UESP Forums

That's an interesting comparison. It might be that they used the monster's maximum damage as a rough yardstick as to how large to make the "bonus" multiplier, but the actual multipliers seem to have been chosen to be multiples of 5.

Well, OpenTESArena does indeed list the locations for the monster data and the code matches the UESP monster data. I think I made one tiny correction from a "1" to a "0". ... I made that comparison chart, because it looked like the "+bonus" value was based on max damage. I totally missed that the right hand column on the Codex chart lists "Exp/HP"

....................Codex........UESP.........."bonus"...........Codex
...................Damage.....Damage.....Max Damage.......Exp/HP
Rat.................1-4...........1-4...............5....................5
Goblin.............1-5...........1-5...............5....................5
Lizard Man........1-8...........1-8..............10..................10
Wolf................1-10.........1-10.............10..................10
Snow Wolf.........1-12.........1-12.............10..................10
Orc.................2-12.........2-12.............15..................15
Skeleton...........2-16.........2-16.............15..................15
Minotaur...........3-18.........3-18..............20..................20
Spider..............1-20.........4-20..............20..................20
Ghoul...............2-20.........5-20.............20..................20
Hell Hound........3-25.........5-25..............25..................35
Ghost...............5-25.........5-25..............25..................35
Zombie.............5-30.........5-30..............35..................50
Troll...............10-30........10-30..............35..................50
Wraith.............10-30.......10-35..............45..................75
Homonculus......10-30........10-35..............45..................75
Ice Golem.........10-30.......10-35..............55..................100
Stone Golem.....10-30........10-35..............55..................100
Iron Golem.......10-35........10-40..............65..................125
Fire Daemon.....10-35........10-40..............65..................125
Medusa............10-40........10-50..............75..................150
Vampire...........10-40........10-50..............75..................150
Lich................10-30........10-75.............100..................175

Wow, I didn't realize that killing a Medusa rewards more XP than killing a Fire Daemon or Iron Golem! That's nice to know.

Last night I discovered that you can get into a locked house using your fists to punch open the door, which lets you avoid wearing down and breaking your weapon. You should save your game first, in case the guards show up before you get in. You should also be sure to remove your gauntlets first, to avoid crashing the game. I'm not certain, but Leather Gauntlets might be safe to wear when using your fists as weapons, whereas wearing Chain Gauntlets or Plate Gauntlets will crash the game; I'll have to experiment to see whether or not this consistently holds true.

But it doesn't work for locked doors in crypts, although using a weapon does work, so the amount of damage per swing might be a factor.

Ummmm.. yeah, I still can't even break them down with my weapons in town just yet.

I finally got back to actually just playing the game. I still haven't finished reading the manual. Just some catch up notes. I said I was using SoundBlaster Pro II as my default, but it gets kinda wonky and certain things don't play right. I think it's mainly because I was trying to use the midi file for the SBpro2 that even the games install doesn't use. I could have had it emulate a SBpro1 or regular soundblaster, but that was what I was trying to avoid. So now I'm playing with SBpro1 for sound and midi. I think I may change it up every once in a while for variety in music sounds.

During testing, my Bard character picked up a longsword. He can't use it, but it did show up as blue after picking it up because it had magic.

I got so used to reloading save games over and over during my testing, that when I was playing today I want to save a file and reloaded an old one instead. Luckily I hadn't accomplished much.

I had to go look, and really there isn't any similarities except for maybe graphic style and quick jerky action.....Every time I go to talk to the bartender in an inn it reminds me of the arcade game Tapper (or Root Beer Tapper). He just needs to sling that mug down the bar...just once.

Oddly enough, it seems like locked houses are easier to break into using your fists than using a weapon!

And since my newest character is a Nord and started in Skyrim, I've been spending a lot of time in the city that the portal in the Imperial Dungeons sent me to-- Helarchen Creek. Normally I would have headed to Hammerfell by now, but my goal is to break into every house so I can see which layout it uses and add it to my map. I haven't even bought anything yet from the equipment stores or Mages Guild, because I've been using looted items-- although I already know that there are a couple of enchanted Maces that I want to buy from two of the stores.

