Forsworn Faction Pack _ ArbitraryFA _ Forsworn (WIP - SSE Conversion)

[Trykz]

2 hours ago, thomas00126 said:

hmm wonder if one could get tattoo's that give those abilities most shamans atleast from what i feel like do a lot with tattoo's and rituals would be cool if it is possible like a physical representation of your progress

 

It would be cool, but I think it would require Slavetats to handle the application. I don't know anything about how that works.

Though I would not be against someone proficient with that stuff making a plugin after I release the mod.

 

On another note, I made a few changes and additions to the Shaman progression system:

 

First, I added the ability for your Shaman to skill up their magic skills on the target dummies that the mod adds to the game.

Then, in the interest of maintaining balance, I've changed the players base magickarate to 0.10 to promote learning better magicka

management, and to offset the greatly enhanced magickarate increase that the meditation ability provides. If the meditation ability is

working as I intend, you 'should' get the occasional skill-up in Restoration from meditating. I'm still testing that bit, but will report

back when I have confirmation that it's working. I set the skillmult to 5.0, and will adjust it accordingly to how frequently it fires off.

 

Here's a shot of my test character skilling up destruction on one of the target dummies:

 

 

Spoiler

 

My next task will be to finish up the new spells and abilities, as well as completing some more of the book.

 

Trykz

 

[Trykz]

So three things to report today:

 

First, I'm doing away with the creature followers. They're simply too inconsistent. Even with MHIYH and EFF, it's too much of a mixed

bag as to whether they'll work consistently or not. I suspect this may just be something in my load order conflicting, or they just can't

be depended upon to function properly. I could probably sort it out with time, but for the moment, they're just too problematic to

contend with right now. I may add them back at some point down the road, but for now I don't want them causing undue delay in

releasing the mod. For the Shaman, they're pretty pointless anyway given the Shaman's Avatar summons. The planned future addition

of Foragers (Druid Initiates), will depend on taming spells (timed), in lieu of dedicated pets. So there again, the creature followers are

largely redundant. Again, I "may" add them back in the future, once I get a better handle on creature follower creation. Aside from

that, the human followers all work properly and without issue as far as their basic functions are concerned. I'll be testing their extended

functionality with MHIYH and EFF at some point this week.

 

Second, is I found a sort of "critical mistake" when creating the order in which you acquire Avatars. The issue being with the Avatar of

Halyn (the boar). In the vanilla DLC, these are only found on Solstheim. This Avatar is second in the line of acquisition. Which would

require the player to go to Solstheim at a potentially low level (assuming a new character is created to play through the mod), to acquire

the 5 blood components to create the Essence of Halyn to acquire the Avatar. The original LE version of this mod adds multiple Forager

vendors, similar to vanilla hunters. It also adds Hag Alchemists you can buy alchemy components from. So to avoid forcing a low level

player to go to Solstheim, I've added one Blood of Halyn component to each of these vendors. So lower level players can simply travel

around to the vendors and purchase them for 7 gold each. I'm currently waiting for the vendors to refresh their inventories to confirm

this is working properly.

 

Finally, my two sons (who have been deployed to Iraq for the last 10 months), will be returning home at the end of this week. Two weeks

after they return to their families, I will be heading back to Florida to resume my semi-retirement ?? Which according to my wife, is

my normal full-time 40 hour work weeks ? so I'll be unavailable for a few weeks until I get things set back up down there. My modding

capability will be non-existent during this transition, as I will only have my laptop to work with, which is certainly incapable of modding.

However, I WILL be able to monitor the mod post-release, and offer any support I can until my modding rig is set back up.

 

Anyhoo, that's it for now. I may post another update later tonight. We'll see how much I can get done.....

 

Trykz

[chefren]

I am getting a bit excited about this, maybe I can finally some day play through this mod all the way without getting stuck on bugs suck as unresponsive NPCs

[Trykz]

14 hours ago, chefren said:

I am getting a bit excited about this, maybe I can finally some day play through this mod all the way without getting stuck on bugs suck as unresponsive NPCs

 

I think you're confusing this with AFS. Which has nothing to do with this mod.

 

I will however, be working on converting the new AFS LE version when it releases.

 

Trykz

[Trykz]

Last night was pretty productive. I managed to finish up the upper level of the cave home, and it is now VERY follower friendly, with room for up to six (6) followers.

