Have you ever had weapons or shields disappear in thick grass or brush after killing an enemy? Don't you hate that? what I think would be cool, if they could do it, would be to have some sort of spell to detect an object that isn't part of the scenery--sort of like the detect life spell. I don't know if that's even possible, but it's just an idea... What do you think? Your views are valuable and welcome!

In Morrowind you had detect key and I think detect enchantment (little circle in your local map). They were pretty useful because you actually had to search for things in that game, not just have waypoints tell where what your looking for is. I would very much like to see them return in some form.

Morrowind had a similar spell (only for keys and enchanted items tho).

In Oblivion there is a certain magic you can do when an item gets lost in the grass. Lower the grass distance slider. :read:

God, yes. I especially hated when you were on a hill or something and item slid to god knows where. Maybe not even a spell, I know some games would highlight items it you pressed shift or tab.

Not sure.... I can see why this would be convenient for the situations you mention. But it seems like a somewhat clunky way of solving that problem. After all, why would a spell tell you where an iron arrow is? At least with Detect Life, I can come up with some sort of explanation: you are picking up on the creature's "life force" or whatever (the same thing you trap in a soul gem if you use Soul Trap). So, extending that a little, I can see that this sort of spell would make sense for enchanted items - you are picking up on the magical energies or whatever in the item.

But for generic items? Not sure how to make sense of that. And, no, I don't think "well, it is magic, after all" is sufficient. That's just giving a cheap label to hide a lack of acceptable rationalisation.

So here might be some other ways to solve this problem. Perhaps with the in-game physics, you could use a spell which "blows up" everything nearby, and this will throw anything on the ground nearby into the air. So anything hidden might move to somewhere where it's easier to spot. :shrug:

Fallout 3 had a good solution, the dropped items was in the inventory list of the body. yes it's a litle unrealistic if you see the weapon fall of a cliff but unlike real life you can not push aside grass to look and you can kneel down and get things under a table

Even FONV had a kind of logic to this. Boone the sniper would act as a spotter and highlight potential targets when you aimed. Rex the cyberdog would sniff out chems and highlight locations where these were hidden. In TES, life form would be ok, as would magic detection. But generic items? Probably better to do it the FONV way, even if they lost their weapon, it would still show up in their inventory. Heat (infrared) vision, as some kind of daedra vision (?), to detect cooling down bodies? Dunno, feasible I guess and nice for the variation, but not strictly needed.

Well on Xbox I sold Hircine's Ring to some shop-keeper accidentally and could never find it again.

But yeah maybe you could start off with a detect spell and that levels up to detect items (glow based on how much they're worth), and detect life.

A detect enchantment spell could be interesting. It wouldn't help find normal weapons and all those arrows that bounced of the enemy, but at least there would be logic to it. Perhaps it could even over a short range let you see that the guy comming for you has an enchanted sword (or other object) becuase it would be lit up the same way.

You are a great hunter! But a poor trader... :violin:

This is exactly why I save game like every time I make more than 20 steps... bliviongate:

Daggerfall have Detect nearest magic item Detect nearest treasure pile
Morrowind have Detect Enchantment, Detect Key
Oblivion have Midas Magic and some others mod since developers make vanila Oblivion too simplified.

I always wanted a summon pillaging mob spell that would summon say 8 small little hyperactive thingies that would run around collecting everything not nailed down and then run up to me and fall apart leaving the items behind in piles of leaves or twigs. Mainly because im lazy but also because whats the fun of summoning if you cant have minions to do the work for you. Summon beer forager.. forager runs off.. 3 hours later he comes back drunk and carting a half full keg of beer... summon pie gatherer... 4 hours later.. you see your pie gatherer running toward you followed by an angry mob of old ladies... EEEEEEEEEK!!!!

Undead have "Life force"? I think we could refer it to soul force.

:fallout: 3 had a good way of being able to get the weapons off them by when u kill them the weapon stayed on them even if the weapon was in another world...hopefully it will be passed on

Off topic: it was crazy in Morrowind, the shop keepers would equip most items you sold them, so unless you killed them it'd be gone for good.

On topic: Rex's spot perk was great, Dogmeat's fetch was great.
I used to take the tower BS in Morrowind all the time for the detect ability, even if finding keys on shelves and on tomb walls was a nightmare.
I've yet to use the particular spell, but I think LAME adds quite a few spells to mark objects / bodies that the physics / grass make disapear.

So it's not impossible to do, and would boost non combat spell lists for more role based players to create a specific Diviner / mysticism build even if that school has been removed.

sure, as long as it has a short radius, kinda spoils the fun being able at log range to see where loots lays around.

I think it's possible but very unlikely, as such spells are like spears and crossbows. Which is to say, we had them in Morrowind then they got removed, and we know how that sort of thing goes.

Bring back 'Beggars Nose'! The detect Life/Key/Enchantment spells were useful in Morrowind and I would like to see a return.

I approve of this spell idea.

Case Closed.

It would be better to not have it drop at all and instead just be put in your inventory as broken where it wont have any damage effects until you repair it from a blacksmith. And not be able to repair it yourself only from a blacksmith. So tiered of the Knights of the Oder knocking my weapons out of my hands lol I spend more time frantically searching the grass and trying to avoid them instead of actually fighting them.

I always had that happen, too. and it was REALLY upsetting the one time it happened when I was using Dawnfang/Duskfang and I looked that place over sooo many times but never found it again....*exhales incredibly disappointed sigh* One of my favorite weapons, disappeared into thin air and gone forever...Such a tragedy.

Maybe there can be spells for detecting different types of objects, like weapons, armor, or misc.

Newer run into that in Oblivion, if you take condition down to 0 it stays in your inventory. However enemies throwing away weapons then you kill them is a problem.