Bugs (Oblivion)

No game is perfect and Oblivion is certainly not without its bugs.
 * First, be sure to install the latest patch (currently v1.2). You can get more information at our patches page.
 * Important Note: Many of these bugs, glitches, and exploits have been fixed as of the patch v1.2.
 * Ensure that a bug is widespread among other users (and not just a problem with your system setup), or has been confirmed as a real bug.
 * Feel free to discuss any problems, glitches, or bugs in the talk page. This page is continuously undergoing cleanup to remove non-bugs or individual gaming issues.

Using the console

 * For more information on using the console and its commands, see Console commands.

For PC users, some of the bugs on this page can be circumvented using the console, specifically the bugs where Item X is needed but doesn't show up. To open the console, simply press the tilde key (~), which is the key to the left of the '1' key and below the 'Esc' key. Some have stated that the at (@) key (the '2' key) can also open the console.

Disk read errors
These seem to occur on the Xbox 360 version from time to time even with a clean, unscratched copy of the game. This bug may very well have to do with the console itself rather than the disk, but is notable, as it occurs on many consoles.

Solution Save fairly often (should be done anyway in case you die). It helps that the game itself (if set to) auto-saves frequently. If this happens, restart the game, and it should play fine. If it continues, the problem seems to go away if you remove and reinsert the disk.

Seemingly endless "enemy nearby" or "guards pursuing you" messages
If when you try to wait, you get either of the aforementioned messages, commit a crime and pay the fine (a petty crime, obviously) and you should be able to wait and fast travel again. or you COULD just use save/load.

See this thread for more details, including how to extract from the proprietory Installshield .cab files: here.

Mages Guild - Cheydinhal Recommendation
This has been found on several forums for both PC and Xbox 360 versions.

If this quest is not completed within three game days of starting the quest, the item you're looking for will disappear (as part of the normal body removal routine, I suppose) from the place where you are supposed to search, and therefore makes the Mages Guild quest impossible to complete!

Solution: You can use the cheat player.additem 0002E5AC 1 to fix this (it gives you the ring - then just walk into the building and talk to Deetsan).

Mages Guild - Arcane University - A Mage's Staff
By falling off the island (near the staff) instead of fighting the necromancers, you will be forced to return to Wellspring Cave again to regain access to the island. When you return the necromancers will be gone and you will be unable to finish the quest. More information on the discussion page for this quest.

Solution: Either re-load a previous save or use "setstage 000e4e14 30" in the console.

Thieves Guild - May the Best Thief Win
On the PC version there is a bug in this quest. Methredhel gets to the diary almost immediately, and although the map indicates that the book is in her chest in her house, it does not appear in the chest when it is opened. It is not possible to pickpocket Methredhel for it since she is not carrying it. Even after 30 days Methredhel never takes the diary to Amantius, and the secondary method of entering the Guild is never triggered. It is therefore impossible to join the Thieves Guild should this bug happen. An interesting version of this bug is when Methredhel doesn't get the diary immediatly. This could happen if she gets interupted by another NPC, or when she get's stuck on a "glitch spot" - a spot where NPC are stuck and can't move. My Wood elf got the diary this way, much to my suprise (Methredhel was busy talking to a guard).

Solutions: Use the cheat player.additem 000355ED or use movetoqt 1 to get the diary and give it to Amantius to complete the quest and join the guild.

Or do what I did and learn an invisibility spell, like Deathly Visage from the Dark Brotherhood. If you go invisible as soon as you enter the door, you can sprint past her and get to the book before she can. I've completed the quest this way with all my characters.

Another way to complete this that has always worked for me is-- Talk to the beggar and get the location, then fast-travel there. Run full-tilt for the door, she will likely beat you there. Go in after her (having the Tower Stone active on you helps open the door) and she is still in sneak mode, in an empty floor of the house... Just unsneak and dash past her to the desk, where the diary is. She never breaks sneak, the house owner is never downstairs to see you un-sneaking, and Methredehl doesn't care if you are visible to her when you get it. The invisibility is not required.

