[Robert Jackson]

Woohoo! :celebration:

Emma, I do actually have a tiny request for version 3, if you don't mind...is it possible to tone down how often Vilja's random pvssyr brings up the "What I would really, really like to do is go to Cheydinhal..." line at a certain point in her quest? (Going to continue this under the spoiler tag, just in case.)

Spoiler

I had the misfortune of hitting this quest of hers while I was in the middle of doing Allies for Bruma--and got to the point where she needed to go to Cheydinhal just after I'd closed the Skingrad gate. Cheydinhal was very far away, and I had three more cities and Sancre Tor to get through before I was willing to take a break from the MQ to go to there. (I know the need to go to Cheydinhal is pretty pressing, for Vilja, but there's an Oblivion crisis on! Priorities! I'm RPing things so that the Oblivion Crisis comes first for my character...as opposed to my last time through the game, where I kicked around doing other things for the better part of a year (in the game) before I got around to finishing the MQ.)

So really, part of the problem is that I didn't get to Cheydinhal for the better part of a week after Vilja asked me to, and that's my own stubbornness at fault there , but...I swear I must have heard her "Cheydinhal plz?" line at least a thousand times during that. She asked to go to Cheydinhal while we were walking around town, tramping through the wilderness, closing Oblivion Gates, hip deep in undead in Sancre Tor, etc. etc. A friend of mine now refers to this as the Great Cheydinhal Obsession of '10, because Vilja just wouldn't let the idea go: she must have asked me about Cheydinhal at least once every fifteen minutes.

I'll freely admit that I find the whole thing more amusing than anything, but sometimes it did grate on the nerves. So...if you could change how frequently that line appears in her pvssyr, I would appreciate it. As would the twitch in my character's eye that appears everytime someone says the word "Cheydinhal."

Nag,Nag,Nag,... :ahhh:
I kinda thought the same thing, sounds Just like a Wife when she gets something on her mind.... :rofl:

Spoiler

That's Mot the only time that happens,,,

I'll take a look at this Cheydinhal incident .
It's actually quite funny... because you do know that you can simply ask her to shut up, don't you? It's in the 'Let's just talk for a while-topic". And, honestly... she is only a bunch of pixles, so you don't have to worry about truly hurting her feelings if you tell her keep quiet while you are attending to more urgent things, like saving the world, before you go to Cheydinhal and talk to greenhaired witches because Vilja wants you to do so .

But I do understand what you mean, and I will look into it

[Barbequtie]

Maybe a request to allow lowering Vilja's level when playing her as non-essential.

With Vilja by my side, all my adventuring is really easy-peasy (Two level ~15 characters have it much easier when fighting together). These days I leave her at a city before heading out to enjoy the visceral battle experience... even FCOM becomes easy when playing with an essential a companion by your side. Making her non-essential will mean she will die very soon too!

How do other folks play Vilja (essential or non-essential)?

Maybe I should just up the difficulty slider (currently at 55%)?

[saharen beauty]

Maybe a request to allow lowering Vilja's level when playing her as non-essential.

With Vilja by my side, all my adventuring is really easy-peasy (Two level ~15 characters have it much easier when fighting together). These days I leave her at a city before heading out to enjoy the visceral battle experience... even FCOM becomes easy when playing with an essential a companion by your side. Making her non-essential will mean she will die very soon too!

How do other folks play Vilja (essential or non-essential)?

Maybe I should just up the difficulty slider (currently at 55%)?

I'm not sure how well your suggestion would get along with another suggestion that CDCooley has already implemented for those who have required to have Vilja's health adjustable so that one can raise it when using FCOM etc, this in order to be able to have her as non-essential. I.e. as standard Vilja's level is set in the construction set, to be 2 levels below the player level. Then CDCooley has scripted her so that the player can tailor how much (if any) health bonus she should have).
Why don't you tell her to stay out of fight? That should in general keep her from fighting... until your own health goes down so low that she fears your life is at stake. Then she'll jump in, as she after all is a real friend and not a rented henchman.

I think CDCooley rather than I should reply to your question; I don't think I can fully interpret how the health-adjustments he added interacts with the kind of adjustments you suggest.

[pinar]

Could just take her Sword away....

(course you can expect a dirty look and a Snide remark :rofl: )

[yessenia hermosillo]

Maybe a request to allow lowering Vilja's level when playing her as non-essential.

