Finding RefID of dead NPC's?

[MeltedLemonade]

Dead body cleanup cell results in an infinite load screen. There are dead NPCs from the Beyond Reach mod that I need to finish quests, but the help menu only tells me the Object ID

Is there a way I can find out the Ref ID of these NPCs?

I got it. Skyrim Search mod.

[Sairek Ceareste]

You can use the console and try the 'help' command. Put the NPC's name you're looking for in quotation marks and it should search for all reference IDs of anything that matches whatever is in the quotation marks.


For example:

help "gryphon"

Would list every listed reference along with it's reference ID of anything that has "gryphon" in the name, be it an item, npc, quest, etc.

[Eternie]

I'd suggest going to the UESP skyrim SE site and type in the dead persons name so that you get that persons page which will list their Ref ID and their base ID

The console search function usually only lists their base ID and not the Ref ID you want.
Hope that helps. Trouble is a dead NPC is listed as dead in your game.

Reloading a previous save before said person died is the better way of saving a NPC or a quest. A dead NPC won't get your quest to continue whether you resurrect them or not.

But it is your game, hope this helps

[Hypertext Eye]

Originally posted by Eternie:

I'd suggest going to the UESP skyrim SE site and type in the dead persons name so that you get that persons page which will list their Ref ID and their base ID

Does UESP have ID's for Beyond Reach characters?

The console search function usually only lists their base ID and not the Ref ID you want.

Yeah, console search has never given me a Ref ID.

[Death Approaches]

no of course not, neither of those. when looking for a dead NPC you don't know where you killed or if it's been cleaned up yet anyway, there's only really one trick I know, textual save.

go indoors somwhere small, any random house, store, whatever, just a small cell. open the console do 'save textsave 1' and it'll dump a text file savefile. (they can be huge and take a while to write, so be patient)

when it finishes up it'll open whatever text editor you have set to default, search for the name... it'll be at least the 2nd instance but maybe more... it goes baseID, then any quests or items or whatever might have the same name, then ACHRs, which is where your corpse will be, near the bottom of the file, about 80-90% near the end.

say you were looking to find J'zargo.. you find him once, 0001c195, find again, it finds reference to his flame scroll testing quest, but find again, and another bare "J'zargo" is found - 0001c1a3, that's the RefID you need.

whether or not it'll work mostly depends on if they have an ondeath trigger attached if you can do that or not, if they're quest givers that's common, because you usually redirect their tasks to someone still among the living, so bringing them back won't always work, and you certainly can't spawn a new copy, they'll be dumb and quest-less, it'll be that NPC, but none of the definitions attached that make them the person you want.

all you can do is try... so tab back to the game window, 'player.moveto <RefID>' and cross your fingers before your 'disable', 'resurrect', and 'enable' trinity.

[Eternie]

I know years ago with a friend we searched and found in the Oblivion SKSE form Data (?) there was a console command to show the Ref ID of a base ID with something like GiveREF at the time it didn't work for Skyrim so I assumed it was a generic thing for Oblivion, but who knows.

Generally if I want a characters REF ID I load a save in which I know I'm close to that character so I can go and click on them in game (with Console ) to get their ref ID then reloading current save, the Ref ID will stay in console through the loading screen as long as you haven't clicked on anything else. Obviously note the ref ID so you know it and can use Prid (ref ID ) enter then Moveto player enter to bring them to you.

[smr1957]

But, of course, the bottom line is, if they are a unique NPC, and they are dead, then they are dead forever as far as the game is concerned - and you need to roll back to a save made before they died. Resurrection does not work in that situation and never has, but just usually causes further issues down the road.