Okay, riddle me this:
Suddenly, some dead NPCs are no longer lootable.
Here's what I discovered:
Level 52 character.
Looked down, couldn't activate a bandit I just killed. Checked the console, NPC had no name at all. Just base ID and Ref ID.
Started a new game, with the same mods, same problem.
verified game cache, recleaned Update, DG, HF, and DB.esm. Reinstalled major mods. Re-patched all proccers.
Checked all mods and patches for updates.
Googled everything I could think of.
Started unchecking mods, got to EBD (fortunately nearly last of the load order) and names came back and bodies became lootable.
Checked the EBD esp in xEdit, discovered some, but not all, names of NPCs did not carry over. They were blank and the blank was overwriting the name, no matter whether it was from a game esm or a mod.
RTFM. Googled some more. Left EBD out of my load order and came to make this topic.
Problem NPCs seem random, but include too many leveled NPCs to just manually carry the names over in xEdit. Also random townsfolk (Belethor, for instance) are affected.
Is there a field that EBD changes that prevents names from being carried over during patching? Height maybe? I mention it because I just recently started messing with altering the minimums of race heights.
P.S. I use Mod Organizer so my game is a bit more stable with updates and patches than it used to be.