Whenever I dismount and leave my horse to begin a ruin or something I come back and the horse is no where to be found.

Usually, riders tie the reigns to a branch or something so the horse doesn't wander, but I know this is sorta a useless mechanic for a game. Instead how about not having the horse wander off.

These horses are suppose to be domesticated. I'm not an expert on horses but I would think they know to stay in the area for their master.

I don't mind if the horse roams around a 5ft area, but I'm losing my horse in the radius of 100yds!

And can we please be able to back up a horse. Getting to the ledge and falling off is annoying when I have to do a full 180. Thats ridiculous....horses can back up.

Very odd... in Oblivion, neither of these things occur- you can back up, and your horse will (generally) stay where you dismounted, or at least remain within sight of where you dismounted it.

My horse has never wandered more than a dozen feet from where I leave her.

My horse generally stays in the same area, even after going into a dungeon, the horse is in the same place. The times the horse doesn't - usually when there is combat and the horse has vanished somewhere.

Backing up horses would be awesome.

Only other thing I've found is if you're over-encumbered and you're just walking foward, if you fall off a cliff and the horse dies, but you survive, I found you're stuck in sprinting mode, which at the time I found very useful because I was ages away from a place to sell my goods, just at the cost of my horse .

But may have been just a one off thing, usually don't like killing my horse through acts of stupidity.

If you fast travel, even if its just to the spot where you are already standing, your horse appears beside you. I often use fast travel to my current location as a horse summons.

Normally I travel on foot, though the one time I rode a horse (the owner was slain, laying on the ground beside the horse), it kept walking away when I dismounted. This was at a stable too, and I thought that would have been a safe place to leave it. I just watched as the horse kept walking away, as if trying to go back to where its dead master was. Since it was "free", I didn't think much about it.

Perhaps "purchased" horses don't wander off as much? I would prefer my horse to be where I left it after entering a dungeon or engaging in combat.

Sometimes if you start combat outside a location the horse will run away. Sometimes it runs in to fight. So I think this explains some of the wandering. What the game really needs is some sort of whistle or freely-given shout that summons your current horse to you.

Agreed, probably a power though, not a shout.Something you learn from a book or you start the game with or learn from an NPC.

A "whistle" or at least something on the compass/map would be nice, so one wouldn't have to put up missing posters around Skyrim for their horse.

I also noticed that I have to dismount in order to talk to nearby npcs. That was possible in Oblivion but not here...

I recall people back in the day requesting mounted combat, and instead we get horses that can't back up, like to wander off, and we can't talk to npcs while on a horse.

I'm pretty sure that's considered a stolen horse, even if the owner is dead (check your stats, probably has a stolen horse now). I had the same thing with horses that weren't mine - they just walked away when I dismounted.

And a whistle would be really, really awesome. Would have to be within a certain range, I mean if you whistled for the horse in Solitude and it was somehow in Riften - probably shouldn't work, unless you have super duper whistle capabilities.

I remember back in January of last year they were iffy about whether they were going include horse mounts at all because they were having some difficulty implementing them. At least they didn't get cut even if they are quite limited.

I never had a problem before with a horse I have bought. Only time the horses start walking away is when I find it.

After my first horse got wasted, I gave up on them. Can't fight from them, keep losing them, they only fight when I'm not on them...a bit pointless.

This has been an annoying problem for me. The first time I lost my horse (in the mountains south of High Hrothgar) I spent all night searching for it in the dark before finally giving up and continuing on foot, suspecting it had run off a cliff or something. When I finally came back to search again after meeting the Grey Beards, I found it on top of a guard tower(!) and had trouble getting it back down again. I've had it ditch me on mountains only to find it at the base of the mountain on the opposite side without any explanation of where it went or what it had been doing. I.. I'm starting to suspect it's working with the dark brotherhood. It's also a little disconcerting when it charges in to confront a dragon on a mountain plateau with the Sovngarde chorus chanting music while I'm still waiting down below. I swear, if I see that horse absorb anymore souls, or hear another bard singing about a dragon-horse, I'm breaking it's front legs and leaving it at Nilheim. I'm supposed to be the hero in this story! ..I just hope it hasn't learned any shouts yet..

It seems to turn on flee-AI & run away if gets injured. I think it purposely hides behind obstructions to break line-of-sight. Since there's a good chance you're near the thing it's running from, it's basically hiding from you. If your horse runs away during a fight (not in pursuit of an enemy), try standing in place and surveying the area for the largest thing nearby. Chances are the horse is hiding behind it.

anyone who played 2worlds1 (haven't played 2, yet) knows how well they implemented the game mechanics of horses. i expected skyrim to build on the shortcomings of that game, but, obviously they did not.

for those that didn't play 2worlds, it had: horse combat (not perfect) that one could become very proficient at, whistling, enemies did not attack horses when not being ridden, the horses run a good distance away from a combat area when you dismounted them, many free/roaming horses, packrat, 1st/3rd view, and they could sprint for longer than a short distance.

a good system that beth should have further developed. their attitude about horses is very disappointing.

Did you actually buy it? If you stole it that's the "penalty"

Not useless at all. It should be relatively simple to program a mechanic where as long as you`re near a tree or some sticky-out thing you could `tie` your horse to one place. Basically a simple program would make the horse stop permanently with maybe a little graphic showing the reins attached to something. Shouldn`t take a programmer longer than a day to do.

But just remember, if a wandering monster appears the horse will have no chance, being tied down.



Well in defence of reality and Oblivion, when I rode horses and they`re not tied down they can wander off (even domesticated) and in Oblivion sometimes a wandering monster would make a horse runaway without your knowing. Sometimes I`d even come across my horse in Oblivion dead from some creature after being in a dungeon.

Horses and how they work are badly realised in Skyrim, so very weird since they were so much better in Oblivion.

i only had this problem with stolen horses, but shadowmere just stays or if he sees danger than he charges at full speed

I often find this a good opportunity to practice my Detect Life spell. This is also a fairly reasonable use for fast travel even if you don't typically use the mechanic: fast travel to your current location and voila! Your steed has been reunited with you.

Had this in an Oblivion mod, one spell, if horse is close to you it will follow, nice if you pick ingredients. Cast again and the horse will stop.
If you are some distance from the horse say 20 meters away it will come to you, if it far away it would teleport to around 50 meter away and run the rest of the distance.

I've never had this problem. If you stole the horse, it's supposed to wander off to penalize you for stealing it.