Hello. Recently I've noticed that the loading time for accessing a corpse or container in Oblivion has been very long. Now it takes 4-5 seconds of "freezing" before a corpse or a container such as chest, crate, or barrel can be accessed. The inventory loading time is normal. This never happened before. What are the possible causes for this?

I loaded a fresh character in tutorial dungeon, everything is normal.
I loaded a previous game, this was noticeable (2-3 seconds of loading time).
Now this is a pain, every time I want to loot a corpse or a container, or finish lockpicking, I have to wait for 4-5 seconds before the menu comes up.

The difference of the saved games is, in the most recent saved game I had lots lots of ingredients and potions (700-1000) in my inventory. In the previous saved game I did not have as much ingredients and potions, but still a lot. In a fresh saved game I had few potions and some weapon and armor.

That's your reason right there. Every time you access a container, both your weight and the weight of the container are calculated. This is very processor heavy, and will be an issue even if you happen to be one of those people with a quad-core omfghz processor sitting in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Having 2gb+ ram can reduce it slightly, but ultimately you just have to stop carrying so damn much. For most people it starts happening around 100-150 items, and isn't as noticable in the vanilla game due to low carry limits (after wprn armor). In a modded game where people have their carry limit much higher, or where they've enchanted alot of strength stuff, this is more common. Additionally, having anything with feather or burden effects tends to make it worse since it complicates those weight calculations (since those effects work on individual item weights, not whole weight like it was in morrowind).

Thanks for the explanation. Yes I use a carry all you want mod. I played a few characters before, each with a lot of weapons and armors, but none of them were alchemists, because I just made sure that I survive each battle, then use wait command to heal for free. Now I decided to play alchemy and discovered it is a very good skill. I created a lot of potions and poisons, but didn't use as much I guess. And along the way, I picked up even more pre-made potions. I tried to drop every potion I have, but I realized it takes ages, so I guess I ll use them more often.

One solution is to just stop carrying around so much. Get yourself a player house, and use one of the containers there to store excess ingrediants/potions, and do most of your alchemy work within that house. You might even want to find a toned down carry mod so that you have some sort of limit to work around. Excess clutter, books, plates, equipment can also lead to inventory slow down. You really shouldn't carry more than 3 full sets of equipment and a dozen weapons at any time.

Another solution if you do not want to leave potions at home is to download a mod that will add a container to your inventory and move all the potions there.

Since the game pauses when you open your menu, you will not be penalized in-game for needing to access your bag of holding to take your potions.

After a similar advice from Vagrant (btw, Thanks!), I ended up using the above method and it cut my container opening times to 1/3.

Possible mods could be:
- Bag of holding
- Portable campsite