Deviously Cursed Loot LE 9.0 (2021-03-09)

[LieutenantPaladine]

Hey folks,

I'm having a bit of trouble with the end of the Bound Queen quest line.  I found all the pieces of the key, and now Julius won't unlock me.  Which is fair.  However, the quest prompt now says accept him as keyholder (Hah, no.), kill him (He seems to be tagged as essential, as eight Incinerates do nothing), pickpocket him, or look for the key somewhere around the college.  Unfortunately there is no marker for me to follow, so I'm a little overwhelmed.  

 

TL;DR:

I want out of Queen Sarah's stuff, and can't kill Julius.  Can someone offer a little help?

[evilblade]

Is it possible to somehow completely turn-off the crime portion of the mod and return to vanilla dialog with the guards when you have a bounty?

[Elsidia]

45 minutes ago, LieutenantPaladine said:

I want out of Queen Sarah's stuff, and can't kill Julius.  Can someone offer a little help?

Spoiler

Just sneak to him and steal a key from it's pockets. This key leads to chest somewhere in college. Try to find yourself) If not success to find chest PM me i give a more clue)

 

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, donkeywho said:

I think that one of the arachnophobia mods (the original?) made you use the WASD keys to escape from the spider webs.

Essentially the same key-mashing game that was in the DA Captured mods. Not fun.

 

TBH, I prefer Defeat to Arachnophobia/DA, because at least that is exactly as hard as you configure it to be.

(Not that I like any of them).

 

The mechanism in Devious Lore is ... for all intents and purpose ... luck. Either you get lucky and press the right key almost first go, or you get unlucky and your stamina is drained before you find it. Because we're not dealing with a highly-responsive "arcade game" engine here, there's enough lag in the DL game that it's certainly not about how fast you can press the different keys to find the right one, it's how fast you can recognize whether the drop-speed has slowed or not.

 

With DL, difficulty configuration matters quite a bit. Set it below one and you can escape from quite hard devices first try.

It's not really a game, it's developer effort put into creating the impression of a game, but ultimately it's luck and script load that decide if you can win.

 

The HH mechanism is purely stats driven. You're making choices and then some random rolls occur behind the scenes.

I prefer that, as it works better with the "speed" and "responsiveness" (or lack thereof) that Papyrus has.

 

The configuration choices in HH are reasonably good, but it's still a bit limited in what stats are contributing to the "escape" success.

Also, it's easier to avoid rapes if you wear a lot of clothes that fill lots of slots. 

 

That feature is really nonsense, as a TAWoBA wearing character becomes "safer" than one is modest dress, or standard vanilla heavy armor.

At least, they have more chances to resist.

 

 

For me, none of the non-combat resist mechanisms feel right.

The idea of replacing the Skyrim combat system seems crazy to me.

Skyrim is a combat game. Why on earth would we replace its combat system with a clumsy menu and some dice rolls?

 

It just needs:

a) more nuanced crime handling when you fight rapists in town

b) a way to surrender, if that's what you want (every defeat handler mod has this anyway)

c) a consistent way to handle post-defeat attacks

 

There's already a well-developed, responsive system for fighting enemies in Skyrim, already implemented by Bethesda.

 

The only reason to circumvent this is to give speech a chance before resorting to physical measures.

The vanilla game already has mechanics for this: the Valtheim Towers toll collector, for example.

Skyrim speech mechanics aren't great though, but you can use any stats mechanic you want under the hood instead of a built-in speech/persuade/bribe/intimidate check.

But when speech fails, violence should always be an option, and it should be up to the player how far they are prepared to go.

They could use only unarmed, and try to brawl the attackers, or they could go all-out.

How they fight should impact how guards react.

 

When you look at it this way, ALL rapes are post-defeat rapes.

The equivalent to the non-resist case is they attack you and you surrender immediately.

If you're bound, you will quickly be defeated, so again, it works out with no special handling.

It's actually *simpler*.

 

As I detailed in many other places, the key to this working in town and hold-controlled countryside is appropriate guard responses, which is something the player would want to configure:

e.g.

