Skyrim talk:Dungeons

Loot Mysteries

There are still a ton of unanswered questions about how loot is generated in Skyrim. Most of which feed into the overall question, "why can players get better items than specified in the leveled lists?" Some of the questions also apply to how the level of enemies gets set, but so far readers/editors seem less interested in knowing about that half of the picture.

My instincts say that Special Loot are responsible for all of the unusually-high-level items that players have reported finding. There's a "special loot" flag that appears on certain leveled lists, indicating that the game is free to apply some type of special rules when calculating what appears. (For those looking for this flag in the CK, it does not appear on the top-level LItemSpecialLoot10 and LItemSpecialLoot100 lists -- instead it appears several nested levels lower, on the lists where level actually is used to determine results). There are also a variety of GMST settings related to special loot:

• fSpecialLootMaxPCLevelBase = 0.0
• fSpecialLootMaxPCLevelMult = 1.0
• fSpecialLootMaxZoneLevelBase = 0.0
• fSpecialLootMaxZoneLevelMult = 1.0
• fSpecialLootMinPCLevelBase = 0.0
• fSpecialLootMinPCLevelMult = 0.6
• fSpecialLootMinZoneLevelBase = 0.0
• fSpecialLootMinZoneLevelMult = 0.4
• fSpecialLootWeighting = 4.0

About the only conclusion I can draw at this point from those numbers is that any level adjustment is more likely to be done as a multiplier rather than an offset (presumably "Base" would be used for an offset, and the "Base" values are all zero).

Beyond that, though, I don't know. The multipliers seem backwards to me -- I'd expect multipliers larger than 1, for example, so for input level of 20 (character at level 20), calculations are done at level 30 (the resulting item is a level 30 item). Another major complication is that based on my testing the CK provides no help. As far as I can tell, all the "preview" buttons in the CK ignore the special loot flag -- the previewed items are strictly what you'd expect based on the input level. Therefore I think any further testing will need to be done in-game.

If anyone is interested in delving into this further, I'd suggest using the CK to create a special custom container that contains maybe 100 instances of the LItemSpecialLoot100 list. Place that container into a dungeon, then in-game go to that dungeon and check out what's in the container. The special container means you get meaningful statistics from a single check, and also means you know for sure that the items came from the special loot list (instead of any of the other items that can be placed in a boss chest). Then it's a matter of checking the levels of those items against the leveled lists (for example at Generic Magic Weapons), with the first question simply being, are any of the items higher-level than you'd otherwise expect?

The other main mystery is: how does the dungeon level come into play? I'm assuming it can adjust the level used in all leveled lists, but it would be really helpful to get in-game confirmation of that. Another custom-created container (using multiple copies of a standard loot list) placed in a few key dungeons would be the most authoritative way to check the loot level.

The final question that I VN'd on the page is: what needs to be done to make a dungeon be "cleared"? My experience is that the "cleared" message always pops up right after I killed an enemy. It's possible it's always after killing the boss (although being sure of that means properly identifying the boss -- at first I thought Morvunskar was an exception for me, because it was marked as cleared before I killed Naris the Wicked, but when I checked the game data, he's not the boss). However, I'm sure it's happened before all the enemies were killed. So it would be interesting to know what other players are finding.

--Nephele^Talk 22:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

For the record, a second requirement for a dungeon to be clearable appears to be that there must be an official boss (its LCTN record must have a LCSR fields for the reftype "boss", 000130f7). That's in addition to the requirement that the place has to have the LocTypeClearable keyword. The new boss requirement explains more than a dozen places where readers had reported that a place couldn't be cleared. The only remaining problem cases that I'm aware of are Purewater Run and Wolfskull Cave -- and more confirmation would be good in those cases. If anyone knows of others, it would be great to get them listed here so that we have a complete list of problem cases to examine for a pattern/explanation.

Also, the boss requirement is consistent with killing the boss being the only action that needs to be done to trigger the place as cleared. --Nephele^Talk 04:13, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Adding Klimmek's House to the unexplained cleared list, per this discussion. Klimmek's House does have a boss (two in fact) -- but if killing a location's boss is all that is required to have a place tagged as cleared, then nearly every house and store in the game is clearable (190 locations that don't have the clearable flag have bosses). Plus it doesn't help to explain either of the other two problem cases. --Nephele^Talk 16:46, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

I just found this discussion as the result of this one. In the example I just cited, where I used a low-level character to pick out exactly when I started getting the next level of soul gem, a 5th level character was able to get Lesser Soul Gems, where they would otherwise only be available at level 8. Using the above multipliers, my guess is that they're applied to the levels on the list itself rather than the character's, meaning that Lesser Soul Gems appear at level (8 * fSpecialLootMinPCLevelMult = 4.8). That's obviously only a partial investigation, but this sounds like an interesting one to investigate, so I'll look into it further and post what I find. – Robin Hood↝talk 00:38, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Dummy Items

In case anyone else is trying to figure out how "dummy" items work, I figured I'd jot down some notes here.

