How to Get Back to Desktop When Playing Skyrim

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Contents

• 1 Glitches
  • 1.1 Achievements
  • 1.2 Getting Stuck
  • 1.3 NPC Dialogue
  • 1.4 Loading
  • 1.5 Physics
  • 1.6 Sound
  • 1.7 Weapons, Armor, and Apparel
  • 1.8 Other Bugs
• 2 Exploits
  • 2.1 Armor Duplication Glitch
  • 2.2 Follower Pickup Duplication Glitch
  • 2.3 Quicksave Duplication Glitch
  • 2.4 Infinite Power Attack Stamina
  • 2.5 Selling Merchants Their Own Items
  • 2.6 Unlimited Scroll Usage
  • 2.7 Object Flying
  • 2.8 Horse Tilting
  • 2.9 Clipping
  • 2.10 Equipment
  • 2.11 Free House
  • 2.12 Gold
  • 2.13 Infinitely Powerful Items
  • 2.14 Invisible Exploding Fireball Arrows
  • 2.15 Petty Soul Gem Trick
  • 2.16 Skills
  • 2.17 Vampiric Werewolves
  • 2.18 Other

This article documents general glitches that have been discovered in Skyrim.

Quest, place, NPC, creature, and item-specific glitches do not belong on this page, but rather on their respective pages.

This is not an exhaustive list of every anomaly that may possibly occur. There are numerous minor animation oddities and graphical surprises that you can uncover if you try to trigger them; if you choose to do a bizarre and unpredictable set of actions, it is likely that the game's response will also be bizarre and unpredictable. Rather, these articles only document glitches that other readers are likely to be interested in learning about: i.e., those that have serious consequences; those that can be exploited to your advantage; and those that most players are likely to uncover during standard gameplay.

Furthermore, these articles focus on general glitches. Glitches that are only encountered under very specific situations are documented on other articles: problems during a quest will be documented on that quest's article; problems that only occur in a given location will be described on that place's article; etc. If you are looking for information on a problem that you've encountered, you should start by searching the same way as non-problem-related information by looking at the wiki article on that topic. This article is the place to look if there is an inexplicable problem whose source is not obvious, or for problems that don't fit into one of the site's other articles.

Glitches [edit]

Please visit (and contribute to) Bethesda's official bug report in their forums.

Achievements [edit]

• If you sign out of your profile during a load screen, then quickly sign back in after earning the Achievement "Wanted", it will display the achievement as being unlocked; however, no Gamerscore will be given and the amount of achievements shown will be 1 less than it should be if this happens. It will not count Skyrim towards the 100% completion grouping either. ^?

Getting Stuck [edit]

NPC Dialogue [edit]

• If an NPC changes location (via doorway) while you are in conversation with them, you will be unable to finish the conversation. When spoken to again, they will repeat the first line of conversation but have no conversation options.
  • Sometimes, the NPC won't even talk to you. The options won't be there either and for some reason you won't be able to leave conversation using either Tab nor Esc ^?
• If you initiate a conversation with an NPC while holding the walk/run button, the button will invert upon leaving the conversation (i.e. if you use hold shift to walk, you will now have to hold shift to run). This can be fixed by opening a menu, holding the walk/run button, and then exiting the menu while holding that button. This does not include the "options" menu.
• If you are in a conversation with an NPC and open the Steam in-game interface using Shift+Tab, you will no longer be able to use Tab to end the conversation upon returning to the game. This is related to the Shift toggle bug where if you press Shift during/initiating a conversation it "sticks". You can unstick Shift by pressing it once or manually clicking the exit key. Simply waiting may cause the NPC to eventually end the conversation. ^?
• Pausing during dialogue while an NPC is talking will cause the NPC to skip to the next line if enough time has passed for the voice clip to be finished.
  • This can be fixed by opening the Console to pause the game during dialogue.
• When on a trade screen with a merchant or follower, sometimes clicking on a particular menu item (such as Weapons or Misc) will exit the trade screen. This is because it doesn't automatically register where you click as the active region and the active selection/clicked area can be out of sync. This also leads to a bug where clicking on a specific dialogue choice actually registers as a different one you had highlighted.
• Changing locations while in mid-conversation with an NPC sometimes causes the NPC to follow you to that location.
• While one NPC is talking to another, it is possible to make them skip their dialogue line(s) that appear on-screen. While the NPC is talking, sprint into them they'll stumble back and continue on without finishing their sentence(s).
• While an NPC is sleeping, if you go to talk to them, they may sleep and talk at the same time.

Loading [edit]

• When loading another saved game, being in a sunny area will not display any shadow while being where a shadow area would be darkens the whole world. ^?
• Sometimes some of the scenery disappears or is completely cut off. If you try to walk into the disappearing landscape, then you will be told that you "cannot go that way", causing you to freeze. This can cause the game to be unplayable as you cannot move in any direction without being stuck. ^?
• Sometimes when you load into a new area you may not interact with certain objects and entities. ^?
• Water does not render correctly in occasional chunks. The water still exists, but is invisible. In these instances, there may be a rectangular patch missing from the screen. Reloading a save file may fix this issue.
• When the game forces a cell change (e.g. when you are arrested with a large bounty and brought to a castle) you will sometimes load before certain key elements of the cell do (such as the ground).
• When reloading a save, your legs and lower body may become stuck in the floor. This can be rectified by jumping. ^?
• Sometimes when loading a quicksave using the quickload key (normally F9), you may become over-encumbered even though you're not, showing the message "You are carrying too much to be able to run". To fix this you have to sheathe or unsheathe your weapon or go to the items menu. This doesn't permanently fix the problem, as every time you quickload a quicksave the problem will return. The only way to really fix it is to start loading the quicksave through the load menu.
• When fast-traveling with a following NPC, in rare instances, the NPC may act like the enemy shaking glitch, but will occur in the ground rather than being inside an object. It only occurs if standing near it and not moving. This can be corrected by having the NPC follow you to somewhere other than the area it was just in. ^?
• Sometimes when when entering a new cell by opening a door, the game would freeze, and appear to be all black. If you look at the screen from the right angle, you could see Open (VARIES) very dimly as well as your compass and other HUD elements but the game would be frozen. As of the latest update, waiting (Waiting in real life) about 30-45 seconds, the game will unfreeze and continue loading the game.

