Animal Respawn in the Wilderness

[BlackPete]

I have consistently noticed that sabre cats and foxes in Skyrim do not respawn in a given location when killed. I looked in the CK and discovered that all varieties of sabre cats and both varieties of foxes do not have the respawn box checked (see below). I also noticed the same on wisp mothers, which I also have observed do not respawn as they should. Other creatures such as bears, wolves, deer, etc. seem to respawn fine in the game (from my testing) and they have the respawn box checked in the CK.

 

Skyrim.esm

EncSabreCat > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in USKP 2.0.0)

EncSabreCatSnow > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in USKP 2.0.0)

EncFox > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in USKP 2.0.0)

EncFoxArctic > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in USKP 2.0.0)

WispRace > EncWispMother > Respawn flag is not checked -- (apparently intentional)

 

Dawnguard.esm -- Under Actors:

DLC1EncSabreCatVale > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in UDGP 2.0.0)

DLC1DarkFallEncSabreCat > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in UDGP 2.0.0)

 

Dragonborn.esm -- Under Actors:

DLC2EncBoar > Respawn flag is not checked -- (corrected in UDBP 2.0.2)

[Arthmoor]

Just as well that this is here actually because this may need more detailed investigation and the bug tracker is a lousy place to do that.

 

I'd have to investigate it more deeply but I really don't see any reason off the top of my head why Sabre Cats should be immune to respawning when pretty much everything else will. If Patch 1.3 broke this, then something should show up in Update.esm to confirm that but I don't recall seeing an edit to Sabre Cats in there. We'd all have to be blind as bats not to have seen something like that.

 

Wisp Mothers though, I recall having run across something just recently in a script or something where the devs made it crystal clear those are not intended to respawn. Who knows why that would be, but it's there.

[BlackPete]

Thanks for looking into this, it is something that has bothered me for a long time. Feel free to remove the tracdown entry that I made for this topic, if you feel it's necessary. I apologize for not always knowing where I should post bug reports.

 

Just to clarify, would checking this box in the CK allow Sabre Cats to respawn properly in the game? I'm am absolutely sure that they do not respawn properly* in the game from hours of testing, which is why I think they may be the (or a) culprit in the respawning issue people have reported in the game. By the way, another member on the Skyrim forums, named "Otheral" was the one that told me that the official 1.3 patch broke the respawns.

 

* Here's an example to help clarify my point:

In a given location where a creature spawns, like across the bridge to the east of Honningbrew Meadery, the spawn can vary in that it might be a skeever, wolf, or sabre cat. If you kill the skeever or wolf, for example, the location respawns just fine after 10 days of not visiting that cell. However, if the spawn is a sabre cat and you kill it, I've found that this particular spot will never spawn a sabre cat or any other creature ever again (even after 10 days of not visiting the cell). When this begins to happen (i.e. you kill sabre cats) in numerous areas around the (Skyrim) world, it becomes more noticeable when an area respawns (after 10 days), because more and more of these spawn points begin to break and there are fewer and fewer animals/creatures in the world as a result.

 

I hope my description of this issue is clear enough to understand. If not, please feel free to let me know as I tend to go into a lot of detail, maybe too much, which may become confusing.

[Arthmoor]

No, actually he's probably right. I checked, EncSabreCat and EncSabreCatSnow lack the respawn flag. They're the only two defined records in use for vanilla Skyrim. So once you kill them all, they're gone.

 

So I went looking for a possible reason in lore for this, and found nothing. No mention in the one book in the game that talks about them saying that they're going extinct or anything. So it's just a plain old bug.

 

In thinking on it more, I came to the realization that I hadn't been seeing sabre cats lately. I may well have killed them all already

 

The ones from Danwguard are probably supposed to respawn as well unless there's some major reason they shouldn't.

 

And no, this problem has nothing to do with the respawn stuff Beth broke in 1.3 because the sabre cats have never been edited. They've been this way since launch day and I'm surprised it actually took this long to realize what happened.

