Skyrim PC Saves Carry Over to Special Edition, Unless You Were Using Mods

You may have been able to get Skyrim: Special Edition for free, but the game exists as a separate title on Steam from the original version. While it is possible to carry over your save games, there's a big caveat.

The process for moving saves from vanilla Skyrim to the Special Edition is an easy one: You simply move them from one folder (My Documents/My Games/Skyrim/Saves) to another (/My Games/Skyrim Special Edition/Saves). Simply boot up Special Edition and you'll be able to pick up from wherever you may have left off. Note that you'll first need to open Special Edition in order for the new save folder to be created.

Here's where the caveat comes in: You can't have used mods. If you did, you'll be presented with a message saying the save "relies on content that is no longer present." You can attempt to continue anyway, but you shouldn't expect it to work. After receiving the notification pictured above, the game crashed for me when loading any of my old, mod-using saves. Rock, Paper, Shotgun tried first removing mods from vanilla Skyrim and then making a new save, but Special Edition wouldn't accept that, either.

It's entirely possible some saves will work or that this will change in the future, perhaps as those same mods are updated and re-released for Special Edition. Even if that does happen, there's no guarantee old saves will ever work.

Mods are a central component of playing the game for many, as they can be used to expand the game in wonderful ways. Perhaps you wanted a better map or to call a floating Dwemer airship your home. Or maybe you just wanted NPCs to stop shouting at you from so far away. Whatever the case, Skyrim mods proved to be tremendously popular, as download numbers on Steam's Skyrim Workshop and sites like Nexus Mods demonstrate.

The Xbox One and PS4 versions of Skyrim: Special Edition also now support mods, though there are some restrictions, particularly on PS4. You can see all of the ones available so far here.

With the game out now on all platforms, we've rounded up some helpful beginner's tips for those playing for the first time as well as those who may have taken a few-year break from it.