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does anyone know if this gate respawns after 72 hours? i want to use it to go in and get loot, id rather leave it so only one gate it open at the moment as i dont want to do the main quest or have them opening randomly at this stage

Main-Quest gates won't respawn (including the Kvatch gate). Only the smaller, non-quest related gates will respawn .

shame, thanks for the info!

kgnmike88 wrote:shame, thanks for the info!

Hehe np .

Gates don't respawn at all. Once they're down, they're down.

Dark Spark wrote:Gates don't respawn at all. Once they're down, they're down.

Ow yes, I made a mistake there. Gates don't respawn, unless you start messing around with the console, according to the wiki.

Umm... gates dont respawn...

Though, I wonder if the question might be: Do the things INSIDE the gate respawn?

Yes, I think they do after 72 hours. To be sure loot the inside of a gate, exit without the sigil stone, move somewhere else, wait 3 days and return. It should be reset

If you close a gate it won't respawn.
I think the max number of gates you can close is 60.

Scarlett_Nightmare wrote:If you close a gate it won't respawn.
I think the max number of gates you can close is 60.

I think the topic starter means if things inside the gate respawn after 72 hours. And I think they do as long as you wait 3 days and don't take the sigil stone.

Actually, what happens is that there are 7 random Oblivion worlds and 90 possible random gate locations in Cyrodiil. a maximum of 50 out of those 90 locations will "spawn" an open gate. Initially, all open gates are unconnected to any of the worlds. When you enter a gate, an unused world at random is connected to that gate. If all 7 worlds are in use and you enter an 8th gate, the world that's been left idle the longest will be disconnected, respawned and reconnected to the gate you just entered.

For example, to simplify things, let's say there are only 10 gate locations, you enter gates 1 through 7 in sequence, and the game chooses worlds at random. You might get...

Gate 01: World 5, 60 hours idle, 12 hours left until respawn
Gate 02: World 7, 52 hours idle, 20 hours left until respawn
Gate 03: World 2, 50 hours idle, 22 hours left until respawn
Gate 04: World 6, 40 hours idle, 32 hours left until respawn
Gate 05: World 3, 30 hours idle, 42 hours left until respawn
Gate 06: World 1, 12 hours idle, 60 hours left until respawn
Gate 07: World 4, 10 hours idle, 62 hours left until respawn
Gate 08: -
Gate 09: -
Gate 10: -

As you can see, all 7 worlds are in use. What happens if you enter Gate 09? Well, the first world you entered was World 5, which has been left idle the longest (60 hours). So World 5 gets disconnected from Gate 01, respawned and reconnected to Gate 09, and we end up with...

Gate 01: -
Gate 02: World 7, 52 hours idle, 20 hours left until respawn
Gate 03: World 2, 50 hours idle, 22 hours left until respawn
Gate 04: World 6, 40 hours idle, 32 hours left until respawn
Gate 05: World 3, 30 hours idle, 42 hours left until respawn
Gate 06: World 1, 12 hours idle, 60 hours left until respawn
Gate 07: World 4, 10 hours idle, 62 hours left until respawn
Gate 08: -
Gate 09: World 5, 0 hours idle, 72 hours left until respawn
Gate 10: -

OK? Now what happens if we fast-travel BACK to Gate 01 and enter it? Now, it's World 7 that has the longest idle time of 52 hours, and gets disconnected from Gate 02, respawned and reconnected to Gate 01...

Gate 01: World 7, 0 hours idle, 72 hours left until respawn
Gate 02: -
Gate 03: World 2, 50 hours idle, 22 hours left until respawn
Gate 04: World 6, 40 hours idle, 32 hours left until respawn
Gate 05: World 3, 30 hours idle, 42 hours left until respawn
Gate 06: World 1, 12 hours idle, 60 hours left until respawn
Gate 07: World 4, 10 hours idle, 62 hours left until respawn
Gate 08: -
Gate 09: World 5, 0 hours idle, 72 hours left until respawn
Gate 10: -

Now you get confused... "Hang on! This was World 5 which I left littered with corpses waiting to respawn! Why has it suddenly changed to World 7?" It gets worse. You THEN start checking the other 6 gates you entered in sequence to find out if they've changed too and, sure enough, they have!

Campfire Competition: I use the above behaviour to my advantage for "loot farming". But can anyone figure out HOW I do that? A roasted Venison Steak fresh off the campfire for the first correct answer. For the vegetarians, a seared Tomato on a stick!

Edit: Post corrected due to getting the idle timings wrong. Sorry folks, the initial assumption was entering Gates 01 through 07 in sequence with a few hours delay between each, so the idle times should have been in descending order. Unfortunately, I went through several versions to demonstrate before settling on the above, and dropped a clanger on the editing. Shows what happens when you surf an all-nighter and decide to stay awake all day guzzling coffee and make up for lost sleep the next night. Web lag, if you like.

sorry yes i meant loot the world, leave without the sigil stone, then 72 hours come back will everyone have respawned i know it works on random i was just wondering if it worked on kvatch cos if it did i wouldnt of had to open up the next 10 gates,

H8ball is there anything you dont know about this game,

kgnmike88 wrote:
H8ball is there anything you dont know about this game,

He will say yes but we all know thats not true.

