I couldn't find the old Neeshka thread, it's been a silly amount of time since I last worked on her. A talented individual who's name I can't remember (pls contact me if you see this so i can credit you), and I were working on a complete overhaul of Neeshka a few months after old version 1.6 was released. But real life began to get in the way of us both, and I got totally burned out from months of working on the mod and never playing. I haven't touched Oblivion in prob 2 years or something close.

Anyways, I'm creating this thread to put in the readme for the new version, and if anyone is still interested in this mod, I do hope you enjoy this version. Everything is changed for the better, but it's still Neeshka. The biggest change is in her dialogue menu, which used to read like a table or contents for some kind of tech manual or something, but now everthing is streamlined into simple conversation lines, with her most used functions at the top level, making using her much faster and easier.

Another nice change is making nearly all of her functions dialogue driven, instead of spell-based. She uses spells for things that make sense, but her inv sharing, stat menu, arrow fletching, things like that are all controlled via her dialogue. Her torch use and healing options (which are now completely spell based instead of ModAV scripting) are all turned off and on via dialogue now.

Speaking of scripts, they have been updated as well to do many new things, and do the things she did better. I also added a nifty little bit of code to automatically fix the nasty double-face bug that hit her when she fast-travels. That was annoying as hell when I started playtesting the new ones, I don't rememeber that before, what casues that? I got the idea how to fix it from the UOP, and added a bit of script to her main to take care of it.

Another one is a bit of a cosmetic makeover, giving her Ren hair and Nequam eyes. Not that most ppl didn't do this to her already, but she needed it as a base. I smoothed her face shape a bit, and adjusted the tones to make her look just a bit younger, a little prettier than she was, but not so much that she doesn't look like she doesn't belong in the game.

As of this moment the file is hidden from view so I can update everything. But here is the link to it, it should be back up soon.

EDIT: Ok new version is up, if anyone is interested.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8256

EDIT: Neeshka v2.1 is now up. Below are the changes from v2.0

1. Updated her horse with meshes and textures from Slof's Oblivion Horses, with permission. All-inclusive and unique, won't affect anything other than Neeshka's horse, no matter if you have Slof's or not.
2. Set her eyes back to default, to remove dependancy from Elaborate Eyes. If you want different ones, feel free to change them in the CS.
3. Made a change to her "fallen behind" message so it wouldn't go off every time you load into a new cell.
4. Made a change to her "auto double-face fix" so it only runs after she is taken as a companion. Seemed to interfere with the initialize part of her script.
5. Got rid of all the varla stone messages that display when she recharges your equipment - thanks to Jumanji for that one.
6. There was an error in her sit-while-armed package, fixed, but likely isn't going to help her sitting behavior.
7. Fixed an issue where if she is in casual mode and you check her inventory, she puts her armor back on, making you have to tell her to follow casual again to get her to change back into her clothing. - Thanks to Emma for pointing that out.
8. Added script to force her to load into player's cell if she was supposed to, and didn't. This will stop her from getting left behind when you go through a door. When outside, if she gets too far behind, this will also act as a warp, unless she is on a horse, then it will do nothing.
9. Fixed an error that left her standing in her undies if you woke her up and told her to follow you. Now she will get dressed as soon as you tell her to follow, without having to do it twice.
10. Changed her player heal spell to target only, no AOE.
11. Removed the "heal during combat" function and dilaogue, and replaced with something useful, and much more reliable. She has an AOE restoration spell she can cast from the dialogue menu. This is useful for healing horses, other NPC's, other companions... just stand near them and ask her to cast it from her Abilities menu.

Old neshka is back !
I remember that she used to be one of my favourite companions back then !
Maybe i shall test this new version.

Great! I'm not that much into companions, but Neeshka was by far the best companion I tried. Glad you got rid of the auto heal bug, I had to delete that part of the script back then. Will definitely download and add her to my game.

I do enjoy a good companion so i will give it a try!
Regarding to the hair mod you used, you said you've "giving her Ren hair and Nequam eyes".
Does the mod require any additional hair mods?
Dont think so, but want to be certain.

I don't think this requires any additional hair mod, but you will need to install Elaborate Eyes meshes, or you may have black eyes or googly eyes.

Old Neeshka is back its wonderful thanks for updating her!

Heya, hope you like the all new Neeshka, lemme know what you think after you try her out.

Gah I didn't realize the eyes I used needed seperate meshes. That's what I get for modding with other mods installed... Thanks for mentioning, The CS doesn't let you specify eye meshes, I don't want my mod to be dependant on another. Suggestions of what I can use instead, something that I can include?

