Skyrim Patch 1.3 Fixes Dragons, Buffs, Books

Greg Tito

PR for Dungeons & Dragons
Sep 29, 2005
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Skyrim Patch 1.3 Fixes Dragons, Buffs, Books


The Steam update is available now, with an Xbox 360 and PS3 patch incoming soon.

The strength of Skyrim is in its open-ended gameplay, not the sometimes surreal bugs that crop up. We fantasy gamers are willing to tolerate magic spells tossing fireballs of death and huge reptilian beasts flying through the northern sky, but if those dragons fly backwards, that's just weird. Anew patch fixing those issues would be beamed up on Steam on a future date [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114453-Skyrim-Patch-Makes-Dragons-Fly-Backwards]. Well, that day has come as firing up Skyrim on Steam will start the auto-updater downloading patch 1.3. On their official forums, Bethesda said the team submitted the same patch to Microsoft and Sony for review and those platforms should have an update soon.

Most of the nagging issues seems to have been dealt with with this patch, including the two biggest problems created by 1.2 - the backwards flying dragons and resistance buffs not working as advertised. It also looks like the problem people have had with books disappearing from shelves might have been fixed. Good, because I've been busy collecting every book I find with which to decorate my house in Whiterun - as soon as I save up the 5000 gold - and I didn't want lose them all to some stupid code. Now, a Khajiit thief sneaking in to nab my books, that's totally cool.

Bethesda has made the game run even better on systems with Core 2 Duo CPUs, which most modern gaming computers would have by now, so that seems like a good thing even if I'd love to have that be done before launch. Perhaps more importantly, Bethesda included a note saying they are working on utilizing the full 4 gigs of virtual memory address space available, essentially negating the need for mods like 4 GigSkyrim [http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1013]. "We're also planning on rolling out support for 4-Gigabyte Tuning (Large Address Aware) next week for our PC users," said Bethesda. In laymen's terms, using more memory will make the game run faster and decrease loadtimes on the PC. So we got that going for us.

As for the PS3 users with big save files, it doesn't look like patch 1.3 will help fix the slowdown issues you've been having. Maybe next week?

Here are the full notes for Skyrim patch 1.3:

General stability improvements
Optimize performance for Core 2 Duo CPUs (PC)
Fixed Radiant Story incorrectly filling certain roles
Fixed magic resistances not calculating properly
Fixed issue with placing books on bookshelves inside player purchased homes
Fixed dragon animation issues with saving and loading
Fixed Y-look input to scale correctly with framerate

Source: Bethesda [http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1308295-update-13-now-on-steam/]


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Rhayn

Free of All Weakness
Jul 8, 2008
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I never experienced the backwards-flying dragon myself, but I just now experienced one killing itself. It landed (presumably to have a bite of my Breton self), but it apparently it got scared of my Skull of Corruption and just died on the spot. Wether this is a cause of the new patch, I couldn't say though. More investigation will be required.

That said, I love the tweaking Bethesda's doing with Skyrim. On launch, I did roughly around 25 fps on max settings, now I'm up to 40. Then again, I am using the 4gig mod...
 

scorptatious

The Resident Team ICO Fanboy
May 14, 2009
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I kind of hope this patch doesn't create even more problems for Skyrim. Like making dragons spawn inside inns or something. :p
 

Kungfu_Teddybear

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I'm going to wait a day or two before I get this patch. I wouldn't be surprised if I downloaded it then a day later I saw a news post on here "Skyrim patch 1.3 makes things even worse!"
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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lol, Radiant Story, like that is a thing. I still havent found any proof that it is actually there. I went to a dungeon, got an object, talked later to a guy that gave me the quest to get that object on that dungeon and gave him the object right away. In Oblivion the same would happen.
 

Kukakkau

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Feb 9, 2008
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I have one specific dragon that does this (and most others just refuse to land at all) and today it got "stuck" in the air. Okay it's in arrow range let's kill it and be done with the bug - I get it in the "grounded" health range - it roars then flies a bit, gets stuck again. Once again in arrow range so I keep shooting it till it ran out of health

Aaaaand nothing happened - zero health dragon stuck in the air till I get close then it flew off to freedom... /ragequit
 

socialmenace42

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May 8, 2010
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scorptatious said:
I kind of hope this patch doesn't create even more problems for Skyrim. Like making dragons spawn inside inns or something. :p
:O

That would kina be awesome

OT: Good news, since my glitches in skyrim only started after I downloaded 1.2 so this had better fix my backwards dragons...

