Oblivion talk:Bear Season

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Contents 1 Location? 2 Number of Bears 3 Interesting Glitch! 4 Can't find the bears!

[edit] Location?

Anyone able to give some idea of where this quest is based? --Endareth 20:28, 20 April 2006 (EDT)

It says it in the main article. --Aristeo 19:02, 27 September 2006 (EDT)

Ok there is a big problem, the guy that is supposed to give me the quest isn't at Shardrock Farm at all.

[edit] Number of Bears

The article says there are 10 West Weald Bears in the game, but I did the quest at a low level and have killed 14 West Weald Bear Cubs - are there possibly more cubs than adult bears or does the quantity shown in the article need revision? Morgandy 12:53, 10 August 2008 (EDT)

All the bears come from a leveled list. There's a total of 18 uses of the list, but 8 of those are in the TestAlanBears test cell. Had you used the console? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:25, 10 August 2008 (EDT)

I did not use the console. I looked through my mods and I can't see where any of them would influence this count, however, Eshme's Bodies Ver. 3 does place a shop fairly close by. It seems a little odd that a shop would change the wildlife in the area, but I suppose it is possible. Is there anyway for me to check this as a possibility? Morgandy 14:00, 11 August 2008 (EDT)

Mystery solved - the bears do respawn if someone other than the player kills them. (I'm guessing this is so they are all still there if the farmer kills any.) I had some modded animal companions with me the first time I explored the area and they killed four bears and I collected the fangs. I noticed that when they kill someone or something, it does not show in my stats, so for all intents and purposes, someone other than the player killed them. When I returned alone to do the quest, there were ten bears which I killed and they have not respawned. Sorry if I caused any confusion here. Basically, it was indeed down to a mod I was using. Morgandy 08:50, 12 August 2008 (EDT)

That's interesting, because I killed a bear probably somewhere around level 20 or 25 and hung on to that one fang set in my collectables stash and didn't get around to doing this quest until just now, at level 45 (going for 100% completion). With that one set with me, I just killed 10 bears for a total of 11 fang sets (turning in 6 of them after I'd collected 8). I KNOW I killed all 11, although one of the ones I killed just before turning in the fangs died from a continuing poison effect -- which I have seen mentioned before doesn't always count as the player killing them. But if that's the one the game doesn't consider I killed myself, would the bear have respawned right away? At most a game hour or two passed between when I killed that bear and when I killed the 11th one. Might the end of the quest trigger a respawn of any not killed by the player? --ACGrecor 04:37, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I, too, am coming accross a West Weald bear that's respawning. It is a West Weald Brown Bear Den Hunter with ID FF01357B (on this site that bear is listed as having an ID of either 0018AE3D or 0018AE3E). I got the FF01357B from the console. I can't figure out how to get an item's numerical ID in the CS yet so I've hit a brick wall in tracking it down there. When I did this quest I killed 10 bears and got 10 fangs. I didn't use poison or any summoned creatures (just my trusty, unenchanted, daedric dagger) and didn't come across corpses that someone (or something) else had killed. Very odd, indeed. Also, the I'm using the GOTY edition and the only mod I have installed is Toggleable Quantity Prompt --Foubister 18:43, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

FF01357B is a reference ID, whereas the other two numbers are base IDs. Basically any ID starting with FF is a reference ID, and in particular it's a reference ID that's dynamically assigned at game-time, which means it can't be converted into anything else; it's a meaningless number outside of your individual game. Even using screens such as tdt, I'm not sure whether it's possible to figure out more about the source of the bear. If you were to get another number, it would be yet another reference ID, but a static one this time -- 0x000cb4ec or 0x0018ba0? (the last digit could be 'a' or any number except 2) -- which can be used to figure which of the ten bears it is.

Looking at the construction set, the main difference between the ten bears is, of course, the location where they initially appear. Other than that, the remaining difference, and only likely source of a difference in behaviour, is essentially a bookkeeping detail. One of the ten bears is set up to be the "parent" reference (parent in the programming sense, not the biological sense). When the quest is complete, that "parent" bear is disabled, which causes all of its "children" to also be disabled. Eight of the other bears are tagged as children of the parent bear. The tenth bear is an orphan (the one that first appears at x=-108835, y=14629.1 if anyone is interested). If just one bear is acting oddly, then I'm guessing the tenth one is the problem, because it never gets disabled.

On the other hand, after digging up that information, I realized I'm not entirely sure how it was determined that the bears don't respawn -- even though it looks like I'm the person who added the information. Based on the date of that edit, it's from before I spent a lot of time agonizing over creature respawning; even after all my research, respawning can still seem like an arcane mystery rather than something predictable. I'm guessing that all of the bears do respawn -- in particular if you level up enough to change the type of bear that appears. To really be sure, though, it's something that would have to be tested in-game. Not that I'm doubting what either of you have said, but more testing would be necessary to know whether just one bear can respawn or all ten, and to know what triggers respawning.

To summarize, as long as the quest is incomplete, it's possible all ten bears respawn. After the quest is complete, nine of the bears should vanish forever, but it's possible one of the bears continues to respawn forever. --Nephele^Talk 23:47, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Facinating! Thanks for the quick response. I had a feeling that that number was odd. I've got a sort-of test going on at the moment, I'll post if anything interesting comes of it --Foubister 00:20, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, just tested this - and I completed this quest ages ago. And it took me about five seconds to locate a West Weald Brown Bear Den Hunter. Strange. Krusty 00:01, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Interesting Glitch!

If you attempt to dupe a West Weald Bear Fang to complete the quest early, you will be disappointed to find that only 1 drops, but happy to find out, that when you pick the fang up again, your journal will update saying you have collected a second fang! I tried to dupe the fang again to see if it would work again but it did not update again, however when I had collected 4 more, bringing my total to 5 fangs, the quest updated saying I had collected 6 fangs, and when I spoke to the quest giver, he thanked me. The game told me "5 West Weald Bear Fang(s) were removed", and the quest completed as usual.

I am not sure if repeating the dupe glitch on the second Fang you find will update saying that 4 were collected, and again with your third fang to say 6 were collected. –Nesskid 22:49, 25 January 2009 (EST)

[edit] Can't find the bears!

Help! I can't find any bears around the farm? Where are they supposed to be? I've been running around the farm for hours with a very powerful Detect Life in place, I don't see ANY bears! WRFan 19:55, 24 October 2009 (UTC)

No bears. I checked the coordinates of the bears in the toolset and teleported to the locations where they are supposed to be using the "player.positionworld" console command. No bears there! Ah, what the hell, I just spawned 6 new instances of the bears and killed them:

player.placeatme 0018ae3e

WRFan 15:16, 26 October 2009 (UTC)