I started a separate http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1108665-can-you-recover-lost-items/ in the cheats forum about this, but I probably should have asked about it here.

The problem is that I left items in a chest to long and lost them when the room reset. I'd like them back in my current game.

I was thinking that it would be nice to able to load a saved game where the items were still in the chest and save all of the items in the chest to a file. Then load my current save game and read the items from the file and put them into the chest.

I don't know jack about the Construction set, but is this something that I could use it for?

No, the CS will not recognize a save game file, only an .esp or .esm one. AFAIK, what you want to do is not possible with any type of utility.

I think it may be possible, actually. Resave that old save which has the items, using the console with this command:

save items 1

Then look in the saves folder for a files called items.txt (or items.ess.txt). Open it and search for the missing items by name. In another notepad window (or on a piece of paper, if you don't have two monitors) make a note of the IDs of these items (should start with FF and be 6 hexadecimal digits after that, for a total of 8, for example FF0054AE). Load the latest save, then try using the Additem command to add them.

I don't know if it'll work but it's worth a shot.

That would probably work, but I had a lot of stuff in that chest, so manually using the additem command for the ID of each item is more than I'm willing to do.

Does the "save items" command save the things your character is carrying, or every item in the game?

Is there a way to convert an oblivion save into a human readable format? A text or XML file? If I could do that I could probably things myself.

It's just the "save" command - it makes a new savegame. The parameters are savegame name - in this case, "items" - and there's a boolean parameter after that to output the contents of the save to a text file, which is activated by having a non-zero numerical value, typically "1". Not sure if a non-numerical value would work, but "1" is the expected value so that's what we use.

Saving through console doesn't require number, just type:

save SaveGameName

or

save "Save Game Name"

if there are spaces in file name.

They want an text-file-output, so they can find the items easier.

I'm quite well versed in how it works, thanks. The way I explained it is correct. You're not wrong, but your explanation isn't relevant to this particular use of the command.

Forgot to mention, you can build a batch file with the additem commands and place it in the Oblivion folder. Still a bit of work to make the file, but then all you need to do is type one command and it adds all the items back all at once.

Hm, that's a way I hadn't thought about. But IDs starting with FF are usually RefIDs, and those won't work with additem.

Anyway, I was thinking something along the lines of using RefScope and ConScribe to output each ObjectID to a log file, then copy the IDs from the log and write a batch file for the console... FormID Finder could be used instead of RefScope, but, for this purpose, RefScope's logs would be easier to work with, I think.
I can write some more detailed instructions if needed - if this seems worth the effort. Regardless, do at least use a batch file for adding the items to your new save. It's not hard, and it'll save some time since you can just copy and paste the IDs. Instructions for that are in the Notes section http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Console_Functions.

Edit: Partially ninja'd. :ph34r:

Actually, the FF range is reserved for dynamic IDs, which can include RefIDs, especially of dropped items, but would also include FormIDs of self-enchanted items and custom potions.

Yep, you're right. Anything defined in the save itself. Need more coffee, I do.

I'm considering giving this a try.

I used the save command, but the file that got puked out is pretty intimidating. How on earth do I figure out which items are in the chest that I'm interested in?

Where'd everyone go? You guys were full of advice before. I finally decide to give this a try and everyone runs out on me.

*crickets*

I'd recommend searching the file for the name of one of the items. When you find it, the others may or may not be near it. If they're not, then take the item ID and search for that until you find 'em all grouped together. I hope they actually will be, I've never tried that before.

Alright, you're back!

I tried to do just that. Or something similar.

I knew I had Dar-Ma's diary from the Hackdirt quest in the chest. I tried to search by the ID (000280a9) I found on http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Dar-Ma%27s_Diary page. Then I tried by names. I tried "diary" and found a few things like Logren's, but not what I wanted. Searched for variations on Dar-ma's name and the most I found was a few references to the Dar-ma character.

I had some Eye of Beholden alchemy thing, but a search for "beholden" returned nothing.

Makes no sense to me. Any suggestions?

I'm gonna take a look at a similar file generated from one of my saves, and then I'll get back to you with what other advice I have.

After looking at the file, the only advice I can offer is to either reload from that save that has the items, and redo everything since (since that would be easier) or just accept that the items are lost, and continue from the later save. I could find no way to determine what was in a container, though I was able to find some containers listed.

Yeah, that file is scary, like I said. What is the point of being able to output the file to text if the text looks like that?

The brute force technique is still an option, but I hope to avoid it.

I'm not giving up on trying to retrieve my stuff. But if I can't, so be it.

Thanks.

I had to stretch the notepad window across two screens so that each entry would only take up one line. That's 3200 pixels of width (1920x1080 main monitor, 1280x1024 secondary)

There are good uses for that type of output, but this, apparently, is not one of them.

Was a lot of that stuff from mods? If not, I could do it for you if you'd upload the old save somewhere. I realize the method I suggested probably sounded pretty difficult, but, for someone who's already got it set up and knows how, it wouldn't take long at all.

Thanks for the offer, but I'm afraid quite a bit of the stuff is from mods.

I think I can probably pull this off myself. I'll probably need some hand holding, but I'll try not to be too needy.

I downloaded Refscope 2.0.2 and I will download Conscribe. What version should I get? 80c?

I haven't looked too deeply at what either of them do, but from what I did read, it looks like these mods should allow me to do what I need. I saw that Refscope has a way to inspect the contents of a container. Nice. And I guess there's a way to dump that information to a log file.

Let's start with that for now.

I'll worry about loading the data from the log file into my current save game once this step is done.

All right. Yes, 80c works fine. Installing it will add a 'Save to Log' button to RefScope's info windows. I don't remember if that's done automatically or not, but the RefScope readme should tell you how to enable logging if not.

Now, unfortunately, I don't believe there is a way to get the IDs for all items in the container at once, so you'll likely have to open the inventory window and do it one item at a time. Selecting the container and going to 'Contents' will bring up a list of all the items, but no IDs. Save that list anyway, because it includes the quantity of each item and that'll come in handy later.

Ok. I've got a big old log file with all of stuff from my container. So far so good.

Now, I'd like to try creating this batch file that will load all of that stuff into the chest in my current game.

Will this be a bunch of batch files for each item, or one big batch file with all of the stuff from that container in it? If I saw an example file, I'd probably figure out how to format it myself.

One big file will do. Write the commands just as you would in the console, one per line. Like this

player.additem 25231 1 player.additem 17829 3 player.additem 1C6CD 1