There will be an Elder Scrolls 6…presumably…at some point. It will probably not be until 2021 that gamers are able to revisit Tamriel via the next entry into the Elder Scrolls series. According to many reports, Bethesda is going to wait until they are finished with the space-based RPG titled Starfield before they begin working on Elder Scrolls 6. One rumor, based on a supposed leaked internal memo at Bethesda, is that the next entry will take place in Valenwood (the home of the Bosmer elves). One hope many gamers have for the next game in the series is that it doesn’t contain the numerous bugs/glitches that plagued Skyrim – especially the earlier versions. Here are ten bugs that Bethesda hopefully doesn’t allow to appear in Elder Scrolls 6.
10 Quests That Can’t Be Finished
Skyrim had far too many quests that, due to a bug, could not be completed if the player didn’t complete the quest in a specific way. A good example of this happening is the quest found in the Bards College to find Rjorn’s drum and give it to Giraud. If the player finds the drum before activating the quest it will be impossible to complete. The player can still give the drum to Giraud and collect the reward, but the game will never show the quest as complete. Bugs like these are inexcusable for a AAA game, and hopefully the next Elder Scrolls game will not have any of these annoying occurrences.
9 Bugs That Allow Training The Character For Free Or Quickly
Not all bugs are annoying or game-breaking. Some bugs are not only easily exploitable but very helpful for the player. This is one of those types of bugs. In Skyrim there is an NPC, named Faendral, whom the player can gain as a follower. Faendral can train the player’s character up to level 50 in the archery skill.
The problem is that players can access their follower’s inventory via the trade option when in dialogue with them, and the money the character pays Faendral will be in his inventory. So players can get their characters to level 50 in archery for free. Another example of this is at the beginning of the game when the player is escaping from Helgen; in only about 10 minutes the character’s sneak skill can be maxed-out, and the NPC accompanying the player's character during the escape cannot die - so the one-handed skill can be quickly increased here as well.
8 Getting Stuck To Surfaces
This annoying bug causes the player’s character to become stuck within something or against something. This seems to be a bug common to a lot of Bethesda’s games. Every person who has played Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, or Fallout: New Vegas has had this happen at least once. Typically the only remedy is to reload a previous save game, and hope it wasn’t from half an hour ago. Fast-travelling also fixes this, but if this happens when enemies are nearby the ability to fast-travel will be disabled. Hopefully, Bethesda will find a way to prevent this bug in future releases.
7 NPCs And Creatures Falling From The Sky
Nearly every player of Skyrim has had this happen to them – they load a save game or exit a structure only to see a creature or NPC fall from the sky and die upon impact with the ground. Sometimes it was a mammoth, sometimes it was a dragon, and sometimes it was an NPC from a town on the other side of Skyrim. While this is oddly, and immensely amusing to witness, sometimes this bug would cause an NPC necessary for the completion of a quest to fall to his/her death – making the quest impossible to be completed.
6 Bugs That Break The Fast-Travel System
This bug doesn’t break the game, but it will make the game extremely tedious to complete unless the player chooses to skip the side-quests. This glitch comes in many forms as well. Some players simply find that they suddenly can’t fast-travel, without a reason given – this can persist even after reloading the game.
Some players find they couldn’t fast-travel after defeating, or sneaking away from enemies. The game can sometimes prevent fast-traveling due to enemies being nearby - when there were no enemies in sight or on the radar. This version of the bug could thankfully be fixed by simply reloading a previous save game.
5 Bugs That Prevent Resting
This bug wasn’t too impactful with all the options available in Skyrim for healing your character. Though, it is still a bug that should not have been allowed to be in the final product. This bug would disable the player’s ability to have their character rest. The common cause was the game would state that enemies were nearby when there were no enemies in the area (like the fast-travel bug). The bug could also happen when the game mistook the character as a trespasser and disabled the ability to rest until they left the area. Resting isn't necessary, but the benefits of being rested or well-rested will be lost.
4 Save File Size Affecting Game Performance
This bug has only really affected the PS3 version of Skyrim, but nevertheless needs to be prevented from happening again. Many players have stated that after the save file gets too big (over 6MB) the game starts having performance issues. The biggest complaint is a severe drop in framerate; which can make a game unplayable.
This may not be associated so much with the size of the save file, but more with how much the player has changed the world since the beginning of the game. Guild quests, in particular, make rather large changes to the game world, so those playing Skyrim on a PS3 might hold-off on the guild quests until later in the game.
3 The Basket-Over-The-Head Bug
This bug is one of those beneficial ones – and is also very amusing to see exploited. Merchants and shopkeepers get predictably aggressive when they see the player’s character stealing one of their items. Player’s soon learned that Bethesda took the concept of NPCs “seeing” them stealing something very literally. Players discovered they could pick up baskets and use them to cover the heads of shopkeepers. Shopkeepers did not seem to care that this was happening; in fact with the basket over the shopkeeper’s heads players were free to steal everything in the store at their leisure.
2 The Alchemy Bug
This is probably the most famous bug in Skyrim, as it allows for characters to have weapons, armor, and items the gods themselves would covet. The player makes or finds items that fortify alchemy. Wearing these make a fortify restoration potion and drink it. Take off your gear and then reequip it. Repeat this process a few times then create a fortify enchantment potion and use it to make new fortify alchemy gear. This will allow the player to make incredibly powerful items by being able to craft incredibly overpowered potions whenever they want. Weapons can now be made that deal damage in the tens of thousands, armor can be improved to provide thousands of armor points, and enchanted items can also give a bonus in the tens of thousands to an attribute like health.
1 Bugs That Make Enemies Unkillable
These bugs are among the worst. It’s not that big a deal when a regular enemy, like a wolf, is somehow rendered invincible by a glitch; however, when this happens with an NPC or creature tied to a quest it can be a huge problem. One common occurrence of this glitch is when encountering Morokei in Labyrinthian. Many gamers have complained that their game glitched and Morokei could not be damaged. Apparently there is a bug which turns off the hit-detection for Morokei, causing all attacks to miss. There is a similar bug when fighting Alduin which renders him invincible as well.