Mod for eliminating essential NPCs?

[Squid]

I'm interested in killing essential NPCs, but simply using the .ini tweak to make them all killable is no good, because then they'll all get eaten by dragons or some other horrible (and unintentional) fate.

So, does anybody have any good mods or solutions for this? Something that marks them all as protected instead of essential might be ideal, but the only mod I can find for that (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37949/) doesn't exactly have stellar reviews and it doesn't cover the DLC NPCs, either.

Heart Breaker (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/32598/) seems to have a solution for this, but I'm not interested in all the bells and whistles that come along with that mod.

This mod (http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/8170/) seems to have a novel solution, but judging from the discussion posts, it doesn't seem to be working as intended.

I could just manually mark essential NPCs as non-essential using the console when I decide that it is time for them to die, but that's no fun, there must be a better solution.

For now, I'm resigned to using the last option if it becomes necessary. I tried the .ini tweak option for awhile, but I didn't like how easy it was for essential NPCs to die through no fault of my own.

If there really aren't any good mods or solutions for this, it might be the excuse I need to fire up the Creation Kit and get to work. It ought to be relatively trivial (but tedious) to just mark all the essential NPCs as protected.

[Squid]

Publicado originalmente por SpeedFreak:

I personally wouldn't do it I mean nothing to see a failed quest with an item that sits indefinitely in your inventory .... not to mention the chance in some real big quests that will be bugged.

Immersion is good however it's still a game. Don't come here crying if the main quest or some big guild quest is bugged because a quest giver died.

I'm not an idiot dude, I'm not going to make a whole thread on the forum asking for help because I killed off some character that was tagged as essential. Your "it's still a game, don't come here crying" comments are pretty hostile and that seems entirely unwarranted.

On the off chance that I did end up with a failed quest or pointless quest items in my inventory, I'm savvy enough to use console commands to get rid of them.

Right now, I'm just playing with the essential characters still tagged as "essential" because I can't find a good solution for this. At this point, I'm entertaining the idea of figuring out how to create the tes5edit script that was discussed in this thread as a theoretical possibility, because after a fair amount of research it's pretty clear that the only mods which address this issue on Nexus are poorly made and could cause a lot of problems.

<RANT> I don't know why everyone gets so freaked out about the idea of killing off essential characters when Morrowind functioned perfectly fine while still allowing the player to attack and kill any NPC in the game. You could break all kinds of quests in Morrowind and the game didn't give a damn, it would only give you a warning if you broke the main quest but it would still let you do it. I guess it's just another symptom of the game industry continuing to pander more and more to casual players who want to have their hand held throughout their entire experience.

I mean, don't even get me started about the quest markers in this game. The game leads you by the damn nose throughout the entire experience. You barely have to even look at your surroundings, you can just follow the little floaty markers on the screen and fast travel everywhere you need to go. </RANT>

Get off my lawn!

[SpeedFreak1972]

Ok, ok didn't mean it that bad it was just that you know there can be consequences that's all. Not being pedantic or so however I just want to prevent another whine thread (in general).

My apologies.

[Squid]

Publicado originalmente por SpeedFreak:

Ok, ok didn't mean it that bad it was just that you know there can be consequences that's all. Not being pedantic or so however I just want to prevent another whine thread (in general).

My apologies.

I'm sorry I kind of went off there. It wasn't really completely directed at you, some of that is just ... general complaints that have been building up for awhile. Especially the part in <RANT> tags.

Anyway, I agree that the uninformed "whine" threads are annoying, and I do recognize that killing off quest-related NPCs can mess up a lot of the quests in the game.

Part of why Morrowind got away with that is that it didn't have a "quest" log with active/completed quests, or quest markers ... it just had a journal with chronological journal entries. I actually kind of preferred that system to the current one.

If I do start working on some kind of mod that does this using a safer method than the existing mods, I'll be sure to plaster lots of warning messages all over the mod description, in big, bright red letters.

[pedantic_roc]

A simple way to do what you want, Kami, is to just make a .txt file and drop it in your Skyrim folder. Just call it something like SkyrimDeath.txt. When you start your game, open the console and type: Bat SkyrimDeath.

It shouldn't be too hard to find the Base ID of the NPC's you want to slaughter using UESP.net
and the format is simple enough.