• guards always take the rapists' side
• guards always take your side
• guards have some weighted chance
• guards favor the side that only used unarmed
• guards consider various factors like:
  • thane status
  • "You were asking for it!" (sexy clothes, naked, drunk, on drugs)
  • you have a slave collar
  • you only used unarmed combat
  • you used magic
  • SexLab Survival factors
  • and so on...
• guards ignore rapes altogether unless somebody hits a guard
• easy to imagine a few other alternatives here

The consequence of this is that a high-level PC would (probably) only get raped if she's tied up to start with. For me, that's fine.

 

 

Whether or not everyone sees the logic in this, it's the approach I have planned out when I return to update the SLD rape feature.

[SkyTem]

Unrelated question.  Anyone know how safe Patreon is to become a subscriber of "if you did want to tip"?

[Kimy]

4 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

For me, none of the non-combat resist mechanisms feel right.

The idea of replacing the Skyrim combat system seems crazy to me.

Skyrim is a combat game. Why on earth would we replace its combat system with a clumsy menu and some dice rolls?

 

 

Well, yes. Overcoming just THAT is actually the single biggest challenge in designing BDSM content for Skyrim. How, just HOW do you fit a genre that's (aside from the occasional spanking stuff) non-violent by nature in a game that's 100% about violence? Often enough, when designing bondage mods, you have to create safe spaces just to allow the character getting tied up without getting instantly killed in the process (remember how the earliest DD mods suffered from that?). Skyrim was never meant for bondage content. Let's be honest, we put our content in this game not because it fits, but because most/all of us don't have the manpower to develop a large open world 3D game from scratch.

 

In the case of "random sex attack scenes", we make it fit by pretending that the almighty warrior isn't all that almighty. The DCL feature (and I guess most similar features like it) pretend that the Dragonborn (which as you may or may not have noticed, DCL NEVER refers the player as!) didn't play attention for a second. Or walked in the wrong back alley. Or her sword had an equipment failure. But yes, she got overwhelmed. Insert any acceptable reason here, really.

 

Would I allow her to resolve the situation with violent means, we all know how that would end. She'd win. Easily so. We're talking about a person who takes on dragons, shoots them out of the sky and then returns to the closest inn to share the story and lots of ale. There is seriously no way that this woman would lose a battle against a few thugs. There'd never BE any "get ambushed randomly" scene, unless we pretend that violence, for whatever reason, wasn't an option.

[Kimy]

4 hours ago, SkyTem said:

Unrelated question.  Anyone know how safe Patreon is to become a subscriber of "if you did want to tip"?

You mean if Patreon is trustworthy? Yes, I believe it is. It's widely used for supporting creators of any imaginable arts.

[Lupine00]

3 hours ago, Kimy said:

Would I allow her to resolve the situation with violent means, we all know how that would end. She'd win. Easily so.

Hence the introduction of plausible reasons why you might choose to limit the weapons you use to resist in a town and not go all out...

 

Alternatively, not everyone is playing the game as a mighty Dragonborn.

 

My poor PC infallibly dies to dragons if they catch her outside a town, but she can still get -some- loot out of dungeons.

 

But... even for characters playing the game as a near-invincible battle-god, a pet-suit tends to put a damper on your ability to win every fight.

Or a collar that stops you wearing your nice daedric armor... Or an armbinder, blindfold and slave boots, or... I'm sure you get the idea.

 

You can get bound up due to traps that are not a result of failing at combat.

Or due to hilariously bad dialogue-based decisions that you deliberately take, that include the words "Smoking hot"...

 

I hear there's a mod that does that. People should try it out!

[Reesewow]

8 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

The configuration choices in HH are reasonably good, but it's still a bit limited in what stats are contributing to the "escape" success.

Also, it's easier to avoid rapes if you wear a lot of clothes that fill lots of slots. 

 

That feature is really nonsense, as a TAWoBA wearing character becomes "safer" than one is modest dress, or standard vanilla heavy armor.

At least, they have more chances to resist.

Doesn't HH also have the option to specify what slots to ignore in its stripping mechanic? 

 

I always found that to be one of the stronger aspects of that struggle, since multi-part gear could either be set up to result in a long struggle that slowly strips the PC, or it could be set up in a more realistic fashion where the attacker strips only the bits that block access.  The latter setting putting bikini armor essentially on the same footing as vanilla clothing and armor, if "gear protection equality" is important to the player. 

