Recruit Companions Mod

[seeker1]

So a curious little mod popped up at mod.io. It's called "Companion Interaction QoL".

Not much info there. But then I guess this is the kind of mod where they can keep the description short and sweet.

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/m/companion-interaction-qol
"Adds a spell to immediately recruit or dismiss a companion." Well, at first glance, you might be like. Well, homes, we don't need a spell to do that, do we?

But there's a video embedded in the mod page. It's somebody's Tav talking to Jaheira outside the Nautiloid. Well, OK, it's a mod to let you recruit companions EARLIER than you would normally be able to.

Yeah, had to test it. It works. I loaded a save I had from Act 2. Hit the spell icon. Selected Minsc. And boom, yes the Mad Rashomon was there standing in my Act 2 camp. Of course, he had no tent yet. He won't have a tent until Act 3. He stood over by my other hirelings.

To be clear, this is something you could do before. Either through the debug console, you had to use some abstruse console commands, & that required script extender. (So I couldn't do it that way.) Or you could do it with Debug Book. But you had to dig through some menus and submenus and it took a while. It definitely was not this easy. (The last time I tried doing this was a LONG time ago when I was still having issues recruiting Minthara right after Patch 5. So I tried spawning her with Debug Book in Act 3. It worked. Sorta. She appeared in the camp, but, uh, dead. I rezzed her, and then I discovered I could not speak with or interact with her. So, experiment a failure.)

So, other than not having a tent, Minsc actually had the same usual dialogue responses you might get form him in Act 3. My suspicion - no extensive testing yet, I just want to make sure this would even work - he's obviously not going to have any banter or much of any interactions in Act 2 because none exist for him. They were never written. But if you're impatient about getting some companions early ... or you want to make an attempt at bringing one back ... well, honestly I have no idea if that will even work. Like what would happen if you killed Karlach earlier in the game and used this to spawn her in camp? (My guess: she's gonna spawn dead, and even if rezzed, can't be interacted wth.)

Spoilers follow.

Final question: what on Earth will happen if Minsc runs into himself in Act 3? Well, of course, I suppose now you can entirely skip a visit to the vaults AND the sewers. You've already got him. Will the quest log show that Jaheira's quest to find him is already fulfilled before it even began? Dunno. The quest to find him won't start until Act 3, even though I now have him in Act 2. I have a deep feeling if he does run into himself in the vaults, ♥♥♥♥ will start bugging out in the game, and the scripts will go haywild. I doubt I would try that experiment.

These are questions I'd love to ask the author, but they have their forum comments turned off. Of course, I bet they have no idea, themselves, but I can't even ask other players/users what experiences they've had using this mod. Sigh. (I really wish modders wouldn't do that.)

But ... the bottom line ... are you one of those folks who (like me) wish you could have Minsc in earlier acts of the game than Act 3? Seems like you can. Of course, I suspect things will be a little bit weird as he'll have no interactions, banter, or reactions till Act 3, when those were actually written for his character, but ....

[Jaeleth]

Originally posted by seeker1:

So a curious little mod popped up at mod.io. It's called "Companion Interaction QoL".

Not much info there. But then I guess this is the kind of mod where they can keep the description short and sweet.

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/m/companion-interaction-qol
"Adds a spell to immediately recruit or dismiss a companion." Well, at first glance, you might be like. Well, homes, we don't need a spell to do that, do we?

But there's a video embedded in the mod page. It's somebody's Tav talking to Jaheira outside the Nautiloid. Well, OK, it's a mod to let you recruit companions EARLIER than you would normally be able to.

Yeah, had to test it. It works. I loaded a save I had from Act 2. Hit the spell icon. Selected Minsc. And boom, yes the Mad Rashomon was there standing in my Act 2 camp. Of course, he had no tent yet. He won't have a tent until Act 3. He stood over by my other hirelings.

To be clear, this is something you could do before. Either through the debug console, you had to use some abstruse console commands, & that required script extender. (So I couldn't do it that way.) Or you could do it with Debug Book. But you had to dig through some menus and submenus and it took a while. It definitely was not this easy. (The last time I tried doing this was a LONG time ago when I was still having issues recruiting Minthara right after Patch 5. So I tried spawning her with Debug Book in Act 3. It worked. Sorta. She appeared in the camp, but, uh, dead. I rezzed her, and then I discovered I could not speak with or interact with her. So, experiment a failure.)

