This guide is for players who are trying Devious Followers Continued for the first time, and aren't sure what it does, and how it's going to change their game.

I wanted to put this guide directly on the mod front page, but the LL page-size limit won't allow it.

 

 

Get a Follower

 

You will need a follower. Without a follower, DF won't do much.

 

A vanilla follower, such as Mjoll, or vanilla mercenary such as Janessa is fine, and the many hundreds of "standalone" follower mods you can find on LL or the Nexus will all work fine with DFC too.

 

 

Recruitment

 

Recruit the follower, and after a while they should say something like, "I hope you won't cheat me like other adventurers..."

 

After this, you can initiate a dialog and select the [Click Me] dialog. This will give you some DF tips and the mod will be enabled to work properly. After this you won't have to [Click Me] on any new followers. The [Click Me] is there so you know what you're getting into.

 

If a follower is slow to start, try talking to them. You should see a dialog like "Can I rely on you?" Clicking this will push follower registration along immediately.

 

Sometimes a follower just won't work. There is a feature in the MCM Debug menu to add reluctant followers. If a follower doesn't get the debug dialog after using the option to add followers in the debug menu, it's because they are not properly configured as a follower in Skyrim, and lack the vanilla follower factions. You can find how to fix this in any guide on how to make a follower.

 

You can also use an option in the Debug menu to stop a follower (under your crosshair) becoming devious. You can undo this just as easily if you change your mind. You can't stop a follower from being devious if they are already your follower though; you need to do that before you recruit them.

 

 

Pay per Day

Once your follower is recognized by the mod, they will periodically charge you money for their services. Their fees are priced "per day", but you can control how often they update what you owe in the MCM. That frequency won't change the costs (much), just how often they remind you about your debt and how incrementally it's added. Adding debt more often can result in slightly more interest accruing unless you are quick with making the payments. However, every time you pay your follower, you gain a little fatigue to your resistance, so paying less often may be better unless you want to end up under your follower's thumb faster.

 

Your devious follower is "essential" and cannot be killed. However, additional followers you hire are not. This is so you can't escape your debts through trivial murder - it would be far too easy.

If you don't want to pay your follower manually, you can use the gold control mode, and the follower will look after your money. You might regret this. Nothing comes for free. In some cases the follower will force you into this mode because of debt and low willpower. You cannot dismiss your follower while it is active.

 

If you don't pay your follower enough money, you will accrue debt, and also interest on your debt, and the follower will happily let you do this ... up to a point. Once your debt gets too much, the follower will take action to make you reduce the debt. This might involve forcing you into deals, or they might take items from your inventory, or in extreme cases, they may enslave you. You can configure the worst outcomes in the Punishments section of the MCM. In most cases, you will simply get forced into deals without a chance to refuse them. It's better to take the deals yourself once your debt gets high. If you do it proactively, you can refuse the worst deals instead of taking them, though this adds even more debt.

 

 

Deal Basics

 

One way to reduce your debt is to agree to deals with the follower. Deals may also be forced if you have low Willpower, or you simply owe a huge amount. When you take a deal, your debt is reduced. You must then follow the terms of the deal until you can pay it off. Initially, new deals are very expensive to pay off, but as their 'duration' elapses, they go down in price - you can configure this. The prices for debt relief, duration, and payout cost are configurable in the MCM, along with the penalty for early payout.

 

Many deals will require you to wear a devious device. You do not have to lock the device; the follower just needs to see you are wearing it. You may even be able to remove it, briefly, without the follower noticing. This is one way that you may manage to eat or drink while wearing a gag. If the follower catches you breaking the terms of the deal, they will add more debt to punish you. The device you wear isn't usually specific either. If you need to wear a corset or harness, any corset or harness will do, it doesn't have to be the one the follower gave you. There are exceptions to this like the circlet, amulet and ring deals, along with the chastity belt, the tape gag, also the items required if you are enslaved, and some others.

 

Paying off a deal is initially very expensive. Depending on how you configure, it may be much more than your final deal buyout value. As time passes, the cost to buy out of the deal will decrease until it reaches the configured buyout cost. It will not drop below that. However, it's possible for deal durations to be extended in some cases, which makes buyout expensive again.

You can configure it so that "punishment" will remove some deals, and it nearly always removes debt, but you can configure a minimum amount that is removed. The exact allowances will vary. If you're punished by being sold into Simple Slavery, all your deals and debt will be removed and your devious follower relationship is ended. If the follower sells you to another follower, it will use the configured values.

 

 

Dismissal

 

You should (only) be able to dismiss your follower if you pay off all your debt, have no deals, and are not in gold control mode. The exception to this is if you configure a minimum contract duration. If you do that you cannot dismiss your follower until you've been with the follower at least that long. If you use a follower framework, don't use its debug features to dismiss your DF - it will likely cause you problems. DFC tries to stop the follower frameworks from doing this, but it doesn't try too hard, as there are situations where you may need to do it to repair a broken game that the mod can't foresee. You can also set restrictions on dismissal, for example, so that it can only occur in sensible places and you can't dismiss a follower in a dungeon, or immediately after leaving town.

