MFW The Console Doesn't Give You The Ref ID, Just The Base ID

[Saint]

Seriously, why does it do this with some items but not all? What command can I type into the console to convert Base IDs to Ref IDs? I use a no essential NPCs mod for when people need to die for slandering vampirism and a mod that notifies me when unique NPCs are killed, but then someone like Nils dies and i spend 10 minutes trying to find his ref ID to teleport to him to resurrect him. Da ♥♥♥.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Seriously, why does it do this with some items but not all? What command can I type into the console to convert Base IDs to Ref IDs? I use a no essential NPCs mod for when people need to die for slandering vampirism and a mod that notifies me when unique NPCs are killed, but then someone like Nils dies and i spend 10 minutes trying to find his ref ID to teleport to him to resurrect him. Da ♥♥♥.

It would not work correctly anyway. Skyrim runs death scripts to all named characters. Resurrecting them through console does not undo the script. As far as game knows, Nils is dead and remains that way.

Effects for using Resurrect command vary. Some characters may act and talk as usual, but very often - especially with merchants and quest characters - game will get bugged, when it is no longer running scripts to dead characters, but those (as being "resurrected") are trying to cause scripts to run.

If you need to find Base ID, then check character entry from UESPWiki. However, I really advice against using the resurrect command, or removing essential flags in the first place. None of the named characters will ever respawn, so they are all unique in their way.

[Wario]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44596/?

[Saint]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Seriously, why does it do this with some items but not all? What command can I type into the console to convert Base IDs to Ref IDs? I use a no essential NPCs mod for when people need to die for slandering vampirism and a mod that notifies me when unique NPCs are killed, but then someone like Nils dies and i spend 10 minutes trying to find his ref ID to teleport to him to resurrect him. Da ♥♥♥.

It would not work correctly anyway. Skyrim runs death scripts to all named characters. Resurrecting them through console does not undo the script. As far as game knows, Nils is dead and remains that way.

Effects for using Resurrect command vary. Some characters may act and talk as usual, but very often - especially with merchants and quest characters - game will get bugged, when it is no longer running scripts to dead characters, but those (as being "resurrected") are trying to cause scripts to run.

If you need to find Base ID, then check character entry from UESPWiki. However, I really advice against using the resurrect command, or removing essential flags in the first place. None of the named characters will ever respawn, so they are all unique in their way.

No, he's not, I looked up his ID on wiki fixed the issue easily, that's not what this topic is about. I've resurrected Delphine and Esbern more times than i've wanked in my life and the main questline continues as if nothing happened. I've honestly never had an issue with resurrecting a character, and some of hte only ones i haven't tried on are merchants (seriously, i just realized i've never had to bring a merchant back to life wtf?). Resurrect works perfectly for me and when it breaks i'll just make a mental note not to kill that character again. In the meantime: Murder Sprees abounds.

Getting off of this tangent and back to my main topic: there's no console command that lets you see Ref IDs?

[Saint]

Originally posted by Wario:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44596/?

From what it seems this mod doesn't let you call up a referance for an item if you aren't already in it's presence and can click on it. I need more something that lets me go "Oh, Delphine just died for the tenth time in an hour. What's her Ref ID? >Teleport >Kill the thing that killed Delphine >Resurrect."

[Ilja]

Problems with resurrect have bee documented far and wide in this forum. You will notice the conflict sooner or later, especially if merchant character dies.

What comes console, I don't think there is a direct command. I don't recall and can't test right now, but does
help CharacterName
or
help "Character Name"
provide RefID?

[Saint]

Originally posted by Ilja:

Problems with resurrect have bee documented far and wide in this forum. You will notice the conflict sooner or later, especially if merchant character dies.

What comes console, I don't think there is a direct command. I don't recall and can't test right now, but does
help CharacterName
or
help "Character Name"
provide RefID?

No, it provides Base ID from what I can tell, which the game won't accept for commands like
Resurrect ID
or
player.moveto ID

[gnewna]

If you're really determined to do this (rather than, IDK, taking out your anger on whoever and then reloading a save if you don't actually want them dead) then all the RefIDs of vanilla characters can be easily found on the uesp wiki (or the other one, but the uesp is generally better). You don't even have to go out of game to do it, just shift+tab to open the Steam Overlay which has an adequately functional browser. "Nils uesp" gives this as the top result: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Nils RefID is quite clearly listed in the table on the right.

[Anelace]

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/44596/?

This mod will make the console display both the baseID and refID of selected NPCs.

Edit: Nevermind, reread your post and this won't help you. Sorry.

[Saint]

Originally posted by gnewna:

If you're really determined to do this (rather than, IDK, taking out your anger on whoever and then reloading a save if you don't actually want them dead) then all the RefIDs of vanilla characters can be easily found on the uesp wiki (or the other one, but the uesp is generally better). You don't even have to go out of game to do it, just shift+tab to open the Steam Overlay which has an adequately functional browser. "Nils uesp" gives this as the top result: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Nils RefID is quite clearly listed in the table on the right.

