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> Another Hearthfires Mod, with added Dremora
ghastley
post Jan 29 2016, 08:04 PM
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I put together a Nordic Tower home for my latest Dremora character, and have started making it into another Hearthfires mod, so you can find the tower empty (except for a workbench and anvil) and start making it more comfortable by adding furniture etc. The location is between Valthume and Lost Valley, near the Cradle Stone Tower, but closer to the edge of the map. So close, that you can't fall off the back side as "you can't go that way".

I've managed to squeeze in all the crafting stations, and a double bed. There's no room for kids, which avoids having to support adoption. It has an observation platform on top, copied from one at Valtheim.

I'm thinking of providing a spell book that teaches "Summon Dremora Housecarl" which combines the long duration of the elemental thralls with a bit of the Dremora Merchant and Butler powers from Dragonborn. To make it useful, I'd select one of several "builds" according to the player's skills, so a mage gets a tank, and a melee character gets a mage or archer, etc. However, the gender of the summoned Dremora may need player selection, somehow. Maybe two spell books, and reading one destroys the other?

The reason for summoning, rather than just using a Dremora NPC, is that the Dremora can be levelled when summoned, so re-summoning when the player levels will keep them in step without re-equipping. Since a Dremora can't wear most armour, this would offset the inability to swap out their gear, and also provide the in-game reason for not doing so.



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Acadian
post Jan 29 2016, 09:00 PM
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Nice idea for a home - and a Dremora housecarl is the perfect touch! tongue.gif


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Grits
post Jan 29 2016, 10:04 PM
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That sounds like a great idea, ghastley! What a neat location.

For the summoned Dremora, are you thinking spell or power? I think being able to choose their gender is especially nice. Do you have a quest requirement in mind?


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ghastley
post Jan 30 2016, 12:39 AM
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QUOTE(Grits @ Jan 29 2016, 04:04 PM) *

For the summoned Dremora, are you thinking spell or power? I think being able to choose their gender is especially nice. Do you have a quest requirement in mind?

Yes, I'm considering both. Spell would be OK if the duration is a long one (999 days?), so you get the Magicka back before needing it again.

The location isn't easy to reach. The usual route is through Lost Valley Redoubt, but you can bypass the Hagravens at the top. So I'm thinking that a quest might not be needed. Finding it will be hard enough. However, there probably will be a quest in the CK setup, just to be able to notify the player that they could go look for it. That might get level-up initiated, and I'm tempted to use a Dremora courier, and make it dependent on the Daedric quest at Dagon's Shrine being completed. The Kyn were impressed, even if Dagon wasn't.

I'm thinking "summon housecarl in bedroom area, and armour is not needed." Lover's Comfort perk without the whole marriage thing and all the CK setup requirements for the home. That makes gender significant.

Edit: Pieces of the Past requires level 20. I don't think I'd want to wait that long.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Jan 30 2016, 12:48 AM


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ghastley
post Feb 4 2016, 03:06 AM
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I just finished nav-meshing the tower. It's been a real pain, as it's an exterior, so I have to connect to the existing, and I didn't realize that I'd put it at the junction of four cells, so there are a lot of cell-edge joins. That's on top of the need to nav-cut each piece of furniture.

Still I do have a prototype spell for conjuring the housecarl, and here's proof that she's a real one. Just look where she chose to stand!


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Grits
post Feb 4 2016, 11:42 AM
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Ha! That’s a real Housecarl, all right! bigsmile.gif It’s great to see a female dremora.

Good luck with the navmesh. Just reading “junction of four cells” gave me a cold sweat.


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ghastley
post Feb 4 2016, 04:09 PM
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The summoned Dremora Housecarl has given me a whole bunch of quirky problems I wasn't expecting.

First off, I cloned from the summoned Dremora Lord and changed from a fixed level, to "player level multiplier" using 1.0 as a start point, although I suspect it will need to be slightly higher. What I didn't notice was that the Lord had a health level offset to avoid him being OP, so he gets -200 off his calculated 600+. The housecarl was getting the same 200 taken off hers, and I'd summoned her at a level where she got about 205, so nett 5. Colliding with a butterfly could kill her! Presumably at lower player levels, she'd have spawned dead, and immediately disappeared again!

Fixed that, and now she groans all the time. Discovered that all commanded humanoids with a playable race voice do that. Had to change her voice back to CrDremora, but now she has male battle cries. She's due for a custom compilation as a new voice type. Males are OK with the standard voice, of course.

