A very serious bug has been found with Shivering Isles that will render the game unplayable in many ways after about 50 to 120 hours of play (better FPS means bug hits earlier). The bug will occur regardless of whether you access SI content or not.
The bug is thoroughly confirmed on the PC. It is not known whether the bug affects Xbox users as well -- it is reasonable to assume that it would, but might not hit until around 150 hours of play assuming 30 FPS on Xbox.
While the situation appeared quite bad initially, a patch mod is now available for the PC and a tool is available to repair savegames that are affected by the bug or that are likely hit by it in the near future. Moreover, there is an official response from Bethesda:
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.
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=674324
Let's do a recap:
-This bug will afflict you from the moment you install SI.
-The SI files are registred into Oblivion.esm, and they are what cause this glitch. So, if you want it to dissapear, the only way for now is to keep a savegame from before SI install, then reinstall vanilla oblivion without SI.
About the bug himself: there is a good article on it on
www.uesp.net. Long story short(not so short actually):
-after SI install, the game will generate a huge amount of object ID per second. Approximatively one or two per frame(so if obli run with 30 fps, the game will generate nearly 60 object ID/second). Also, this newly created ID refer to non-existant object, so it doesn't truly affect the size of the savegames.
-normally, one ID is generated each time a new object or NPC appear in the game world. The game generate ID from FF 000001 to FF FFFFFF. Under vanilla oblivion, the second number need far more than maybe one thousand hours of play to be reach. You will probably not live long enough to see it(or rather, you will already play the elders scrolls 5 for a long time.)
-now for the problem itself: when the counter hit FF FFFFFF, the game reset it to 00 000000. But the trick is that number is not a valid object ID. Thus, the object will simply dissapear from the game world. As I say before, this problem can appear in vanilla oblivion, theorically. But with SI installed, the problem will appear under a reasonnable amount of time. If you begin a playthrough from the very beggining(with SI installed), you have approximatively 150 hours, less if you already play vanilla oblivion for a long time before SI, less again if you own a high end PC(as the fps will rise, the ID will rise exponentially faster).
FIX
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=673664
should bring the fighting system on par if not better than the Dark Messiah M&M.
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