Raven is the resident bard at the Eight Plates in Balmora.

She will eventually agree to travel with you.

While she will wield weapons if asked, her true strength lies in her songs that have crippling effects on her enemies.

(Give her the Music books you want her to use, make sure she has her lute equipped)

Raven will brew simple potions while at home providing you have the ingredients.

She will perform at the Eight Plates in Balmora if you ask her. She has a repertoire of 10 songs to choose from.

She can teleport home if you ask her to. (She has a room at the Eight Plates)

Her room is simple but has a piano she will play for you, a scripted bookcase for her music books and a scripted instrument case for her lutes.

She will remove / equip her armour and / or helmet if asked.

She will help you make decisions (think of her as a pretty magic 8-ball)

There are 10 music books scattered, talk to book sellers and traders.

There are 4 lutes, each one allowing Raven to sing more powerful songs. Talk to Raven in towns to get hints.

There are 3 new dungeons to explore, available respectively at levels 20, 40 and 60.

The companion mechanics have been tested quite thoroughly but I am unsure how balanced her songs are at higher levels and how difficult the dungeons are and since it will be a while since my current character (still stuck at level 2 and in Seyda Neen!) is not quite ready for those dungeons.

Any feedback is appreciated

https://www.dropbox.com/s/90wy8ibw5um45q1/RavenBETA.7z?dl=0

Known issue:

If Raven runs out of songs, she will start bashing enemies on the head with her lute. Personally I find it funny to watch.

Oooh. Bard companion! Yes~ Downloaded and will let you know if I find any issues.

Yes, that should be fine.

Thanks

So I've been doing some playing around/tinkering with this companion and have some reports and questions below. Excellent work btw!! This is a very original an interesting companion with some unique mechanics!!

(1) the lute in the hallway of the eight places (presumably there so you can give it to Raven), is floating in mid air

(2) the quest to get into Raven's room seems to begin rather abruptly. I suggest having her stand in the main area of the tavern playing until the PC talks to her, and then having her lute break during the conversation. After which, she can ask the player to get her a new one, retreating to her room until the PC does so

(3) when you speak to her and she disappears to play in the main area, she doesn't disappear, but appears to keep playing music in her room

(4) in one of the first couple journal entries, there are "*" symbols of what I think may have been intended to be parentheses

(4) The instrument and bookshelf clip against the back wall. I don't know whether this was done to make it seem like they were cabinets "built in" to the wall.

(5) Some spelling mistakes/grammatical errors in the first couple of greetings, i.e., "please to meet you" should be "pleased to meet you," "Rossignol" should be "Raven," etc.

(6) When you ask her to take a healing potion, she takes one even though none are visible in her inventory (does it come from the player's inventory?)

Observations

(1) Room is well-decorated and definitely fit for a bard! I love all of the items and knick-knacks in it

(2) the character design is fantastic. Fits in well with Jasmine and Julan!

(3) the books and spells she's encountered so far have been very useful

Questions

(1) How do the songs work magicka wise? Some of the songs seem to be castable for multiple uses a day, yet it seemed like she was using her fists a lot in combat. Does she stop singing when she runs out of magicka?

(2) There are dialog options where the menu results seemed unclear...What do you think?-->yes/no Do you like him/her?-->yes no. Are these purely for RP purposes? or are they placeholders for dialog that is going to be added later

(3) if you give her every book you find, is her AI arranged so she can use them all? or is it best to only give her 2-3 books?

(4) how do you double check that her lute is equipped?

(5) how do you find the new dungeons? are those the hints she gives you for the new instruments in different towns?

(6) are books equipped by giving them to her? or by putting them in her case? It wasn't sure how to activate her book library.

Suggestions

(1) Have her perform in towns by singing songs about the player, temporarily increasing the player's personality within that town (to make it easier to speechcraft, mercantile, etc.)

(2) Have her explain the history of some ruins that you explore with her, or the history of particular artifacts

(3) Add some interaction between the publican of 8 places and her (since she's their resident bard)

Going to keep playing with the mod installed! Can't wait to see what else I can experience through it

Also, I think there may be a conflict with LGNPC Seyda Neen. When I took Raven to Seyda Neen, she suggested that I talk to the bard at Arilles. However, nothing happened when I spoke to him because of LGNPC's dialog. Is what he says implemented through a greeting? If so, I think the problem could be fixed by adding a topic when she first suggests you talk to him, and then using that topic to advance the quest. Something like "bardic knowledge" maybe?

