A peculiar glitch in Skyrim has caused a player's Speech skill to drop to zero, making it impossible for them to pass even the most fundamental conversation checks. While unusual flaws are frequently associated with Bethesda sandboxes, the scarcity of harmful problems in Skyrim lends beauty to the game rather than irritating it. Today's Skyrim is stable and fluid compared to its launch, thanks to years of official and unofficial patching.

Nevertheless, there are still quite a few exploitable areas in Skyrim. One well-known example lets players add strong enchantments to their gear indefinitely by briefly increasing their Alchemy via Enchanting and then temporarily enhancing their Enchanting skill via Enchanting. Since Skyrim's stats are only designed to handle tiny values, it is incredibly simple to cause an integer overflow, which causes the impacted stat to abruptly turn negative.

NoAdministration1070's character had an integer overflow, which is why their Speech skill is now mysteriously -999975, even though the source of the error is still unknown. In Skyrim, speech is primarily utilised for two purposes: passing conversation checks and haggling with vendors for lower costs. While it won't prevent the Dragonborn from finishing their quest, having a poor Speech can lead to some entertaining scenarios.

NoAdministration1070 cannot finish the Dawnguard storyline with a Speech skill this low since finishing the Prophet quest necessitates either passing a Persuade check or buying Kibell's silence in order to find the Moth Priest's whereabouts. In Skyrim, bribe values are also influenced by speech. In this particular scenario, Kibell is requesting the Dragonborn for a meagre 20 million gold, even if passing a persuade check is out of the question.

Even while you can use the console commands in Skyrim to solve this problem or even go back to a previous save, there's a certain allure to carrying on with such an oddly cursed experience. With The Elder Scrolls 6 currently under development, it is unclear how Speech will change in the follow-up and whether it will take cues from its Starfield equivalent. Skyrim received criticism for eschewing its role-playing game elements in favour of a more simplified gameplay experience when compared to its predecessors. Although Skyrim's continued popularity attests to the popularity of this choice, Bethesda may decide to reconsider their strategy for The Elder Scrolls 6 in light of more recent blockbusters like Baldur's Gate 3.