So I walk out of Lakeview Manor and get mugged instantly by three bandits, one of which is wearing Nordic armour.

Fine...it happens.

I want my archery skills up so I stubbornly persist with my crossbowbow rather than knives or some other weapon combo better suited to close combat.

What follows is the inevitable loud and generally insulting behaviour of the thugs, interspersed with loud explosions from my exploding bolts. I got killed once and had to reload to try again.

After I'd looted the bodies, I thought to myself, "Where the hell were my staff while all this mayhem was going on?" I walk back inside to find the two kids fast asleep, my husband curled up in bed, the housecarl comatose and the steward equally oblivious...maybe they'd all been at the mead barrel in the cellar.

Now I don't expect the girls to rush to my defence with the daggers I gave them, but the other three? Come on, it must have sounded like a Motorhead concert outside. I'm beginning to think Bethesda should have included divorce settlements in the game. Next time my hubby greets me with "It's good to see you, my love," I should at least have the option of saying something sarcastic like, "It would have been even better to see you last night!"

This is the reason I use Windstad as my Hearthfire home. I've never had a random attack there. Great place if you're into alchemy.

Many of us have had this thought. For a great many reasons.

You can get a mod to remove hostiles from the BYOH spaces:

http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41579/?

Yeah but if you do this mod you won't get your sammy Skeever pet in the cellar


Ok....I had a regular Lydia warning about noises in the cellar.......four Skeevers were in there. I killed three.....the forth lost his hostile red dot rating and continued to just wander around harmlessly......I figured he'd be good as a pet and he stayed happily snuffling about keeping my cellar clear of other creatures! Love you Sammy ! ! !

LOL, I'd almost forgotten about Sammy!

Just.... spare me.... from skeevers. *SHUDDER* HATE 'em.

Installed! No more giants killing my cows before I can even draw a weapon. Get off my lawn!

Yeah! Do be aware that if you install in the middle of a game you'll probably get one more hostile encounter each before the mod actually kicks in.

HF housecarls are useless feckers I modded it so when the kids are playing outside they're watching over them rather than inside napping somewhere or sitting scoffing my grub!

Heh, funnily enough Windstad is the only place I've had random bandit attacks... gamewise they can occur at any HF house but only have a chance of triggering after 3 days absence iirc so if you're a regular visitor you'll never see them.

That's something I rather miss from the Fable series. You could marry and divorce at whim, and your spouse would give you presents, like paintings or STD's. Good times. But so far as the lack luster response of housecarls, I can relate. Before modding, the last random encounter I had was a giant who had come over to help himself to some chickens. Rayya ran off screaming something about being routed while my suicidal livestock charged in. Pretty bad when livestock has more courage than your housecarl.

I have had some encounters in Winstad, too. One was bandits inside my house! I came up from the cellar after blacksmithing one time and there were 3 bandits in the entry way!

Yes, there is a definite problem in Skyrim with "getting help." Dragon attaxcks the College of Winterhold? I'd like to run into the Hall of lements and yell, "DRAGON! HELP!" Same when I see a Giant or Dragon outside of any of my hearthfire homes. If nobody is outside, too bad

My current character recently build Lakeview and has already had numerous attacks, and the *only* help he's ever had from anyone there is from Shadowmere. Everyone else is always inside doing whatever it is that they do.

I've had the opposite.

The giant that visits Lakeview usually stands near the door and ignores people if you haven't got a cow to steal. However, I've come out a few times to find him beating on Rayya (who's fortunately protected, and just goes to a knee). On one occasion, I found him killing off the bandits, as I'd left him there long enough to get a second round of visitors - or else they were a set of of hired thugs. Whichever they were, I was able to wait until I only had the weakened giant to finish off.

Herricka had the giant at Lakeview for quite a while. He mostly just stood at the corner of the house. She let him stay there as doorman for a while, just running by him. But eventually he decided to stand right in front of the door, so she had to kill him.

I'd probably leave the giant alone too, if it weren't bothering anyone, but even before I notice that it's there, Shadowmere is already determined to attack it. Then there's really no choice but to kill it.

I had that too, until he got threatening when I tried to get to the door he'd gotten too close to. Alas, poor Scratchy ( I had named him by that point, he was always scratching his back with his club) had to go.

I've grown very fond of a tower exit for every vanilla Hearthfire house. That way, you can sneak out on the roof and survey the grounds safely before dropping down to ground level. I also have the habit of arriving during daytime when the House Carl and Steward are working outside. If bandits attack while the staff are out and about, they'll help defend the homestead.

Wow I've never had them indoors but they certainly spawn inside the house walls as the navmesh still extends under the house even after its contructed can't believe no-one has fixed that.

The College.. heh I had a dragon arrive there and not a soul lifted a finger to help me. Die, reload, dragon arrives again, die again, reload again... in the end I ran all the way down to Winterhold pursued hotfoot by an angry dragon and got some help from the Guards!

If I leave him he turns on the kids so you either have a couple of screaming kids running around followed by a thumping great giant or they end up dead so don't have any choice but to deal with it.

I've read where people have issues with Rayya, but she's always on the ball with my characters that have Lakeview Manor. Now Gregor on the other hand, at Heljarchen, will show up to fight IF HE'S THERE! More than half the time he's wandering somewhere between the house and Whiterun, or the meadery! Grrrr! Valdimar at Winstad ins't a whole lot better, but not as bad as Gregor.

The navmesh can only be modified by cutting nits of it off with collision boxes of type L_NAVCUT, which operate by making their boundaries a cut in the mesh, so that NPC's won't cross it. The navmesh still exists inside and out. This is different from the way it worked in Oblivion (which had a point grid instead of a surface) where parts of the grid could be disabled.

If something spawns inside one of those boxes, it just has the effect that it can't get out, which prevents the problem from curing itself!

IIRC the things that get spawned are working on encounter zones, rather than specific spawn points, so it's not just a case of moving the latter. Spawning can happen anywhere inside the area.

I get an angry giant greeting me first in the morning or a Dragon .Bandits would be fine.

No Draugr?

A husband would read something conjugal into something like that. Better to straight talk!

I've had them "in the walls", too. This http://i.imgur.com/a4oRhLO.png shows the Bandits in the entryway