Shivering Isles fixed

By Robert Purchese Published 1 May, 2007

PC and X360 patches available.

Bethesda Softworks has finally released a patch for Oblivion expansion Shivering Isles to fix the "FormID" bug that was ruining some people's games.

Those of you playing the game on PC can find the update on The Elder Scrolls website, whilst you thumb-twiddlers enjoying it on Xbox 360 can download the fix from Live.

You should also be aware that expansions bought using direct2drive aren't yet compatible with the patch, and those of you who installed beta Shivering Isles patches will need to reinstall the entire game.

The bug, which had already been patched to some extent on the PC, rendered the expansion unplayable on both formats after an extended period of time (between 50 and 120 hours on the PC, depending on your frame-rate, and between 75 and 150 hours on Xbox 360 depending on your play habits).

It has to do with the way the game identifies objects in the world. The simple version is that the game eventually runs out of identification numbers (formIDs) for things, confusing the way it manages system memory, corrupting data and failing to register objects when you save your progress.

Head over to the official forums or the Oblivion wiki for more bug-related information.

Alternatively you can quest your way to our Shivering Isles review to see what we made of the game, bug or no bug.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • skillian #1 5 years ago

    The main thing this taught me was never buy a game from direct2drive - it always requires a different patch to the one the rest of the world uses, and it always comes later.

    I don't know why that would be - maybe it's a DRM thing?

  • kangarootoo #2 5 years ago

    That makes sense. If there is a different DRM solution in place it probably means your downloaded exe is not the same as the disc version, hence it needs a unique patch.

    Eventually though, if DLC starts to become the majority delivery system, you might see patches earlier than for the disc equivalents?

  • menage #3 5 years ago

    Great. Now I can finally play it again without paranoia.

  • lennon #4 5 years ago

    Noticed quite a lot of slowdown since installing the patch. Not noticed it before now. Hopefully its just the dungeon I am currently in.

  • kangarootoo #5 5 years ago

    I just bought a bundle more points, and with only 2 achievements left in the main game and the Knights of the 9 pack finished with, I might just be shopping for this.

    I have found with Oblivion that it is the sort of game you can come back to ages after you gave it a rest. I probably stopped playing for a few months, but then that was just enough time for me to get back into it again.

    One question for those who have played this. All this talk of "other realms" makes me think there will be loads of dark, lava filled areas. The Oblivion realms in the main game sucked ass. I prefer brightly lit skies and rolling hills.

    So, what kind of scenery makes up the bulk of this add on? I'd be gutted it was 50% dungeons and 50% moody daemon realms.

  • kangarootoo #6 5 years ago

    Yay!

    Ta

  • kangarootoo #7 5 years ago

    On that note, do people remember the sand storms in Morrowind. At the time that was an awesome effect. And the NPCs raising an arm to shield their eyes were just the icing on the cake.

  • Razorus #8 5 years ago

    So what about a patch to clean up the glitch that stops me from completing The Coming Storm side-quest?

  • Sorb #9 5 years ago

    Argh I just found the Thieves guild bug that prevents me from getting more than 950/1000 points acknowledged in the Wiki EG linked to ("stuck in cutscene mode";). After having played over 200 hours I donīt feel like playing it all over again to get those points :(