Hello there. I'm an Xbox user, still waiting for the 1.4 patch.

So here's the thing. Even though I realize the patch is around the corner, it's not likely it will get released for consoles until next week the earliest. And I have a lot of free time this weekend, and a Skyrim game that's been waiting since mid January. Part of it because of work, part because of a bug.

I have that bug that prevents you from reaching Riften. If you fast travel, the load screen loads forever. No crash, just endless load. If you walk/ride/run/swim there, the game always crashes whenever you are near Riften. Therefore, the city of Riften is effectively unreachable and the save where this happened to me, useless.

I have earlier saves without the bug, though. But they would force me to replay several hours to get to the point where I was, so I've been waiting for the patch all this time, always thinking that it could get released the next day and fix my bug.

Even though it was never listed by Bethesda, other users have mentioned that people testing the beta reported this kind of bug as being fixed by 1.4. However, that's sort of the typical case of 'he says that she says that he says'. I would really like to know if it does fix it, now that the patch is available for PC. Otherwise I'd just load an older save and play the game this weekend. Also, it would kind of svck to eventually download it, after waiting for so many days, and realize that the damn thing doesn't even fix the bug.

So my question is: can anybody who experienced the bug I described first hand, confirm that 1.4 fixes or doesn't fix it?

Thank you very much.

It's sad that you have to deal with bugs like that =/. I've never had that kind of bug, but that's pretty inexcusable.

Before patch 1.4, in my more recent saved games, I couldn't approach within about 10 metres of Riften without a 100% crash. I couldn't even move around the lower-right corner of the map gor long without the game crashing. On version 1.4, I can run right up to Riften's gates and enter the city without any issues at all.

That sounds real close to what's happening to me, but where you having trouble with fast travel as well?

To several places, yes but, oddly, Riften was not one of them! Approaching to within the "event horizon" or exiting through any of the city doors resulted in instant CTD (Crash To Desktop) every time, but I could fast travel in and out of the city OK.

Could you walk to those places without the game crashing? Also, then I understand that you could not approach Riften normally, but the city was still available for you if you fast traveled, right?

I could walk up to the doors but the game crashed when I tried to enter. When I gave up playing (until 1.4 was out), just walking around outside would crash the game within a few seconds. It got really bad.

Okay. Not sure if it's the same problem, then. It all sounds like the general stability issues the patch promised to fix, while my problem is something very specific limited to Riften. I can travel the rest of Skyrim no problem.

Sigh. I wish I just decided to load that older save back when everything happened, instead of waiting naively for a patch that I assumed was gonna be out in a couple of days. Now I'm in a position that, if I resume playing from the older save, chances are the patch will be out before I reach the point where I was when the game glitched. And I bet Murphy's Law will make the bug fixable if I do that.

The are around Riften was the worst affected in my game prior to 1.4, though the only places actually in Riften that sometimes caused crashes were the doors in the Thieves Guild area.

I refloat this just to confirm that 1.4 didn't fix the bug.

Still, it's interesting to note that it did improve, according to many, the general performance around Riften and such. That means that what I got is a completely different thing, as I feared. A very specific, game-killer bug that very few people are reporting.

This is intresting, I've recently discovered that I can't fast travel or get close to Northwood Summit (CTD) which is also near Riften, however everywhere else is fine. I can go to Riften and everywhere else just that one place. Seems like we've got similar issues. No idea how to fix this though I've tried everything.

EDIT: I have no idea when it occured I've only just discovered because I was looking for ruins in hopes for Dragon Priests, and that place gives me CTD when I fast travel there.

Yes, that's what makes this a pretty terrible bug. It's impossible to know when the problem begins, so you don't even know how much you have to backtrack to make it go away. Because the only way to fix it, unfortunately, is to go back to an older save before whatever happened, happened.

And the fact that this doesn't seem very common makes me fear that it will just be ignored and stay like that forever.

Personally, since I really don't want to find myself in the situation of having to redo ten hours of gameplay or worse again, and knowing that this can happen at any location (there was a third user once that reported it somewhere else), from now on I'm just going to have several saves of each of my last three character levels, so there's always a range of options to 'go back in time' if anything happens.

svcks to play a game like that, fearing that everything could just blow up any minute, but it is what it is.

It has been said many times before. Whenever you patch a game it is best to start over in order to enjoy the full benefits of the patch. Some fixes are implemented in a preventive fashion meaning that it would no longer be possible to obtain the bug in the first place. Unfortunately it does not fix cases where those bugs have already been triggered. There are fixes that works retro-actively as well but also not in all cases. Only by starting a new game can you be sure that you're going to obtain all listed fixes in the patch.

And I cannot be ok with that. And it amazes me that some people are.

It's nothing but a shameless way of using their fans as beta-testers.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to attack anyone here. At least I can fix my problem by just loading and older game. But the bottom line here is that a videogame should not get released with bugs that can completely destroy the experience and force you to start over. That's absolutely unacceptable. I understand that open world games like Skyrim will have bugs. But those should be minor bugs. Something that prevents you from moving forward in your game is intolerable, not matter how big and complex the game is. I've been pretty understanding with Bethesda for the longest time, and I still am for the vast majority of issues, but this way of acting is simply wrong and it should not be overlooked by the community. Personally, I won't get any more or their games on launch date anymore, because I've already worked as a free tester for them one too many times.

As the saying goes, life is not always fair. I do understand your frustration but go through the 360 forum and see how many people reported the same problem that you just did. Enough to make someone sit up and take serious notice? Some bugs hit everyone and their pal and the developers will quickly rush out a fix for it. Some bugs are limited to a handful of people and if you're very lucky it might get fixed as a result of a bigger bug being fixed. Sometimes the only way to fix a bug is to stop it before it happens. When you're playing a game that consist of millions of lines of code and you are allowed to do almost anything you want the odds of every bug being caught before launch is 0.

You can be angry or you can except the reality of it and get back to having fun. If you view it as a personal affront and really can't get over it then yeah, find something new. It is just a game after all.

I know. Like I said, I'm not taking it terribly bad. I'm not throwing my game out of the window or anything. I'm going to keep playing it and enjoying it. I'm just saying what is true.

Skyrim is the first Bethesda game I bought at launch. Many warned me about it, and I was completely aware of what might happen. Unfortunately, it happened. It was just my little experiment, and now I know I won't experiment anymore. Next time I'll wait until the game has been tested for a year and buy it then. It worked marvels with Fallout.

Good things come to those who wait.

The only problem is if nobody buys a game at launch the developers will go bankrupt and make no more games. So think of it as your contribution to the continuous existence of the gaming industry.