Physics [edit]

• Objects you push that remain in contact cause you to "vibrate", which gains velocity as it continues and can very easily lead to death or could force the object to disappear. This is most observable with carts as it's very easy to push them and still be touching them, especially if you are in the cart itself.
• Enemies may occasionally get stuck on the scenery and animate incorrectly (extremely fast and jerky). Sometimes this may result in them catapulting high into the air and then falling to their deaths. This can also happen as a result of the dead dragons being launched into the air as the unintended effect of a spell. The body of the dragon can get stuck in the front gate or bridge of a town that you fast travel to.
• Objects which are affected by physics can appear to simply disappear if they are pushed outside the bounds of playable areas. They still exist but are unreachable. ^?
• NPCs that are killed while they are sitting in a chair or sleeping will often end up lying under their chair or bed and occasionally partway under the floor.
• If you drop items from your inventory and re-enter the zone or reload a save, you will find the items you positioned are not where you put them after grabbing and moving them, but rather in the exact place where they were dropped from your inventory. This seems to occur only when you load a save from that same area, then immediately drop and rearrange the item before leaving. Loading the save, leaving the area, coming back, then dropping and rearranging gets it to stick.
• Enemies killed by a decapitation may disappear; you can loot them afterwards, but they will be invisible.
• When using the slow time perk with bows, the enemy's shield or weapon may hang in the air after killing them, in the same position it was in when they were shot.
• Sometimes when you hold an object up to a wall and sprint into it, your character will glitch between the wall and object and be forced through the wall into unplayable areas. This can be used to reach merchant chests that are hidden behind or below walls.
• Sometimes whenever the console is processing lots of data, (for land generation and spawnings) weapons will randomly appear out of nowhere and float in midair indefinitely until you activate or move them. This only seems to happen in outdoor habitats, though it may rarely happen indoors.
• On rare occasions, when you kill an NPC that is or belongs to an enemy, that entity will fall through the ground and appear (still dead) approximately 200 yards from where it was killed. This is most noticeable with horses. ^?
• For some odd reason, on extremely rare instances, you may find a human NPC sleeping on a bed that has a table "squashed" above it, creating a somewhat enclosed area. Because of this, when the NPC first wakes up in the bed, he/she will raise up as normal, but they will appear to be stuck and will slide through the table to where the edge of the bed is and stand up as normal, as though the table didn't exist. This may be from the cause of an error in the design, or an improper setup. ^?

Sound [edit]

• Frequently, and seemingly at random, sound effects lag for as long as 5-6 seconds, then will occur all at once. This often happens when sneak-attacking with a bow. This also commonly happens while using the three word Whirlwind Sprint shout outdoors; the first word will be heard, but the last two words may be heard 4-5 seconds after the shout has concluded.
• The music that plays during combat may not cease after combat ends.
  • Completely exiting the game and restarting may fix this.
  • Opening the console and typing removemusic muscombat may fix this. This will not prevent you from hearing the music again once another fight starts.
  • Alternatively, get into combat with another enemy and defeat them, this normally results in combat music completing correctly.
• The dungeon clear tune may occur when you are not in a dungeon or even doing anything in particular.
  • This can sometimes happen due to special triggers in locations (eg finding a hidden treasure room or completing a puzzle that allows progress in the dungeon), or script lag whereby the game has realized a location has been cleared (eg the boss of a location has been marked as killed), some time after it had already been.

Weapons, Armor, and Apparel [edit]

• Weapons and shields do not clean up from the world properly, and after a time they will begin to float in air near where they were lying.
• Switching weapons in combat has a 3-10 seconds delay. This is especially obvious when switching from a bow to spells or from a bow to dual wield swords.
• Certain types of weapons, when bound to a hotkey, will become unbound if more than one is in your inventory when the key is used. This only occurs for weapons that cannot be equipped to each hand through hotkeys (i.e. daggers, swords and greatswords).
• Wearing a mask with any hooded robe can cause your character's head to become invisible.
• With the Heavy/Light weightless armor perks, if a single piece of armor in a stack is equipped, the entire stack is weightless.
• Killing an archer that has drawn its bow but not yet released an arrow can result in the dropped bow appearing to still be drawn.
• Human characters in some cases fight unarmed with their fingers out like Khajiit. ^?
• If you stand in front of an archer shooting a target, then their arrow will "vibrate". ^?
• Sheathing your weapon while having a spell equipped to your left hand then unequipping the spell may result in your left hand displaying without a spell next time you unsheathe your weapon. ^?

Other Bugs [edit]

