Companions Arise!

[deadarmour]

Finally finished:

 

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/23129

 

2-300 hours worth of work (I am slow ;D)

 

 

 

Companions Arise!

 

Companions train, fight, eat and drink themselves merry!

 

The aim of my mod is to add some life to the Companions; to make it a richer and more immersive experience. To be what I always thought it should have been.

 

A lot of changes have been made to the way things were; read below to find out!

 

IMPORTANT!!! READ THE QUEST NOTES, ELSE YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO COMPLETE THE QUEST LINE.

 

REQUIRES NEW CHARACTER, WILL NOT FUNCTION PROPERLY ON OLD SAVES (Farkas' outfit, I think that's about it for issues unless you have already been to Jorrvaskr and joined up)

 

Companions

 

Followers:

Athis, Njada, Ria and Torvar are available as followers as soon as you join the Companions (made no sense before that no-one would follow you till you became Harbinger)

 

Added a dog to the Jorrvaskr who you can ask to follow, wait and dismiss (he is better at sneaking and a little bit more powerful than a regular mutt, as well as being essential)

 

 

Universal:

Gave all companions except Aela a Skyforged bow and arrows

Set to level with player up to 55 for companions and 60 for circle members

Companions train outside with the dummies on a rotor

Dinner time together in the Jorrvaskr (8pm)

Sleep in their own beds (11pm)

 

Specific:

Due to the many indescrepancies between vanilla equipment and skills possessed or dialogue specifically relating to certain weapons type which SHOULD have been weilded, the following changes have been made:

 

Kodlak: Gave Skyforged Warhammer, changed behaviour to hang around the Jorrvaskr hall instead of his bedroom

Skjor: Gave Companions Wolf Shield, gave fuller head of hair to make relationship with Aela more believable and make him look younger than Kodlak.

Farkas: Gave Companions Wolf Armour, fixed so that he wears it and keeps his weapon before and after werewolf transformation. Made him slightly taller and increased weight to 100.

Vilkas: Was fine

Aela: Gave Supple Draugr Bow

Torvar: Gave Skyforged Battle Axe, Banded iron armour, changed colour and style of hair

Njada: Gave Companions Shield, Skyforged Steel Axe, Scale Armour, gave her a blind eye and changed hair colour, made her a little heavier

Athis: Gave Skyforged Steel Short swords, made dual wield, Heavy/light armour mix (credit to PrivateEye for shortswords)

Ria: Gave Skyforged Greatsword, Iron armour

Eorlund: Gave Blacksmith clothes

 

Jorrvaskr

 

Alloted a specific bed for each companion

Added a little decoration to the barracks in basement and Kodlak's room

Added Safe chests in the barracks with the player's name

Added Jon Battleborn as a bard who plays during the Companions guild dinner time

Changed the music inside the Jorrvaskr to a tavern theme

Changed the position of dummies a little and added another archery target

Added a bench and another idle position in the courtyard

Added a backboard between the beams of the Jorrvaskr Porch (credit to Deandra of Uesp forums for modelling and help with getting it into the game)

Added a chandelier outside in the porch (as they train till 8pm, it tends to get a little dark)

 

Armour

 

Added:

Companions Wolf Shield

Changed:

Wolf armour is now equal to Steel Plate (only available once joinging the circle; given during quest)

Ancient Nord Armour is now equal to Ebony

 

Weapons

 

Added:

Skyforged Warhammer

Skyforged Mace

Skyforged Shortsword

Skyforged Bow

Skyforged Arrows

Fixed:

Skyforged Dagger upgradable

Nord Bow upgradable

Changed:

Wuuthrad is now more powerful, faster and has an enchant that *ACTUALLY* does damage to Elves (lightning)

 

Quests

 

More radient quests:

7 before Proving Honor

4 before the Silver hand

6 after Silver hand, then infinite (see below for details)

 

Proving Honour: Extended the spider area by about 2X, added in a bunch more of them so that it is really something to be scared of (Farkas you wimp).

