So, uh, how do you keep a companion alive? It seems like every fight I get into, Julan gets killed. I usually leave him behind if I want to do something actually dangerous now.

I admit, I am using Morrowind Advanced and Wakim's Game Improvements, but I've reduced difficulty to -50 and it's not really helping.

Have him fight with a bow or spells. If he (or any other companion) starts swinging with a melee weapon, chances of survival go out the window. Blame Bethesda for not giving us proper support for companions.

Raise his skills, thus raising his attributes/health, and causing him to fight/defend himself better? Improve his equipment? Make sure he has plenty of potions?

I didn't want to unbalance the game more than necessary, so he's not overly powerful by default, but if you train his main skills to the max and give him amazing gear, he'll mow through most things in the vanilla game, at least. But you do need to train him, his skills don't improve through use like yours, so if you're not training him, you'll outstrip him as you level up, and since the baddies are levelled to YOU, not him, he won't fare well.

I expected this, so I set him to bow and spells almost immediately, but I think he keeps casting a touch range spell. If I go into melee range, he follows me right in, and if he gets something's attention away from me he takes a huge beating. I also equipped him with better weapons and armor.



He's got amazing gear (weapons and armor from Balmora Expansion shops), and I've only just trained him in his first 30 skill points, I've also farmed the Telvanni alchemist for exclusive health potions for him, which did help, but he goes through them fairly quickly.

Thanks for advice. The training is a bit slow, but helps.

His main skills will train faster than his other skills, so focussing on them is a lot faster. But his attributes are based on an average of various skills, so raising differnet things can help max his attributes. You don't need to max all skills to max his attributes, though.

If he's going through too many healing potions, I find it helps to tell him to only use his magic to heal himself, not offensively, and give him some mana potions too.

Also!

I went to Nchul...something with him to check on a late mage guild report? I found out I didn't have the tools to defeat the steam centurion outside the entrance, so I used Almsivi and headed back to Vivec to learn some ranged damage health spells. Anyway, when we got back to Molag Mar, he just took off running. What is up with that? Was he still "in combat" with the steam centurion?

Quite possibly! Do you have his telepathy ring yet? SOmetimes you can use that to get him out of combat mode.

Other times, you might just have to hit him to snap his combat-AI out of it. SAVE first, in case he actually starts attacking you back! The safest way to do it is to open the console, click him and type:

startcombat player
stopcombat

That usually works, you sometimes have to do it twice though.

K.

Oh, cool. Thank you again!

Well I let him get drunk again, but this time sleep isn't doing it. I've slept for over 24 hours. Do you know the console command?

Open the console, click on Julan and type "set alcohol to 0"

If only this worked in real life. "set hangover to 0"

Haha, I actually tell people to type: set alcohol to -1 becuase then he DOES get the hangover. I think he deserves it!

Thanks, Kateri, for your help earlier. I've got past that stumbling block, and all is right with the world. Ta!

Just wanted to pop in here and thank you for the wonderful companion. I've been away from the game for about a year and am back adventuring with Julan. You wrote him extremely well; he really feels like a real person to me. I'm also curious if you've ever played Knights of the Old Republic? Julan reminds me a bit of Carth Onasi...in a good way.

Ha, yeah, busted - KOTOR/Carth was a big inspiration. Not so much in terms of Julan's personality, but I stole two major things that might make it feel similar: 1.) a companion you could insult and tease, who would give as good as they got, and 2.)

A problem:
I saved Shani from the mine and delivered her in the hands of healeri n Ahemmusa. She said I should come back later. I waited for few days, no use tho. I went to Julan's mother, and she gave me a "simple task" to kill two enemies. Somehow I had allready killed them, so she just gave me the reward. But point of this all is: I can't get into the Cavenr of the Incarnate. THe tooltip says I have some unfinished business with Mashti, but "saying" all topics to her, I don't get an update in my journal or something else. Shani is still weak and I'm stuck. Ugh. Great mode tho, makes it very interesting, especially for female character. ^_^
Any help appreciated, thanks in advance!

bump. :whistling:

Sounds like you're done with Shani for now, but you still need to investigate Mashti a bit. Have you talked to her about her past? And followed up on that by talking to some of the people involved?

Ugh resolved everything myself, by digging trough dialogues and journal entries in CS. :/

Problem: Julan can't seem to stand up. He just lies down on the ground and can't seem to move. His arms move as if he was walking, but remains firmly planted on the ground like it was some kind of animation glitch. Does anyone know what's wrong?

I'm told the answer is to run Lizardtail's Animation Fix program, which you should have, as this is an issue to do with an animation mod. I think? Something like that? This has been asked before, but it's a conflict with some fairly recent modding stuff I know nothing about. IIRC, that was the answer.

*Puts on Duncecap for not reading the Read-Me*

Well as the above says I messed up because I didn't read the read-me .... and recruited Julan just after the Vivec Informants Quest ... now both the main quest and Julan appear to be stuck ... is there anyway to get around this? Or am I screwed?

If you recruited Julan, the MQ shouldn't be stuck, you just need to follow his questline for a bit first, and it'll unlock. Is Julan behaving normally (how do you mean, "stuck"?)

Well I began the Zainsubbi Informant quest (With Casius sending our Julan away) where he goes and gets drunk and lets out about old girl friends ... after sobering up I got some more information out of him, but nothing more of where to go next for him ... talking to Zainsubbi just gets a 'You'll have to finish Julan's quest first' dialogue.

Am I able to go back and 'catch' whatever happens in Vivec Informants for him? Or skip it? I'm abit lost really.

You just need to do a bit more with Julan first (sorry, I know, it's not clear, need to fix that...) - try training his skills up a bit more, and see if he has more to talk about. Should be two conversations, in cities, after 15 and 30 skillpoints.