[BlackPete]

I had a feeling this was a bug. Hopefully correcting this could lead to a fix for many creature spawn points not working properly anymore. Do you have any idea whether or not, enabling this "respawn" flag would allow sabre cats to show up again in an existing game where we have already killed them off? By that I mean, would fixing this be retroactive? And also, I did notice that the Vale Sabre Cats added by Dawnguard are missing the respawn flag as well, I would assume you saw that in my original post, from your comment above.

[NightStar]

I have to agree on that I don't know any reason why Sabre Cats or the Vale Sabre Cats shouldn't respawn. After reading this, I just realized that I haven't seen a sabrecat since spring in my current game If the respawns work as described by blackpete8427, that would also explain why my wilderness seems a bit empty.

 

I'm sorry to hear that the developers intended Wisp Mothers not to respawn as they are a fearsome enemy and there aren't that many of them in the game.

[maboleth]

Maybe I'm wrong but I could swear I meet those sabre cats in exactly the same spots, on fields that surround Whiterun.

[VaultDuke]

And no, this problem has nothing to do with the respawn stuff Beth broke in 1.3 because the sabre cats have never been edited. They've been this way since launch day and I'm surprised it actually took this long to realize what happened.

 

I've often enciuntered reports of this on the Bethforums in various places. They were often dubious and lacked proper research, unlike this excellent report here.

Also the nature itself is rather odd to point down. respawnpoints breaking after sabre cat kill is hard to recognize, because usually, as you describe, the world just slowly empties without you knowing why.

 

reports of sabrecats breaking the spawn points have been brought up a number of times though, and it may as well be the Beth Patch that broke it. The did some engine change in how the respawns are handeled, and maybe in the process the changes/broke the "no respawn" setting. maybe before it would only ever spawn a sabrecat once, and then proceed with wolf and skeever spawns, but now it simply terminates the whole spawn point.

does that sound reasonable?

while this interpretation would suggest the sabre cats should in fact go extinct, for the sake of the spawn point integrity, i would still support the change.

 

re Wispmothers: they only spawn at their own spawnpoints, right? nothing else would break here if they were left untouched?

though i would like to see that reference about them not respawning, because much like NightStar, i think they are awesome enemies.

[Arthmoor]

Unless it was an engine patch that clobbered the spawn list at those places, the sabre cats have been borked since  11/11/11. It has to be an oversight, there's no way this could have been intentional.

 

I'll have to find that wisp mother reference now because I know I saw it somewhere, but wasn't looking for that and didn't make any sort of special note about it.

[BlackPete]

To clarify something about this bug, I am not talking about random encounters (sometimes referred to as "world interactions" or "world encounters"). There is a random encounter where you can encounter a bandit fighting against two sabre cats, another where a mammoth is fighting two sabre cats, and then, of course, a well known one where the "Old Orc" has slain two sabre cats looking for a good death. These encounters are treated separately in the game, in that they are not affected by this bug. The places that are fixed creature spawn points (which always spawn some sort of creature) -- like directly east across the bridge from Honningbrew Meadery (as I described in my original post) are the ones that suffer from this bug. Some spawn points (notably in Falkreath hold) never run into this bug (from my testing), because they will always spawn a bear, troll, wolf, or frostbite spider (and never a sabre cat).

 

Additionally, for testing purposes for the sabre cat respawn problem, I simply edited [sabreCatRace > EncSabreCat] and [sabreCatSnowRace > EncSabreCatSnow], so that the respawn box was checked in the CK, and saved an ESP (mod) into my Skyrim data folder and noticed that this does indeed allow sabre cats to respawn properly in the world (after 10 days away from a cell) like it should *. What I haven't been able to determine yet is whether or not this will fix those already broken spawn points where we have already made the sabre cats extinct (i.e. whether this fix would be retroactive* on existing games).

 

Also, in the Dawnguard.esm, I'd assume that at least [DLC1SabreCatGlowRace > DLC1EncSabreCatVale, DLC1DarkFallEncSabreCat, and maybe DLC1EncSabreCatMasterPackage] would need to have the respawn flag checked. I'm not sure whether DLCEncSabreCatMasterPackage is ever used in the DG expansion, but I'm sure that someone like Arthmoor would know for sure.

 

* As I am not an advanced programmer (or CK user) by any means, I'm not sure whether this is all that needs to be adjusted in the CK and exported into an ESP file to fix this issue (without any unseen negative side effects).

