Aenigma66 suggested I make Valgus teach restoration, which makes sense from a role play aspect given he has such a hard-on for healing. The only issue is that as a follower, it allows the player to do the Faendal trick, where you can swipe the gold from his inventory immediately after paying him.
Of course, from an immersion standpoint, Valgus shouldn’t be asking for money anyhow. As far as he’s concerned, his things are your things, including the stuff in his brain.
***SPOILERS for the quest Birds of a Feather*** After some suggestions from user Danvolodar, I decided to add some post-quest witches to the Bird’s Eye, to help provide a visual representation of the effects of your choice. Given the hagraven AI is sketchy, I figured the best way to do this was give Misha a coven. The trigger for this is in Solitude. Once you enter the Winking Skeever after finishing the quest, the changes shown in the video will happen.
Given the witches are random, you do get some duplicates on occasion, such as the Dunmer at the bottom. For the most part though, I think it serves as a nice little addition to the quest should you side with Misha.
Make a patch for UFO – Ultimate Follower Overhaul and I will donate 20 bucks.
No joke. Love both mods but only being able to use one follower from NPC’s at a time is a drag.
Well, UFO‘s author is not answering messages. It’s up to him to make a patch, because I have no idea how UFO works and the scripting is beyond my knowledge.
The authors of CH, EFF, and AFT were forthcoming and willing to help, which is why patches were made and they are compatible. If I knew how to do it myself – without sacrificing functionality with other follower mods – it would have been done already.
First I’m hearing of EFF and AFT, gonna have to check them out.
Sadly, the author of AFT has gone off the radar – and been so for some time, now. I’ve heard tell that somebody was looking into making a a patch for compatibility between AFT and 3DNPC, but then decided not to bother with it until the updates stop.
I still use the most recent version – it takes a little bit of fiddling and abuse of the console codes, but it works okayish for the time being as is.
How much abuse we talking here James?
Well, you’ll have to make some use of the console to continually set the 3DNPC follower count to 0, at least, especially if you want to gather more than one such follower outside the various storylines. Case in point, I was following the vanilla main quest and ran into Zora, Valgus, Rumarin and Anum-La. Having Zora with me the whole time, the others declined to follow me until I hit them with AFT‘s make a follower function. It works well enough, but it can screw things up when the scripting calls for the followers to disband, such as in the case of Pit Dogs, where the scripting got so tangled that at a point Zora should have been across the map from me, she was right there, walking along to our next destination.
Of course, having one of the 3DNPC’s combined with multiple vanilla/custom followers seems to work just fine, so long as the 3DNPC is the first one you recruit.
IIRC, this follower/free trainer exploit has already been fixed in a patch.
By the way… I don’t know if this is possible, or if you haven’t already done so… But have you considered adding a hearing or speech impaired NPC?
I mean… It would make sense that amongs all people in Skyrim, at least one of them uses a signal language such as ASL or LIBRAS to comunicate.
(I know, there’s a NPC who can only speak by singing… But still, it’s not the same).
I was able to get my money back from Valgus though. Is it the unofficial patch maybe?
I dunno, how would you communicate with said person? Unless you mean like blind person magic, like where they use other methods to compensate and function like normal NPCs.
It could be like Hogar from Game of Thrones sort of thing. He understands your commands, but is unable to articulate a response beside muttering his name or just grunting. His dynamic responses to surroundings would just be guttural as well
It would be like Hodor from Game of Thrones. he understands commands but is not able to articulate responses. His dynamic reactions to the environment and all would be guttural too. Maybe questline to restore speech?
I do have one of those, actually. You can even marry him.
edit: damn these squished threads. I may have to alter nesting to just 2 comments or so. Anyhow, thanks for the suggestions, keep them coming.
Yes, it is the USKP that fixes the follower-trainer exploit.
I’m not sure if this is where I ought to leave this, but I was wondering perhaps if you’d considered making a hybrid character. Imagine the relentless hatred a character would get if they were, say, part Dark Elf and part Nord, or not even hatred but just a continual rejection because of their blood. I thought it’d be interesting. I’m sorry if this was kind of a stupid idea or cluttering the forum or something, I figured I probably ought not spend three paragraphs going into it.
Sure, that’s a decent idea and I’ll consider it.
Now, I do have a Dark elf in Raynes who believes he’s part Khajiit, (although whether that’s true is up for speculation, given the two races can’t cross breed) and hates that side of him. As a result, he’s made it his lifelong goal to hunt down lawbreakers and thieves.
I know, and I’ve read your explanation of him. It’s a poetic character, and I frankly love him. I’m talking someone for whom the loathing comes from the outside, at least initially. Scorned by the elves for having tainted blood, mistrusted by humans for their impurities, and a general resentment from the Argonians and Khajiit for the dark elves’ past transgressions against their races. Someone who truly has no home, a fundamental outsider.
Yeah, like I said, it’s a good idea, I would just have to figure out how to make the vanilla characters shun him/her and more importantly, figure out which ones would do the shunning (like for instance, that dock Argonian who “doesnt’ appreciate Nords right back.” as opposed to making new NPCs just to be racists.
Similar to how when you walk into Windhelm, Rolff Stone-Fist sets an example by yellilng at the Dark Elf to go back to Morrowind or whatever.
