Custom Skyrim Legendary Edition NPC Mod I created Refuses to work in game.

[YeOldeKiwi]

Hi there to the very few if any people that will actually come across this lol

 

So I have been spending a lot of time trying to get back into creating custom npc follower mods for my own personal usage in the Legendary edition of Skyrim (playing on a non-gaming laptop so no SSE). Yesterday I successfully (although it took a couple tries and I have no idea why it decided to work when it did) created a follower mod and put it into the game. Today, I decided I wanted to create another one, and oh boy did I somehow manage to piss off the creation kit gods because lo and behold, it was too good to be true that it would work.

 

So, the problem:

 

Even though my npc "Drax" shows up in the creation kit after placing him in the Frozen Hearth in Winterhold, and has an id and everything, when I actually load the game, the mod seems to just not be activated. This makes no sense because I have made sure that as soon as I saved the mod after confirming that the npc shows up in the Frozen Hearth in the render window of the Creation Kit, I checked and without a doubt the esp file was right there in the data folder like it should have been. I then even went back into the CK to check to see he would still show up just to be doubly safe, and yup he was there AGAIN where he was supposed to be.

 

But then of course as is custom with creating mods for this game, as soon as I load up the game to see if all my 'hard' work paid off, I go to the Frozen Hearth in game and he simply is not there. I then crossing my fingers checked to see if I could at least spawn him in via the console command function. I typed "help Drax" in the console and there is simply nothing there. No reference id or base id or anything. I tried various different things to try to get it to work and still nothing. I went back into CK to see if somehow something had changed but it still showed him there as if it was working. The one thing I'm not sure about is that when I loaded JUST the Skyrim Esm in the CK, there was no "Drax" actor present.

 

Now I am certainly far from an expert at using the CK and modding but I do have a very basic knowledge of how it is intended to work and I just for the life of me cannot figure it out. I've searched the internet several times over and there is absolutely nothing that helps me that I have been able to find. So anyone who reads this:

 

PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I AM LOSING MY MIND HELP BEFORE I THROW MY LAPTOP INTO MOUNT DOOM.

 

Thanks in advance.

[EhrenFreude]

I hate to be "that guy", but did you make sure the .esp was enabled?

[YeOldeKiwi]

Yes for sure haha not that I use the Skyrim launcher but I checked the launcher and it was checked. As I said though when I load only the Skyrim ESM in the Creation Kit, the created npc is nonexistent, but I don't know if that is simply because it would only load the base game without any modded stuff. I think I might start from scratch and try just building the mod over again today.

[Dupre232]

...when I load only the Skyrim ESM in the Creation Kit, the created npc is nonexistent, but I don't know if that is simply because it would only load the base game without any modded stuff.

Correct, if you load only the Skryim.esm in the CK, you'll only see the vanilla game. Anything new that you mod in the CK should then be saved as a new file (either another .esm or usually a .esp). That file is your mod, which needs to be activated in your plugins.txt file. The next time you open the CK to work on your mod, you load your mod as the "Active" file, which will automatically load the vanilla files too.

 

Another thing to check is that you saved your mod in the correct place - the data folder.

 

I'm guessing you're using a mod manager like most people, but I recommend checking the file manually to ensure it's enabled. It's here:

C:\Users\[user name]\AppData\Local\Skyrim\Plugins.txt

 

If you type help Drax and nothing is returned, either your mod isn't activated in your plugins.txt file, or you didn't save your work as I described above.

 

Let me know if I can help more before you commit your laptop to the fires of Mount Doom. :smile:

Edited May 7, 2020 by Dupre232