Why not use default eyes? Personally I don't like Elaborate Eyes anyway, they look unnatural and thus worse then Beth eyes to me. Of course that's a matter of taste, but regular eyes are far from looking ugly - it won't make the mod worse if you use them. People can always replace them on their own if they want to have different ones.

Yeah that's true. I just don't like the dunmer red on her, and I do like the Elaborate ones personally, but it would solve the problem. I'll change that soon, but I'll wait a bit and see if any other issues pop up first. Hopefully they don't, she's really been put through the ringer.

Just curious, have you based this companion based on the Neverwinter nights character of the same name?

I was playing NWN2 at the time I started this mod, Neeshka's name just popped in my head at the time, that's all, it was catchy.

Welcome back. Companions seem to have fallen by the wayside as of late but it hasn't stopped me. Glad it hasn't stopped you either.

Indeed

I've heard nothing but good things about the old Neeshka, so I'm definitely going to give the new version a test drive. Good to see you active in the community once again, Rsndt-Evle!

Thanks for the sentiments

@ Sulteric - I like your Viconia companion, in my game she hangs out with Neeshka in Battlehorn Castle. I don't take two companions out at one time, and my little girl complains when I take Neesh, she'll say "aww I like the other girl better" lol gee thanks honey

EDIT:

Ok I have 3 changes so far I need/want to make.

1. I tried something diff with her "fallen behind" message, but it goes off when loading a new area way too often. Going to switch it back to the old way.

2. In order to keep her non-dependant on a mod I can't include the parts to without messing up tons of other stuff, it has been suggested by Phitt that I leave her eyes the default dunmer red, and let the end user mod her eyes if they like. Any other opinions on this?

3. Since I use the fantastic Slof's Horse mod, Neeshka's poor horse looks pretty bad next to all the others. I've asked AlienSlof if I could include the files needed to fix her horse only. If someone didn't have this mod, the files would go in and not affect other horses in the game. If they do have the mod, they could just skip installing the horse meshes and textures. Any opinions on this? Assuming AlienSlof says I can use them...

That's all I've found so far, everthing seems to be working great. If you've spotted any weirdness, pls lemme know before I update it again soon.

I think the default red eyes look better on Neeshka.
So far no other problem with her.

After playing through Oblivion for the second time, I was starting to feel lonely and browsed around for a companion. Found your previous version of Neeshka, and I like her a LOT. The way you used the original ingame dialog to give her an interesting start really put a big smile on my face . So when I saw this thread, I just wanted to stop by and thank you for a lovely companion .

Any companion mod that gets praise from both Emma and Sulteric sounds like a must have mod to me. Thanks for the update!

Have you had any luck figuring out a eat/sit package? When the player sits down Viconia very infrequently sits down next to the player. I must be doing something wrong.

Per TES Nexus:



Can she switch weapons on her own, without prompting, as circumstances require, from ranged to melee, or vice versa?

@ Savage - currently I've got her default red eyes back on, and yeah I have to agree with you. Sometimes you can overmod these things. (sometimes you can overplan these things? three amigos? meh nvm )

@ Emma - tyvm I must have been insane to listen to nearly every single line of dunmer dialogue there was to put that together... but it worked out well, so I'm glad I did it... now anyways lol

@ Sulteric - It's not you, it's the fact that nearly every single piece of furniture in the game designed to be sat on is not set as a persistent reference. This is why the companions refuse to sit in a clearly available seat. I've experimented with this. I once set a bench around the great tree in Chorral to persistent (open cs and see for yourself, they are all unchecked), sat on it, and Neeshka plopped down right beside me. Now that I was positive it worked, I set it back to normal, and she ignored it.

I have found that usually there will only be a single seat in an interior cell that will be set as persistent, and that's why the companion will go up the stairs and down the hall to sit down, because it's the only one they can sit in. Now as far as why that is, or why they are like that, or why the vanilla npc's seem to be able to sit anywhere they like, I just don't know. If someone did a persistent reference mod on all the seating in the game, then our companion sitting problems would be over. :hehe:

EDIT: Hmm actually after I got to thinking about this, I remembered that the persistent reference thing was why I had her Eat to sit to begin with. Sorry, it's been a while... :/ Eating is what makes them sit in non-persistent chairs, but I assume you prob already figured that out. As far as what makes them decide which one to use... I have no clue. I was thinking maybe it had something to do with the order they are listed in the Cell View window. Setting a distance lmit doesn't seem to help at all. I've set her to a very small radius before, and she still will sometimes go to the other end of the room. I guess the need to eat overrides something as trivial as how far to travel to do that.