That was quick feedback



1. The lute is there for testing purposes, it will be gone in the proper release.

2. Good idea, not sure how, for her to visibly play the lute, she has to have it drawn i.e. ready to attack. I can however leave her in the main area where she will discreetly ask the player to meet her in her room.

3. I was considering teleporting her to the main area but decided that seeing her disappear right before your eyes was as immersion breaking as a fadein / fadeout. Need more thought on that.

4. Yes the bookcase and instrument cabinet are meant to look like they are on the wall, books and instruments would be clipping otherwise.

5. Yes, I will have to go through all the dialogues as I changed her name half way through.

6. The healing potions come from her inventory, it is part of the basic companion script from Grumpy.

1. I tried to keep it simple and vanilla looking so it fits with the Eight Plates. It is still rather lavish but Raven got style that way.

2. I *really* need to play so I get better acquainted with Jasmine, Julan and Constance so I can add some dialogue for Raven.

That being said, writing is not my strong suit, i lack the imagination, the flair and let's face it, the English, so anyone willing to give Raven more personality would be godsent.

3. The books describe the spells so you can pick, I decided to give her only a few so it is easier to predict her behaviour.

1. The songs cost magicka, but less than spells would. The magicka cost is in fact a way to make her cycle through her spell library. She has a drain magicka song and regenerates magicka. I will probably have to change some numbers around to get it right though.

If she was using her fists, then you didn't give her the lute from the instrument case. (I realise she has a lute on her back so that's confusing, I'll see if I can change that). I am guessing that the spells you saw were her powers from the Diresinger Songbook. She'll need to carry her lute and the books to use the spells, much like the player in A Bard's life (but somewhat simplified).



2. The dialogues are purely for RP purpose, yes, you need to finish those questions yourself. I personally enjoy those



3. When you give her a book, she actually gets 4 spells with the same effects but with different magicka costs, this way she will cycle through all the spells. Say you gave her the book of mana drain and the book of darkness, she will cast blind, drain magicka and then again, up to 4 times blind and drain magicka. Obviously, the more books, the less likely she is to bask enemies on the head but you might have to wait a bit longer for that paralyze spell you were hoping her to cast.



4. That is an issue, an npc will automatically equip the best weapon in there inventory so the option I have so far are: in dialogue Force equip the lute but will be a problem if for some reason you took it out of her inventory, and there are 4 lutes in total... Or, give the lutes a lot of damage to make sure she prefers it to any other weapon you make her carry but then, her bashing on the head would not be just comical, it would be deadly too!



5. To find the new dungeons, you need to talk to Raven in the main cities. She will want to talk to other bards to get some info. Another attempt at mimicking what the player does in A Bard's Life.

1. I like that. I wanted to implement a way to buff the player's personality through dialogue but decided it would be weird to ask Raven to sing a song in the middle of a shop because I want a discount... But if she sang about my exploits in an inn or on the town square, I could get a permanent personality buff? and +1 reputation maybe. Hmmm...

2. That would be fitting for a bard, well, a D&D bard (which was part of my inspiration) but then again, dialogues, not my strong suit and neither is lore. Mostly, companions like Julan and Jasmine already do a great job commenting on quests and places.

3. That's planned, I really need to think of a good back story for Raven first



Thanks for your feedback

Currently working on giving a better and simpler control over the spells Raven uses.

I tried to replicate what I did in A Bard's Life because I saw Raven as an extension of this mod but I realised adding a book and a lute in a companion's inventory does not come naturally to the player AND, there is no simple way to make sure Raven has the lute equipped and, with enough shuffling around / loading etc, I actually managed to break the mod.

The spells will be added and removed via the books in Raven's library, activating one, prompts the player to decide if Raven should use that song or not. The script does not check that she has the lute equipped but that she carries one only.

I thought giving Raven some magicka regen would make sure she keeps on singing (as opposed to head bashing) but then again, why should she, even if irl singing does not cost magicka, it is certainly tiring and not neverending.

So I am trying something new, a large mana pool but no regen, but the dialogue option to give Raven a bottle of Sujiama (Matze is just too cheap) to restore her magicka.

I have been testing things to make Raven sing my praises using a charm spell with a wide area effect, so anyone close enough to her the song would be impressed with me, but that didn't work too well as Raven did cast charm and proceeded to attack me. Hm.

Additionally, to her her sing about my heroic adventures, i need to check the completion of quests, all the quests? some quests?

Finally, I am considering switching the lute on the back for one in the hand (set up as a shield) because it bothers me that Raven would have a lute on her back and suddenly pops out another one in her hands when she goes head bashing.

