Instantaneous Cell Reset Bug

[AlexQuinn13]

Hew guys I have a weird reset thing going on in my game. I just started a new game and now Sanctuary, Red Rocket, and Tenpines Bluff reset the moment I leave them. The food, water, beds, and security drop to either really low or to zero. It is super annoying af and I can't stop what I am doing to go to them to reset them. Is there a mod out there that can help fix this?

I have a lot of mods that change the way things look and cleans up things. So far the power armors are not effected by this new bug.

[Mebantiza]

I am encountering this as well. I cleared the forge, 2nd time actually, Looted, left a few items behind due to weight, and popped over to the Slog to drop items off, sell, so, on, and walked right back to the forge to pick up the rest of my take.

 

Full reset off the cells items. NOT the mobs, they stayed dead. But all the interior scrap, doors, terminals etc, had all reset. My loot was unaffected as well. I wouldn't mind a mod that INCREASES cell reset time by large factor even. Too many items means I spend the bulk of my time sorting and managing junk, and that is not even factoring in having to manage settlements.

 

This issue, actually undermines the game quite a bit. The idea I can go back to that USAF station and keep looting infinite mini-nukes out of the intel room, which also fully respawns all its other goodies, breaks the game a great deal for me. I wouldn't mind at all if the random NPC raider-types respawned, but NOT the items. That at least, would be realistic. As it stands now, locked chests relock, and refill, terminals lock and can be hacked again for XP, the most powerful round in the game? Just wait and walk into the right places and get a new set.

 

Broken....

Edited December 21, 2017 by Mebantiza

[Ripper1776]

I've recently started playing Fallout 4 again. I believe I am suffering from this bug. It seems to be linked to Survival for me. I am playing on PC with mods. After downloading some mods, I started a Survival character. Once I defeated the raiders in Concord and escorted Preston and Company to Sanctuary, I went back through Concord and everything had reset. I've been testing for the last day or so, and it definitely seems to be just Survival causing it. Tried shutting of different mods and it would still occur. All I would have to do was clear out the raiders, head down to that little camp where you can have a random encounter, and go back, and everything would reset. The only thing that stopped it was dropping my difficulty. Then I could clear it out and it didn't reset.

 

I would really like to keep playing on Survival, has anybody tracked down the cause and a solution to this bug yet?

 

 

 

Edit: My brother asked if I had tried disabling all my mods, I had not. So I tried that as well. As long as I'm on Survival, I'm getting really fast resets in Concord. The bodies just outside of Sanctuary are also resetting, drifter and dog. Neither of my settlements, Red Rocket and Sanctuary, have had any resets, though.

Edited January 2, 2018 by Ripper1776

[harimau93]

yup! this f*#@ing cell reset bug is enormous!! :pinch: all my save got corrupted, & everytime I go back to the forged all enemy & loot respawned like nothing happen?! is there no fix at all?!

[BigSLM1993]

I'm getting this bug as well. Super annoying. Like I can clear out the entire outside of any building. Enter, clear out the mobs, and then when i go back outside, everything has respawned. And sometimes it's disadvantageous, when some enemies spawn right where you'll exit.

[orbenn]

Chiming in that I'm also getting this bug.
Playing on Survival with mods, including Sim Settlements, and Scrap Everything--although I'm puzzled if this is the old cell reset bug since that was supposedly fixed.
I can confirm from the console that iHoursToRespawnCell and iHoursToRespawnCellCleared are at their normal values. Editing those settings doesn't seem to have an effect.

I can instantly reproduce it:

1. Go into the Corvega plant after clearing all the raiders on the outside.
2. type pcb in the console to purge the cell buffer (or clear the whole plant taking long enough that the cell is probably removed from the cell buffer)
3. Go outside and all the raiders have respawned

Edited December 14, 2018 by orbenn

[WHITELION1284]

Hey all,

I too have this bug. It's shown up periodically over the years and I never know whether I'm going to get it on a given play-through or not. For me it's the Supermutant ambush spot at the northwest corner of Diamond City, I guess that's the one behind Hangman's Alley that others have mentioned? That's the marker for me. If that spot is bugged then everything else is bugged: Concord, Thicket Excavations, etc. But if I restart the game (ugh) it isn't always the case.
In any case, if anyone has a fix I, for one, am very interested.

Cheers.

[hobopav]

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 Travel

2. 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 EZ

C. 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.

[SKKmods]

Inspired by your awesome diagnostic, I knocked up a datalog, loaded a clean vault exit survival save game and ran from V111 exit to the baseball bat 000a2cb3 several times. The bat is actually in cell POICC07 which is also tagged with the RedRocketCaveZone.

I can confirm your instant reset and respawn results are reproducible.

[Distance (558)>] [Cell <Wilderness (0000DD62)>] [Location < (0001F3FE)>] [EncounterZone < (0009F372)>] Vault111Zone

[Distance (2854)>] [Cell <SanctuaryExt03 (0000DD61)>] [Location < (0001F228)>] [EncounterZone < (0022CD52)>] SanctuaryHillsZone

[Distance (15448)>] [Cell <Wilderness (0000DDA1)>] [Location < (0001F228)>] [EncounterZone < (0022CD52)>] SanctuaryHillsZone

[Distance (17043)>] [Cell <RedRocketExt02 (0000DDA0)>] [Location < (00024FAB)>] [EncounterZone < (00024FB8)>] RedRocketTruckStopZone

[Distance (22177)>] [Cell <POICC07 (0000DDC1)>] [Location < (0005FAA8)>] [EncounterZone < (0005FAA7)>] RedRocketCaveZone]

The RedRocketCaveZone needs to reset as the RedRocket01 cave is a dungeon with a Boss and a Boss container.

 

The error is extending the RedRocketCaveLocation, and therefore its resetting boss encounter zone, to the external cells RedRocketCaveExt and POICC07.

 

edit: bloody tables don't work :(

Edited February 26, 2019 by SKK50

[hobopav]

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...