Experiencing Skyrim after patch 1.4

January 27, 2012 By 56 Comments

It has been a long time coming but Skyrim 1.4 patch went live on Steam for PC users a couple of days ago in form of a beta update. We are still uncertain as to when the full patch will go live and when the Xbox 360 and PS3 will get the download. Those who will benefit the most from Bethesda’s latest work are PlayStation 3 owners of the Elder Scrolls V, as they should finally see an end to the lag issues, which has affected some gamers.

Now the 1.4 beta patch for Skyrim has been available for two days we thought we would see what PC users were experiencing. A recent article has been explaining how one PC user faced a dilemma, as he was unsure whether to install the patch due to the previous one causing a few issues during installation. However, he proceeded to do so, as curiosity got the better of him.

Experiencing Skyrim after patch 1.4

Thankfully there were no such issues this time round – well for him anyway – and so the journey begun to see what the developer has done with their game. It didn’t take long to find a bug, it seems if you are close to a mountain trail the wind gusting will sound more like a hurricane and can become annoying, as the noise will not sound nice coming from your speakers – even worse if you have a set of headphones on. The sound is said to be even worse if you have or are standing near a torch, for some it could actually sound as though you are on fire yourself.

For some they would consider this just a minor bug and would not put then off installing the Skyrim 1.4 beta patch. However, it seems there is yet another bug, one that can cause repeated dialogue after starting up a conversation. Now it’s not known if this is an isolated issue to just this one guy, or maybe others have experienced the same thing – we would like to know?

These are still only minor issues and once you open your eyes and begin to look in detail at the world of Skyrim, you will notice it has been improved thanks to an increased framerate. However, there’s no getting away from the fact that PS3 users will gain the most and are anxiously waiting for Bethesda to get their act together and make it live right now. What is your overall impression of this latest patch?

Update: It seems there has been yet another update; 1.4.20 is now live on Steam and has fixed a number of issues with the first 1.4 bug, one of which is the audio issue we discussed above.

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  • Sakn

    aaarrgghh been waiting soo long for a ps3 fix

    • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=621000335 Thomas Candlish

      likewise…..I started  a totally new game because playing at 1 frame a minute was ridiculous.

      • Lee

        I have still to exprience any lag on PS3 but I am on a PS3 slim which is 6 months old as my original 6 year old one got the Yellow light of death ;(. I wonder if the slims run the game better ?

  • Ty

    now were is the construction kit

  • ysa

    yeah the repeated talking is everyone … bethesda must be drunk 

  • Jcalberta

    Very annoying. This game made a billion dollars and IT IS an awesome game … but, i’ve had crashing (still do) ; screen tearing; flickering/flashing … etc.

    Yet some people claim to have no problems whatsoever. ???

    I figure it will eventually get where it needs to, but it looks like that could a while.

    Onward …

  • Random

    i dont see anywhere about mana/hp/stamina regen corectly…and dual weap equip.
    is realy lame ..
    when you play first time a game with bugs it makes you to be disappointed why rush to release the game when isnt full tested and fixed..

  • Pete Austin

    I played Skyrim for 90 mins today, with no blue screens or crashes. That is a first for me – previously mtbf was about 10 mins. Was showing slight signs of memory leaks towards the end (image rendering of new rooms slowing down) but this is a night-vs-day change compared to the previous version. I have NVidia/Windows7 64-bit. This is the version that Bethesday should have released with!

  • Wolventrail

    Any patch for the annoying follower attacking you for no reason issue?

    • EconomicGamer

      If you’re in Beast form and hit them I know they turn on you.

  • Anthony Daps

    Guys, skyrim is such a HUGE game, calm down, there’s bound to be bugs, Might as well release it to the public, enjoy what they can and alert the developer of bugs you come across. If you consider how big the game is, and compare it to the bugs (they’ve fixed) in the changelog, it isnt a huge deal. (except for the ps3 framerate issue). Give them time to finalize the patch so you don’t have to keep complaining! Plus i’m sure you wouldnt have wanted to wait an extra 3 months to get the game (November to February)!
    Just my thoughts

    • bugbear1

      “-Skyrim is such a HUGE game, calm down, there’s bound to be bugs. . .”  Combined with, “I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to wait an extra 3 months to get the game” due to Bethesda Q/A.

      Yes, we would have gladly waited for a game that did not lockup, ctd, have backward dragons, missing heads on player-toons and the-      L   A     G. . . .