The easiest way I've found to do this, is to pickpocket Methredhel or her "partner" before getting the quest. Steal the house key, start the quest, let her take the book, then just go back to her place and voila!

Another solution is to simply wait at night, and then pick Methredhel's house door and sneak past her to the cupboard. The book is in there.

Copying Daggers and Staves
This glitch requires you having the Staff of Worms aquired from Mannimarco, and the Skull of Corruption from the daedric god Vaermina. To start this glitch off you need to kill someone or find someone that is already dead. Once you have found a dead body. Put the weapon you want to copy on the dead person's body that isn't the Staff of Worms or the Skull of Corruption. After that use the Staff of Worms and reanimate the dead person. Once they are up off the ground shoot the Skull of Corruption at the person you reanimated. When the clone appears of that person you will notice that they have the weapon that you want to copy. Once the clone gets the weapon out like they are going to attack something kill them before the original reanimated person dies. The weapon you want to clone should be on the floor somewhere after you kill the clone. Collect the cloned weapon off the floor and then go to the dead body you cloned search their body and take the weapon you cloned. After all of this is done you should have a duplicate of the weapon you wanted to duplicate.

Crash on exit leading to crash on running/loading
Some players find that Oblivion crashes sometimes on exit. They also find that Oblivion will crash on startup after one of these crashes. While we don't know the cause of the crash on exit, a cause of the crash on startup has been found.

Solution: Apparently   corrupts the Oblivion - meshes.bsa file when it crashes on exit, and this causes it to crash on startup. To fix the problem, replace the current meshes.bsa with an original copy form the DVD by copying it out of the Installshield .cab files on the DVD, or by reinstalling the game.

Stretching People
When people/creatures are killed, sometimes their body turns to 'jelly' and they ball up on the floor. When this happens, it continually happens to that creature until the game is reset. This can be quite fun as now you can strech the body as long as you want and it just keeps stretching. This might also happen when you shoot them with a paralyze spell.

Shifting Staves
When a staff is placed somewhere by a player it will shift a foot or two towards the direction the head of the staff is facing. This happens when a player reloads into the area after saving in another area.

Paintbrushes
A miscellaneous item that can be found in many areas in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. While seeming ordinary, Paintbrushes are not under the effects of the physics engine in Oblivion; that is, you can drop one from your inventory and it will float in the air in front of you. This is very useful for creating a "bridge" of paintbrushes to reach areas more easily. Unless you're an absolute role-playing purist, it's a good idea to carry several paintbrushes, and pick up any you might find.

Paintbrushes can usually be found in many chests, barrels, and sacks in cities, which prove to be the easiest places to find them.

This also seems to work with bricks and bones.

Infinite Money – Dorian Glitch
This bug reportedly works for both the PC and Xbox 360 version. In order to achieve infinite money, murder Dorian located in Imperial City Talos Plaza District. Loot him, and take his money. Instead of being removed from his inventory, the money remains and can be taken as long for as you want. After you're tired, save, then when the guards come pay the fine. You should still have the money, minus the fine, in your inventory.

If you cannot kill Dorian before he runs out the door, then either come back when you can or use the difficulty slider. You could also use the Yield exploit to drain a lot of health before he actually starts to run away.

Note: &mdash; This bug is somewhat inconsistent. Often times Dorian will only have 10 gold on him (or another very low amount). In this scenario you will not be able to grab infinite money. Use the sneak ability to pickpocket him and it should show how much money he has (you don't want to actually take his gold at this point). If he does not have a reasonable amount, specifically at least 35 gold, use the speechcraft (disposition) system and bribe him. This will put money in his pocket and make the glitch viable. If you keep using the Yield exploit, you'll be draining his disposition, making it possible to keep bribing him over and over - we managed to shove over 2000g into him before he ran out of health - that's 2000g every single time you try to grab the money!

His body should stay there for several game days (allowing you to continue stealing infinite money from his corpse), however the game seems to do garbage collection on dead bodies. Note that this bug will NOT ALWAYS work. It has a chance of failing.