So, other than not having a tent, Minsc actually had the same usual dialogue responses you might get form him in Act 3. My suspicion - no extensive testing yet, I just want to make sure this would even work - he's obviously not going to have any banter or much of any interactions in Act 2 because none exist for him. They were never written. But if you're impatient about getting some companions early ... or you want to make an attempt at bringing one back ... well, honestly I have no idea if that will even work. Like what would happen if you killed Karlach earlier in the game and used this to spawn her in camp? (My guess: she's gonna spawn dead, and even if rezzed, can't be interacted wth.)

Spoilers follow.

Final question: what on Earth will happen if Minsc runs into himself in Act 3? Well, of course, I suppose now you can entirely skip a visit to the vaults AND the sewers. You've already got him. Will the quest log show that Jaheira's quest to find him is already fulfilled before it even began? Dunno. The quest to find him won't start until Act 3, even though I now have him in Act 2. I have a deep feeling if he does run into himself in the vaults, ♥♥♥♥ will start bugging out in the game, and the scripts will go haywild. I doubt I would try that experiment.

These are questions I'd love to ask the author, but they have their forum comments turned off. Of course, I bet they have no idea, themselves, but I can't even ask other players/users what experiences they've had using this mod. Sigh. (I really wish modders wouldn't do that.)

But ... the bottom line ... are you one of those folks who (like me) wish you could have Minsc in earlier acts of the game than Act 3? Seems like you can. Of course, I suspect things will be a little bit weird as he'll have no interactions, banter, or reactions till Act 3, when those were actually written for his character, but ....

Yes, Minsc immediately comes to my mind regarding this mod. Since I get him so late in the game that there is practically no use for him, and I'm sorry for that. But it might lead to a LOT of anachronism... The one you referred, Minsc vs Minsc, and then Minsc meets Jaheira at Last Light inn (with no scripted dialogues yet to cover that)... My guess is that he'll be totally oblivious to Jaheira and even to himself and if 2 Minscs are in the same party, they'll trigger random scripted dialogues from their database, independently. His cutscenes will show up, however, at the proper time and place, though, but showing himself speaking and showing the other himself in the background too, with the party.

[Chaosolous]

It's nice that people can have the companions they want, but my thought on that is that it's going to be a pretty quiet game right up until you get to where those companions would actually be unlocked.

It's not like the mod adds voice lines and dialogue where none-exists for the companions you would be getting early.

Neat idea though. Those late Act 2 and 3 companions are under served.

[seeker1]

Yeah, so, it's interesting. I just tested, if you summon Minsc in Act 1, he overlevels everybody else and immediately starts out at lvl 12. He obviously has no tent, and you can't even (like a custom hireling) assign him a camp spot. He just seems to like to sit and play his bongo drum over by Karlach. You have some minimal dialogue with him in camp, he talks a bit as if some things have happened which haven't (as I would expect). He sometimes banters with other companions, but he won't react to anything, because of course they never wrote any reaction for him to things in Act 1 or 2. Honestly ... he's about as quiet as Alfira is as a quasi-companion.

So, I may not end up using him until much later, anyway; he's so OP'd over the rest of the group. What I'm curious about -- will Jaheira's quest to find him auto-complete as soon as you enter Rivington, or the city? This means skipping a lot of stuff to acquire him once you get to the city. So there's that.

I'm going to test this as an experiment, and keep a save right before trying it. So what happens if you kill Minthara (as an enemy), then spawn Minthara later on after the party? My guess ... my prediction ... again she spawns dead, and even if she can be resurrected, may not be interactive. But I'm so curious, I want to find out.

Anyway, the results of another experiment. It's very strange, I made Astarion a 'virtual' avatar, and the game goes through the scene of where from his point of view he decides to bite a party member. As someone once described here, he has a definite motivation for this. Spoilers? His master Cazador ritually bound him and told him he cannot feast on sentient beings. My guess is he was under these parameters because Cazador probably didn't want him exposing what Caz was up to, and forcing greater restrictions on him as a result.

From his POV. you can see he tries to bite the player (or another party member, doesn't matter) because he wants to test if this compulsion from Cazador is still in effect on him. And it isn't, BTW, if he succeeds on a stealth check, he drains the party member, then needs to make another Save to avoid draining them completely and killing them, in essence testing his own self control. Anyway, if both succeed, he gets the buff, the party member gets the debuff, but, no, they don't realize what happened the previous night or that Asty is a vampire, still. (Although his vampire bite attack appears on his hotbar.)

