Hi everybody,

I hereby proclaim myself a Noob, just started the game, & am wondering about saves.

My Nord is level 4, & each time I save, I save in a new slot, so I have 20+ saves at this point. (I have autosaves turned off.)

Is there a cutoff?

I've read that some people cycle between, say, three saves. Why, when the game allows seemingly unlimited saves?

Thanks in advance.

You don't need to do a new save everytime, I just use quick save after I kill something incase I die then I don't have to do a load of stuff again, it keeps overwriting itself so my save screen is nice and empty. The only thing I use new saves for is for saving different characters as quick save won't do that for me. For me it's much more efficient and quicker than saving a new slot every time. As for the limit, I have no idea but normally games with a big save space usually let you save 99 or something like that.

Thanks demo.

One reason I ask is because I read that saving on top of old saves causes the save file size to grow to unwieldy proportions.

I haven't read that having 99 saves causes lag (or whatever), so I'm not sure why more people don't have many many saves.

I don't believe so. I have over 4,000 saves in my save list. My wife has over 2,000 saves in her list.

At some point I suppose I will go in that directory and delete the first few thousand.

I cycle between 3. And I have all atuo-saves turned off and I save often. Haven't had any problems that way.

I keep a good number of saves around, but I do delete older saves, usually. Or move them to a folder on the PC.

I might keep 10 to 20 saves (less that usually since I'm still in the learning mode with my character, and would be okay with restarting if something goes horribly wrong). The number on my saves for my current character is in the 1700s I think.

But I never save "over" an existing save. It might not be a problem, but it has been reported to cause problems in other games. So to be safe I always save in a new "slot".

There are many good ways to save, the key is to have slots to go back to for whatever reason.

I always make a save before I enter a dungeon or a new cell in a dungeon.

I always have a save from before I start a quest. Accepting it is OK without a save, but starting it is where you want the save point.

I always have a save in the middle of a quest or at the completion of a stage, not over writing any of the others.

I also will have a save from before starting any faction, and then one during it for major stages. I use the quest saving strategy outlined above in addition.

I never overwrite a save slot more than 5 to 10 times.

This game can glitch, even if it was perfectly patched, it will glitch from time to time. The number one way to solve a glitch is to reload an earlier save and start the quest over. It is rare, but you will thank me later for this.

Depending your rig, there is a save cutoff limit. Mine kicks in around 1800 save files, and what happens is that the saves simply don't save, even when you try to overwrite a file.

Skyrim seems pretty stable regarding overwriting, and I don't think anyone has reported instability or corrupted saves from this.

One issue with the system is the inability to 'name' saves...sure, the game does it, but it's not the best option. If you are on pc, you can create a folder (anywhere that you can remember where it is), and then copy the last save of a character from your Skryim saved games folder and then paste it into the new folder...simply reverse the process to reactivate your old character. This will stop you inadvertantly erasing an earlier character that you might have been saving for when DLC comes out, or if you have different people playing your copy of Skyrim with different characters (very helpful for people with kids or grandkids).

I think it is post 12 in here:

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1337420-how-do-you-make-the-save-files-use-your-characters-name-on-consoles/