Today I decided to start another character, thinking it should be no issue at all to run multiple characters at the same time (like in any other game).

So after doing the initial "flee from dragon" event on my new character, I decided to load my first character (level 15) again, but to my surprise, none of the recent quicksaves were there anymore.

Google tells me the game likes to overwrite other char's quicksaves and I should have done a manual ESC->Save, but I don't seem to be able to find any information how to retrieve a character if you haven't done any such ESC->Saves (figured F5 should be good enough and nothing in the game told me it isn't).

Any help how to get my 1st char back? A bit frustrated. =/

It may be possible to find the quick save that overwrote it, right click it, hit Properties, hit the Previous Versions tab, and see if your old character's save is still in there somewhere.

But also, never, ever rely only on auto/quick saves when playing a Bethesda game (or any game, really). Always make manual ESC->Save saves, at least once every 20 minutes or so. It's so easy for a save to get corrupted or overwritten that that should just be common sense.

Personally, I don't even use quicksaves, or even overwrite my manual saves. I just go in and make a new save every time and go back and delete the old ones when I have around 1000 or when they start slowing down my game.

there is only ever 1 quick save.... it overwrites each time you push the quick save key... you must MANUALLY save each and every time you want a permanent one. If you never did this.. your most likely SOL.... sorry...

Most games with quick save functions even way back in the day rarely made individual save files for each and every one.. quite often it rotated them around... just like you shouldn't ever rely on auto saves... bad idea.

Welcome to the worste save game system in the world. If the files have been overwritten then they are gone.

Try going to your user/mydocuments/mygames/skyrim/saves folder and checking there to see if there are still any copies of your save files there.

One way I keep track of the characters I play is to make my own folders in the saves folder and move the files around myself that way I never have to worry about "overwriting" anying either by the system or by myself.

Hope you can find you saves.

In my Saves folder I see 3 .bck files with time stamps from when I last played my first char

autosave1.ess.bak
autosave2.ess.bak
autosave3.ess.bak

anything I can do with those?

the quicksave.ess.bak already seems to have been replaced by a Save of my 2nd char.

Edit: It looks like I could also restore an old quicksave.ess (the right-click -> Properties tip) from 2 days ago, which would be alright I guess, if the autosave backups are useless.

Try right clicking on any of those saves, or your regular autosaves, and doing the thing I mentioned above with the Previous Versions tab. I just tried it and it found me three previous versions of that save, one being from a month ago.

Harsh lesson I guess :/ but indeed, manual saves are your friend.
I like to back em up in separate folders periodically too to keep the current one nice and tidy (and prevent possible problems)

You just need to remove the ".bak" by renaming those files, and then with the *.ess extension Skyrim should recognize and be able to load them. I would back up and then rename the 'autosave1' etc. part as well though, since you're going to be deleting the *.bak extension anyways.

Ah thank God, that worked, back on my mighty almost-level-16 now. Else I could have used Gamemastr35's advice and restore a 2 day old quicksave file, which would have been fine too, better than completely losing all progress.

Thanks all for the fast help.

I've gotta say thanks to you guys as well. I did the very same thing Tvei did, only mine was at level 45! Talk about pissed at myself. Anyway, was able to retrieve 99% of it, (I think I lost maybe a couple hours of play time). I was a quicksave kind o' guy myself. Mainly 'cause I seem to die at some inopportune times, but I can see now where it's extremely wise to "hard" save.

Thanx again folks.

I turn off all autosaves, and manual save. You'll get in the habit of it, and after a few hard lessons, probably never forget again. I use a savegame profile manager (which Bethesda should have incorporated in the first place) so that each character I use has its own save directory.

Yes its good practice in Elder Scrolls games to turn off auto-saves ad use only hard-saves, I.E hit esc and actually save, i have never once even use a quick save heh never once in 13 years of playing TES games, almost as unfathomable as someone who has never hard saved i guess lol