Emma

Neeshka will heal you right from start, and she and Vilja are approx equally good as marksmen. So, why not let Vilja be the archer and Neeshka the healer until Vilja offers to heal you (which shouldn't take that many game days)?

Yay! Thank you. I'll go and start tagging then :D

Since the release of Companion Vilja, I have often been asked for advice and involved in discussions regarding companionfriendly houses. It doesn't help if a house is ever so beautiful and well-made - if some specifics aren't taken cared of, companions will "misbehave" in there, walk into statics, refuse to sit etc. I don't know how many abodes I have made companionfriendly for my own usage. As more and more people started to ask for companionfriendly abodes, I ended up making my own list of houses that I know are companionfriendly, but, obviously, it is by no means comprehensive as I cannot keep track on everything that happens and every mod released. When you added the new search-tags per cathegory it dawned to me what a great help it would be if "companionfriendly" would be a tag, in particular for houses but possibly also for other mods. I have no idea how easy/difficult it is to add new tags, but if it's simple for you, I think that it might be helpful both for mod users and for mod makers who want to market their abodes as good houses for companions.

I'm thinking that as there IS an option when you leave the endorsement to post a comment, many feel encouraged to leave a message even if they "don't have anything in particular to say". And that's where we get the "Thanks" or "great mod" or "Awesome" posts. With the new system, i.e. separate endorsement threads, these posts are basically treated as "spam" - i.e. they are put in a different thread in order not to "spam" the "real" thread. If there weren't a comment-option with the endorsement itself, those who want to say something will still do this - they will go to the "real" thread and post a comment. Or a full mod review, as some people actually take the time to write a full review that they attach to their endorsement. Whereas those who only felt that they "should" leave a message because the comment-option was included with the endorsement will no longer feel an obligation to post "Great mod" or whatever. (Now, that said... after 9 years of modding, it *still* makes me happy to hear that people have joy from my work, so personally I don't mind if someone post "Great mod" or "Awesome" about something I have done :blush: but if such posts end up in a "pseudo-spam-thread", well, then there isn't much point in it.) EDIT: Should you decide to somehow remove the endorsement threads, please don't do so without a warning!! I have several quite extensive and very well written reviews that people have made of my mods and posted with their endorsements, I wouldn't want them to vanish! Then I'd much rather want to take the time to copy and paste them into the "real" thread, but it's quite a lot of work as we are talking about going through many, many hundreds of posts manually to look for the "gold nuggets".

I think Wrinklyninja made some very good points in his post, and I second his opinions. Dark0ne, thank you for your reply earlier on in this thread. In reply to your post: Yes. It is much different. For Companion Vilja, who now has two threads of totally around 3600 posts, there haven't been much "problems", but many good discussions leading to further improvements have been initiated in an endorsement post and then continued, involving many new posters. What does slightly annoy me is that people have brought up "minor bugs" in the endorsements, "bugs" that have had very natural explanations (conflicts, problems caused by the player's playing style, problems caused by other mods). I have of course instantly replied and explained these "bugs", but my posts are now separated from the posts where the "bugs" are suggested. So, by reading the endorsment topic it now appears that there are "bugs" in our work. Anyway, as Buddah points out, the only constant thing in life is change, whether it's for the better or for the worse is easiest to see retrospectively. I'm grateful for this site and the work you put into making it better and better, and even if this particular change isn't something I personally get very happy over, I'm sure there are others that welcome the change. And, over time I guess I'll get used to having currently 64 threads to keep track of instead of just 32. And I can of course always post in the endorsement threads for my mods and kindly ask people to post in the other thread instead, if they want me to read and respond to their posts.

