Help request - modding "Proving Honor" quest

[tmanthewhite]

Greetings!

 

I have next to no experience using the creation kit (of any TES game) to modify quests, although I've manged to edit items/characters in the past. Here's the problem I'm having: I'm making an overhaul that makes the level of many NPC's independent of the level of the player, combined with some bugfixes. One character that really needs some modding is Farkas, as you all probably know. Modifying the characters was no problem whatsoever (used the NPC editor & TESVsnip) and I decided to give Farkas a Steel Plate Armor and a Skyforge Steel Battleaxe instead of his default gear in addition to changing his class. Everything works great, but now I'm doing the "Proving Honor" quest for the companions (the one where you trap yourself, and Farkas changes into a Werewolf to kill a bunch of ambushing Silver Hand people). After transforming back, Farkas was suddenly carrying an iron greatsword (dropped his weapon on the floor) and he now wears steel armor. I know this is normal for the quest, but it's something that has always bugged me anyway, so I decided to see if I could fix it.

 

My first idea was to simply give Farkas a second set of Steel Plate and a second weapon in his inventory at spawn, so that he would default to this superior equipment when he turned back in the quest. A bit crude, but I figured it would work well enough. Strangely enough, this doesn't work... He'll use the better weapon alright, yet he keeps wearing the steel armor, even though he still has a set of Steel Plate in his inventory (checked with the console). Strange thing is though, that if I give him another set of Steel Plate with the console he actually will equip it. Stranger still is that when I use the command "removeallitems" post-transformation, his inventory will be cleared (confirmed with console, and he was standing around in his underwear), but as soon as I add any item on him (weapon _or_ armor) after I deleted his entire inventory, he equips a complete set of Steel Armor out of nowhere again. Disable/enable and respawn also couldn't fix this anymore.

 

Appearantly this weirdness is caused by the quest, because these things never happen in a save I made before he transforms and turns back. So I just installed the editor, watched introductions to it on youtube and started messing with it to fix this quest. Turns out I really have no idea what I'm doing though. Using the tried and true method of deliberately breaking things and observing what happens I managesd to learn a few things however:

 

- I deleted a line in some script somewhere, and with that I managed to prevent him from dropping his weapon. This by itself worked fine, and caused no trouble for the progression of the quest at all.

 

- I found two entries in the script section describing Farkas' standard weapon and armor, and they were set on "Iron Greatsword" and "Steel Armor". Figuring all I needed to do was to change these to Skyforge Battleaxe and Steel Plate and I could solve the problem. Turns out I was wrong though. Doesn't seem to have any effect changing those things at all: he still equips an iron greatsword and a randomized steel armor. Now, my problem is I don't have any saves from before I started the quest, so I can't see if it works if you load the mod and then start the quest...

 

- Another thing I learned is that by deleting a line in script (I think) '000A6F8D' I simultaneously prevented Farkas from changing back to human form (which is bad), but I also prevented his inventory from being reset (checked with the console). He talked to me normally and progressed the quest fine though. So it seems I found the script I need to edit.

 

Thing is, I haven't got a bloody clue how I do that. And now I'm hoping one of you smart buggers can help me out so that we can finally fix a well known and rather annoying bug.

 

Thanks in advance,

 

T.

[tmanthewhite]

Well, Fixed it.

 

After messing around with the editor for an evening, I managed to find out how to go about this scripting buisness. Turns out it was more intuitive than I thought. Needed to do nothing but edit the quest script file, which could be done in the editor easily. (Almost exclusively needed to remove lines instead of typing new lines.)

 

This quest was a mess though, even someone with no previous experience in scripting like me could tell. The whole thing struck me as a work-in-progress that was hastily finished last minute. Apparantly it was originally intended that either Farkas or Aela could accompany you, and this resulted in a lot of extra code that confused me at first. Also, it handled the inventory at tansformation in a really strange roundabout way, which didn't help my understanding either. It first added a script that would actively drop Farkas' (or Aela's...) weapons on the floor, transform them, make them switch the lever, turn them back, erase their entire inventory, reset their standard outfit (instead of just adding it, and also in Aela's case a diffent armor than she normally has...) which caused it to undo any possible previous mod, and give Farkas an Iron Greatsword instead of Skyforge Steel (of which there was now still a copy on the floor. Aelas would have gotten a normal steel dagger). Madness, I tell ya. It was relatively simple to delete all this mess, which makes Farkas not drop his weapon on the floor (simply unequips it during transformation now) and not reset his outfit, which solved that. I then added some lines that remove the steel plate armor in his inventory (he had because of my mod) and immediately add them back, so that he would equip them and not be naked. Result is that his inventory is identical to what he had before transformation.

 

T.

[tmanthewhite]

Well, Fixed it.

 

After messing around with the editor for an evening, I managed to find out how to go about this scripting buisness. Turns out it was more intuitive than I thought. Needed to do nothing but edit the quest script file, which could be done in the editor easily. (Almost exclusively needed to remove lines instead of typing new lines.)

 

This quest was a mess though, even someone with no previous experience in scripting like me could tell. The whole thing struck me as a work-in-progress that was hastily finished last minute. Apparantly it was originally intended that either Farkas or Aela could accompany you, and this resulted in a lot of extra code that confused me at first. Also, it handled the inventory at tansformation in a really strange roundabout way, which didn't help my understanding either. It first added a script that would actively drop Farkas' (or Aela's...) weapons on the floor, transform them, make them switch the lever, turn them back, erase their entire inventory, reset their standard outfit (instead of just adding it, and also in Aela's case a diffent armor than she normally has...) which caused it to undo any possible previous mod, and give Farkas an Iron Greatsword instead of Skyforge Steel (of which there was now still a copy on the floor. Aelas would have gotten a normal steel dagger). Madness, I tell ya. It was relatively simple to delete all this mess, which makes Farkas not drop his weapon on the floor (simply unequips it during transformation now) and not reset his outfit, which solved that. I then added some lines that remove the steel plate armor in his inventory (he had because of my mod) and immediately add them back, so that he would equip them and not be naked. Result is that his inventory is identical to what he had before transformation.

 

T.

[ganred]

Could you tell me what you did to solve this problem? I got the same issue and can't find a way to work around it. After their first transformation neither Farkas nor Aela use the outfits i gave them in the CK.