Killed an NPC by accident: who is dead in your save, and how to bring them back

What happens when a character dies

• Essential characters cannot be killed. They fall to the ground and get up again. The editor lists them as Knocked down, or as Unknown when it cannot read how their state was stored.
• Everyone else can die, and the death stays in your save. A quest that needs that character may fail or never finish.
• Some deaths are part of the story. Lokir, the prisoner killed in the opening scene, is already dead in a brand new save.

The safest way to fix this is to load an older save from before the death. If that is not possible, or you do not remember when the character was killed, there is the resurrect console command, which brings the character back but can leave a quest in a state its scripts did not expect. Quests that can only run once can't be started again by any means, players report, so a character who died in one may stay a problem.

See who is dead

The editor reads your save in your browser. The file is not uploaded anywhere, and nothing is changed unless you save an edit.

1. Close Skyrim and make a copy of your save file (.ess). The editor keeps no backups, and edits are at your own risk.
2. Open the save in the editor. The welcome page shows where the saves are for the Special Edition, the GOG and Microsoft Store versions and the Legendary Edition.
3. Open the NPCs tab. The Characters card lists the named characters your save has a record of, with filters for Alive, Dead, Knocked down and Unknown. It opens on Dead.
4. Use the search box to find the character you killed.

Unknown means the editor cannot read that character's state yet. Their life state changed in the save, because they died or were knocked down like the essential characters are, but the editor does not understand how it was stored. They can still be reset.

Characters the game has no record of at all are not in the list. They live as at the start of the game.

Reset a character

Reset removes what the save keeps about a character. The game then has them as at its start: alive, at home and with their own belongings, as if you had never met them. What quests did with them goes too: a spouse, a follower, a quest-giver who appears later. Reset someone a quest needs dead, and that quest may not finish.

1. In the Characters list, press Reset next to the character. The row changes to Reset to start. Undo takes it back.
2. Check the other rows. The button on the card that resets all dead characters at once resets everyone shown as dead, including people whose death belongs to the story, so use it only when you are sure.
3. Download the edited save from the editor and put it in place of the original while Skyrim is closed. Start the game from that save.

A reset follower comes back as the game made them, not as you left them: the weapons and armor you gave them are gone. Confirmed in the game: a character who had died was reset in the editor and was alive again in the loaded game, with no problems seen.

We suggest resetting only a character you killed by accident, and not people you meant to kill, as undoing choices you made can spoil the game for you.

If the quest still does not move

Resetting a character does not run any quest script. If the quest they belong to is stuck, the Quests tab shows its stages and objectives, and the editor can mark the quest completed, failed or active. Its notes say that it changes what the journal records, not what the quest's scripts do, so rewards and follow-up quests come only when the game runs a stage.