HELP! - Creation Kit

[bican203]

Hey, I'm desperetly looking for help for creating a NPC overhaul mod which changes the values of all NPCs including the player. I've downloaded the CK but I've never used it before. I'm afraid that I would make a mistake which will end me up with a broken game. Can someone halp me navigate through the process, please???

[Xander9009]

To start with, you can't break the game entirely (unless you modify the original game scripts badly). The worst you'll do is make a saved game corrupt, meaning you'll have to reload to before the mod was installed. Or you might make it crash. But both of these can be fix by disabling the mod. So poking around and trying new things is perfectly fine (as long as you don't the original game scripts).

 

Second, if you want to change an NPC's values (I assume you mean skill levels or health points or spells and the like), then you'll need to load up Skyrim in the CK. To do that, go to Understanding the Creation Engine Data Format. Once it's loaded, on the left, open the tab 'Actors' and then select "Actor". You'll see a list of every actor in Skyrim. Editing one is as easy as double-clicking it to open it (or right-clicking>Edit), find the value you want to change, and changing it.

 

You can find the one you want by sorting them by the column 'Name'. That's the name you'd see in game.

 

A few notes: if the EditorID of the NPC starts with "Enc", then it's an encounter, something that's created while the game is running. If it starts with "Lvl", then it's a leveled actor, meaning it doesn't actually make a single actor, but rather it picks one from a list (which you can find the name of at the bottom left where it says "ActorBase"). If you want to edit all the NPCs, then whenever you open one, look to see if it has an Actor Base. If it does, then look to see which boxes under that are checked. The checked boxes are what this particular actor will get directly from its base. That means you can't edit that type of value here, you have to go to the actor base and edit it there. Or you can uncheck the box that corresponds with what you want to change. But you'd save yourself a lot of time if you edit the base instead, because it'll probably be used in other actors, too. That means when you edit the one, it might change 15 and save you that much time.

 

Anyway, look around on the Creation Kit website for the other tutorials and it'll explain how to make a new NPC. You don't want to make a new one, but learning how to with explain how to edit them to some extent as well. The specific page I linked to was the very first page in the Beginner's Tutorial, so you'll be good to go right from there.

[bican203]

To start with, you can't break the game entirely (unless you modify the original game scripts badly). The worst you'll do is make a saved game corrupt, meaning you'll have to reload to before the mod was installed. Or you might make it crash. But both of these can be fix by disabling the mod. So poking around and trying new things is perfectly fine (as long as you don't the original game scripts).

 

Second, if you want to change an NPC's values (I assume you mean skill levels or health points or spells and the like), then you'll need to load up Skyrim in the CK. To do that, go to Understanding the Creation Engine Data Format. Once it's loaded, on the left, open the tab 'Actors' and then select "Actor". You'll see a list of every actor in Skyrim. Editing one is as easy as double-clicking it to open it (or right-clicking>Edit), find the value you want to change, and changing it.

 

You can find the one you want by sorting them by the column 'Name'. That's the name you'd see in game.

 

A few notes: if the EditorID of the NPC starts with "Enc", then it's an encounter, something that's created while the game is running. If it starts with "Lvl", then it's a leveled actor, meaning it doesn't actually make a single actor, but rather it picks one from a list (which you can find the name of at the bottom left where it says "ActorBase"). If you want to edit all the NPCs, then whenever you open one, look to see if it has an Actor Base. If it does, then look to see which boxes under that are checked. The checked boxes are what this particular actor will get directly from its base. That means you can't edit that type of value here, you have to go to the actor base and edit it there. Or you can uncheck the box that corresponds with what you want to change. But you'd save yourself a lot of time if you edit the base instead, because it'll probably be used in other actors, too. That means when you edit the one, it might change 15 and save you that much time.

 

Anyway, look around on the Creation Kit website for the other tutorials and it'll explain how to make a new NPC. You don't want to make a new one, but learning how to with explain how to edit them to some extent as well. The specific page I linked to was the very first page in the Beginner's Tutorial, so you'll be good to go right from there.

Thanks a lot Xander!

 

I'll try that and ask again in here if I struggle. Is that okay?

[Xander9009]

Sure :)