I tested this by bringing all 5 of the mod's built-in followers human there, and set them up using MHIYH. I have EFF in my load order as well, and seems to be functioning

normally. The only workbenches in the home are alchemy, armor, and a cookpot. I didn't want to put the full compliment in there, because the outside area already has

all of the essentials. Followers plug away on the mining nodes and benches if you set them up on a schedule with MHIYH. I also adopted the girl in Whiterun, and moved

her there, so that's all working properly as well, except she won't go outside to play. I think it may be because Lost Valley is marked as a dungeon area. YMMV depending

on your load order. I'll have a look at whether or not changing that will have any negative impact on the game, and if not, I'll see if that sorts it. Not a priority atm though.

 

I also took a look at @Delzaron's latest AFS release v0.4, and did a quick conversion for SSE. I then loaded both mods into SSEEdit, and flagged them as master files so

I could create a patch that allows both mods to run side by side without issue. Delzaron will be releasing another updated version in roughly two weeks. So I'm waiting for

him to get to his final release version before I start working on the dialogue edits that I made in the 2.2SSE version. I'll likely be back in Florida for a while before I get

around to that, but I think it'll be worth the wait. The compatibility patch will be standalone, and will only be necessary if you run BOTH mods together. Which I HIGHLY

recommend. They blend together quite nicely, and give an unprecedentedly immersive Forsworn experience.

 

Anyway, here are some shots of the cave home interior:

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

At this point I'm down to moving the three NPCs out of SkyHaven and into the Karthspire camp, creating more new spells, and finishing up the book. I also

want to tweak the followers a bit with new spells and abilities for the females, and some sleepwear for them all.

 

Trykz

[Trykz]

Okay.... after a week of plugging away at creating spells and abilities, making some cosmetic additions to most every Redoubt location, and adding

a bunch of new content to the book, I was pretty much down to just moving the NPCs out of SkyHaven. I say "was", because I sort of screwed up.

Royally. At one point this past week, I needed to take a break from spell stuff, so figured I would work on what was "supposed" to be an addon to

this, that I intended to release after I got settled back in Florida. So I THOUGHT I had converted the .esp to .esm to work on adding the new Forager

(Druid) class and associated content. So after a couple of hours working on that in the Creation Kit, I decided to save that stuff to a new plugin.

 

Well..... turns out I never actually converted the main mod to a Master file ?

 

So, I was left with a choice..... close the CK and lose all that work, of just go ahead and save it, thus putting myself into the position of delaying the

entire mod until I finish ALL of the content I planned to release this week, AND later. That said, it gives me no pleasure to say that I chose the latter.

So I will NOT be releasing this as soon as I had hoped. I WILL however, be setting up my modding rig at my brother's house when I get back to Florida

so I can keep working on the mod while I get resituated at work, and work on getting my house situated for my wife to join me there in September.

I figured it'll keep my occupied during the off-hours, and help pass the time until my wife comes home.

 

So with the bad news out of the way, allow me to give you a little preview of what I had previously left undisclosed:

 

I'll start with what I "thought" I was creating on a new plugin:

 

Welcome to The Grove of Tranquility:
 

Spoiler

 

 

 

This is an entirely NEW worldspace. As you can likely tell, it's largely unfinished. It's footprint is roughly equivalent to 16 Whiteruns. I generated just a basic LOD to facilitate

construction of the worldspace, as the pop-in when working in the CK can be quite frustrating. I'll be regenerating it at a higher resolution upon completion so the end result

will look much better. Once I get the worldspace finished, I want to add an entirely standalone barter economy. With vendors who will trade your raw materials for gold OR

other items, such as raw materials you may need, but can't easily acquire. The space currently has no navmesh, but I will be handcrafting that once it's all built out so it WILL

be very follower friendly.

 

I also couldn't help but notice how easy Forsworn are to kill. I've watched them get massacred by mod-added NPCs (like Travelers of Skyrim and Genesis NPCs) with no help

at all. I've also seen a group of THREE roaming Imperial soldiers wipe out the entire Karthspire camp. And my Karthspire camp contains 30+ NPCs. So I did something about it.

Now each Forsworn camp and Redoubt has from 1-3 tamed Frost troll allies to even the odds a bit. They're just basic allies with basic roaming AI packages set to 4096. So

they'll wander around and stand at any patrol markers they come across until a fight breaks out.

 

Finally, I will also be moving the cave home entrance into this new worldspace, which should resolve the issue with adopted kids playing outside when you tell them to. It will

also make compatibility with AFS a little easier to manage, as there'll be no interference with AFS's Hagraven Coven entrance. Speaking of AFS, my understanding is that @Delzaron

will be releasing a new version soon with some additional content and changes. Once he releases that, I'll be looking into converting that to SSE, and releasing it beside (or shortly

after) this. We'll see how it goes. I'll probably do at least one more status update before I break down my rig and pack up my truck and trailer to head back home to Florida.

