The Suppurating Ulcer of iDeathDropWeaponChance: A new Poultice?

[lmstearn]

Here's another angle on the iDeathDropWeaponChance saga from a modding POV.

(Can't remember as Skyrim is not used ATM: Is it the case that after looting a skeleton's weapons, the weapons still appear as visible on the remains? If so, this surely needs attention.)

Suppose one fires a Lightning Storm spell at a lowly skeleton.

The armor/weapon can fly with such a force that it can embed into a rock wall so can now be a semi-permanent part of the dungeon interior (and unfortunately save_game bloat )

Or it can be completely vaporised (thus reducing potential save_game bloat)

It then might be able to be "mined out" with a pick axe or such.

Or he is hit by your behemoth with maxed out 2 handed perks. There's no reason to suppose to find his gear more than a 20 ft radius from the hit. With increasingly large distances from the salvage point, it would make sense to increase iDeathDropWeaponChance

Or it can be "damaged beyond repair" making it unsalvagable and worthless.

Does any other mod do something like iDeathDropDamageArmorChance so the bigger the hit, the more chance the weapon/armor is damaged, thus again making the salvage operation much less lucrative.

Another idea is to make all undead weapons "bound" weapons. Upon their demise, the weapons/(armor?) simply vaporize.

Or another idea is rust. A cheap armor set or weapon in a dark & dingy and damp dungeon simply degrade to unusable after a set amount of time. 6 months Skyrim time perhaps?

Or any weapons & armor left in dungeons can be cleaned out after marauding raids. Odd little popup messages throughout the progression of the game like "It has been reported that a band of greedy goblins ransacked 37 inactive skeletons and draugr from Reachcliff Cave with an estimated loot value of $$$..." would add to immersion.

[VaultDuke]

i think you do not understand the issue. graphically (aside from the odd glitch now and then) the setting does not change anything. enemies still drop their weapons, and they fly/havok around separatelly.

the only change is in when you aim at the dropped weapon or shield. in vanilla, you simply picked up the weapon or shield. with the change, you instead open the enemies inventory and can now chose what to pick (including the weapon and shields).

the weapons and shields are now mechanically attached to the corpse and activating them opens the corpses inventory. they are not however physically attached to the corpse, they still move independently of it (compare to a shattering skeleton, each part still drops on ts own, but each part is still linked to the same inventory).

 

it's really more complicated to explain, than what it actually changes ingame.

the problem with separatelly dropped weapons (vanilla setting) is that they are not recognized by the game clean-up system. AT ALL. they just stay were they are, forever (or until you manually put them into a container which cleans up). all your ideas of when and how and why they could or should be cleaned up fail because of this: the engine simply can't do it. it only cleans up corpses, and anything within their inventory/container. the workarounds that would exist (attaching a skript to every dropped randomly generated item) would cause more issues than it's worth.

 

i think what you interpret this to be is: with the chance set to none the weapon will not be dropped visibly. which is false. it will drop but not as a separate weapon, but as a part of the corpse (as i said, similar to how a skeleton hands or skull is still part of the skeleton corpse)

[lmstearn]

Allright, so if my mod collects the ref IDs of all this bric-brac and stores them in some ordered dataset called KLEENUP for later use, can these then be all set to NULL?

[VaultDuke]

well, it might be possible, that an external save file cleaner can remove instances of dropped loot. i am not sure there is one around yet, that does this reliably and infallably

[Arthmoor]

Allright, so if my mod collects the ref IDs of all this bric-brac and stores them in some ordered dataset called KLEENUP for later use, can these then be all set to NULL?

How is your mod going to know the IDs? The game doesn't tell anything what's going on so far as I know. You'd be guessing at best. I doubt the overhead of walking the cell looking for every ref and somehow trying to determine if it starts with FF (I'm not even sure that can be done) would be worth it in the end. Then how do you further determine that the FF ref wasn't dropped there by the player?

 

Oblivion knew the difference and could act on it without intervention because the engine kept track of all this. Skyrim, for whatever daft reason, does not. So it is assuming everything FF based needs to stay on the ground. Forever.

 

well, it might be possible, that an external save file cleaner can remove instances of dropped loot. i am not sure there is one around yet, that does this reliably and infallably

Hadoram's save cleaner can delete form IDs from the save, but you have to know what they are and that's going to be far more tedious than simply looting the garbage and dropping it in a barrel instead.

[lmstearn]

Doesn't look good then.

If dungeon object IDs for NPCs are generated on the fly as one proceeds through the interior then the only way to capture these (without player interaction) is to do a diff on all those starting with FF. And a diff on player inventory before  & after as well.

But then what if player makes a potion or en enchanted item etc. in the dungeon?

Makes such a task at the least tedious, and at the worst, preposterous.

 

Unless one was to do a complete dungeon overhaul, doing away with all the Vanilla handle of objects & such. Errm.

Now it's clear why this hasn't been attempted to date.