      Because Skyrim is “large” by comparison with, say, MW3, that is NO excuse for its condition upon release.  To grandly assume that users, having to ”eat” all the bugs and putting up with all the sorry excuses from Bethesda, including patches FOR patches is “required” for receipt of Skyrim at market is silly. 

      If YOU wanna be an apologist for Bethesda, fine; but, please don’t chastize others for not sharing your viewpoint.  Frankly, FFXIII-2, while repetitive and familiar, is a much more cohesive game than Skyrim will ever be due to a never-ending litany of bug lists.

      Moreover, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is a 200+ hour open-world RPG with action-adventure combat that hews close to Skyrim conventions and yet manages to be fairly proven with consistent FPS and solid gameplay in most preview assessments.

      If THAT game, of similar ilk, works as intended, WHY make excuses for Bethesda’s follies?  It’s the same rhetoric from Bethesda. . .  After Fallout, Fallout: New Vegas and Oblivion’s problems that were, curiously, similar to Skyrim’s problems, whymake excuses for lax Q/A and/or incompetency?

      • Irony

        LAG? I have zero lag. I’m getting 60fps with everything maxxed out, additionally I have installed 2 and 4k textures, still no problems other than a few bugs here and there. And for a game with over 300 hours of game time (total, all missions, cannot be played on one char ex. Storm Cloaks/Imperial Legion), I’m not surprised they couldn’t QA the whole game. Its bound to have some issues. Most games of this caliber have them, and yeah Bethesda is usually a release first, fix later kind of company, but they also understand that mods will be out within the month that either fix most of the problems, up the graphic textures, or change the game completely. So Bethesda makes a game with a 95+% stable base and then patches up to make it in the 99th percentile. So far so good, but a couple hick ups along the way. Backwards dragons was kind of funny actually.

        Oh wait, none of this means anything to you because you bought the game on a PS3, and so I have to ask you one question. On a 6 year old system with a single core and barely 1/4 gig ram, what did you expect?

        • Jaysonjota

          Irony u are indeed a d-bag. You make me laugh with your virgin talk about the computer been better and ps3 older. My comment will be banned if I say whats really on mind about you. Sit tight on your chair hold on to your mouse and keyboard, meanwhile I play on ps3 and hang out with women. You know something about that??

          • Sterling

            I think u both are gay !!

          • SilverSurfer

            So I don’t agree with all that “Irony” said, but @fae297b2971df2d447f068bbbc0ce86d:disqus  … that was really mature.

            @Irony yeah we have a PS3, we expected the game to be good to go at launch. It wasn’t. Why set a title for our system and not make it work?

          • Irony

            Indeed!

            That is a good point, but you have to know what you’re getting into when you have a console that old. You are not going to get the top fps or performance, nor are you going to be able to take part in new technologies like 3D (which I don’t particularily like anyways) or the latest res textures and such. Bethesda actually releases it’s games with less than great resolutions on their textures, but I think it’s because they know people are going to mod their games pretty extensively.

            I admit I bought Fallout 3 on Xbox, it was fun and looked great, but after seeing it on PC and all the mods, I decided to save up and get a PC that would be able to run TESV (which had been teased at the same time I saw FO3 on the PC), and a friend helped me get what I needed to run Skyrim. I have to say, I’m glad I did. Total I spent around 1400, over a year or so to get a sweet computer and upgrade my living room (Went from a 37 inch to a 42 inch TV) and that includes the 5.1 surround. That comes out to be around 115 bucks a month. Not too bad when you think about it.

          • Irony

            No need to attack me because you bought the wrong system. And my gf says “get a life creep.” She also enjoys Skyrim on PC.

        • ass

          The IBM cell processor has 8 cores and a central core. making it 9 not 1

      • Anthony Daps

        Well put, you’re right. 
         So then what’s the problem! What’s going on with Bethesda? Why do they continue to make games with similar issues? instead of “ including patches FOR patches”

        “never-ending litany of bug lists”
        and lets all hope that isn’t true (eventually)

  • noie

    Well, my save file is about 27 Mb, 300+ hours, on PS3, and I’ve yet to experience lag, or any number of bugs that I’ve heard of. It’s good for me, but I hope the patches fix everyone else’s problems.

    • http://twitter.com/essexgrin alan green

      Would be interesting to know if you’ve been using the bookshelf in your home???
      Poor script handling for bookshelves has been blamed for most of the laggin on ps3.

      • Jjack339

        I had the PS3 version on a PS3 slim purchased in Nov 11….. 9 mb sav and 50 hours in and it was unplayable….. not to mention load times….. Switched to the PC version even with just a 5870 mobile GPU with 1st gen I7 I was running it on high (which looks much better than the PS3) but to me the biggest difference was load times. On the PS3 loading the game took 10-30 seconds, on the PC it is 2-6 seconds.

