Do emptied loot chests at Dragon Lairs respawn new content over time?
Do emptied loot chests at Dragon Lairs respawn new content over time?
If you go to where a dragon is, and kill the dragon, get the word wall, and empty the chest, you are done there. Later on, I do not know how long, but you happen to go back to that same spot, a dragon will have re-spawned, and you can kill it, but there will be no dragon soul. The dragon will not burst into flames, but the dragon will have plunder on it. The word wall will not give another word, but the chest will often re-spawn with plunder.
A dragon priest lair will not re-spawn the plunder in a chest, but I have had the dungeon itself re-spawn. There are enemies and depending on ones level, they will be harder and there could be more deathlords than before. I do not remember if the dragon priest itself re-spawns, but I do know the dungeon does.
Normal chests respawn in 30 days, but the dragon treasure chests don't. I don't believe the main treaure chest in most bandit and draugr dungeons respawn either. The bandits and draugr usually do respawn though, and I've killed secondary dragons at walls and always gotten a soul. I believe that named dragons don't respawn though...
The chests do respawn after some time, I don't know how long though.
But something I discovered was that many different things would not respawn in a play through where I completely refrained from using any kind of fast travel.
Here's an experiment I made: I loaded an old savegame and went to one of the Dragon Lairs I had cleared. I checked the chest, and it only had two items in it (a pair of gauntlets that I probably left cause I didn't want them). When I visited the same place in one of my recent saves, the chest had new contents (including gold).
Correct, 30 days for a cleared place, 10 days for a non-cleared place.
Nope, it's just related to time passed.
I have my dragon chests respawning, but then again, I use official patches, so maybe they changed that. :s