Erandur can't be interacted with after completing Waking Nightmare and dismissing him as follower

[belegost]

I completed Waking Nightmare quest by not killing Erandur, destroyed Vaermina's staff and made him a follower. Was adventuring with him for a while, then I dismissed him. I had some other adventures in the meantime, even met him wandering in the wilderness during that time at which point he already had no dialogues and couldn't be talked to. He would move his mouth as if uttering some line, but he has no voice, not even a generic line. I thought nothing of it at the time, however recently wanted to recruit him back, went to Nighcaller's Temple and the issue persists.

 

He sandboxes around the temple's entrance hall, the prompt to activate/talk with him is there, but it does nothing. He still doesn't have any response, he moves his mouth as if replying, but no voice lines are being played, can't be interacted with, disable/enable, kill/resurrect, recycleactor all doesn't work. NFF claims he is in follower faction and indeed he is, but I can't do anything about it. addfac 5c84d is moot as he's already in PotentailFollowerFaction and it doesn't do anything. I can't seem to find any console commands to force an actor into being active follower, it appears this can only be done through dialogue, and the dialogue is not there.

There are no overrides in his record bar an appearance overhaul which doesn't touch his AI packages at all. I do not use AI Overhaul or similar mods.

 

Purging him from NFF doesn't do anything. I had added custom outfit to him via NFF when he was my follower and curiously recycleactor, enable/disable, kill/resurrect or just regular kill and then resurrect doesn't even reset his equipment. He respawns with the same equipment I gave him as if it was part of his plugin data. Which far as I recall was never the case (I might misremember), recycleactor should have reverted him to default outfit. He can be summoned via NFF, he's still listed as past follower but there's just no way to interact with him in any way.

Attacking him with low damage attacks makes him hostile, but I can't send him to bleedout, even when punching with fists and no hand-to-hand perks. He either dies when he gets to zero or a killmove triggers on him. Interestingly, when he does become hostile, TrueHUD reports him as being much higher level than myself, which was not the case when he was a follower.

 

Copying him by placeatme 24280 also has no effect as the copy exhibits the same behaviour.

 

He doesn't even have any dialogues which any NPC should have with my current load order: SexLab Romance, Unforgiving Devices and Devious Interests, all should have added their own dialogues to him, but nothing appears.

 

Out of curiosity I loaded a different character who never completed his quest and pre-Waking Nightmare version of Erandur on that save line behaves normally. I had not tested if the issue would be reproducible on that different character because Waking Nightmare is a long and boring quest, I hate it, and I'm not going to do it twice.

 

My wild guess is this might be a different manifestation of the bug described on his UESP page, but I'm basically speculating. All searches I made only return issues with him during Waking Nightmare quest but I can't find anything specific to his behaviour afterwards. I guess majority of people just kill him for the staff (which is shit anyway) and they can't appreciate he actually makes a very good spellsword and healer.

 

He's also the father of my character's child, so yeah, child support and all that. Pay up, pal!

Edited March 13, 2025 by belegost

[Tlam99]

First find out which ai pack.

Extended console shows it.

 

If you got this, then a proper debug spell can fix it.

[belegost]

22 minutes ago, Tlam99 said:

First find out which ai pack.

Extended console shows it.

 

If you got this, then a proper debug spell can fix it.

 

 

DA16ErandurPostSandbox

FormID: 0010E3C0

 

What am I to do with that information?

[Tlam99]

Look at the sandbox, if there are any conditions, like quest finished or specific area.

If this package does not allow dialogue, you can set this. Use the defaultsandboxeditorlocation as template

and set all the flags.

Better would be to replace this package.

I will have a look whats the best way to fix.

Just wonder, why they gave him a special sandbox package.

Will be later on the pc, should not be a big deal.

 

 

[Tlam99]

The problems seems to be the starting point. It's inside the temple.

He probably cannot enter.

 

see screen

 

Best would be a sandbox editor location. Then he walks to the inn.

 

Spoiler

 

[Tlam99]

here a fix. esp FE

It's a copy of the sandbox when he stays at the inn.

He probably has no more the key. So you might do a prid and moveto player, if he is inside the temple.

 

 

ErandurPostSandboxFix.7z

[belegost]

1 hour ago, Tlam99 said:

here a fix. esp FE

It's a copy of the sandbox when he stays at the inn.

He probably has no more the key. So you might do a prid and moveto player, if he is inside the temple.

 

 

ErandurPostSandboxFix.7z 554 B · 1 download

 

Doesn't seem it works.

I did several tests and I did manage to have him regain his voice and dialogues twice but I'm not really sure if that was due to the patch or not. Here's what I found:

 

First test with your patch:

Loaded a save from inside the Nightcaller's Temple, issue still present.