Ah, I’m sorry, I got so carried away with the emotional aspect I forgot about the practical. Writing it off by having that explain why vanilla NPCs ignore them would be a bit of a cop out and not very believable, but other than some specific characters and that generic guard “Watch where you’re going”, there isn’t much directly confrontational dialogue. I can see where that would be a problem, I apologize.
No need. It only needs to be one scene, and worst case scenario I could just toss in some random Argonian and have Matt or someone reliable voice it. Like I said, it’s a good idea, it’ll just take some time to figure out how to approach it in order to create the least amount of overlap.
For one, Rinori is kind of an outsider as well, and the fact that she lives in Windhelm and is so meek would probably make it so this person has to be the opposite. Things like that to emphasize contrast with the existing horde.
Precisely. I’ve probably spent too much time thinking about this, but it’s your mod and I figured if you liked the concept you’d want to run with it your way.
Yeah, any suggestions are welcome. Did you want to give this hypothetical Dunmer a name?
Half Dunmer, and the name is the only thing I hadn’t really been able to develop very well. I do think it’d be appropriate for it to be something completely Nordic though, so totally un-elven as to be laughable and make its owner unwilling to give it out.
As for the character, I thought it might be…interesting to have their mother have been some form of escaped slave to heighten the misfortune a little. Product of unwilling relations from slave owner to slave, and thus raised by a mother that resented their existence and with a father that, if he even knew about them, would be about as like to spit upon them as anything else.
Yeah, I’m having trouble with this – too much overlap with existing characters. Raynes being a Dunmer half-breed was bad enough, but I’ve beaten the concept of interracial marriage taboo into the ground, such as the Nord/Khajiit pairing in the “To Warm Sands” quest, and an Elven/Nord pairing in “Elven Sword” and Morviah‘s lover being a Nord and so on and so forth.
The territory is just too familiar. And the more characters are similar, the more everyone seems less unique. I might just turn it into something else, experimenting with possibly making his father a bandit instead. As in, playing the criminal card instead of the race one.
Anyhow just fair warning it might not be recognizable.
It’s your mod. I’ll be honored if any piece of it makes its way in.
whoops, replied to myself. let me repost.
anyhow, the story I had was the dunmer having a Nord father who was murdered. He’s shunned by other Dunmer for reasons he doesn’t understand, but returns to the Gray Quarter to find his father’s killers. The PC then helps him hunt those killers down, but in the end, he learns the truth. The men killed his father to avenge his mother. She was raped by the Nord, and died during childbirth, hence the resentment over his existence – the fact that he was raised by this Nord and considered him a good father didn’t help.
the problems I was having had to do with the themes and nature of the quest. Half-breed Dunmer hunting people, interracial marriage, emotional twist, etcetera. Just too much overlap, but the story itself is good and you could probably use it for something if you ever want to make this NPC in another medium, i dunno.
at this point, that’s really the hard part. finding something that’s not only good, but unique to the mod. even exploring the bandit thing reminds me somewhat of jade. perhaps I could remove the guilt factor and make him defiant, but then it runs the risk of sounding like larkspur.
I’m even trying to use more of the “ugly” hairstyles now, because I’ve overused the good ones. I think the ratio of balding and unkempt NPCs will only increase from here on out.
If it’s different you want, why not go a different way entirely? Mixed race is good because in the vanilla Skyrim it seems like the type of thing that would be fairly rare, and yet more common in a place like Skyrim than anywhere else in the Empire because so much of it is easy to hide in. Doing a new take on an idea is what storytelling is.
However, as I recall the Dunmer people are both scattered and still a little preoccupied with their former eminence, so how about this take. They’re not the product of the rape themselves, say their father was, and they’ve just grown up in Skyrim, mom and dad are dead in a bandit raid and they’re on their own now living life as best they can. When the Dragonborn happens upon them, they’re in hiding because some Dunmer knights are chasing them in order to drag them back to Morrowind. Apparently their esteemed grandparent’s other kids got killed for some reason or another and now they’re supposed to go be heir to the jerk because the name must live on.
And personally I think some of the uglier hairstyles would be perfect for realistic characters. A lot of the “hard” warriors in Skyrim seem to be very preoccupied with washing their faces and keeping their hair nicely combed.
I’ll read this later and may use it for something else, the quest is actually turning out pretty well, although at this point it only vaguely resembles the original framework but nothing like any of the stuff I’ve done so far. I’m actually rather excited about this one. Anyhow, will post results at some point, shouldn’t take long to voice.
Oh wow, cool. I honestly didn’t even expect you to be as polite about this as you have been, let alone actually do something with it. I’ll be looking forward to the new quest.
Speaking of suggestions, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tellevi outside of the barracks room when she heads to Sky Haven Temple. Maybe have her get some air and sweep the training yard upper porch…
Yeah, I probably should add some sweepidlemarkers and then give her a schedule.
About Valgus. I think that the performance is too intimate and the actor is too close to the mic. If you imagine two strangers meeting outside, they should be talking from a distance. Btw, this is not a criticism of the actor, just of the choices that were made for this performance. Also, “as my father did me” sounds strange. Maybe change it to: “as my father did for me”
I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I believe this is too give Valgus more of a softer, deeper baritone, as closeness to the mic picks up more bass.
I generally let actors make these kinds of choices and don’t really see that much of a problem with it personally. In some cases, like Carmella, there are technical compromises being made where proximity is used to help reduce room echo. Breaths can be EQ’d out because they’re bass frequencies. Room echo cannot.