I gave the base NPC template a levelled weapon, and discovered that I hadn't checked the box to inherit inventory on the summoned one, so she got an enchanted Daedric Battleaxe at level 5. So I set it, and it switched her to L1EnchWeaponDremora1H and she spawned with a Greatsword! Discovered that the list is not 1H, as it's named, but allows all melee weapons. Made my own list. Now it will be a levelled mace (always with fire enchantment). I've given them a left-hand shock spell, but I suspect I'll need to change the combat style before it gets used, as I've not yet seen it in action.

The next issue will be outfits. You can't interact with a summoned character to swap out their equipment, so her Daedric-like armour is the same downgraded Dremora gear that they all get. I need to create various levels of it, and make a new levelled list of outfits. I might as well try and make visual variety at the same time, for both male and female. That could be just clones of regular armour as Dremora versions, which is what Bethesda did with the Daedric, but I'd prefer it all to look "not from Nirn", so I'll likely be adapting a few custom ones.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 4 2016, 04:10 PM


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Grits
post Feb 4 2016, 09:32 PM
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Thank you for sharing the details of your process. I have never made a summonable humanoid before, but I’m working up to a summonable Katria. I would not have thought of these issues myself. Perhaps I will get lucky and find she already has a leveled list of her gear.


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ghastley
post Feb 8 2016, 03:03 PM
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I keep running into more "gotcha's" with the housecarls. I just discovered that you can't summon a leveled NPC, so I have to create a spell for each one, and a scripted meta-spell to cast the right one. Not a biggie, because I needed to do that anyway to make style selection work.

And I need some feedback on that. In order to provide a housecarl that suits the player's style, I need to decide between Mage, Missile or Melee. I'll first identify the player's preference for their own play-style by checking highest skill. If it's Archery, they're an archer. Then if their Magicka is higher than Health or Stamina, they're a mage. The rest will be assumed fighters (as sneak-thieves etc. need the same follower, or none at all.)

I'll pair a Melee tank with an archer, a Mage with a fighter, and an Archer with a mage. The logic is that an archer can fire around a rushing-in tank, but a mage would have to hold off from using area spells, and would prefer someone who stand back. The fighter gets a mage as a more versatile ranged partner. There's a big difference between human intelligence and AI so the human/computer match-ups don't work so well the other way round.

Are my assumptions valid in your experience? For example, does Buffy count as an archer or a mage? And if the logic gets it wrong, does it still select an appropriate housecarl for that style?


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Acadian
post Feb 8 2016, 03:52 PM
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Buffy's magicka dwarfs her other attributes. That said, her primary attack is stealth + bow. When paired with a follower, she does okay with any actually. Her preference is:

!. Ranger. Engage by bow at range (like Buffy) but if foes get too close, switch to melee while Buffy keeps shooting.

2. Tank. Same, actually. Housecarl tanks use bows okay when range allows.

3. Mage. Nice from range and friendly fire is not a prob since Buffy and mage both keep distance. Mage is not as able, however to defend them when foes get close so Buffy has to frantically maneuver to ensure foes attack the mage while Buffy has a good line of fire to shoot the foes. It becomes more of a matter of urgency protecting the mage since they tend to be squishier up close.

I think one reason the game uses general warriors (bow at range, !H+shield up close) is that it works pretty well. I'm not sure that a warrior PC would enjoy charging in at the risk of being back-shot by an archer or mage housecarl.


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ghastley
post Feb 9 2016, 03:14 AM
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Well, the summon spells now seem to be working. My test character is a two-hander, and he gets a mage housecarl of an appropriate level. If I boost his magicka via console, he casts an archer housecarl, etc.

I still have a few issues with the weapon rack in the tower to sort out (which may be due to UKSP trying to fix them), and get the story part sorted out. I.e. why you get pointed to the tower in the first place, and how you get the summon spell. But the hard work of constructing the mod is done.

Kothet, my test Dremora, is the resurrected former owner of Prizna from the Gweden Brothel, last seen dead in an Oblivion realm connected to the gate outside Bravil. He's forgiven her for killing him, as it was exactly what he'd have done if the roles were reversed, but he's a bit miffed at Dagon for setting him up for it. That's why he's wandering Tamriel at the moment, figuring that Prizna must have seen something about the place that she liked.

Aranxa, his female counterpart for testing the male summon spells, has no real backstory. She's having fun wearing the outfits I'm trying out.

Basic Armour (and on a male) is mainly retextured imperial with the top removed or replaced.

Medium Armour adds a plate top extracted from the full daedric cuirass.

Mage robes - this is the "skimpy" version. Standard will just be a re-texture. (I'm thinking of a third spell that summons the female in skimpy stuff if you just want eye-candy, so I'm playing with outfits.)

The Daedric armour at higher levels is the same visually as the player armor, but has the lower stats that all Dremora get, so it comes in a bit earlier. The boots and gauntlets shown in my images gives way to those items before the cuirass gets replaced. No helmets are worn, and the mage robe stays at all levels, with the mage armor spells doing the same job.


