Hello - I've been banging my head against the CK for a number of days now and just cannot figure out how to solve a small problem.

I've got a small enchanted "exploding arrow" mod (http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=9280) and one of the items I am trying to better perfect is an "Arrow of Light". If you're a thief or otherwise stealth archery character, it's kind of cool to launch an arrow off into the distance of a dark cave and light up that dark area where you think the baddies might be - or where you might want to explore.

Essentially, what I am wanting to do is to have an archer fire an arrow, which upon impact leaves behind a light-source (similar to magelight, for example) that then lasts for say, 60 seconds.

The problem is that I cannot get to work quite right.

I am successful with a less than ideal temporary solution:

I've defined an AMMO (my "enchanted arrow") tied to a Projectile which is tied to an Explosion which leaves a Placed Object (currently a custom version of LightSpellLightStatic. This solution works great except for it is a static object which hangs around forever (possibly clearing when the cell resets). The light is created wherever the arrow hits, which is good. I'm worried about this, however, as it could lead to save-game-bloat, plus I think it would be more realistic if the light remains only for a specific period of time.

I am only partially successful if:

Define an AMMO tied to a Projectile tied to an Explosion which leaves a Placed Object which is a Spell (magelight, for example). This works IF the arrow hits an NPC target (the spell creates the light on the target and it lasts for my defined duration). However, nothing happens if you aim into a wall, the ground, or anything else.

I've also tried similar to the above where the Explosion does not leave a Placed Object, but instead has an Enchantment which does the light (similar to what a Staff of MageLight does). In this case, however, it either doesn't work at all, or it sometimes works but only if your arrow sticks into a wooden target (like a post) but doesn't if you hit a wall. It's driving me nuts!

Does anyone have any experience with anything remotely similar to the above issues? I'm sure that I'm just making a noob error and missing something obvious... or I'm unaware of some critical concept. I've tried practically every possible combination of effects that I can think of.

I'd much appreciate it if anyone has any feedback on this!

Thanks!

I can't remember which post i read this in, or whether the information is correct. The essence of the post was that the game would remove previous arrows once a certain number had been reached in the game world/cell.
So if the maximum number of arrows allowed was 10, then once the 11th was reached the first would be removed. This would be fairly easy to check with your enchanted arrow, fire one, and then fire off normal arrows to see if your enchanted arrow is removed.

This does not seem to be the issue - although thanks for the thought. The problems I was having was that the spell effect does not go off correctly, period.

I may have found a solution... am testing it now and will post shortly with what I found.

In case any readers are interested in what I found...

My original solution was to have an arrow Projectile spawn an Explosion (empty, no real effects) which places an object. The object I originally chose was a static magic light. While this had the overall effect I was looking for, I didn't like the fact that the light had no duration - it was permanent until the cell resets (I assume).

It turns out that instead of placing that static light object, I could define a "Hazard" object which in turn displays the light effect. The great thing about the Hazard is that it has the control for setting a duration. Turns out using an enchantment in this case was a red herring.

The funny thing is that I was already using placing a Hazard in this way with my Arrows of Fireball - these arrows explode in a fireball enchantment effect, and the Explosion places a Burning Oil Hazard at the point of impact. I guess I just didn't realize at the time how it really worked behind the scenes!