• Sometimes animated doors that serve to move between cells can get stuck in their "open" state. Attempting to enter the door will close it, and you will not be moved to the new cell. The door will work normally afterwards.
• Barred doors are able to be opened by activating the bar through the door. At the right angle the bar will be selectable through the door.
• Enemies turned into ash piles may not clean up properly, leading them to accumulate in several areas.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.9.26.0.8 of the Official Skyrim Patch.
• Harvestable items (plants, garlic, pheasants, etc.) reset/respawn upon entering the cell (exterior or interior) after 10 days; but after save and reload of that cell, they revert to the state of the cell the previous time it was exited.
• When moving items to or from a container, the entire menu will often jump up one line while still having the item selected. This occurs seemingly at random. If this happens enough times, the selection will eventually go off the screen. This may sometimes be briefly corrected by moving out and back into that section. If that doesn't work, your best bet is to move the mouse off of the item horizontally then back. This bug occurs nearly 100% of the time so it's recommended that you proceed slowly and deliberately when placing items into a container to avoid accidentally removing the wrong items.
  • There is currently no fix or mod that corrects this while otherwise preserving the original inventory UI.
• Wolves and dogs run up and down (in the vertical plane) on doors while attempting to pass through, as though ignoring gravity. ^?
• Characters hit by frost icicles and arrows may have it stuck on them permanently. This may be related to the function that leaves arrows on bodies hit with arrows; however, clearing arrows in inventory or unequipping apparel is not guaranteed to work as a solution.
  • Anything which forces your character model to completely rebuild will work to fix this, such as going into Beast Form as a werewolf.
  • The console command sexchange twice will force a re-render.
• Essential NPCs sometimes get stuck in the wounded state (down on one knee) and they may not recover back to normal. This can be fixed by any of the following:
  • fast-traveling elsewhere and back
  • staggering them with a shield or weapon
  • using Unrelenting Force
• If you use a skill that changes the entire character's skin, such as invisibility or werewolf form, then the eye texture can glitch. This can be fixed by going to the main menu and then reloading a save.
• If you stand on the two halves of the split log in a mill, you may be sent flying a short distance when they disappear.
• Rarely, LMB and RMB cannot be used to perform actions. You must instead attack using other keys.
  • Changing the control settings for LMB or RMB to another key and back may fix this.
• Sometimes using crafting stations doesn't work and instead just switches to third-person for a second, makes a clicking sound, but never actually allows the interaction.
  • Wielding/sheathing your weapon, changing equipped weapons/apparel, shouting, interacting with a station while it's in use by another, or any combination of these may fix this.
• Using Alt+Tab to switch out of the game then back may result in the Windows mouse pointer remaining on-screen along with the Skyrim mouse pointer.
  • To avoid the extra pointer, when you first Alt+Tab back into Skyrim, move the Windows pointer to the bottom edge of the display and back up again. The game will not display at this point, but the mouse will disappear. Now, Alt+Tab all the way around to Skyrim again (or Alt+Tab then Alt+Shift+Tab). You will now be back in your game with no extra pointer. This same technique can be used to remove an existing extra pointer by Alt+Tabbing out and then back in as noted.
  • Loading your in-game map before you Alt+Tab out will prevent the Windows pointer appearing when you Alt+Tab back in.
  • Opening the console before tabbing out will also prevent this.
  • Restarting the game will restore the mouse pointer to normal.
• Using Alt+Tab to switch out of the game then back may cause visual glitches such as texture flickering and incorrect shadow rendering. These glitches will often increase in severity, possibly resulting in a crash to desktop.
• Your character's facial expression may get stuck as if in combat (locked teeth, furrowed brow, squinted eye). Followers can also get stuck in this state, and can be fixed by walking into them until they protest, or talking to them, where their expression will return to normal.
• Items called <MISSING NAME> may appear on dead NPCs. It is recommended that you do not pick up these items, because when they are dropped, the game may crash.
• With Dawnguard, you may spontaneously become a vampire in addition to being a werewolf. This seems to occur during location changes and/or entering combat. It adds "necks bitten: 1" to stats and the vampire power and active effects. The werewolf ability remains unchanged. Serana's dialogue menu still shows that the vampire option is not taken. ^?
• While swimming, equipping from the hot keys favorite selection a melee weapon in one hand and a distance effect spell occasionally locks up the game. It seems one command, the melee weapon, is legal but the other isn't. ^?
• Changes to the mappings of the R and F keys will not be visibly displayed in the favorites menu, though the changes will still apply.
• Sometimes, regular items with a "quest item" status added to them (e.g. in Thieves Guild generic quests) won't lose this status, and if you already had a stack of them, then the entire stack will be unusable, undroppable, and unsellable. This can be a problem with Alchemy ingredients, because the entire stack of ingredients will be unusable.
  • You can fix this through the console by entering player.removeitem <item> <number> to remove all affected items and re-adding them with player.additem <item> <number>. They will be normal items now.
  • You can fix weapons that suffer from this glitch by placing them on a weapon rack.
  • Another way to remove quest items is to go to jail and jailbreak. Open the prisoner belongings chest to receive your quest items but take nothing from the chest (the quest items are given to you automatically), then go to jail in a different hold. Jailbreak yet again but don't retrieve your belongings. Now go back to where you first went to jail and get your stuff.
• Draugr that are killed by a sneak attack while lying down or standing in a crevice can disappear through the floor. This can become a problem for certain quests which require you to obtain an object from the body. This is due to a physics bug when calculating where the body will fall. Occasionally, if you follow their fall, the body will be lootable.
• Live fish can show up in places they do not belong, such as on footpaths hundreds of feet above a river.
• Tips may rarely remain on screen indefinitely. ^?
• Killing an enemy with a projectile, whether an arrow, bolt, or spell, may trigger a context-sensitive cinematic kill animation, only to result in the projectile striking the target but failing to kill it, striking an intervening object, missing the target entirely, or sometimes not even being fired.
• Status messages that repeat will only be displayed every other time. This is most often seen when mining or when transmuting ores.
• After installing Dragonborn, some chairs may be glitched in some instances. People sitting on these chairs will sit through the chair, as if the chair's real form is lower than the displayed form. Standing up after this occurs may result in the appearance of standing inside the chair.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.4 of the Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.
• After prolonged playing time you may notice that your character is no longer able to interact with world objects like chairs, beds, workbenches, etc. ^?
  • This can be fixed by entering player.tai in the console. This will re-toggle your character's AI, allowing it to interact with objects again.
• Items in the help menu may link to the wrong topics. The problem is caused by removing an add-on or mod that modified the help menu, like Dragonborn, and then saving your game. This corrupts the help menu for all games from that point forward, even if the mod is re-installed.
  • Starting a new game (or loading an older one if you've re-installed the relevant mod) will allow you to see the help topics correctly.
  • For Dragonborn, use the console commands below to fix your help menu. As always, the "xx" needs to be replaced. See the Form ID page for help. If you have any other mods that add to the help menu, they will be removed. You can add them back in by repeating the last command with the correct Message FormID.

