Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim cheats/bugs discussion

For whatever reason I decided that this discussion should probably be separate from the other thread we currently have running, but if someone feels that it belongs there then it can be moved. This thread can be for discussion of cheats and bugs for Skyrim, the ramifications of using such things, the morality/immorality behind it, or whatever else. Perhaps you know a bug that is totally useless but fun. Perhaps you accidentally ran into a nasty bug once and now you want to tell your horror story.

What this thread is not for is ridiculing others for cheating or exploiting bugs, bragging about how awesome you are because you do or don't cheat, flaming, trolling, and otherwise disruptive behavior. Also, Skyrim is a pretty buggy game, especially older versions, so staying on topic to some degree shouldn't be very difficult either. Also, while technically you can use the console to cheat in a ton of different ways, I'd like to avoid discussion of that because it's incredibly easy for someone to simply look up the console commands and figure it out themselves. Perhaps if someone wants to make a master list of useful console commands for cheating or if someone knows any commands that do particularly fun or exciting things that will be fine.


I'm going to get the discussion started off with a nifty bug I just read about that I had never heard of prior, as well as a horror story I have about a thieves guild bug.

"Daedric arrows are extremely rare, but if you manage to get one, plant it on someone (guards are best for this) whom shoots arrows at a practice dummy. Steal whatever arrows he/she uses, and plant the arrow of your choice (I use Daedric, but Glass arrows are decent too) on the person. They should start firing the arrow of your choice at the target dummy. You can grab the arrows from the target to duplicate them!"

I've never actually attempted that, so I can't speak for how valid it is, but it seems like a pretty useful trick if you don't mind a little extra help.

So my first character was a thief. I compulsively stole everything of value that I could find, and looted every building I came across. Well apparently if you break into Honningbrew Meadery prior to getting the fourth quest in the thieves guild chain (Dampened Spirits) it breaks the quest and you cannot complete it by any normal means. I fiddled with some console commands to try to progress the quest beyond the point where it broke, but it didn't work. The only thing I could do to take care of the problem was use the console to skip to the next quest, losing any and all rewards or experience I would have gained in the quest. It was pretty unfun.

I think the most annoying glitch in the world is when your supposedly immortal partners die, just as you save your data.

I think the most annoying glitch in the world is when your supposedly immortal partners die, just as you save your data.

Most likely you have an autosave or some other save file not long before when that happens, so it shouldn't really be a huge issue, really only an inconvenience.

Sadly, I had autosaved just after the boss fight where she died, left the dungeon and didn't notice, and saved my data.
It really pissed me off, and has hindered me since.

When your follower "dies", they enter a pre-death state that generally allows them to come back to full health immediately after battle. However, if they continue to take more damage after entering that state, they will die permanently.

If there's a chance your follower is still alive but nowhere to be seen (for example, if they entered the pre-death state and you ran off, thinking they were dead dead), fast traveling to a location should cause the follower to appear back at your side.

If fast traveling still doesn't produce your follower, they're almost certainly fully dead. You can confirm this by trying to pick up another follower: if they agree to come with you, the other follower has ceased to be. Sorry about that.

The only thing you can do at this point—if you're not keen on loading up an earlier save or using console commands—is to find where your follower died and loot their corpse.

If you are amenable to using the console, generally you still need to find where your follower died to ressurrect them: when you do, open the console, target their corpse, and type:

resurrect 1

and press enter.

However, you can get around even this restriction by selecting the follower by using the prid command anywhere:

prid <RefId>

Where <RefId> is the ID corresponding to the follower, found by using the Creation Kit or by looking up the follower on UESP. Once the follower's selected, use the resurrect command mentioned above.

loot their corpse.

Really all I had used her for was "hold this", so I ended up doing this, in the end.
She died maybe a week or two ago, so, meh.

I can speak to the arrow one. I did that. That's the only cheat I did. I went to the store and bought one daedric arrow then planted it on a guard. I now have over 1k arrows. The other fun thing with that is you can give guards different weapons. My guard that shoots my daedric arrows uses a glass bow.

My annoying glitch is apparently very common. When I got to the Esbern part of the story, he didn't have a voice and refused to follow me. I had to use console commands to get the story moving and ended up downloading his voice file and installing it manually.

I had to do the Esbern voice fix as well, though I haven't actually done that part of the quest line yet.

The only cheat other than terrain exploitation and such that I've done is getting my speech to 100, and I did it mainly so I could invest in shops and then use them like a fence to sell stolen goods. Thing is, on my mage instead of stealing everything, I kill everything, and take things that I can sell to a normal vendor. I'm making just as much if not more money than I did on my thief, and having fun killing shit in the process. The thief character isn't incredibly fun to play anymore because the play style is so tedious and having speech at 100 is kind of too good.

I remember doing that for 100 speech. I also did one for 100 pickpocketing and ran around making daggers for 100 smithing.

I can speak to the arrow one. I did that. That's the only cheat I did.

I remember doing that for 100 speech. I also did one for 100 pickpocketing and ran around making daggers for 100 smithing.

??????

I don't know if it is considered a cheat or bug or not, but there are some followers that you can buy training from and then take your money back from their inventory. I did that to level my thief's archery to 50 in Riverwood at the beginning of the game.

There is a guard in Witerun in the market who stands against a pole and faces one way forever. If you give him money then steal it back you can get 100 pick pocketing really fast. Took me like 30 mins. Keep money with you to pay him off if you fail.

I just got pickpocketing to 100 by picking pockets everywhere I went. The final perks for pickpocketing kick ass too.

When your follower gets stuck in a dungeon, you can open the console, click them, then use "moveto player." I remember one vertically oriented dungeon that was particularly horrible and this was the only option.

Not if it's a PS3. It don't open, like it used to.

We're talking about PC because Skyrim is way better on the PC then on the PS3

Only because you can fiddle with it, like that. Or if you have a Desktop. My laptop would probably catch on fire, if I played for too long.

Skyrim is the kind of game that you make sacrifices to play on PC, because you miss so much if you don't.

IMHO Skyrim even runs better on a semi decent PC then a PS3. I know my friend gets lag issues on his PS3 I don't get on the PC at all.

There's a house in Whiterun you can jump on and then from there you jump onto the city wall then it noclips you underground where you can walk around and get to this chest that has a shitload of items. I have yet to find this chest legitly and I'm still wondering if it's an Easter egg or not .

There's a house in Whiterun you can jump on and then from there you jump onto the city wall then it noclips you underground where you can walk around and get to this chest that has a shitload of items. I have yet to find this chest legitly and I'm still wondering if it's an Easter egg or not .

You mean like this? They appear to be for merchant items that you're not supposed to be able to steal. Navigating without popping up above ground is hard :/