 

 

Willpower and Resistance

 

Willpower and Resistance measure how well you are able to resist the follower's demands and overbearing personality. Willpower directly determines how the follower treats you, and changes the responses and topics you have in dialogs. Willpower ranges from 10 (max) down to 0. If your willpower is below four or so, the follower will have considerable influence over your decisions, and you may have troubles refusing deals.

 

You regain willpower by sleeping at least six hours at a stretch. This also restores follower lives (see later). The more devices you are wearing when you sleep, the less willpower you recover. Having deals can also reduce willpower restoration. There are many options for willpower in the MCM.

 

Resistance is a value that is like lives for willpower. When distressing things happen, your resistance will be reduced. If it is reduced to zero, then you will lose a point of willpower, and then your resistance will be reset. How resistance varies with willpower can be configured in the MCM. You might want to stick with the defaults to start with, but if you use Spank that Ass or Sexlab Survival, those mods add many new ways to lose resistance, and you should probably increase the resistance per willpower value to about 30 to make up for it. You should probably also reduce the willpower lost in furniture a bit in the SLS MCM, especially if you have MME as well.

 

While SLS can quickly burn through your resistance if you end up being spanked in furniture, the fastest way to lose it is to be raped while wearing a lot of devices. This means that mods that set the victim flag when they should not make a lot of trouble for the player in DFC. It also means that deals that make you vulnerable to rapists you might have added via some other mod are especially dangerous.

 

With SLS, it's possible to lose a lot of willpower, and end up vulnerable to being forced to have a devious follower by a guard, if you're bound. Alternatively, SLS can inflict a devious follower on you if you're caught "without an escort". With SLS, a follower can be made mostly obligatory, and that will make it harder to avoid the complications that DF adds.

Your devious follower can manage your SLS licenses for you, which does some of the pressure off, but you're basically trading an immediate cash problem for a long-term debt problem. Sure, you can get reliable and easy access to licenses, which makes having a devious follower quite useful, but they will be adding more debt than you'd otherwise get. If a lot of expensive licenses come due at once you could find yourself in a difficult debt situation quite suddenly.

 

 

Follower Lives

 

Every time your follower is knocked into bleedout they lose a 'life'.

 

Lives are restored when the follower sleeps, but it is always assumed that if you sleep, your devious follower also sleeps.

 

They do not need to have a bed for this, as long as you can sleep, they can. Maybe they find one once you are sleeping? You can buy a bed for only the follower in an inn, in which case you do not sleep, and do not regain willpower, and have some time to kill. Normally, you would only do this if you can't afford a bed for yourself but are desperate to restore your follower's lives.

If you get a bed for yourself, you do not need to pay for the follower separately. The follower automatically sleeps when you sleep, even if you don't see it happen!

 

Followers who run out of lives don't die, but they do become grumpy and will not help you remove devices or play gambling games. They may be unhelpful in other ways too.

Your follower offers various benefits in return for the fees, beyond their regular follower capabilities. If they run out of lives, you cannot access those benefits, or even pay debt. Your DF can remove devious devices that you get trapped in - for a fee, and they can play a gambling game in which you can win cash, and another to win keys of various kinds. These are very useful when your willpower is good and you have plenty of money. They may become a financial trap for a PC who doesn't have sufficient earning capacity.

 

 

Games

 

If you find yourself in some devices, and your willpower is not good, the follower may decide you are happy to play a "game".

 

By game, they mean some humiliating sexual task that could involve giving the entire clientele of a tavern a blowjob, or it might be worse. In most cases you can simply add debt and skip the game, if you really don't want to play.

 

You can set the minimum time between games in the MCM. Don't make it too short, or you could find the games become too frequent and intrusive.

Most games won't activate unless you exceed at least half the configured enslavement debt.

 

 

Against Your Will

 

If you are without a follower, and your willpower is very low, and you are wearing devices, guards may decide you have the demeanor of a slave, and will demand you take them to your master. Pick a follower to "pretend" to be your master so the guard will release you. The follower will become a DF, with some debt added up-front as payment for helping your escape. You can disable this feature in the MCM if you don't want guards harassing you.

 

If your debt grows beyond a threshold you can set in the MCM, and your willpower is not high, you may be enslaved by the follower. In this case your deals are suspended. However, the follower will dress you in devices of their choosing, make you crawl, work as a cheap whore, and behave quite capriciously. You will need to pay off a certain amount of debt to escape slavery. It's also possible for the follower to sell you to other potential followers.

 

There is a mysterious "potion" deal you can configure in the MCM. Do not enable the forced version unless you know what you're doing. Normally, you can always refuse this deal. If you take it, all your deals will be paid off and your debt reset to zero, but the follower, or some random NPC, will have a lever to control you indefinitely. This doesn't mean you must do whatever they say, but ... don't mess with this deal unless you like to be inconvenienced for the rest of your game. Also, you can configure intervals between the bothersome parts of this, so it can be made relatively unobtrusive if you want, but it's still quite hazardous, as you'll see if you ever play with it.

