So I killed all killable people in whiterun then something urgent came up so I saved and ran off to return home later and find I had overwritten my main save. So is there a way for me to recover my old save? And if not are there any people relating to the main quest or another large side quest I may have killed?

The only thing you can rely upon is your autosave saves. If you don't have that (or the autosaves are none the better), then you're basically screwed.

I've never killed anyone in Whiterun town (only in Dragonsreach), but I think no major quest will be affected. I can only think of small quests like Amren's family sword and some such. Should be no problem

Ahh k tu

Ty*

There is a solution if you're a pc player. I don't know if you're gonna play without issues but it's a try:

- Type this: " (i don't know how it's in english, it's right down 'esc'. or "~" it may work as well.
- Left click on someone that you want to live again
- Type "resurrect"

The NPC that you clicked sould come back to life (ooooooh), if didn't work, sorry.

- You have to do this with everyone that you killed.

Good Look!

If you're on a PC and use the console check a wiki because I think I've seen people discuss that if you resurrect a quest-giver or merchant NPC they are only present in the world...they don't return to their fully functional selves.

It's usually stored backup games, on pc it's three autosaves and one quick save, however all of the autosaves and the quicksave has an .ess.bak backup file like quicksave.ess.bak, rename it to quicksave2.ess and try to load it, you might also want to try to rename some of the autosave backups.

Always do hard saves before testing something like this also before starting major quests.

This reminds me of people eating poison apples in Oblivion and then saving.

you can also simply spawn an npc though playing god might break immersion for some folks.

This is why I keep at least 4 "main" saves.

I keep 8. Yeah, that really came in handy when I screwed up the continuity of the Companion's Guild questline.

I'm on PS3 so with absolutely no hope of rectifying everything I keep 3 saves per Char. 1 main save for when I'm done playing, and then overwrite the other 2 as I enter a dungeon or do a mission..

If I was to do the Saarthal mission for mage guild, I'd load up the 'main' save, then save usually at every door and/or after every battle on the 2nd save until the quest is completed.

Then if I did the next college mission I'd overwrite the 3rd save every door or every battle or every main step until the quest is completed.. And ONLY use the 2nd and 3rd saves in turn for every mission, until I'm done for that playing session and if no glitches or bugs were encountered, overwrite my 'Main' first save for the character before quitting.

Although, with all that OCD saving and mega files clogging up my PS3 (I'm up to 6 characters all lvl 25+), I've not often really been in a tight spot where I needed to reload an old save unless I really started screwing around like a moron. So I'm probably just wasting my own time.. *shrug*

Any overwritten save has a backup file. Whether you use the menu or the console, be it a quicksave, autosave or a named save, an overwrite renames first, and then saves new.

That's why I don't do stuff like doing something incredibly stupid and then saving.

Every 5 saves I create a new one so I can travel back in time at any point should a major bug arise. I end up with 200-300 saved games per character

I learned that with Daggerfall

True I'm still faithful to the tradition.

And nothing of value was lost.

Why delete saves in the 1st place and only have a few?? That's just sillyness.

just ressurect everybody, and ive never had problems with semi-functional ressurected npc's

(what on earth were you doing mudering the townsfolk you naughty man )

Maybe I should get my saves in order. I have over 500 and only 1 character...

hahahahahahaha

At least you don't have to pay that bounty now. With the money saved from this you should be able to purchase proudspire manor.

So there is good that has come out of this

With this city's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
or persist in the doomed world you have created.