@ Fable - She can, to an extent. The way to get that to work well is to always make sure the ranged and melee weaps she has are equal in damage. In her ranged mode, I gave her both marksman and blade. If she has say a steel sword and steel bow, she will switch between them as needed. She'll pull the bow and shoot at the enemy until it closes on her, then she'll pull out the sword and hack away. However... if she has a steel bow and say a glass sword, or even a steel sword with fire damage, you can forget about her using that bow... and vice-versa. As long as her weapons do about the same damage, she'll switch them out. If one does a bit more than the other, or has magical properties, she's gonna stick with it no matter what, unless you take it away from her.

EDIT:

Ok a quick note to mention things I'm tweaking for v2.1

1. Her eyes are set back to default red. If you wanna change them in your game, have at it.
2. Fallen behind message now works like the old way, where it goes off when it's needed, not after nearly every cell change.
3. Updated her horse with meshes and textures from Slof's Oblivion Horses, with permission. All-inclusive and unique, won't affect anything other than Neeshka's horse, no matter if you have Slof's or not.
4. There was an error in her sit-while-armed package, fixed, but likely isn't going to help her sitting behavior.
5. Emma pointed out that if she is in casual mode and you check her inventory, she puts her armor back on, making you have to tell her to follow casual again to get her to change back into her clothing. This has been fixed.
6. Made a change to her "auto double-face fix" so it only runs after she is taken as a companion. Seemed to interfere with the initialize part of her script.
7. Got rid of all the annoying "varla stone added - varla stoned equipped" messages on a 2yr old suggestion from Jumanji lost in my Inbox. *cough*
8. Added code that will force her to load into the player's cell if she was supposed to. Sometimes when you would use a door and load into a new area, she would get left behind, this shouldn't happen anymore.

There are still two things that are bugging me that I want to work on before releasing the new version... if anyone has ideas about any of this, please speak up.

I'm still not happy with her healing. Out of combat healing seems to be working ok for the most part, except when she wants to heal the player, she starts walking for some reason. And Emma says Neeshka is trying to heal her (him?) even when she is at 100% health, which makes no sense either. In-combat healing just doesn't seem to work right at all. Back to work on these I guess.

Another thing bothering me is trying to find a way to get her horse to follow the player's horse around when not being ridden. After dismounting for a fight, Neeshka sometimes has to walk like half a mile to get back to her's. And she walks, refusing to run, even though I try and force her to. If her horse could just use a "follow" package when on its own, with the target being the player's horse, it would solve everything. I just dunno how, or if, it can be done.

Just a quick note to mention Neeshka 2.1 is now up. Edited the first post int he thread to list the changes, and the download link is found there as well.

I had an epiphany today, and solved two issues that had been plaguing poor Neeshka. Well one blatant issue, and one minor inconvenience.

I'm still testing in my game, and will be testing this for many playhours to make sure, but I'm 99.9% positive I have her combat healing, and out of combat healing, working perfectly. So far they have both worked each and every time, without fail, in a variety of situations. I'm still using plain ole restoration spells too, so no 3rd party mod dependancy or ModAV commands or anything of the sort, to mess with the player's max health. They are still both dialogue-controlled to be turned off and on at the player's discretion as well.

The other little trick has to do with her horse...

What used to happen was... you would be riding horses, Neeshka would detect an enemy, and immediately jump off her horse to fight. The "Neeshka has engaged an enemy" message flashes, and you stop, get off your horse, and help. When the fight was over, Neesh would follow you to your horse, then walk about 100 yards or some such to get to her horse, which seemed to take *forever*.

Now, when the fight is over, Neeshka's horse will run over to stand near the player's horse, and wait. When you get on your horse, her's will be right there for her. Cuts waaay down on the time it takes to get moving again. This happens anytime you are riding horses, whether fighting or not. If you dismount at the stable outside a city, Neeshka's horse will run over near the player's horse and stay there, so when you come back out, there it is Also, it doesn't matter what horse you are riding, it will work for any of them, even mod ones. Basically if the game knows you are on a horse, it will work.

I plan to test all this for a while before releasing, so I'll make a note when I do.

Personally I would prefer if Neeshka wouldn't heal the player during combat. I know I can turn it off myself, but if the option is there it would feel wrong to do so - I don't throw away a Daedric sword either when I find one only because I feel it makes the game too easy. Health management during battle is an important aspect of survival in the game (will I make a power attack and try to finish the enemy or rather cast a restoration spell to be on the safe side?) and if your companion takes care of that for you it feels a bit like a cheat.

And can't you make Neeshka only attack an enemy while riding a horse when she either gets hit by someone or when the player dismounts as well? I use horses to be a bit faster then normal or to enjoy riding through the landscape and I don't dismount for every mudcrab that is walking towards me. I would prefer if Neeshka would as well ignore enemies that can neither harm her nor the player while riding.