You still need the later "exposure" scene after finding the boar to get the "reveal" to Tav and everyone else that he is a vampire.

[seeker1]

Experiment results were exactly as I expected, and matched what happened when I did this with Debug Book (a long time ago).

If you kill Minthara, then after you leave the gobbo camp, you attempt to spawn her, she appears in your camp dead. You can rez her. But it won't do any good, she can't speak to you, or interact in any way with Tav. In short, she becomes entirely non functional.

Next experiment: what if you KO her, but rather than waiting for the Moonrise trial, you attempt to spawn her later in camp? It works ... with one weird result ... she appears in camp, but in a state of "unconsciousness" (little spinning things over her head) even though she is standing up. You need to cast Restoration or Awaken or some other spell that can cancel out her unconscious state. Anyway, that appeared to work. Except ... well, I went to have her respec out of Vengeance to take a custom Oath (as I often do), and the game froze. Well, partially froze. I could still save, Tav could still do stuff, but Minthara and Withers were "locked" in conversation. Anyway ... after panicking a bit, I quicksaved, and reloaded, and next thing I knew Withers was asking her what she wanted, and she respec'd. Whew.

I do not know what's gonna happen when I get to Moonrise. I'm not going to have her in my party, obviously. But is her "trial" still going to happen anyway? (If it does, and that "copy" of Minthara goes to prison, I might just leave her to her fate, as long as my "copy" of Minthara still works, LOL.) Guess I'll find out. (Worst possible situation, she disappears out of camp ("there can be only one"), goes on trial, and has to be rescued anyway. Well, if you gotta, you gotta. At least I had her for a while.)

Anyway, it occurred to me later that I could use Minsc, if I respec'd him, then simply made sure to stop levelling him past the level of everybody else in the party, and left him with his "level up" tag. The trick is to make sure to keep skipping over levelling him up.

Neither are much more responsive or interactive in Act 1 than Alfira - pretty much what I expected.

[seeker1]

Experiment results:

I made sure Minthara was in camp when I went through the doors to the Moonrise throne room, I had a feeling having her in the party was gonna make something bug out, having her face herself.

,,, walked through the doors, wondered what would happen next. Well, there she was on trial as normal (except wearing all the armor and equipment I had already given her, that was different), and as usual, I persuaded the baddies to spare her and send her to the dungeon below. But then what happened next ... instead of going down to the dungeon cell as normal, she was there, "neutral"/yellow, just standing there, and offering the usual dialogue for "follow me out of here". Except ... when I asked her to follow me out of there ... nothing happened. Ruh roh. So I had an idea.

So ... I went back to camp, spawned her in camp again, and she was back as a standard follower again, and the quest "Decide Minthara's Fate" was resolved. Whew. I think everything is copacetic now. (Until something crashes later.) BTW, I peeked down in the prison area below, her questioners are there in the cell, but questioning the ether, and are non interactive. Can't even kill them for the heck of it. LOL. So basically, I avoided the usual "persuade the guards to let her go" stuff.

Yes, I know I'm messing with scripts in the game, and I'm sure I'll pay for this later, somehow. Mebbe not, I think at this point everything is "in phase". But it WAS useful to have Minthara fighting some of the initial shadow and undead enemies before the usual point I acquire her (especially as I'm facing extra undead due to the More Encounters mod).

I have Minthara using the Oath of the Eldritch Hunt, another homebrew one that popped up at mod.io. It seems to fit her, it's a weird spec involving invoking evil to slay evil. Which seems to fit her. Still nobody's updated or done Oath of the Watchers, which I usually used to spec her to.

[seeker1]

So, I arrived with Minsc and Jaheira into the city, and Jaheira seems to already be progressing normally, acting as I would expect had I already found Minsc. It shows her quest to find Minsc is done. But, now this is weird, I then went to meet Nine Fingers, I had Minsc speak to her, it's not like she couldn't see him standing right there, but she proceeded to give her dialogue about having set up an ambush for the "Stone Lord," even though he's standing right in front of her. LOL.

Well, I'm not going to the vaults, or the sewers, or any of that, and I guess the Zhent-Guild struggle will never happen, and thus Nine Fingers will never offer her help for the final fight. Well ... no biggie, and worth the tradeoff of having Minsc early ...