I completely agree about the corrupt savegame problem. Morrowind's nastiest "feature" without a doubt! Having to restart from scratch because of a corrupt savegame perfectly illustrates the danger of using ONE savegame only. It's a
SINGLE point of failure, folks! There are four possible ways to recover from a corrupt savegame situation:-
1. On PC, possibly Xbox too: When Morrowind detects corrupt data in memory, it sometimes has enough control to create a "Restore" savegame before crashing. Reloading from this (if successful) puts you back at the point immediately before the action you took that "triggered" the crash. Retrying the same action will usually not re-trigger the crash because data in memory is no longer corrupted after the game has been reloaded. Note: I'm not sure whether Xbox creates a Restore savegame, if it does, then by all means reload from it. If not, step 2 below is your best bet.
2. On PC or Xbox: Reload from a previous savegame, losing SOME progress.
3. On PC only: Last ditch resort to avoid step 4 below. In Wrye Mash, right-click the corrupt savegame file and select Repair All from the context menu. If the corruption is minor, this MAY repair the savegame sufficiently for it to load successfully again. Only snag is that the repair MAY delete savegame database records, causing game objects to disappear. If a vital object (quest item or essential NPC) is missing, you can use the console command PlaceAtPC to respawn it.
4. On PC or Xbox: Restart a new game from scratch, losing ALL progress!
Here's a method of savegame management that will ensure you NEVER get beyond step 2 above:-
Cycle Saving: Repeatedly cycle through at least two savegames, i.e. Save1, Save2, then Save1 again, etc. Three or more savegames is even better. Personally, I use three because corruption is very rare but I like to hedge my bets anyway.
Recovery: If the latest savegame in the cycle is corrupt, simply reload from the previous one in the cycle.
Continuation: Next time you save, don't overwrite the next savegame in the cycle. Instead, DELETE and recreate it anew. If the corruption was due to a bad sector on the hard drive, this ensures that next time any attempt is made to RE-use that sector, it will be marked as bad and NOT used again.
On PC, possibly Xbox too: Quicksave frequently between cycle saves. On exiting Morrowind, quicksave AND immediately do the next cycle save. This gives you TWO identical savegames. If the quicksave is corrupt, reload from the latest cycle savegame and you've lost ZERO progress! Note: I'm not sure whether Xbox supports quicksaves. If not, the solution is...
On Xbox: If quicksave ISN'T supported, you can still get TWO identical savegames by simply cycle saving TWICE before exiting Morrowind. Then, if the latest cycle savegame is corrupt, reload from the previous one and you've lost ZERO progress. You may want to extend the cycle length to compensate. E.g. If cycling through two savegames, create a third. For three, create a fourth.
Hope this helps.
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