Thank you for your constant effort to improve an already good site :smile: That said, I must admit I'm not thoroughly happy with what you are doing now, as it has severe effect *backwards*. I notice that now the replies are in one thread and the questions in another (as people generally ask their questions while endorsing). It gets a bit... complicated... when we are talking threads that originally had +3000 posts... !! Most people do post their questions and suggestions while endorsing, i.e. in the same post, maybe you can make them change this habit over time, but it is what they have done in the past. Therefore questions and answers are now split in an unfortunate way. (On a side-note, if people are not doing questions and suggestions when endorsing, what is the purpose in at all posting while endorsing? I mean, it would basically mean that the only relevant thing to put in the endorsement-post is generic stuff like "great mod, keep up the good work".)

Yes, I notice that now the replies are in one thread and the questions in another (as people generally ask their questions while endorsing). It gets a bit... complicated... when we are talking threads that originally had +3000 posts...

Well, it seems to me that I have my replies in one thread and the questions in another as people generally ask questions when they are endorsing rather than separately. Not easy to find anything in a total of +3000 posts when the questions are in one thread and the answers in another :(.

So... the posts will be in one thread and the replies in another?? Or questions asked while endorsing will be in a separate thread from questions asked when not endorsing? Oh well, hope you'll find a system for it, because right now, it's utterly confusing :/

Has there been some kind of database accident for uploaded files? There seems to be LOTS of posts missing in threads (especially notable when I can find all my responses to posts, but the posts are gone, in some threads like 10 missing posts). Also previous endorsements seems to have been deleted.

Thank you for your kind words :smile: I do see what you mean about the red and blue bags; it still takes some effort, but at least you don't have to carry the items for her - they'll be safe in her bags. Now, for the next version of Vilja , we WILL look into if there is a way that will let us add an easier way to handle her wardrobe, as well as ways to make her repair her own armor. These functions require OBSE, but CDCooley thinks he can script it so that the feature will be there for OBSE-users but still not force OBSE-dependancy on Vilja. ...and unfortunately this reply still doesn't cover your original question. I haven't played with CSR, although it's on my to-do-list, so I cannot tell how it is handled. Hope someone else will be able to reply.

Hi, As for Vilja, I suggest that you simply use her extra containers in her own inventory, where you can put everything you want her to carry but not use. You can read more about this and other matters of gameplay and companion usage in the "Important Notes on Gameplay"-document that I have enclosed. Please also read the "Vilja dialog manual" to get a broader perspective on what can be done and what can not be done. This does not solve your problem, and I don't know the correct answers regarding CSR. As CSR (unlike Vilja) requires OBSE, it means that CSR has access to scripting functions that we haven't used for Vilja.

Hi As you say you have reiinstalled Oblivion, I think I know the reason for your problem. Vilja is made with the latest version of Oblivion. If you have forgotten to patch your Oblivion to latest version after the reinstalling, mods made with the latest Oblivion will not work for you. So, head over here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/ and get the latests patch. Check that you get the correct one - it's different depending on whether you live in the states or in Europe. Hope this helps :)

...and once you have reinstalled, pretty please read the doctumentation, in particular the "Important Notes on Gameplay". There you will learn that you don't have to edit Vilja in the construction set - things like essential/nonessential an a variety of other things can be toggled in her Options book, ingame!

I beg your pardon?? Instruction from Vilja readme: "Just drop the content into your Oblivion-data-library. " That's exactly how it works, and it's also exactly what you say. Why are you considering your description adequate and ours, which is exactly the same, an example of "bad installation instructions"? If you go to the optional files for Vilja, you will find a package with the Rein hairs, set up with the Vilja customization package, ready to use without any work at all. Screenshots are also available for each hairstyle in the screenshots section.

