I have been to a few dungeons and come across bandits and forsworn that, when I kill them, the corpse will literally disappear, immediately.

A few times, while searching for them, my cursor will light up with the option to loot the corpse, but they are not visible.

I've experienced this quite a few times (Five of the previous twenty or so kills), and am unsure if it has been previously reported.

I am running a 1st Gen 80gb PS3, without sony's 4.0 patch. Skyrim is at patch 1.3. (although I've experienced this with patch 1.2 as well).


Has anyone else had a corpse disappear immediately?

Yes. I started seeing this after patch 1.3 I'd go back after a fight to loot a corpse and they would be gone instantly. I wonder if they're getting stuck in the ground or something.

Yah but not that often. It wasn't game breaking and in one instance it was becuase a dragon crash landed into the forsworn, which was quite handy because two hits later and the Ancient Dragon was dead too. Anyway, didn't stop me looting the corpse, just had to search for it.

They have been doing it to me for the past few days ? So I try to loot them before I move on ! During the empire quests they vanished quick sometimes before I could get to them !! And that was most of them. A few remained but not very many.

Try loading from a save just and I mean just before a major encounter like that and make sure you reboot and reload. Then start up the save and perform the quest. Let be know what happens. If they last longer its just more proof of bottled up memory not being reallocated to the resource pool. Doesn't help you immediately any of this, but does help in the long run.,

I've had a similar issue. When I deliver the final blow I see them fall and phase into the ground.

Drop bears...

I would believe that if I hadn't just loaded a save, walked 1 flight of stairs and killed the briar heart, after my PS3 was completely off for 8 hours. The time from system start to vanishing kill was less than 10 minutes. There was also a frost troll present, which I killed immediately before the briar heart, and it did not fade away immediately after dying. After securing the pommel from the dungeon, the frost troll's corpse was still there, on my way out of the dungeon - Briar heart nowhere to be found. I believe he disappeared through some temple stairs.


That describes my issue exactly.

Does this happen to all killed NPCs? The map doesn't necessarily assure to drop items/characters "on" the ground. For example right before the big tree in Whiterun, I am repeatably able to drop items "under the surface". Nonetheless, knowing where they dropped I can still pick them up again.

Yes , I've had this happen too , but mine seems to be related to what I've taken to calling the Rocket Effect on my flame enchanted bow .
About 50 % of the time with humans , and 100 % of the time with small animals , when I shoot them , they achieve liftoff . I'm not talknig a little bit either , I've seen bandits shoot 50 to 100 feet into the air instantly , almost like what happens when hit with a giants club .
Any time I'm dungeon diving with that bow , if I shoot someone who is close to a wall , there is no body . If they don't have at least 30 feet or more of free space behind them , they get shot through the wall .

i had this happen yesterday on the silverhand quest, dead guy disappeared in front of my eyes killed him maybe 10 sec b4

This happened to me once. I shot an undead with my double-fireball ... well, right through the wall he was standing in front of. Just his dropped weapon was left on the ground.

I've noticed this as well. Seems they thought that making corpses dissapear quicker would help the stability/framerate issues. All its done is prevent us from looting them.

Its an old story with Bethesda. Partially fix one thing by nerfing/breaking something else.

Not all - about five of my previous 20 kills. It has happened in various locations, but three of the 20 have happened at the dungeon for the Pommel. The pertinent info is in my OP.

I've experienced this in patch 1.2. I've only recently updated to patch 1.3, in fact to deal with this specific Briar heart (A few one shots due to the magic resistance bug made me go for the update).
The 1.3 patch, it is reported, increased (made longer) some reset timers... This is happening instantaneously after the kill (non-enchanted one handed sword).

I could reload the save, kill him again but I'm sure the error would not reproduce, as it is occurring randomly for me.

Ya my bow can now lift a man or animale right off the ground when hit !! Very cool !!!!

Odd I noticed this yesterday as well. I thought it might be specific to the missions I was doing. I was "attacking fort greewall" for the legion. Every Stormclock I killed almost instantly disappeared. I kinda figured it was because there were about 100 of them or so to kill in that mission and it would have been too much npc nonsense to deal with.
Ive killed a few bears and other trail animals and they did not immediately disappear.
The dragon I killed in the city of Solitude did not vanish either.

I had noticed this too after updating but i was in a dungeon at the time and had got a 2xdamage sneak attack on the guy so at first i put it down to the extra damage. He also hit a wall a few feet behind him so did'nt go too far.

As i write this i'm doing the battle for Whiterun with my new character and i'm using firebolt and lightning bolt so i can confirm magic projectiles have the same effect. Every single guy i kill flies at least 20 feet through the air.
Arrows fired from NPC's also have this effect. While it looks a bit stupid to have people flying through the air left, right and centre, it also looks pretty cool! I actually hope they don't "fix" this.

LOL ~ Ya me too !!! I really like it when a guard is charging and you hit him and he folds and flies back wards !!!! Makes me want tot use my bow more !!

I saw this happen after 1.2 came through. I've only been able to verify a disappearance twice (one happened in a heavily wooded area and may have just been due to obscured vision).

I noticed this to at first I thought it was extremely funny but now it's just friggin annoying.

But do they disappear? If they don't, I don't see how it's relevant to the topic.

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

In the Whiterun battle for instance, i'm starting to think that the bodies disappearing was in direct relation to the amount of characters on the screen or the amount of action happening at once.
There was never more than 6-7 enemies attacking at once and including my character there was around 9 or so guys on my side. At the start of a clashes with groups of enemies the bodies would disappear before my eyes, sometimes AFTER i had pressed the button to loot them. As for the guys that were flying through the air, i could'nt see what became of all of them but i did see some disappear and one disappeared before he touched the ground, while he was still tumbling through the air.

Another kill disappeared. This time, a Dremora at the temple of Mehrunes Dagon.

He disappeared as he fell backward onto the stairs leading to the temple doors. I was able to find him, and able to drag his (invisible) corpse to the altar infront of the stairs. He remained invisible.

I get a kick out of killing enemies when they are sleeping. They always fall through the floor.

They'll appear again later if they clip through the floor I think. I've had stuff fall out of the sky at random when I'm running around and its actually pretty hilarious.