That would explain certain oddities that using companion code doesn't cover; I don't use horses, though, thus my assumption it was companion code.

It sounds like you've got a better understanding of the actual programming than I do (all my exploiting knowledge has been gained from the outside of the game), but based on my experience with this game, before the patch you can keep nearly any corpse in the game around indefinitely provided that you constantly visit the cell you're keeping them in within the refresh window, or in other words, never stay away from your house longer than seven days (the corpse-refresh rate has to be less than the 10-day respawn rate, because most corpses I've tested don't stick around for that long of a window). This even applies to normally-respawning NPCs, and if the dungeon you get them from respawns, it will just do so without them, and the corpse will remain where you left it. Dungeons respawning as part of a particular mission can override this, though - lost a witch I was keeping when Deepwood Redoubt respawned for Olava the Feeble's quest (can't remember other specifics, though).

This is the crux of why patch 1.3 is so damaging - with the 1-day refresh rate in effect, it becomes virtually impossible to do this.

And I can see the replies to this now - 'Oh you're just complaining that they patched one of your precious glitches' (trust me, I heard all every iteration of that line when I first posted the problem on Gamefaqs). Well, whether or not you consider the above method an exploit, know that things have been this way since Oblivion and all the way through FO3, NV, and right up to Skyrim pre-patch 1.3; it was supposed to be a reliable system of keeping track of bodies that Bethesda has on a whim decided to drastically change.

Mobs have a refID that is tied to a cell, your thralls will still have the same refID.

That is why sometimes when you fast travel, your thralls will seemingly disappear.

However, if you know where you got your thrall, you can go back to that location and they will come running back to you still thralled, and of course since that location reset, it will bring new friends...

Cell reset is 30 days, but corpse reset is now 1 day, it used to be one week.

You can of course change this on PC, but console gamers are slaves to the patch.

So if I want to test for permanent bodies, if I visit my house within 7 days, that may throw off the test to see if the bodies are truly permanent?

I guess I want to find out what's the best way to test for thrall permanency so I can provide a list of characters for people to Thrall and they can trust that the bodies won't go "poof" on them when out exploring. There are few things more frustrating that using a Thrall as a mobile suitcase only to have your entire inventory being stored on them to disappear.

Drop the corpse off at your house.

Fast travel to Markarth to Riften or vice versa.

Go back to your house and see if corpse is still there.

I don't think that works because I tried that with one body and it was still there. I then put that body in my house and left for about 13 days. When I returned it was gone so using the Markart-Riften method would suggest it was a permanent body, while doing a longer wait would make it disappear.

Well you could wait 30 days in a sufficiently distant cell, then go back. 30 days is cell reset, which is the longest reset.

I recommend changing the timescale though, makes life easier.

Or you could change reset times with a mod.

There are two different timers at work here (technically three): the corpse timer (1 day), and the auto-reset timer (10 days), and the latter is clearing out any 'left-over' Thralls when hit. The previous corpse timer of 7 days allowed one to bypass the auto-reset timer because the Thrall code exempts them from auto-cleanup, thus making sure to visit your warehouse every couple of days would reset the Thrall timer and keep them from being eligible for cleanup. The 1.3 patch, however, reduced the Thrall timer from 7 days to 1, making it impossible to do this as spending the one day away from the warehouse means they are marked as eligible for cleanup and disappear once the 10-day limit is reached.

The third timer is the 30-day timer used for 'Cleared' areas, which is applied in lieu of the more normal 10-day one. This one is a bit harder to test against, though, as the Thralls are tied to their 'home' cell and as such are subject to the 10-day limit in most cases. Thus Blackwyrm's request for methods and/or subjects to test it with, as doing so requires a Thrall that is somehow exempt from the 10-day one.

This might already have been said, but:
What would be great, is if you could stuff them in the otherwise unused coffins in the game. Then while in the coffin, they exist forever.

Also, is Movarth any good? I checked his stats and they didn't seem as good as my Master Vampire.

I think the conjuration tree is far too limited, would like to play a necromancer but they seem so underpowered in the game.

Man, I know what you mean. Bethesda just needs to go ahead and make Necromancy it's own spell school already, they've been dancing around it since Morrowind.

A very good explanation. Just an update, I had a few of the characters I listed before, but the roommate accidentally deleted my game when loading his. I'm going to have to start over with another game to test this out. It would seem that if you can keep a Thrall "permanent" by simply visiting your warehouse/home within a 10 day window, that would probably be sufficient. What I've been finding is most bodies just disappear within the 1 day window if you leave them in your home. Eventually it would be nice to have a nice clear list of bodies that fall within each window...disappear after 1 day, 7 days, 10 days, 30 days, and permanent.

I don't know how you guts can enjoy being a necro in Skyrim. The behavior of my Thralls is so bad it's game breaking, e.g. was in a dungeon, got into a fight, then ny Bandit Chief pulls his weapon and sprints the opposite direction of the enemy. He ran all the way outside and disappeared! His Thrall spell is still under active affects, but he's gone. Really great job Bethesda!

There are so, so many cool things they could do with necromancy, and all the ideas I've read so far are good ones (I've thought up many myself over the years as well) - I think Bethesda just needs to recognize the potential to implement a full-blown necromancy playstyle; all it would take would be a few simple, reliable, and (this is key) obvious little additions to enhance the experience.

Even if a topic like this isn't enough to convince them to reverse the change made in 1.3, hopefully it would help them realize just how much people would go nuts for a necromancy playstyle, provided that they made the effort to feature it. The problem right now with it is that, even as limited as it is, nothing about the art is obvious or well-explained in Skyrim; 'why does my thrall disappear when I fast-travel?' 'Why did the body disappear when I left it behind?' 'Why do I keep getting this 'too powerful' bull ****?' It takes someone as nutty as myself and others to waste countless hours figuring out the quirks just to make it feasible...only to have a random-ass patch toss said hard-earned info on its end (rant / vent...).

