I'm a level 25 sniper. When I browse around in the wasteland I often stand and hit 'Q' to see early if there are any enemies or aggressive animals around me. When I spot some by VATS I immediately kill 'em with my 'instigating' sniper rifle. After some kills the problem occours very often that I don't find the dead bodies again which I want to loot.

The main problem for me is, it is hard to determine the distance through the scope to the now dead target. Especially at night I don't find the dead bodies again. Yesterday I killed some Molerats in the north of Sanctuary. I could not loot them as I did not find all. It is a pity. What makes the problem even worse is when a dead body fells down a slope.

This is a point I ask Bethesda to do something. Any ideas of the forum to solve this problem?

Ah yes the biggest problem with "long distance relationships". I wouldn't expect beth to do much so that leaves you with a few options off the top off my head. Close the distance before you reach out and touch someone. Use some sort of landmark in conjunction with your target to locate their body. Of you're on PC perhaps there's a mod that highlights lootable corpses. All I can think of at the moment.

If you stop using VATS you would mostly not have this problem. You simply can't orient yourself playing like that.

Right. If I don't use VATS any more I won't have such problems.....because I don't get it if enemies appear.

BTW you should not use VATS for far distant enemies, because the accuracy is too bad in VATS. I hit with my sniper rifle every time if I use my scope, only. Perhaps I additionally press the ALT-Button to improve accuracy further, but VATS is useless for far distant enemies.

#LOL#

Yes, I am on PC. I will look for that mod. Thank you.

When i loose track of corpses i usually go into 3rd person view to get a top down view of the area the best I can. It usually helps, though it is still a pain

If it's outdoors, you can also open the console and enter 'tg'. This will toggle the rendering of grass, which might obscure the corpse.

Still, it's only a corpse. Losing one now and again is hardly anything to worry about.

Bring Dogmeat with you. Call him over and ask him to look for weapons, then follow him. Hopefully the weapons he finds will be near the corpses you just created. That's the best idea I can come up with. I don't think he has an option to look for "recently deceased persons" which would be ideal in your situation.

VATS sniping is fine, my accuracy is 100% if I use a critical (which I always do for headshot snipes). 2 tips to help the OP:

1) When you get the target come out of VATS and zoom in, the SS will have orientated themselves towards the target so should be easy to see where they are

2) Use a critical - The animation associated with it often follows the corpse for a time, helping you see where it has gone

I generally only use vats for seeing if there is anything out there, do a quick click, if it doesnt zoom in on something move on. If it does, I get out of vats and snipr them normally.


I also use vats for bloodbugs and bloatflies becuase I have a hell of a time getting a good shot off when they are up close. But other than that, vats just makes the gameplay kinda weird. If I wanted to play in (sort of) turnbased style, id play another game.


Edit: the whole reason I even posted. This happened to me last night on a legendary ghoul, did not occur to me to use dogmeat to find corpses though(or what they were carrying). Thats a good idea.

If you know the general area of thew corpse, use 'TWF' (toggle wire frame). Corpses are usually higher res than terrain and can be spotted fairly easily.

Also make a habit of staying in scope view after the shot and noting the position of the corpse, especially if they fall off high things.

Im on ps4, is that a pc only feature?

Like people already said, try not to use VATS for sniping and switch to 3rd person view to get a better look at the area were the kill was made.

if only they would sparkle

Seriously, I lost the Skeleton Key in Oblivion. I was out in the heights, accidentally dropped it and couldn't find it again among all the heather, even after searching the area for an hour. Talk about crying in your beer! I was too far ahead in the game to reload without more whining and crying, so I went back to ordinary lockpicks. I really wish you could make objects "sparkle."

It's not just sniping. If you are using close range weapons and kiting, it happens then as well. I think a perk called "6th Sense" would be helpful.

I like this suggestion. I fully agree.

Yes, it's a console command.

It seems to me that sometimes the bodies just disappear altogether. Normally I don't fuss too much, but it happened to me just last night with a Legendary enemy, depriving me of that sweet, sweet Legendary loot.

Yes I swear sometimes the bodies disappear. Many times I'll find the weapon and no body. It doesn't happen right away but if ten minutes or more has passed it happens.

Good idea! Ima try this. I've had this problem with a melee character, never mind a sniper build. If there's a lot going on and you're getting shot at its easy to lose track of who died where.

You should try looting a group of enemies that just got introduced to your explosive minigun.

Maybe this happens but I know you can knock enemies through objects. Maybe knocked em into the ground? Was running around a building with my Kremvh's Tooth and came across a power armor raider. Hit him so hard I found his body 2 floors down.

I use this mod to reveal dead bodies. It's a nightmare to find them at night in the wilderness otherwise. And yes, even then, sometimes bodies disappear.

http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/4380/?

Great answers.

But the first & most obvious tip is mental. Doesn't take a fraction to make a note of where the victim is standing.

Also, before attacking take notice of where you are in relation to the targets. As they fall, call them out to yourself.

Moving on, I'll take the Dogmeat step one further.

ANY hireling is useful by simply selecting them for orders, and using the cursor on the battlefield.

Come anywhere even close to a missing object/body and the order will change to reflect it. Works extremely well.

Even while noting at shoot time, they can later move by gravity (slide down a hill or off a building, or just down a hillock or ravine). Also, explosions can move them. And in the dark it is hard to find them once they have moved. I wouldn't wish that kind of hunt in the dark game play on anyone. It gets tedious and tiresome quickly after about the 50th time.