    • Caleb Darrell

      You’re lying

  • Liam Bennett92

    Will this patch the shroud hearth barrow bug where the iron door requires a key after the swinging pendulums, I really need to get the kyne peace shout.. 20 Thu’ums is my last trophy and cannot get it because of this =(

    • Mike

      Take the journal back to the innkeeper and he will give you the claw to open the door you need opened.

  • Ben

    I’ve rolled with the punches on these bugs thus far. I’m about 160 hours in. But in the last 20 hours or so, Skyrim has turned from my fav game of all time to one of the most frustrating. I’m up to 2 main quests and 6 misc quests that cannot be completed because of bugs. The biggest one was almost the last straw for me… and I don’t think they fix it in 1.4. I completed Raldbthar very early in playing. When I finally got the dwemer component 100 hours later, the dungeon had been reset and now it is impossible to lower the bridge at the end to get to the end to get to the device, which is part of a major mission. That was pretty much it for me, I’m switching to FFXIII-2 when it comes out in a few days. (Unless someone knows a Raldbthar fix!)

    • Refugee_1

      Hey Ben I know it breaks immersion but use the ‘tlc’ console sommand to turn off collision so you can levitate across to get the item.

    • Jeff

      You could try to launch yourself with the whirlwind shout. It worked for me in a different dungeon where a drawbridge reset itself and I couldn’t get to the other side. Given I tried about forty times, but I finally nailed the position of my character and went shooting all the way through the raised drawbridge to the other side. If you can get it to work, it is a big relief. That is, of course, if your problem is one of distance, if not try all your shouts and see if you can find something in there to help.. 

  • Reality

    I’m glad I haven’t really played much of this game.  I shelved it until most of the bugs and quest breakers are fixed.  This should teach everyone not to get so hyped up over a game release. 

  • Piggy1kenobi

    How bout they stop fixing minor issues on other systems and fix the major ones on the PS3!

  • Jeff

    I started to experience the lag at about 9mb (PS3) and when my file got to 15mb it basically gave up on itself and just wouldn’t load. I had been using the bookshelves also, so I guess that is why. Hopefully after this update (Whenever us console users get it!!!) the save  files won’t be able to get so big from saving data from every single little object you come across.. Fingers, Toes and nuts are crossed, don’t let me down Bethesda!

  • Irony

    Running a game released a few months ago on a system that was released 6 years before it… fail.

    TES have always been, and always will be a PC game first and foremost. Despite trying to make the game run on older/poorly designed consoles so that more people can play, there are bound to be issues with a system that runs a single core 3.6Ghz processor and only 256MBs of VRAM. 

    You’re hating on Bethesda for having bugs, which all developers have, yet you aren’t blaming Sony for a console that is obviously past it’s prime. Meanwhile Sony says the PS3 will have a 10 year lifecycle, so 4 more years on a system that can’t even play current gen games.

    The only thing that shocks me is that the Xbox is better than the PS3 in performance, despite having a much worse hardware configuration. Though this is probably a deal Microsoft made with Bethesda to get the DLC out sooner to their platform and even have the PC wait a month to get it. Or it may be because Microsoft is the initial platform for the PC release and the Xbox  was a downgraded settings version away while almost no extra programming needed.

    Well, back to my 2 and 4k HD texture running beast of a PC. Wow, Skyrim looks great at 60FPS with all settings maxxed and those texture replaced.

    • Sam

      Pop your head, not everyone can afford a high end computer you stuck up rat.

      • Irony

        High end computer? I saw Best Buy had an Asus Laptop for 1200 that would run Skyrim with at least 40-50 fps… and that’s a laptop. You could get a desktop with an HDMI and power it off your existing TV for what, 6-800 for a tower? Finance it for 18 months and pay off 50 bucks a month for 12-16 months and not pay a single extra dollar. That’s not that bad when you think about it, especially since you get to use the comp only having paid 50 bucks the day you bought it. If you can’t squeeze 50 bucks out a month for a year, I think gaming is too expensive of a hobby for you since most games are 60 bucks and there are multiple releases each month. Just saying,

    • Jeff

      I tried to reply yesterday, but i guess the content wasn’t deemed suitable.
      Anyhow, I agree, what a kn0b you are irony. You can have your PC that runs like a dream and looks fantastic and is so great that angels brought it down to you from heaven. I guess i’ll just have to settle for relaxing on the couch with a big ol’ 60 inch led tv and surround sound system, and not having the tip of my nose burnt from pressing my face up against a 4inch monitor. Monitor. That’s what it is called. Wow, games on PC must bring you to a new level of immersion, especially when you realise at age 30 that your back is permanently hunched and you have arthritis in your right index finger. So realistic.. Look, a bear, I must now draw my sword and click this evil beast to death. click. click. click.

