Name: Arren
Version: 4.5.
Date: 03/06/2010
Category: Companions
Requirements: Shivering Isles Patch 1.2.0.201
Author: Sein_Spvssyn
Source: http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9926
Source2: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=5370
Source3: http://tesalliance.org/forums



Description
===========
Arren is the most complex companion. He has a lot of dialog, depth and character. Probably so much dialog that one playthrough won't show you all. Arren has his own items but you can give him what you want and if he likes it, he will use it. He is balanced with FCOM in mind.
He is not a romanceable character. Though he has comments and opinions about all quests, all locations, every thinkable situation and has general banter. His comments and behavior is dependand on his disposition towards you. When he likes you he will be a very loyal companion. If he hates you he won't do everything you want and might not follow you all the time. He has very surprising consequences.
Arren has 4 single quests and a questchain.



Location
========
Arren is placed in the second start dungeon. Right after you open the door with the key from the goblin corpse.
If you don't start a new game Arren will come for you. It might take a few in-game hours until he finds you.



Details
=======

Standard
-------------
-You can tell Arren to wait, follow, go to any of your houses except Waterfront, he goes to the Merchant Inn instead
-You can also mark up to two places as his new home and tell him to go there
-dialogchoices to change Arren's clothes. You can choose between Best clothes, leasure suit, nothing and his normal battle armor
-he repairs his own armor if you tell him to. He needs a repairhammer and gold to do it. The goldcost is (playerlevel/34)*setcost. Setcost is (250 for iron, 520 for steel, 1165 Dwarven, 2610 Orcish, 5550 Ebony, 13850 Daedric and 18000 for Arren's Unique set)
-access to Arren's items. Read the known issue section for details
-Arren has its own horse and a teleport spell to call it if it is too far away
-scaled items and spells
-unique item set at lvl 37. You need to tell him to repair his items to get it
-4 Quests. One at lvl 10, one at lvl 20, one at lvl 30 and one at lvl 40
-A long questchain. Currently implemented one quest for each level
-Arren is balanced around FCOM
-uses a torch while you use one
-sits if you sit (he will say random things every 10-90 seconds)
-After you get 10.000 gold Arren approaches you and ask for his share of the loot. You can tell him "no" and he runs back to the Merchants Inn or you can say "yes" and he will take 5% of the gold you find. When you ask him for a rapport you can see the total share he got up to that point
-Arren has a full 24hours day cycle if you tell him to wait. Activities differ if Arren is indoor or outdoor (see spoiler section for activities)
-When Arren reads, hunts, gathers herb, wanders around or trains he will say something every 1-3 minutes.
-Additionally he says something every few minutes while he follows you.
-He will also comment on quests on his own.
-A lot of comments on quest. Ask Arren about his opinion on the quests you are currently on.
-Arren will have a lot of more or less useful tips if you ask him about them. The topic won't always show up, be patient. Most tips are quest dependend.
-A lot of dialog for the place you are in currently. Cities, Wilderness and dungeons depending on inhabitants
-At lvl 2-19, 21 Arren tells you a story. Ask him about it
-Arren has his own conversation dialogs
-won't report your crimes. You need to sneak when you steal valuable items to not get reported
-if you are invisible (or sneaking) and Arren is not in combat you can sneak around without aggroing monsters with Arren. Arren will either cast invisible on himself or sneak depending on what you do
-spell to attack a target until it is dead; spell to stop the attack started with the attackspell
-has a runspeed bonus to not fall behind you. He is always a little bit faster than you to catch up on you
-automatic teleporting to player position if a certain range is exceeded and a spell for manual teleport
-Arren's Master summons are leveled
-Arren's summoned mobs don't attack you now during combat. If you want that your summons don't attack Arren get the mod "friendlier summons". (http://tesnexus.com/...ile.php?id=2926)
-the size and stats of Arren's summons vary randomly now for each cast