(Example)

;BEGIN
;
;MARKARTH
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
;
;RIFTEN
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
;
;Etcetera
;
;END

I made one a while back to set a few Blacksmiths and Shopkeepers as Essential before I just decided to delay the Vampire attacks :-)

[Squid]

Publicado originalmente por pedantic_roc:

A simple way to do what you want, Kami, is to just make a .txt file and drop it in your Skyrim folder. Just call it something like SkyrimDeath.txt. When you start your game, open the console and type: Bat SkyrimDeath.

It shouldn't be too hard to find the Base ID of the NPC's you want to slaughter using UESP.net
and the format is simple enough.

(Example)

;BEGIN
;
;MARKARTH
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
;
;RIFTEN
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
SetEssential 000##### 0 ; NPC Name
;
;Etcetera
;
;END

I made one a while to set a few Blacksmiths and Shopkeepers as Essential before I just decided to just delay the Vampire attacks :-)

The thing about that, though, unless I'm mistaken, is that it just removes their essential status entirely. So they could, for example, get slaughtered by a Dragon or by Vampires or something.

I mean, I disabled random Dragon and Vampire attacks, but I mean ... in theory.

Now, if there was some way to make a similar script that removed the Essential tag but also added the "Protected" tag, that would accomplish the core solution I am thinking of (which doesn't seem to exist on Nexus).

[pedantic_roc]

I'll look into it tomorrow. Have to wait in all morning for a collection :-)

[pedantic_roc]

Right then. Sorry, Kami, it appears that it's okay to set non quest related NPC's to essential with a batch file, and quest related NPC's AFTER thier related quests complete, but not the other way around - as in, setting Essential NPC's as Nonessential. Also using CK to change essential NPC's to protected doesn't work either.

Testing on my Nephews rig (it's faster than mine lol) resulted in the already running scripts from core .esm's overwriting any .esp I made to set essential NPC's as protected. As expected.

There's too many scripts running with dependancies. e.g. Bierand is essential up until you receive whichever armor set you choose. This is tied to the Civil War (obviously) and this is further tied to which camp commanders will appear, and where, and if Season Unending is running, and if so what stage is it at. Tbh - I got really lost trying to keep track of how just this one character was stitched into the game and how many scripts were, or could be, affected.

Followers and non quest related NPC's don't suffer from this 'knitting' but I can now see why there isn't a setprotected command. I guess that's why there isn't a mod like this anywhere yet. Apologies for suggesting a bad solution.

[Squid]

Publicado originalmente por pedantic_roc:

Right then. Sorry, Kami, it appears that it's okay to set non quest related NPC's to essential with a batch file, and quest related NPC's AFTER thier related quests complete, but not the other way around - as in, setting Essential NPC's as Nonessential. Also using CK to change essential NPC's to protected doesn't work either.

Testing on my Nephews rig (it's faster than mine lol) resulted in the already running scripts from core .esm's overwriting any .esp I made to set essential NPC's as protected. As expected.

There's too many scripts running with dependancies. e.g. Bierand is essential up until you receive whichever armor set you choose. This is tied to the Civil War (obviously) and this is further tied to which camp commanders will appear, and where, and if Season Unending is running, and if so what stage is it at. Tbh - I got really lost trying to keep track of how just this one character was stitched into the game and how many scripts were, or could be, affected.

Followers and non quest related NPC's don't suffer from this 'knitting' but I can now see why there isn't a setprotected command. I guess that's why there isn't a mod like this anywhere yet. Apologies for suggesting a bad solution.

Interesting. Thanks for reporting back.

I found one mod which claims to offer essential NPCs as "protected" instead as one of the features: http://erkeilmods.altervista.org/skyrim/skyrim-npc-overhaul/

I wonder what method they used and if that works well or not. There was another mod that did the same thing but didn't seem to work well for a lot of the people using it, and the author openly admits to not testing the mod in the discussion thread: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/37949/?

Given the apparent complexity of the system, I can see why some modders have opted for an option like this one: http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/56113/?

[pedantic_roc]

Interesting. Yeah, I read the warnings in thier descriptions. That last link even mentions 'after' events. It's a brave thing to attempt I guess. I myself wouldn't upload anything like that, though, because of the risk of incompatibilities.

Mod it 'til it breaks I guess, lol. Have fun with that, Kami :-)