 

Until then, watch this space.....

 

Trykz

[MimosaTundra]

I'm looking forward to this mod and wondering how your work on it is going down there in Florida.  Currently I'm "roughing it" playing AFS in Oldrim and constantly having to setstage or moveto on nearly every quest.

[Trykz]

On 7/8/2021 at 10:03 AM, MimosaTundra said:

I'm looking forward to this mod and wondering how your work on it is going down there in Florida.  Currently I'm "roughing it" playing AFS in Oldrim and constantly having to setstage or moveto on nearly every quest.

 

So a lot has happened these past months.

 

Went back down to Florida, which lasted about two weeks before Covid started

ripping through the state again. Said fuck it, and headed back to New York. Which

is where I'll be remaining for the foreseeable future. Buried my nephew two weeks

ago after he suffered a massive sudden heart attack. The wife and I are finally over

a pretty nasty summer flu as well. Considering selling the Florida house since it

seems to be the stupidest place on the fuckin' planet to live at the moment ?

 

I've also put my FO4 Droids mod on hold for a while so I can get back to work on this.

 

Needless to say, it's been a pretty tiring couple of months. So the current plan is.....

 

semi-retirement. I get enough side work here in New York to comfortably subsidize

the wife's income. And since this was all her idea, I'm pretty comfortable with it.

 

Sooooo.......

 

the current plan is to finish the Shaman component by Halloween at the latest. Some

of the Forager stuff is already in place, but will be unusable until I complete it sometime

around the Christmas holiday. I've also concepted a Warlord component to tie in nearly

the full spectrum of Forsworn classes. I built a custom Forsworn female BriarHeart race

mod a while back. And the plan is to integrate and release that at the tail end of the

series, sometime in mid-2022.

 

I'm hopeful that Delzaron finishes up and finalizes AFS so I can do a full-compatibility

conversion to SSE, and release it together with this by Halloween or shortly thereafter.

In the event that he doesn't, this will release anyway. I don't want to hold it back any

longer.

 

Trykz

[Trykz]

One of the things that's most bothered me when it comes to siding

with the Forsworn (after saving Madanach), is that the Forsworn

who actually tolerate your presence, would still attack your mount

if you brought it too close. Well, no longer will that be the case:

 

 

The horses in this shot are part of the Forsworn faction. Currently, none of them are "owned". But that will be changing.

I'm currently working on the packaging for their eventual owners. When completed, they will each have an owner/rider

that will travel as a group of 6 from Redoubt to Redoubt. There will be multiple groups travelling simultaneously starting

at their origin Redoubt, and visiting each Redoubt in their rotation for one hour before moving on to the next.

 

Now you're probably wondering, "how does this resolve the player horse issue?" Simply put, there will be one horse of each of the 5 vanilla variants for the player

to choose from. One horse of one variant will be located at one of the Redoubts for the player to choose from. NONE of the horses will be saddled/armored. Mostly

because it doesn't seem to make complete sense given the somewhat "primitive" nature of the Forsworn. I currently have 3-4 chapters of the Shaman book to write.

As well as a number of spells and potions to add. I also need to repair the broken links that resulted from moving the cave home from Lost Valley into the Grove to

fix it's compatibility with MHIYH. Apart from that, I need to finish up the Grove's flora and navmeshes.

 

I'll try to post some updated shots of how the Grove currently looks tomorrow.

 

Trykz

 

 

[Trykz]

One last update for tonight:

 

Another bothersome item was the lack of children among the Forsworn. You could

say the same for bandits, but that's a whole other mod for a whole other time ?

Anyway, I added them to the leveled NPCs you'll encounter at the Redoubts:

 

 

I know, I know..... they're potatohead kids ?

But for the sake of compatibility and unnecessary

dependencies, they're the best I could do.

 

Although, they "might" utilize the appearance of some of the available

children mods since they're vanilla Breton race kids. I'm also considering

pulling out and converting my old LE Dovahteens mod to add in some

older teens in a future update down the road. We'll see.

 

Trykz

[Trykz]

Some shots of the current Vale of Tranquility:

 

To get a sense of how far things have come I suggest having a

look at the shots in this post for a bit of perspective.

