Reduce Pool of Legendary Effects Possible on Legendary Enemies

[hinnybin]

What I'd Like:

I'm tired of crappy legendary effects on items found on/from legendary enemies (according to my subjective tastes), but I don't want to touch/alter ANYTHING that isn't "loot from killed legendary enemies" (merchant items/quest rewards). Not looking to add in any new legendary effects, NOR buff the bad ones.

 

What I tried:

I tried editing "LegendaryItemQuest" in FO4edit, but I've been having trouble getting it to work. Maybe something weird with how an esp handles deleted elements from an array?

 

What a more experienced mod maker might be able to do:

Maybe ""bad"" legendary effects have to be edited to be redundant copies of only the ""good"" legendary effects in each structure within the array, bad ones can't just be deleted? Maybe it's possible to edit the "bad effects" within the array so they have no valid items to spawn on? I've not tried anything with creation kit, only FO4edit.

 

Additional Considerations:

Could this work on an already existing character, or would I have to create a new save?

Requesting a possible secondary mod (or a link to an existing one) that could get this type of change to work on a savefile that already has 300+ hours?

Compatibility with mods (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/17836 https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/22143) that inject DLC weapons/ammo into commonwealth is ideal! :laugh:

 

I can't find a mod that does this to my satisfaction, best I could find is this: https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/14019 ... but I don't agree with their removal choices, and I don't want to change/buff legendary effects, even if they are bad. I wasn't able to reverse engineer the mod, and can't even verify if it even works. To avoid a text wall, I won't list out legendary effects I'm requesting to keep or remove until the post gets replies.

 

TLDR: Please someone make a mod that removes legendary effects of my choosing from the pool of possible enemy drops, but NOT from guaranteed or unique drops/rewards/purchasable items OR helps me make the mod.

 

[HeyYou]

I haven't dug too deeply into this, so, let me ask a couple questions first. :)

 

How does the game decide which effect to put on a legendary item? Is it just random chance? A leveled list??

[hinnybin]

I haven't dug too deeply into this, so, let me ask a couple questions first. :smile:

 

How does the game decide which effect to put on a legendary item? Is it just random chance? A leveled list??

I'm not sure, I was hoping someone with more knowledge about modding could tell me :tongue:

From what I gathered, digging around in FO4edit, there's a file called LegendaryItemQuest, id 001CCDA5 within the level lists that details the properties of how legendary effects can be applied to items.

I THINK that this file only affects items generated randomly upon the death of a legendary creature, as there are completely other files which put "unique" items into the world (aka like the "gainer") or into vendor inventories (like the "big boy", referenced as dcfatman or something).

 

From what I gather, the LegendaryItemQuest holds two arrays of structures. The first list determines ammo type, and I have no idea how that ties in at all. The second list is structures, each structure is dedicated to a legendary property that can be applied to items. Within each structure, it details what KIND of item that property can be applied to, referencing other files, such as the weapon mod files which detail each individual legendary effect, and item lists which detail item categories (such as "small guns" "big guns" "ballistic guns" or "armor") or masterlists that combine one or more of those smaller lists.

 

I tried making an esp that just had deleted entries from the array for legendary effects, but upon launching the game, spawned in legendary enemies were still generating items with the deleted properties. (in old save files, new save files, and new save files where I waited until exiting the vault to spawn in a legendary enemy. I did NOT find any naturally generated legendary enemies and test their drops, I only did testing with console commands)

 

I posit that the failure of my attempt presumably had something to do with the nature of arrays, and how they cannot be cleanly overwritten in the manner which I had attempted to alter them.

 

EDIT: I also saw something on reddit, someone was suggesting that this file has an additional function in which it dynamically tracks these legendary effects, and has some way of tracking which legendary property has been used, and disables it from spawning another legendary with that property until all available properties on the list have been applied onto spawned loot, after which, the list then re-enables all properties available for a new set of generated legendary items. Essentially preventing the player from getting 2 or 3 item in a row with the same legendary ability/property.

Edited May 20, 2021 by hinnybin

[HeyYou]

Not sure about duplicate effects.... I think I have seen some of those in my various playthrus.... So, no idea if that is a thing or not. I am simply not familiar enough with the CK to be of much more help..... I was hoping it would be something 'easy', and you could just edit a list, and reduce the chances of some affect or other showing up to zero. Maybe still possible with the array...... but, would need to know just how the game determines which effect it wants to apply. Wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't a script out there somewhere, that dealt with it.

[hinnybin]

Unfortunately, the list is quite extensive (50+ entries), so nothing about editing the list is easy. Even if you were to replace "bad effects" with "good effects" in the array, that alone would be a long, meticulous, tedious, exercise requiring something like 100+ lines/entries to be copy pasted. Unfortunately FO4edit does not seem capable of multi-line changes. I cannot copy a structure within the array in its entirety and copy it over another structure. I would have to look at every property of that structure, and copy and paste each individual line into a new line (each structure has like 12-15 lines of properties). I would have to do a LOT of redundant work to cover the bases of the presumed flaws in my uncertain understanding of how an esp handles altering an array.

 

I suppose actually it wouldn't be TOO much work for me to test this. If I only do this for ONE entry, and then kill 100+ legendary enemies with turrets after I spawn them in, I could pretty easily see whether or not the "overwritten" single property ever showed up.

 

I was just hoping someone who knew a lot more about this would swoop in and have a good solution for my problem. Knowledge about how arrays and esps interact, or had a script to generate a new legendaryQuest file, or had some dev tool that allowed them to edit redundant lines of text all at once/very quickly.