Hmm... if you are using a mod called Bridges of Cyrodiil, that might explain why she acts a bit erractic (understatement) when trying to lead you out of the Imperial city. It's something with the pathgrids that have been changed in some areas. Vilja cannot help it :). Something similar happened to me: she was despeartely trying to walk through a house-static added by a mod (again, not her fault that there weren't any proper pathgrids for this), and she said also to me "Don't look at me likt that! I know exactly where I am going". I felt sorry for her, and rather than telling her to stop leading, I sort of "bumped" and "pushed her away from the house. Just as I had finished pushing and she was free to continue walking she turned to me and smile, exclaiming: "It's so nice to have you as a companion. To know that you are just a few steps behind me, ready to help out if I'm in trouble". Touché! Then it was obviously great that Xanordon started this thread :smile:. Hope you will enjoy her company! Here is a direct-link to the mod: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28977 Here are also a few links to screenshots that shows some of the differences between Vilja and other companions: Vilja riding on her own Vilja recognizes other companions... ...and sometimes even know about their stories. She has her own opinions... ...and sometimes she knows what you are doing in an almost scary way... ...and she is very much aware of the quests you are doing. Now YOU can go adventuring with HER It's a very different roleplay experience to travel side by side

Of course I have collected quite a few hilarious Vilja-moments over time. I'm going to post a few of them. I'm however not so sure this is the best place for feedback on Vilja, regardless if it is praise or criticism. I think the VILJA FEEDBACK-THREAD is the most appropriate place for this, so it would be great if you changed that part of your original post :wink: (And I don't need any praise for having so much fun with my favorite-hobby, modding) And now to some lunatic moments with Vilja: Lunatic moment 1 - CDCooley had been working on the new script that allows you to shout combat instructions to her during a fight and I was going to try it out. So, I dragged Vilja and Wolfgang the wolf with me into the wilderness outside Bruma. We were climbing a steep mountain side when suddenly something fell over my head, tumbled down the mountain side and ended up on the ground, whimpering. Wolfgang the wolf. I thought to myself "What on NIRN happened???" ...and then I heard a familiar voice behind me, solemnly exclaiming: "I shouldn't have pushed so hard..." We continued to the next fort (poor Wolfie recovered well and tagged along) where we found a bunch of daedras. As the goal with our little excursion was to try out the new script, I let the daedras attack me without defending myself, Vilja beat them up while I signaled various instructions to her. After the fight, my character was half dead and my armor torned into pieces. I started to talk to Vilja, who said she had something serious to discuss with me. When I asked her to tell me her thoughts, she replied: "I wish you would be more careful when you are fighting. If you are not concerned over your own life, think of me having to face the enemies alone!" I was still laughing out loud when I closed the dialog window. She looked at my character, frowning, and instantly said: "I think we should repair our armor". Sometimes, she really is so fun! Lunatic moment 2 - With Vilja, one can tell her to go and sit somewhere, and she will do so - this way the player can always sit next to her as she picks chair first. Now, Vince_Bly contacted me because he had concerns about his Mountain Shack mod - a very sweet exterior house on the way to Bruma (I very much recommend it as a modest first abode or a holiday cottage). Players had reported that when their characters were sitting down, their companions would just wander off and disappear until the player stood up again. So, I promised him to test. I brought Vilja there, sat down on various chairs... and just as Vince had said, Vilja indeed tended to wander off and vanish. After several tries, I told Vilja to sit down (while I was standing) in order to see what would happen. And indeed... she wandered off! I followed her. She went behind the house, and started to walk a small path between some bushes. After a little while, she reached... the Mountain Shack's privvy house! She opened the door, sat down on the privvy throne and exclaimed: "Finally something interesting!" I bet that was where all other companions also had went at each occasions the players had sat down. And considering the lack of privvy thrones in Cyrodiil, I guess one has to understand if they, like Vilja, felt that they had finally found something interesting!

I don't know what went wrong for you, but I know how to get her out of this mod. Wait until after the shops are closed, then talk to her. She will give up on her idea to go shopping and follow youo again. (In the upcoming ver 3, I'll add in some further precautions for situations like this). Both CDCooley and I and a bunch of other longterm Vilja users look over the Vilja endorsement-thread on a daily basis, if you post there, you'll normally get a reply very quickly. Here, it took me a little longer to catch that someone was having a problem :smile:

Great to hear that! :smile: I think it's actually quite fun to use Julan and Constance together - they're quite a team. Thank you :smile: Constance is an old mod, though... we - Grumpy and I - made her back in 2005. Back then I think she did set a new standard, but Kateri's Julan was released 18 months later, and he is awesome. Like said above, they're a great team, too.