Example movie: see here

More glitches... Well if you use a spell like absorb skill blade that counts as an attack and should lower Dorien's Dispossition without killing him. I'm going to try to bribing him with all my money and then using frenzy to make him attack me and then looting his corpse. This should be interesting... In the end it didn't work. I just got my money back and had to pay a fine for attacking people.

Infinite Money – Vampire Cure Reward Glitch
After completing the Vampire Cure quest and getting the potion to the count's wife, come back the next day and ask him for a reward. He'll give you level dependent gold(A level 20 should get about 3000). You can keep asking and clicking 'reward' and he'll give you the reward each time.

Note: ''This is assuming you can give the woman bloodgrass. Many forums are talking about this bug. She might not recognize that your inventory has bloodgrass, therefore making you unable to complete the Vampire Cure quest. Think twice about becoming a vampire unless you have the The Vile Lair official plug-in.

Infinite Money – Female Orc in Kvatch
There is an exploit if you can find a person that will buy items that is outside a city while on a horse. The best NPC is an orc woman who buys and sells weapons in the camp just outside the main gate to Kvatch. Obtain a very high-valued weapon and equip it, go to the camp and while on your horse with the weapon equipped, sell this item to her and you will receive the gold for the weapon, however as you are on your horse the game will not allow you to unequip weapons. The result is that you sell the item however it will not leave your inventory so you can sell it again and again until you have the amount of gold you feel happy with. The upside to this exploit is that it is faster than above and you can raise your mercantile skills as you are trading to receive the gold.

Notes
 * This will only net you 200g per sale, as she only has 200g on her.
 * A video of the glitch being used on PC.

Cloning Items
Note: With the patch released on March 23, 2007, the cloning exploit has been fixed, and does not work. This is referring directly to the XBOX360 version. You can still duplicate if you have a memory card (MU) and a hard drive (HDD). Just move your account and copy a save to the MU, disconnect the HDD and Ethernet cable/wireless adapter. If you do not have a MU you can also go to the Xbox Dashboard, select the System Blade, and select Memory. Highlight the HDD symbol and press Y. Press X, X, Left Bumper, Right Bumper, X, X. You will see a confirmation message to confirm system maintenance, proceed. Performing this function will also clear any software updates. This will not clear your saved games (How ever if you have any items from add ons that weren't around be for the update you will not be able to load this game).

Cloning items is a fairly simple process, and only requires a stack of arrows (along with whatever you are trying to clone). Equip the arrows and begin blocking (what you block with does not matter). While blocking, open up the inventory, attempt to unequip the arrows (you will receive a message stating that you cannot), then drop whatever you want to duplicate. Upon exiting the inventory, you'll drop the item in an amount equivalent to the number of arrows in the stack. Contrary to popular belief, a bow is not required to clone items despite the fact that arrows are involved.

Cloning will work with most items, however rare/quest items (like Nirnroot) do not appear to work at all. Stolen items will work, as long as you are also carrying a 'legal' version of the same item (this leads to having two stacks of the same item in your inventory). If you want to duplicate arrows, you will need to have two separate sets (one equipped, one to be cloned).

When the particular arrow quantity is dropped, example 50, but cannot be because you are performing an action, the script remains unactivated. When you drop the desirable object, the game fills in the script, and will drop 50 of that item.

Be careful when duplicating large numbers of items, as it can lag excessively. It is a good idea to pick up previously cloned objects before making more. Using stacks rather than singular items reduces the lag (if you're duping an item with 100 arrows, 100 objects will be rendered and calculated on the screen, if you use a stack of 5, it only needs to render 20 objects).

There is a rumor that once Knights of the Nine is downloaded and installed, that some objects will become unable to be duplicated. However, this is unconfirmed and needs to be corroborated. Please leave any comments at the usertalk page here.

