Archeron NPCs Stuck In Infini-Defeat. Where Is The Fucking Reset-Button?

[libertyordeath]

Scenario:

 

1. NFF + Slaves For Banditcamps + Archeron.

2. Rescue a slave from banditcamp. Make her NFF-follower. Send to homebase. Lets call her Slave1. Those are uniques by the way, no randos.

3. Months later, i have rescued let's say 19 more slaves. Let's call them slaves2-20. No problems ever.

4. Then i rescue slave21. Also make her an NFF follower, send her to base. But on the way she gets attacked and defeated. No problem Miss - bad black wolf can't hurt you cause i'm here. I heal her and she leaves loadarea returning to base. Seems good so far.

 

5. And now the WTFH?! begins! I return to base. Slave1 (!!!) is in defeat. But she never left base. And she's walking around sandboxing - while supposedly in defeat. I cannot talk to her, because all i get is the defeat menu. Healing magic? Nothing. Healing potion? Nothing. Leave base, and go back in: Still in defeat. All recovery options for NPCs are enabled in Archeron, so in theory she should autorecover on unload. But then again, she also shouldn't be walking defeated - or be defeated to begin with - basically she's "defeat-broken". Across load-doors and across gameloads (yes, tried to save and load too).

 

Surely Archeron must have a "master-reset" button in the MCM, just like every mod of this kind? NOPE! Absolutely nothing. There's no debugging, no troubleshooting, no nothing in the Archeron MCM. It seemly just assumes that it beyond failure.

 

So how am i supposed fix it? Kill her and resurrect, or shit like that? I'm this close to nuking archeron alltogether, because i have no interest in uniques getting perma-borked in my safegame. And since NPCs can go into defeat anytime they're attacked, the risk is pretty high.

 

TLDR: Where is the hidden big red reset button? 

 

UPDATE: Kill and ressurrect doesn't fix it either. Neither does disable enable.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2024 by libertyordeath

[anjenthedog]

fwiw, did you try a console resetai on her?

 

Also, not sure if NFF woks this way but as I recall, back when I used AFT, summoning a whacked-out follower would reset their status handily. Maybe try summoning her from another cell

Edited August 15, 2024 by anjenthedog

[traison]

Probably not what you want to hear but to me that sounds like a broken mod, as in, it has a bug in it that blanket-defeats everyone when it happens to one. A reset button would not be considered a fix, but a workaround. I doubt a reset button, even if there was one, would keep it from happening again 10 minutes later.

 

But, lets say you want to create a reset button using the sledgehammer approach. I would assume considering your previous attempts at working around this failed, that the actors may be assigned to aliases in a quest somewhere:

1. Grab the base and reference form ids from one of the problematic actors. Use More Informative Console if you don't already.
2. Open your save in ReSaver.
3. Locate the quest scripts belonging to the problematic mod. xEdit can tell you which ones that is, if the name isn't obvious. If in doubt, go through them all.
4. Go through its properties to see if you can find the problematic actors. Right click references -> Find, the IDs here make more sense.
5. Delete the script instance.
6. Save. (create backup, this is probably a bad idea)
7. Load the save in-game and pray to your daedra it doesn't explode.

[libertyordeath]

1 hour ago, anjenthedog said:

fwiw, did you try a console resetai on her?

 

Also, not sure if NFF woks this way but as I recall, back when I used AFT, summoning a whacked-out follower would reset their status handily. Maybe try summoning her from another cell

No effect with resetai. I tried going to another location and teleporting her there via "Call to you". No effect: She appears and tries going back to base (since that's her current NFF assignment). I also checkedd NFF package priority: Set to 50, which is the lowest NFF offers.

 

Also i have confirmed via savegames the window in which the character was defeat broken. Here's the timeline:

 

1. Inside Base. Slave1 is fine. Savegame available.

2. I leave the base and fast-travel far away. Do some exploring and random fights - all far away from base. No savegame for this period.

3. I attack a banditcamp and rescue slave21. Make her NFF follower and assign her to base. Then dismiss her so she starts walking to the assigned base. No save for this period.

4. Slave21 is attacked and defeated, but not raped since i intervene and heal her. She proceeds towards base and leaves the loadarea. No saves for this period.

5. I fasttravel to whiterun to sell some loot. Savegame available here. Slave1 is defeat-broken if i call her.

6. I fast travel to base. Slave1 is defeat-broken. Savegame available here.

 

So basically this happened while i was far away from where slave1 was supposed to be. It did not happen when i returned to base, so she was corrupted while.... unloaded?

 

[libertyordeath]

.... I have a really silly idea how this may have happened. It would imply some really stupid bug in archeron...

 

You see, archeron has an option to auto-defeat followers if the playerchar is defeated. I have that turned on, and i was defeated once in those fights while exploring.

 

Problem is slave1 was far away at base and obviously NOT following. She would however have the "potentialfollower" faction or how it's called. Perhaps archeron uses the wrong faction and with the above option blanket defeats every potential player follower. Still doesn't explain why only slave1 was borked, but maybe that's just the one where skyrim told archeron: "are you fucking nuts? what even is this? (throws towel)"

Edited August 15, 2024 by libertyordeath

[libertyordeath]

1 hour ago, traison said:

But, lets say you want to create a reset button using the sledgehammer approach. I would assume considering your previous attempts at working around this failed, that the actors may be assigned to aliases in a quest somewhere:

1. Grab the base and reference form ids from one of the problematic actors. Use More Informative Console if you don't already.
2. Open your save in ReSaver.
3. Locate the quest scripts belonging to the problematic mod. xEdit can tell you which ones that is, if the name isn't obvious. If in doubt, go through them all.
4. Go through its properties to see if you can find the problematic actors. Right click references -> Find, the IDs here make more sense.
5. Delete the script instance.
6. Save. (create backup, this is probably a bad idea)
7. Load the save in-game and pray to your daedra it doesn't explode.

Thank you. However that's not really a reset-button, but save surgery as a last hail mary option. As described in the above timeline, i do still have a save from 2 hours earlier when i started the trip, and slave1 was fine there. Seems like a cleaner option to revert back to that save, since 2 hours are an acceptable price.

 

I will however permanently disable all Archeron NPC and follower features, and i will not try them again in future versions. If a developer says "No need for a way to reset NPCs. My mod will never break them. Trust me". And well, then it does break them and i have no recourse. Why should i assume the same doesn't happen again in a future version by some other bug? No thanks Mr Developer: You made a bold claim and failed, so no second chances from me.

[Tlam99]

Try this

 

or the dwarfen bone

[traison]

If slave 1 is the only one having issues, then modulus seems like a thing that could cause it. Lets say there's 20 slots for NPCs somewhere, with mod 20, slave #21 (index 20) becomes slave #1 (index 0). Perhaps Archeron works fine as long as you don't go over 20?

[libertyordeath]

1 hour ago, traison said:

If slave 1 is the only one having issues, then modulus seems like a thing that could cause it. Lets say there's 20 slots for NPCs somewhere, with mod 20, slave #21 (index 20) becomes slave #1 (index 0). Perhaps Archeron works fine as long as you don't go over 20?

And it would have no reason to assume going over N, if it was using the right faction to detect followers. Skyrim only allows a small number of active followers - even with mods or tweaks. But if it parses over "potential follower" instead, it will get hundreds of results - hundreds of NPCs getting defeated - something's gonna break if it does that. Fair chance slave1 was simply one of those i noticed, since i pretty much went straight to her after selling loot.

Edited August 15, 2024 by libertyordeath