I've been playing Skyrim since day 1, and the game as we all have experienced can take awhile to load sometimes. Skyrim is a huge game after all. But then I noticed one day the giant amounts of useless items in a cave. No big deal, I thought. I left, and continued adventuring. Then I went in a draugr ruin, and noticed more uneeded amounts of items. I remembered the draugr ruins I had just entered took a little longer to load than most, and it wasn't any bigger than the average sized ruin. So I figured it was due to all the useless items inside making loadtimes a bit longer. So since then, I decided to observe the places I went into to see just how much useless junk is thrown in there.

The items I am referring to are:
Tankards
Linen Wraps (I despise these things)

These are just the items I noticed were dumped in areas in such a quantity that has me wondering what the point of having so many of them is?

If I'm not mistaken, neither item serves any purpose to the player. (Has a use) I get why they are there, but I do not understand why a draugr ruin has to have 100 linen wraps in it? Or a fort has to have 50 tankards in it?

It doesn't bother me when it is a big fort with a dozen people, but in some areas it is like Bethesda went overboard with the useless junk.

There are quite a few items that the numbers could be cut, in my mind, by a lot.

Can anyone else relate to my problem? I feel as though the over abundance of items is what kills this game as far as loading sometimes. And what items out there do any of you feel have too much quantity?

Where are my calipers!!! I really miss them

Ugh don't get me started on all the friggin embalming tools.

Aren't there a few sets of calipers in Skyrim?

II believe you might be referring to " tongs". They look similar to calipers. All of the calipers that I used to have are in The Shivering Isles.

It's just a quirk of the loot tables, I believe.

So you want all items to have a use? Their use is filling up the world. If you look at Oblivion to Skyrim it seems they removed many clutter items already

I don't think they are useless. They give the world more realism. Just because something is there doesn't mean that the player must be able to use it.

Besides that a lot of these "useless" things have been used in mods. Linen for example is used in quite a few custom armours.

If you don't want them, don't take them....simple. This isn't a game where you need to collect every item.

Its a tradition since Morrowind to have as much as possible moveable and pick up able, quite alot of item in the game are just set dressing that you can pick up.

Ok so many of you have obviously misunderstood.

It doesn't bother me that they are useless, it's the fact that there are so many of them stuffed into a "dungeon" that it seems overdone. Too much. Overkill.

How many items need to be stuffed into one cave? Those 2 mentioned items are just 2 out of a handful of things that seem to be overkilled in some areas.

As far as mods goes, I'm on a 360, so useless to me.

And wtf "If you don't want them, don't take them....simple. This isn't a game where you need to collect every item."

who said anything about collecting them? I don't even pick up valuable swords/shields/armor.

it is the blatant fact that there are 100 linen wraps in dungeon ____ which was overkill and instead of wasting time adding tons of tankards and linens and useless things they could have made the dungeon a little more unique.

(and not all dungeons are similar. But there could have been more time spent on some)

They would've had meaning if the devs weren't held to such a BS deadline. But the suits in corporate get what they want in the end. Luckily on PC mods make use of these things. Like linen wraps actually used to make clothes. Since no one has YET to make a embalming tools to make lockpicks mod I'll have to do that myself...

EDIT: What I really miss is the DIVERSITY of the useless items. Back in OBV rich characters had gold plates and cups and carafes. It was a joy to rob chapels that indulged in luxury, as to show them a lesson. But in this game? Everyone's got the same dull appliances. Which is fitting of course. There's a civil war on in a somewhat poor country of barbarians. But still...some "rich" homes would've been nice. Would have been special to come across the rare opulent abode. (This is actually shown in Riften though so I have to give credit where credit is due. Riften's Jarlhouse is the nicest looking one besides Dragonreach obviously because the Jarl there is corrupt and taking bribes. I just wish there was MORE examples of such overt lushness)

The "Useless items" are clutter from a World in which people have lived and have needed to undertake task which seem menial to have lived.

Being able to interact with the clutter is great, you get to decorate your in game personal space. You get to collect calipers, or skulls, or plates, or cooking pans. It allows development of you within the game, it allows a freedom to play not just the game but play within the game world.

Early Elder Scrolls games had less clutter and not much in the way of having personal space you could decorate. You could buy houses and ships in Daggerfall, but you could not put a Statue of Dibella in all her glory near the front door. The Sand Box freedom in the last three ES games has been great for game playing rather than just getting through questing.

This is true. BUT my point of the overkill items is the fact that instead of wasting time placing "useless" items in Skyrim, they could have spent that time else where. And it isn't always the "useless" items. Books, silverware, weapons, food, etc can be overdone at times. For instance, alcohol, in some place can net ypu 1000g easy if you took the time to pick them all up. Now i'm not referring to any meaderies either. I literally walked into some dungeon and found enough mead to throw an excellent party, yet no one there to drink it. It just says "overkill" to me.

ok now how many statues of dibella are in game vs linen wraps? How many people, who have not modded them, have used linen wraps to decorate their home? Collected? Maybe a few, but the amount of them in game is too much. Tankards... really? Ok no offense but if you're collecting tankards you might want to get off Skyrim.

And if they had taken the time to add more statues (other gods, talos, etc) into the game or other cool items for the house then I might not have as big a deal with it. But when there is so much left undone and stories that fell short I get a little sad. Then I see how much time was wasted individually placing tankards, platters, linen wraps, etc it makes me mad because there is so much more they could've invested in.

Actually . . . I'm having the opposite problem. I find the lack of clutter in the world kind of disturbing at times!

But do you want them to add more items like tankards and linen wraps?

Or items that seem to be lacking in the game? I'd prefer more things like more decorative items, more statues, etc.

The clutter isn't bad, it is just the fact it's all the same few items.

Ahh, now I see what you're getting at. More variety in my clutter would of course be nice. I can only collect so many linen wraps!

You act as though them placing tankards in the dungeons took alot of time away from creating the game...

Besides, why wouldn't there be linen wraps everywhere in ancient nord dungeons? They buried the dead there after all, mummified them and everything. I'd rather have clutter than empty dungeons full of nothing but Draugr.

I still vividly remembe the surprise when I entered the Seyda Need census and excise office in Morrowind. A world so much alive! Plenty of things around with which I could interact. No longer the static, semi void world of past RPGs.

Indeed.

So embalming tools and linen wraps are all they had?

and yes if you take the time to individually place all those items, tankards/linen wraps/etc, then it obviously occupies someone's time and effort.

Again I'm not saying removing 100% I'm saying LESS of the same items and more variety. And not just 100 different things in a dungeon, an appropriate amount of things per dungeon area.

Honestly the linen wraps are the most useless item in game...

I like to watch all the junk fly around when Dawnbreaker perks. Other than that I could care less about it. Junk is junk. It's just there. I don't care how or why as long as it doesn't bog the game down.

I feel like sometimes the high overkill amounts of items do slow down loading times and cause lag

I use dawnbreaker and when its perk goes of in a cluttered room the game nearly crashes haha

The clutter is there so that Unrelenting Force looks cooler. You shout, random objects placed in the room react accordingly. Totally worth the nonexistent FPS loss.

nonexistent?

I don't think you read the OP...

Whenever I play a Bioware game like DA:O, I am always struck by how empty and sterile the environments are. There is zero clutter. If the PC cannot sell it, or kill someone with it, it literally does not exist. It makes the world seem not only bland, but startlingly fake. Then I go back to the ES games, that are packed to the brim with empty wine bottles, bathroom buckets with potions of true shot beside them, food piled up on the tables, shoes beside the bed, and a zillion other things. That is a world I can believe is real, where people actually live. Clutter is simply what makes an immersive game world.