A critical bug has been found in Shivering Isles, the recently released expansion pack to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. According to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages Wiki, there is a bug that affects both PC and 360 players when they have the expansion installed, regardless if they have accessed the actual content or not. For the PC, the bug has a greater chance of affecting players who’ve played the game for a significant amount of time (150+ hours) and if you have a very fast PC. The bug is based around how the game handles object IDs. Every time a new object or NPC appears in the world, the game will generate an ID number. Specifically, the ID range is from FF 000001 to FF FFFFFF. As you play the game, the more and more object IDs will accumulate. Eventually, if you play for a significant amount of time or play at a high FPS — IDs are generated faster at higher FPS ratings — items will begin to disappear.
Regarding the bug itself, a Bethesda employee — under the name NothingCatchy — issued a statement, saying, "Regarding the issue in which Form ID’s are being used at a high rate in the Shivering Isles content; we are aware of the issue and we are currently looking into a solution. We appreciate your patience, especially from those of you affected by this issue, as we carefully work out a fix that will correct this problem without adding any new issues."
In the meantime, thanks to the community’s support, an unofficial fix has been released, which you can find here. As for 360 owners, the bug has been confirmed on that platform, too, and while it’s assumed Bethesda will produce a patch to fix it, the time frame is unknown.
GamerNode Protip: Keep an extra copy of your saved game to ward off potentially falling into Oblivion.
