== Roaming NPCs ==

This mod adds 31 traveling NPCs to the game world. The reason for the mod is that I didn't like how you almost never find any interesting NPCs while walking through the wilderness or along the roads. It's either enemies or Imperial Legion soldiers. Even a mod like Crowded Roads (which I like and use as well) only adds generic NPCs that don't do anything but travel on the main roads. Roaming NPCs adds traveling adventurers you can interact with to the wilderness and a few traveling merchants who sell interesting wares to the roads. Note that this mod is not called 'crowded' for a reason. You will rarely meet one the NPCs so it is not a replacement for 'Crowded Roads' or similar mods.


There are three types of NPCs:

1. Adventurers (Adventurers, Mages, Rangers, Battlemages, Knights)

Adventurers travel around almost exclusively in the wilderness and thus can't be found on the main roads (with very few exceptions). Unlike the Orc Adventurers that can already be found in the game they really travel and not just wait near the same location all day long. They have varying levels ranging from level 7 to level 30. Since I don't want to imbalance the game they all have low-mid quality equipment only so even in the unlikely case that you manage to kill a level 30 adventurer at a low level somehow you won't get uber equipment from them. But what they lack in equipment quality they make up for in stats.

If you meet an adventurer you can ask him/her to join you on your travels. If your disposition is high enough and if he is not too far above your level he will join you either for free or for a small or large fee (depends on the level difference). He will leave you after 1-2 days, if his disposition towards you becomes too low or if you dismiss him. After a few days you can ask him again to join you.

While the adventurers are companions their 'features' are limited. They follow you and they sneak when you sneak (and put out their torch if they have one equipped). That is all, no inventory managment, optional combat styles or similar features. You can ask them about the Gray Fox though to find out about their responsibility. Don't try to commit crimes while you have a follower with high responsibility. They will report you or turn against you just like any other NPC with high responsibility would. Even adventurers with low responsibility may not help you if you commit severe crimes like murder or attacking imperial soldiers.


2. Riding Adventurers

There are only 5 of them and they're just for show (no companion feature). They are all around level 30, so if you are in trouble and see one of them they can protect you.


3. Traveling Merchants

There are four traveling merchants traveling from town to town. They are always on the main roads. They're riding horses with saddle bags and always have a mercenary guard (also on a horse) as follower. Unlike the merchants in the vanilla game they actually sell useful things like enchanted and unechanted arrows of all qualities except for Daedric, powerful but (relatively) cheap potions and scrolls and other nice and really useful goodies like potions that permanently increase your attributes (which are very rare and expensive plus the max amount you can ever buy is 10). They don't sell high level weapons or armor though as I felt that the player should find these things on his own and not buy them. Their inventory will reset every second day no matter what your respawn time is set to. It is worth checking what they have to offer if you meet one of them, trust me.


= Requirements =

Apart from the latest patch you should have Elys Universal Silent Voice installed. Otherwise you may not be able to read the dialogue added by this mod.


= Changelog =

v1.1

- fixed a potential bug where sometimes recruited adventurers would visit you after they died and respawned
- cleaned up a few identical to master records with TES4Edit

v1.0

- intitial Release


= Installation =

Put the meshes and textures folders and the 'RoamingNPcs.esp' into you Oblivion\Data folder. Check the esp in the launcher.


= Credits =

Mystikhybrid for the saddle bags
Odin_ml for the saddle bag mesh fix

Huh. Another Phitt mod already. Very nice.

gothemasticator

Looks great, but Oblivion is already CPU intensive as it is for me at the moment. I'd better not download it, tempting though it is. :laugh:

I will be checking this out soon as I knock off another quest mod or two.

Reminds me of http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=24847 a bit.

EDIT: @S'lider:

1. They respawn, but under normal circumstances they shouldn't die. They will flee once an enemy comes close and the mercenaries are very powerful.

