hobopav

I highly doubt this would have any effect - unless you're thinking in terms of radiant quest working correctly because most bosses/chests happen to be in interior cells. But by entering an interior cell you're already 'fixing' the bug anyway. It's the act of forcing the loading screen (and whatever Bethesda does code wise during the loading process) which makes the item respawn timer work correctly throughout the entire encounter zone. The real fix is to do the same but not only during the loading screen but as soon as the cells from an affected encounter zone unload from memory because the player has reached some distance threshold as he/she is moving away from that zone.

ohhh, and one other thing I forgot to mention - this doesn't affect respawning enemies - so if in any of these Encounter Zones you kill something, that kill will stay dead for 7 game days before respawning. It only affects items. Whicked Shipping is a good example (and again, don't fast travel in or out of the area if you want to test this) - kill the 3 ghouls and take some random items from the area. Walk away far enough to unload the areas cells (going over to Robotics Disposal Ground is far enough for sure). Now walk back and you'll see the ghouls are still dead but all the items you took have respawned. Now, had you done the above test by fast travelling, upon returning you'll find the ghouls still dead, but more importantly the items you took would NOT have respawned. Again, I want to point out that this will happen on all game modes (easy, normal, hard, survival, etc). It just seems like survival mode is the culprit only because you can't fast travel and so naturally you'll encounter this issue more often.

Thanks for testing SKK50. You'll find the same results in all Encounter Zone areas that don't have the 'Never Resets' flag set - instant item respawn, given that you move away from an area far enough to unload its cell/s from memory AND don't fast travel or enter an interior cell doing it. However, if you do fast travel (even to itself) or enter an interior cell, and thus force the loading screen, the reset/respawn timer will work correctly - meaning that only if you return in 7 game days will items respawn in an Encounter Zone which doesn't have the 'Never Resets' flag set. Of course the simplest fix is to go into the Creation Kit and create a mod which turns on all those 'Never Resets' flags. However, I'm really not sure what the game wide implications are - maybe certain Zones need to reset for certain quests to work correctly or perhaps having a 200 hour game play with tons of never resetting areas resulting in bloated save files of unusable sizes, etc...

