Vanilla follower troubleshooting

[pgir001]

1st off, I have to admit, I've never done anything like this before. I didn't really think this was that ambitious, but I am really struggling to get this to work. I've been following as many tutorials on force greets, packages and alias references as I can find,but what I am trying to do, looks really messed up by Bethesda. Meaning, it's very clear, how they implemented it was not their original intent.

The mod I want to create is intended to change how the player 1st encounters Lydia. I wanted to have a sort of progression.

 

My thought was to drop her in Dragonsreach in MQ102 with a hold marker similar to Irileth's having her actually there participating in the discussion about Helgen. As a housecarl, she should be there. When the player hit's the trigger at the base of the stairs, I would have her move to the player at the same time irileth does and she'd say "You're not supposed to be here!" when Irileth says What's the meaning of this" Let the scene play out normally from there. And then when the player is sent to the Barrow, I was going to have Balgruuf say something like "And take Lydia" and she'd be a temp follower like the way the companions do it. And once the dragon was killed at the tower, I could have her say something like "Head up, I'm right behind you" and then disable her there, and let MQ104 just pick up normally from there as if she'd just getting back at that point.

 

However, Looking at her vanilla spawn, she's in a function in the script attached to MQ104. Where she is enabled there and moves to her marker which is also enabled in that same function. So I thought that by assigning her at a different marker for MQ102, it shouldn't be a problem, and yet, the second she's enabled, she heads right to that marker and then turns to force greet the player with her housecarl dialog. But the player isn't a thane yet. I found that dialog isn't even tied to MQ104, but the house Purchase quest. I guess Bethesda initially planned to have her waiting in Breezehome. I put a condition on her force greet package requiring MQ104:160 to be completed. Now she won't even appear in Dragon's reach where I dropped her. So, clearly, her markers and packages are all active before the function in MQ104 triggers them. What's worse, and I have no clue about this, When I went back to test her, I did it from my discussion with Alvor in Riverwood, and I saw Whiterun guards all patrolling Riverwood. I didn't touch their markers or packages, but somehow they must be tied to Lydia.

 

 

Does anyone have any familiarity with this?

Edited June 8, 2018 by pgir001

[Niborino9409]

I tried to mess with Lydia too but I ended up not bothering. Wanted to have my follower appear alongside her but eventually gave it up. Too much work for little reward :dry: :sweat:

[pgir001]

I tried to mess with Lydia too but I ended up not bothering. Wanted to have my follower appear alongside her but eventually gave it up. Too much work for little reward :dry: :sweat:

Yeah, I see that. It looks like she has links to things elsewhere and I can't find them. I hate the idea of giving up on Lydia's intro. I'll spend a little more time digging in CK for her references, but I've been at this a week already and have zero to show for it.