Coincidentally, I got a lead for the Skeleton's Key, so I decided to take a side trip to Valenwood to get the map, but I plan to head back to Helarchen Creek after I find the Skeleton's Key. The sad part is, the Skeleton's Key doesn't even sound all that useful, since it can only be used once a day-- although I did see a Twitch streamer use it to get through the magically-locked door in the Crystal Tower when she hadn't yet found a key to the door, so I guess it isn't completely worthless.

Wasn't there some type of key like that in Skyrim (ES-V) from the thieves guild or nightingales or something that could open anything, but it was part of a quest and had to eventually hand it over to finish? That is funny how you happened on to that quest while in the middle of trying to pick a bunch of locks.

Speaking of which. I picked my very first lock today. It was in a dungeon, but I was happy and started trying it more often. Broke into a couple of treasure chests in Stonekeep as well. A little while ago I took my first boat ride also. (Thanks for your post, pointing those out.) And used levitation for the first time today, thanks to my magic helmet. That was interesting...and a very good way to get yourself stuck. But I did eventually discover that the standing long jump helps recover from many "sticky" situations. (How you do a standing long jump while levitating is best left to the magical philosophers.) Stonekeep kept giving me "Mines of Moria" vibes. First I find a message that tells me the fort was over run and they fled down the goblin caves. And then another saying they headed north through the goblin tunnels to make a final stand. Then finally....drums...drums in the deep. "They are coming."

Two questions. You mentioned once you make your save slot names fill all the available space. Why? Is that just for organization; keeping them even? Another thing you mentioned was testing how far away you need to be before a dead monster body disappears. Did you ever get an answer? I killed a goblin on top of a treasure chest. Apparently the activation area for a body is wider than the activation area for loot, so I couldn't get to the chest.

My lengthy save game names are mainly for the sake of appearance, but the fact that the characters aren't in a fixed-space font makes it kind of semi-pointless, because the save game names don't line up as neatly as I'd like them to.

I'm not so worried about how well the names of the cities or dungeons, and the names of the provinces they're in, line up with each other, so much as how nicely the "date-time stamps" line up, because if all save game slots are in use it's easier to find the most recent save if the date-time stamps are conveniently lined up.

I know what you mean about trying to loot a pile of treasure when there's a dead enemy overlapping it. What you can do is (1) loot the corpse of anything you want from it before you make it disappear, then (2) rest for 0 hours-- R, C, 0, Enter. You don't even need to type a 0-- just R, C, Enter should do it, IIRC. The corpse will disappear and you'll be able to loot the pile of treasure. This also works great for Trolls and Vampires, whose "corpses" will regenerate and "come back to life" if you didn't "fully kill" them.

That's very good info to know. Thanks for that.

I realized that my Longsword broke while in a dungeon....wait ...I didn't crash. Does it "always" crash or does it "sometimes" crash; like when talking to people? Did it not crash because it was a magic sword or because it doesn't crash with Knights? ....Yeah, I broke a sword as a Knight. I was drinking a lot of potions instead of resting. Or is it when your armor breaks? I'm not sure I've ever seen my armor damaged as a Knight. It always says "new". (It definitely crashes if I use my fists afterward.)

This led me to test my Knight's fixing abilities. When it was mostly damaged, but not "broken", I rested "until healed". It took 11 hours. I was fully healed and my slightly damaged bow was fixed, my 1st magic sword gained a few more "uses" and my mostly broken magic sword was better (not new) and had more "uses". Resting 1 hour at a time and I was healed in 6 hours and the same fixes occurred to my weapons (all on the 6th hour). Resting 2 hours at a time and my weapons all had the same fixes at 6hours and I was fully healed at 8hrs. In terms of in-game time, your "resting for 1hr" process definitely saves time. I kept resting 2 hrs at a time up to 20hrs, but my sword was still very damaged. No changes after the fix at 6hrs. I then rested for 24 hours and I gained more magic uses. ( I can't remember if it was "more" fixed.) I decided to break it completely and start from there. It took longer to fix, which I expected, but what I found odd, was that my slightly damaged bow would not receive any repair until EVERYTHING received a repair. Does repairing have anything to do with the amount of Health I need to heal, or the amount of damage other items have?

