i haven't been deleting minisave programs. lol, that would be an honest to goodness cheat.

bones, now that you mention the 2 year respawn time, i think my respawn timer failure is much more general. apparently, all my respawn times are messed up. almost everything (monsters, chests, cauldrons, ground corpses, trash piles, etc.) everywhere respawns immediately. all i have to do to move out of an area, then move back in. the only refill related thing that seems to work is vendor inventory. they start with about 30 items. if i buy something from a vendor using the save and reload tactic to change the items they sell, the number of items available is reduced. this is most noticeable with the sturmford book seller.

the only knowledge i had previously about respawns was the refill value presented on the prima guide maps, which doesn't specify what the value actually stands for. (i have a download version of the guide, so i haven't actually read through it. i've been searching for a topic i need, then printing the pages, maps and such, that i might need to refer to multiple times). i've gone back through the atlas introduction section again and now see that the value presented stands for days.

i think that my installation of the game does not create minisave files, i've gone through the various folders created by the installation. the only save information i see is in the savegames folder. all that contains is the autosave header and file and the headers and files for the saves i have created.

it seems to me that if the respawn timing was actually working the game would be extremely difficult. based on some quick calculations, using 1 second real time to 1 minute game time, it would take approximately 12 hours of real time play to reset an area with a 2 year respawn. even an untrained, poorly equipped party can clear the dragonflies in sturmford in a couple of game days , without gaining enough experience or coin to advance beyond level 4 and have any coin left over to shop. but beet hoven and the thrall camp area in strumford are next to impossible with a poorly equipped party with no advancement in skills. i can't imagine just sitting in sturmford city for 10 hours of real time play with nothing to do, waiting for the dragonflies to respawn. of course, you could advance the game clock by resting until dawn for 2 years, but that notion offends my aesthetic sensibilities.

it does make sense to me that "gift" items: clovers, wells, barrels in cities, should be controlled by some type of refill criterion, to prevent (or at least minimize) the exploit i described in my original post, but the stuff you have to earn on the field of battle should be more directly related to level of difficulty. a level 50 party killing dragonflies in sturmford shouldn't be able to gain anything of value while a novice party ought to be able to gain enough to be able to progress to the next level of difficulty. to some degree the black chests operate based that principle. while the chest in drangheim prison can be reached by a fairly low level party, it can't be opened safely by that party.