2. They have set routes and travel from one town to another town. Like Chorrol to Bravil, Anvil to Bruma and so on. They don't stop at inns though.

3. Yes, they travel from one dungeon to another dungeon. In game that shouldn't be noticeable unless you follow them for twenty minutes since the dungeons are quite far away from each other.

Will they enter the dungeons as well, or do they just patrol between them?

Instant download. I like this...

Edit.
Can you develop more AI package of theses new NPCs?
i.e. these NPCs should have some scheduled actions based on hours/days/months...
something like for example Alval Uvani or Orc Mazoga in Oblivion
so we can find them doing a particular work (town, hunting in wilderness, clearing some dungeons, ... etc) in a particular month/day/hour...

I think I have an issue with the Adventurers or at least one of them. Happened upon a riding Adventurer fighting some crits outside Skingrad - and he was almost continuously casting some spell on self. Or, rather, it was cast on him as he didn't use any cast animation. Sounded like a shock spell. I would have thought it was an AoE spell that could be fixed via the UOP, but it was perhaps 10 times in a row but then it paused for a while before starting over, so it doesn't seem to act like they do.

Anyway, seems like an excellent mod. Just what I've been looking for in fact.

No idea why that happened. The riding adventurers don't have scripts on them, they are just regular NPCs with AI packages and vanilla combat styles. If it was near Skingrad it was probably an adventurer with shock shield and restore health spells in her spell list. So that would explain why the shock effect came up, but it wouldn't explain why the NPC cast it over and over. I have seen NPCs casting spells over and over before without a reason (for example bandit wizards often cast restoration spells all the time if you sneak up to them even if their health is at 100%), sure it's not just regular NPC behavior?

Hm, I thought that behaviour came from MMM? It gives creatures/NPCs randomized health etc., which can lead to Bandit Hedge Wizards etc. casting restore health continuously if having randomized health under their normal. At least I think it's something like that, no expert on this.

EDIT: That's not it when I think about it. The MMM ones (or if its vanilla behaviour) are actually casting restore health spells on self. In this case http://i49.tinypic.com/a28bqd.jpg, no cast animations. In fact, I can't recall seeing something like this before.

That is definitely a shock shield spell. I just checked her in game (did so before as well and met her once myself while playing the game) and didn't notice anything odd. She cast the shield spell in combat once and restore health spells after combat a few times, but nothing else happened. Do you maybe have a mod that gives the shock shield spell a visible effect? By default the effect only shows when the spell is cast, but not as long as it's active. I could imagine that a mod may want to change that for a nice visible effect like on the screenshot. Most magic mods also increase the duration of defensive spells, that's why the shield spell could be still active after combat has ended for quite some time.

In case you don't know, could you maybe test that by casting a shock shield spell on your character? Ungarion in Bravil (Warlock's Luck) sells an apprentice spell (adventurer has journeyman spell, but that shouldn't matter) in case you don't have it in your spell book.

Just checked and my char gets a completely different effect from casting Shock Shield. I think it's from Duke Patrick's Magic you can believe in. Also, as said, the Adventurer doesn't cast the spell, the effect just happens much like with AoE spells with certain mods.

What I meant with the effect is that a mod may script the effect to come up while a shock shield is active. That would look like the NPC is casting the spell without actually casting it. It would just be the effect coming from a script, like pme ShockShieldEffect (or whatever it is called) once per second. In that case the NPC would only need to cast the spell once and then for the duration of the spell the effect would show all the time. But like I said, if that is not the case I have no idea.

I noticed that all these new NPCs belong to ImperialLegionOutside faction, why this particular choice? Don't you think this will be not good for players with evil character?
In Oblivion there is a faction that could be a nice choice as well "Adventurers Faction".
Reading your comment at the beginning of this thread this encouraged me to install "Crowded Roads Advanced less crowded". I edited this esp to change all hero factions from "Player Faction" to "Adventurers Faction".

Could you link me to this?

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18251