Thanks :smile: No, I don't have any more than Vilja - creating one companion with so much features and dialog takes quite some time. But, Vilja has unique interaction with several other companions, and that will blow some additional life into them if you leave them in wandermode to smalltalk. I'd recommend Neeshka, Sonia, Rhianna.

Well, with Vilja the looks shouldn't be a problem... if you don't like my original version, you might like one of the alternate ones, like: Xtudo's Moonshadow Vilja or 4GVN's custom Vilja or Xtudo's Custome Odd-eyed Vilja... or any of the other optional looks (including Tabaxi, Argonian and vampire looks) that are available as optional files on the Vilja download page. This is a link to a tutorial on how to exchange faces both on PC characters and - if you scroll down a bit - on companions. Hope this helps (although I still think that my original Vilja is rather pretty :wink:)

Very sure it happened again - there's one more missing this morning. It is registred as 'have given endorsement' but the counter hasn't counted. I'm positive, because I wrote down the number of endorsement and the last one giving one before I went to bed last night. This morning there were two more added to the list but only one more to the counter.

Hi, As I recently released a mod that has gathered quite some nice attention, I have been looking more than normally at the number of endorsements for this mod (Companion Vilja). And now I'm positive (well, I *was* 200 % positive when I started to write this... now I'm just 99,3 % positive :rolleyes: ) that when I went to bed last night the number of endorsements were 226. It is still at 226, but according to the endorsements stats, two more have endorsed her this morning - one with a comment (this made me aware of the potential problem) and one without. Now, the reason I'm instantly posting here is that the same happened when Vilja was originally released back in december 2009 - when she was among the top 10 of the top 25, lots of endorsements (like +10) just vanished the same way. So I thought I'd better get in touch with you about this. Is there a way to check if there is something 'wrong'? Maybe this is even a known issue? I'm sorry to bother about this, but I thought I'd better bring it up... Emma (...who by now of course is only 97,6 % sure that she is right about this... :rolleyes: )

Well, if one understand what is happening, it's easier to accept 'flaws', isn't it :smile:. I think you can safely assume that vanilla areas are pretty well path-gridded and should work relatively fine for companions. With the exception where there are height-differences, of course, like the balcony scenario we discussed. If you have problems in modded areas, you should consider gnarling at the modders instead of at the companions ;). It is related to the respawn time, so if you have changed this setting it may be that you have to wait longer also for companions to reset. I really don't know the answer to this, as I have never tried prolonged respawn times (I would be interested to know, though!) She has 1400 dialog entries in ver 1. Some of them won't show up until you have learnt to know her better, so in the beginning some might show up more often. They are not cycling, they are based on random 100. In ver 2 she will 'only' talk with intervals of 40-60 seconds, which is a bit slowed down compared to ver 1. And, she'll have approx 2500 dialog entries, so it should be quite a variety. Lol, I'm sure she liked you :smile:. However, from what I have seen, companions tend to go to the chair in the interior that was first placed in the CS (as I have made some house-mods I have noted that she always go for the chair I placed first in the cell). When you sit down, she'll head for that chair. When you raise, she is triggered to leave her chair and find another... probably the second chair placed in the cell. It could very well be that if you had just moved to the chair next to where you were sitting, she would have come to you. It has absolutely nothing to do with her disposition towards you, that I am sure of. Hehe, don't think that would help! But, if she was standing very far away from you, that's an indication of that something isn't right. a 72 hours separation would most likely have cured this (the 72 hours wait tends to sort out a surprising amount of problems not only with companions but with all npcs. As said before, I would be very interested to know what happens if your respawn time is changed like you describe). Could it have been that when you added Vilja you had another companion in tow which you left behind somewhere without telling him/her to go into wait mode? I have seen that this tends to make a new follower walk further away from the player. Also, if she is wearing heavy armor this makes her move slower, as is valid for all npcs. Yes, it could have been. If others have had similar problems, they haven't reported them to me, which wouold be sad, cause if there it a problem I believe that most of us modders do wish to attend to and solve it. If you decide to try out Vilja ver 2 (no point in starting with ver 1 again), would you be so kind and let me know if you have any issues with her? :smile:

