Help request - vanilla NPCs keep spawning on the roads

[Guinefort1]

I've been noticing a problem with my installation of Oblivion onto my new(er) laptop. Vanilla NPCs keep spawning onto the roads and are often completely missing from their proper towns. On the roads, I run across them getting murdered by bandits/monsters. Further, because NPCs often aren't where they are supposed to be, it means their businesses are likewise inaccessible. Whatever is causing will soon cost me the ability to play the game, since the effects will stack up and kill off ever more merchants and quest characters.

 

Just using console commands to enable/resurrect everyone isn't working either, since that doesn't fix why they are spawning on the roads to begin with, they will just appear on the roads to get slaughtered all over again, and that won't make them obey their schedules.

 

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Guinefort1]

I managed to solve the problem. It was a modding issue, not a software or hardware problem like I had originally thought. Thank you to the people to who took the time to read the original post.

[Wiepman]

Just out of curiosity, what wrong mod/ wrong load order was the cause?

I may have sort of similar problems...

 

At least the peculiar part of vanilla NPC not in their respective city where they are supposed to be,

but all over the place on roads, thus getting killed by bandits and such.

[Oblivionaddicted]

Just out of curiosity, what wrong mod/ wrong load order was the cause?

I may have sort of similar problems...

 

At least the peculiar part of vanilla NPC not in their respective city where they are supposed to be,

but all over the place on roads, thus getting killed by bandits and such.

You probably have a mod altering or replacing some NPC's AI packages, you can detect it easily through the CS extender or TES4Edit.

[Wiepman]

 

You probably have a mod altering or replacing some NPC's AI packages, you can detect it easily through the CS extender or TES4Edit.

 

 

While that is true.

Still, I think it is good to know which mods are known to potentially cause such quirks.

[Striker879]

Another possible cause for you finding them on the roads is this ...

 

The game has a "safe cell" which it uses as a place to put things it doesn't know what to do with. By default that safe cell is the Tiber Septim Hotel in the IC. The way that I understand it, when the game needs to place something but gets it's shorts knotted up and becomes confused where to place the object it uses the lobby of the Tiber Septim so that it can move on and figure out the next thing.

 

When the misplaced object does not have a low processing flag set the game will use that object's AI packages to figure out what it should be doing next, which will normally involve the object needing to walk to the location set for that package. If the object does have a low processing flag set then it won't begin to process it's next package until the player enters the same cell (thus you won't find that object just walking along the road).

[Oblivionaddicted]

 

 

You probably have a mod altering or replacing some NPC's AI packages, you can detect it easily through the CS extender or TES4Edit.

 

 

While that is true.

Still, I think it is good to know which mods are known to potentially cause such quirks.

 

There are THOUSANDS mods for this game and you didn't even post your load order so what did you expect? :-p

 

Post your load order and if you want to fix your problem quickly, note the names of out-of-place NPC's, take a look in Oblivion.esm and note their AI packages then check your mods with the CSE and/or TES4Edit and look for any of them that alters these NPC's and/or their AI packages and the precise changes they bring.

Edited November 4, 2018 by Oblivionaddicted

[Wiepman]

Oblivionaddicted, on 02 Nov 2018 - 8:41 PM, said:

There are THOUSANDS mods for this game and iyou didn't even post yoru load order so what did you expect? :-p

Post your load order and if you want to fix your problem quickly, note the names of out-of-place NPC's, take a look in Oblivion.esm and note their AI packages then check your mods with the CSE and/or TES4Edit and look for any of them that alters these NPC's and/or their AI packages and the precise changes they bring.

 

Oh, trust me, surely I would would have.

 

But you see, that was my previous install what had these game-braking flukes.

 

That install had those damn NPC's-wondering-about-and-consequently-found-dead-on-roads-problem.

 

Drove me nuts!

 

Tried almost about everything.

 

Changing load orders and re-creating bashed patches all night till dawn.

 

Then on top of that also more frequent inexplicable CTD's started happening.

 

And since over time there had been too many mods installed/re-installed or removed in that load-out to realistically determine what could originally have caused these flukes.

 

So I took a deep breath and called it quits.

 

Deleted the install all together and started a brand new install to play with all over again.

 

Starting with the what a small base with common obse (OSR, blockhead, elys_USV, EngineBugFixes come to mind) and basic texture mods (such as Quarl's, Bomret, OCO2 and the likes) as a base.

 

And...

(knock on wood...)

Those wandering off NPC's

and inexplicable CTD's haven't happened yet so far.

[Oblivionaddicted]

So much the best for you then. :-)