 

I agree that it would be nice if violence was always an option for those that would take it, but it probably would take an extreme guard and AI overhaul like you described.  Fights among neutral and friendly NPCs are sketchy in unmodded Skyrim as is - start adding a few followers using their own frameworks and AI and extra NPCs touting AOE spells or abilities, and it feels like anything other than a fist-only brawl in a city tends to devolve into a mini-war.  Which some people are OK with, and others (self included) simply cannot stand.

 

Honestly one of the main reason I love the SLS pickpocketing overhaul so much is that it bypasses the victim's vanilla aggro/fleeing phase, which makes it *much* less likely that a hot-headed follower is likely to try to kill them before the guards arrive to give the actual fight or surrender choice.

[xseno]

57 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

 

 

You can get bound up due to traps that are not a result of failing at combat.

Or due to hilariously bad dialogue-based decisions that you deliberately take, that include the words "Smoking hot"...

 

I hear there's a mod that does that. People should try it out!

Which mod it is?

[SkyTem]

2 hours ago, Kimy said:

You mean if Patreon is trustworthy? Yes, I believe it is. It's widely used for supporting creators of any imaginable arts.

Cool.  I haven't ever used any sites that aren't of one of the big companies to pay for stuff online before so I thought I'd ask about that one first.  I checked the site out for the first time recently.  The rest of you guys use it without issue?  Thought I'd get everyone's opinion.  Ty for the reply btw.

[Lupine00]

50 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

Which some people are OK with, and others (self included) simply cannot stand.

Maybe they will listen when you say no?

 

If you're afraid there will be trouble, maybe you better let those guys have their way?

They probably won't hurt you ... too badly ... right? If you just lie really, really still, and pretend it's not happening.

 

 

But seriously. I'm not saying there's no place for "passive resist", HH struggle, persuade-style checks, etc. but when those mods deny you the basic functions of Skyrim they do something that *I* cannot stand. I don't expect everyone to want it my way, but it's surprising how much people get locked into thinking only in terms of how the established mods work, and not how Skyrim works.

 

It isn't necessarily easier to pacify a bunch of bandits and enact a combat-defeat rape than to pacify a bunch of townspeople who end up sucked into your push-back against your attempted rapists. It's the same pacify mechanic, and there are good and bad ways to implement that.

 

I follow Kimy's point that five years ago or eight years ago, modders were struggling to get these things working, but they are a lot less mysterious now, SKSE is more mature, modding is more mature. People are getting tired of the same old mechanics. SD+ slavery as it is *now* would have been a masterpiece in 2012. It's still technically clever, but game design ideas have evolved. If handling the factions of a troublesome town population is ... hard ... then good, a mod that gets it right will be bringing something new, instead of churning over old ideas that were already done and polished five years ago.

 

HH already exists, so we don't need to make it again.

[Lupine00]

6 minutes ago, xseno said:

Which mod it is?

?

[DonQuiWho]

1 hour ago, xseno said:

Which mod it is?

Think it's

 

Don't

Curse

Lupine00

[xseno]

34 minutes ago, donkeywho said:

Think it's

 

Don't

Curse

Lupine00

Ye ye I get it was confused because I dont remeber seeing the 
" that include the words "Smoking hot"..."

scenario

 

Please forgive this nub  

[Reesewow]

Quote

HH already exists, so we don't need to make it again.

 

My HH comment was referring only to the issue of HH "favoring" armors that use non-standard slots you had described - not that it specifically should be implemented in DCUL as better alternative to combat. 

 

44 minutes ago, Lupine00 said:

I don't expect everyone to want it my way, but it's surprising how much people get locked into thinking only in terms of how the established mods work, and not how Skyrim works.

Well, for myself personally any mod that comes out isn't going to be in isolation - it's going to be jostling for a spot in a very well established suite of mods, that work well together because of that established behavior.  So my questions or criticisms of an idea are certainly going to be coloured by how I perceive it would fit in an established mod environment.  Of course, sometimes a mod comes around that's so great of an idea that it is worth the pain of changing that environment to fit.

 

 

As an example I think one of the major challenges could be - what if the player doesn't surrender? 