RevertFormList 163 AddFormToFormList xx030ebe

• If a sabre cat, snowy sabre cat, fox or a snow fox spawns at a respawn point in the wild it will effectively break that spawn point.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• Some plants will never respawn if harvested. ^?
• Rarely, a mountain may fail to render all but the outer edges of itself, causing it to look invisible, and allowing you to see the ground inside. Due to this, you can walk, jump, and sprint through the mountain, but renders correctly once you're outside the mountain, and you can't re-enter it. This is particularly useful if there is a location on the other side of the mountain, but cannot get to it without walking/sprinting miles around it, or struggling to jump to the top, as you can walk completely through it with ease. ^?
• Playing with a Khajiit character and then loading to another Khajiit character will cause the current character to have the same color tail as the previous Khajiit (i.e. white to orange). ^?
• Quicksaving can cause the game to crash to desktop.
  • This is seemingly caused by not having made a proper save for an extended period of time; making a proper save (via the save menu) will fix this.
• A part of the sea might not load properly, resulting in a large black square.

Exploits [edit]

Armor Duplication Glitch [edit]

• Duplicating armor on mannequins:
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.2.4 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch..
  1. Place the armor that you want to duplicate on your mannequin.
  2. Don't exit out of the equipping screen, then take all of your armor back.
  3. Leave the area (loading screen) and come back. The set of armor you did the action with will now be duplicated on the mannequin.
  • If done to an enchanted piece of armor (e.g. personally enchanted Ebony Armor of Destruction), it will be the unenchanted form. However, armor that was already enchanted when you found it (e.g. the Ebony Mail) will retain its enchantment.
  • Tempering seems to be removed from the duplicate armor.
  • This even duplicates dragon priest masks.
  • It works on armor from add-ons

Follower Pickup Duplication Glitch [edit]

• It is possible to duplicate items using the follower pickup command. This glitch requires the Dawnguard DLC to be enabled. Quicksaving is used to make this glitch work, and as such this glitch requires the PC version of Skyrim, or Xbox 360 Kinect voice commands.
  1. Drop any items that you wish to be duplicated.
  2. Order your follower to pickup all of the dropped items.
  3. Quicksave the game and quickload twice immediately afterwards. The items picked up should be spawned where they were originally picked up.

Note: Stacks of items will not be duplicated. Only one out of the stack will be duplicated.

Quicksave Duplication Glitch [edit]

• It is possible to duplicate items using the quicksave hotkey.
  1. Place your crosshairs over the item in which you wish to duplicate.
  2. Press the quicksave hotkey and pickup the item at roughly the same time. Keep pressing the pickup button however many times you wish the item to be duplicated. A single duplication is virtually guaranteed, but multiple duplications vary in results.

Infinite Power Attack Stamina [edit]

• It is possible to Power Attack without draining stamina:
  1. Attempt to power attack, then immediately after the animation begins attempt to power attack again. This will result in no stamina loss.

Selling Merchants Their Own Items [edit]

• By abusing the menu, it is possible to sell a merchant their own items and gain their own gold. This glitch requires usage of the mouse, so this can only be done on PC.
  1. Open up the buy menu from a merchant and highlight an item that you wish to sell the merchant (This item will be sold to them, so make sure they have enough gold).
  2. Click on the category of the highlighted item (under your name, not theirs) and drag your mouse (while holding down the button) over the merchant's item category that you wish to sell them.
  3. Press the action button (by default E) and you have successfully initiated the glitch. Keep pressing E (and/or left clicking the item) to sell the merchant their own item.

Unlimited Scroll Usage [edit]

• This glitch is a variation of the "Selling Merchants Their Own Items" glitch.
  1. Simply place a scroll into any container, then follow the steps in the "Selling Merchants Their Own Items" glitch. Instead of pressing E repeatedly to sell, simply left click/right click as if you are equipping the scroll.
  2. As long as there are no scrolls of that same type within your inventory, you should now have infinite usage of that scroll.

Note: This also can be used to dual wield weapons or wear an item without it taking up inventory space.

• Alternatively equip any scroll, raise your arms, transform into a Vampire Lord, revert form and give the scroll to a follower. The scroll will stay equipped and will have infinite uses.

Object Flying [edit]

• It is possible to use items to jump infinitely (albeit slightly inconsistently).
  1. Drop a kettle or a basket onto the ground rightside up (Any open object should work if it is large enough).
  2. Jump into the kettle or basket so that you sink down slightly.
  3. Hold the action button (default E) so that you grab onto the item (not to be confused with picking up the item into your inventory).
  4. When the kettle or basket is grabbed, repeatedly press jump to jump infinitely.

Note: Sometimes the kettle or basket will no longer be grabbed. This is unavoidable from testing. It happens roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, but it generally happens higher than you will ever need to go.

Horse Tilting [edit]

• It is possible to fly through the world at speeds reaching roughly five to ten Skyrims per minute (literally).
  1. Make a save on a character which you wish to begin flying on in third-person mode.
  2. Load another save, or use the same character (it doesn't matter), and mount a horse.
  3. Find a rock or ledge that is steeply angled, but not too much to where the horse does not cling to it.
  4. Move down the rock so that the horse is facing into the ground. The closer to perpendicular to the ground the better. If the horse's head is in the ground, that is perfect.
  5. Dismount the horse and open up the menu to time this part. You want to close and open the menu repeatedly until your character is just barely offscreen (your character should fly back and forth).
  6. Load the save game and enjoy. Enter first person view to effectively cancel out of the glitch.

Note: If you make the save by entering any crafting station (by entering a crafting station and immediately making a save as third person view engages) you will lose all world collision when you perform this glitch.

Clipping [edit]

• To clip through a wall, grab an object by holding down the "Take" button, press it flat against a wall, and walk continuously into the wall. While this will normally result in a short fall through a blue field followed by instant teleportation back to solid ground, doing this in specific areas can allow for the easy acquisition or theft of large amounts of items by looting the hidden chests that vendors keep their goods in. A reliable place to test this in is the Blue Palace, where there is a hall going off to the left of the curved staircase in the entry area. On the right side of the hall is a bench, and clipping through the wall right of the bench between it and the pillar will place you on a thin strip of ground with no walls and a light blue background. Balancing on the thin strip to the left and dropping down past the chest visible below will, if it's activated on the way down, allow the looting of Sybille Stentor's entire inventory and cash stock, minus what's on her person.