So the choice is 1/ a cool lute on the back with the occasional extra lute in the hands or, 2/ a less cool lute in a hand but the impression that Raven has a single lute that she carries differently in a fight, and finally, 3/ I could try to script the lute so that if it gets equipped the one on the back is removed and vice-versa but that can get messy and generally speaking, I prefer to not add more scripts than needed, MW can be unstable enough as it is.

Thought?

Any feedback on the dungeons?

(1) I think your system change to how her song repertoire works is a great idea, and would be more stable than working off of the books in her inventory. I don't think it breaks realism either, as the books could be in her shelf because she has read and "learned" them, and activating specific books would just be an extended way of giving her orders. I see it as equivalent to her tuning her instrument appropriately and maybe engaging in a bit of practice before heading out on another adventure

(2) As for what her spells would draw off of (magicka) I think your idea is a great one. Would she still regain magicka upon resting? or is Sujama going to be the only way to do it?

(3) As for Raven singing to improve the player's reputation, I think a cleaner option may be to have it buff the player's stats, rather than affect NPCs. You could have a check for the cells that are considered cities and/or taverns, and then ask her to sing your praises as she walks around. As a result, the player would receive a temporary boost to personality and speechcraft. Grumpy and Emma's Constance companion has a similar charm ability that seems to work well.

As the player's "reputation" stat grows through completing quests, so could the power of the buff, as her songs are likely to have greater impact and receive more attention the more famous the player is. This may be a cleaner option than checking for specific quests, as there are so many quests in the game that the script would be enormous.

The only thing I worry about is the disposition bug affecting personality. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you use a spell to increase your personality and then talk to an NPC, and then talk to them again after the spell wears off, their disposition becomes their original disposition MINUS what the personality bonus was, right? or did this bug relate to some other stat?

(4) Have you thought about giving her a lute for her hands, while just making the back one "invisible" in game? That way she'd still be able to receive the armor bonus, and there wouldn't be the strangeness of her having a lute on her back and in her hands. Alternatively, you could replace the back lute with a case that she uses to carry the lute, which provides the same armor bonus.

Update:

- overhauled the way Raven learns her songs.

- changed the way lutes are handled so that the player, well, doesn't handle the lutes.

- added a way for Raven to recover her mana using sujamma (she still has a very weak mana regen ability).

- changed the dungeons that were really, really, overpopulated.

Yet to implement

- song of heroic deeds that will make npcs realise just how great you are. (will look into what Constance does and the personality buff issue. I seem to remember GCD was not too happy with stat buffs, really not sure now)

- a way to make the use of the lute more realistic in combat. (as a shield, on the back, scripts... who knows!)

- dialogues for / about Raven

https://www.dropbox.com/s/90wy8ibw5um45q1/RavenBETA.7z?dl=0

Is this safe to replace in an existing game? I imagine so if the player leaves Raven in her room, stays outside with the books and lute, and then cleans the save by deleting the Raven's Room cell? or is that not even required?

Definitely clean the save (keep a back up just in case). I'd go as far as de-activating the mod in wrye mash before cleaning the save and activating the newer version but ideally start from a saved game before you met Raven.

Jason, wait a bit before updating though, I am still tweaking the spell-learning system with a possible auto-sheathe function.

EDIT: I think I got it, no more double lute. Scripts only applied to the first lute.

So the latest Beta is available under https://www.dropbox.com/s/90wy8ibw5um45q1/RavenBETA.7z?dl=0? Bard companion sounds great, so I will be sure to give it a try. Btw. you should run Optimiser Textures on the textures of the mod, there are some missing mipmaps etc.

Yes, that's the one.

Do you meanhttp://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/12801/?for the textures? Never used it, time to learn I guess Thanks for the tip.

Thanks

Yes, that's the one. It requires some additional settings, but if you wait for a while, I will send you already set up version.

What are settings? I'd like to set it up for Morrowind for me, but I don't know the settings.

Aw, sorry.

I won't update her until I test the dungeons more thoroughly again, get a critical bug report or ... have dialogues for Raven *nudge, nudge* so you won't have to start a new game just yet.

I was wondering if Raven should be able to learn more songs, I don't want to give her spells that kill but I have yet to explore the scripted ways to make her buff the player under certain circumstances.

Essentially, she would train as a skald as well as a diresinger. Thought?

Going to try and develop some dialog during my plane flights on Saturday. Already have some great ideas!