Things I noticed:

• "Broken" isn't completely broken.
  
  • It will say "broken" in the inventory but you can still do a few (sometimes many) more swings.
  • I killed a ghoul with my broken sword.
• Repairs occur all at the same time
  
  • I don't know the formula for "when", but it will be all at the same time.

Yeah, I broke a weapon as a Knight because I was using it to bash open doors and chests, so I was damaging it faster than I was auto-repairing it. This was before I realized that auto-repairing occurs while you're resting.

If you're pjaying a non-Knight and need to get your gear repaired at an equipment store, it always takes 10 days or less to repair a completely-broken piece of gear, depending on how much the item is worth, and hence how much it costs to repair that item (because the cost to repair it is a certain fraction of how much it's worth). So I think it can take up to 10 days to fully auto-repair your gear, depending on how damaged it is.

I don't remember for sure, but I think the number of charges a weapon or piece of armor has remaining might decrease as the gear becomes damaged, even if you aren't using it. I think it takes up to 10 days to auto-repair and fully recharge gear.

I'm not sure whether I messed up my game or not. I was in a dungeon getting the map to the Skeleton's Key location, and was on my way back out. I saved my game upon going up from one level to the next, as I always do, but then I immediately got attacked and either got killed or caught a disease, so I restored my game and continued on. Then I noticed that when I'd saved my game I'd gotten the "file not written" error in DOSBox. Everything seems okay, and the file that couldn't get saved was "WILD002.04" which hopefully hadn't changed since the last time I'd saved in that slot, so I'm hoping it's fine.

Random Generation
It seems like the Wildxxx.xx files are wilderness areas, but I'm not sure how much is known about them. I was just wondering with as much exploring as you do, if these may already be mostly complete and not create much new data. (But then I remembered you were on a new game.) These wouldn't save a map area and would only need to save dungeon maps that aren't the filled in kind. If I understand the "random" creation of areas, it is like Minecraft. A mathematical seed is stored and based on where you are, the formula creates that area based on the seed. The area isn't created in memory until you actually get there. The only thing that is stored when you leave, is what you changed. As long as the seed remains the same, the area will always be created the same. Like No Man's Sky and Minecraft, the "random" part is the seed. No one planned where all the buildings would be and what all the land would look like. They just planned all the possible building blocks for land and buildings that could be created by the seed.

Now that leaves one question. Is it like Minecraft where starting a new game creates a new seed or is it like No Man's Sky where the seeds are already stored and every one sees the same things in the same areas for every game? It seems like the main dungeons are stored, otherwise putting maps in the Codex would have been pointless. It seems like the cities are also stored. ("Stored": these could still be stored "seeds", but probably had the most hands on tweaking.) Most NPC's are random and I think the names of shops and temples are random. (I think the special ones like beggars and fire breathers, etc. are part of the city.) I've been curious if the names of city rulers remains the same or is also random. That really only leaves one possible area for random generation - the Wilderness. Is the wilderness for Rihad the same every game you go there? If it is, that means it would be possible to create maps for the wilderness of each city showing where all the dungeons are located. That would be a ridiculously HUGE and difficult task....but possible.

Jumping
I saw a thing in the section on combat that said unless you were a Khajiit or Acrobat you couldn't make a jump if it was over 1 tile wide. I've always been playing a Nord Knight and beefing up my strength category and I know I can jump at least 2 tiles/blocks wide. Although, when I was testing with the acrobat...it was crazy how far I would jump.

I earlier mentioned getting unstuck from a wall by jumping. I got stuck because I was levitating, but I discovered I can get just as stuck from jumping on things. The little grey areas show me places I can rest, but some of them are too high to climb. I finally realized that I can use the standing long jump to get up in these little nooks. Although stepping off can often land you stuck inside the wall. I can simply jump out, and all is well....unless I was doing a little mountain climbing - jumping on one ledge to jump to an even higher ledge. Moral of the story: Never walk off an edge higher than you can jump on (even while levitating). ..."loads previous save".

