Are you less than thrilled with the quality of loot available in thief caches? It's mostly the same stuff from cache to cache, taking all the fun out of the search. How many Daedric daggers of paralysis do you even need? If I loot one cache in a city, the other two are sure to be nearly the same.

This mod aims to change that by completely replacing the contents of thief caches with a better variety of loot. What you get will be more interesting and often more useful (and sometimes less, because thieves are indiscriminate).

How it works

The container records for thief caches in Skyrim and Solstheim are now filled (almost) entirely by new leveled lists that select from a wide variety of options. You'll get 3-6 picks from these lists, plus one Prowler's Profit bonus if the perk has been activated. All of the new leveled lists are built from vanilla lists, but SkyPatcher can be used to add even more to them.

The loot variety list can choose from any of the following:

• Lockpicks
• Misc. jewelry (chance of enchanted jewelry or a religious amulet)
• Small amount of gold
• Arrows
• Some gems
• Skooma and/or moon sugar
• A weapon—not always enchantted, not always "best", and may include bows and crossbows
• Armor
• Potions (better variety and more than vanilla caches)
• A few alchemical ingredients, with a better chance of uncommon/rare items than normal
• Some leveled soul gems
• Prepared food
• Scrolls
• Misc. thief loot (the kind found in vanilla town encounters)
• Loot from people
  

The "people loot" is slightly more likely to be found, and includes a few items from one of these classes:

• Mage: Enchanted robes/jewelry, magic-skill fortifying potions, alchemy ingredients, soul gems, scrolls, writing supplies (for spell research/discovery mods), and a smaller chance of a spell tome or staff.
• Soldier: Imperial or Stormcloak gear (not CW-completion aware), pocket change, drink, food, lockpicks, and Stormcloaks might have had an amulet of Talos.
• Farmer: Pocket change, drink, food, farm clothes.
• Hunter: Bow, dagger, pocket change, arrows, drink, food, pelts. With SkyPatcher, fishing rods and maps have a chance to appear also.
• Worker: Dagger, pocket change, drink, food, clothes from various professions, smithing supplies (ingots/leather/strips).
• Other regional options including sailors, bards, merchants, and Forsworn.
  
  

The leveled lists are designed to be very modular, allowing you ease of patching with your own additions. A sample SkyPatcher .ini file is included, mostly so that CC Fishing didn't have to be included as one of the master files. I encourage you to make your own additions to these lists with SkyPatcher and share your changes!

Regional variations on the loot variety are now available as well. The 5 major guild holds and Solstheim each have slightly different variety lists powered by Base Object Swapper, influencing what you might find in the caches.

MOD Synergy

SkyPatcher users can enjoy optional support for these mods' extra items (the ones that don't already alter vanilla leveled lists):

Rare Curios
Complete Alchemy & Cooking Overhaul
Spell Research*
Dino's Spell Discovery*
Rabbits Drop Rabbit Fur SE
Skeevers drop Skeever Hide
* Option comes with a light plugin to create new leveled lists for distributing items

FAQ

Q: ESP-FE?
A: Yup!

Q: Compatibility?
A: Not with anything else that alters thief cache contents directly, obviously. Otherwise it should be highly compatible. Mods that touch the same vanilla leveled lists used to build the loot choices will see their changes reflected here. For instance CACO alchemy ingredients should auto-populate the alchemy lists.

Q: Will you add ____?
A: Maybe. I'm especially interested in adding more interesting loot via SkyPatcher. If you decide to add items from your favorite mods to the leveled list patcher file included, send me your changes and I'll probably incorporate them into the mod.

Q: Why aren't crossbow bolts included in the ammo choices?
A: Planned, but removed at the last minute in version 1.0. Dawnguard has no leveled list for steel bolts, nor a master leveled list for all crossbow or bolt types, because of the way these things unlock in-game.

Q: Why is some of the loot less useful?
A: Immersion! Let's be honest: a lot of the vanilla loot from caches is useless too. This mod tries to strike a balance between valuable and interesting.