Not sure if anyone cares, but the following is what I posted on the Beth forums a while back in regards to this issue. It's an engine bug and can be reproduced 100% of the time no matter what mode you use or how many mods you have. Of course Beth never addressed it. Anyway, here is the post: Before I explain what this bug is and how to reproduce it 100% of the time, I want to mention that I first noticed it while playing Survival Mode and it really ruined my immersion. However, this bug occurs in all Modes, but just happens to be more prominent in Survival Mode because you can't Fast Travel. I've also searched lots of forums and found tons of players who reported 'aspects' of this bug, but nothing that concretely pins it down or ways to fix it. I really believe this is a game engine issue that needs to be fixed by Bethesda (or at the very least addressed since it can be 'fixed' using normal game mechanics). WHAT IS THIS BUG: This bug affects ITEM RE-SPAWNING in tons of areas of the game, items that you might have previously picked up. By items, I mean most non-unique things found in containers or lying around these areas, like junk, food, etc. BY RE-SPAWNING, I mean items that you looted in an area that re-spawn (or restock) minutes after they've been looted by you. You enter some area, loot it, leave the area, do other stuff in different areas, come back to said area, and voila....all these items are back, restocked, re-spawned... seemingly only minutes after you've looted them. Now, in vanilla FO4, lots of cells are supposed to re-spawn (or reset) items after a certain amount of time. One of the gamesettings (in the Creation Kit) that governs this is 'iHoursToRespawnCell' which is set to 168 - meaning that in a Normal Mode vanilla game, at least 7 game days need to pass before a cell resets (and restocks items). Yet, this is not what happens unless you apply the 'fix'. Ok, on to the bug, but first a few things... MY SETUP: PC (Win 8.1)Latest Steam verified game with all Official DLCs and NO OTHER MODS.Start New Game on Normal Difficulty (You must start new game to have a 100% of seeing this bug) DON'T DO THE FOLLOWING AFTER EXITING VAULT 111 (this is really important): 1. Do Not Fast Travel2. Do Not enter an interior cell (for example - do not enter the molerat cave by Red Rocket) BUG IN ACTION: 1. After exiting Vault 111, make your way to Red Rocket, go past and enter the first house in Concord (the one with the Baseball Bat behind the front door).2. Grab the bat and whatever else you want in this house.3. Walk back (no fast travel) to the Vault 111 exit area (don't re-enter the vault, you just need to get here to have the cell with the house containing the bat unload from memory and this appears far enough in my tests).4. Walk back to the bat house in Concord - the bat and all the items you grabbed before should have re-spawned.5. Repeat #2 - #4 as many times as you want. Each time all items in the house will have re-spawned. 'FIXING' THE BUG:(You can do this at anytime no matter how many times you have visited the house, as long you're still using the same new game made for this test) 6. Walk to the house, grab bat and any other items you want.7. Now, while in the house Fast Travel somewhere, anywhere (Red Rocket if you want) OR go into the molerat cave by Red Rocket - as long as you get the black loading screen.8. To be consistent, head over to the Vault 111 area.9. If you now return to the house, the bat and any items you grabbed will NOT RE-SPAWN until the correct cell re-spawn time has passed (7 game days minimum).10. You can repeat steps #2 - #4 above as many times as you wish, and items will not re-spawn until that timer has expired. SO, WHAT IS HAPPENING: FO4 has a bunch of areas that are classified as Encounter Zones (EZ) in the Creation Kit (CK). For example, all settlements are EZs, but so are areas like (and I'm staying close to Vault 111 for ease of testing): The Ranger Cabin, Wicked Shipping, Thicket Excavation, USAF Satellite...basically most anything that gives you EXP Points for discovering a location and has a map marker. Every EZ is made up of 1 or more cells, which can include exterior and/or interior cells. The Ranger Cabin EZ is made up of 1 exterior cell while USAF Satellite is made up of 1 exterior and 1 interior cell (with the Raider mini-gun boss). Concord has several exterior and several interior cells) Some EZs (all settlements for example) have a checked flag in the CK called "Never Restes" while others don't. This flag, when checked, prevents an EZ and all it's cells from re-spawning items (and I'm assuming other things like enemies) and that does makes sense for settlements, since you don't want stuff resetting here, ever. However, other EZs like the Ranger Cabin, Whicked Shipping, Thicket Excavation, and USAF Satellite do not have this flag checked and are meant to eventually reset. But if you were to test those EZs in the same manner as the house, you'll get the same results - items re-spawning minutes after being looted. Want 20 Runaway Holotapes? Walk to the Ranger Cabin, grab the holotape, walk over to the Robotics Disposal Ground (which is far away to unload the Ranger Cabin EZ), walk back to the cabin, get re-spawned holotape, repeat... So why use the house with the baseball bat? Well, this house is part of an exterior cell which along with the molerat cave interior cell, is part of the RedRocketCaveZone EZ. This is a different EZ from Red Rocket itself, which is named RedRocketTruckStopZone. RedRocketCaveZone does not have the flag checked it's easy to test on a new game (it's close to Vault 111, walking back and forth is relatively quick, not many enemies to worry about). And it has an interior cell (the cave) - meaning you can test it by either Fast Travelling or entering the cave. So, it appears that when you're in an EZ (and you have to be in one of the cells that are part of the EZ) with a "Never Resets" flag unchecked, and you either: A. Fast Travel somewhere (even to the EZ itself) or B. Enter an interior cell which is part of that EZC. And by doing either A or B you force the loading screen... ...the game engine correctly sets/saves/tracks the re-spawn timer in the correct manner. Yes, whether this is accidental or not, items in all the cells that are part of the EZ will not reset until the timer has expired (again, in default vanilla normal mode this is at least 7 game days). This will fix any EZ which appears to have this issue. Go ahead, try it at Thicket Excavation (an area that lots of players have reported instant item restocking). Go there, loot it, and Fast Travel out. Come back and items will not re-spawn. And Finally, the reason players who play in Survival Mode seem to report this issue more often is simply because you can't Fast Travel in an un-modded Survival Mode game. The only way to "fix" an EZ with this bug in Survival Mode is to enter an interior cell that is part of that EZ, and plenty of them don't have one.