      You have fun with that, dunce.

      • Rob

        Jeff, I’m laughing so hard at your idiocy as I sit in my $300 leather gaming chair (very comfortable) and looking at my 42″ TV.  My 7.1 surround sound system is pretty nice too, might I add all this is being powered by my PC? gasp!  We can have surround sound, comfortable seats, and big TV’s too! I know your feeble brain might have some trouble comprehending that…I have my wireless Xbox 360 controller hooked up to my PC as well, so for games that work better on a controller I can use that, and for all the rest I have a keyboard and mouse.  See, we PC users have the best of both worlds, I’m not going to say the xbox or the ps3 is BAD, because for some users they are easier and more compatible.  But I don’t like to sacrifice a lack of enjoyment and immersion for simplicity.  I have my monitor set up perfectly, my surround sound tuned to project the best sound to my exact position (there are two speakers in my chair, inches away from my ears to give a completely real and close up experience), and I have a PC with more power than a PS3 could dream of.  Oh and if my chair does happen to get a little uncomfortable, my bed is just a few feet behind it.  Pretty dang comfy.  Yeah I worked hard to afford this all, and some people can’t, that’s fine.  But don’t tell me your set up is even close to as nice as mine :)

        • Jaysonjota

          Rob u just missed something…. and you are virgin LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

          • Sterling

            like you !! lol

        • Irony

          I noticed you have a similar system to mine. 42″ tv, surround sound (only mine is 5.1 :/ ) and the windows live controller (for other games, I prefer mouse/keyboard for Skyrim). I think you put it perfectly when you said we “have the best of both worlds.” 

          What I don’t understand is why more people don’t get a PC over a PS3. You can get a base tower with a good i7 for 7-800 bucks give or take, then plug it into your HD TV so you don’t have to buy a monitor. Use a wireless mouse and keyboard and run that as a entertainment system. I watch hulu or netflix for TV (without paying the extra fee to get hulu on an xbox or PS3), I play the latest games at unbelievable fps, and download mods and such that give old games new life. Hell, I played Morrowind the other day, and with Vurts packs and some others, the game looks better than MW3. That’s only a 9 year old game… but then again that’s Bethesda for you. And the best part of the Desktop is it’s longevity. Not only do they last 5 years or so, but if it starts slowing down, you can just get a RAM upgrade and spend a hundred or so to get a great Video Card and you’re back to primo graphics on the newest games and it lasts another 5 years! With such a simple upgrade, it makes me wonder why the consoles haven’t added an expansion bay to at least add another core or graphics card update to increase speeds and such, years down the road. Then you could justify a console having more than a 3 year lifecycle.

          P.S. what chair are you using? I’m just using my couch haha

      • Anonymous

        If you have enough money to invest in a 60″ LED TV for a better picture, you should look into PC Gaming. After all, you can just use an Xbox controller, and Skyrim is way better on PC than 360.

      • Jaysonjota

        LOOOOOOLLLL BEST REPLY EVER. LOOMAOOOOOO

        • Kei

          You’re posting on a website called “Gaming Entertainment”, on a post about Skyrim’s patch. Come on, son. Come on.

      • Irony

        Only 40 inches? HDMI output in my comp to a 42″ screen with surround sound and a wireless mouse and keyboard. OR I could use the wireless Windows Live controller that happens to be exactly the same as the Xbox controller. 4 inch monitor? you must be living in a nightmare with that PS3 if you think that’s how PC gaming is..

        • Irony

          meant: “4* inches” in the first sentence. In response to what Jeff had posted about “monitors”

    • Mikeybraidey

      The PS3 has 8 physical cores, just saying

      • Irony

        Wikipedia:

        “The PS3 uses the Cell microprocessor, which is made up of one 3.2 GHz PowerPC-based “Power Processing Element” (PPE) and six accessible Synergistic Processing Elements (SPEs). A seventh runs in a special mode and is dedicated to aspects of the OS and security, and an eighth is a spare to improve production yields. PlayStation 3′s Cell CPU achieves a maximum of 230.4 GFLOPS in single precision floating point operations and 21 GFLOPS double precision. The PS3 has 256MB of Rambus XDR DRAM, clocked at CPU die speed.”

