Just today I rented Skyrim again as I got the Dawnguard DLC for free from the beta opt-in and I wanted to try out the new patch and DLC. I first traded the game in a few months ago because the game was too bugged to play. One quest corrupted my save files and made me have to start over. Now with Dawnguard, the game is even worse. The game freezes and will not let me play the game for more than 10 minutes. I have re-installed everything and cleared the system cache...nothing works. How can they sell a game that is broken? This is why people lose faith in Bethesda...their games are too bugged to even play! So glad I rented this bugged crap instead of buying it again. Bethesda is dead in my books. Actually make sure the game you sell for $60 works before you put it out....

That is unfortunate you're getting these problems, but you must realize you're in the minority with problems of this magnitude.
You didn't buy a broken game, since it works just fine for most people.

I've played over 300 hours of Skyrim on my Xbox (and 50 hours on my PS3) and had maybe ten freezes. No corrupt saves. No major glitches.

Either your Xbox has problems, or more likely, your save file got corrupt a long time ago and patches don't fix that.
Do all these crashes persist with a brand new character?

I been havin pretty much the same problem with the freezing.
I would be running and the game wouuld freeze.
I would go through a door like the keep in Markarth and as the game is loading to put me inside there, it would freeze and I would have to turn the game off and turn it back on again.
For the longest time this would happen when I was sent on a quest by skjor to Shamer's cave to get a Elven bow, and every time I would get to this one part of the cave, the game would always freeze.
I hope Bethesda are reading these requests and problems to make the game better; because so far they are the best.

Damn this svcks, im sorry to hear that :/, but maybe it's your xbox's fault (if its old that is) since i've heard that Skyrim tends to overheat older models rather quickly, otherwise i hope your problems get fixed soon.

Sorry to hear that's happening. If you're seeing a persistent crash, I would recommend rolling back to an earlier save before the issue takes place. You might also try clearing the Xbox Cache (to remove title updates) and deleting/re-installing Dawnguard.

I too have the same issue, Xbox Slim, 70 gig free on HD, Skyrim on HD, DG on HD, worked fine until I got DG, now every game it freezes up and loading screens that used to take maybe up to 20-30 seconds to load, now can take 4-5 minutes, or just lock up totally, DG needs to be fixed .....


Reinstalled 3 times now, everything, even does it with new characters, no dice, its only since DG though before it would freeze maybe once every 100 hours plus, now its every 2 hours if I am lucky .........

Hmm I would recommend you to delete Skyrim from your HD and not re-install it afterwards . Perhaps that should help. Not only would this stop the freezing, but you may also have better textures ^^ and graphics because there is a HD bug of Skyrim . When you install it on your HD it will not load ^^ all the textures which make them blurry or looking bad. I have experienced that with my ^^ xbox and also with one of a friend's.

hope could be of assistance.

Test with a new character. If it doesnt lock up as often or at all, the save file for that character is bugged. It happens to a lot of us.

How do save files become bugged? Is it a consequence of something you do through playing or does it occur somewhat randomly over time. Just curious to know if there are any preventative measures myself and others could be taking. To date, the biggest glitch I had in Dawnguard was when I kept contracting vampirism w/o having the disease first. Cured it about 9 times before I just restarted (this wasn't the sole reason for doing this, but certainly was a driving factor). Overall, I haven't had any major issues with Skyrim or DG (although only on second playthrough for DG side and I hear vampire side is more buggy) but I have still encountered many glitches that are extremely annoying and well reported, so I am counting the days for when we see fixes for those.

Random crashes have the potential to corrupt data on the HDD, as does powering down the system incorrectly or playing during a thunderstorm or playing during a "brownout". It can happen with any title, I've had saves for Forza get corrupted and had to start all over again. In Skyrims case, bugs can be stored in the savefile that overtime create havok and eventually corrupt the save. Thats why in many cases its best when a bug strikes to reload from an earlier save and to not try to "play through" the bug because it can make matters worse in the long run for that character.

I had the same problems. I've seen it more than a few times on the DG support forums as well. It's not a negligible percentage and it is, most certainly, related to DG.

Saying that the DLC is fine is false as well, there are dozens of instances that came to light soon after release that the Beta testers told Bethesda about bugs and they simply ignored them. Doesn't sound like a company I intend to continue supporting unless they get off their asses and fix this overpriced crap.

Additionally, the "Make a new character" argument is horse-[censored].

These games are the type where you spend hundreds of hours on a character, for that to go down the drain due to the game maker producing a faulty product is despicable.

Its a legit answer even if you dont like it. Many of the bugs in the game are scipt errors and those can and do get stored in the game save. The gamesave trumps ALL updates made to the game, so bugs that were in the gamesave stay in the game even when fixed in later patches. The only way to rectify it is to start on a fixed game version.

And TES is designed specifically for multiple play throughs, the act of having to start again is not a big issue. And this is coming from someone who has 7 characters and over 1k hours in the game since launch. And as someone who has had a plethora of bugs with the title.

I didn't mean that it wasn't a very valid option, you're correct that it is the only way to truly get over some of the bugs fixed by patches, etc. I actually feel like it's even less necessary here than in previous TES/FO games, since you can master so many things and racial bonuses are almost negligible (some are still very nice but unnecessary with the right enchantments/skills).

It just meant that having it be the default response to fix things is extremely unpleasant. A company that consistently publishes games that have a strong propensity to ruin characters after X amount of time, even after the game is "live", is pretty lame.

Yeah I get your point, but in actual fact there are many other games out there that have had similar problems with player saves. As I always say a gamesave system MUST be bullet proof so that corrpution etc doesnt happen. Though to be fair Skyrim is much much better than previous titles in this respect, I remember having to start Oblvion 8 or 9 times before I got the unofficial patch due to characters corrupting.

I've noticed that my characters begin to lag and I begin to experience freezes when I reach around level 30 or so in a character. This has happened with both old characters I played before the download and new ones that I rolled up after installation. I save often and I suspect that the issue has to do with the amount of data in the save as you reach a higher level. If I try to play for any length of time, the game begins to stutter and then it freezes. Loading takes forever. I play on X-box 360 exclusively.