Complex and unique
-----------------------------
-Arren has now a dispotional state towards the player. This changes dialoge and actions dependand if he likes you or not
-Location specific behavior
-Funny scripted events
-Arren has sometimes a mind of his own. He will go to where he wants. This is rare and only happens in cities.
-Unique Greetings depending on various conditions
-Arren will occasionally start a conversation with other NPCs who are following the player
-After Arren dies he will release a Ghost. The Ghost stays at the corpse's location and attacks enemies. If the Ghost is alive, you can resurrect Arren like normal. When the Ghost dies, you must go to a chapel and talk to a priest. It costs playerlevel * 100 gold to resurrect Arren.
-When Arren's bounty reaches 500 gold you get a messagebox with three choices. First is to do nothing and the guards will attack Arren. Second choice is you pay Arren's bounty if you have the money, if not Arren will pay it. The last choice is to send Arren to the IC jail. There you can help Arren get free. Just give him a lockpick and he will catch you later; or let him rot.
-Arren gains an aura depending upon the players fame/infamy. If the player has enough fame and only a few infamy points Arren gets a holy aura. Same for the unholy aura.




To Do
=====
-completing the quest chain
-adding conversation started by Arren with multiple paths and consequences
-more background of Arren. With Arren's parents and childhood house




Install
=======
Just unpack the archive to your Oblivion/Data folder and activate Arren.esp.

If you use Entius Gorge you need the compatibility patch found here: http://tesnexus.com/...le.php?id=13834

If you use a version prior to 3.0 and install to 3.0, you need to either redirect the baddy.esp from the modlist of your savegame to Arren.esp with Wrye Bash or you just unselect baddy.esp and select Arren.esp. But then, Arren is reset (which poses no problem except you need to redo the quests if you have done them before.).
1. Start Wrye bash.
2. Go to save tab and click on the newest save.
3. Click on the mod list of the save on the bottom right.
4. Right click on baddy.esp, choose "change to" and change it to Arren.esp.
5. click safe and you are done.

Do not clean this mod. It is already cleaned.

I recommend using a Script Effect Silencer mod.

If you use Entius Gorge you need the compatibility patch found here: http://tesnexus.com/...le.php?id=13834


Uninstall
=========
Deactivate Arren.esp. Delete Arren.esp, ArrenReadMe.txt, Arren.bsa




Incompatibility
===============



Known Issues or Bugs
====================





Spoilers
========



History
=======
I want to say that without Khettienna's help from the B.T.A. Guild on TesAlliance.org this release won't be in the state it is. She has done a fantastic job on testing Arren and finding bugs. A big thank you to her.
Also the screenshots are from her because I am bad at such stuff as some of you might know.





Contact
=======




Credits
=======





Tools Used
==========
TES4Edit - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11536
TES4Files - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8489
TES4Gecko - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8665
Readme Generator - http://lhammonds.game-host.org/obmm/tools_readme_generator1.asp
Wrye Bash - http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Bash.html



Licensing/Legal
===============
You must contact me and obtain my permission before re-packaging any part of
this mod. If I do not respond within 2 weeks, wait more.

Arren is my favorite in-game guy to have around. Brilliant work, Sein Spvssyn. :celebration:

I've used Arren before and quite enjoyed having him around, unfortunately he got quite buggy with me in the version I had 3.2 and a new version didn't seem to be forthcoming so I took the decision to remove him. I've now put him back into the game but almost immediately ran into an issue. After he caught up with me and we did our intial dialogue and started the Beating Heart quest. We were in the Talos Plaza District and it was night so Arren decided to wander off to the Merchant's Inn (at least that's where I assumed he was going- wish he'd tell me where he was off to ). However Golgat Ducal showed up and had I HAVE NO GREETING as his greeting text and wouldn't stop bugging me, however I managed to cast the Call Arren spell which brought the normal quest dialogue back. Just thought I'd mention this incase anyone else runs into this issue.

Why didn't you say anything at all?

He goes to the nearest inn.

Unpossible! This will never stop bugging it seems. Will be checked and fixed in 2-3 hours.

Fixed and new version available.

Wow! Another companion. Vilja will be pleased.

She surely will, and she has since long unique interaction with Arren added, both conversations and greetings.

Having those two in tow can be quite fun... although if also Arren wanders off to do his own things, I bet the players will have quite a handful!

Congrats on the release!

nice, now I wanna try him with Vilja!

that frielndier summons mod you linked to is not working though..

It seems the status report Arren does reports the wrong disposition. This will be fixed.