Knightly Repair
If resting in shorter increments let's you heal faster, is there a way to repair faster? I had also asked the question if repair was linked to your healing. When I was trying to repair, the first hour that a repair occurred was close or exactly to when I got healed. I also noticed that while I was running around in a dungeon and resting for healing that my item was repaired very quickly.

Perception: When I was healing in the dungeon, I was always using "Until fully healed". So I was resting for 10-20 hrs, it just felt like less because it wasn't one right after the other.

Final Answer: Repairs occur at midnight at it takes 10 repairs to go from broken to new. (like you said) ...."Knightly" Repair...I really am a Bosmer.

This stuck in my head, but for some reason, I twisted it in my memory to thinking that you were talking about dungeons in the wilderness of a city. I know there are several wilderness dungeons that behave like some stores. The map is already filled and there might be some stairs. Then there are others that look like little abandoned hobbit hovels. Those are larger without resting places and you have to create the map as you go. I started thinking that you had said there were two of these types and 14 of the smaller dungeons in a cities wilderness.
Yeah....No.

Apparently wilderness dungeons are essentially random and show up all over the place based on the initial "seed". I loaded up my ver 1.03 game and traveled to the same city and "yes", it does have the same wilderness map. Theoretically this map could go on to infinity. I don't know if you know anything about "fractals" (I know very little). I believe there is some similarity to and connection between fractal mathematics, computer generated landscapes, "seed" generated gaming maps, and even some neural networks. The basic idea is a math formula that has a random output, but in an "organic" way with symmetry and familiarness. If you take a picture of the left side of a persons face, do a horizontal flip and paste it to the right side you will have a full face, but when we look at it for too long, something just feels wrong. The perfect combo is "similar, but not identical".
I'm going off on a tangent, but one of the things I wanted to point out is that these fractals often break down at some point. Either in repeating themselves "exactly" or reducing to "0" and producing blank or static output. I was thinking about my "hour" in-game walk and how the terrain started repeating.

Wilderness:

• I'd like to see if I can find the breaking point of the wilderness
• The city map and the city map (while in the wilderness) fit together.
• The wilderness is made of "blocks" (Farm block, dungeon block, cemetery block, etc.)
• The city is essentially a 4 block square. (smaller towns just have less buildings)
• I'd like to create a "Wilderness" page
  
  • 1 image of a large portion of the wilderness map
  • list the types of "blocks" with thumbnail image
  • add misc info that is specific to wilderness
    I suppose the proper place would be to include it on the "Places" page

Correct, when I was talking about 14 random dungeons and 2 fixed dungeons per province, I meant the random dungeons that get added to the map of the province either by getting a quest from the ruler of a city or by finding a lead to one of the legendary artifacts, not the random dungeons you find in the wilderness outside of a city.

From what I've seen, the random dungeons in the wilderness have 3 possible outward appearances, each having a different appearance on the wilderness map.

(1) The little "hobbit-hole" dungeon entrances appear on the map as a red dot-- or door-- with nothing else around it.

(2) Another type is a small brown rectangle with a red dot, and it looks very similar to what I call a crypt or mausoleum, but its door looks different than a crypt's or mausoleum's and a random dungeon is inside.

(3) Then there's a larger brown rectangle or square that has additional brown sections-- representing bridges or elevated walkways-- attached to the main rectangle or square, and a red dot a bit off-center. When you go up to it, the main building has platforms or ledges on the side, and the door almost looks like it should be blocked by one of the platforms, but you can enter without any problem. Inside is a random dungeon.

The other types of "dungeons" you mentioned, where the interior is already mapped for you, aren't dungeons per se, and I refer to them by various names depending on their outward appearance and what their interiors are like-- towers (there are usually two close together, and sometimes four), forts or fortresses (they look like a plain castle), and crypts or mausoleums.

I guess crypt is a better term than mausoleum, because the interior seems to be underground-- at least, the exit looks like stairs going up-- but their main characteristics are that they're a single level, usually with several small rooms connected to a larger central room, and they contain a lot of coffins and sarcophagi. There are 2 or 3 types, or layouts.

There are also 2 types of tower layouts. The interiors are simpler and, IIRC, a bit smaller than a fort's, and there are several levels-- 3 or 4, I forget which.