Just a few suggestions, looking forward to any update you'll be making.

Thanks for the feedback, it does wonders for my ability to see things from every angle. Your comment about attacking when the player dismounts has given me an idea... which I will adress in a moment. But first, I understand your point of view about her healing the player during combat, but the options she has are what I personally want her to have in my game. Giving players the ability to be able to turn it off is the best I can offer so she can adapt to the wide variety of needs of the people who use her. I also agree that keeping an eye on your hp when fighting is an important part of the game, which is why her combat healing won't be an automatic save every time, I designed ways for it to be hampered.

For example... if she gets knocked out, she can't heal you until she recovers. Also, there is a timer in place that makes her wait 6 seconds between every spell cast. The spells (including her own self-heal) also have cost, so it is possible for her to run out of magic. There is a distance check in place as well, so if you get seperated during battle, she won't be able to heal you. In real life measurements, that distance would be about 20-25 feet (6-7.5 meters). Since during combat she only heals you when you are below 1/3rd health, taking a couple of hard hits while she is down, or seperated from you, or if her magicka is low... will still mean death, if you don't take steps to avoid it.

If all the conditions are met, she'll give your health a nice boost, but you have to make sure the conditions *are* met if you want her to help you out in your time of need, which adds its own layer of strategy imo. It's fun to be nearly dead, out of potions, not be a magic-user, and have an enemy hot on your heels while you run looking for Neeshka for help. I play a sneaky little Bosmer with a bow, who has to run backwards and shoot when the sneak-attack fails, so this can happen more often than you think. :hehe:

Now about her jumping off her horse to attack anything and everything... yeah that gets old really fast. In her dialogue, there is the option to set her aggression levels. She defaults to 10, which is basically kill anything you see. You can also set her to 5, which will make her ignore anything that attacks her horse, but she will still attack anything that targets the player, or herself. Then there is 0, which will make her ignore any threats at all. You can set her to this before getting on to ride, and she will merrily ignore any mudcrabs that wave their claws at you. However, when you do decide to dismount and fight, you'll have to speak to her again and set her aggression back to 5 or 10, which isn't really practical or realistic. "Oh hey Neesh, there is a group of enemies bashing you in the head right now, mind helping me fight them off?" blah...

Maybe I could set her aggression to 0 anytime she gets on a horse, and then an automatic 10 when the player dismounts and draws their weapon... Then the player can decide whether to keep riding or stop and fight, and she will follow by example. When done riding, if you purposefully want her set to 5 or 0 again, you can do so via dialogue, when it's more practical. Sounds like a nice addition to me, any thoughts on that?

EDIT:

Ok here is a list of proposed changes I've already made and will be testing before release. If anyone has thoughts or suggestions on these, please speak up.

1. Combat-healing is back in, can be turned off and on via dialogue, activates when player is at or below 1/3rd base max health value, has limited magicka and limited range. So if you need healing, make sure you get fairly close to her, and hopefully she will not be out of magicka. If she is low, she will cast as soon as she's able.
2. Out-of-combat healing improved to use new method, no more targeted spells that can miss, no more walking while she's trying to cast.
3. New "cast AOE heal party spell" via dialogue from version 2.1 has been retained, useful for healing horses, other companions, npc's, whatever.
4. All healing and torch functions are now **OFF** by default. If you want her to heal you in and/or out of combat, and/or use a torch, you will have to tell her so.
5. Neeshka's horse will now move near the player's horse when not in use. This will cut down on the distance she has to travel to mount, and cut down on time it takes to get moving again. If the player isn't using a horse, Neeshka's horse will stay near it's home marker.
6. When Neeshka is on horseback following the player, she will no longer dismount on her own to fight. That way if you just want to keep riding, she will ignore any enemies and continue to follow you. If you do want to fight, simply dismount your horse, and she will go on the attack if enemies are near, unless you had her set not to attack enemies before you got on the horses via dialogue. In that case, she will return to however you had her set before getting on the horses.
7. Her dialogue fletching option now only shows if she has been set to ranged mode.
8. Her dialogue aggression options only show the two settings she is not set to, the one she is set to will not show. Her "aggression is set to X" message has also been removed when changing options. It will be easy to see which one she is set to by which ones are showing.

If no one sees anything wrong with any of this, I'll upload when I feel it has been tested thoroughly.

I'm considering making a mod that would make the seats persistent. I could start it with player owned homes and expand it to inns, castle lobbys and such.

I think it would be worthwhile and it should not affect anything. Good? Bad? Indifferent?

A lot of work but worth it for immersion with companions.