Left the temple, consoled him him to my position, issue present

He walked back into the temple, I followed inside, issue present.

Decided to wait one hour within a temple. Due to Extended Encounters a hostile warlock spawned, Erandur killed them and suddenly regained his voice, uttering generic Dark Elf voice lines. When interacted with he now had the "Follow me, I need your help."

 

Second test with your patch disabled.

Repeated all the steps above, the issue present throughout, no fix.

 

Third test with your patch:

Loaded much later save in Winterhold, consoled him to my location, attempted to talk. Issue present.

Made him follow me by using SexLab Tools mod and adding him to actor list. Went outside, found a polar bear, got him into fight and kill it. Issue present.

Went to all the way down to Wreck of Pride of Tel-Vos and got him into fight with the bandits and bandit boss. He regained voice and "follow me" dialogue option.

 

Fourth test with your patch:

Loaded the same save as the first test, inside Nightcaller's Temple, issue present.

Waited one hour, had a hostile warlock spawn, killed by Erandur. Issue present.

Walked out, found a wolf, consoled Erandur to me and got him to kill the wolf. Issue present.

Walked to Driftshade Refuge, consoled him to my location when the three Silverhand aggroed. After the fight issue persisted.

Walked to Snowpoint Beacon, consoled him to my location, got into fight with bandits. Issue present.

COC back to Nightcaller Temple, consoled him to me, waited one hour, warlock spawned, fight ensued, warlock dies, issue present.

Went out, consoled him outside, he started walking towards Dawnstar instead of oing back to the Temple. I went back to Temple, waited one hour, went out and walked to Windpeak Inn in Dawnstar. He was inside, sitting at the table. Issue present.

 

Fifth test with your patch:

Repeated steps from third test, in Windhelm. No fix, issue present throughout.

 

Seems like the results are inconclusive, and the fact he "repaired" himself twice was a combination of factors. I can't decide if your fix was one of them or not, even though it seems like it might have been. Since it takes almost 5 minutes to start up Skyrim on my potato with the load order I currently have I don;t feel like doing any more testing.

 

Thank you for your help.

Edited March 13, 2025 by belegost

[Tlam99]

ok, he must get unloaded, that's the cell change

The combat switched the package, too

 

he needs to be unloaded. (cell change and disable enable), or forced package change (combat)

The problem is, the old package never terminates, because it's faulty. He needs another package active and then reapply the fixed package after unload or combat seems to works, too

Faulty packages never end and this guy is a permanent actor, stays in memory.

 

Did you exit to desktop when loading former saves ?

It's a must !

A reason quests get bugged.

 

https://www.loverslab.com/blogs/entry/15370-notice/#findComment-72121

 

 

Edited March 13, 2025 by Tlam99

[belegost]

I had experienced similar issue with Urag, i.e. him becoming unresponsive, although the circumstances were different.

 

I had a SL teleport bug trigger while having sex with him and after all was concluded he too became unresponsive in a very similar fashion to Erandur. No voice and the only response,  if one has subtitles on, are three dots.

 

More detailed description of how I was able to trigger it can be found in this post: 

 

Theory and speculation:

 

Now that got me thinking that my original issue with Erandur might have been caused by him going into knock down state at some point during our adventures together, while at the same time a SL scene was playing out. I don't recall the details, but I am specuating this might have been the cause, although the bug only manifested itself after I dismissed him as a follower. Therefore my original assumption this was a manifestation of a bug described on his UESP page might have been a false positive.

 

Since I had been using Bane's Defeat since forever, every knock down is basically a Defeat knockdown and there might have been some unforseen fuckery involved.

It is also entirely possible an interaction with NFF might have been involved since it also has its own system for handling knockdowns and it might clash with Defeat's. But I'm just throwing wild guesses right now.

 

Tagging @Tlam99 for posterity, and @Bane Master since I promised him I will keep him posted on any Defeat-related issues I  encounter. I hope you don't mind guys. Thank you.

Edited August 2, 2025 by belegost

[Bane Master]

1 hour ago, belegost said:

NFF might have been involved since it also has its own system for handling knockdowns

Thanks for the tag - I suspect that if NFF is trying to handle knockdowns as well as Defeat that's a recipe for trouble!

[belegost]

13 minutes ago, Bane Master said:

Thanks for the tag - I suspect that if NFF is trying to handle knockdowns as well as Defeat that's a recipe for trouble!

It usually is not intrusive. All it does, it keeps the follower in knock down state until a time specified in MCM passes. By default it's 15 seconds (which I stick to in my games and let Defeat handle it rest of the way) which I believe is much shorter than both Defeat and vanilla state. It can be made to last longer or even persist until combat state ends but I never do that.

 

However someone who actually knows how that stuff works (like yourself) could probably look into it and decide if that is actually a factor. I might just be throwing another false positive your way.