It's no secret that the Dark Brotherhood and Thieve's Guild (well, definitely the DB) were among the most well-received aspects of Oblivion, and they continue to be so in Skyrim; people love to play the bad guy in an open-world game like this. So who in their wrong mind wouldn't want to play as a skull-robe-wearing, frankenstein-building, undead-army-conjuring necromancer? All it takes is for Beth to decide to implement it and feature it properly, and honestly, I think they might be on the right track - Dead Thrall in and of itself was a huuuuge step in the right direction over Oblivion.

Its always been refered to as necromancy in-game... and conjurers seperate. Sooo I don't see why not.

In all fairness, necromancers get the one master spell that is unique, powerful, versatile, magicka efficient, and the most fun.

No other master spells have that, and most of them either svck, or aren't much better than the expert level counterparts.

I'm ok with sharing it with conjuration

I'm thinking I'll wait until 1.4 to start my mass-hoarding/collecting of bodies to test for Thrall permanency. I can just imagine wasting all this time to get them only to have it undone or changed with 1.4. Let's just hope that necromancy gets fixed in an upcoming patch soon. Hopefully all the faithful necros will post in the thread discussing the upcoming patches where the Beth mods read.

dead thrall is just about the most fun and argubly most powerful spell in the game.

Re: Ulfric. Not sure if you can, but I wonder if it is like the guards. The guards scale to your level so if you are level 40 or more it would say "too powerful", if you tried to thrall a guard.

If Ulfric scales to the level you were at, when you killed him... its unlikely you could thrall him (unless you did that way earlier than I did.)

Some people said they did thrall him, in various message boards, while others said he was "too powerful", when they tried.


My current favorite is the Thalamor soldier, from the thalamor embassy. She looks spiffy in her glass armor with me, a female nord in my legendary heavy imperial armor,
and the unkillable Mjoll in her daedric. I read they cap out at level 36, making them near the thrall limit (of 40.) So I brought her home, killed her, smithed her glass
armor to legendary then double enchanted most of it for one hand fortify/fortify archery. I stuck resist shock on something else, I could not double enchant
one hand/archery on to, 74 hp on her chest piece, tossed her legendary daedric one hand sword, legendary daedric shield with 44 resist frost and 44 resist fire
and the legendary daedric bow (plus that one daedric arrow. ) Unlike Mjoll, she actually USES the daedric bow. She really GOES TO TOWN on stuff.

I'm on master diff, only had her die once because she stood like she was challenged on one of those spots that activates the wall of spikes that slams out at you.
She stood on it through several hits, then died. Then I just took all her gear, stuck it back in her corpse, then dead thrall again.

I'm mostly melee so I have to put on a couple of 29 percent conjuration fortify items just to cast dead thrall that one time, then remove them again

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I've only had her glitching inside of one cave, it was the cave that zones into the something warehouse in solitude. I could have just went the other way, into that warehouse, but I knew that once in there the guards would aggro and the thrall won't even TRY to sneak like Mjoll does. So I had to reload a save. Before trying to reload the save, I tried using that shout that is suggested if an npc won't zone out of a cave during a quest; It blew her to what looked like the zone point, but unlike it did with that NPC (for an earlier quest) she did not "zone"(instead she merrily ran back to me and said "Unnnhhh" some more.


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Anyone else have their thrall revert back to the original npcs voice sometimes? Normally she only says "Unhhh", or "must kill...." On about four occasions, she has said
stuff in the regular female thalmor voice:

"Watch it with that spell" (when I tried to heal other her the first time, which doesn't work of course"

"Watch it with that fire"(or something like that, on ONE of the millions of times I unsheathed my Daedric one hand fire/ice enchanted sword.

I think necromancy needs to be beefed up a bit, like maybe certain animal thralls (I mean if a frost ateonach can follow me around, then a bear shouldn't be a huge hassle)

And the pocketed corpses thing sounds really cool, like if you trap a soul or something, you should be able to bring the person back with any person's corpse and a soul gem. As in if I place a soul gem with Ulfric trapped onto a gaurds body and thrall it, then the corpse should morph into Ulfric or have his stats or something. (soul gems should now be named with the creature or persons name that you trapped, just so I can resurect the right guy)

Bump.

A few notes on a couple more characters that I've found to NOT be permanent so Necromancers beware...

Sebastion Lort
The Caller
Anise
Master Necromancer from Ilinalta's Deep
Dremora Kynreeve from the Black Star
Drelas from Drelas' Cabin
Master Vampire from Haemar's Shame
Vampire Mistwalker from Haemar's Shame

For each of these, I put them in Breezehome, then fast traveled around Skyrim for at least 7 days. Upon returning they were all gone. So far, the only body that has remained over 30 days was an Ascendant Necromancer from Ilinalta's Deep. I'm not exactly sure why when the other Necros from that dungeon disappeared. Could just be a glitch? It's the necromancer that is found by the water with the drop-down bridge.

I haven't gotten many others yet, but it's incredibly frustrating to find a character that you want to Thrall then have them disappear in a day when walking around. You can't trust putting your loot on any of them because they may just vanish!

The dead mother from frostflow lighthouse (forget her name) is permanent. Her daughter you find in the dungeon below is not permanent.

dead bodies and items dont stay put like in previous games and that svcks major dragonballs..i want to decorate my home with treasure and bodies but everything respawns to its original state