I've got a rather rocky coast line, and it's actually fairly well terraced. I set up path grids to keep creatures from getting lost or stuck, but it seems to be having the opposite effect.

I attempted to set up "trails" that I new creatures wouldn't get stuck in. They are broad, fairly free of statics (nothing that they can't jump over/step on), and straight. However, it seems that as soon as I enter combat, they immediately head for the nearest tree, and start making circles around it?

I've also got a bear cave that worked fine - until I put in the path grid for the cell. Now the bear can't get out of his den - he just keeps oscillating back and forth. I suspect his may be due to the fact that the rear of his den is actually in another cell, so I'm going to try moving him forward just over the cell line and see if that fixes him.

Is there a "path grids for dummies" guide anywhere?

Thanks!

That is an unexpected outcome of using pathgrids. I am going to guess that the granularity of your grid is too coarse (nodes too spread out) for the AIWander distance of the creatures' AI. If there wander distance cannot reach the nearest node they may reverse direction and return to the node they left making it appear they are 'on patrol'. You might increase the density of your pathgrid nodes (making them closer together) and/or increase the AIWander distance for the affected creatures, and see if that helps your situation.

I am not aware of a formal tutorial on pathgrids. It is one of the least documented aspects of the construction set, but a search of this forum should turn up some older, useful threads.

Hmm, you may be right. I used a default starting grid of 1024, and my bears are set up with a ai distance of 512. I'll probably have to do a bit of both - but since I want the bears to wander, I'll start with setting their ai distance to 1024 and see if that helps.

Yes, but there isn't much to say about them.
http://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/?p=modding_data/tutorials§ion=202276