So I've been playing Skyrim on the Xbox 360 and loving it (it's my first Elder Scrolls game). A while back I noticed that my maximum health was 119 points higher than it should have been. After removing all armor, blessings, and guardian stones, my health was still 119 points higher than normal.
After some research I found that this was a glitch. Apparently, if you use potions that increase your maximum HP by x amount for y seconds, your health will be permanently increased if you take enough damage such that your health is critically low at the instant that the buff wears off. I remembered fighting a bunch of mages a while back, running out of regular potions, and popping a Sleeping Tree Sap, while the mages continued to obliterate me. When the sap wore off, my health was critical, and my health glitched.
I was able to reproduce this in a controlled environment. All you need are some of those potions and a way to drain your health (I like to use the Alteration school spell Equilibrium). I can drink one of those fortify health potions, then drain my health until I am in critical condition, then keep it critical; when the potion wears off, my health is permanently increased.
I figured this information may be helpful to people who wanted to increase health without wasting a level-up on it. I've tried this with Magicka and Stamina but it didn't work.
Problem is, I really want to figure out how to reverse it. Ever since my health was artificially increased by 100 points, the game is way too easy, even on Master difficulty. After researching online, the only solutions I've found was to use console commands but, again, I'm playing on Xbox 360 so I can't manually just go in and reset my health and I thought repeating the glitch might reverse it but it didn't.
Is there any way I can get my health to revert back to normal? I really don't want to start a new character as I have 120 hours invested in this save file. I didn't notice that my game glitched until hours after it happened so I can't go back to a previous save file.
Any help would be appreciated.
Best Answer
Since you can't use the developer console it might very well be unsolvable, but they might correct it in a new patch.
Few ideas I've got:
Try to become a vampire, when you are standing in sunlight, all your attributes get permanently (until it is night or you are indoors) decreased, the magnitude depends on which stage you are.
There is an effect, accessible only by using alchemy, that permanently lowers health. It is not the damage one, but Ravage should do it (if I understand it correctly). Although I don't really know whether the potions you create with both positive and negative effects are classified as potions or poisons.
Both of these effects are reversible and might very well not be of any good, but you can at least try.
I am sorry I couldn't provide anything better.