The forts have more elaborate interiors, and sometimes have a lower level in addition to multiple upper levels. There are a few different layouts.

As for the cities, there are 3 different sizes-- as indicated by their 3 different icons on the provincial map-- and the number of blocks per city varies accordingly; that is, some cities are more than 4x4.

"Keep"-- that's what I was trying to think of instead of, or in addition to, "fort" or "fortress."

As for the building blocks or squares that make up the wilderness map, if you press F2 to see your coordinates you'll notice that they always range from (32,32) to (95,95)-- although sometimes the numbers at the extremes can be 96 (instead of 32) or 31 (instead of 95) depending on which direction you're facing. But I've been wondering whether the squares are 64x64, as potentially suggested by the coordinates, or are 32x32 such that the large area defined by the range of coordinates is made up of 4 blocks in all-- 2 across and 2 down. I'm inclined to think it's the latter.

Yeah, I have a habit of calling all the red doors in the wilderness, "dungeons". But you're absolutely right. One is some type burial chamber and then there are also fort/fortress/keep type buildings. If you would like to formally name those, I would be happy for the assistance. I don't think they are named in anything from Bethesda, so naming them (and the wilderness blocks) is fair game. But having a name would be very helpful for identifying them with a general idea of what to expect.

I'm currently working on a wilderness map for the City-State of Rihad. The wilderness blocks are 576x576 pixels in my image. The red doors are 9x9. So if a "door" is a standard "map-pixel?", then a wilderness block is 64x64. Rihad happens to be a 4x4 of wilderness size blocks. I'll have to check out some other areas to check about other sizes of cities and also to ensure that different areas still use the same wilderness blocks (even though things like grass and trees are different). I'd like to make the Rihad map just large enough to include 1 of each wilderness block (preferably 2 to show repetition). Currently it is a 10x10 of wilderness size blocks and a wilderness block is approximately 1.5 in-game map views.

I'd never played with the coordinates before. Those are weird. Is it just me...they don't seem all that useful. ---- Okay, so inside the city they make a bit of sense starting at the upper right corner and each coordinate point is the size of a door square. The coordinates in the wilderness are wonky though. They actually start at the center of a what I'm calling a wilderness block. When I walked to the left/right corner of the city wall (in the wilderness), the coordinates are ~64/64, but that should be a 32 or 95 area.

Just a thought. The fact that the coordinate "turn-over" point is essentially off by 31/31; this probably accounts for why the counter is 32-95 instead of 1-64.

As far as the wilderness coordinates, I've thought that perhaps they're numbers which are a certain number of bits wide, such that they effectively roll over when they increase past the number of bits. But it's weird that their lowest value is 32, not 0.

I wonder if they're signed values of a sort? That is, maybe 64 represents 0, with anything less than (to the "right" of) 64 being a postive value, and anything greater than (to the "left" of) 64 being a negative value, or vice versa?

And it's interesting that the dimensions of a random wilderness dungeon is 64x64, except each level is composed of 4 blocks, so each block is 32x32. This might suggest that what you're calling a wilderness block of 64x64 is actually 4 blocks of 32x32.

The city of Helarchen Creek in Skyrim has a map that's 87x87, made up of 16 city blocks of 20x20, plus a few extra rows and columns around the city blocks where the city walls, city gates, and palace gate are located. From what I've seen, all cities are made up of these 20x20 city blocks, but the number of blocks varies depending on the size of the city. Since 20 isn't a nice power of 2, nor is 87, it's probably just a coincidence that the large city you started with corresponds so nicely to a certain number of wilderness blocks.

The entirety of my information and thought process has been based solely on Rihad. I haven't paid much attention yet in dungeons or other cities to have a broader perspective.

I'm getting a little confused with terminology surrounding the term "blocks", and I want to make sure I am understanding you correctly without imposing my terms on your words. It seems to me that the basic size that is uniform to all areas is a red door as far as length and width. Other than the pixels on the images slapped on one of these "floors", I haven't noticed any world building block that is smaller. Is that correct?

I need a little help to understand what you are looking at when you see a 32x32 square. Ex: a wilderness dungeon is "composed of 4 blocks".

