I am encountering annoying bug with loot lists in mods. The containers mods add only spawn the level one stuff, regardless whether the container itself is a vanilla one or added by the mod itself. I am only seeing iron and fur items and novice alchemy equipment. The leveled lists are fine, in vanilla dungeons they spawn the correct stuff.
While I was typing this I also did a brief test that indicates that the the loot in mod added containers is already determined when the mod loads for the first time rather than as usual when the player enters the area. That svcks. Is there a fix for this available?

Post your load order, obviously this is an issue with your setup.

Do these particular mods have leveled lists merged in your bashed patch? (you are using a bashed patch, aren't you?)

I have exactly the same issue, and I'd be surprised if it hadn't been discussed before. I doubt it is an issue with load order, basically non respawning and hand placed actors and containers seem to have their inventory fixed at the moment the mod they come from is installed, calculated from the player's level at that time (usually 1). Most clear examples are the various caches of loot and at Deepscorn Hollow, which always contain very low end gems and jewelry despite supposedly having leveled lists which could yield more at the player's level I first check them, and the Morag Tong assassin in Mehrunes Razor, who has the lowest level version of the armor and an iron dagger regardless of his/player's level despite his inventory being leveled lists (checked with all mods loaded in TES4edit, no mod was altering him). Running a resurrect command on him does respawn him with the right level inventory.

Yes, you are right migck, it happens with no other mods installed at all. I cannot confirm though that it is restricted to non respawning containers, I have seen Oblivion sacks that do respawn affected by it as well. When they actually do respawn their loot would probably be recalculated from the players new level, but on the first visit it is always level 1 stuff. I guess there isn't a fix for it, otherwise it would probably be known around the veterans here.

Wrye Bash's Bashed Patch merges leveled lists and does it very well, but it can't do anything about a mod that doesn't provide such a list. And it can't update a mod's own specific items. That's something each modder has to determine if they add loot.

That's a bug, if what you are describing is actually happening.

With non-respawning characters their leveled gear should be set when you first encounter them - it would then be reset when the gear respawned (certain static actors have respawning gear).

Certainly - this is not a universal bug in the Engine, or it would have been spotted years ago.

Actually it is. NPC levels are fixed to whatever the load order is at the time you install the mods. That's the entire reason Wrye Bash has a function to relevel NPCs in your saves. Mods that change their levels won't take effect, ever, without doing that.

I have a hard time understanding why hand placed loot and non-respawning containers should be an issue. They don't respawn, so obviously their levels won't update. Hand placed loot can't even be a leveled item, it has to be a manually placed REAL object. Being able to place a leveled item in the world only exists in Skyrim.

My understanding is that he is complaining about non-respawning leveled characters, not about mods that changed a fixed character's level.

It's the same difference. An NPC with the PC level flag set operates the same way. Their levels are set at the value you first encounter them in the game. With a lot of cities etc this means mostly low level NPCs. Permanently. It's something that exists within the game engine that can't be corrected with mods. You have to use Wrye Bash's function to fix that.

So, it doesn't make sense to give a non-respawning container a leveled list of any kind as inventory, since it will only yield level 1 results? That is basically the problem I encounter, and the same with a hand placed non-respawning actor, be him PC level offset or not, since his inventory is calculated from the player's level, not his. The leveled lists in their inventories aren't being calculated when the player first enters the cell where the actor or container are, but at the start of the game. Even entering their cell for the first time in two different game sessions yields the same items.

Containers and NPCs should both work the same way. The data for these is set upon encountering their references. NPC level info is baked upon first encounter, so it's reasonable to assume containers do the same thing when they aren't configured to respawn.

I would find it incredibly unlikely that the game is instantly storing the data for every container everywhere in the save at the start of the game. Do you realize how many containers that would be and how big the save would get trying to keep track of it all?

I'm basing all of this on the same logic as persistent references. Even those don't bake in until you've visited them once.

Containers set to respawn and NPCs who do the same WILL be recalculated once their new references are spawned, in case that's not clear for someone reading this.

Ok, I've ran quite a few tests, and I simply don't know what to think anymore. I'll try to explain as best as I can.

Take Vilverin, an introductory dungeon of sorts everyone surely has heard of. The bandits you find in the first level are hand placed, but otherwise they are like regular mobs: their inventory are leveled lists, they are pc level offset, they aren't persistent, and don't respawn. Well, their inventory is set as you would expect depending on the level of the player when he enters the cell. All fine.

Now, I made a mod where I copied one of those bandits into a test cell from that mod. A different reference to the very same bandit. The savegame used was of a test character at level 1 with no other mods. So I set him to level 20 and off we go.
In Vilverin, that bandit appears with elven/mithril gear. But in my test cell? Fur and iron, every single time!
And the same deal with containers, the ones in vilverin yield loot according to your level, but the ones in the test cell always level 1 loot, no matter what you set your level before entering, nor waiting for a full respawn, nor the save being clean or not from the test mod.
EDIT: of course, if I enable the mod and load a savegame clean from it where my char is at level 20, I get level 20 loot, even if I set my PC back to level 1 before entering.
What is different between the references in my mod and the ones from Oblivion.esm? Well, my mod is an .esp, whereas Oblivion.esm...
I turn my mod into an .esm and lo and behold, everything works as expected! Loot yields are correctly set the first time you enter the cell!
And the same happens if instead of NPCs and containers from Oblivion.esm I use new ones added by the mod itself.
So it seems this problem predates esp files of any kind, which icludes the official DLC. I have no idea how this could be fixed, or if it is old news fixed a long time ago somehow. Wrye Bash AFAIK what it does is update the actors' current level, or the level min/max/offset for PC offset ones, if some mod has changed them after you first encountered them.


EDIT: even more tests done. My conclusion is simple:
Any actor or container hand placed by an esp file, no matter where, has its contents determined at the moment the esp file is enabled in the savegame, depending upon the player's level at that point. For respawning references, these will have their inventory recalculated after the cell they are in resets, following the first encounter with the player. Does not affect leveled creature references since these only turn into an actor when the player first visits the cell.