How to find a NPC from a mod?

[darkholy119]

If I'm having trouble finding a potentially roaming npc from a mod, are there more practical ways to go about finding them or spawning them somehow than manually searching roads and such for an npc that may not even be spawned properly (or killed already by something etc.)?

I have imported my save after adding the mod and I believe I have seen some npc's connected with the mod already (just not the one I'm looking for) so I know it is working. I did a bit of research on this and it seems like the Kenshi engine does not have the ability for force spawning npc's? Yet the game does obviously spawn some npc's in regularly without importing too.

Would appreciate some suggestions on how best to locate/spawn this npc. Thanks!

[Shidan]

If you know what faction they spawn as, you could try searching for their platoon file in your save data. That will only work if they have actually spawned though. Can pull its coordinates using the this guide. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1370334383

After you have the coordinates you could either teleport yourself there using the guide, or place a campfire in-game and select it with the in-game editor to track your coordinates, and navigate to the character's location.

Or you could try editing the mod said character is from. To either change its spawn location or alter its spawn rate.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1608980474

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

If you know what faction they spawn as, you could try searching for their platoon file in your save data. That will only work if they have actually spawned though. Can pull its coordinates using the this guide. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1370334383

After you have the coordinates you could either teleport yourself there using the guide, or place a campfire in-game and select it with the in-game editor to track your coordinates, and navigate to the character's location.

Or you could try editing the mod said character is from. To either change its spawn location or alter its spawn rate.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1608980474

Thanks Shidan!

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

If you know what faction they spawn as, you could try searching for their platoon file in your save data. That will only work if they have actually spawned though. Can pull its coordinates using the this guide. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1370334383

After you have the coordinates you could either teleport yourself there using the guide, or place a campfire in-game and select it with the in-game editor to track your coordinates, and navigate to the character's location.

Or you could try editing the mod said character is from. To either change its spawn location or alter its spawn rate.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1608980474

Thanks to those guides, I was able to check my save file and confirm the NPC I'm looking for does not seem to be spawned at all. I was also able to find the mod and open it with the FCS. It does seem like the npc I'm looking for is indeed in the mod and probably can be spawned, though I'm thinking the issue may be that the npc does not have a 100% spawn rate, also not sure if there are specific conditions set for them to spawn. I'm guessing if I just kept importing my save over and over I may eventually get the npc to spawn.

Would you happen to have a guide or instructions specifically detailing how setting spawn rates/locations for special NPC's works? I think I may have found the place where I could edit these values in the mod, I'm just not sure how I should edit them to make the spawn rate 100% or maybe change the npc from a roaming npc to spawning and staying in a specific location like The Hub bar.

Thanks again Shidan!

[Shidan]

If they spawn as a homeless spawn, that means they would have a constant chance to spawn in that region. So importing would not be required then, just patience.

No way to set the homeless spawn as 100% without spawning duplicates. But moving to a bar squad would be fairly simple.


First thing I'd suggest is removing the squad from the homeless spawn lists. In
biomes->spawn area. You can use the box in the top right of the squad's entry to check the references to find all regions that it can spawn in.

Then open the Hub in the towns section, and from the dropdown select bar squads. Select the character's squad from the list.

I would also suggest removing their AI package, and replacing it with the hang out in a bar package, to make sure they stay there. This can be done with the dropdown int he top right of the squad's entry, and you can remove the old one by right clicking on it and selecting the option to remove it.

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

If they spawn as a homeless spawn, that means they would have a constant chance to spawn in that region. So importing would not be required then, just patience.

No way to set the homeless spawn as 100% without spawning duplicates. But moving to a bar squad would be fairly simple.


First thing I'd suggest is removing the squad from the homeless spawn lists. In
biomes->spawn area. You can use the box in the top right of the squad's entry to check the references to find all regions that it can spawn in.

Then open the Hub in the towns section, and from the dropdown select bar squads. Select the character's squad from the list.

I would also suggest removing their AI package, and replacing it with the hang out in a bar package, to make sure they stay there. This can be done with the dropdown int he top right of the squad's entry, and you can remove the old one by right clicking on it and selecting the option to remove it.

Thanks for the info! Does "homeless spawn" mean they don't have a faction? Since this special npc does seem to have a custom faction (made it easy to search for their spawn in my save file) and a few other generic npc's that can also spawn into this faction.

So, just to make sure I understand this right, If I manage to do this change correctly, it should mean that this special npc will only spawn at The Hub bar then and that's the only place I would need to check? I've noticed that some other npc's (such as Hobbs or global pacifiers etc.) meant for The Hub bar sometimes walk around The Hub with the "shopping" goal for a while on a new save import before finally ending up at the bar a while later.

Also, if I have implemented this change correctly and this special npc has not spawned at The Hub bar after a save import, would that mean there's no point in waiting and I should do another save import? I guess I'm trying to understand if npc's like this can spawn on a sort of "timetable queue" after a save import or if all npc's that can spawn will spawn immediately all at once as soon as the imported save is first loaded. I think I've sometimes noticed new npc's (in general and not necessarily related to this mod) spawned on a simple save reload when I don't think they were there before, for example... I guess this may be a re-population though.

Hope I'm not bothering you with too many questions but I do really appreciate the help! Thank you!

[Shidan]

Homeless spawns refers to squads that do not spawn from a location, but rather simply in the wilderness. Often bandits and wildlife are spawned this way, but not always. Sometimes it can be things like military patrols or caravans too.

The won't necessarily spawn at the bar in the Hub, they will spawn at the town. If there is a bar, they will usually go hang out at the bar, but often times if the bar is full they will wander the town or shop. Nothing you can do to stop this short of editing the AI package. They will guaranteed spawn though, as long as you leave the spawn chance value at the default 100.