When I look at the inside of the city for Rihad, there appear to be "city blocks", but those are mostly 20x20 with "most" of the buildings staying inside 19x19 giving a 2 door space walkway between city blocks. That leaves a few extra blocks for a border walkway between the "city blocks" and the outer wall. The entire city is skewed slightly towards the upper right hand corner which means the walk way next to the outer wall is narrow on the north and east walls and wider on the west and south walls.

My point in describing the city blocks I see in Rihad, is that I have no problem believing that my "wilderness blocks" are actually composed of a smaller 32x32 block component. I probably need to map some dungeons to get a better idea of what those block components look like. For Rihad, at least what I have mapped so far, those 4x4 squares of 32x32 blocks are contiguous, meaning the same 4x4 square will show up in other areas without sharing portions of it's 4x4 construction with other areas.

EDIT: Oh I thought I'd tag on here, a problem I had with mapping. I had to adjust my DOSBox settings. When I first started mapping I discovered that each time I started Arena, it would scale up the in-game "door block" to a slightly different pixel shape sizing. That was really messing me up when trying to stitch them together into a single image.

I "do" realize that when I was talking about "city blocks", I was basically repeating what you "just" told me. That's a habit of mine that helps me process my thinking, but when I accidentally let it come out in my writing or speaking, it sounds like I'm trying to sound as if I'm saying something new. I'll often test something for myself and then reword it to my own words as a way of confirmation; "yes, I'm seeing the same thing; that info is correct". I usually sound less rude or insane when i remember to keep that conversation in my head.

As I said, I need to check how other areas compare to Rihad, but I was only trying to suggest that since cities and dungeons each have their own size of construction blocks (32x32 and 20x20), might it be possible that the wilderness also has it's own unique construction block size?

(Edit: You know what - I "am" rude. Sure the above is true - I'm not intentionally rude, but I definitely wasn't listening very well and missing your whole point because of my preconceptions. YES!! if another city is a different size that doesn't fit nicely into 64x64 blocks - that's totally going to mess with how the "wilderness-blocks" go together. I absolutely "must" do some work on other cities before clinging to any conclusions. --Sorry about that.)

If you look at the map, notice the yellow "arrowhead" that represents your character's position and orientation. Each of the three little squares that make up the arrowhead are pixels in the game's 320x200-resolution graphics mode.

The red door squares on a map are 3x3 pixels, and represent the smallest division of space in the game, which I call "cells." In your first-person view, you can often identify the rows or columns of cells by looking at the ceiling or floor-- although that depends on the graphics that the surface of the ceiling or floor uses. Each cell corresponds to one coordinate position, and you can drop only one pile of loot in any given cell. If the cell already contains something, such as roots or manacles hanging down from the ceiling, then there won't be any room to drop anything in that cell-- although temporary objects such as the corpses of your enemies don't count, just permanent objects like roots and manacles. Certain things that look like objects-- long-dead bodies of blue-robed mages, trapdoors, books, etc.-- may actually be nothing more than the graphics design of that cell's floor, in which case they won't prevent you from dropping loot there.

What I'm calling a "block" or "square," for lack of better terms, is a square collection of cells that make up some identifiable pattern which can be repeated throughout the map. Within a city, this would be a 20x20-cell area that contains buildings or other things-- statues, fountains, etc.-- which form the "building blocks" that the cities are built from. You can often see the borders where one block ends and another begins because the ground's terrain or graphics might be different. I chose the term "block" in the sense of a building block, but it also seems apt in the sense of a city block.

Random dungeons have larger blocks which are 32x32-cell areas. The smaller random dungeons which get added to the map of a province by accepting certain random quests from the city rulers, or by finding a lead to a legendary artifact, are merely 2x1-block (or 64x32-cell) layouts. However, the random dungeons that you encounter out in the wilderness have levels which are twice that size-- 2x2-block (or 64x64-cell) layouts. Given that there are 4 blocks per level in larger random dungeons, I was tempted to call them "quadrants," but that doesn't seem appropriate given that there are only 2 blocks per level in the smaller random dungeons.

