steady decrease in creatures over time/ broken respawns?

[anjenthedog]

Just curious, is there something I need to do to ensure creature populations remain more than scant on a long (over 2 year play). It seems like there are fewer and fewer creatures since I began playing.

 

I also see far fewer humanoids while walking the roads (I walk everywhere unless I fast travel). Even imperial and elven prisoner patrols are fewer than they once were (I see one in a blue moon these days, whereas it used to be almost "regular"). What gives?

 

Did adding other realms over time (Bruma, those two little regions against the southern mountains, and the Reach expansions) force some global actor limit or something?

[7531Leonidas]

Do you use True Hunter (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25628), by any chance? The older version I am using sometimes doesn't reenable spawn points. When I rework my LO, I will update this mod.

[anjenthedog]

Hi, thanks for the reply. Nope. I've never even tried that mod. Plants respawn. And maybe animals too, but finding a live bear or tiger or even wolves is getting rare. And by finding, I don't mean that I hunt them down either. They're just random encounters.

[7531Leonidas]

In my older playthroughs, it often seemed as if spawn points were changing over time, first moving to different places, then becoming more crowded together as more were re-enabled as my pc grew in level. With True Hunter, some points just didn't come back at all. Maybe one or more of your mods is doing something similar, changing spawns to reflect your character's level, and changing what can/cannot spawn.

 

I also use Immersive World Encounters, and it is very 'streaky' at times, repeatedly giving me the same type of encounter several times in a row. Again, I haven't updated to the latest version, b/c I don't want to chance mangling my LO with an update.

 

As an aside, my pc is lvl 180+, and got Aela's Snow Cat Pelt mission, and I wandered the wilds for months, not seeing even ONE. Had to go hunting giants for their stored pelts. Not fun at all.

[anjenthedog]

I noticed the same with a snow cat fur request. They were never "common, but they did seem to appear more often in the pale when I was lower level. I did the same. I ended up purchasing about half of the needed pelts. It's one of those side quests (I've done at least a half dozen pelts quests so far) that took quite a while, but no worries, there's always a "kill dragon" or "hunt bandit leader" or "slay the beast" side quest available from one of the two quest mods I have installed, to keep me busy when I'm bored wandering.

 

I suppose it's possible one of my mods (or more than one) is interfering. But I don't "know". As you noted, it could be some level thing. Wolves for instance started fading off the map (not gone just not plentiful) since ~level 20-30 (somewhere in there)

 

I have no idea how someone gets to level 180. I've been playing for ~3 years and haven't broached level 70 yet. Ok...maybe not correct. There are elements (thieves guild, assassins guild, Boethia, civil war) that I don't have any interest in pursuing, so that could be impacting my level progression. And I suppose it doesn't help that I have three play vectors going (ie three different players on three different game-randomized character development paths)

[7531Leonidas]

Me, I just used a couple of perk enhancers to allow a zoot suit of 100+ magic school enchantments, so I can spam their expert/master spells at zero cost, but it still takes quite awhile. Nothing says fun like spamming Incinerate 3-4 times on a Frost Troll, or Thunderbolt on Snow Bears or Legendary Dragons!