Will quest items slow the game down?

[kubikiri]

Hello everyone.

 

I recently marked some npcs as quest items in order to keep them always in the game world(i.e. will not disappear even if they stay in some respawn-able cells), but today when I'm test playing the game after a quite long modding period(about one month), I feel the game seem is not as smooth as before(the game fps drops a lot, though I have to admit that with so many mods activated my oblivion game never gets very smooth).

 

I don't know if this is caused by those newly added quest items in the game? Or is it just some kind of god-knows-why random slow-down caused by the game engine?(The game speed returned to basically normal state after I restarted it.)

 

Thanks, and please forgive my bad English.

Edited December 25, 2012 by kubikiri

[Striker879]

I can't really say for certain that having an NPC marked as a quest item will affect game speed (that's a trick that most partner/companion mods use so that the companion isn't reset on exit from Oblivion planes by the way). What I wonder is if you've considered just setting the NPCs to 'essential' (unkillable) instead of quest item. When set as a quest item their bodies won't disappear from the game world when they die, but if they're off somewhere in the wilderness they could be hard to locate if you don't have their refID handy. If they're essential they'll just resume their current AI package when they recover (usually the bandit etc. will have moved off).

 

If you're using the console to set them as a quest item then you've already dealt with getting the NPC's baseID (not such a problem for vanilla NPCs but a bit more complicated for mod added NPCs). The console command to set an NPC to essential is 'setessential <baseID> 1' (without the quote marks or brackets, the number one sets them essential or using the number zero will make an essential NPC not essential). If you're using the Construction Set then it's a simple tick next to 'Essential'.

[kubikiri]

Hello Striker879, thank you for your reply!

 

Actually I checked them as essential before, then unchecked the "essential" and checked the "quest item" instead. So they can die, but wont disappear after they died. I did this in case they wander in to a random dungeon, die there and be erased from the game world permanently. They always have respawn flag checked, so they'll eventually recover.

 

However I now decided to overhaul all the npc mods I've installed. This time I'll give them smaller leveling range based on their races and classes, uncheck essential and quest item flag, let them live on their own in the game world.

 

Thank you again!

Edited December 26, 2012 by kubikiri