Anyone know how monster LOOT drops work?

[Satribe ●]

Comparing info on OpenTESArena's wiki and the info on UESP added by KShrimp in 2017 and the info is pretty close, but with a few missing pieces of information. (On UESP for Fire Daemon and Homoculus it says Loot=none, but that was a mistaken edit I made. They were originally blank. It looks like it was information that was simply overlooked or skipped at the time.)

My two questions are:

• Why/How is gold different than the others?
• How is a Monster's Level considered for loot drops?

What I seem to know:
OpenTESArena's wiki points to 0x3B135 as the start for the percent chance of monster loot drops using DWORDs for each monster. Comparing that to UESP's info and it matches up that a DWORD has 4 bytes and each byte represents a % chance for a monster to drop a certain type of loot. (Gold / magic item or potion / low quality item / magic armor or weapon) These are in the sort order for Monsters: (Rat, Goblin, Lizard Man, Wolf, Snow Wolf, Orc, Skeleton, Minotaur, Spider, Ghoul, Hell Hound, Ghost, Zombie, Troll, Wraith, Homonculus, Ice Golem, Stone Golem, Iron Golem, Fire Daemon, Medusa, Vampire, Lich).

After lining up the code with the monsters, we see that the first 4 bytes (DWORD) aren't used (at least not with the monster list) and the DWORD for RAT starts at 0x3B139. Ignoring the first byte for GOLD at the moment, you can simply convert the rest of the bytes from HEX to DECIMAL and they match KShrimps edits as % chance of those types of loot drops from those monsters.

The two oddities:

• You can't just change the % chance of magic item for a RAT and get magic items. It also requires the rat's LEVEL to be raised.
  • Monster Levels are single bytes starting at 0x42096 and are sorted by the monster list.
• %chance for GOLD is all wacky.
  
  • I don't know how KShrimp arrived at those values
  • Although in the code the %chance seems to increase with the monster difficulty, KShrimp's edit seem to reflect closer to what actually happens. From HEX 0..32 (DEC 0..50) the percent change increases. From HEX 32..64 (DEC 50..100) the percent chance decreases. Where a value equals a 50% chance for other items to drop, it is approximately a 25% max chance for GOLD drops and if the value is higher the %chance lowers from 25% down to 0%.

[SeaGtGruff ●]

Regarding Fire Daemons and Homonculi, anything that disappears and leaves no corpse when you kill it cannot be looted, so I'm not sure what you mean by "that was a mistaken edit." What was the mistake?

[Satribe ●]

My main meaning was that I changed it from BLANK to "NONE" because of my assumption. You are correct that they disappear and then you can't loot them which in effect equals "none". So that doesn't seem to be an assumption. However, in the code, having all 0's equals none. So a Rat, Wolf, Snow Wolf, Hell Hound, Ghost, and Wraith have all 0's and drop no loot or gold. Yet Homonculus has code for dropping GOLD and a Fire Daemon has code for a chance to drop all categories.

In the Codex Scientia page 18, under GHOST, there is this sentance:

Note: ghosts, like a couple of other monsters (wraith, homunculus, firedaemon, vampire, lich), vaporize after being killed. A nice spell to have available for such combats is a combination freeze/damage spell to cast when they are almost dead. With luck, the spell will kill and paralyze it simultaneously so it freezes before being completely vaporized and can thus be picked for treasure.

Even with this statement, the code won't allow Ghosts and Wraiths to drop anything. Perhaps this is why the other two were left blank, because the Code says it "could" drop, but to prove it one way or another you'd have to actually freeze it and get the loot. "Not" getting loot, could simply be you didn't hit it at just the right time. - You could prove you can get loot - if you actually got loot.....but it's harder to prove that you "can't". The argument will always be; "You proved you didn't, not that you can't. The Codex says it's possible, and the code seems to agree." That doesn't mean it actually works, but....I don't know.