If the character doesn't spawn after all that, it means you've done some incorrectly. Or there was something I didn't account for in my instructions. It should always spawn the bar squads for that town as long as they are set to 100 chance, which is the default.

There are no delayed spawn mechanics for towns, so I'd guess you simply were seeing re-population, as towns can regenerate their residents.

And I'm happy to help, no worries. :)

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Homeless spawns refers to squads that do not spawn from a location, but rather simply in the wilderness. Often bandits and wildlife are spawned this way, but not always. Sometimes it can be things like military patrols or caravans too.

The won't necessarily spawn at the bar in the Hub, they will spawn at the town. If there is a bar, they will usually go hang out at the bar, but often times if the bar is full they will wander the town or shop. Nothing you can do to stop this short of editing the AI package. They will guaranteed spawn though, as long as you leave the spawn chance value at the default 100.

If the character doesn't spawn after all that, it means you've done some incorrectly. Or there was something I didn't account for in my instructions. It should always spawn the bar squads for that town as long as they are set to 100 chance, which is the default.

There are no delayed spawn mechanics for towns, so I'd guess you simply were seeing re-population, as towns can regenerate their residents.

And I'm happy to help, no worries. :)

Thank you again for the answers Shidan!

So, I followed (most of) your instructions and I was able to edit the mod and get this special NPC to spawn at The Hub after a save import. However, I rather quickly encountered a new problem now.

First, I will just say that I did skip the step you mentioned of removing/deleting this special character's homeless squad spawn (in the Border Zone), my thinking behind this was that I didn't mind if a clone of this character spawned in the wilderness and I was curious to see if it would actually happen eventually after I had already recruited this special character at The Hub bar. I can't see how it would be, but if that is somehow the reason I've encountered this new problem, then yeah, I should've just followed all of your instructions.

The new problem is that, once spawned at The Hub, this special character seems to have no dialogue or interaction option attached to them. There is simply no way to interact with him at all. I do have the recruit any prisoner's mod from the steam workshop, which has worked with other modded non-vanilla characters in the past, but even once I put this special character in a cage there is still no "talk to" options for him.

The strange thing is, there is definitely dialogue for this special character in the mod, which is why I never anticipated this at all. I have seen complex dialogue branches written out for this specific character in the mod, with one or two dialogue branches seeming to lead to recruitment. So, I have no idea why this dialogue isn't being connected to the character's spawn in the game.

So, at this point, I'm unsure if this is an issue with the mod itself being left unfinished/outdated or simply my own edit not being implemented correctly. I would be asking the mod creator about all of this but last I checked, they haven't been active on this mod's page for over a year now. I am still interested in somehow getting this character recruited though.

So, again, I really appreciate the help Shidan!

[Shidan]

My guess would be that the dialog has specific conditions set in order to trigger the dialog, which are not being met. Unfortunately can't say much more without knowing the mod, since said conditions could vary wildly.

You could check the conditions yourself, by opening the character's dialog, and then opening their "talk to me" dialog. Or just give me the name or link to the mod and I can check them.

Screenshot showing an example of locating the dialog and conditions.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/438495548119580698/810169660195602452/Dialog_example.PNG

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

My guess would be that the dialog has specific conditions set in order to trigger the dialog, which are not being met. Unfortunately can't say much more without knowing the mod, since said conditions could vary wildly.

You could check the conditions yourself, by opening the character's dialog, and then opening their "talk to me" dialog. Or just give me the name or link to the mod and I can check them.

Screenshot showing an example of locating the dialog and conditions.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/438495548119580698/810169660195602452/Dialog_example.PNG

Thanks for the quick reply!

I just checked the dialouge pack and as far as I can tell, it all seems to be set up in an identical way to Beep's dialouge pack in the screenshot you linked. I also traced the dialouge pack back from the character's spawn I added in at The Hub in my edit and as far as I can tell, the dialouge pack seems to be properly applied to that character's squad spawn at The Hub. I can't really tell exactly what the dialouge condition is but it seems to be the same as Beep's condition in that screenshot.

I'll link the mod below, it's the same one I was asking about a while back in the bug forum where you also replied and took a look at it for me. The one that can crash windows aero with it's mod list tooltip. lol

"Jasin the Assassin" is the npc from this mod I'm trying to recruit.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1477339905&searchtext=beautiful+faces

[Shidan]

Ah, that condition would be the problem then, as it requires the character to have less than 25 in Melee Attack, Melee Defense, Martial Arts, Dodge, Strength, and Dexterity. Or to have less than 75 total between all of those stats. Which he definitely goes over looking at his stats.

Should be able to remove the condition by selecting it in the list, and clicking the remove button above it. Or you could edit his stats to make them compatible in the stats entry for him, also found on his character entry.

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Ah, that condition would be the problem then, as it requires the character to have less than 25 in Melee Attack, Melee Defense, Martial Arts, Dodge, Strength, and Dexterity. Or to have less than 75 total between all of those stats. Which he definitely goes over looking at his stats.

Should be able to remove the condition by selecting it in the list, and clicking the remove button above it. Or you could edit his stats to make them compatible in the stats entry for him, also found on his character entry.

Would you be able to show a screenshot of where this condition is/what I should remove? Thank you!

[Shidan]

Sure.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/438495548119580698/810193986110619658/Remove_condition.PNG

[darkholy119]

Originally posted by Shidan:

Sure.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/438495548119580698/810193986110619658/Remove_condition.PNG

hey Shidan, just wanted to say thank you again for all the help with this! I was able to get this mod's npc recruited thanks to your help!

[Shin]

Was recently looking for some character too. Ended making a script to find it for me. Maybe this will be of any use for someone https://steamcommunity.com/app/233860/discussions/0/3111397019620467796/