 

The Silver Hand: Aela now gives wolf armour when the player is naked (it went weird when I archived, so now they can be found next to the log where you spawn) corpses and blood of fallen silver hand members litter the hallway down into the dungeon (show that Skjor has been there), added several more enemies in various locations.

Extended the time from 5 to 20 minutes for you to get back to the Jorrvaskr and tell them of Skjor's death (in order to hear their reactions).

 

Other: Made the giant at the start a bit beefier, so more likely to be alive long enough for a fight.

 

Eorlund now gives new options for free weapon dialogue (warhammer, mace, shortsword and bow)

 

QUEST NOTES:

 

After Skjor dies, you will get 7 radient quests from Aela. You will then be stuck getting radient quests from Farkas and Vilkas for infinity... when you get bored of this, type

player.setstage c04 10

into the console in order to start "Blood's Honor"

 

 

Issues(none major)

 

Athis and Njada:

 

The fist fight between Athis and Njada begins with weapons out, and goes on for a long, long time, but still works ;P You can just exit the room and come back and it'll end if you don't wanna hang around for 2 or 3 minutes.

 

Njada has a pretty obvious seam between her neck and body, I have tried to cover this up a little by giving her leather armour instead of scale.

 

Jon Battleborn:

 

If you are present when Jon enters the room to be a bard, he will not generally reach his destination, and will instead start miming with his instruments. This can be fixed by re-entering the room; he will then go to his play spot and start performing. After having made one request, Jon will again start miming instead of playing, but can again be fixed by re-entering the room. Both of these are sometimes fixed by waiting.

 

Jon sometimes plays for too long and keeps the companions awake after hours, this can be fixed by re-entering room (who would have guessed?)

 

After archiving, Jon sometimes doesn't stop playing at bedtime. This seems to be sporadic and differs from visit to visit.

 

Skyforged Shortsword:

 

Model in menu doesn't display correctly, but by all other accounts works fine

 

The Silver Hand:

 

If the player when turned into a werewolf runs around and attacks people, Aela may become aggressive after the blackout. She will not attack, but she will refuse to follow and be unresponsive. If you enter the dungeon and wait for a few hours, she will usually appear inside and return to normal (if she doesn't, wait longer)

 

See "quests" for information about Wolf armour

 

Farkas:

 

After becoming a werewolf, sometimes becomes naked through that part of Dustman's Cairn. Puts his armour back on when you go deeper inside the dungeon, through the door to Dustman's Crypt.

 

Eorlund:

 

Of the new free weapon options he gives, the mace gives an incorrect weapon (staff of chain lightning). The audio for one of the dialogue options doesn't work, but functions properly still (can't remember which one, either bow or shortsword)

 

Training, eating, sleeping:

 

This doesn't start until after you have given Aela her shield from Eorlund, Farkas has led you to your room and given you the task of punching someone's face in. After you hand it in, everything works (this is caused by quest script from vanilla forcing people into the basement during this time for introduction purposes).

 

What I would like to do

 

I have many ideas for quests that would improve the flow of the questline already written up (quests before the trial/initiation of Dustman's Cairn to introduce you to the lower members of the guild/hands-on tutorial on weapons and tactics, and before/after Skjor's death). I began creating them, but ran out of time as university begins in a few weeks.

Details can be found at:

http://forums.uesp.net/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=31909

 

Brawling whenever you want with appropriate members of the guild

 

Sparring in the courtyard during the day with other companions

 

Training on the dummies for slow skill gains

 

Training quests (eg perform a specific task given by Farkas such as running around an assault course to increase heavy armour skill)

 

An epic quest (difficult, multi-part) to obtain Ysgramor's armour after the main quest line.

 

Special thanks:

 

Deandra of the Uesp forums for her help and support in the making of this mod

 

Shortswords for Skyrim by PrivateEye (I used the steel short sword for Athis' weapons)

 

Darkfox127 and SpiralDynasty for tutorials on youtube

 

My mum for voicing Aela (haha)

[calfurius]

Cool mod

[deadarmour]

Cool mod

Thanks dude :)