I have this character, you see who has started displaying disturbing tendencies. Let me explain a few things before I get right to the nitty gritty here.

As time has progressed, my characters have shown increasingly independent behaviors. Taking odd actions at odd times without any input from me. I'm not complaining, mind you... I find it fascinating, but at the same time oddly disturbing. Anyway, these things have mostly been small and unobtrusive, but by now things are very strange indeed.

I just installed "Live Another Life" and "Head Tracking" and deleted ALL previous saves afterward before starting this character (yes, I went into the game files and removed the saves you don't see as well). It should have been (and apparently was) a completely fresh start.

The first thing I noticed was that she occasionally wouldn't remove her quiver, or she did it when she danged well felt like it, when I unequipped her bow. Yes, I have the mod to unequip ammo. Anyway, she would continue wearing the quiver, and if I didn't go into inventory and remove it manually, maybe after a few minutes the quiver would be removed in a seemingly random fashion

Then she took to deciding for herself what clothes she would or would not wear. let me explain. I use SkyUI, and Ihave her favorites group 1 set to jeweler only. That means I press F1 and all of her cothing except jewelry is removed. Press F2 ans she dons her Rough Tunic, press F3 and she dons her steel armor.

Normally, I press F1, then F2 or F3 based on circumstances so each change of clothing is complete. that has always worked fine in the past with other characters, and it should work now, but...

Well, take a look at https://i.imgur.com/sIkn0ZL.jpg.

Using that same process, this is how she chose to dress herself. If you look, you can see the steel greaves of her armor above her steel boots, yet the armor is under her tunic. The thing is that the armor rating is no better this way than if she was just wearing the tunic by itself. Of course, I had placed the wooden mask on her intentionally to use it's transport ability. Anyway, pressing F2 or F3 did nothing at all. F1 removed it all, including the wooden mask, but then she refused to dress again and wandered around nvde until I dressed her manually.

I also run the "Real Needs" mod, and of course the character needs to sleep, eat, and drink. the problem is that i check the needs frequently, and manually in inventory have her eat or drink. the problem is that she has started eating and drinking whether she needs to or not on her own, and usually at the strangest of times.

Here's an https://i.imgur.com/ZxqAiGk.jpg.

We were at Labyrinthian, playing with the frost trolls. I'd had her sneaking, and just around the bend of that circular structure is a frost troll I was hoping to sneak past on the way to get the horse. There we are sneaking along, when she suddenly stands up and calmly starts to eat some bread! I'm like "What ARE you DOING?!? That frost troll will take your head off and eat YOU!" but does she listen? Oh no.

No matter what buttons I frantically push, she calmly continues eating the damned bread until she's finished, then crouches back into sneak, and everything is back to normal.

It also seems she loves smithing, but is not fond of using a pickaxe to get ore. Don't ask ME what she's doing in https://i.imgur.com/U7MYJ5j.jpg screenie, I have no idea. She's supposed to be mining ore from that vein, but instead she's standing there doing something that I can't see while locked in the animation. If she was a guy, I'd swear she was taking a Leek...

The thing is, I don't know what's going on here, but I don't really want to fix it unless the game becomes unplayable. It adds a certain element of individuality to the game that is actually quite refreshing. I just thought I'd share with you folks and see what you think.

I think there are some problems with SkyUI's favorite's functionality since a recent update. I used to use it for most of my hotkey groupings, but have now switched over almost completely to "More Hotkeys Please."

For me, it mainly seemed to be when I would temper something, it would no longer recognize the upgraded version of the item, but would instead (seemingly) use some other item in its place.

Course this could be because of conflicts between mods, but in any event, I just do not use the Favorites groups in SkyUI and instead use More Hot Keys Please and generally the problems no longer appear.

With the Pickaxe . . . I've seen this before too. It happens with swords from time to time. Most recently, I had "Chillrend" (RH) + Jagged Ring + "Soul Trap Dagger" (LH)" set to F2, when I switched from "Bow & Arrows" or some other configuration of hand weapons, Chillrend didn't appear. But reloading the hotkey it eventually showed up.

Well, that would explain the clothing, but not the mining or the eating/drinking and quiver issues. I'll bear that in mind in the future if the game gets unplayable.

One thing you could try: copy your saves so you have them as "backups" and then experiment with removing any mods you think might be causing it (with strictly "experimental" play, meaning you recognize that any saves you make AFTER removing mods are likely to eventually become corrupted, bloated, gnarly, stinking unusable, spoiled, gunk.)

If you can pin it to certain mods, then you might be able to use TESVEdit or something (maybe a Bash Patch) to stop it from happening.

Prior to my current ~Level 21 playthrough, I did a bit of pruning of my mod list. Realized I had stuff that I either never used, or which was not actually working and deleted it. I also took the time to try to really understand what LOOT was trying to tell me when it said that some stuff had ITMs, etc. Seems to have helped as I've had fewer crashes and weird problems in this most recent playthrough than previously.

Hmm... can't say I liked SkyUI 5.x when I tried it out. Decided to stick with 4.x instead.

I say keep an early save, just in case, but roll with her just the way it is. I think odd things like that make the character more unique and real. As long as she is playable.. why the heck not.

I've seen some weirdness with a recent update of SkyUI, too. Mostly just some menu selections that I can't mouse-click any more. I'm not using favorite groups presently, because I've been switching characters too much to remember key settings, but it's possible that something in the mod is broken, borked, and busticated.

Areial, hi hon well, there's a good reason for not letting it flow. Dropping into eat mode next to frost troll!

You know, even on vanilla the game does this to me. Like your literally in the middle of a dangerous melee confrontation and along comes "the Fugitive" or "the Courier"

Next thing is your locked into a few seconds of idle chit chat while a thug is tearing Ulda a new one. You can mash the button to finish the conversation, but it still takes as long as a couple of lethal enemy strikes!

I once had a courier nab her in the middle of a dragon attack. I could hear the Frost breath firing off and all the wing flapping and shouting, but the ani was the stupid courier handing over his letter with dialogue options. When it finished, she dropped dead on the spot.....frosted to death, but held in abayance during the dialogue.

One more....not me this time, my lad. He was crossing that bridge just before the 7k steps. A bear comes ambling over from Pinepeak just as a courier ran up and stopped him on the bridge. Lots of bear noises from behind and frantic button mashing. He just managed to disengage the stupid courier with a sliver of health remaining.

So.....yeah......it might be fun and spontaneous to have uncontrolled actions firing off, but not on DiD eh!

At that point i wish there was a speech option to say "Me and 5 other Guards are fighting a Dragon AND Vampires, and you want to tell me about a museum? Killing you right now might be worth the jail time".

Ha.....yes Meetra, quite so. Sadly what's available and what we want, are two different things. For pc users, perhaps a mod could be written to allow immediate dis engagement from idle pvssyr. Maybe a mod that recognises the red dots appearing and puts couriers and fugitives into stand by mode until the danger is past!

For me......Ulda has to run away from couriers if I see one heading her way when a fight is about to go down. Kinda silly really!

On PC it's as easy as pressing the tab button -not sure if the courier will attempt to re-initiate conversation, or will aggro on the dragon.

On console, tab key should translate to the button you guys use to bring up the selection menu for inventory, spells, skills and map.

I started hitting the "B" button and got out of the conversation, though it did take reading on the forum that you could do so, to know I could. Which would sometimes lead to going into the menu and out a few times as I frantically mashed the button. And cursing...lots of that.

yeah stopping to eat while sneaking past a Frost Troll might not be the greatest Idea.