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

I figure about one good week of steady plugging away should be enough to

finish it up. The forestation, foliage, and landscape adjustments are the most

time consuming. Only a couple of the cells (where there are NPCs) are currently

navmeshed. Also note that this is a NON-combat worldspace. It's primary function

is to be the sole location for creating spells, mixing potions, and advancing

the class related quests. Speaking of quests and classes:

 

When the mod is finished in it's entirety, there will be four classes

in total, each with it's own specific questline for progression:

 

Shaman

Forager

Warlord

Briarheart

 

Bear in mind that the Briarheart class will require a custom race swap at an appropriate point in it's quest advancement. As noted earlier, the race is essentially complete

and just needs to be integrated into the mod. Which is why I'm saving it for last. Placing it last allows the user to make the choice of updating the mod to it's final

stage to become and play a Forsworn Briarheart. As of now, there isn't anything to prevent a single character from playing through the entire completed series

of classes, and I'll be doing my best to avoid any overlap.

 

I'll try to get some shots of the female Briarhearts up in a day or two (it's currently disabled in my load order).

 

Trykz

Edited August 29, 2021 by Trykz

[Trykz]

Here are a couple of shots of the female Briarheart:

 

 

And yes, the Briarheart DOES glow and visually pulse ?

 

As noted earlier, the Briarhearts will be added at the very tail end of the series. Mainly because

of the additional RaceCompatibility requirement. I'd rather not require the RaceCompatibility

master for the entire mod should some players not be interested in the custom race. The body

is a custom 3BBB body with full BodySlide capability, as is the torso armor you see pictured here.

The armor includes zaps for every piece, to be completely customizable to your liking.

 

I'm also looking out for an SOS compatible male Briarheart resource body. The way that

Briarhearts are set up in the vanilla game, the "body" isn't an actual body at all. It's an armor that 

once removed, reveals a normal body beneath. Which really takes a piss on immersion

during SexLab scenes ?

 

Other than that, the Shaman book is about complete. I just need to add a few more illustrations.

All 9 avatar creatures are also finished and in game. Vale of Tranquility is a bit further along as

well. I'm essentially working on it in pieces, because it's quite large with LOTS of trees and foliage.

I still need to repair the broken links caused by moving the mine home into the Vale, but

should wrap that up by mid-week. Next week I'll be spending a bit of time writing up some

lore to spread around the Redoubts for the player to find. I suggest keeping an eye out

for it, since it will provide a LOT of hints to what's on the horizon.

 

Finally, I just want to reiterate that this isn't a "normal" quest mod. The "quests" are actually

quite small, and serve only to advance the story narrative behind each class. The whole

Shaman quest is like 5 stages. The rest is handled through the book. So there are NO quest

markers to hold your hand and walk you through things. But believe me when I tell

you that you won't need them. The book provides plenty of detail to easily guide you through.

 

Each of the 4 classes will have their own tiny quest and book. But make no mistake, "tiny"

doesn't mean "small" by any means. By my current estimate, it should take you at least

40-50 hours to complete just ONE class progression quest. They are meant to be played

DURING your normal playthrough, NOT as a replacement for it. There are no restrictions

for play. You can play through with an existing character, but I HIGHLY recommend a new

character. High level characters will for certain bulldoze through and run out of content

very quickly. Once the final series is complete, you could choose one to play through

or even ALL of them at once. Potentially adding up to 200 hours of gameplay to your game.

 

Well, back to planting trees and shrubs I guess ?

 

Trykz

[Trykz]

So I somehow managed to complete nearly the entire Forager class questline. It's pretty

rudimentary at best, but that's because I still need to work out the ingredients and

proportions for potions and armor/weapons, but the basics are all there and the quest

is completable. It was my intent to release the Forager content at some point later after

the initial release of the base mod with the Shaman content. But at this point, I can see

no reason for not including both in the initial release since little needs to be done to finish.

 

The only overlap between these two classes is the base ingredient I created for acquiring

the Shaman Avatars. The Shaman uses the ingredient to formulate a potion that grants new

spells, and unlocks progression to the next Avatar. The Forager uses the same ingredient

in greater quantity to formulate a potion to acquire new buffs and abilities that aide in

defeating the next Avatar creature, up to a final Avatar boss fight. Which I intend to be quite

tough, and likely take multiple attempts until you achieve the appropriate prerequisites to

beat it.

 

I'll go into greater detail about how the progression systems work closer to release. But this

should give you a general idea.

 

Trykz

[SlverSkull]

Has this mod been put on the backburner while you work on Droids of the Commonwealth / waiting for AFS to be finished?