The Elder Scrolls Online – How to Fix Invisible Enemies Bug

• Title: The Elder Scrolls Online
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Do you get invisible enemies that don’t seem to load? You can’t hit them but they can hit you? And loading screens where there shouldn’t be any?

Bug Description

Since the last update, I have been getting the bug that basically made the game unplayable.

1. Invisible enemies. Sometimes only some mobs in the group sometimes all of them. I would be unable to target them, while they could hit me just fine. My follower could fight them and AOEs could kill them. Eventually. So it was not a connection issue.
2. I would load into the world and all would be fine but soon enemies I would encounter would begin to bug out.
3. Resource nodes would also become invisible and unusable.
4. I would get loading screens out of the blue.
5. There was some sound delay/stuttering.
6. Lowering all the graphics to potato-mode somehow helped but the bug still happened a lot and the game looked like KOTOR on a bad day.

How to Fix

1. Go to your windows bar, and right-click the volume icon. Select sound.
2. Go to the Playback tab.
3. Right-click Speakers and choose Properties
4. Go to the Advanced tab.
5. On a drop-down list select 16 bit, 96000 Hz (Studio Quality).
6. If the 2 options below the drop-down list are checked, uncheck them.
7. Done.

It worked for me so it might just work for you. It’s easy so it is worth the try.

How the Fix Works

As you can imagine after a month of trial and error, reinstalling twice, creating a new save folder, and doing all the other things online guides told me to do I was pretty desperate. I was slowly thinking about giving up when I remembered a bug I had years ago in some DMC game (if I remember correctly). Basically, the game was making sounds that were not what the Windows had in settings and the game was converting every sound it had programmed in real-time so they would be what Windows wanted.

It was causing a delay, making the game sound terrible and a fix was a few clicks in the windows settings. I had nothing to lose so I went into settings and changed them blindly since I didn’t know what sound files for ESO looked like. But I had been lucky. The difference was unreal. I went from the buggy mess with square graphics to playing smoothly with graphics set to high. So yup, it works.

Some Fixes That You Can Try

1. In Device Manager disable all the sound drivers except for the one you are going to use.
2. Reinstall because it can be missing/broken files.
3. Delete ESO folder in Documents, and let the game make a new one. Sometimes something in the settings can get broken.
4. Finish/abandon all old quests as it apparently can cause some enemies to become invisible. Just make sure you are able to remember who gave you the quests in the first place so you can restart them.
5. Disable Steam in-game overlay.
6. Disable Windows 10 gaming overlay.

I did all the steps but it was after I changed the sound settings that the bug finally disappeared.