Some common items may not be duplicated:
 * Boar Meat
 * Mannimarco's Staff
 * Glass War Axe
 * Mothers Head
 * Ayleid Statues
 * Quest items (items that cannot be dropped)
 * Nirnroot
 * Daedric weapons -unconfirmed
 * Xbox 360 (unpatched)
 * Confirmed clonable Daedric weapons : Dagger, Mace, arrows
 * Confirmed unclonable Daedric weapons : War Axe, Bow

Some other items can be duplicated:
 * Black Band ring
 * Spell Absorption amulet

Alternate Cloning Method
Note: I've only seen this glitch done on the PS3 version of the game. I'm not sure if it can be done on the other systems. It was not fixed in the PS3 version, so I'd assume it works on the PC and 360 version

'Note: I've have done this with the scrolls on the Xbox 360. I hear that it still works after the last patch

First, get two or more of the same scroll. Go to the scroll in your inventory and click to equip it twice. Then, go to the item you want to duplicate and drop it. You'll get as many copies of the item as you had scrolls.

If you only have a few copies of a scroll and you want to get more copies of an item, click to equip the scroll you only have a few copies of twice and then drop another scroll. Two will appear on the ground. Pick up one and repeat. Once you get quite a few copies of the scrolls on the ground, pick them all up. Then, you can use this scroll instead to do the multiplication. Just so you know, this will not work with quest items.

Where Spirits Have Lease
Issue: After finding Velwyn Benirus in Imperial City, he says to meet him back at The Count's Arms in Anvil. However, you may find that he's not there.

Solution: He says to meet in a couple of hours, so wait around two hours and he should show.

Also, try lookin in the staircase of the inn, I found his head in a corner and after talking to him he moved to our meeting place and was unbugged.

Another problem that occurs is Velwyn getting himself loaded inside a wall or staircase in the Count's Arms. This is related to the bug description just above, and it also happens in the Imperial City. The only solution I could come up with was to leave the quest sit for a game-week or so while I did other things. When you return to the inn you should hopefully see a reloaded Velwyn standing out in the open where you can talk to him. The only way I ever discovered where he was while loaded in the wall was by using my Vampire's Hunter Sight. Otherwise I might never have found him.

The Siren's Deception
Issue: In Anvil, for the quest The Siren's Deception, it is possible that you won't be able to enter the farmhouse. Signy Home-Wrecker and Faustina Cartia may attack you at the Flowing Bowl. If you kill them, you do get the basement key but are locked out of the farm to finish the mission.

Solution: Be sure to meet them at the farmhouse at the appropriate time: after 11 pm.

If you are locked out, use the cheat code "player.coc GwedenFarmInterior" without quotes and kill the woman in there and then the mission should finish automatically.

Also it is possible that after killing the gang that the quest is not updated. In that case type this into console "player.setstage MS04 60" this will then bring the two guards into the farm house.

Bruma - Lifting the Vale
Issue: When you go north to find the Akaviri artifact for the Countess of Bruma, and complete the quest and come back, you may still have "enemies nearby", even in towns and inns, no matter where you go.

Solution: To fix this, you must go back to Serpent Trail, to the ruin you found the artifact in, and search it extensively. There are many skeletons in there, and you have to find the one or many that are giving you the message and kill them.

Mages Guild - Chorrol Recommendation
If you opt to go with the "Guild Way" and return the item to the guild, the guildmaster will tell you that you get his recommendation, BUT the green arrow still points to him and you will not have gotten the recommendation. Although no quest pointer points to it, you must then go to the person which gave the location of the item and tell that you gave it to the guild. You get a "part 2" quest and it completes at the same time, thus allowing you to continue. (You effectively get the recommendation only after this.)

Go Fish: Slaughterfish
Issue: During the quest that involves you killing twelve slaughterfish for their scales, the quest markers may be off at times (in locations with no fish).

Solution: This is a large pain, but if you swim around the lake using Detect Life, you should eventually find the slaughterfish. It will be perfectly still, making no movement at all; once you attack it, the map marker will update and it will start to move and attack as normal.

Issue #2: During the quest you may not find any fish, even at the green marker.

Solution: This comes from a clipping problem where the fish spawned directly in a rock under the water. You can use the console command to turn off the clipping and walk under/through the rock. The fish will usually follow you out. After that, turn clipping back on and complete the quest.

Unfriendly Competition
In Unfriendly Competition, sometimes it is difficult to find the required evidence shovel in the Mausoleum. It is NOT the shovel that is at Agarmir's house. Look around the mausoleum carefully, as things can fly around during battle. Especially check dark corners.

