Enemies are noticing me halfway across a dungeon/in separate rooms. What gives?

[Nohrin]

I made a new playthrough in my heavily modded skyrim. Last playthrough was nearly perfect. I had to stop midway because I was stupid and kept uninstalling mods mid playthrough, eventually bugging the save down. This new playthrough is weird. Enemies seem to notice me from 50-100 meters away, often through walls and in different rooms. I removed a bunch of mods, so my setup isn't nearly as big, but otherwise changed nothing. I don't play with any mods that effect detection, but I do use Skytweak. I still have it set so that sound is very irrelevant for NPC detection (its a 0.1 in the MCM, compared to vanillas 0.5). With that being said, I can't understand how draugr are noticing me from halfway across Bleakfalls Burrows. Does anybody have any advice? I would post my load order, but I think that would be a wasted effort, because I have literally no mods that effect detection. This seems to be more of a bug than anything else. The only mods that MIGHT effect detection would be Ultimate Combat, or Combat Evolved. But I think my Skytweak settings would over-rule anything detection based.

[azoth1267]

Had similar issues with my setup (been a long since i played though), unsure what really was the cause but im assuming its something to do with magic aura effects (think they are classed as cloak spells) that a number of mods use for any number of things.

[Nohrin]

1 hour ago, azoth1267 said:

Had similar issues with my setup (been a long since i played though), unsure what really was the cause but im assuming its something to do with magic aura effects (think they are classed as cloak spells) that a number of mods use for any number of things.

Thanks. That narrows it down a bit.

[Grey Cloud]

NPC AI mods?

[Nohrin]

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

NPC AI mods?

I don't think so. Other than the two mentioned which alter combat AI (Ultimate Combat and Combat Evolved), but those are really popular mods. I will test without them however.

 

Edit: I just thought of another mod that mods NPC AI: I use Immersive Citizens (Lite). However, that is mostly for friendly NPCs. Such as towns folk etc. I doubt it would apply to random bandits / draugr.

[Grey Cloud]

48 minutes ago, Nohrin said:

I don't think so. Other than the two mentioned which alter combat AI (Ultimate Combat and Combat Evolved), but those are really popular mods. I will test without them however.

 

Edit: I just thought of another mod that mods NPC AI: I use Immersive Citizens (Lite). However, that is mostly for friendly NPCs. Such as towns folk etc. I doubt it would apply to random bandits / draugr.

 Immersive Creatures? Are you sure you have the sound set the right way? I mean that 0.1 is low and not high? (closer/further).

[Nohrin]

4 hours ago, Grey Cloud said:

 Immersive Creatures? Are you sure you have the sound set the right way? I mean that 0.1 is low and not high? (closer/further).

Thanks for the help, but I am pretty sure I figured out what was causing it. I believe it was indeed Ultimate Combat. I think up until this point, my Ultimate Combat mod was not fully working, probably being overwritten by something. I noticed combat is a lot more difficult and the NPCs are acting much differently. This is probably because of either Combat Evolved or Ultimate Combat, which I both put lower in my load order. I suppose I will have to get used to being noticed easily. No more sprinting in dungeons. I would edit this part out in CK, but I'm deathly afraid of CK. Unless someone would take the time to make a guide on it. I only enter the CK when I am following a guide.

[Grey Cloud]

6 hours ago, Nohrin said:

Combat Evolved or Ultimate Combat

It's never a good idea to have more than one mod doing the same thing.

[yatol]

8 hours ago, Nohrin said:

 I only enter the CK when I am following a guide.

as if there's no guide on crap kit...

that stuff can be edited in 5 min in tesedit

 

you go to a bandit npc (first ones in any mods that overhaul hostiles npc)

bandit use behavior from template x, no need to check the templates to find the npc that end with standingstill, radius50, radius100..., above the headpart, there should be one, since that npc is a copy paste from encbandittemplate000 (that is useless leftovers by the way)

you type the id

it's overwrite by mod x that replace 50 by 200

you go there

either you delete that mod stuff to go back to vanilla for that stuff, either you reduce the boost

 

if there's nothing that edit those behaviors, he have just replace some editorid that end with radius50 with editorid that end with radius200 or something in some template, so you check the npc called encbandittemplate, encwarlocktemplate, or go check what is referenced by those editorid that end with radiussomething

 

[Nohrin]

6 hours ago, yatol said:

as if there's no guide on crap kit...

that stuff can be edited in 5 min in tesedit

 

you go to a bandit npc (first ones in any mods that overhaul hostiles npc)

bandit use behavior from template x, no need to check the templates to find the npc that end with standingstill, radius50, radius100..., above the headpart, there should be one, since that npc is a copy paste from encbandittemplate000 (that is useless leftovers by the way)

you type the id

it's overwrite by mod x that replace 50 by 200

you go there

either you delete that mod stuff to go back to vanilla for that stuff, either you reduce the boost