 

Most users will be likely be using a combat defeat mod such as Defeat/SL Adventures or DCUL's own combat defeat options.  If the player takes a power attack mid struggle with a rapist and triggers a Defeat bleedout, should that supersede whatever event the mod controlling the rapist had planned?  Can it pick back up or end gracefully after another combat defeat mod has been triggered and completed?  Should the player not be running any other combat defeat mods at all, and expect the mod triggering the rapist fight to offer that functionality? 

 

Certainly all solvable issues, but not inconsequential ones if a mod just wants to be able to trigger sex attacks on a player.

 

 

Makes me think that such a mod could be really interesting as major crime overhaul with awareness of additional armor tags/SL aroused exposure/Devious Devices ect.  It could be really useful if any mod could just flag a combatant as "rapist" and have the overhaul know to treat that combat completely differently than a random assault on a townie.  Definitely interested to see what you may come up with on your implementation of something like this in SLD.

[Elsidia]

4 minutes ago, Reesewow said:

Certainly all solvable issues

Not to far for search - i just try Arachnophobia and in middle of wrapping trigger DCL surrender - i was teleported in cocoon far away and lay down in armbinder and cocoon)  - triggers DCL escape minigame) Only as example what can be gone wrong.

[Kimy]

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

But seriously. I'm not saying there's no place for "passive resist", HH struggle, persuade-style checks, etc. but when those mods deny you the basic functions of Skyrim they do something that *I* cannot stand. I don't expect everyone to want it my way, but it's surprising how much people get locked into thinking only in terms of how the established mods work, and not how Skyrim works.

 

Again, every single line of code I ever wrote was about fitting a non-violent genre into a violent game and try not to let the violent parts get into the way of my content. My ability to adopt the very way of thinking you apparently find so weird is the very reason why my mods exist in the first place.

 

 

7 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

 

 a mod that gets it right will be bringing something new, instead of churning over old ideas that were already done and polished five years ago.

Five years is basically how old DCL's sex attack code is. This discussion more or less is about improving what's there, but without rewriting the entire thing from scratch. Btw, restricting her weapons? Ummm...so you would find it immersive if the gate guards would search her bag and somehow take her spells away? Mmmmkay!

Honestly, while text box narrated skill checks might be less than ideal, it's still better than coming up with excuses why our mighty amazon girl isn't armed, when everybody trying to take advantage of her IS. This feature will never be 100% immersive. People who can't accept it for what it is, can always disable it?

 

Btw, DCL already DOES have a "get taken after a failed attempt at using violence" feature. It's called "Combat Surrender". It does exactly what you're suggesting - if our warrior goddess fails at being godly and gets defeated in combat, her enemies will have some fun with her. The one you're complaining about is an -additional- feature that's tailored for towns and peaceful areas, where violence would usually NOT occur. As I said above, it DOES take accepting the slight inconsistency that the same warrior goddess because of <insert any reason here> isn't able to simply wipe out the bandits with her fire magic and greatswords when they jump at her from behind a bush. It's not THAT outlandish a thought for a family of mods that tend to turn warrior goddesses into helpless bound slaves more often than not, no?

[slicksly]

23 hours ago, Kimy said:

This is not the first time I am getting asked to implement such a feature, and I am still open to the idea. However, what is NOT going to happen is any of these boring button-masher minigames, like the one that was in Defeat. I hate these. There is no way DCL will ever have a "Hammer the W and D keys 100 times in 10 seconds to escape" feature.

I have never tested the mod you quoted, as it conflicts with my own, so I can't even say how its resist feature works. Feel free to suggest one that's NOT a silly button-masher minigame and can be halfway easily fit into the existing feature, and I will consider it!

I've always been partial to timing-based click challenges as an easy and purposeful gameplay mechanic, myself. Something like a float going from 0 to 1 and back to 0 again every X interval, with the player having to make a button press (attack button?) within a set nearness to 1. For example, if the float would go from 0 to 1 and back to 0 in a second, and you were supposed to click when the float was above 0.8, you'd have a 0.2second time frame to hit the click timing window. If linked to skill, the level of skill could affect the required accuracy, so higher skill has a larger hit area between 0 and 1. There could also be a difficulty slider which would affect the overall hit area, and / or how long the timer would use to reach 1 and regress back to 0 again.

 

You could also string them together, forcing several successes to complete the task. It'd also open for partial success-systems, where applicable.