Lost Histories
Issue: When clicking "map," it shows no arrow for Shum gro-Yarug. This may apply to both the Lost Histories quest, and the quest to buy the house in Skingrad. The quest arrow just points you to a road, and upon arriving at the arrow, you find nothing. Therefore you can't finish either quest.

He actually falls off of the bridge and dies, and where his body landed is where the arrow is pointing for the house quest.

Solution: The best way to fix this is to either: 1) use the console to summon him with his NPC ID, or 2) find his NPC HEX ID, point to it, and use the resurrect command. After some time he showed up walking on the road. Enter the console, and type the following:


 * prid 00028FB6
 * resurrect

Mankar Camoran's Paradise
Issue: Mankar Camoran does not appear in the building at the end of the Paradise mission. Instead, he seems to be wandering around the inside of Cloud Ruler Temple, and you're unable to attack or pickpocket him. He just asks you, without voice acting, to "enter the hall" to challenge him. You cannot complete the Paradise mission because of this.

Solution:If you are experienceing this glitch it is because Mankar Camoran is stuck either in Lake Arrius Caverns...at the Dagon shrine, or from what I have heard he sometimes gets stuck at cloud ruler temple. First you need to find him either at the Cloud Ruler temple or at the Dagon Shrine inside Lake Arrius Caverns. I found him in the far right corner (Just off of the platform) of the Dagon shrine. If he is at Cloud Ruler Temple he should be in the main room where Martin is. A word of Caution save before you enter Lake Arrius Caverns, and do not attack anyone but Mankar. My system crashed everytime I tried to attack anyone else. You have to run straight to Mankar without attacking anyone else. Speak to Mankar, and then start hacking away, loot his body and grab the amulet of kings. After you have the amulet of kings start running, because by now you probably have a whole herd of cultists after you. After a few seconds the loading window will show up and you will be back at cloud ruler temple with a message saying the you defeted Mankar and that the portal to paradise has closed.

Shrine of Clavicus Vile quest bug
Issue: When attempting to return the Umbra Sword to Clavicus Vile's shrine for his quest, both PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game crash. The crash has something to do with the statue that Clavicus Vile will give you to carry with while you do his quest. The crash occurs when this statue has to be placed back onto the shrine pedestal from your inventory. At the end of the quest when you go back and talk to the shrine again, whether you give the sword, or keep it, when the statue gets removed from your inventory, the game crashes. This is confirmed on the PC version as well.

Solution: The latest patch fixes this quest. If it does not fix it for you, keep reading:

Before ever talking to the Shrine of Clavicus Vile, go to Vindasel, here you can find Umbra with her sword. Defeat her and take the sword, then go talk to the Khajiit worshipper by the shrine. This will add the Clavicus Vile quest to your journal. You can then speak with the shrine, and he will immediately say, "You've found the sword!". He will take the sword and you won't have to do his quest. Do this and you won't have the glitch with the statue having to get removed from your inventory.

It may also be possible to get around the bug by making sure that the sword Umbra is not currently equipped. This seems to have worked for at least a few on the PC version of the game. It is recommended that you try this method first, as another lucrative quest may hinge on the completion of this line.

For those who do not want to have to reach level 20 this is a good alternative. One simply has to receive the quest and activate the shrine without the loss of gold.

Another possibility is to use wait. Immediately after returning the sword to Clavicus but just prior to the Baucus's parting remarks, simply "wait" for an hour. This has the effect of "time-warping" the character past the final remarks, so they are never given. The game may still lock up later if you ever return to the shrine again, however.

Additionally, for the path of keeping the sword, you can try and warp to the waterfront district. The seller's words should interrupt those of Baucus (the dog) and allow you to continue (tested only on 360). This doesn't seem to work when you accept the Masque.

Wabbajack glitch
Issue: For some reason, when you use the Wabbajack to transmute your own horse, you are simultaneously kicked out of every guild you have joined. Each message claims that you have stolen from another guild member, except the one for the Dark Brotherhood, which only says you have broken one of the tenants. The suspected reason for this is that since it's your horse, it belongs to all the faction you are in.