Big MT is EMPTY

[YesRoyalty]

Okay, so this issue might not be mod-related, but it may require a mod to fix. I just don't know.

 

I've just completed two new playthroughs of Old World Blues, and in both cases the only enemies to appear anywhere were the one-time set-in-stone encounters (i.e. you pick up Elijah's LAER and a gang of Lobotomites shows up). Furthermore, in one of the two cases the lack of spawns/respawns extends not just to NPCs but also to ALL harvestable plants AND the Sink CIU's vendor inventory (this, of course, being the file where the Sink is supposed to be my character's main base), which tends to put a damper on actually getting a lot of use out of the place. In the other of the two saves, the recurring spawns started after I completed the DLC (i.e. the point where everything that WAS spawning is supposed to STOP), making it seem like the trigger somehow fired late, or in reverse, or who knows what.

 

It is worth noting that in both cases I used a COC command to access the Sink before actually starting Old World Blues in order to drop off some items that I meant to store there and didn't want to haul around for like two weeks before initiating the DLC. Also, I recall that in the file where absolutely nothing is working I stepped outside at one point during that visit, but in the file where everything started working afterwards, I did not. Such visits did not take place prior to the other times I played through OWB, wherein everything worked like it was supposed to.

 

Is there something I can do in the GECK - or better yet, a console command I could put in in-game - to get everything to start respawning again? I'd really like to fix this without having to restart these characters.

[Aonghus]

Sounds like one of your mods is messing with the leveled lists in the MT. (Basically anything that begins "NVDLC03" in the leveled creatures lists.) You might want to pop open FNVEdit and take a look at where the conflict is happening.

[YesRoyalty]

It doesn't look like I have any mods that mess with the leveled lists...

I'm pretty sure that I accidentally fired a trigger or changed a variable too early by COC-ing into the Sink. I'm combing through the scripts in the GECK, but frankly my knowledge of scripting is spotty enough that I could look right at the problem and never know.

[Aonghus]

You got me curious, so I fired up the geck and took a look. It turns out, there is indeed a scripted trigger to turn on encounters in the MT. Basically what is happening is there is a quest (NVDLC03Enc) that controls encounters in the MT. This quest is triggered by the script attached to the Main Quest (NVDLC03MQ01, "Welcome to the Big Empty")

 

It sounds like your premature entry into the Sink is causing the quests not to fire correctly. It might be possible to reactivate them using the "setstage" console command, but the simpler solution would be not to enter the MT except through the standard method.

[YesRoyalty]

Well, I'm not going to make any early visits again, that's for sure.

I'll try out the "setstage" approach.

 

Thanks!