As Rhianna, Neeshka and Vilja are the probably most stable companions out there (been testing lots of them before I started out on making Vilja), you probably won't be happier with any of the others. Although, give it 3-4 days and then download the new version 2 of Vilja. Her scripts have been thoroughly reworked by CdCooley, and she actually now is the only OB-companion I have seen who follows order really good, who can sneak through a whole dungeon without attacking and who can stay out of fight until she is attacked by an enemy or you are close to dying. Hopefully that version will be released this weekend - I believe this will happen, we just have some final playtesting to do. On a side-note I'm very surprised about what you say about Vilja and 'dialog-loops'. That's not normal at all and no-one else has reported any such problem during the 5 months she has been released. Could it be that this was before you adjusted your loadorder or could it be something else strange that happened in your game? Or could it even be that the looping dialog was from another mod, and that's why you/she couldn't get out of it (if it wasn't voiced, it was definintely from another mod). There is a good general rule when a previously functioning companion starts 'misbehaving' (and you haven't just added a new mod without running Bash). Bring the companion to a safe interior location. Leave him/her there. Go somewhere else and rest for +72 game hours (or go and crawl dungeons for +72 game hours without returning to the companion). After this period of time, you are very likely to find that your companion is behaving normal again. There *are* mods that companions work poorly with, yes... Any mod that includs areas that are not properly path-gridded! And that is true for many, many housemods and I suspect just as many dungeons. The companion is 'blind'. He/she doesn't 'see' the environment (especially not if you are in a mod-area, as mods work in 'layers', one layer for each mod. So your companion is in his/her layer and the mod-house/dungeon in its own layer). Therefore, the pathgrids are necessary for a decent following behaviour. If the modders have forgotten to add pathgrids to their interiors/exteriors, you can't expect any companion to follow well. (I even tried a housemod where the modder had put the path-grids *outside* the house. I think you can guess what happened - I could hear Vilja talk, but she was running around in her path-gridded limbo, unable to enter the house). Another thing to consider is that the companion doesnt have any sense of the Z-level. If you are high up on a balcony and there's an enemy right below it, one would have hoped that the marksman companion in tow wouold use his/her bow, right? Well, I'm afraid not. As the companion doesn't 'feel' height differences she will imagine that the enemy is next to her and dash off to beat him up with a sword instead. This is annoying, but when one understands why it happens, and that it's not 'the companion's fault' it might be easier to live with it... I still think companions are worth it... I wouldn't go anywhere without Vilja and Neeshka. They brighten up my Cyrodiil life quite a lot. (And it IS fully possibly to tell Vilja to keep quiet ;)). Again... I think you should give Vilja ver 2 a try. I think CdCooley has done a wonderful job on improving her scripts, and I believe that the improved combat behaviour matches what so many of us have been wishing for. (although it might not work fully in all modder-made dungeons!) If there are no hiccups, this version should be available within less than a week. 1-2) Agreed... However, I think you'll find that CdCooley's work on Vilja will mean a huge improvement. 3) You probably haven't met this lady. Ver 1 include +1400 lines of fully voiced dialog, upcoming ver 2 +2800 entries. 4) Agreed. A team of companions are pretty useless together, as they work in 'layers' (see above) and won't be aware of each others actions (new version of Vilja is however also introducing interaction between the layers) 5) Combat instructions, you mean? 6) Hmm... have met very few companions who disagrees on having their gear changed. They gladly change if you give them something better to wear. 7) Agreed! So they never get any special weapons in my game :p 8) With the Companion resurrect mod, one can have them non-essential without having to reload game if they die.