(Oh yeah, Captcha: what's atesula

I don't know, please do tell me)
 

anthony87

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Aug 13, 2009
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Rhayn said:
I never experienced the backwards-flying dragon myself, but I just now experienced one killing itself. It landed (presumably to have a bite of my Breton self), but it apparently it got scared of my Skull of Corruption and just died on the spot. Wether this is a cause of the new patch, I couldn't say though. More investigation will be required.

That said, I love the tweaking Bethesda's doing with Skyrim. On launch, I did roughly around 25 fps on max settings, now I'm up to 40. Then again, I am using the 4gig mod...
Same thing happened to me yesterday when I hit a Dragon with a blast from the Wabbajack. Maybe they're just not fond of Daedric Staves.
 

weirdee

Swamp Weather Balloon Gas
Apr 11, 2011
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josemlopes said:
lol, Radiant Story, like that is a thing. I still havent found any proof that it is actually there. I went to a dungeon, got an object, talked later to a guy that gave me the quest to get that object on that dungeon and gave him the object right away. In Oblivion the same would happen.
It shows up later on when you burn through the standard missions. They're kind of boring, but it gives you a way of earning cash without hunting down merchants with coin or persuasion to buy your particular type of good.

Of course, you could take those speech perks, but every time you gain a level, everything gets stronger even if your levels aren't really related to making yourself specifically stronger...

Anybody have two unscripted dragons kill each other yet? It's one of the better things to witness.
 

Sniper Team 4

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Apr 28, 2010
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Yay. Fix the thieves guild quest and then I'm perfectly happy. Because then, I can get my last three trophies. Still, it will be nice to be able to fight dragons again.
 

GeorgW

ALL GLORY TO ME!
Aug 27, 2010
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Finally, the books! I know it's a minor thing, but it's been bugging me soo much!
I'll still wait a few days with the patch, given the last one.

Still too bad about no fix for PS3, I'm playing on 360 and it lagged like crazy during a magic fight I had, every time a spell hit the game stopped for 2 seconds. With 2 mages fighting it was hell. It should be top priority, but I guess these are much easier to fix.
 

Sight Unseen

The North Remembers
Nov 18, 2009
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josemlopes said:
lol, Radiant Story, like that is a thing. I still havent found any proof that it is actually there. I went to a dungeon, got an object, talked later to a guy that gave me the quest to get that object on that dungeon and gave him the object right away. In Oblivion the same would happen.
I've personally seen it in action. There's a quest in whiterun from a former Alik'r guy who'd settled down with a family, but lost his sword and asked me to go retrieve it for him. I've received the quest twice and both were in different dungeons. Also, I have gotten the same quest from different people a couple times as well.

It's a system that's designed to be a subtle and not very noticeable feature, so it's natural that you won't notice it much, especially if you only play one character. It's when you go back and redo certain quests, or you find the same quest but from a different source that you notice the effect of the radiant system.
 

newwiseman

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Aug 27, 2010
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anthony87 said:
Rhayn said:
I never experienced the backwards-flying dragon myself, but I just now experienced one killing itself. It landed (presumably to have a bite of my Breton self), but it apparently it got scared of my Skull of Corruption and just died on the spot. Wether this is a cause of the new patch, I couldn't say though. More investigation will be required.

That said, I love the tweaking Bethesda's doing with Skyrim. On launch, I did roughly around 25 fps on max settings, now I'm up to 40. Then again, I am using the 4gig mod...
Same thing happened to me yesterday when I hit a Dragon with a blast from the Wabbajack. Maybe they're just not fond of Daedric Staves.
That is the Dragons will only die on the ground problem, so if it's flying and doesn't want to land it's immortal.

I remember seeing a dragon crash to the ground, it might have been Alduin (I can't remember), but it's part of a story.

It's minor but waiting for them to land before they can die is starting to annoy the hell out of me.