Some 50-odd items in the game data are tagged with the "Dummy" keyword (000F3E6C) -- DummyPotion, DummyBook, DummyWeapon1H, etc. I assume the dummy items are used by the developers so they can place the item exactly where/how they want it -- whether a sword is lying on the table or stuck into it vertically, for example. So the dummy items have a basic model associated with them, but I think most of the other information in the dummy record is irrelevant. However, I think the Dummy keyword is really just a convenience to make it easier for developers to identify these placeholder items; it looks like any item in the game can actually be replaced.

The real work of the leveled-list replacement is instead done as part of the REFR object. The leveled list used to generate the resulting item is stored in the XLIB (leveled item base ID) field of the REFR. So a DummyCuirass in one place might turn into any unenchanted cuirass but in another place, it might specifically be an enchanted Dwarven cuirass. Interestingly, the mechanism is even used for leveled artifacts (Chillrend being the one example I've noticed so far). --Nephele^Talk 22:50, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

nonClearable list

Is there a list of the non clearable areas? If so where? If not it may be a good idea to make a page or sectoin of this page dedicated to these places. I perfer nonhome homes as my home, in game i mean. Others may to. Or even as a reference.

I asked the same question recently. There is no list of non-clearable locations, because that list would be huge. It would include every town, farm, and the like. --Xyzzy 22:54, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Whether or not a location is clearable is irrelevant in terms of using the place for a home. Non-clearable locations can still have respawning enemies and respawning containers, -- and in fact, all other factors being the same, they will respawn more quickly than a cleared location, making them worse as a home that clearable locations. So I don't see what value there would be in having a list of non-clearable places.

My guess is that what you're actually looking for is a list of non-Respawning locations, a.k.a., Safe Locations, all of which are listed in the Safe Locations category. --Nephele^Talk 23:05, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Clearable areas

This page says there are 184 clearable dungeons, but the page that lists the clearable dungeons http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Category:Skyrim-Places-Clearable has 189 locations. Moreover, one of those locations is either misrepresented or should be excluded: User:Jak Atackka/Sandbox2 - as it does not appear on the world map. I'm also not sure how this list was compiled. In my game, I have cleared every location on your list (Except the Jak Atackka cited above) but I have a total of 196 map locations marked cleared on my in-game map. Yet, my journal only shows that I have cleared 183. I'm assuming that some pairs of locations count as a single clear (e.g., Reachcliff Cave and Reachcliff Secret Entrance), but there is still some discrepancy regarding the maximum number of clearable locations. Grey 20:15, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

I've fixed a few issues in the category (including the sandbox), which now brings the category's total to 185. The total on the page had said 186 (not 184). Your addition of Angarvunde adds one location not previously taken into account; on the other hand, a few places were being double-counted and have now been cleaned up.

As for the discrepancy between 183 and 185. Angarvunde appears to be one of the differences -- which I've somewhat explained in the notes on Angarvunde's page. It's possible that there's one other case where a quest sets the clearable flag instead of it being done the standard way. Also, just to cover all the bases -- are you sure that Wolfskull Cave is in your total (because clearing it depends upon whether you're on the related quest)?

Which leaves the 196 vs 185 issue. There are four places that are known to appear as cleared because another place says cleared; I've now listed those on the article. I haven't tried to create a similar list of places with multiple map markers (e.g., cases such as Reachcliff Cave and Reachcliff Secret Entrance), but there are a handful of other such cases (North/South Shriekwind Bastion and North/South Skybound Watch come to mind off-hand). It's very possible that there are seven such places, which would then explain the discrepancy. --Nephele^Talk 01:20, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Update: there actually only six places that have two map markers (now all listed on the article), so there seems to still be one remaining unidentified double-count. I don't think I do anything more from the game-data side to investigate it -- I think it will take you comparing your game map to the categories. --Nephele^Talk 17:05, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

My count of clearable areas is 184 - the page that lists all the clearable locations states that the locations shown count toward the Delver achievement, but there are 4 locations shown that do not: Angarvunde and Mistwatch - show as cleared on in-game maps, but do not add to the cleared dungeon count in your journal. Mara's Eye Pond and Den, and Clearspring Tarn and Cave both have separate listings, but they do not clear independently of each other (e.g., to clear Mara's Eye Pond (and get the it counted toward the Delver achievement), you must clear Mara's Eye Den. The same applies to Clearspring Tarn/Cave - there is actually nothing to clear in the tarn; it is the troll (or whatever) that spawns in the cave that must be cleared).Grey 17:03, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Clearable Mechanics in DB

Dragonborn seems to have a couple of places that are documented as clearable, but don't have a boss defined - what is the mechanic marking them as cleared? For example:

• Saering's Watch - CSList
• Headwaters of Harstrad - CSList
• Beast Stone - CSList

--Alfwyn (talk) 20:56, 21 January 2013 (GMT)

Actually two of the locations have a boss defined. The internal format changed (since Dawnguard), instead of a LCSR field, now a ACSR field is used - that's why CSList misses the info.

• Saering's Watch
• Headwaters of Harstrad

The Beast Stone is probably cleared by the quest. I'll see what I can do about updating CSList. --Alfwyn (talk) 20:09, 25 January 2013 (GMT)

I believe that the stones are cleared during the quest when you use Bend Will on them, and break the hold that it has over the people working on it. I'm like 95% sure that's when the stones were cleared for me. Jeancey (talk) 20:11, 25 January 2013 (GMT)