 

if there's nothing that edit those behaviors, he have just replace some editorid that end with radius50 with editorid that end with radius200 or something in some template, so you check the npc called encbandittemplate, encwarlocktemplate, or go check what is referenced by those editorid that end with radiussomething

 

It turns out it wasn't Ultimate Combat or Combat Evolved afterall... I spent all night going through my mods, disabling each one, to test NPC stealth detection. I wasn't making any progress until I delved deeper into Google, where I saw a random post on the Nexus forums about how Skytweak was making somebody noticed by NPCs as they entered cells. He described his issue just like I did. Nobody replied or tried to help this person the nexus forums, so his post was buried. I thought I had nothing to lose, and decided to restart my SkyTweak settings back to vanilla, and low and behold, I was no longer instantly being detected by NPCs as I entered dungeons (or pretty much anywhere. Was getting mighty sick of wolves keeping me in combat as I attempted to interact with objects in Tamriel worldspace). This narrowed it down A TON. I went through all my Skytweak settings, testing each one enabled and disabled, until I narrowed it down to the stealth category (go figure). After more narrowing, I singled out the one setting that was increasing NPCs detection rates to absurd levels...Drum roll please...

 

"Sneak Base Value"

 

...

 

Let me read to you the description of this setting, as written by the author of SkyTweak himself.

"How good you are at Sneaking at lvl 0. Decrease to make sneaking harder."

Excuse me...What? WHAT?! Decrease to make sneaking harder? As far as I can tell, this setting has NOTHING to do with Sneaking, but your characters overall "aggro radius".

 

I had inadvertently increased this setting at some point, thinking it would make me better at stealth, as that is the opposite of making something harder... I increased this setting from the vanilla -15 to 0 (highest possible setting) and that alone caused the entire world to know exactly where I was, and to want me dead (okay I am exaggerating. Not the entire world, but anyone/anything within a good 200-300m, or 4-5 cell blocks.)

 

So not only does this setting have nothing to do with your actual sneaking ability, but the direction the mod author tells you, is opposite of what the perceived effect would give. Lowering this setting (going deeper into negatives) makes your character harder to be detected, stealthed or not. Actually, I think it has no effect on your stealth. Because when I would hide, AI detection would be pretty much normal. My issues were when I was NOT in stealth. 

 

Anyway, long story short, I put this setting back to vanilla which is "-15" and everything has been working fine and as intended so far. To think a mere 15 points can make that much difference. Just out of curiosity, I put the setting to "-200" and I could attack any NPC and they would wander around saying "where are you?!" Kind of funny actually. Very similar to "tdetect" console command.

 

This experience actually is helpful. I had always wondered how to make my own character invisible, without making other NPCs "invisible", as "tdetect" effects ALL npcs detection. 

 

So here is the lesson: Don't underestimate Skyrim.ini settings. Even the smallest of changes, can make your game near unplayable. 

 

I want to give a shoutout to that dude whos post got buried on the Nexusmods forums. Without you, I probably would of been stuck in perma hide for the rest of my playthrough. 

 

If anyone is reading this through google, follow my steps. Disable your mods one by one (or in bulks to speed up the process) to troubleshoot the offending mod. In my case, it was not a mod, but rather a Skyrim.ini setting. That being "Sneak Base Value".

 

Also thank you to everyone who posted here. While you did not exactly solve my issue, you tried your best and I was/am thankful for your help. 

[Foulmouthjester]

Dude thx a bunch that "sneak modifier" was driving me nuts.

[Henkebenk]

If anyone has the same issue: As Nohrin pointed out, something is changing the Sneak base value. I did not have the SkyTweaks installed so i figured it was something else. But i could not find it, so i installed skytweaks, this way i could just change the sneak value back to -15, and the issue was resolved.

 

[Jeriko67]

On 3/30/2022 at 12:23 PM, Henkebenk said:

If anyone has the same issue: As Nohrin pointed out, something is changing the Sneak base value. I did not have the SkyTweaks installed so i figured it was something else. But i could not find it, so i installed skytweaks, this way i could just change the sneak value back to -15, and the issue was resolved.

 

 

In addition to this quote, SkyTweaks isn't on Special Edition but you can port it (some people say it's easy) but if you're like me then you can just use this fine fellow's port with this link https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12G6v0KG4raxosCxx_8GiFjS3dAeXqKxA. I have no idea how this happened but shout out to this thread for helping with the nonsense