With Vilja by my side, all my adventuring is really easy-peasy (Two level ~15 characters have it much easier when fighting together). These days I leave her at a city before heading out to enjoy the visceral battle experience... even FCOM becomes easy when playing with an essential a companion by your side. Making her non-essential will mean she will die very soon too!

How do other folks play Vilja (essential or non-essential)?

Maybe I should just up the difficulty slider (currently at 55%)?

I think you meant lower her level when she's essential. In theory that would work, but the standard complaints have been that she's too weak rather than too strong. That's why we created the option to give her a health bonus. You should be able to raise her health and set her non-essential in any game, but how high you need to raise her health bonus will depend on all of the various options you have set in your game.

You can adjust her health and try moving the difficulty slider up, but that really doesn't solve your core problem that she's too good as a fighter. You're right that having any companion or even summoned creatures with you can drastically alter the game balance.

We tried to make her less aggressive than most companions and the best solution for your problem is her "passive" combat mode. Tell her to avoid fighting and she'll stay out of combat until either she is hit directly (usually by accident) or the player's health drops to about 1/3 of maximum. That allows the player to do most of the fighting but still lets her jump in and help in those cases where there are multiple or dangerous enemies.

[Vahpie]

We tried to make her less aggressive than most companions and the best solution for your problem is her "passive" combat mode. Tell her to avoid fighting and she'll stay out of combat until either she is hit directly (usually by accident) or the player's health drops to about 1/3 of maximum. That allows the player to do most of the fighting but still lets her jump in and help in those cases where there are multiple or dangerous enemies.

I know what I need, a button that stops fighting for all actors in cell

Sometimes I just wanna run around screaming "Pax Vobiscum" while guards are fighting guards, and civilians fistfighting sword wielding peace keepers....

I haven't played that much and haven't had Vilja with me, but I will play Oblivion some today and see if I can solve my issues with Agression. If I do I'll post back if it were a mod conflict/issue that might be interesting to know about.

Looking forward to your next iteration Cdcooley and Emma!

Cheers!

[Ella Loapaga]

I've encountered a (fairly serious) problem with Vilja version 2.3.2, I'm afraid.

I recruited Vilja at level 4, so she was level 2. She behaved impeccably, changing into and out of her armor when I asked, and allowing me to inspect her belongings. However, since I've reached level 5, she's stopped doing all this. She will still follow me, and wait when I tell her, but she won't change her outfit, and won't let me inspect her gear. When I ask her to do either of these things, she says "ok" but just wanders off. Also, she won't use any of her weapons when fighting, preferring instead to use her fists. I also checked her stats immediately before and after levelling up, and noticed that after levelling up, her current fatigue had been reduced down to 0 (all her other stats looked about right).

I use Realisting Leveling, so I did wonder if it was a problem caused by the way RL levels the player up - by default, you level up immediately as long as you are not in combat. So I changed RL's setting so that the player only levels up after resting, but the problem still occurred.

I did play for a while with Vilja a couple of months ago, before version 2.3.2 was released, and I didn't have this problem then, so either something got broken in that version or I've found a new incompatibility with a mod I wasn't using then...

Eloise

[kyle pinchen]

As no-one else have reported any problems, the first guess would be an incompatibility of some kind. If you still have a save since before you levelled up, the easiest way to check would be to temporary disable the RL-mod and check if it does any difference. (i.e. if she behaves normal if you level up the normal way, without the RL-mod)

What you can also try (general solution no 1) is to leave her behind for +72 game hours and see if that changes anything.

Uhm... you say she says "ok" and then wanders off? "Ok" isn't her normal reply to these questions, but maybe you don't mean it literally?

When you say that the player levels up AFTER resting, do you mean that literally, or does the player level up during resting, as with the Oblivion level system? If the levelling happens in game-mode it sounds very likely that it could affect companions in a bad way.

[Matthew Aaron Evans]

I haven't noticed Fatigue problems for awhile, but low Health is still an issue (Affecting All Companions in general)
It just seems after a few battles they never regain Full health, the the max they Will recover continually decreases until their Health bar is only a dot. So far the only Real fix is a Full resurrecion, Ressurect 1 does not restore their health and RestHealth does not return it to Full Health... :shrug:

*typo

**I have nothing to effect leveling outside of FCOM and the BashPatch

[Daniel Brown]

I haven't noticed Fatigue problems for awhile, but low Health is still an issue (Affecting All Companions in general)
It just seems after a few battles they never regain Full health, the the max they Will recover continually decreases until their Health bar is only a dot. So far the only Real fix is a Full resurrecion, Ressurect 1 does not restore their health and RestHealth does not return it to Full Health... :shrug:

*typo

**I have nothing to effect leveling outside of FCOM and the BashPatch

This looks very odd. Do you have installed any mod that could change drain health effects? or a realistic mod that could be reducing their maximum hit points for not eating, drinking or sleeping or when they get a really hard hit? Or maybe a mod that could alter health bars?
Maybe a mod doing one of this things has an incompatibility with another one.

