Reproducible Item Dropping Bug (Physics glitch? Bad cell/level design?)

[bjornk]

I have encountered this strange bug many times before and have always treated it as a random temporary glitch, but today I realized that it is absolutely reproducible and not at all random. As far I can see only a couple of other people have talked about it before, apparently the  "Anniversary Edition" also has it.

Here's the problem:  When you drop one item from your inventory, "any" item...

Normal (expected) Behavior:
The item should normally go straight ahead and then drop to the ground once out of your inventory.
Glitching Behavior:
The item comes right out of the middle point of the 3D player model (while in 3rd person view) and goes directly down below and hurts the player.

The really "weird" part is that this glitch only seems to occur in certain locations. Here's one, and the steps to reproduce the problem:

1. Go to Pinewatch (coc Pinewatch01 should work).

2. Go inside the house.

3. Take the big kettle (cauldron), should be on the first floor.

4. Drop the big kettle and observe how it behaves when dropped. (i.e. the glitch)

5. Take the big kettle again and go outside.

6. Drop the kettle again now while you're outside and observe how it drops (i.e. normal behavior)

7. Go inside and drop the kettle again, and observe how the glitch is reproduced when inside.

Note 1: Save/load, restarting the game etc. won't fix the issue.

Has anyone else here encountered this bug before? Any ideas what could be the cause? Any solutions?

EDIT:

The problem is in the vanilla Skyrim, nothing to do with mods. Had to fire it up to test after more than a decade. Tested the issue in vanilla Skyrim, no mods, not even the unofficial patches, just Skyrim LE (Skyrim and all 3 DLCs) + SKSE, and I got the same result.

While inside the Pinewatch shack (and I've read that there are other cells in the game behaving this way) anything dropped from the inventory appears right on the player model instead of in front of it and it is propelled towards the ground, instead of forward. No issues doing the same thing outside the shack.

EDIT 2:

Just a wild guess but maybe the X-Y-Z orientation is messed up for this particular cell, in other words, the cell was designed in the incorrect orientation, therefore dropped items probably still follow the horizontal axis (X or Y) but the horizontal axis is somehow vertical in this cell, acts like the Z axis everywhere else. Could be some other cell parameter affecting the physics behavior, don't know. Checked the Pinewatch01 cell and its location records in TES5Edit and didn't see anything particularly odd looking.

Still finding new bugs in a 13 year old game...

Edited August 31, 2024 by bjornk

[bjornk]

Just a few other people reporting the issue without realizing what's going on...

  Quote

Rather then dropping in front of me, the items literally drop from my character, then go flying(And in a bucket's case, causing damage).

Expand  

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/615803-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/66657924

  Quote

After updating Skyrim to 1.9.32 and starting aa new game, I've noticed, that items dropped from inventory do not appear at the crosshair mark position as usual. Instead, they drop directly at the character's feet, often flying all over the place.

Expand  

https://forums.nexusmods.com/topic/1128308-inventory-drop-glitch-bleak-falls-barrow/

The issue has nothing to do with your FPS above 60 or v-sync not enabled etc., if that was the case you'd experience the same problem everywhere, not in particular locations.

[bjornk]

May have something to do with certain items and their incorrect (?) "physics properties" and the way they interact with the game world perhaps? Doesn't explain why they behave differently inside and outside of particular cells though.