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Grits
post Feb 9 2016, 04:53 AM
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Your pairings sound good to me, ghastley. I find the most difficult things to manage with followers are their Destruction spells that have an area of effect and their summonings, and that’s easy to avoid by not giving them troublesome spells.

I often spread out the attributes even when a character doesn’t use them all, but I don’t think I’ve ever gone so far as to give someone the most of an attribute that they don’t use, so I wouldn’t have a fighter who was identified as a mage. However sometimes my mages have more Health than Magicka, so if I’m following this right they would be identified as a fighter and get a mage Housecarl. That would work out fine because the mage Housecarl would stay out of the way of the mage player character just like an archer Housecarl would.

Great progress! I like that their armor is unique.


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ghastley
post Feb 12 2016, 07:50 PM
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The spells all seem to working as intended now. Including fixing the problem of multiple Active Effects that I had for a while (needed a flag set not to show the initiating spell in the UI).

My progress is getting slowed because Kothet is enjoying his time in Tamriel, especially as his housecarl is a hottie! He's just trying to complete his set of Legendary Daedric Armour, because he's clearly trying to impress someone, and all he needs is one more Ebony Ingot to temper his cuirass. However, he mined out Gloombound making Ebony bows to grind up his Smithing, and he's had all the ebony from Northwind Mine (found two dragons at the summit afterward - the resident one had company). We found at least half the veins in Blackreach, and his game doesn't include Solstheim, so not many sources left.

The housecarl is mute right now (maybe that's why he likes her! laugh.gif ) I need to put together a voice for her, with lines from another housecarl, maybe. Aranxa's male housecarl uses the regular CrDremora voice that the summoned Dremora Lord uses. He's vocal, even when she's trying to sneak. nono.gif We're not sure if he resents being in the complete control of a female, as he's too dutiful to suggest it. Aranxa loves it, and his lines just crack her up.





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Grits
post Feb 13 2016, 12:34 AM
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ghastley, I’m giggling over your Dremoras’ antics. I always love it when a character gets the Sanguine Rose, because the Dremora lines are awesome. biggrin.gif I'm glad your spells are working!


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ghastley
post Feb 14 2016, 03:01 PM
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I think I have a reasonable way to start the whole thing off. When the Oblivion Crisis ended, and the gates were all abruptly closed, many of the Kyn (the Dremora) were left in Tamriel, cut off from their path back to the Deadlands. Even when they fall in battle, they are now returned to Tamriel. Dagon is not the caring type, who'd go out of his way to bring them home, and they didn't expect him to do so. Their loyalty to him was based entirely on his providing the opportunity for battle, and the chance to prove themselves (to each other).

The Kyn in Tamriel have seen evidence that the player is Dragonborn, and likely to be involved in fighting the great beasts, as they return to the skies. The Kyn would like to participate, and offer the services of one of their number as a companion in the player's quest. If the player will make a home in the tower, as a show of good faith, then the bargain is struck.

If I adjust the build conditions for the house parts, then the bedside table where the spell tome is found will be built after the bed, and enough of the place to make it a home. I'd originally intended a choice of spell tomes, but can probably adapt the Oghma Infinium method to have the player choose their housecarl from a single volume.


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Acadian
post Feb 14 2016, 04:42 PM
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That's a great 'backstory' for having a Dremora pal! goodjob.gif


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ghastley
post Feb 15 2016, 11:53 PM
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It's ready to roll! (I think)

Try it now

Note that only the female housecarl has the glowing eyes. I may do that for the male later, but I'd like feedback first. The place probably needs a bit more clutter, but I'm not sure what.

The doc contains a copy of its homepage.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 15 2016, 11:55 PM


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Grits
post Feb 16 2016, 03:58 AM
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Woo, got it! Thank you, ghastley! Time for a new Dragonborn, I think. I'll report back when they get to the top. smile.gif


Added: Read the doc, thank you for the logs! That saves a long hike to a mill. I'm looking forward to this!

This post has been edited by Grits: Feb 16 2016, 04:03 AM


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ghastley
post Feb 16 2016, 04:56 AM
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Not in the one you have, but coming soon.

I was wondering what to put on the dining table, and then this happened.


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Grits
post Feb 16 2016, 05:07 PM
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Ha! That's awesome. Chocolate and blood flavored? biggrin.gif

Junia Atrius, Dragonborn, just got a fun letter from the Kyn. She is leaving Whiterun to go check out the tower. Woo!

I installed the mod right after the fight at the Watchtower, and the courier found her as expected as soon as she leveled up.


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