        Impressive as it was when it came out, the unit has only one Processing element, 6 that act as a CPU cache (although not exactly correct, they’re faster and work in conjunction with the main processor),1 more is dedicated for OS operation and security, while the last one (technically 9th unit, not CPU/core) is a spare core to help out when needed.

        No one is saying the PS3 was not a fantastic system, just as the original Xbox and N64 were before it, but it’s prime life was in the past, and now the consoles (both 360 and PS3) are quickly aging out to games that require more and more RAM and processing speed.

    • Livingthedream

      This dude has never got laid…..now I’m going back to my 34c 24 34 hot ass wife and waiting for the PS3 patch.  If it never comes I’ll be fine.  Unfortunately for rosey palm he will beat this game eventually.  Have a nice life. 

  • jason.weng.xs12

    From what I’ve heard, it’s not PS3′s fault it had the lag but it was because Bethesda can’t make a game for PS3 is the reason. Don’ quote me on this, it’s from what I’ve read or heard.

  • LeastResistance

    I think that the point is being heavily and fundamentally missed here. No-one who’s not in the grip of severe fanboy fever would doubt that the 6 year old PS3 is far inferior to an up to date, gaming biased multi-core PC. It’s a no brainer.

    But in the this case, critsism of the PS3 is irrelevant and a product of sheer PC fanboy-ism. The fact is, Skyrim runs absolutely fine on the PS3 at first, demonstrating that the PS3 hardware is fully capable of doing the job asked of it, but that flaws in the design of the PS3 version pervent it working later on as the number of items changed by the player in the world grows. But this is nothing to do with processing speed, it’s a memory issue.

    Bethesda must have known that this would happen on the PS3 version, that’s the point here, and that’s the reason for the hate on the forums. Their play testers would have built up 100 + hour games inside of two weeks; they 100% certainly new it was broken, and they released it anyway. Perhaps they assumed a fix would be easy. Now, I’ve been playing the PS3 version, I have a13MB save and can’t really play more until the patch comes out (assuming it works as we’re being told). I love the game, it’s incredible, the production and design process boggles belief - I’ll have no problems at all with Bethesda… IF they fix it. They MUST fix it. Because if they don’t, then they’ve knowingly and coldly ripped me off – that’ll be when I have a problem with them, and start writing to consumer organisations, and I won’t blame anyone who shares my opinion.

    How could Sony possibly be blamed for this? How is it the fault of elderly console architecture? Bethesda have designed a game for a machine, the game doesn’t work properly, the issues of why, or if it should have been converted for the PS3 are not the point. Bethesda produced it, they released it, it doesn’t work, they must have known it doesn’t. They didn’t have to release it, they didn’t have to work on it in the first place. Now they are obliged to fix it, having taken the money of millions of PS3 owners, and if they don’t fix it I think they should rightfully expect strong legal action. What you think of the PS3 is totally beside the point.

    I’d like to reiterate that I love the game and if they DO fix it I’ll be first in the queue for the next game, even if it’s on the PS3!

    • Mir

      Same here! Love this game!!! 

  • sarcastic

    Irony, here’s a cookie.  Im glad you are worth as much as your PC

  • Parker_ttt

    It is pretty funny how ps3 users complain. why wont my 2011 game work on my 2005 console. I just got a new computer and am playing skyrim with almost no glitches(except the occasional flying mammoths) Be smart and get a computer!!!! 

  • runes tales on amazon kindle

    Any news what the dlc is yet.

  • parker_ttt is gay

    or i could be Parker_ttt and be super fanboy and have my mommy and daddy buy me a new PC too

  • Weebork

    Though I have Skyrim on the 360 I have noticed that since the 1.4 patch the “Call Dragon” shout has caused two issues:

    1) Odaving either does not show up at all (in an outside setting), shows up only to circle indefinitely way, way out in the distance, or shows up to make one pass before going back to watching TV, or whatever he does when you don’t call him.

    2) When Odaving does show up and decides to stay to fight, the game’s frame rate drops significantly, where it becomes very choppy and glitchy. The problem occurred multiple times, even after a cold restart of the console.

    On top of that error I have also noticed that a lot more dead creatures clip through the world shortly after I kill them. This especially happens if the dead NPC falls from a height. This can be quite frustrating after spending some time killing a character to get a quest item they carry only to have to reload the game and fight them again because they clipped through the floor.

    Anyone else having the same problems (on Xbox anyway)?