Visually, it could be anything - a circle shrinking into a "hit area" and growing out again, a bar reaching a peak and regressing again, a key approaching a keyhole center then diverging, or anything else.

[Elsidia]

33 minutes ago, Kimy said:

about fitting a non-violent genre

When man rape you is non violent?

 

Also combat surrender is most annoying thing (but i still not ready to turn it off).

You can have full hp and one strong hit and you surrender.

Also if you wear a leg irons you drop weapon and surrender (i can understand it but still annoying)

[Kimy]

6 minutes ago, Elsidia said:

When man rape you is non violent?

Poor choice of words on my part, admitted. But semantic nitpicking aside, it's quite clear what I meant, I guess?. BDSM involves a lot of things, but doing battle isn't one of them. Skyrim is ALL about combat.

6 minutes ago, Elsidia said:

You can have full hp and one strong hit and you surrender.

Only if you fail to block it

 

[Elsidia]

3 minutes ago, Kimy said:

BDSM involves a lot of things

Ok if we speak about BDSM - rape isn't included. Only by both consensual as play element.

[Elsidia]

7 minutes ago, Kimy said:

Only if you fail to block it

My fault i prefer fight without blocks - even i don't know what buttons block attack on my gamepad)

And how i can know in what moment strong attack appears to block it? Stay always in block and hit back after enemy hit you? it's not my style)

Edited: I play Skyrim only for DCL mod - other game play is only as necessary bad)

Edited second time: wander in dungeon to search for some good DCL things as cursed loot (or some quests) and now strong attack and i'm in other place)

[Rogwar002]

19 hours ago, Lupine00 said:

As I detailed in many other places, the key to this working in town and hold-controlled countryside is appropriate guard responses, which is something the player would want to configure:

e.g.

• guards always take the rapists' side
• guards always take your side
• guards have some weighted chance
• guards favor the side that only used unarmed
• guards consider various factors like:
  • thane status
  • "You were asking for it!" (sexy clothes, naked, drunk, on drugs)
  • you have a slave collar
  • you only used unarmed combat
  • you used magic
  • SexLab Survival factors
  • and so on...
• guards ignore rapes altogether unless somebody hits a guard
• easy to imagine a few other alternatives here

The consequence of this is that a high-level PC would (probably) only get raped if she's tied up to start with. For me, that's fine.

To be simple: Thumbs up to that.

 

I disklike Decathlon as a killer for joysticks and dislike keyboard smashing skill with any feature in Skyrim. It is a RPG... more or less ?

There should be a way to code what is leading to rape. Nakedness, behavior, reputation. I like to play with SL sexual fame. I modified a version for personal use without ZAZ just to have the atmosphere of beeing a slut or a slave in a town after several days with a slave or slut collar. I added and modified a version of Dragonborn in Distress for my personal use.

That said there should be a way to circumvent rape with character skills and a little bit of a choice by using the dialouge feature.

 

A submissive slave should not be able to talk her way out of a rape. Hell, the way some of us play it is not a rape at all, why should the submissive RPG character talk her way out of it?

A dominant demigoddess will not be raped at all, but annihilate the town she is in before submitting to a milkdrinker the shopkeeper is.

 

A little faction swaying from submissve via neutral to dominant and there is lot of roleplay possible. Public sex with a slave collar: ++ submissive. High heeled leather clad vixen with weapons big as a sledgehammer walking confident her way through whiterun: ++ dominant.

 

just my two cent.

Rogwar

[Zaflis]

1 hour ago, Rogwar002 said:

A little faction swaying from submissve via neutral to dominant and there is lot of roleplay possible. Public sex with a slave collar: ++ submissive. High heeled leather clad vixen with weapons big as a sledgehammer walking confident her way through whiterun: ++ dominant.

If you want to go with stats (submissive, dominant etc.), i'll remind that they are already included in SLAX https://www.loverslab.com/topic/130406-sexlab-aroused-extended/

It would mean making it into a dependency but i don't know yet if it's considered more stable than SLA. Either way there's potential that many mods would use same internal factions and promote mod-interaction, without having DCL as a dependency.

 

I guess using the stats is nice idea when considering what npc's can do to you. It would live based on what you have chosen in the past. As a player you always have your own way so the stats may not need to filter available choices at least.