After a thread where Otheral seemed pretty certain that alchemical ingredients did not spawn and in which Pseran Wyrd mentioned this maybe due to the days passed and how if you revisit a cell before the time is up, this would make things even longer to respawn, i decided to put this to the test. It would be a real bummer if alchemic ingredients from plants never respawned. Otheral sounded particularly upset about this and I remember him complaining about it before, but what if it was not a fault, just a misunderstanding of the game?

So I travelled all down the road from the docks picking every pickable plant I could find up to Solitude, I picked one particular spot to check (by the horse cart). Then I went to the Winking Skeever and stayed in the inn for 10 full days without leaving. What I discovered afterwards:

1. After 7 days the Tavern fella seemed to reset back to his bar position.

2. I told my Follower to wait and she vanished after about 6 days. Went home out of boredom I guess.

3. Plants did not respawn.


But it was mentioned that it could take up to 30 days, so back to the Tavern I went and stayed in there not for 30 days, but 40 days and nights!

The Taverner kept asking if I was sick- I sure was after that! What I discovered:


1. Don`t tell your Follower to wait and she`ll stay with you all the while.

2. The taverner resets to the bar every 3 and 7 days.

3. I went outside to check the plants and they HAD all RESPAWNED!

So worry not, Otheral, ingredients do respawn, your alchemy is not ruined, you only need be patient. I suspect everything else vanishes like the ash piles too after a time. If you want to test do as I did for the Xbox version, then go for it, but wait 30 days.

Many thanks to Pseran Wyrd as he is correct.

That`s one problem solved.

Good to know, thanks!

My OCDness cause me to never finish Oblivion but I heard on GameFAQs iirc that EVERY cell will COMPLETEY reset after so many days, even if it like something crazy high like 30-40 days that was enough to let me play freely without going crazy that I just kicked that bucket one inch from the wall.

The outside world of Skyrim itself being counted as one giant cell for the most part, you can only expect that there may be a few prombles with the resetting. For example, there a random dead hunter in front of the Brotherhood place on one of my characters who must been there for longer then 14 days by now. I went to jail for a 1000+ bounty twice and all of that fast traveling must have tooken a few days.

I had many thoughts about alchemy ingredients respawning or not,in the early stages of my games.
At first I was thinking like in oblivion they respawned after 3 days away from that game cell that Skyrim would do the same.
I discovered that this was not true.
After playing the game more,Skyrim that is,I discovered that you are allmost entirely correct.
It only takes about 10-14 days for most ingredients to respawn.
I think this happens when you don't clear the entire area,if you clear the entire area I think it takes closer to 30-48 days,
I can easily stay away from an area for 10-14 days,but staying away from an area for 30-48 days is very difficult for me.
This could have a say in my input,I don't know.

I could have told you this, lol. I rat the plants in Whiterun and on its nearby roads regularly, and they keep on coming back...never checked the length of time it takes though, because there's a lot of plants in a lot of Skyrim.