I mean, do enemies re-spawn in the 'cleared' dungeons/ holds or is it basically over at that point?

Enemies will still respawn in a cleared dungeon.

I think they respawn. Not sure on the timeline. Maybe two weeks in-game sounds right?

They do respawn, however, the default time is something stupid like 300 days. This can be edited, though.

There was a thread on this last week with decent info in it but I can't find it right now. Can anyone confirm numbers?

It's 30 days of in game time... Not too long.

its just to mark on your map that you have been there and done it once, but things will still respawn, just very, very slowly. Im not sure if some dungeons dont respawn though

Not sure about the other versions but the ps3 version takes a month for them to respawn.

I don't know if it means you either killed all of the enemies, killed the boss enemies or just got to the loot chest at the end.

Yep, that is correct. 4 weeks approximately in game time, couldnt find the article i read on it though.

Are they still the initial level or they sync with your new one?

I believe its triggered by killing the boss enemy and looting the boss chest

Certainly not really cleared as in killed everything. I was where Krosis is, found it by chance without a quest. Killed the dragon, read the shouts on the wall but RAN AWAY from Krosis.
The place shows now "cleared" on my map. I really hope I didn't broke anything like quests or chance to kill him for his mask (read about it on wiki)

It would be great if there was a timestamp added, like "cleared on 1/1/11" or some other way to tell what "cleared" actually meant.

I was making my way through a fort yesterday and when I checked the map for a second it told me I'd 'Cleared' it. Which makes no sense, because there were still plenty of enemies to take down (including the boss, whoever s/he is) and I had yet to loot all the chests. I got 'Cleared' in Bleak Barrow Falls, too, even though I was only halfway through it at the time, so finishing off everyone and thoroughly looting the place can't be what triggers it.

I've also had dungeons where I've killed every enemy and still didn't get cleared. Overall, I feel like this feature works correctly ~80% of the time. It's still nice to have, but it ain't perfect.

Cleared means you finished 'the big thing at the end of the dungeon'

Sometimes this means killing the 'boss' and opening the chest, sometimes this means obtaining a shout, etc. Its the way of telling you that there is something you missed, but you can always go back in and kill everyone and find a new 'boss' and chest.

As stated even if it says 'cleared' it does not mean that there are not people to kill and the respawn time seems like a lot less than 30 in game days (unless fast traveling takes way longer than i think it does)

I have gone into the same dungeon four times and killed everyone and I don't think i've been playing for 3+ game months yet (I never sleep and don't wait very often)

I also thought it level locks the dungeon to the level range it was when you first cleared it. Is this not the case? It seems to be in my experience.

Think of it as a way for you to know you've already visited a given dungeon, so if you were wanting to roleplay a treasure hunter and you didn't want to revisit one you've already cleared, you'd know which locations to check off your list as having been "cleared" of loot and enemies, even if they respawn after not visiting for a month.

Some locations will be revisited, either because of story quest reasons, or because of the Radiant system re-using quests and quest objectives to continue giving you incentive for continuous adventuring and dungeon-delving. You could always just reason that a new gang of bandits just moved in when they found the place vacant, or that a new group of creatures found a new home to take roost in, and that the people living and traveling in that area are being harassed again and need your help once more with dealing with troublesome pests.

Because sometimes, you have to call the exterminator again because you have a bug infestation problem again in real life. Kinda like that, see?

You may, or may not, have noticed that the game actually plays a noticable sound effect when the "cleared" flag is set, so try listening out for that. Can't really describe the sound. Sort of like a sinister low, slow, booming sound.

How it's triggered seems to differ from my observations. Simply entering a particular room or area triggered it in some places, killing a boss did the trick in another, and opening the boss chest was the key in one dungeon. Avanchnzel didn't even get the flag for me, but I imagine that is because I did not enter a particular gated room near the end of the dungeon (as I don't know how to unlock the gate), and I either have the enter that area, kill all the enemies, or explore all areas of this dungeon in order for the game to mark it as "cleared".

that last one totally reminded me of clearing the spiders out of the dam mine again i swear the local guards are good enough to kil a dragon but a handful of spiders in a well lit mine nope sorry thats to hard for them.

It means this:

You were here. You defeated the enemy occupants here at one time and saw what the dungeon looks like.



That's it. Over time the dungeon will repopulate with enemies and/or if you pick up a "random quest" from bartender rumors or whatever.


It's just a note to let you know you were there before in case you were only looking for new dungeons you haven't explored yet.

That's what I was thinking. Only I wish I'd thought about it before skirting around certain sites so that a map marker wasn't added and thus leaving me uncertain about whether or not I'd visited: now I'll need to go and find them again!

Keep in mind, fast traveling takes up a lot of in-game time. If you've fast traveled across the map 20 times (we all have if we've played 40+ hours), that is long enough for the dungeons to supposedly respawn. My guess is the big boss at the end doesn't respawn still, because that's the one aspect that makes the dungeon "Cleared". Finding the loot is up to the player, but I don't believe has to be done to clear the dungeon.

This

Are you sure? I cleared out a fort near Whiterun only to find that Imperials had replaced the bandits I slaughtered when I returned a week or so later.