Equipment [edit]

• Quickloading a game does not correctly reset areas. This leads to a near-infinite number of exploits, such as being disarmed, quickloading, and then picking up the disarmed weapon to go with the one you had in the savegame, allowing you dual-wield unique/artifact items like Dawnbreaker.
• Equipping the Ancient Shrouded Cowl will not appear on Khajiit and Argonian characters. You can then equip a second head armor which will appear. Both pieces are considered equipped. If both objects are enchanted, you will receive both effects.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.2 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• Similar to the Ancient Shrouded Cowl, the Falmer Helm also allows for equipping of a second headgear (enchanted or not) of types:
  • Dragon Priest Masks: Can be equipped while the Falmer Helmet is equipped.
  • Ebony Helmet: Can be dual-equipped with the Falmer helmet by equipping the Falmer Helmet, then equipping a Dragon Priest mask, then equipping the Ebony Helmet.
  • Execution Hood: Same process as for the Ebony Helmet.
  • Circlets: Can be dual-equipped with the Falmer Helmet by equipping the Falmer Helmet then equipping the circlet; this also works with the Penitus Oculatus Helmet.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.2 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• The Gauldur Amulet allows equipping a second necklace, similar to the Ancient Shrouded Cowl and Falmer Helmet. Unlike the helmets, however, you can replace the Gauldur Amulet and still be able to wear two amulets. Save and reload the game while wearing two necklaces, then select a third necklace from inventory. The Gauldur Amulet will be replaced instead of the second necklace.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.8 of the Official Skyrim Patch.

Note: Using the Gauldur Amulet glitch will prevent the Ebony Helmet and Execution Hood from being usable with the Falmer Helmet.

• It is possible to wear multiple sets of armor at the same time, using these steps:

Note: The Saarthal Amulet will allow two amulets to be worn at the same time and the mechanic for selecting is the same as two rings in Oblivion:

• 1. Submit to jail while wearing the first set of armor
  2. Escape from jail and submit to jail again, this time wearing different armor.
  3. Escape and submit to jail once more, except this time serve your sentence and you will be wearing two different sets of armor at the same time.
• By placing a stolen item onto a general NPC and then killing that NPC, the item will lose its stolen tag.
• The easiest way to get rid of the stolen tag on an item is to place the item in a container that isn't owned, and then have your follower loot the container. You can then trade with your follower to get the item. This works with any amount of stolen items.
• Arrows of any type can be duplicated by pickpocketing a guard that shoots at a target dummy before they start shooting, and stealing the steel arrows, then leaving one arrow of the desired type in their inventory. Collect your arrows from the target dummy. A great spot for this is the Whiterun Great Porch. The guards appear at 8am and 6pm and shoot for four hours each. Another good spot is Solitude's fort courtyard, where two archers usually practice.
  • This is also possible on Thieves Guild members in the Ragged Flagon - Cistern. The members of the Thieves Guild stay up later than guards do, allowing for more arrows per person. Also, the person practicing will occasionally change, requiring you to place your desired arrows in all their inventories.
• If a follower is too heavy to trade a certain item, simply drop the item on the ground and command the follower to pick it up. They will pick up the item regardless of their current weight.
• As a Werewolf/Vampire Lord, and with any follower that can trade items, start by equipping the transform power. Save or quicksave. Press transform and talk to your follower ON THE SAME FRAME. If the transformation animation and the dialogue window open at the same time, you've done it right. Wait until the animation completes, then select the trade items option. Go to your inventory, and equip all of your armor at once. Some items may not want to equip at the same time (Such as Necromancer Robes and Hide Armor).
  • If you have 2 IDENTICAL items that you enchanted with the same enchantment, equip one of them. When you try to equip the other item, it'll give you the buff without being equipped. this can be repeated infinitely, and stackable buffs will stack (Such as Magicka Regen or Fortify Pickpocket).
  • Both of these glitches work on all versions (tested PC and PS3).

Free House [edit]

• All purchasable houses and their upgrades can be acquired for free.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.5 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
  • You must have the gold in your inventory needed to purchase the houses legitimately in the first place. The exploit involves removing the gold from your inventory before it is automatically removed in the buying process. You need to talk to the Steward responsible for selling the house when they are near a container. When you have agreed to purchase the house, there is a small delay before the money is removed. During this delay, you can remove the gold from your inventory by placing it in a nearby container, retrieving it after you have been notified on-screen of the purchase. Container refers to any normal container, a dead body, or a follower. Remember to save before you start in case you are not quick enough.
  • Breezehome—The best place is the map table up the stairs behind the throne. The Steward must pass the table to go downstairs and there is a chest under the table.
  • Hjerim—At night Jorleif sleeps in the kitchen next to several sacks.
  • Honeyside—There is a long chest by the wall to the left of the throne.
  • Proudspire Manor—There is a cupboard behind Falk Firebeard that is within reach.
  • Vlindrel Hall—There is a Dwarven chest to the right as you look face-to-face with the Steward in the throne room.
  • Note 1: This does not work for purchasing plots of land with the Hearthfire add-on.
  • Note 2: Normally, even if the container is "owned", your money is safe because you placed it there; it will not need to be stolen to regain it. However, if there was already gold in there to begin with that did not belong to you, your gold will be added to the same stack and you have no control over which gold you get, forcing you to steal.

