I know for sure that during one of the loading screens, it said that I shouldn't leave my stuff in containers outside of purchased homes, but I wondered if it's possible to "own" a place other than that like caves or forts if I clear them out. But I wonder if bandits or any NPCs would come back to infest the places again like in Oblivion.

Caves respawn with mobs from what i have seen.

Guilds And owned homes has chests that never steal your loot. Without a mod I would never leave stuff in cave or fort. Don't know if there is quest but I doubt it.

Alright, thanks. I wonder if Forts would be better than caves, then?

Maybe I can experiment and see if there's a place (or possibly a glitch) where no NPCs would ever loot/steal my stuff. I can try leaving a few unimportant, non-valuable stuff in one of the forts and come back to check on it once a while to see if it's still there.

I want a cave

Cheers!

Nope. Guilds and Purchased homes are the only locations that do not respawn. Anything outside of those will respawn after roughly a month of in-game time, and anything you have stored in containers or those caves/forts will disappear when they respawn. And no, its not respawn after 1 month of absence, its 1 month after you clear the cave. Sorry. Without the CK adding in more owned places, you are very limited in your choice of storage.


EDIT: Bird, its not NPCs looting your stuff you have to worry about, its the game replacing everything with new loot-filled containers.

Forts seem to respawn also, i just checked some of the forts i cleared, full of bandits again

Quoted the wrong message

Alright, gotcha. I understand, thanks. I'm on a console, so I'll just have to wait until people have created enough mods for me to jump on the PC to enjoy living in places other than purchased homes.

It's possible you're taking him too literally. He might be speaking of looting in a "roleplaying" sense.

But what you could do is clear a fort/hideout, then make it your place for something like 3 weeks, and then clear a new place that you like and move there. Right?

As with a lot of things in this game. I'm sure they will be a mod for this eventually.

In theory. In practice, Ive seen things disappear much quicker than the 1 month respawn period. 2 Fast Travels to be precise.