 

 

More about Deals

 

Various deals impose daily obligations, to drink skooma, lactacid, be milked, offer sex, get spanked, and so on. You need to push the follower to progress these deals. If you do nothing, you will simply default and the follower will laugh and increase your debt. For all these deals to be enabled you will need to have the required mods installed.

 

The "key" deal is also similar to the daily deals, in that you have to act to avoid penalties. You must quickly use, or offer the follower any keys you find. If you are too slow to hand them over, they will search you and find them. If you are caught with keys, you will be punished with more debt. You can still play the key gambling game and get keys, but you will have to use them quickly. If you take too long the follower will take them back, and charge you for the privilege. When the key deal ends, the follower returns all the keys that were taken. You can also hide keys in containers and other places to keep them from the follower - for now at least. In many ways the key deal is quite mild, but it can be expensive if you don't pay attention. If you think it's too easy, post on the forum and I'll find a way to toughen it up!

 

Some deals involve being bound in town. You can usually ask the follower to remove the bindings once you are out of the safe guarded areas.

Over time, the follower may get bored with you, especially if you keep paying your debts on time and don't have lots of deals to keep them amused with your misfortunes. Follower boredom leads to them increasing their prices. Dismiss the follower and find a new one to reset boredom. If you take more deals, or play games, or suffer other indignities, the follower might stop being bored automatically.

 

When you pay your follower, it wears down your resistance. This manifests as resistance fatigue. this is an amount of resistance that is removed from you after you sleep and regain willpower (and resistance), effectively impairing your maximum resistance. If you have high resistance fatigue, it can exceed your natural willpower restoration from sleeping and start to destroy your willpower. You can get rid of it by making big donations to priests. It carries over between followers, so be careful. If you don't make enough donations to keep up your self-esteem, you will inevitably fall prey to your follower's schemes. Another way to remove fatigue is to pay off deals, and the longer you set deals to last for by default, the more effective this will be.

 

 

Multiple Followers

 

You can set up the additional cost for extra followers in the MCM. This is a simple percentage extra per follower after the first, which could be zero, or 100%, or even more if you like. This can dramatically increase your costs if you have a lot of followers, but you will need a follower framework installed to recruit them - DFC does not do that for you. It does patch the frameworks though, so make sure it's allowed to overwrite. Also, be wary of installing all the bells and whistles from NFF - only the more basic options have been tried and tested.

If you have multiple followers, only one will be your devious follower. The others are just normal followers in most respects and do not have the special dialogs. I always thought it would be cool if there were group games and things, but never had time to add them.  Also, as noted earlier, additional followers are not made essential, and may be killed as per normal if they aren't made essential by Skyrim, or some other mod.

 

 

Pausing Devious Followers Functionality

 

If something is going on in your game that just doesn't work with DFC. Maybe a Deviously Cursed Loot quest, or a quest that requires a certain follower who shouldn't be devious, then you can "pause" DFC and it will stop messing with your followers or accumulating debt. All your deals will be suspended and your follower will go back to being a completely normal follower. This will continue until you unpause the mod, if you ever do.

 

If you are enslaved into SD+ or some other mods, DFC can be set to auto-pause and unpause when you get your freedom.

 

 

Boredom and Punishments

 

Boredom is (for now) a simple mechanic that is intended to encourage you to take deals periodically.

 

• Boredom resets if you take a deal. (Follower likes this).
• Boredom is reset if you have more deals than expected deals. (Follower likes this).
• Boredom increases over time while you have less deals than expected deals.
• Also, it only increases (in most cases) if you have some amount of willpower left.
• Boredom means your daily rate is increased or your deal discount is offset (basically discount and boredom increase cost are combined and capped).
• The current caps are max discount 90% and max penalty 100%, so you won't be charged more than double due to boredom.

 

If you take even one deal, your boredom is reset to zero, and as long as you have enough deals, it won't go up, so it's easy to manage.

 

In future, it may become less generous, and the amount of boredom removed when you do something the follower likes could be limited and configurable.

 

The impact on your daily rate is already configurable. If you don't think it's severe enough, you can increase it in the MCM.

 

 

You won't be enslaved due to boredom (directly).

 

The mechanic that triggers a follower to take direct action is debt. Purely debt.

Boredom merely accelerates accrual of that debt.

• If you owe more than the debt limit, they will act to correct it.
• If you get too many deals they will enslave instead of adding more.
• If you owe more than half the debt limit, various games unlock.
• If you stay under half-debt-limit, the follower will not do much to trouble you.

However, there is also an enslavement mechanic based on having a lot of deals.

Get too many deals and a timer starts for enslavement. Make sure you pay off some deals before it happens.

 

You can configure these behaviors in the Punishment page, or adjust the enslavement amount in the main config page.