I've spent a lot of time playing this game -- over two characters, I've logged over 100 hours. There have been a LOT of nasty bugs outside the ever-present memory leak, but this one in particular has really soured my playing experience.

Sometime after I finished the quests A Blade in the Dark and The Horn of Jurgen Windcaller, the game lost it's battle music. There hasn't been a single note of battle theme in several hours of gameplay. Not even during battles with dragons. The calm, peaceful incidental music just keeps playing away. It's disconcerting, especially when an enemy sneaks up on me and attacks me from behind. The change in music doesn't just amp up the battles, it acts as a warning that something's spotted you.

I don't know what's caused this -- it wasn't the 1.2 patch itself, because I've played for a while in the wake of the patch and the music only just decided to take a hike -- but I really hope it's fixed by the "incremental patch" planned for next week. The lack of battle music actually affects the atmosphere so much that I don't even want to keep playing. I started another new character, and that one still gets battle music... but for how long? And I really don't feel like investing another 75 hours in this new character just to have it bug out too.

Please, Bethesda. Fix your game! It's a damn shame that Fallout 3 and New Vegas are still so broken on PS3, don't let Skyrim go down the same road.

Try messing with the music audio level a bit and see if that gets it re-initialized?

Tried that. I keep my music levels pretty high in the first place. Besides which, music isn't gone entirely. The field and city music still plays, but the battle music never does. During combat, the field music just keeps playing. It's actually a little disconcerting.

I've tried reloading, reinstalling the game and patch, loading an earlier auto save... the only thing that's brought back the battle music is starting a new character.

i'm also getting this but only after patch 1.2 actully everything worked fine before patch 1.2 at least before the massive lag but everything worked at least. battle music is an effects and bethesda has openly said they diled down effects in patch 1,2 like the birds outside of riverwood making noises everytime i walk by but i look up and nothing there

I was getting battle music all the way up until after the two quests I mentioned above... it actually seems like the music stopped after a main campaign event fighting a dragon. From that moment on, no more battle music. It just vanished.

It probably got shut off because there was too much sound going on at once and then never turned back on. Sometimes that happens when you have a lot of sound effects playing simultaneously but usually it's a sound effect that gets cut short and not the music completely.

Have you tried removing and re-installing the actual game data itself?

I had something like this prior to 1.2 and still have after. In my case, battle music will eventually start playing at some point during the fight, it just fails to be triggered right when the battle begins and, with weak enemies, often results in battle music not playing at all. So, the longer the fight, the more likely it will start playing. In my case anyway. Reinstalling from scratch didn't help me at all, but it's worth a shot. You could also try and delete your options as they were probably corrupted. I think they are stored in the save file utility in XMB. Careful though, you don't want to delete your save games.

I back up my save data to a thumb drive every night, so I've tried using a previous save and that didn't work. My alt character uses the same settings data as my main, and it still has battle music, so I don't think it's in the settings data, but I'll try deleting it and see what happens.

I've also tried deliberately stretching out battles to see if the music will start eventually, but it doesn't. Of course, conjuring a bow didn't used to freeze the game for a couple of seconds, either...

I'm going to try and reinstall game data and patch and see if that helps. If it doesn't, then hopefully next week's emergency patch will help.

It's happening the same with me!!!

I'm reinstalling right now. I'll post back when it's done, see if it's fixed anything. If not, I guess I'll be submitting a support ticket to Bethesda technical support tonight.

Reinstalled the game data and patch, deleted the options, and still no battle music on replay (and my shield bash doesn't seem to want to make sound either). It must be connected to the save data somehow, because my level 1 alt still has battle music if I boot up that save.

The loss of battle music is a major disappointment. I don't hold out a lot of hope, but I hope 1.03 fixes it, because neither waiting until January to get it back or starting fresh on my alt sounds very appealing.

i think that awesome.....so you will get surprised each time your atttacked!

If you think it's awesome, feel free to turn your music off. Meanwhile, some of us would rather like to have the option of having battle music. Dragon battles feel so hollow now.

Lack of battle music is part of the reason I'm not super keen on MMORPGs like WoW. But at least in those games it's a deliberate choice, not a bug that manifests nearly 100 hours in.

Only if there weren't those annoying, little red dots in the compass.

Those dots don't show up when you're being taken from behind by a cave bear. And when you're playing a Mage with an armor rating of 0 without an alteration spell, that's a one-shot kill.

I don't have a way to check right this second, but is there an option in the game settings to actually "mute" the sound? Or maybe turn the master audio completely down, save the game, quit and reload and turn it back up or "un-mute" it?

You can mute the sound, but that's not the issue. Everything else sound wise is working as-usual, and there isn't a separate slider for battle music. I've tried tweaking all of the sound sliders, even the master slider, and it changes nothing.

It's like the field or dungeon music simply refuses to be interrupted by the battle music.

I've got this issue. Started with all music disappearing but a reboot fixed that. Some hours later, the battle music wouldn't stop (during the final Legion quest) regardless of reloading/rebooting. Eventually a glitched dragon showed up and it seemed to correct itself.

Now my battle music is getting scarcer and scarcer - started off with weak enemies but I've just had my first silent dragon fight. All my issues with music started post patch.

WOW! Now this I havent heard of, I can imagine the battles just lose their 'feel' without the fight music

This game is a F***ing mess

I actually quite like the lack of battle music.

I'd be perfectly fine with there being an option to disable battle music. It's the lack of choice in the matter that's made me set the game aside. I won't be playing it again until the issue is fixed, because for some reason, this is the issue that bothers me the most.

Aaron, that's exactly my problem with the lack of battle music. Fights feel... empty. Hollow. I can't really put my finger on it, but half the joy I took from engaging in combat -- especially with dragons -- vanished with the music.

My sister has now lost battle music in her game (on a separate PS3). She was on her way up to see the greybeards for the first time, and from that point on, no more battle music.

This bug... bugs me.

Had this already two times with all music. It fixed itself after completing the specific quest successfully. However, sound-effects were still there.

It happened to me when I got over 700 armor rating. Going below that number again fixed It. Might be related.

I don't think that'd affect my sister's playthrough as she's a lot less armored up, but I am over 700 on my armor. I'm going to pop into the living room and check that out real fast.

Result: My armor rating was 724. I removed my Legendary Dragonbone helmet and replaced it with a Flawless Iron Helmet, which took my armor rating down to 647. I left Whiterun and started a fight with two Giants. No battle music. During that fight, I noticed a dragon flying around overhead. It wouldn't attack me -- that's a well known glitch, I suppose -- but it did fly off to attack some Whiterun guards, so I followed it and managed to get it's attention. After about 30 seconds, my battle music miraculously booted up. It was non-boss music, however. Which is something I've never experienced while fighting a dragon. The dragon flew into an area filled with Bandits, and the Bandits killed it. I got their attention, so the battle music continued.

After I killed them, I quick traveled to three different locations and engaged three different groups of bandits. None of these battles triggered battle music. It was back to being the pleasant, soothing world exploration music.

Curious. I'm not sure if changing my armor rating was a coincidence or not. I'm going to play around with it some more this evening, that is assuming I can get the game to run: I ran into some seriously gnarly FPS dips, going all the way down to 0 FPS for more than three seconds at a time. Curiously, this seems to have coincided with me downloading things to the HDD over PSN. When I paused the downloads, the game ran a little bit smother. Still jittery, but the three to four second gaps with 0 FPS seem to have gone away.

I'm going to test this all further in the evening, and I plan to set up my camera and record some of the session so I can load it on YouTube. I'll provide a link here when I have.