So those are the terms I've been using, although I'm open to suggestion if anyone can think of better ones.

Regarding the strange coordinate values out in the wilderness, I had the following thoughts last night:

The values range from 32 to 95, rather than from 0 to 63 as they do in a random dungeon, which seems odd. But perhaps they include one or more "flag" bits? I originally entertained this idea in terms of a sign bit, where bit 6 (value 64) was the hypothetical sign bit. But then I wondered if bit 5 (value 32) might also be a flag?

What I'm wondering is whether the coordinates within a dungeon block or wilderness block (assuming a wilderness block has a 32x32-cell size rather than 64x64) might be based on 5-bit values ranging from binary 00000 (decimal 0) to binary 11111 (decimal 31)? Then bit 5 in a dungeon block, or bits 5 and 6 in a wilderness block, might be used to indicate which block the cells are in.

Let's consider the two blocks of a smaller (2x1) dungeon first, and consider just the horizontal ordinates:

| 64 63 62 ... 34 33 32 | 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 |
| < Left/western block> | <Right/eastern block> |

What if each block's coordinates are actually just 0 to 31? Bit 5 would then indicate whether a given cell were within the left/western block or the right/eastern block:

| 64 63 62 ... 34 33 32 | 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 |
| < Left/western block> | <Right/eastern block> |
| 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 | 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 |
| Bit 5 = 1 (or add 32) | Bit 5 = 0 (or add 00) |

It might seem like a bit of a stretch to resort to using bit flags as an explanation of the ordinate values, but when we consider the (32,32) to (95,95) range of coordinate values for wilderness areas then it might start to make a bit more sense:

| 95 94 93 ... 66 65 64 | 63 62 61 ... 34 33 32 |
| < Left/western block> | <Right/eastern block> |
| 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 | 31 30 29 ... 02 01 00 |
| Bit 6 = 1 (or add 64) | Bit 5 = 1 (or add 32) |

In other words, if we think of bits 5 and 6 as composing a 2-bit flag, or pair of flags, when the left bit is on it refers to the left block, and when the right bit is on it refers to the right block:

Left block -- bits 5 and 6 = 10
Right block -- bits 5 and 6 = 01

I admit that this might be even more of a stretch than what I'd said above regarding the dungeon blocks, but so far it's the best idea I can think of for explaining why the wilderness coordinates have the values that they do. And this explanation more or less relies on the assumption that a wilderness block is 32x32 cells, just like a dungeon block, and that a larger wilderness area is formed by a 2x2 group of wilderness blocks, similar to the way a dungeon level is formed by a 2x2 group of dungeon blocks. We could call this larger wilderness area an "area," unless you can think of something better.

Wow; when I'm sick, I should really stay away from sending email or posting in forums. I get pretty loopy.

I like "cell". It leaves room for it to be a sort of boundary rather than a physical space. The physicality of a space depends upon what's in the cell.

Your thought process on the coordinates seems to fit with what occurs. I haven't seen any technical information on this. I just remember seeing some opinion comments saying; "it's broke".

I took a look at Helarchen Creek. It looks like it is a 4x4 of city blocks and the wilderness city map fits to the internal one. At the top right (northeast) corner, the city is right against the wilderness blocks, but at the bottom and left walls (south and west) there is a buffer or "yard" where there's nothing but grass. That's not to say there couldn't be any, I just didn't notice any. Specifically I mean there is nothing on the map. No pavement or buildings. Although the village is smaller, it still sits on a 128x128 cell plot of land.

Hmm, I never made that connection about the empty areas. In my last playthrough, I made a point to visit every city in each province-- although I may have missed some in the first few provinces, since it was a decision I made partway ithrough the game-- and I also made a point to explore the wilderness around each city. There are quite a few that have large areas of emptiness on two sides, such that you must walk away from the city for a distance before you start to see roads, farms and other buildings, cemeteries, lakes, etc.

Thanks for that about the F2 for coordinates. I saw that once, but never tried it. However that greatly sped up my mapping skills. I can walk in a fairly straight line now.

