What I mean by popping through the floor is he'll be downstairs in the back room, behind the staircase, and will go to come upstairs. He'll walk around the staircase about halfway, where you can see him if you're standing at the top. From there he'll either continue on his way without pause, go right up the stairs and stand, ready to do business, or he'll suddenly be standing next to the table and fireplace, upstairs, without touching a step. Like the game just flings him up there because he's taking too long to make the trip or something. Then, occasionally, when he walks from the fireplace to, say, near the doorway at the entrance to the shop, he'll slip and fall down the stairwell. Rather than walking back up the stairs, he just blinks to where he was heading, with no actual steps in between. It looks strange. It doesn't happen too often, to be honest, but standing and looking at the man for about 3 solid hours (that salvage quest is a doozy to test beginning to end
), it happened several times. It is exacerbated if you stand in his way when he's walking, as there's just no room between everything on the walls and the staircase for two people. All the same, I understand and completely agree with you on the confusion and annoyance of unseen forces preventing an otherwise sensible maneuver. It is a matter of a simple visual annoyance vs. a phyiscal restriction on movement. I assume there's no railing for that sort of staircase?
Dangerous for kids! . . . Oh. Hey. Maybe that's why they're never seen... Kept hidden from view until they're old enough to walk up stairs without railings...
Far as killing Relneth, I thought I set him as essential... I'll double check that. No, I've never killed him. I have pickpocketed him for his key, though, and the PonderItem is visible... I'll look into the shoe thing and also into if you can find the silly items on mages at the university. Maybe Bethesda did something sneaky that I missed when dealing with them.
Anyway, gonna be heading home in an hour or two, start on hammering out these things shortly after that, and should have another ESP up shortly after that. Yay!
Edit:
Stealing from Relneth, the PonderItem shows up as <Missing Name>... I'll work on an alternative more later. Bedtime now. Sorry for the lack of ESP =(
Edit Again!
Here's the ESP. No more PonderItem. I swapped it with a copy of 'Guide to Ald'Ruhn' instead. Now Relneth reads a fair amount, instead of pondering in his study. Turns out that the PonderItem was sorta icky to begin with. There's a single NPC (head of Bruma Mage's Guild) to uses the item, and it appears on her person if she dies, or is pickpocketed. The official plugin, Smuggler's Cave, changes the name of it to Ring, and makes it a quest item, so if the player picks it up, they can never drop it
So, yeah. Simply removed it, swapped it with a book.
Far as nifty loot instead of merchant chests, I figured being able to break into his workroom, and have access to some bonemold, among other armor bits, was a nice prize for a place like Ebbedin. So nothing particularly amazing in the storage room.
Everything should be shiny now.
Enjoy!