Ok, so I fast travel to a town just so that I can get to a quest location faster and inevitably a dragon attacks the town. I kill the dragon but of course it has already killed multiple people in the town before the deed is done.

What happens with those characters? Do they ever come back, are they replaced? Am I wasting my time running around and using the resurrect console command so that I don't lose a blacksmith or quest forever?

Named characters never respawn, as far as I know. I've never had a merchant come back on any of my files.

They never come back ALL of Windhelm's merchants at the stalls exept the high elf lady have died.

Unless they are triggered to respawn, then no. In my opinion, that's a design flaw.

Not unless you like zombies.

Some of the merchants will be replaced by somebody else but not many.
The unwalled towns are particularly vulnerable to dragons but they can attack walled cities as well.
A good trick is to fast travel to somewhere near to the city then do the last bit of the journey the slow way. That way if you are due a dragon attack it shouldn't take out anybody important.

So then, running around cheating with "resurrect" is the best option? *sigh* This just makes me hate to travel to towns now.

That's great advice, I think I'll use that from now on.

The only NPCs that are 'replaced' are guards. And, unless it was fixed in a patch, resurrecting NPCs via console only brings them back graphically - they don't resume their roles as merchants and/or quest-givers.

If you want to visit the dead NPCs you can use a console command to transport yourself to the clean-up cell.

The ones I resurrected seem to have resumed their roles. I was able to buy from one of the three dead.

Is there something else I can do? Perhaps a way to make them invincible or something?

They may have fixed it in a patch - I hate you PCers a little more now.

I think you can set them to essential. I've heard you can clear essential tags so I'm assuming it goes the other way, too.

I'm not entirely sure, it was one of those twin brothers in Falkreath. Can someone else confirm? They definitely walk around talk. Both brothers were in the same store. So if that's not supposed to happen then it is fixed.

If it makes you feel any better, I was a ps3 player until I finally got finished my pc a month ago. So I know your pain.

Anyone got the phrase to use to do that?

Use the resurrect 1 command. Adding the one puts them back in the game as they were. You can also make NPCs essential with setessential 1 if you have their base ID.

Someone posted this in reference to Lydia: setessential a2c8e 1

I'm assuming the "a2c8e 1" is Lydia - I think UESP has the codes for each NPC.

Ah, I think I recall reading that somewhere. I assume that setessential works fine if I just mouse click them, right?

What of the ones I've already raised? Do I just run that on them again or should I kill them?

a2c8e is Lydia, the 1 is likely a setting.

Nope, if you click them you get a reference ID, not their base ID. Alas, I got so frustrated with losing NPCs in Oblivion I went through and made every NPC who travels or lives outside a city wall, or goes anywhere essential, and it took weeks to find all of the right base IDs and type them in (there was a LOT of them). You can use 'help' in the console to search an NPCs name and bring up the ID.

Edit: The 1 means essential, if you search the NPC and they already have a 1 then they are already essential. 0 (Zero) is non-essential.

Alas, if you have resurrected a dead NPC without the 1 the game will probably think of them as dead, and other NPCs will no longer treat them as alive. I don't think you can fix this unless you load up an old save.

1 is essential
0 is nonessential

When the NPCs die, they seem to go to that weird cross-shaped room that some people have posted about.

So you couldn't, say, kill them again and then resurrect 1 later? I don't know what happens after their body has been cleaned up. If they magically appear or what.

Resurrect 1 works fine with the reference id, right?

That seriously sounds creepy.

NPC "heaven" is like if Stanley Kubrick designed hell then Willy Wonka came and vomited all over it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZFTA-P0rxA

I've gone to that room myself, but I never tried using resurrect on them and trying to teleport them to the outside world. Mostly because I'd also have to leave and the place appears to be an Escher-like hellscape. I'll try it now though, because I'm curious.

To put a recently dead NPC back in the game as 'themselves', you need the command: resurrect [base ID] 1

A reference ID, or clicking the NPC will not work.

You could experiment with NPCs you resurrected without the '1', but I think DiD for NPCs. Maybe try disabling them and then re-enabling them? Enable should bring back AI, but I think it's not AI that is missing when something dies. It's more how the game treats them. If you know any NPC you have resurrected follow them for a bit and see if other NPCs speak to them or about them. See if any of their relatives have any dialogue referring to them being dead. The only real problem you may encounter is if the NPC is specific to a quest.

Thanks, you just caused my next nightmare.

Thanks for all the responses. I appreciate it. Guess I better start learning base IDs now... (sigh)

Apparently my game would rather crash forever than go back to that weird tye-dye prison, or it's since become inaccessible. Tried teleporting myself to quite a few dead NPCs via console but the game crashed over and over. I haven't killed any named NPCs lately so I couldn't think of ones aside from those that've been dead for months, so that could be an issue.

Since fast-traveling tends to encourage dragons, I never fast-travel to a town. I choose a place near the town and then walk the rest of the way. I don't fast-travel all that much so I don't get all that many dragons...just enough and I don't have to do the resurrect NPC thing.

This is why it svcks to be a werewolf most of all.