NPCs are an integral part of the Skyrim experience. They serve as your primary enemies and quest-givers. They run the economy and overall make the world seem alive and realistic. This is why you’re in trouble when NPCs suddenly disappear without good reason. Most of the time, issues like that are caused by mods and bugs within the game, and they can be a real pain to solve. Especially if quest-givers and essential NPCs start disappearing. This is why we’ve prepared this guide to summarize the most common reasons for missing NPCs and how to resolve them. Let’s see how to fix issues with missing NPCs in Skyrim. 

NPCs missing due to a mod 

Skyrim’s modding scene is among the best in gaming, and installing mods seems like a quintessential experience. Once you start playing with mods, the vanilla game is basically unplayable. Mods that alter the NPC’s visuals and behavior are among the most popular on any modding platform in Skyrim. There’s hardly a person out there that hasn’t tried Interesting NPCs or Diverse Skyrim mods.

The thing with mods affecting NPCs is that they can also affect them in adverse ways, especially if you have one more similar mod active at the same time or you’ve simply installed the mod in the wrong way.

If you start encountering issues with NPCs soon after installing a mod that affects them directly or indirectly, your first action should be to deinstall the mod in question. Sometimes, this should be enough to sort the problem out; sometimes, you might be forced to start a new game from scratch. 

Suppose you’re new to the world of modding or plan on using mods that will have a significant impact on the game’s mechanics or NPCs. In that case, it’s best to use a mod manager or carefully follow the instructions provided to ensure everything runs smoothly.

Make sure that NPCs aren’t simply dead 

NPCs in Skyrim are affected by the Radiant AI system, which means that they have lives outside of the player’s interaction with them. NPCs are affected by world encounters just like the player is, and we’ve all witnessed those midnight vampire raids on large cities and dragons absolutely demolishing small settlements, leaving only essential NPCs alive. 

If you return to the city after a vampire raid or dragon attack and some NPCs are missing, they are most likely dead. If the bodies have managed to despawn, it can be impossible to determine whether the missing NPCs are dead or a bug is occurring. 

Luckily, this is why we have console commands. By teleporting yourself to Dead Body Cleanup Cell, you can determine whether the NPCs are dead or truly missing. 

This test area is unreachable through regular means since it’s outside of the game’s world. This is where the bodies of all dead NPCs end up, and it is a neat way to ensure that you’re not mistaking the game’s feature for a bug. To teleport to Dead Body Cleanup Cell to check out which NPCs are dead, use the coc WIDeadBodyCleanupCell command. 

If NPCs you’ve noticed missing are dead, and you deem them important, you can spawn them to your location using the console. The command to spawn NPCs is player.placeatme <RefID of the NPC you want to spawn>. You can check out all RefIDs by following this link. Alternatively, open the console and type help <the name of NPC>. 

This is an important command when it comes to shopkeepers dying. Some merchants in Skyrim have a backup to replace them in case they die, but sometimes even the replacement is missing. If I want to spawn Falion in Morthal after I’ve made sure that he is dead, I will type player.placeatme 0001AA5E. 

Please note, however, that some NPCs, especially essential ones, might lose most of their dialogue options and functionalities after being spawned again. 

NPCs stuck outside of the game world

Once you’ve made sure that missing NPCs are not dead, but you can’t seem to find them anywhere in the game world, there’s a good chance that they glitched out somewhere inaccessible and got stuck within the textures or somehow found themselves outside of the game world. 

You can use the player.moveto <NPC refID> command to teleport to their location. Once again, you will need access to the refID of the NPC in question. If I want to teleport to Falion’s location, I will use the player.move to 0001AA5E. 

If Falion is truly stuck outside of the game world, this command is not as useful, and perhaps we should try teleporting him to our location. 

To teleport NPC to your location in Skyrim, use the following commands: 

1. open the console by pressing “~.” 
2. Type Prid <refID> in Falion’s case, RefID is 0001AA5E, press enter
3. Type moveto player and press enter 
4. If you’ve done everything right, the NPC in question should appear at your location.  

What to do when NPCs are disabled completely? 

If you haven’t installed any mods, you can make sure that the missing NPCs are not dead, and you can’t teleport to them nor teleport the NPCs in question to your location. It means the NPCs got disabled (despawned) due to a bug.

This issue can be easily remedied by using the enable command. To enable a missing NPC in Skyrim, follow these steps: 

1. Open the console by pressing “~.” 
2. type enable followed by NPC’s refID once again.
3. Press enter.  

The NPC in question should now be enabled in the world once again. 

I realize that most of those solutions are exclusively for PC. On consoles, you pretty much have only two options. You can try reloading the save that wasn’t affected by the issue, or if the issue persists even after reloading, you will need to start a new game completely. 

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