from the CE Editor:

Follow-up:

tried increasing RespawnAttempt (2→4), RespawnLimit (20→50), and RespawnTypes (12→30) in globals.xml, since our very large modded item count (3400+ types across 13 files) meant most types never got a chance per CE cycle. Tested over roughly 16 hours (four consecutive ~4h server sessions, 2026-08-24 04:01-20:01).

Total placement attempts logged for our ContaminatedArea-restricted test items over that period:

AK101_Black (800 "search overtime"/"hard to place" combined).

AK101_Green (776 "search overtime"/"hard to place" combined).

M4A1_Green (1007 "search overtime"/"hard to place" combined).

Ammo_40mm_ChemGas (1885 "search overtime"/"hard to place" combined).

None of the successful spawns accumulated across that same 16h period landed inside any of our 7 painted ContaminatedArea zones.

So increasing the CE's per-cycle throughput did not fix the underlying issue. Our original questions from the initial report still stand and are, if anything, more clearly demonstrated by this data: items appear to spawn at locations that don't match their configured usage/area-flag requirement at all, rather than being constrained to (or evenly competing for) the painted zones.

i only painted Tierzones and now the contaimation:

I've spent multiple days trying to properly configure contaminated-zone loot on my server, but despite following the documented setup, it still isn't spawning reliably. Regular loot at these locations gets prioritized over items with ContaminatedArea usage, rather than the other way around.

i analyzed in some relevant discords that a lot admins have the same issues regadring this topic.