After I tried porting the Laboratory expansion from another modpack, Ancano became unkillable.

[XME2233]

I’ve encountered an issue during the final stage of the College of Winterhold questline: I am unable to kill Ancano. Normally, the player simply uses the staff to dispel the Eye of Magnus's invulnerability shield and then kills him; however, Ancano refuses to die—no matter what I do, he remains stuck in a kneeling position. Even using console commands (such as `kill`, `disable`, or `setessential 000xxxxx 0`) fails to kill him, suggesting that something is protecting him. I’m wondering if there is a way to identify what is protecting him or to remove his "essential NPC" status. The only other instances involving Ancano that I’m aware of are Balazar's quest and the choices in "A Hero's Troubles," but checking the console output hasn't provided any useful clues.

[XME2233]

SOS sorting error; this information can be used to provide the mod list.

Crash_2026_8_4_22-39-10.txt

[Dorabella]

Laboratory Expansion , Which mod is it?

 

In Xedit, open the mod you think is causing the issue, search for Ancano in

NON-Player Characters (Actors) if it's there, and remove the instance

 

 

[XME2233]

4 minutes ago, Dorabella said:

Laboratory Expansion , Which mod is it?

 

In Xedit, open the mod you think is causing the issue, search for Ancano in

NON-Player Characters (Actors) if it's there, and remove the instance

 

 

Extract the "SexLab" mod from a Korean modpack, add it to another modpack that lacks it, and integrate relevant elements according to personal preference.

[Dorabella]

4 minutes ago, XME2233 said:

Extract the "SexLab" mod from a Korean modpack, add it to another modpack that lacks it, and integrate relevant elements according to personal preference.

Why? 

 

It seems more like an issue with some Defeat not triggering

[XME2233]

9 minutes ago, Dorabella said:

Why? 

 

It seems more like an issue with some Defeat not triggering

Due to the influence of the male protagonist, certain functional modules of the female protagonist (such as the "combat defeat" state) are disabled by default. Although the Magnus quest can be completed using quest codes, I am genuinely concerned that the script responsible for protecting Ancano might lose its target as a result and trigger issues; yet at the same time, I really do not want him remaining at the College.

[Dorabella]

1 hour ago, XME2233 said:

certain functional modules of the female protagonist (such as the "combat defeat" state) are disabled by default.

Could that be the reason? Make sure you don't have any active “Defeat” events. It would be best to temporarily disable them, restart from a previous save (barring any possible CTDs), and try again. In theory, if the triggers are turned off, the scripts won't start. 

 

It's likely that some Defeat features will take a few minutes to deactivate.  If you can kill him, you've found the culprits

[traison]

3 hours ago, Dorabella said:

In Xedit, open the mod you think is causing the issue, search for Ancano in

NON-Player Characters (Actors) if it's there, and remove the instance

 

That would only remove direct NPC_ record edits that change the ACBS flags Essential (0x2) and Protected (0x800).

 

There's also:

1. Quest alias references setting the Essential or Protected flags as long as the actor is assigned to the alias.
2. SetEssential and SetProtected in the ActorBase script.

Dealing with quest aliases might be problematic. I'd start with More Informative Console to see if it can list them. If it can't then there's ShowQuestAliases; you'd have to go through every running quest by hand in the in-game console.

 

Papyrus is easier to search. Notepad++ can search recursively through all pex files in all mods, except it won't search in packed BSAs. I've made a tool that can handle all of it. It's available by request. Once you have the list of pex files you need to obtain the sources for them and go through the code to determine if one of them is modifying Ancano. Remember that a property or field named BananaSplit might still be a reference to Ancano.

[Dorabella]

3 hours ago, XME2233 said:

Extract the "SexLab" mod from a Korean modpack, add it to another modpack that lacks it, and integrate relevant elements according to personal preference.

I don't see the point of this. All you'd have to do is open the mod in XEdit along with Sexlab, associate them, and you're done. This would make Sexlab a mandatory requirement, but it would definitely be less of a hassle. 

 

 

Spoiler

After trying to transfer the “Laboratory” expansion from another modpack, Ancano became unkillable.

 

Either it's a “Defeat,” or the move performed with Sexlab ( see above ) broke something.