 

* Actually, I think I may have answered my own question on this one, it seems that spawn points that were broken do work again on an existing game when I created an ESP in the CK and checked the respawn flags for sabre cats. So if this is added in the USKP 2.0, it should be a retroactive fix.

[BlackPete]

Update: This bug (with the sabre cats) was confirmed and marked as fixed in Tracdown, and Arthmoor said it will be added to the USKP 2.0, so hopefully the creature respawn issue (that was not completely fixed with the official 1.6 patch) will finally be solved once 2.0 comes out of beta, if my theory about sabre cats breaking spawn point was correct.

 

Edit: Additionally, the respawn problem at Greenspring Hollow should also be fixed, which had the potential of breaking the Companions radiant quest "Animal Extermination."

[VaultDuke]

awesome boss move. registered 4 days ago and already got a fix snuck in during a beta period. :-D

[Arthmoor]

Yes, well, such a big issue - potentially fixed by 2 checkboxes. Can't see any harm in running that through now vs waiting however long it may be before the next cycle of updates is up.

[Sclerocephalus]

While checking all WE Triggers for missing properties (to fix a different bug), I discovered an interesting detail:

 

By setting an optional property on the script that runs on those triggers, they can be configured to trigger only one specific encounter type. This option has been used on six triggers only.  Two of them have been configured to start event number 307 (they are the only ones out of the six to start this specific event), and both of them are disabled by the Hearthfires DLC (IDs of the triggers: 0008F645 and 00099C60). Thus, if there's a specific event which you are missing for some time now ...

[tyrel68]

While checking all WE Triggers for missing properties (to fix a different bug), I discovered an interesting detail:

 

By setting an optional property on the script that runs on those triggers, they can be configured to trigger only one specific encounter type. This option has been used on six triggers only.  Two of them have been configured to start event number 307 (they are the only ones out of the six to start this specific event), and both of them are disabled by the Hearthfires DLC (IDs of the triggers: 0008F645 and 00099C60). Thus, if there's a specific event which you are missing for some time now ...

for some time now what...WHAT???????? /shakes Sclerocephalus

 

but ya this really seems like somethingh that needs lovin

[BlackPete]

Just as a note for this thread: EncFox and EncFoxArctic under FoxRace were also missing respawn flags. Arthmoor stated that he has added these to USKP 2.0 as well with the fix for sabre cats.

[tyrel68]

man this could make the world very lonely later in the game

[Arthmoor]

Yes, and it's been widely reported that quite a few spawners do in fact stop, making for that lonely world.

[Sclerocephalus]

Let's just hope that they were not disabled on purpose. Who knows what re-enabling them will do when a simple sandbox package turns average NPCs into hardcore stalkers ...

[KNakamura]

Soon, Skyrim shall drown in sabercats and foxes *nod*

[Arthmoor]

Sabre cats only ever spawn in the wilderness, and no NPCs in vanilla sandbox near them as far as I'm aware. It won't be an issue since all it's doing is reviving dormant spawn points.

 

I hadn't even given it much thought until I realized I haven't seen a sabre cat in my normal game for quite some time. Foxes, not so much, they're everywhere and I rarely kill them, but even they were thinning out.

[NightStar]

I can't say anything about existing games, but I started a new game for beta testing, and the difference is mind-boggling with the amount of wildlife and random encounters. I hadn't realized how empty my game had become until I saw the stark contrast against a fresly minted character. I'm actually really looking forward returning to my old character after the beta to see if the the world will become more alive again.

[Sclerocephalus]

More objects for touring carriages to flatten ...

[Arthmoor]

lol, I bet that's not even been considered since everyone just thinks it's normal for the wildlife to thin out so much

[BlackPete]

I can't say anything about existing games, but I started a new game for beta testing, and the difference is mind-boggling with the amount of wildlife and random encounters. I hadn't realized how empty my game had become until I saw the stark contrast against a fresly minted character. I'm actually really looking forward returning to my old character after the beta to see if the the world will become more alive again.

I think the fix will work on an existing game (or at least it did for me). The spawn points that are broken in an existing game will need a minimum of 10 in-game days to re-populate without you having visited the cell in which they are located.