Modded armor on followers

[Wolfey86]

Hey, I'm very new to modding, and made a working follower yesterday. Now I want to give her a set of armor from another mod to wear as a default outfit, but I can't seem to figure out how that's done through the CK. Been searching for info on this but can't seem to find anything that pertains to this particular process, so if anyone can help me with this, or point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful.

[David Brasher]

An .esp cannot see any content that is inside another .esp unless you follow special procedures. So there are several options you could use:

(1) Build your follower inside your copy of the armor mod, or else merge the two mods.

(2) Copy the armor into your follower mod by giving all the aspects of it new FormIDs by renaming them. That armor will then exist in both the original mod and your mod. (Note that you may not distribute mods such as the one in example 1 or example 2 unless the armor is a modders resource or the author gave you permission.)

(3) Use Wrye Bash to master your follower mod to the armor mod. This can be tricky, and one false click at a certain time and you have ruined your mod and need to start over. You use the .esmify function to temporarily make the armor mod an .esm while working on your follower mod in the CK. When play-testing, you have to .espify it again so it is not an .esm while you are playing. To make more edits to the mod, you have to .esmify it again. If you ever fail to .esmify and then save, you have ruined the mod and may as well delete it. (The connection to the master is lost and the armor will no longer be in your mod and your follower will be cold and immodest.) Be sure to make lots of backups of various ages so you can revert to one if you discover you have ruined your mod. (It may take you awhile to notice the mod is ruined.)

[Wolfey86]

I need more details since I still can't equip the armor in the Armor mod, I have no idea how to do the second one, and the esmify self doesn't work because you can't load two master files.

[David Brasher]

Skyrim is pretty awful to work with as far as clothing and armor on NPCs is concerned. It is not like Morrowind and Oblivion where actors more automatically equip the best clothes they have. In Skyrim you have to work with outfits. The armor NPCs will wear is their outfit, and they pay no attention to what is in their inventory. So you cannot just put the armor into inventory, you will need to create a custom outfit and change the outfit box.

 

To make things worse, I have heard tales that if you are using a vanilla Oblivion style custom follower, the game is sometimes set up to make them always use steel armor as their outfit regardless of what outfit you give them. I am not sure what the workaround people use is.

 

To copy items from one mod to another, you open them both in the CK at the same time, with the mod you are building set to be the active file. You change the name of an object. The computer will ask you if you whether you want to rename the object, or whether you want to create a new one. You respond that you want to create a new one

 

To get the CK working properly with multiple masters, you will need to add this line to the SkyrimEditor.ini under the (General) heading:

 

bAllowMultipleMasterFiles == 1

[sunishia]

@david

i'm having this exact same problem as a new modder, and i tried putting the "bAllowMultipleMasterFiles == 1" and it still does not work for me. i know this is a year old post, but if you could give anymore pointers that'd be great.

Edited August 15, 2013 by sunishia

[sunishia]

@david

i'm having this exact same problem as a new modder, and i tried putting the "bAllowMultipleMasterFiles == 1" and it still does not work for me. i know this is a year old post, but if you could give anymore pointers that'd be great.

 

oh and i tried "bAllowMultipleMasterFiles=1" as well, and that also didn't work, but i am currently trying again.

[ripple]

This can be accomplished much quicker using TES5Edit.

1) add the custom armour mod as a master to your follower plugin.

2) create a new outfit record composed of the armour pieces you want the follower NPC to wear.

3) assign the new outfit to the NPC.