The arrow count indicator in the bottom right said I had 160+ arrows. I fired several. Maybe 10 or 20. Suddenly I head the click sound indicating that I was out of arrows. The indicator was wrong.

Another thing. Starting new games, I get to the point where you can loot the bodies at Helgen Keep and get your first arrows. I can fire them just fine, up until the point when Ralof gives you the arrows to shoot the bear. At that point, again, the indicator is off. I can use the new arrows given to me but not the ones previously looted.

Even stranger, if I drop the entire quiver (consisting of Ralof's arrows and those looted) and pick it back up, the number of arrows seems to be multiplied.

I uninstalled all mods, all scripts, even my meshes folder which contained modified arrow and skeleton nifs. The problem persisted.

Please someone, reply and scold me for not using the search function and tell me this is a common problem with the latest patch. (though I couldn't find it).

P.S. - Mods, I wasn't sure where to put this post. Since I play on the PC, I figured the best place would be here. Please move this thread if it's in the wrong place.

I tested this in the Helgen tunnel at the start of the game. Here's what happened:

Inventory Displayed Event
======= ======== =============
48 48 Looted from dead archers.
60 60 After Ralof gave me bow and arrows.
58 58 After firing two arrows at the bear.
24 12 After dropping 58 arrows, only 12 arrow quiver on the ground.
36 24 After dropping 24 arrows, picked up 36
48 36 After dropping 36 arrows, picked up 48
60 48 After dropping 48 arrows, picked up 60

The extra 12 arrows that Ralof gave me showed up in my inventory but was not counted in the displayed number. When I dropped all arrows, suddenly all I have are a 12 arrow quiver laying on the ground. The others are gone. I couldn't find them anywhere. But I pick up the 12 and I now have 24 in inventory. It's like the original 12 stays in inventory but is not displayed. However, after that every time I dropped the arrows, they would show up on the ground in 12 arrow quivers. First one, then two, then three, etc. And every time I drop them, a new 12 arrow quiver was created.

This is a Bethesda bug. No doubt about it. I would bet it's the scripting they used to give you the arrows to start with. Maybe if you go on down the tunnel to continue the story line, they end this particular part of the quest, and things are set right again. I don't remember this ever happening before. It's certain it would be noticeable after awhile. But come to think of it, I dump iron arrows as soon as I can get steel or ancient Nord arrows. So maybe, I just never noticed this bug.

Okay, I went back into the game, loaded the save just after killing the bear when I still had the 58 arrows, and continued on down the tunnel and out into Skyrim to witness the dragon fly over. Then I dropped arrows and picked them up like this:

I dropped all 58 arrows which divided into a 46 arrow quiver and a 12 arrow quiver.
I picked up 46 and had 46 inventory and 34 displayed.
Dropped 46 which divided into 34 and 12.
Picked up 34 and had 34 inventory and 22 displayed.
Dropped 34 which divided into 22 and 12.
Picked up 22 and had 22 inventory and 10 displayed.
Dropped 22 which divided into 12 and 10.
Picked up 10 and had 10 inventory and 10 displayed.
Picked up all the 12 arrow quivers from the ground and had 58 arrows and 58 displayed.

This sequence seemed to work like the bug in reverse. There is definitely a separate tracking system for the 12 arrows given to the player. That's why there are always 12 arrows dropped separately. But these dropped 12 are not deducted from whatever is tracking them. So that when you pick up all the arrows, it just adds them back to the original 12. And you end up with 12 extra arrows each time you do this.

What I did out of the cave, by not picking up the 12 each time was to flush the total until the last 12 were dropped. At that point it cleared the other tracking system, and then counted the correct number as I picked up all the 12 arrow quivers.

So there is definitely a bug when Ralof gives you 12 arrows. And it is repeatable, not some fluke.

It's not just in the starting dungeon, Ren. It happened to me well after that, after weeks in game. I was near Morthal just firing off arrows for fun. I had 160 or more, according to my one screen indicator in the bottom right. But after a couple dozen shots, it said my arrows were all gone. Incidentally, I just so happened to be using iron arrows. Is it a bug with iron arrows or all types? I don't know.

Another strange thing. After this had happened and I knew it was more than just a Helgen bug, I dropped my quiver. At that time I had 55 arrows. When I dropped it, it fell as two separate quivers, one of 32 and one of 23. I picked them up and dropped it again. This time it dropped as 55. I exited the game and returned. I dropped the quiver again. It dropped as two quivers, 32 and 23. After picking it up, it was fine thereafter.

There's a huge problem with arrow counts in this game. As I said above, it's not a mod or a script, as I tested with a totally clean Skyrim folder. I'm amazed that when I search Google using keywords to describe this problem, the only thing I can find are a thousand sites describing how to "cheat" to get unlimited arrows using some exploit with the guards in Solitude (or some such). How is it that no one has ever talked about this?

Probably because no one ever noticed it before. In the immersion that comes with playing Skyrim, you get so focused on the game play, the role playing, the crafting, the quests, and even the beautiful game world that you simply don't pay attention to many of the details of the game. You trust that the designers have built in all the number crunching and tracking, so you just don't worry about it.

Well, I for one do not look at the indicator - no time for it, too much busy with living in Skyrim. If I want to know the numbers, I just go to the inventory (as I ussualy have several different stacks of arrows). SkyUI user.

The indicator is just a symptom of the disease. The game is miscounting arrows.