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As anyone who's ever explored dungeons in Arena knows, you can drop piles of loot and they will stay there as long as you remain on the same level of the dungeon, but if you go to a different level and then return to the previous level, all of your piles of loot will be gone, right?

Wrong! A few weeks ago I discovered that the loot piles are actually still there-- they're just invisible because the game doesn't draw them when you enter that level again. But if you happen to remember where they are, you can access them again by dropping an item in that spot. When you look at the contents of the "new" loot pile, you'll see the newly-dropped item(s) plus all of the items you'd previously dropped there.

This is why the "exploit" to increase the contents of loot piles by going back and forth multiple times between two dungeon levels works. Each level of a random (non-Main-Quest) dungeon, keep, tower, or multilevel house has a specific number of loot piles that can be spawned there, as well as a specific number of spawn points, so when you enter a level the game randomly chooses which of the possible loot spawn points will actually get loot piles. For instance, in one house there's a floor with three possible spawn points, but only two of them get loot piles.

If you know all of the possible spawn points on a given dungeon level or floor of a house or keep or tower, you can go back and forth between two levels to do the "bigger loot piles" exploit, then drop an item in any spawn points that didn't get a loot pile to reveal any loot which had spawned there when you were going back and forth.

You can also use this "trick" to preserve your loot so you can go through it again later when you return to that level of the dungeon. For instance, say you've just fully explored one level and found stairs leading to another level, but your inventory is maxed out so you know you won't be able to pick up any loot on the next level. You could drop all of your loot in a memorable spot-- say, right in front of the stairs-- except of course for any armor, weapons, and magical items you've got equipped. Then you can go on to the next level and you'll be able to pick up more loot. When you eventually return to the previous level, you can drop an item in the apparently-empty spot where you'd left your other loot, then inspect the loot pile to retrieve any items you decide that you'd like to keep, such as if any of the previously-dropped items are more valuable than whatever you'd found on the next level.

Of course, you could also just drop your excess items by the stairs after going to the next level, so the loot pile will still be visible when you come back to it-- unless the dungeon has yet more levels, in which case, the pile will still be there but won't be visible until you drop something there.

Addendum: I think this might be one of the reasons why players occasionally get a "memory list blown" error that crashes the game when they're exploring a dungeon. That is, the game obviously must be making and keeping lists of all of the spawned and dropped loot piles on each level of the dungeon, and if you try to overuse the "bigger loot piles" exploit, or if you rest too often in unsafe locations (i.e., not on a raised surface) and spawn too many enemies and end up dropping too much loot along the way, at some point the game must run out of memory for keeping track of the locations and contents of all of those dropped loot piles.

Interesting! Is it possible to mark the spot where you dropped something on the map by making a note? Or are map notes/marks reset when you exit and re-enter a dungeon level?

Notes do persist between levels, and also persist if you leave and reenter the dungeon-- although the loot piles don't persist if you leave and reenter, just between levels. I normally add a note to the map as soon as I enter a wilderness dungeon, telling me which direction the town is in so I can get back without having to use fast travel. I've often gone back inside a dungeon because I made a quick trip back to town to sell loot and free up my inventory space, or sometimes because I forgot whether I've already cleared that dungeon, and the notes I made are still on the map.

However, I'm not sure if the notes eventually disappear if you keep exploring, perhaps based on memory usage. I know that notes on town maps persist if you travel to another town and then return, and I presume the notes on wilderness dungeon maps will also persist in that scenario, but eventually the notes on town maps do disappear. I'm guessing it might be similar to the way the journal only holds a certain amount of text before it runs out of memory and gets cleared, but I don't know.