New version available.

v4.3
$Arrens rapport will now show his real disposition
+Added a missing conversation for Arren leading you inside the Chapel of Arkay
+Added some more quest comments as some of the FG quest had none
$Fixed a bug with Arren's eating routine
#Greatly reduced the eating timer
$While Arren sits and you are not sitting, then you sit down Arren won't stand up and go somewhere else
$Fixed a bug where Arren would loop after you murdered someone for the first time
$Fixed a bug where Arren would loop when he hates you and you tell him to attack a person

Woo-hoo! :celebration:

Thank you, Spvssyn! Downloading now!

New version to fix the googly eyes. Thought they were fixed.

Hey there, thanks for the update. I ran this through TES4EDIT and it came up with this during the automated process.



It has no Identical to Master records, but it has 9 Undeleted ones. Thought it best to let you know.

Artorius.

Will Arren still generate his own armor, once he's killed and returned to life? I had an incident some time ago where armor I'd purchased for him vanished upon his revival, and was replaced by his standard iron set.

Artorius: I will check this.

fable2: Yes, when he dies you must take the stuff or it vanishes.

Hi Gurgl, I'm back again lol. I've decided to put forth a few issues I've had with this mod, both past and present.

Since I've updated to the most recent version of Arren (v4.4), I've noticed that his follow package has gone a bit peculiar. Quite often after a combat he will stop following and just stand in the same spot. If I move away he remains standing where he is, if I cross a cell boundary he will warp to that cell border but still not follow. If however I go from an exterior to an interior cell, or vice versa, the behavior stops and he follows normally; at least until the next combat. Also if I happen to save, exit, and then reload that save his behavior again resets itself and he follows normally. I thought at first it might have been his loot package intefering so I asked him to stop picking up loot but the problem persisted. It could also be something to do with his "talk to others" package as well, which frankly seems rather redundant now that he's completely silent, but I've noticed it intefere with Vilya's movements; the script will start for them to converse and Vilya will wait for Arren to walk up to her, except he never does because he's rooted to the spot so Vilya ends up stuck until I leave the cell I'm currently in.

Another issue I've had is that his inventory has a tendancy to reset after closing an oblivion gate, in my experience through various versions i've played it seems to have about a 1 in 4 chance of happening. It's only happened once since I installed version 4.2 but then I've only visited 3 oblivion planes since and they are becoming pretty rare places in my game (I think I've shut 52 out of 59 gates!). Another oblivion related issue, back when I was playing version 3 was that Arren's horse would appear after I went up a corpse masher inside an oblivion tower (which of course is pretty wierd), I haven't tested this with the most recent version since I've pretty much given up using horses in this game; I like to do a lot of wilderness travelling and the terrain just doesn't suit horseback travel.

I've also ran into a quest related issue:


I've also found a somewhat immersion breaking issue with the end of the 2nd miscelleneous quest:


Thanks for making one of the best male companion mods out there.

Artorius.

New version:
v4.5
$Fixed a bug that let Arren go into loop about "dungeon diving".


Artorius:

Regarding your reported identical to masters. The only stuff I noticed is a spell. LOL. That must've slipped by. Will be fixed in next release. The rest is wanted by me, and needed for the mod.

Spoiler 1: I have no experience with Open Cities. If this means the player is not in Chorrol World Space then this breaks the quest. I can make an OR and check if the player is in the cell of the greak oak. If Open Cities also has the same permanent marker this should work.

Spoiler2: I will see if I can do this. Indeed, it makes more sense.


Not sure about this one. I had a rather foolproof way some versions back then but I removed it. My experience says that inv is only reset when actors have level lists. Since I removed all leveled lists (not all, only the armor/weapons) from Arren and replaced with Iron Armor I never had his armor/weapons/jewelry reset.




Can you provide a savegame for me with only Arren as mod and in the middle of this behavior? This never happened to me. (my email is in the readme)



What do you mean, "completely silent"? If you have a follower he will occasionally talk to him. Given, that the follower has conversations.

Thanks for your reply and PM.



Thanks for looking into that, I wasn't sure if it was serious or not.

.