Gold [edit]

• There is a skeleton lying atop a stone altar on a mountainside slightly south of Sightless Pit. After killing it and its two guardians, each time you activate its corpse, one copy of Doors to Oblivion will be added to its inventory, which you can then take and sell, limited only by your carrying capacity and patience. The body will never disappear.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• It is possible to learn a spell and keep the spell book, while producing infinite copies of the book to sell for a little more than you could a normal book (such as the one in the above glitch). First, place the book on a shelf. While still in the container menu of the bookshelf, read the book using the appropriate button. Exit the menu. The book will still be on the shelf. If you take the book, it will disappear off the shelf, but will reload if you enter the shelf's container menu and exit, producing a copy on each load. Note that this will make the book permanently stuck on the shelf, occupying a slot even though it is not present in the menu, and preventing you from placing as many books on the shelf.
• While in a vendor trade screen, it is possible to sell their own items back to the vendor, giving you infinite gold.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.2 of the Official Skyrim Patch.
  1. As an example, you open the vendor's Apparel.
  2. You then (without clicking) scroll down on the lefthand menu to highlight your own name (both with mouse and the larger font). If done correctly, when you hover over the items on the right, the price will have dropped to what you can sell them for (usually about 10-20% of their sell value).
  3. At this point, if you click the items, you are selling their own inventory back to them.
  4. If you have any of the items, they will be sold first, so pick something that you don't have.
• The Dawnstar chest glitch is one of the fastest ways to get infinite gold.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
  1. Wait for the caravan to come to Dawnstar, then go to the merchant Ahkari and save your game while looking at her.
  2. Draw your weapon and attack the merchant; it is not necessary to kill her.
  3. Reload your game, go into her inventory, but do not buy anything, now exit her inventory.
  4. Go to the chest, it's by the mine next to the jarl's house, underground by some rocks and a tree to the left of the mine.
  5. Finally, open the chest and get what you need, it should have at least 500 gold, to reload the chest, repeat the process.
• Another way to do this that does not involve attacking Ahkari goes:
  1. Wait for the caravan to arrive.
  2. Speak to Ahkari, and ask to see her items.
  3. Exit dialogue and go and find the chest, in the same location as above.
  4. Take anything you want, up to any value.
  5. Wait 48 hours, change cell (fast-travel or enter a house) and then return.
  6. Repeat.

Infinitely Powerful Items [edit]

First, obtain the most powerful Fortify Alchemy enchantments that you can get your hands on. The best will be custom enchantments when you have 100 in enchanting and all five "enchanter" perks and when you use a grand soul gem. For best results, exploit another glitch to wear an enchanted circlet and either a Falmer helmet or Penitus Oculatus helmet. Then you will need as many Fortify Restoration ingredients as you can get your hands on. Find your way to an alchemy lab and do the following: (NOTE: There appears to be a problem with extremely high values in Special Edition for Xbox One. Games crashes with values larger than approximately 10,000% when trying to use Enchanting potions made this way.)

1. Equip all your "Fortify Alchemy" apparel.
2. Make a Fortify Restoration potion.
3. Unequip your Fortify Alchemy apparel.
4. Drink the potion.
5. Repeat from step one.
6. To lock in your exponentially enhanced alchemical power, make an ultra-powered "Fortify Enchantment" potion, then use it to put an ultra-powered "Fortify Alchemy" enchantment on a piece of apparel. Now you can make ultra-potions at will without repeating the grind.

• This bug is fixed by version 1.3.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.

Important Points To Remember

Once you have your alchemy fortified to a satisfactory level, you can then make super-powered potions at will. So long as you don't remove any of the enchanted apparel after the last consumed potion has expired, it will retain its boosted enchantment value until it is unequipped).

You can now create super-powered potions to exploit things that have no maximum value. It is better to focus purely on super-powered Fortify Enchanting potions to enchant items with permanent effects, as potions will always have a limited time of use. The limited time applies to the enchantment potions, too, so a number of them should be created at once.

Bear in mind that the potions will vastly decrease in magnitude once the fortify restoration potion has expired. You can boost the magnitude by using the restoration loop using two or more fortify restoration potions of varying degrees, then consuming the enchantment potion and using an arcane enchanter. This should be reserved only for boosting the most vital stats, as it takes time and resources better spent elsewhere.

Finally, time continues to pass when using an enchanter, so plan ahead and work quickly; typically, you will make two items easily within the time, and a third if you are quick on the renaming or do not rename at all. To make naming items easier on PS3 or Xbox, enter the enchanter beforehand and rename something multiple times to get the text into the system's predictive text box.

Examples

The possibilities are endless; however, anything over a value of 2,147,483,647 (the maximum value for a 32 bit long integer variable) will register as a negative number and the glitch will not work. Below are a few examples of stats to boost:

• Before removing the alchemy enchanted armor, you may wish to make some high value potions. You can sell these potions and, in one transaction, level Speech up to 100. If you make the skill legendary (with patch 1.9), you can then repeat this to gain easy levels and perk points. If you combine this with buying items off an alchemist and then selling the potion, you can gain the resources to keep repeating this loop potentially endlessly. You will need to avoid both over-leveling and the risk of gaining too many levels, whereupon you could lose any unspent perk points.

1. Make items with high-powered Fortify Smithing enchantments. There is no need to go overboard here, as there is a cap on the maximum damage resistance and a point at which a single strike from a weapon will insta-kill any enemy. The maximum rating needed is 642 (see Armor Cap), and a damage rating of around 1,000 will suffice to kill most enemies, while 2,000 should be enough to kill any enemy in one strike even on Legendary settings.
2. A Fortify Health enchantment in the order of several million will guarantee that you never have to worry about any enemy ever again. Doing this though can cause the battle music to stop working so you won't have a warning that you are being attacked. A potion of ultimate healing will restore all of your health, no matter how high it is.
3. In the same way you can fortify your magicka and stamina pools (fortifying stamina will not increase your carry weight capacity). Fortifying your magicka saves having to fortify each school of magic, freeing up several spaces for other enchantments and not limiting which schools you can use freely. At a high enough level, the stamina or magicka bars will stop showing up as you deplete them.
4. A Fortify Carry Weight enchantment will enable you to carry every bit of loot a dungeon contains, and not have to worry about the value/weight ratio ever again.
5. A Fortify Barter enchantment will instantly max out your trade prices (the lowest buying percentage possible is 105% percent, while you can sell at 100%).
6. Drinking an overpowered Fortify Restoration potion prior to equipping an Amulet of Talos will eliminate all cooldowns on Dragon Shouts. The effect will be lost if the amulet is removed.
7. If you have the 1.3 version of the Official Skyrim Patch installed, you can make a Fortify Sneak enchantment strong enough to make you completely undetectable while sneaking, even right in front of a person in broad daylight.
8. If you have the 1.3 version of the Official Skyrim Patch installed, a super-powered Fortify Lockpicking enchantment can make the entire lock a "sweet spot," even for master-level locks, making every attempt at picking a lock succeed on the first try.

