So it seems to be the way that inventory can break off of two things.

1. opening inventory of a particular piece of armor

2. looting things too quickly.

I will use caves as an example. My solution for running caves now is as follows:

1. run the cave, kill everyone, etc but DO NOT LOOT ANYONE OR ANYTHING.

2. once the last NPC is dead, work backwards and start looting the NPC's (might want to have a cool off period on the last guy you killed so just start a few people earlier)

*WHEN YOU LOOT THE NPC'S only loot them when it gives you the two options (Drag Body, Loot) *

that should prevent an inventory lockup.

seems to be that players being dead for too short of a period of time will lock up inventory loading when being looted.