For buffing, I'm not sure how you can get an NPC to intelligently buff the player in real time without either using MWSE or having it be in response to a dialog choice that starts a script. One of the things you could do, however, are bardic song "modes" for new songs she learns. Each new song would add a choice to the menu where you tell her to sing, fight with melee, fight with ranged, etc. Selecting a song would run a script that would add a "silence" effect to her, preventing her from casing dirge spells while she's singing, and add a buff to the player. The buff would disappear when either of the following occurs: (1) Raven dies; (2) Raven exists follow mode; or (3) the player tells Raven to go back to her dirge songs.

Alternatively (and this would probably be the easier/cleaner option), you could have her sing to cast buffs on the player upon request through dialog. Each buffing/skald song would add a small magnitude, but long duration buff to the player (and allies if you can make it aoe). The request to buff the player would fail if the script detects one of the songs already active on the player. Here are some ideas:

(1) Song of the Stalwart Atronach

--Resist Magicka 20%

--Spell Absorption 30%

--Fortify Willpower 10 points

--Drain Agility 15 points

(2) Song of the Berserker

--Fortify Attack 15 points

--Fortify Strength 15 points

--Fortify Endurance 15 points

--Drain Agility 15 points

(3) Song of Shadows (illogical, but would still be cool)

--Fortify Sneak 15 points

--Chameleon 30%

--Drain Endurance 15 points

(4) Song of Mage's Might

--Restore Magicka 2 points

--Fortify Destruction 15 points

--Fortify Alteration 15 points

--Fortify Illusion 15 points

--Fortify Conjuration 15 points

--Fortify Mysticism 15 points

--Fortify Restoration 15 points

--Drain Strength 15 points

(5) Song of 1000 Cuts

--Fortify Speed 10 points

--Fortify Agility 10 points

--Fortify Short Blade 10 points

--Fortify Long Blade 10 points

--Fortify Axe 10 points

--Drain Strength 10 points

(6) Song of Praises

--Fortify Personality 15 points

--Fortify Speechcraft 15 points

--Fortify Mercantile 15 points

(7) Song of the Stalwarts

--Shield 20 points

--Reflect 20 points

--Restore Health 2 points

--Resist Common Disease 30%

--Resist Blight Disease 30%

--Drain Speed 30 points

(8) Song of Fleet Feet

--Fortify Speed 20 points

--Waterwalking

--Restore Fatigue 2 points

--Feather 50 points

--Weakness to Magicka 50%

--Drain Strength 20 points

(9) Song of the Broken Blade

--Fortify Strength 15 points

--Fortify Blunt weapon 15 points

--Drain Agility 10 points

(10) Song of the Magical Aegis

--Resist Fire 40%

--Resist Frost 40%

--Resist Lightning 40%

--Burden 40 points

I like a lot of those songs especially the fact that they also have negative effects, makes gameplay more interesting.

I could add a new combat option 1/ melee 2/ range 3/ songs (I like dirge, added to my to-do list) 4/ constant buff song (chant?) but no dirge at all.

Question is, how does Raven learn those new fancy songs. Books are already used and frankly, seeing as Skald songs are completely different from Diresingers songs, they should be hard to learn... Based on Raven's level maybe? Quests? If so, from whom?... Questions, questions...

While it might be a larger undertaking, it would be cool if you placed some bards in the game world that offered quests to Raven (kind of like how the player discovers the dungeons containing the instruments). These could range from small tasks (i.e., delivering a token of affection to a bard's muse and love interest in the opposite side of Vvardenfell), to the more involved (i.e., retrieving a bard's prized instrument from a bandit cave), to the really intricate (i.e., stumbling across a bard in a dungeon and helping him solve a puzzle that blocks his way). Each bard would teach a song to Raven in exchange for their assistance. You could also have scripted books that add a journal entry, triggering Raven's acquisition of the song. For example, the player could find the book for a particularly powerful song on the body of a dead bard who met his end in a Nordic ruin.

You could, if you want, even make some songs faction exclusive (i.e., one known by a Telvanni bard who won't teach the song to non-Telvanni).

While making A Bard's life I had considered leaving the dialogue filter to the bard class so bards added by other mods could *somehow* have a role to play. Maybe something to consider?

Using already existing bards works but they already teach the player songs in A Bard's Life...

New NPCs work as well but chances of conflict increase as I add things to the world.

Anyhow, looking forward to those ideas you have for Raven's dialogues ~

Using the bards in the game could also be a great idea. There's no reason why they can't teach the player's bard companion songs too, in fact, I think that would allow your Bard's Life mod and the Raven companion mod to complement each other nicely

I'll try and get some dialogs to you by the end of June! Taking a beach vacation next week, so should have plenty of time to brainstorm and write!