Fixsave v1.75

Fixsave is a utility designed to fix problems with people's save games. It repairs a multitude of problems that Daggerfall creates in your game. The most common of these are games that are unable to load due to invalid quest objects, invalid quest links, duplicate map ids, and invalid quest map ids. It will also repair various quests to allow you to continue in the game.

NOTE: Fixsave has a few changes done to it since the 1.07.213 patch. Please review the documentation below to see how these changes affect the operation of the program.

How to Use Fixsave

When you run fixsave, you will be provided a list of the 6 save games that you currently have. When you pick one, it will analyize various parts inside your save game and notify you when it finds something wrong while it repairs it. Sometimes, a quest will be found to be damaged and it will have to be removed. However, most of the time, your game will be repaired with no noticable changes.

NOTE: Because fixsave backs up your game before it attempts to repair it, do NOT try to run the repair utility more than once on a particular game between gaming sesions. Running fixsave more than once will NOT improve its chances of being fixed. Plus, your original save game will be overwritten with the newly modified one. This could prevent you from being able to repair it later with a more enchanced version of fixsave designed to deal with your specific problem.

What Fixsave Fixes

In order to know when to use fixsave, a detailed list of what the program can repair is described below.

• All versions - If you are unable to find the dungeon that contains the Dust of Restful Death on the Isle of Balefira, fixsave will activate it for you. If fixsave reports "NOT ACTIVE", it does not mean your game is damaged. It just means that the quest is not running therefore, there is nothing to activate.
• Pre 1.02.177 - Quests that failed to find a particular person it needed would would improperly create a person to use instead. This caused an invalid quest link to occurr. Fixsave will remove those quests that have this problem.
• Pre 1.03.179 - Quest monsters were not having their items properly tagged to the quest. When the quest terminated, any items remaining in the world (Like the ones picked up by the user) would become invalid quest objects. Thus the invalid quest object error when trying to load a game suffering from this problem. Fixsave will remove the quest information.
• Pre 1.04.191 - 6 main story quests were found to illegally share 3 locations. This would cause problems when a second quest was started that tried to use a location already involved in another quest. An invalid quest map id error would be generated. If you have a game saved before you do the following:
  • Give the painting to Queen Akorithi (!)
  • Give the Dust of Restful Death to Medora
  • Give the Unicorn Horn to Medora
  • Give the Jewelry to Mynisera.
  • Get sent to Shedungent by Queen Abuk-i.
  Running fixsave on these games will prevent the invalid quest map ID crash while saving from happening.
  NOTE: You will need patch v1.04.191 or later before giving the painting in order to be 100% sure that this invalid map id problem will not happen.
• Pre 1.04.191 - Sometimes the faction information for a main story character is deleted. This would cause nothing to happen when you clicked on the NPC. Fixsave will restore this information so that the person will talk to you again.
• Pre 1.04.191 - Objects were found to sometimes not be properly released from a quest. The item was no longer marked for a quest, but still linked into the system. This would cause a wide range of problems. Fixsave will remove the remaining quest information from the objects.
• Pre 1.05.195 - For people having 113 crashes after using items in their inventory, (which includes buying and selling of items) fixsave will repair those games.
• Pre 1.05.195 - Some objects are found to be misreported as quests. This will cause both Daggerfall 1.04.191 and fixsave to crash when loading a save game. Daggerfall has been modified to ignore this problem and fixsave will return the object back to its original state.
• Pre 1.05.195 - More problems with the invalid quest map id have been fixed. Stronger logic code has been added to deal with this problem.
• Pre 1.05.195 - A change done to the "Soul of a Lich" quest, caused the game to crash in a special instance when you killed the lich. Fixsave will allow you to kill the lich and continue the game.
• Pre 1.05.195 - Fixsave will allow people who turned down the painting quest in the game to take the quest after all. This will allow them to finish the game.
• Pre 1.05.195 - A serious bug was located in the game that would cause your items to disspear from the inventory screen. This would also cause the inventory screen to crash when you tried to view a group of items. (Like the ones on your cart.). 1.05.195 will no longer create this problem, but you must run fixsave to repair the game if it suffers from this. Because this is a complicated repair, it may not succeed at reconstructing your map file properly.
• Pre 1.05.195 - A quest was found to be creating an invalid sprite index for an NPC. So if you've been crashing with an error 520 while trying to enter a house for a quest, and fixsave says its fixed an invalid sprite index, then you will be able to continue in your quest.
• Pre 1.05.195 - The problems with people having wild variations in their level advancement has been located. If fixsave sees that you've lost your starting skill sum, it will repair it with a precalculated average sum. Since it is not the sum you stared with, the level you return to may not be the one you had before the problem started.
• Pre 1.05.195 - For people who are getting map id errors after leaving the starter dungeon, fixsave will repair your game so you can continue your journey.
• Pre 1.06.200 - Another fix in the v1.05.195 version of the "Soul of a Lich" quest activates the mummy to be sent after you.
• Pre 1.06.200 - Some people have reported losing their scarab in the Soul of a Lich quest. If you've lost it, and have another scarab in your possesion, this will attach the quest to that item instead so you can complete the quest.
• Pre 1.07.213 - Another side effect of the serious bug found prior to the 1.05.195 patch has been fixed. If you've lost all your quests or the game crashes when you try to load it up, then this will fix your problem.
• Pre 1.07.213 - An internal map memory leak was found in the game. While the 1.07 patch will fix this problem, fixsave will remove the stale objects from your game. If the game is running much slower than it originally did, or if you've had to increase OBJMEMSIZE to a value larger than 2000 and you don't have many items, then this should fix your problem.
• Pre 1.07.213 - Due to a variety of other bugs in the game, some data objects associated with your character are being deleted. Fixsave now replaces them when they are missing. This will help you load your game or prevent it from crashing when you're in your inventory screen.
• Pre 1.07.213 - If your character has negative spell points, fixsave will set it to 0. This does not work if your max spell points has been set to a negative number.
• Pre 1.07.213 - Another method of activating the zombie in the Soul of a Lich quest has been implemented.
• Pre 1.07.213 - A fix for the "Guard the Mage in a Trace" quest was put in when it didn't terminate after the time limit expired.
• Post 1.07.213 - A repair for the problem of a person not accepting the quest item has been added. This circumvents a problem with the quest code in the game.
• Post 1.07.213 - An internal repair function inside Daggerfall sometimes causes a saved game to exit with the error "Invalid Character Data". If you suffer from this problem, fixsave will repair your game so that it is once again loadable.
• Post 1.07.213 - Fixsave now replaces the lycanthrope spell if you've lost the spell.

What Fixsave Does Not Fix

If both Daggerfall and fixsave crash while trying to load a game, then your game is corrupted beyond repair. Usually this happens with the invalid quest map id error prior to the 1.04.191 patch. Or any other time the game crashes while saving. Another sign that your game has been lost is when you get the error "You fall to the ground completely exhausted…" etc. after loading a game. This game is missing the file savetree.dat and no longer contains any map information associated with your character. This cannot be repaired as all of your character information is missing.

If fixsave does start its repair process and then has problems, then there is something I can do to help you. If your game is giving you problems and you used the repairs objects item maker advantage before the 1.03.179 patch update, then fixsave will not be able to help you either. There is too much damage to be repaired. Fixsave is not able to deal with the case of a main story quest being corrupted either as it cannot remove that from your game.