Lost my best enchanted gear and can't find it anywhere

[DragonbornVet]

I'm losing my mind. I had a full set of Daedric armor with Fortify Destruction and Magicka Regen enchantments that I spent like an hour perfecting, dropped it in my player home in Whiterun to swap builds, and now it's just... gone. Not in any of the containers, not on the floor, nowhere.

This is on my level 42 Destruction mage run (Anniversary Edition, PC, USSEP). I definitely dropped it there - I remember the sound effect and everything. But I've checked every barrel, chest, and shelf twice. Even tried the console to search for the items by ID and nothing came up.

Has anyone else had gear just vanish from their homes? Is there some kind of container cleanup that happens if you leave stuff too long, or am I just crazy? I'm pretty sure I didn't accidentally sell it or drop it somewhere else but at this point I'm doubting myself.

 

[TamrielTactician]

That's rough, and I feel you - losing enchanted gear you actually invested time in sucks. But I'm gonna be honest: if you searched with the console and nothing came up, it's almost certainly not in that cell anymore. USSEP doesn't have any cleanup mechanics that would delete dropped items in player homes, so that's not it.

A few possibilities though. Did you drop it on the ground or in a container? If it was on the ground and you have any mods that affect physics or havok (even something seemingly unrelated), stuff can sometimes clip through floors or get yeeted into weird spaces. I had a playthrough where dropped items would end up outside the building boundaries. Also - and I know this sounds paranoid - but if you alt-tabbed or the game alt-tabbed while you were dropping stuff, sometimes the drop doesn't actually register server-side, even though you hear the sound.

The console search not finding it is the killer though. If the items aren't in the cell data at all, they're gone gone. You might have accidentally dropped them in a different cell - like outside the door instead of inside, or in a different room than you thought. Worth checking the immediate area outside your home and any nearby cells.

If you're really certain, your only real option is either console spawn the gear back (you know the enchantments, so you could recreate it) or load an earlier save if you have one. Sucks, but at least you know the build works now.