Yes Open Cities Reborn/Classic does take Chorrol outside of the Chorrol World Space so this does break the quest. The great oak is still present but in a different place in OCR (Open Cities Classic still keeps Chorrol and the rest of the cities in their same configuration but in the Tamriel World Space) so your proposed solution could work. Perhaps you could talk to Arthmoor the creator of Open Cities, he's always more than willing to help make mods compatable with his. I have to admit that I'm suprised noone has flagged up the issue before given the popularity of Open Cities (second only to Better Cities as far as city mods go) but I guess these things happen. For the moment I have temporarily uninstalled Arren since I suspect that even when you do fix the issue I would need to clean save anyway.


Sounds fun, I look forward to it.



Emma and CdCooley managed to make Vilya completly safe from this issue, perhaps you could talk to them and see how they did it and if it can be applied to Arren. I've only had it happen once since my second attempt at playing with Arren so it seems to be a rare occurance. This is a pure guess from me but perhaps Arren's looting habits could be causing it if he picked something up and decided to use it instead of his normal armour and weapons.




Not sure what you mean here, do you mean to start a new game with Arren as my only mod loaded and see if this behavior occurs and then send you the savegame?



I mean that when he talks to Vilya he speaks but has no voice so you can only hear Vilya's side of the conversation. When he's wearing his daedric armour you can only tell he's talking by his arm movements. A typical conversation between Vilya and Arren will go like this:

Vilya: "What's the latest?"

Arren remains silent

Vilya: "What's the news from other parts of Tamriel?"

Arren shrugs

Vilya: "Read any good books lately?"

Arren appears to keep his opinons to himself

Vilya: "My favourite book is ABC for Barbarians, especially the Illustrated Edition."

Again Arren shrugs and remains silent.

Vilya: "Why does everybody have to discuss goblins and mudcrabs all the time?"

Further stoic silence from Arren.

Vilya: "Goodbye!"


Indeed Vilya herself seems to get fed up with this since she turned round to me once after a conversation and immediately said "This is boring!" I couldn't help but chuckle. I suppose if I turn General Subtitles on I could see his conversation in the subtitles but then I'd see everyone's conversations about goblins and mudcrabs. I share Vilya's opinion on this!


Just to finish off with one completely hilarious and unrelated anecdote. I was repairing Arren and Vilya's armour since it's much cheaper for me to do it myself and it trains my armourer skill, and I accidently gave Vilya's Amazonian Bronze Armour to Arren. He promptly put it on and looked absolutly ridiculous in it, but what really capped it off was that Vilya piped up with "Interesting outfit you're wearing today Arren. Did you choose it all by yourself?" :lmao: :rofl:

Thanks for all your hard work on this mod.

Artorius.

In case you want to take Artorius' suggestion about the Oblivion gate inventory reset problem, I'll save you a little time.

Here's the technique we're using to make sure Vilja gets back from Oblivion with all of her equipment. This code is at the top of her script before the code that makes her warp back to the player's location. The only two changes for Arren would be to choose a different holding location (instead of ViljaHomeMarker) and test if Arren is currently following the player (instead of Following > 0).

short PlayerFame					; tracks changes to player fame so we can return automatically from Oblivion without losing equipmentif GetIsCurrentWeather OblivionSigil == 1	; Vilja is following the player if her Following variable is anything above 0, most gates give the player a fame point, but two quests gates don't	if ( Following > 0 ) && ( (PlayerFame != Player.GetAV Fame) || ( MS13.StoneGo == 1 && GetStage MS13 < 80 ) || (Getstage MQ14 == 45) )		if GetInSameCell ViljaHomeMarker == 0			MoveTo ViljaHomeMarker  ; temporarily send her home and keep her there until the player is out of Oblivion		endif		return  ; this prevents the rest of her script from running which might try to warp her back to the player too soon.	endifelseif PlayerFame != Player.GetAV Fame	set PlayerFame to Player.GetAV Fameendif

No need to uninstall. And no clean save is needed. It would be just a small adjustment to the conditions.
I will contact Arthmoor and confere what the best way would be.



I mean a save while this "frozen" issue is occuring. Preferable without any mods loaded except Arren but any save will do if I can load it and see/find out why he is standing still and not doing anything. It never occured to me.
Also, with a safe, can you unload all mods except Arren, start the game, does it occur then, too?



This may sound stupid, but do you have sub titles enabled? Arren has no voice, yet. So sub titles are needed to read what he has to say.