[Eileen Collinson]

This looks very odd. Do you have installed any mod that could change drain health effects? or a realistic mod that could be reducing their maximum hit points for not eating, drinking or sleeping or when they get a really hard hit? Or maybe a mod that could alter health bars?
Maybe a mod doing one of this things has an incompatibility with another one.

I Don't have Any mods Specifically for that, I know Mart's does to an extent, I imagine the rest of FCOM get's a few licks in as well, it just seems to be an inherent Bug with Partners in general...

[Greg Cavaliere]

I think you meant lower her level when she's essential. In theory that would work, but the standard complaints have been that she's too weak rather than too strong. That's why we created the option to give her a health bonus. You should be able to raise her health and set her non-essential in any game, but how high you need to raise her health bonus will depend on all of the various options you have set in your game.

You can adjust her health and try moving the difficulty slider up, but that really doesn't solve your core problem that she's too good as a fighter. You're right that having any companion or even summoned creatures with you can drastically alter the game balance.

We tried to make her less aggressive than most companions and the best solution for your problem is her "passive" combat mode. Tell her to avoid fighting and she'll stay out of combat until either she is hit directly (usually by accident) or the player's health drops to about 1/3 of maximum. That allows the player to do most of the fighting but still lets her jump in and help in those cases where there are multiple or dangerous enemies.

You're right cdcooley, I meant "essential" in my request above. I agree that getting a balance in one's game depends a lot on the users themselves, so you can't please everyone. I thought I'd ask how people play with companions like Vilja and try to maintain balance, even with FCOM. So how do you have Vilja set, users of this mod?

nevertheless, I'll try your suggestions - thanks emma and cdcooley

[vanuza]

As no-one else have reported any problems, the first guess would be an incompatibility of some kind. If you still have a save since before you levelled up, the easiest way to check would be to temporary disable the RL-mod and check if it does any difference. (i.e. if she behaves normal if you level up the normal way, without the RL-mod)

Fortunately, I did have a previous save. And I managed to identify the culprit... (see below)

Uhm... you say she says "ok" and then wanders off? "Ok" isn't her normal reply to these questions, but maybe you don't mean it literally?

No, I just meant she gave the normal/expected response.

When you say that the player levels up AFTER resting, do you mean that literally, or does the player level up during resting, as with the Oblivion level system? If the levelling happens in game-mode it sounds very likely that it could affect companions in a bad way.

By default, Realistic Levelling levels the player up immediately. The only delay is if the player is in combat, in which case it waits until the combat has finished. With the 'level up when you rest' option, it levels the player up when they rest, just like the vanilla system. In fact, it uses the vanilla level up process regardless of which option you choose, but it overrides the standard 'level up' screen you get with the vanilla system.

-----
Anyway, I found the mod that was causing problems. All of the issues I was experiencing with Vilja were caused by her fatigue being set to 0. And her fatigue being set to zero was my fault. :whistling:

You know how you get a bug, and it can't possibly be the mod you were working on that was causing the bug, because you've tested that mod and it works perfectly? :facepalm:

(insert ten of your favourite swear words here) :swear:

The problem was a fix I had made to my Extra Wounding plugin (part of MMM). I'd been having problems getting it to work properly with leveled NPCs - EW stores the NPC's health when it starts and uses that to work out how wounded they are, which is no good if they are leveled. So I modified it to remove all wounding processing and effects from an NPC when they leveled up, and then re-apply the processing at the NPC's new level. However, as part of that I was accidentally setting their fatigue to zero if they weren't wounded. :banghead:

Actually, fixing that bug revealed another bug in the processing, where it wasn't correctly re-applying the wounding processing to a leveled NPC. So I fixed that bug as well. :angel:

So the upshot is that the problem of Vilja's fatigue being set to zero by Extra Wounding after you level up will be fixed in the next release of MMM. :dance:

-----
Oh, and I've also got another plugin in the works that should solve the whole 'enemies attack companions rather than the player' problem, regardless of what mods you have loaded. Arkngt has been testing it with FCOM and SI, and the initial reports are encouraging. :ph34r:

-----
I did just encounter a couple of funny situations with Vilja (well, I thought they were funny...)

