[Bug] Dead Thrall disappearing in front of the player

[EvilGeniusRo]

I know about the bug involving the Dead Thrall randomly disappearing on fast travel but has anyone actually had one disappearing right in front of him? The trick with the fast traveling inside walled cities and him appearing at the stables or entering buildings doesn't work and neither using the "moveto player" command in the console. It has been more than three years since I did a playthrough as a mage and used Dead Thralls and I don't remember having such problems...

 

I recorded a video for anyone that's interested to have a look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpffTtF7ESk

 

My Skyrim load order is as following:

Dawnguard.esm
Hearthfires.esm
Dragonborn.esm
Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch.esp (3.0.2b)

Run For Your Lives.esp

When Vampires Attack.esp

 

Here's also a save file.

removed

 

Note that the Master Vampire is from the random encounter from Dawnguard that involves vampires spawning in cities, mine was from Whiterun.

 

Sorry if this exact issue has been reported a hundred times and you're sick of seeing it again and also sorry of the noobish way of reporting it, I had no choice but to ask for some help, it kinda ruined the game for me, big time.

[Arthmoor]

You generated a special case. One that I doubt would be fixable in any practical way. When a vampire attack takes place, it starts with a radiant quest that spawns a number of generated vampires. Normally, you'd kill them, and the bodies would be left where they fell. You'd then eventually leave the city, causing a "change location event" to take place. When this happens, the quest that spawned them is shut down. Part of what that shutdown process does is to disable and then delete the corpses from the generated vampires. This prevents the corpses from stacking up and causing save bloat, among other things.

 

You being able to reanimate them and do this is an edge case. You brought the generated vampire to the border of what the game knows as "Whiterun Location". Basically the location record that covers the city. Crossing that bridge to the east goes over a cell border that leads to a standard wilderness area. When you do that, you trigger the change location event and the attack quest shuts down and cleans up its generate corpses. Your thrall was part of that.

 

You would have had the same thing happen if you turned south down the road toward Riverwood, if you had gone far enough north across the river toward the Loreius Farm, or far enough west of Whiterun on the way to Fort Greymoor. Or pretty much if you had gone far enough in any direction into the wilderness surrounding the city.

 

You'll notice that when you killed it yourself that the thrall effect was dispelled as it's supposed to be. This indicates that our fix for the issue of them disappearing under other circumstances not related to this is working as intended.

 

I have no idea if this particular case can be accounted for in some way, but it doesn't seem likely.

[EvilGeniusRo]

Thank you for the response. You are right, before doing the bridge part, I would fast travel with the Master Vampire all over the map and he would disappear but if I fast traveled back to Whiterun (still being in the Whiterun area), he would be there. I had a previous Vampire thrall from Cronvangr Cave, fast traveled with her to Whiterun and didn't disappear, that's when the random encounter started, she got killed and made the Master Vampire my new thrall.

 

So that means that I should avoid any vampires (or any other humanoid npc) from random encounters and just make thralls from npcs that normally spawn in a fixed location?

[Arthmoor]

For now, yes. Avoiding thralls made from random encounters would be the only way to deal with it.

[EvilGeniusRo]

Thank you again, you have been a big help!  

I would have been stuck with the idea that all thralls were having the same issue and in the mood that I was, I would take a brake from the playthrough, a long one to the point of abandoning it or just continue it but not touch the Dead Spell ever again, not even in TES 6.

[Arthmoor]

You don't happen to still have that save you had linked in the OP, do you?

[PrinceShroob]

You generated a special case. One that I doubt would be fixable in any practical way. When a vampire attack takes place, it starts with a radiant quest that spawns a number of generated vampires. Normally, you'd kill them, and the bodies would be left where they fell. You'd then eventually leave the city, causing a "change location event" to take place. When this happens, the quest that spawned them is shut down. Part of what that shutdown process does is to disable and then delete the corpses from the generated vampires. This prevents the corpses from stacking up and causing save bloat, among other things.

 

You being able to reanimate them and do this is an edge case. You brought the generated vampire to the border of what the game knows as "Whiterun Location". Basically the location record that covers the city. Crossing that bridge to the east goes over a cell border that leads to a standard wilderness area. When you do that, you trigger the change location event and the attack quest shuts down and cleans up its generate corpses. Your thrall was part of that.

 

You would have had the same thing happen if you turned south down the road toward Riverwood, if you had gone far enough north across the river toward the Loreius Farm, or far enough west of Whiterun on the way to Fort Greymoor. Or pretty much if you had gone far enough in any direction into the wilderness surrounding the city.

 

You'll notice that when you killed it yourself that the thrall effect was dispelled as it's supposed to be. This indicates that our fix for the issue of them disappearing under other circumstances not related to this is working as intended.

 

I have no idea if this particular case can be accounted for in some way, but it doesn't seem likely.

You can attach the MagicNoReanimate keyword to the alias of any NPC who would be deleted by their spawning quest.

[EvilGeniusRo]

You don't happen to still have that save you had linked in the OP, do you?

I will send it to you through a PM.

[Arthmoor]

I think editing that many aliases would be a bit much. I think addressing the loss of the thrall via deletion is something better handled by updating its script on our thrall quest to clear the alias and dispel the effect so that someone can simply get another.

[SSL]

Fixed in my fix.

That is to say, the situation is handled properly, I believe. Details on the ticket.