Yes, Oblivion Gates behave just like any other cell. They reset after 72 in-game hours if you exit them without taking the Sigil Stone. (If you have more than 7 Gates open which have been entered, the Gate you left may or may not be the same Plane of Oblivion when you re-enter after 72 hours. See H8Ball's post above.)

Actually, there are quite a few levels of randomness within Oblivion Gates. The actual Plane of Oblivion you are confronted with when you first enter a Gate is generated at random. Similarly, the layout of underground tunnels is determined when you first enter them. Finally, the interior of the Sigil Tower is a random choice as well. To make a long story short, if you have been exploring Oblivion Gates, you will eventually enter into a world you've seen before and which looks the same on the outside, but the tunnels and Sigil Tower may be completely different from what you remember.

The only Gates which don't have random Planes are the 10 "fixed" Gates which spawn after Martin is escorted to Cloudruler. However, they do follow the 72 hour reset rule.

EDIT: H8Ball, I think you tripped over your own shoelaces in your explanation:

Gate 01: -
Gate 02: World 7, 40 hours idle, 32 hours left until respawn
Gate 03: World 2, 52 hours idle, 20 hours left until respawn
Gate 04: World 6, 50 hours idle, 22 hours left until respawn
Gate 05: World 3, 30 hours idle, 42 hours left until respawn
Gate 06: World 1, 12 hours idle, 60 hours left until respawn
Gate 07: World 4, 10 hours idle, 62 hours left until respawn
Gate 08: -
Gate 09: World 5, 0 hours idle, 72 hours left until respawn
Gate 10: -

OK? Now what happens if we fast-travel BACK to Gate 01 and enter it? Now, it's World 7 that has the longest idle time of 40 hours, and gets disconnected from Gate 02, respawned and reconnected to Gate 01...

From what I see, it's Gate 3, World 2 that has the longest idle time of 52 hours.

As for your Oblivion Gate reset/looting schedule, I'd guess you probably have a calendar/dayplanner/personal organizer on your PC, operating on game-time and which is only active when Oblivion is running, to remind you when a Gate has reset.

Aye aye, sir! Well spotted! Post corrected. See "Edit" comment at bottom of it for reasons.

Well, I've played the game for 5 years and deduced a LOT about how it works internally. Amateur programmer, and the Ex PC Engineer's brain won't quit, you see? I DON'T know everything, but I have a logical "think muscle" on me that LOVES exercising with heavy weights.

Actually, to remind me when a Gate is due to respawn, I have the Map Marker Overhaul installed. It allows you to "tag" any map marker name with extra text which appears in square brackets AFTER the marker name. E.g. You can tag Vilverin as Vilverin [Bandits], so you know it's a Bandit dungeon. I tag every dungeon I visit with a standard tag in the format [cells enemies day hour], e.g. Vilverin [4 B 017 14] which means it has 4 cells, contains B=Bandits, and is due to respawn on day 17 at hour 14 (2pm). I use the same principle with Oblivion Gates, using ONLY the respawn day/hour, e.g. A Gate to Oblivion [018 05], which means it's next due for respawn on day 18 at hour 5 (5am).

For completeness, in case you want to use a similar scheme yourselves... I use a list of enemies, in the form A-B-C, where A, B and C are abbreviations for enemy types. The ones I use are A=Animals, B=Bandits, Bb=Black Bow Bandits, C=Conjurers, D=Daedra, E=Ectoplasmic Undead (Ghosts & Wraiths, immune to normal weapons), G=Goblins, Gws=Goblins (White Skin), Gbh=Goblins (Bloody Hand), and so on for the other tribes, M=Marauders, N=Necromancers, O=Ogres, S=Skeletal Undead (Skeletons & Liches), T=Trolls, U=Undead (covers any combo of E-S-Z), V=Vampires, Y=Mythical (Imps, Spriggans, Will-o-the-Wisps, Minotaurs, etc) and Z=Zombie Undead. So a dungeon tagged A-C-D contains Animals, Conjurers and Daedra. Actually, C and D normally go together, since Conjurer dungeons typically contain a few Daedra.

Map Marker Overhaul is available from TESNexus. I even made a SMALL contribution to it. I use the "Coloured Map Icons" and the original Oblivion Gate icons were red regardless of whether they were open (unbroken) or closed (broken), which made them difficult to tell apart. I altered the closed icon to be a "greyed out" version and posted it in the TESNexus comments. The author (TheNiceOne) used my icon in the next version! Didn't give me credit though.