She asked to go for a swim, so we went for a swim in a nearby pool. When we got out, I spoke to her again, and she asked to go for a swim... :rolleyes:

Shortly afterwards, she made some comment about the deer being beautiful and full of life. I wish I could have turned round to her and said "Vilja, dear... guess what that leather armour you are wearing is made of..." :laugh:

Eloise

[Etta Hargrave]

Okay, I've just meet up with Vilja and checked her stats.
Personality 58
Base personality 80

She is more aggressive than ever. Guess she wont mind me joining the Dark Brotherhood

It's like she is reacting on NPC's/Creatures bad relationship with me, although I am not under attack? I am not very good with AI in Oblivion, I think it is interesting but I have not taken the time to learn much about it yet.

Cheers!

[Dalley hussain]

Okay, I've just meet up with Vilja and checked her stats.
Personality 58
Base personality 80

She is more aggressive than ever. Guess she wont mind me joining the Dark Brotherhood

It's like she is reacting on NPC's/Creatures bad relationship with me, although I am not under attack? I am not very good with AI in Oblivion, I think it is interesting but I have not taken the time to learn much about it yet.

Cheers!

Will her personality revert to 80 if you leave her behind for + 72 game hours (i.e. in wandermode, without any items with constant effects, in a safe interior, while you go and do something else or simply wait somewhere else)?.
Else, you have to set it to 80 via the console, because when it's at 58, this is the reason why she is so aggressive.

She does react on NPCs/Creatures bad relationship with you, and to their factions relations with you and her, and when her personality is lowered and her aggression is raised, she will go on a killing spree. As soon as her personality is back to 80 again, things should be fine.

[meg knight]

Okay, I've just meet up with Vilja and checked her stats.
Personality 58
Base personality 80

She is more aggressive than ever. Guess she wont mind me joining the Dark Brotherhood

If you're seeing both of those then she's suffering from something that is draining or damaging her Personality.

If it's a normal disease, then she'll cure herself the next time she casts her healing spell. You can either heal her yourself, lead her into combat, or just hit her once yourself so she's slightly wounded. (Yes, hitting her seems cruel, but it works.)

If that doesn't help, there's some scripted effect that's lowering her personality. You should try the 72+ hour trick to in that case.

[Elizabeth Lysons]

If you're seeing both of those then she's suffering from something that is draining or damaging her Personality.

If it's a normal disease, then she'll cure herself the next time she casts her healing spell. You can either heal her yourself, lead her into combat, or just hit her once yourself so she's slightly wounded. (Yes, hitting her seems cruel, but it works.)

If that doesn't help, there's some scripted effect that's lowering her personality. You should try the 72+ hour trick to in that case.

As the problem returns after cellchanges, I'm assuming it must be a scripted effect from a mod.

[Amy Melissa]

Anyway, I found the mod that was causing problems. All of the issues I was experiencing with Vilja were caused by her fatigue being set to 0. And her fatigue being set to zero was my fault. :whistling:

You know how you get a bug, and it can't possibly be the mod you were working on that was causing the bug, because you've tested that mod and it works perfectly? :facepalm:

(insert ten of your favourite swear words here) :swear:

Well... my ten favourite swear words are all in swedish, so you wouldn't be able to interpret them

The problem was a fix I had made to my Extra Wounding plugin (part of MMM). I'd been having problems getting it to work properly with leveled NPCs - EW stores the NPC's health when it starts and uses that to work out how wounded they are, which is no good if they are leveled. So I modified it to remove all wounding processing and effects from an NPC when they leveled up, and then re-apply the processing at the NPC's new level. However, as part of that I was accidentally setting their fatigue to zero if they weren't wounded. :banghead:

Actually, fixing that bug revealed another bug in the processing, where it wasn't correctly re-applying the wounding processing to a leveled NPC. So I fixed that bug as well. :angel:

So the upshot is that the problem of Vilja's fatigue being set to zero by Extra Wounding after you level up will be fixed in the next release of MMM. :dance:

Well, that's indeed good news... and until then, we'll know what this is about if someone else experience the same.

Oh, and I've also got another plugin in the works that should solve the whole 'enemies attack companions rather than the player' problem, regardless of what mods you have loaded. Arkngt has been testing it with FCOM and SI, and the initial reports are encouraging. :ph34r:

That sounds very interesting, of course.

