Your going through a dungeon sprawling with vampires, you and your faithful companion Lydia take a moment to loot the corpse of your recent fallen foe. You and Lydia have been through a lot together since the day you became Thane or Whiterun, many a battle have you fought together in. Suddenly a arrow shoots past yourself and lands in Lydia's head, instantly killing her. Her body falls to the ground, the vampire takes a shot at you and you have a choice. Avenge her death and kill the vampire, or take yourself out of the game world, re-load the save and bring Lydia back to life.

How have you been playing the game? Have you been reloading past saves a whole lot because things didn't turn out the way you planned, or have you been going on a no reloading rule?

i live with my mistakes

on my khajiit thief character i only reload when i get caught stealing because being transported to the guard house and having to take the time and steal everything back is annoying as shit

Reload.

Nobody dies on my watch. Always be reloading. Same goes for shootin' games.

I used to reload every time my companion died but in the end I decided they were more in the way than actually helping me so I just let her fell. And the next one after that. 
 
Now I'm a lone traveler.  

Except for one companion death via spell experimentation gone wrong, I live with it.

Reloading when Lydia was my only companion. Now I don't give a fuck!

@Vexxan said:

Now I'm a lone wanderer.

FTFY

OT: I always reload, I can't bear to see Lydia die.

At first I thought you were talking about real life. Then I got sad that reloading doesn't actually work in reality.

It's simply so janky that I'd reload when Lydia died. I got so tired of that I left her in my house. I constantly kept killing her with spells.

I am a poor (actually I am loaded) lonesome cowboy, far far away from home

No need to reload when you're by yourself.

if my horse dies then i'll reload.

I've been reloading if a follower (Lydia) ever dies, that's pretty much the only time I'll reload though.

I only reload in the cases of failed quests i.e. killing the npc's accidentally when I use my lightning call shout to murder a dragon or if I get stuck in a dungeon and have no idea how to get out. That being said, there are a few perks that I have bought that I wish I could take back... power shield bash... ohh man what was I thinking...?

Yes, a few times because of Lydia. However, as far as being stupid goes, I had to use console commands to get a Daedra Heart back because I didn't realize how important they would be to me at the time. I could not live with that over my head.

As is my custom in every game with quicksaves, I save-scum like a motherfucker.

Though I still don't use companions.

If I make a mistake the world has to live with it, I am just too powerful to care about it.

I reload if I kill my follower, I have Aela around max encumbrance usually after some adventuring, so I would be overencumbered if I left her dead and looted my stuff back.
 
Considering she is rocking fully upgraded Daedric armor with +35% archer enchants, no way I'm leaving that shit behind.

I play games to escape the pain of the auto-saving world that is reality

I always re-loaded in Oblivion, but with Skyrim I've been living clean, no realoads.

Reload, since I've killed Faendal about 8 or so times. It's funny when he gets nailed by a Thunderbolt or Chain Lightning, but annoying since I like him. He's been following me since I first got to Riverwood, and I'm going to make sure he lives to the end.

I wish I could, but the f5 key is right there taunting me and so much of this game is just random dumb luck that I always feel like the game is cheating me so I have to. Pick pocketing for example, I always hit f5 before I do it because even though I'm maxed out it will just randomly say nope you can't steal that. Then everyone goes crazy on you. Or when I'm maxed out in Stealth I will sneak up on people and just for no logical reason suddenly they will all see me and I'm dead.

I hope one of these days that I have the will power to just play it as is and let all the chips fall where they do, but so much of that game is just dying or getting bad things to happen to you for no logical reason that I have gotten into the habit of hitting F5 practically every time I move five feet or interact with an object. You never know when something will pop up out of no where and one shot ya or cause you to have a huge bounty and just fuck you over.

Three horses and a dog so far. RIP

I'm playing a video game, so I hit F9

Steam says I played the game for 81 hours. My save says 73.

So yeah, I reaload a lot.

I have not really made any mistakes that I was worried I would not like. I never used companions so I never had to worry about them dying. I had a horse but horses in that game suck ass so when it died I could care less, and I have not failed one quest so far.

I've reloaded so many times. I like to cheat and save before I pickpocket people in case it goes wrong. I've also killed Lydia accidentally about 15 times now so I reload then too.

I don't make mistakes.

I reloaded a couple of times when she'd die by stupid AI behavior. When Lydia actually died in a tough bossfight, leading to me actually killing the boss; I thought it was a worthy death.

Now I simply roll with another follower.

If it is my fault, I live with the consequences. If, for instance, Lydia dies because she refuses to move off the fire spewing floor tile in a dungeon, I reload a save.

I don't feel I've made any *mistakes* per se, but in the spirit of the thread, I certainly live with the consequences of my actions, or lack thereof, as well as whatever crap hits the fan in terms of 'general adventuring'. The game is totally worth it, in that sense. Even if its cost me time and gold in certain fruitless endeavours. (I set all this aside when it comes to glitches, however. If the game glitches out, then a re-load is fair game, so far as I am concerned. That said, I've been pretty lucky in that respect, so have not yet felt like such a step was justifiable)

Depends really. I didn't reload so far when any companions died simply because I am better off without them at this point, but I have reloaded due to quest results like 

When i screw up is ually have to reload, cause it usually involves my death.

Only time I am reloading is if I die.

I don't make mistakes.

I'm constantly doing stupid stuff just to see what happens. Always be reloading.

Lydia went down to some random bandit thanks to her suicidal need to get in everyone's face. I said she can't go out like that, and reloaded. Sometimes it's not convenient to reload like last night when I accidentally sold my bow and had to buy it back for 5 times what I just got for it. The closest save was 15 minutes earlier. I said fuck it and took the hit.

All the time.

Most of my reloads are to check out alternate paths based on choices, cuz I'm a sucker for seeing all the possibilities. That, and the whole stealing/pickpocketing/etc acts that have a chance to get caught. I guess I get lucky with the follower, I've only killed one once with a poorly timed/aimed sword swing. Then again I try to be strategic and move around the other side if my follower is tanking, and if they are going ranged, then its not an issue anyway. Never had them die from an NPC blast.

but yea, I have no problem reloading if I feel it will detriment my game experience going forward, but if its a minor shit, I just usually keep moving along. I had one crazy random thing happen once and saved/reloaded to see what the other outcome would be, and the guy never even appeared again. I actually thought that was kind of cool how unscripted that event was.

The quicksave/quickload hotkeys have been my undoing.

I reload if I mess up a quest. When my horse or companion dies I just get a new one. They die so much on my adventures. One of them just disappeared with like...10,000 gold worth of stuff on them. No clue where they are.

Have a 13,000 gold bounty on me in a town because of a quest. Didn't realize I HAD to go to prison. I killed all the guards so now there is a friendly Frost Dragon that flies around and kills people. Harasses me too. He never lands so killing him is kind of annoying. I just go into a shop or something until he kills enough people and goes away. Shut up! I'm a HERO I tell you!

I reload whenever I can help it.

I just live with it, because I save so often that I always forget which save would fix which outcome.

I despise the quick-save mechanic in PC games...but I realize it's hard to get away from. As such, I started playing Skyrim without saving regularly... but because it's a Bethesda game my first Crash to Desktop happened to me only 20 minutes in... I've wound up quick saving very often.

Which has the unfortunate side-effect of quick-loading being very easy to do, if something bad happens. Though, whenever I end up in a situation where I want to quick load, I always consider if it really isn't something I should just accept and move on.

But... yeah, F9 is very easy to press.

I don't make mistakes.