True, and that's what i've been doing, but I was just wondering if there was a simpler way. It's also not nessicarily about rage every time. Falion in Markarth? Yep, drained him dry out of rage that someone would CURE the next evolution of the races. Disgusting. The stormcloak captains in every stormcloak camp? Just business. In these instances i don't want said people back, but if I attempt to disable the mod the game starts crashing regularly, so I have to suffer the concequences of every other NPC being slaughtered by Master Vampires, Blood Dragons, The Occasional Dawnguard (Although Dawnguard attacks have slowed since I did a mission framing them for a murder) and just return them to life on the regular.

Anyway, I'd say there's no such function as what i'm looking for ingame, thanks for the help, all :)

[gnewna]

You might want to look at "run for your lives" and "when vampires attack" - they aren't, in my experience, 100% failproof, but generally speaking if they're installed most non-combatant NPCs will go indoors to hide during vampire/dragon attacks, rather than getting all "have a go hero" with their crappy iron daggers and flammable clothing. Should be fine to install on an ongoing playthrough.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by gnewna:

You might want to look at "run for your lives" and "when vampires attack" - they aren't, in my experience, 100% failproof

It is safest to do a quick attack against all enemies, when entering in to battle with them. NPCs do run, but sometimes enemies just chase them and go for the kill, or manage to lure them in to battle by attacking them, if the player or another combat oriented character does not notice to attack them first and get them to take part of the battle.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

I've resurrected Delphine and Esbern more times than i've wanked in my life and the main questline continues as if nothing happened.

It's true that Ilja's exagerating a bit about the "scripts for every character" thing (obviously Bethesda haven't written death scripts to break the main quest if certain characters die - instead they simply assumed they won't die because they're supposed to be essential), but as a general rule he's right and you should reload where possible if you want someone undeaded. Certain NPCs do break quests and cause other world changes if they keel over, and resurrecting them won't undo any of that.

By all means use your own judgement, but fair warning, is all. :)

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Falion in Markarth? Yep, drained him dry out of rage that someone would CURE the next evolution of the races. Disgusting.

Morthal. Markarth's the place with the cannibals.

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Anyway, I'd say there's no such function as what i'm looking for ingame, thanks for the help, all :)

It'd be tricky for a command to do such a thing, due to the nature of refIDs.

The idea is that you can generate any number of copies of a given NPC, using their baseID as a template. The game actually does this on a regular basis, in order to provide you with an unending supply of bears, bandits, dragons, and so on.

Each copy gets its own refID, often generated on the fly. So given this, there's no reverse search - if you want to apply a command to a particular copy of an NPC, the baseID (which gets the NPC's "template" information) isn't sufficient to figure out the instance created from that template which you're after.

This is also why using placeatme to retrieve dead / missing NPCs doesn't "work" - it creates a new copy with a new refID, and the quests and scripts they're supposed to be involved with want an NPC with the original refID and fail to act on them.

[gnewna]

Heh, in my experience it's not so much whether I notice or not as whether I can run quickly enough from whichever tavern I'm leaving to find that vampires apparently snuck in behind me when I entered the city at 10pm and then waited until just when I came outside to start fighting the locals - not a problem in most of the cities as the tavern's often close to the gate (or as in Riften, the fighting's often in the marketplace so the fact that I usually leave the Bee and Barb through that door isn't a problem), but with the Bannered Mare? Ruh-roh.

I'm not having a go at the mods, they work well enough that I consider them essentials on most playthroughs (some playthroughs I'm not averse to losing the odd NPC to a Tragic Demise for story reasons, and tbh I'd not be against a very very low chance of a random non-essential NPC dying in cities I'm not in, because come on, what, the vampires and dragons ONLY attack when I, the supernaturally-blessed fighter of bad thingies am in town??)

[Saint]

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Falion in Markarth? Yep, drained him dry out of rage that someone would CURE the next evolution of the races. Disgusting.

Morthal. Markarth's the place with the cannibals.

♥♥♥♥, you're right, now I feel the need to go drain everyone in Morthal of their every drop...

Originally posted by Bomb Bloke:

Originally posted by Saint TEC Walker of Astora:

Anyway, I'd say there's no such function as what i'm looking for ingame, thanks for the help, all :)

It'd be tricky for a command to do such a thing, due to the nature of refIDs.

The idea is that you can generate any number of copies of a given NPC, using their baseID as a template. The game actually does this on a regular basis, in order to provide you with an unending supply of bears, bandits, dragons, and so on.

Each copy gets its own refID, often generated on the fly. So given this, there's no reverse search - if you want to apply a command to a particular copy of an NPC, the baseID (which gets the NPC's "template" information) isn't sufficient to figure out the instance created from that template which you're after.

This is also why using placeatme to retrieve dead / missing NPCs doesn't "work" - it creates a new copy with a new refID, and the quests and scripts they're supposed to be involved with want an NPC with the original refID and fail to act on them.

Good reasoning as to why refID and BaseID are two different things. Interesting fact though, after reading this I decided to have a bit of fun and spawned 20+ delphines. I then started ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with the main questline using console commands, starting and finishing stages at random and they all updated to the new responses for the current quest simultaneously, however if I killed a Delphine and resurrected her after changing the objective she was stuck in her old way until I used console commands to complete the quest she was stuck on. Skyrim's weird.

[Saint]

Whelp. Bloodlust has taken over, i'm off to wipe Morthal off the face of existence!