• Other enchantments to consider are Fortify Unarmed Damage (making it a viable combat option), Resist Magic, and Resist Poison.

Alternative way using poison

Drinking a lot of potions with weakness to poison and weakness to magic effects will multiply the effects, unless it's the exact same potion. While absurdly weak to poison, get someone to hit you with a weapon that you poisoned with a non-lethal fortify enchanting poison. This will let you craft super strong enchantments for 30 seconds.

Invisible Exploding Fireball Arrows [edit]

• Invisible arrows used during Japhet's Folly can be equipped by the player.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.5 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
  • These can only be acquired while on the quest Rise in the East, but once you have them, they can be used for the rest of the game. Near the end of the quest, after exiting the tower on Japhet's Folly, your character encounters a barrage of explosions. These are actually created by an unnamed invisible arrow, and it is possible to stockpile these arrows on your character by being hit with them. While they don't show up in your inventory, anytime you use the last arrow in a stack, the game will frequently equip these "Missing Name" arrows next. They act like an invisible arrow that shoots a firebolt, which explodes into a fireball when it lands. When you wish to stop using them, you can manually equip a stack of any normal arrow. To use them again, simply shoot the last one of any arrow type, and the Missing Name arrows will be equipped again. The number you can stockpile is only limited by the amount of time you want to spend hanging around at the end of the quest getting hit, since they are weightless.
  • The arrows will be removed by the Diplomatic Immunity quest.

Petty Soul Gem Trick [edit]

• You can use a follower with a Soul Trap melee weapon to enchant any number of petty soul gems in one kill.
  1. Get a follower who isn't an archer by default and give that character a weapon enchanted with Soul Trap or Fiery Soul Trap.
  2. Acquire as many empty petty soul gems as you can. Trade them to your follower all at once.
  3. Have your follower kill something with a petty soul, such as a wolf. When the wolf is killed, every single petty soul gem in your follower's inventory should become filled. Use this to make tons of soul gems to power level the Enchanting skill and make a fortune. (Note that this trick only works if none of the soul gems are stolen.)

Skills [edit]

• It is possible to level Enchanting by disenchanting any items you have enchanted yourself, even though you already know the enchantment used.
  1. Have at least one item on which you do NOT yet know the enchantment that is able to be disenchanted.
  2. Open the disenchanting menu.
  3. Have the item you can learn an enchantment from selected so its image appears on the screen, but do NOT bring up the confirmation yet.
  4. At very nearly the same time, attempt to disenchant while trying to move either up or down in the menu to the next item.
  5. If done correctly, the item on which you know the enchantment should be shown with the confirmation screen active.
  6. Select yes, and the item you selected shall be disenchanted, even though you already knew the enchantment. This will allow you to keep the item with an unknown enchantment while eliminating the others and gaining experience for disenchanting.
  7. Repeat for as many items as you want to disenchant.
• If you have the 1.9 version of the Official Skyrim patch installed, it is possible to reach level 252, the level necessary to unlock all skill perks, in about 20 minutes, using the Fortify Restoration Glitch. At sufficiently high levels of glitched Fortify Alchemy, ANY potion you create will garner you enough experience to immediately level Alchemy from 15 to 100. Boost Fortify Alchemy, and visit an apothecary. Buy out their inventory, and begin making potions (just two ingredients to each potion). Make Alchemy legendary after making each potion. When you exhaust your supply of ingredients, sell your super-potions, one at a time to the apothecary. The potions are so valuable that each sale will level Speech from 15 to 100 immediately. After each sale, make Speech legendary. Once you have made all sales, save the game, attack the merchant until it becomes hostile, and reload. The merchants stock will have respawned. Wash, rinse and repeat.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.3.0 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• If you have the Poisoned perk (in the Pickpocket tree) activated, you can reverse-pickpocket a paralysis potion into the target's inventory, which the target will subsequently drink. The character will become stiff and fall to the ground for the duration of the effect, during which time you will be unable to interact with them (save for attacking of course). As the effect wears off and the character starts to get up, immediately pickpocket them again. Though the % probability displayed will be the same, the game will treat it as a corpse looting instead of a pickpocket, which means the actual success rate will be 100% for all items and all gold amounts and you won't run any risk of incurring a bounty. This is especially useful for training skills at higher levels and getting all your money back. NOTE: Because the game technically treats this exploit as a corpse-loot, you do not gain skill XP from using this exploit.
• You can use the Oghma Infinium to increase any or all skills by any amount, up to 100 each, thereby increasing your level to as high as 81:
  1. Open a bookshelf in a home that you own.
  2. Read the book while it is still in your inventory and select a path.
  3. Place the book in the bookshelf and exit the menu.
  4. Click on the book, without reading it, and add it back into your inventory.
  5. Repeat from the second step above as many times as desired.
  • This issue has been addressed by version 1.9 of the Official Skyrim Patch; it removes the boost from the second time of reading, but you can use this to keep a copy of the book.
• Any essential NPC can be used to provide a source of infinite combat skill levels. This also applies to the sneak skill since you can level up sneak by backstabbing. Many quest-specific followers will not attack you if you do this. You can sit there and beat them down repeatedly with your weapon or magic school of choice to raise its skill. The only thing to note is that you do not gain any experience while they are down, so you have to let them get back up.
  • While you are letting an essential character get back up, there is a small window in which you can damage them which will cause their health to reset to full instead of having to regenerate from nothing if you do not interfere.
• The Conjuration spell Soul Trap can be cast repeatedly on a single corpse for infinite experience.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.1 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• Using the vendor trade exploit, you can also continue to sell their own items back to them for 0 gold for Speech experience.
  • This bug is fixed by the Official Skyrim Patch. ^{[verification needed — Please confirm which version. This is present on patch 1.9.31 for the Xbox.]}
• For 100 Speech in about 30 minutes:
  1. Go to Riften and enter the Black-Briar Meadery.
  2. Speak to Ungrien, the Bosmer at the counter, and ask him about Maven Black-Briar, his boss (first option out of two, and then second option out of three).
  3. He will say she is wonderful and feels guilty accepting payment, which is not his true belief.
  4. If less than 25 Speech, bribe him until you reach 25. You will only need a small amount of gold (20-35 may be level dependent).
  5. Once completed, just persuade him over and over.
  • This bug is fixed by version 1.9.26 of the Official Skyrim Patch.
• If you get two Standing Stone powers with the Aetherial Crown, uninstalling the Dawnguard add-on will make one permanent. Reinstalling Dawnguard will make you restart all added quests, but will allow you to get the Crown again. Repeat this for multiple Standing Stone bonuses. ^?
• If you get the: "Summon Spectral Assassin" Power after completing the Dark Brotherhood Questline, you can level grind your one-handed, two-handed, and archery skills via killing the spectral assassin. ^?
• There is a way to level Speech to 100 fairly quickly without the need to barter at all. To perform this exploit, you must be a member of the Dark Brotherhood. Reach the "Recipe for Disaster" quest, then go to Markarth and question Anton Virane. There will be an option to intimidate him; do it, then immediately exit the conversation, and speak to him immediately after exiting the conversation. The initial dialogue will still be there, and you can use the option to intimidate again and again by repeating this process, raising your Speech about every other time.
• You can use the Silent Roll perk without unlocking it at any time by entering sneak mode, jumping and then holding the sprint button mid-air. You will perform a roll upon landing.
• If you have multiple level-ups queued, you can exit out of the skill menu by pressing the close button or key, right after you picked attribute, so that you don't level up more than once. Doing so will let you save level-ups for either training or health/magicka restoration.