Somehow I came across the "Controls" page on UESP. Clear as day it says how to rename your character. Controls and Glitches. Those are two things I wish I knew how to make sure they showed up on both pages. A general list page and also where it specifically applies. For myself I need both. Sometimes I want to look at the complete list to get an overall view because I'm preparing, but I also want to be reminded when I'm looking at the specific page for obvious reasons. I know there is a way to link the same info on two different pages, but that also means it needs to be named and organized in such a way that it looks like it fits on both pages.
But that leads me to another discovery found on the controls page that I didn't really know. The minimap: Q+B+X. Apparently it won't work with certain keyboards...but it works with mine. It's under "debugging", so I don't think it was intended to be something used for normal play. I'm not sure I would use it much anyway, but I do like how you can see all four sections of your map at once, rather than scrolling.

So I looked up wilderness info on the OpenTESArena Wiki and it was very helpful and a little surprising. I've tested and confirmed some of the info. The wilderness is a 64X64 grid of wilderness blocks with each block being 64X64 cells. I wanted to test where the wilderness memory limit is. This is it. It's not specifically a memory or calculation error because it's "too big", it's more like the game doesn't prevent you from going outside of the boundary. Once you get outside of the 64x64 wilderness area the programming doesn't have a way to correctly account for where you are. Right as you cross the boundary the screen appears to flicker because the wilderness block changes to something else. This new "block" will be repeated endlessly, but that's assuming it doesn't crash, freeze, or cause you to get stuck. If you immediately turn around, you have a chance of salvaging your game. I didn't notice any immediate problems with saving after "taking a walk on the wild side", but I don't think I would chance it. Saving on the outside will simply save a broken game and that file will be useless.

32/32 (96/96) is the coordinates for the center of a wilderness block. if you walk out of the city gates and walk in a straight line you can cross this center coordinate 31 times (31 wilderness blocks). If you continue on, the border with be at coordinate ~64, and you've walked into no-elf's land. Isn't there an Oblivian plane that is just madness and nothing makes sense?

There are approximately 65 different wilderness blocks. I haven't finished working on that yet. But all this catch up leads me to a question I want to ask. The wilderness blocks are sorted internally into 5 or 6 lists. (OpenTESArena shows the first five, but there is a sixth list that contains 4 more entries. --plus one block that doesn't show up in any list.) One list contains blocks with temples. Then there is an Inn list. Some blocks have both and are in both lists. Then there is a "wilderness" list with mostly open space or few buildings. Then there is the "busy" list, usually with several buildings or structures. There are a few that are in both lists. I haven't determined what's in the "6th" list, but I think it is large bodies of water.
That leaves list 5. The "red door" list. OpenTESArena calls this the dungeon list, but I agree with you; I wouldn't call all of these dungeons. However, they are all in the same list. So my question is: what would be a good alternative "collection" name that applies to the group as a whole? OpenTES calls the "open area" list, "normal" and the "busy area" list, "village". But like "dungeon", I don't want to call all of those villages. Some seem like ranches or estates. So if you can pull out collection names for those; I'm open.

EDIT: Okay...there I go making assumptions again. There are red doors in other categories. I should probably finish extracting those first. There are 11 blocks in the dungeon list.

Wow, I didn't know about the "minimap," so thanks for mentioning it. I'm not sure how useful it will be, given its small size and the fact that it's partially transparent and you can't see it very well unless you face a dark background, but it's certainly very interesting.

Two things I like about the wilderness minimap are that it appears to show the trees, as well as the actual buildings as opposed to what the regular wilderness map shows-- I think it might be stone, but there's no way to distinguish the actual buildings from any stone pavement or roads or bridges that might be around them.

As far as the use of the term "dungeon," although I prefer to use additional terms like "crypts" and "towers" and "fortresses" for some of the "red door" wilderness locations, I think the NPCs might consider them to be "dungeons." When you stop NPCs in the wilderness and ask them where the nearest dungeon is, I believe they will direct you to the nearest fortress, tower, or crypt if there's no "actual dungeon" that's closer to wherever you are.

But in the player's manual and hint book, I think they do use terms like "crypt" when talking about exploring the wilderness, and they specifically say that red dots (doors) sitting all by themselves on an island ("hobbit holes" as you've called them) are "dungeons."