Questions about respawning

[The great white dragon]

How long does it take for a location to respawn enemies or items?

Do item containers respawn random stuff? And do physical objects themselves respawn?

Does having higher luck increase the number of things such as Nuka cola being found in the vending machines?

Also things that respawn are they leveled?

[ShiveringSun]

There's some variation to respawn lengths. If your playing on default timescale it can be quite quick- sometimes jsut a couple of days it seems.

Yes and yes for most objects... you'll find that coffee cup u picked up again, and even that mini nuke.

No idea if luck factors.

AFAICT, zones have set enemy lvls, maybe with some variance. Wandering enemies and encounter spawns do seem to increase in level with u somewhat, depending on where u are.

[The great white dragon]

When you say days do you mean in game days or real lifetime days?

[MageThis]

in-game.

[The great white dragon]

So out of curiosity why do I find most nuka cola vending machines empty? I'm level 27 I think if that matters

[Space Commander Nemo]

Originally posted by ShiveringSun:

AFAICT, zones have set enemy lvls, maybe with some variance. Wandering enemies and encounter spawns do seem to increase in level with u somewhat, depending on where u are.

It's so much fun to watch when being level 100+ spawns a group of tough-as-bricks gunners to fight you; near a lowly leveled super mutant refuge...

Watch and loot.

[ShiveringSun]

Originally posted by The great white dragon:

So out of curiosity why do I find most nuka cola vending machines empty? I'm level 27 I think if that matters

It's just random, maybe with some machines weighted be more likely to spawn more. Loot quality definitley increases as u lvl though. I recently found a cola machine with 5 nuka cherry!

[ronr42]

Items can respawn in as little as 2 or 3 days. Enemies take much longer to respawn, weeks and even months.

Item containers do respawn the items in them except for ammo, pre-war money and caps.

Luck does not factor into the quanity of items that spawn or respawn. Luck only factors into how much ammo and caps you find in the game world and you need the corresponding perks to find the higher amounts.

Leveled items are weapons and armor, not junk type items.

* As a footnote; As you level up enemies level up with you. When you get to about level 45 or so it will seem that you are Much tougher than the enemies you encounter. That will continue up through level 60 to 70. After that enemies start getting harder to kill again and they spawn in larger quanities. You will start to notice that in a familiar area where there was originally 3 to 4 enemies there are now 6 to 10 respawning and they are much harder to kill. At level 90 and above the game gets real interesting! Have fun with it. :)

Edit: Got a question for you. How did you manage to get 18 achievements when you have only played the game for 1.6 hours???

[The great white dragon]

Originally posted by ronr42:

Items can respawn in as little as 2 or 3 days. Enemies take much longer to respawn, weeks and even months.

Item containers do respawn the items in them except for ammo, pre-war money and caps.

Luck does not factor into the quanity of items that spawn or respawn. Luck only factors into how much ammo and caps you find in the game world and you need the corresponding perks to find the higher amounts.

Leveled items are weapons and armor, not junk type items.

* As a footnote; As you level up enemies level up with you. When you get to about level 45 or so it will seem that you are Much tougher than the enemies you encounter. That will continue up through level 60 to 70. After that enemies start getting harder to kill again and they spawn in larger quanities. You will start to notice that in a familiar area where there was originally 3 to 4 enemies there are now 6 to 10 respawning and they are much harder to kill. At level 90 and above the game gets real interesting! Have fun with it. :)

Edit: Got a question for you. How did you manage to get 18 achievements when you have only played the game for 1.6 hours???

I played the game offline, then synced it accidentally the other day.

So if ammo doesn't respawn I assume only in late game venders would be a infinite source? And of course dead bodies?

Will said bodies be carrying stuff like 50cal and missles, etc?

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by The great white dragon:

So if ammo doesn't respawn I assume only in late game venders would be a infinite source? And of course dead bodies?

Will said bodies be carrying stuff like 50cal and missles, etc?

Ammunition containers can refresh like many other containers, and killing armed people is certainly another source. Note that while enemies don't run out of most ammunition types (they won't use up what they have, no matter how long you take to kill them), they have only a limited stock of a few rare types like mini nukes and missiles. If you kill someone with a fat man or missile launcher quickly enough, you'll find whatever they haven't used on their corpse. This also applies for grenades.

[ShiveringSun]

Originally posted by ronr42:

...

Item containers do respawn the items in them except for ammo, pre-war money and caps.
...

This is not true, at least whith a couple lvl in scrounger. I have looted the same ammo containers many times, and ammo spawns in all types of containers.

Also, at default timescale enemies can respawn in a couple days in outdoor cells...

[The great white dragon]

I also happen to notice that when I die on survival in a room and reload in the same room that there is containers, I see that the loot changes each time I reload, like for example, a stimpack will be in a med box one time, then I die and check it again and it now has rad away and anti biotics, now granted this does not happen every time on everything but it does happen

[Nerevar]

sigh why does nobody here know this yet?

for the TC :

if you play on anything but survival difficulty the respawn timer for CLEARED locations on the map is 20 ingame DAYS. waiting for 20 days alone will still show the location as CLEARED the reason for that is that some REAL GAME TIME needs to pass for the map to update. if you fast travel around 1-3 times after waiting 20 days the location wont show cleared anymore.

locations that dont show cleared or have no boss enemy set (killing this enemy triggers the cleared status) will never show cleared. these locations and the outside world respawn after 7 DAYS already on any difficulty but survival. on survival all respawn times are massivly increased. i think 21 days for outside world and 48 days for cleared areas. not sure on the numbers for survival tough have to recheck.

this includes containers and items. and EVERYTHING in them aside from quest or one time unique items respawns. this includes ammo. saying ammo doesnt respawn is therefore total bs. scrounger doesnt affect this at all. this perk simply makes you find more ammo and sometimes ammo in places where you would normally never find ammo aswell.

this respawn can ONLY happen if the player is not in the cell and does not VISIT this location AT ALL for these amount of ingame days.

exception to this rule are random encounter battle sites like near fort hagen and near nahant chapel. these battle site random encounters respawn MUCH MUCH faster sometimes fast traveling away is already enough for them to respawn.

some zones do NEVER RESET as they are flagged as non respawning areas in the game. example are ANY settlement location or arc jet systems or fiddlers green or walden pond. these locations do never respawn items or enemies at all as they are set to never reset.

hope that clears the question up fully. if not feel free to ask.

[Nerevar]

Originally posted by The great white dragon:

I also happen to notice that when I die on survival in a room and reload in the same room that there is containers, I see that the loot changes each time I reload, like for example, a stimpack will be in a med box one time, then I die and check it again and it now has rad away and anti biotics, now granted this does not happen every time on everything but it does happen

that is normal. and it is also what is used by players for the so called loot locking method for farming legendary items.

this only happens if these items where not spawned already when you saved your game. if you do safe right in front of a container it will ALWAYS have the same items in it for example. since you cannot quicksave on survival you have often to walk back from an autosave bed point which means youre too far away from the items so theyll get randomized again.

[ShiveringSun]

Hmm... 7 days can pass very quickly on default timescale, but it feels there is some variability as I swear I've looted the same container in less then 7 days.

[The great white dragon]

Oh another question I have is when you drop an object let's say a missle launcher because it's heavy of course, on the ground in let's say the outskirts of Boston or take that bridge by the crashed plane for example, will the dropped item remain there indefinitely so I can go pick it up at anytime later or does it disappear?