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I've been playing Daggerfall for a while now. But I only just recently noticed a weird glitch in the game.

I had been going in and out of a graveyard repeatedly to fight zombies with the goal of building up skills and levels rapidly. That, and I wanted to search the treasure piles for maps to new dungeons and graveyards. Picking up some gold and treasure was just a bonus. I don't know if it's related, but I was carrying around so much gold on my character that (due to the weight) she had very little carrying capacity left. (Carrying around 37600 gp.)

Anyway, I frequently returned to the dungeon exit and clicked on it to unload stuff to the wagon without leaving. At one point I was in a hurry and accidentally clicked on my pile of gold pieces in the Clothes/Miscellaneous section - and I was a bit surprised to see the gold pieces were moved to the wagon. This may or may not have solved my weight issue, but I was concerned about the consequences of doing this and so I immediately clicked the pile of gold again to remove it from the wagon and return it to my own inventory.

I thought very little of this incident at the time. I simply exited the dungeon and saved. Then I practiced my skills some more and saved in another slot. Only later did I discover something amiss: The pile of gold pieces (the icon representing them) had disappeared from my inventory! I checked the wagon several times, but it was not to be found there, either! I tried to drop some gold and was a little relieved to see that I still had all my gold. However, as I said, the icon that used to represent the gold pieces was gone.

I find this annoying (and alarming) because I can no longer click the gold pieces icon to see how may gold pieces I have. And I'm not 100% certain what I did to cause this. It could be, for all I know, that I accidentally dropped that gold pieces icon on the ground inside the dungeon - just before I exited! (That would mean that it's gone for good...) Or, it could just be another randomly occuring glitch, like so many others in Daggerfall.

Anyway, I had spent a good many hours leveling up at this place. And I was alarmed to find that the only other save slots still with the gold icon were really old saves!

I thought about using a game save editor (such as "DaggEd") to modify an old save to make up for all the skills and level increases I had made. However, I would still be lacking all the new map locations I had discovered, as well as all that treasure. (Some of it was even daedric.) I could live without the treasure, but I really want those new map locations.

Anyway, after making some backups, I poked around with the save files using DaggEd to see what I could do. Unfortunately, even the latest version of DaggED is extremely buggy. (Moreso than even Daggerfall.) About 75% of the saved files I tried DaggEd could not finish loading the inventory. (It locks up just before finishing, at 99.9%... At which point I have to use CTRL-ALT-DEL to get the Windows Task Manager to terminate the program.) And while I tend to have mountains of items in most saves, it also locked up on some saves from newly started games. Even when it loads a save, sometimes some of the item info is garbled or incorrect. (Like "-255" in enchantment potential for all items.) What's more, there are only two other savegame editors that I could find and neither of them could export or import items like DaggEd can.

As an experiment, and to get a good save from which to export the "gold pieces" from the inventory, I started a new game. I saved after killing a few monsters in Privateer's Hold and getting some gold. However, even with a new game, there was NO GOLD PIECES ICON TO BE FOUND! I fought my way out of Privateer's Hold and fast travelled to Daggerfall to deposit the gold at the Bank of Daggerfall. Then I went to the pawn shop to sell a few things. Technically, my character had gold in pocket - but still no gold pieces icon!

What's going on here?!

I suspected then that, perhaps, it had something to do with the particular installation of Daggerfall I was using. (Including a "No CD-ROM required" patch.) So, I did a fresh install elsewhere and started another new game - without any patch or mod whatsoever. Again I bagged some monsters and grabbed some gold and stuff in Privateer's Hold. Again I fast travelled to a major city (this time other than Daggerfall) to deposit in the bank. And again sold some stuff at a pawnshop. But at no time did I ever see that gold pieces icon anywhere in-game in the inventory!

WEIRD!

And what's more: After doing several Internet searches, I find no mention of this "disappearing gold" glitch anywhere (official or unofficial). Perhaps I just didn't use the right search terms? Surely, I can't be the first person to notice this problem... am I?

Fooling around with the latest version of the DaggEd save-game editor, I noticed something else: There is still an item in the inventory savegame file specified as "gold pieces" and type "gold"! Even when they don't show up in-game, they might still be in the savegame files. Actually, there are usually more than one of these 'items.' (Usually there are 2 of these items, but sometimes 5 or more.) I have seen a savefile where there is not any "gold pieces" items, but that was a freshly started new game before the character found any gold pieces.

In my experiments with DaggEd I had exported all the different "gold pieces" items from every savegame that I could get to load successfully. Through trial and error, I was eventually able to import one of these into my latest save file where I first noticed the problem. (Note: When you "import" an item it seems to over-write an existing item.) It seemed to work and when I loaded the save I once again saw the gold pieces icon! Yeah!

But then I noticed a problem. The icon said I only had 81 gold pieces... OK, I guess I can live without this gold. (I can more than make up for that with selling just 1 piece of daedric armor or a few weapons.) But then I saw that my character sheet said I still had 72600 gold pieces. Thinking this discrepency might somehow resolve itself, I dropped some gold. But the icon still said I had 81. I picked up some more gold, but stil it said I had 81... I returned to Daggerfall and deposited ALL of it in the bank. Then I sold some stuff in the pawnshop. And while I technically had more gold, the icon was still stuck at 81!

I've tried some more importing of gold pieces items, but in every other case it has failed. DaggEd repeatedly spits out some error message or other. Usually it says: '" is not a valid integer value.' (Yes, it says '"' as in the quotation mark.) If it's possible at all, I think the key to a successful transplant might depend on knowing the proper "Parent ID" location to place it.

When you try to import an item in DaggEd a window pops up entitled "Select parent ID." And it says "Select a parent for this item, choose either a name or a number." It also explains "Each item is linked to a parent, there are a few contant parents. These are your default inventory. An item can also be linked to a pile of junk. In that case only a number is available, like 65#####."

Among the many, many variables for each item in the inventory are the following obscure references: Object ID, ID, Index 1, Index 2, Parent ID, Token 2, and Offset. Most of the stats are obvious, such as Material, Object type, Color, Icon, Value, Enchant points, etc., but not all of them.

I can see now that savegame editing in Daggerfall is complicated, quite unreliable, and not an exact science. And it seems the game itself must encode large quantities of gold pieces by representing it with not one, but several "gold pieces" items in the inventory. For example, in the game where I had 37200 gold (not counting what was in Letters of Credit), this seems to have been represented with one "gold pieces" item with a 'value' of 1124 and another such item with a 'value' listed as 1139. I'm thinking the game code somehow combines these two to come up with 37200. (Perhaps with an unsigned long integer? Represented with 4 bytes in total?)

Anyway, every time I tried using DaggEd to modify my character it messed up my disadvantages, which I have to use another savegame editor to fix. (It keeps saddling my characters with Forbidden shield: buckler/round/kite/tower and removes all of the Forbidden Materials I had.) I think it also tends to delete a character or two from the end of the character's background story - meaning it gets shorter each time. Unfortunately, DaggEd is the only savegame editor that allows you to edit your background.

Keep in mind: I never wanted to change my gold in the first place! I was only editing in the hopes of returning that darned gold pieces icon that disappeared suddenly. But if it's going to be this much trouble just to fix it, I may as well stick with a really old save. That, or start over from scratch!

PS: Can anyone tell me how to transplant the map from one saved game to another? As I said, I could live with using an older savegame. But I would really miss all those new dungeon locations my character discovered since them.

I'm fairly sure that gold doesn't appear in the inventory. The only time when it has for me is bugged quest gold. Which should be fixed by clicking on it.

I didn't take the time to read through your entire post, but I hope this is the correct answer.