P S Hey!! You have been a member here even longer than me B)! Someone more who remembers when Morrowind was released

[-__^]

P S Hey!! You have been a member here even longer than me B)! Someone more who remembers when Morrowind was released

Morrowind? I was around when Arena was released, but that was before all this newfangled internet malarkey...

Eloise

[Amy Melissa]

No luck so far. Guess I will reset or raise it via console.
Also since she started fighting I entered dialogue and finished the quest

Spoiler

So when she asked about the blood and I suggested her parents; a bit painfull that, seeing her go and the journal saying that I most probably wont see her again

But of course I was only checking out what would happened, that's not my save.

I don't know, I checked her out with RefScope before but didn't think I saw anything then... Well, modav it is.... or is it; I better do some research first :hehe:

Cheers!

[Amanda Leis]

Have a little information for ya. You might already be informed of this but better to have some redundancy:

Spoiler

When asking around for Seneri in Bruma, NPC's get repeated dialogue options. So instead of asking around one can keep asking the same NPC.
When I was in Imperial Bridge Inn to ask about "Breton with wolf", I could pose that question to Vilja as if she was part of the inn's patrons.

Other than that Vilja's Personality is pretty stable at 80 now, but still trigger happy. Sometimes I have to reset her combat behaviour to sneak a few times as we do a little progress (play 5-15 min) and get attacked. I want to keep on riding leaving the offending animal in the dust but Vilja never think that is the best solution
But I am correct in understanding that normally she would continue riding? I haven't come back to the game interaction where I can get attacked until almost dead before Vilja enacts.

Thanks!

[Lynette Wilson]

Have a little information for ya. You might already be informed of this but better to have some redundancy:

Spoiler

When asking around for Seneri in Bruma, NPC's get repeated dialogue options. So instead of asking around one can keep asking the same NPC.
When I was in Imperial Bridge Inn to ask about "Breton with wolf", I could pose that question to Vilja as if she was part of the inn's patrons.

Other than that Vilja's Personality is pretty stable at 80 now, but still trigger happy. Sometimes I have to reset her combat behaviour to sneak a few times as we do a little progress (play 5-15 min) and get attacked. I want to keep on riding leaving the offending animal in the dust but Vilja never think that is the best solution
But I am correct in understanding that normally she would continue riding? I haven't come back to the game interaction where I can get attacked until almost dead before Vilja enacts.

Thanks!

Thank you for the information about the dialog filters! I''ve been attending to it right before posting this, and you were of course right

I cannot say I understand the reason why your Vilja tends to be overly aggressive, and I have currently not got a good reply for you. I assume you have already tried to leave her behind for +72 game hours and make sure she isn't wearing any enchanted items that could possibly interfere?

It could be related to which gameplay mods you are running- there is a patch for at least FCOM to deal with how Vlja responds to the monsters added by the mod.

[Aman Bhattal]

Morrowind? I was around when Arena was released, but that was before all this newfangled internet malarkey...

Eloise

Well, I started out with Daggerfall, which was for its time very immersive and I think it's still the only game that has literally scared me at times. But at that time, my only internet activities was to look for cheats to find my ways through certain horrible dungeons :blush:

[latrina]

Ahh yes, Daggerfall. The skeletons scared me the most. They certainly had a good strong scream, especially for something without any lungs.

On a more Vilja related note, would it be possible to have combat options for Wolfgang that are similar to Vilja's? It'd be nice to be able to tell Wolfgang to only attack what attacks us, or not attack at all. Then again, you probably already thought of this.

Again, thanks for the great mod!

[Tinkerbells]

Ahh yes, Daggerfall. The skeletons scared me the most. They certainly had a good strong scream, especially for something without any lungs.

On a more Vilja related note, would it be possible to have combat options for Wolfgang that are similar to Vilja's? It'd be nice to be able to tell Wolfgang to only attack what attacks us, or not attack at all. Then again, you probably already thought of this.

Again, thanks for the great mod!

I thought about it and then forgot it. So thanks for the reminder. But I'm not sure it makes sense to give him options just like Vilja.

It would be convenient to have the options, but I'm just not sure it makes sense from a roleplaying perspective.

Maybe Wolfgang by default should behave just like Vilja instead? That could be justified by him reacting to how she reacts.

Or maybe Wolfgang should always be slightly less aggressive? I'll experiment with some options and then Emma can pick one.