Strange Chest (container) Bug

[TentakelnBitte]

I have this weird bug where hidden (under the floor) chests sometimes spawn higher in the cell than they're meant to.

It doesn't seem mod specific, since it affects ALL below floor chests. They never have any stray edits in the console. It doesn't happen every time, just usually when I'm mod testing (changing cells quickly or reloading saves a bunch). I didn't notice it before installing this chest replacer, but it's just a mesh replacement without an esp. The mesh looks fine to me and functions normally elsewhere. Even the hidden chests look normal, only breaking like these screenshots when affected by the bug.

Anyone have any idea what's actually causing this? They don't have any collision, so it's not a huge issue, but I'd still like to narrow it down! 

Examples:

Spoiler

 

 

[TentakelnBitte]

Possibly related:

I have a weapon mod that just drops a spear outside Helgen ("stabbed" into a rock at CharGenExit)... if I coc to any other cell without walking out of that cave first, that weapon spawns nearby in the first exterior/Tamriel worldspace I enter.

 

Still no idea what's causing it.

I've had many, MANY similar mods that just drop crap on a table, inside a log, on top of a mountain, etc and never had them follow me like this. Hell, I've played since launch, modded since 2014, and never seen the chest bug until whenever that chest replacer came out!

edit: not at all related, it's literally just this mesh being weird

Edited January 18 by TentakelnBitte

[TentakelnBitte]

The lovely ruins_smallchest.nif in CL's Barrels and Crates is causing the issues. I don't yet know why.

Not only does it cause the broken merchant chests, but it also somehow deletes bandit chests! WTF!
I made a small test mod that just redirects the bandit chest mesh to a different nif and they come back. Nothing else touches them and other chests using chest01 are FINE.

[TentakelnBitte]

Crazylion thinks it's a save corruption and no one here has any input... 
I made a mod that just redirects the bandit chests to a different dedicated mesh. 

 

Literally just that mesh being weird for some unknown reason. I hate everything.