Strange. I am closing gates constantly and never has he reset his armor since I disabled the safe routine and gave Arren fixed items...
I will see if I am allowed to use cdcooleys routine and adapt it to Arren.

Ah well too late now, but since I wasn't that far into his main questline it's not a huge loss. Also I'll get to see your new improved 2nd Miscellenous quest



Ok I'll try that when I have more time to experiment, probably wednesday since that's my day off work.



I have Dialogue Subtitles on, so when I talk to Arren or when he makes general comments such as during combat or when he's doing his dance routine etc, I can see and read his dialogue. But I have General Subtitles off so I can't see NPC's dialogue when they talk to each other (but since they talk about nothing but Goblins, Mudcrabs and Oblivion Gates most of the time it isn't worth reading anyway). This of course includes Arren and Vilya's conversations. It's not really a complaint but more of a comment on how things look at the moment, if you intend to one day add voice to Arren then all well and good, otherwise I'll just accept the quiet reflective Arren I have for the moment during Vilya and Arren's chats.



I would assume that since cdcooley posted it here that would be tacit permission but of course it's always best to double check.

Artorius.

Artorius, did you have time to test?

New version:
v4.6
$Damage Health spell got accidentally overriden.
#While player is sneaking he can sneak-attack NPCs without Arren not liking this
#Further modified and fixed the Oblivion inventory script
$Fixed an issue with quest 4 of the questchain. This was an incompatibility with OpenCities
#Changed the way Arren gets to find his cat


Have fun.

Hi, I just started using Arren, since I've heard such glowing reports of him. Unfortunately, my first 5 minutes or so of getting to know him have been... not bad or anything, but a bit off-target, let's say. First thing that wasn't quite right was that I use http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37382, in this case the shipwrecked start, rather than going through the traditional tutorial dungeon. I escaped the ship, swam to shore, and was busy picking water plants when I noticed a guy in iron armor swimming into the rocks a short distance away (presumably trying to get up on the shore, or unable to figure out how to get to me since I was half in, half out of the water). "Ah ha," thought I, "I guess Arren's found me, since that doesn't look like the Spell Tomes conjuror..." (who will also move heaven and earth to get to you, but he usually takes a bit longer to get to where I am from his starting postion).

So I swam over to Arren to save him from the misery of his pathfinding AI (not his fault, of course), and he introduced himself.... as if we were in the second tutorial dungeon. Oops. He even swore revenge on the Emperor's murderers, and offered to help me return the Amulet. Trouble is, I was on a ship and didn't get the latest political news, and I don't have the AOK as yet. It's not that this gaffe wasn't easy to ignore, and of course it was soon past, but it's really a bit "in your face" until the conversation is completed. Wouldn't it be possible to maybe have Arren check for if you have the AOK before talking to you as if you do? It just didn't give the best first impression.

The other thing was... his eyes were completely white. Not googly, not missing, simply without irises. Which was just a bit freaky. I looked at the screenshots and he's supposed to have brown eyes (not blind white ones), so I popped into the CS and gave him default brown eyes in place of the ArrenBrownEyes. Sorry I really didn't feel like checking the BSA to see if I could figure out what the problem was.

In any case, we made it safely to Emma's beautiful Fisherman's Cottage-- didn't even have to fight a single mudcrab, although the reason I was glad to have Arren there was in case T.I.E. put another Dreugh outside like it did in my last game (can you imagine? You're level one, you've just survived a shipwreck, and to get inside and dry and some soup in your belly, you have to fight your way past a Dreugh!) -- and I saved and quit to make at least the change to his eyes.

He certainly seems unique (and quite a chatty Cathy, to boot), and I hope that, as I get to know him better, our almost "Fringe"-seeming alternate universes (as in, the alternate universe where he was in the tutorial dungeon, where he imagined some ghost of me beside him, and the one we live in, where neither of us were there) will merge into an immersive whole.

In the meantime, thanks for sharing!

Regarding the eyes, I will check this. Might be that I forgot to package the files into the release. If so, a new bsa release will be done so this is no issue anymore.

For alternate start mods, I guess it is better to have a default introduction. Thought this is the case. Will be fixed. Perhaps also a good idea is to delay the first introduction a bit?