Vampiric Werewolves [edit]

• It is possible to be both a vampire and a werewolf.
  • This bug is fixed by version 2.0.5 of the Unofficial Skyrim Patch.
• There are a few problems associated with using this exploit. Notably, the Necromage perk does not affect your skills, as you are not undead (once you use Beastform after becoming a vampire).

1. Progress through the Companions questline until The Silver Hand, but do not enter the Underforge.
2. Contract Sanguinare Vampiris.
3. Return and enter the Underforge.
4. Drink the blood and become a werewolf.
5. Wait three days to complete the transformation into a vampire.

• Another method that requires Dawnguard:

1. Go through the Dawnguard questline and become a vampire. Continue on the questline until you are sent to look for the elder scrolls with Serana.
2. Join the Companions and progress along their questline until you arrive in the Underforge to become a werewolf. Make sure Serana is with you.
3. Drink the blood of the beast and hit the button to transform into a Vampire Lord at the same time. You will turn into a werewolf and then a Vampire Lord immediately after that. (Save before you attempt this, as it requires precise timing to work at all and can go horribly wrong on failed attempts)
4. Revert back to human form and ask Serana to turn you into a vampire again to make the hybridization permanent.

(The exact timing of a failed attempt can cause a number of variables that become more dynamic on larger or modified saves. This can result in a temporary or unfortunately permanent transformation, which will make your character have a glitchy avatar of a werewolf or vampirelord overlapping with your character. While this glitch makes a character attack with both bodies at once, which can make for a very potent offense, the glitch also make many areas inaccessible and makes first person play almost impossible, since you can only see through the mouth of the larger avatar. It seems that this glitch varies greatly depending on the exact timing of the transformation attempt, and can vary in how perks and abilities apply. This seems to work better with werewolves than vampire lords, since as a permanent vampire lord you have no access to your blood magic or vampire powers until you transform, and can result in menu options not working or not being accesible.)

• Note that while you are in werewolf form, you will lose your vampiric powers but retain its weaknesses.

Other [edit]

• Tapping the sprint button once while moving forward, with a torch equipped and weapon sheathed, will allow you to sprint indefinitely. The stamina bar still decreases, but you will not stop sprinting when it is empty. In addition to this, if you start to move backwards while sprinting forwards, your character keeps the sprinting animation, instead of switching to the backwards animation. You can also stop for a short time and be able to resume sprinting without needing to press the button again. During this time you won't be able to strafe properly.
• If you quicksave while sprinting, and then (A) quickload and (B) release the sprint button at the same time, you can run at the same speed as sprinting, without using up stamina. In addition, you can jump even farther than normal, since you're running at sprinting speed while still being able to jump.
• Requires the Steady Hand perk 2/2. Walk through a door crouched and with a bow out. Once through, draw an arrow so that time slows down and then reload the auto-save. When the game reloads the whole world will be in slow motion as if you had the arrow drawn all of the time. Drawing another arrow will turn off the slow time, but it is possible to change weapon and use magic without restoring normal time. Menus appear to work at normal speed.
• While sneaking, changing active spells will briefly make you move at full speed rather than at sneak speed. Further, if you are unsheathing your weapon and drop into sneak, you will continue to move normal speed until the animation is finished. This is especially useful with Shadow Warrior, since you can pop in and out of stealth at will.
• It is possible to perform a silent roll without having the prerequisite perk. Simply enter Sneak mode with a bow drawn, hold the sprint button and sheathe your bow. You will perform a roll, sheathe, and then roll again while remaining in sneak mode. Drawing your bow again while holding down sprint will also give two rolls, allowing for swift, silent movement. Also, if you jump while in Sneak and hold the sprint button, you will roll forward.
• Swimming underwater may be done indefinitely without the use of any spell, potion, or item, and without having to be an Argonian. When swimming, push your character downward into the bed of whatever body of water you are in, but not so much that you cannot move forward. Swim like this long enough and you will encounter bits of ground that trigger the "gasp for breath" sound that normally occurs when surfacing after swimming underwater and a timer reset for holding one's breath.
• While you're telling your follower to do something, you can pick up objects far away from you.
• Sprinting while using Whirlwind Sprint shout (while at the same time releasing the sprint button) allows infinite sprinting.
• While in the Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary, sometimes approaching the fire in Astrid's room will cause a framerate drop, and the game will "lag" until you leave the room. ^?
• If you choose to go to jail and you have a follower following you when you choose the option to go to jail then when the loading screen appears it may freeze. ^?

How to Get Back to Desktop When Playing Skyrim

Source: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Glitches

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