SSE Just making sure i did this right

[SuperDuperRon]

Hi! I created a mod and just wanted the community's opinion on if i did this right. My goal was to either lower or completely stop the chance of running into the Vampire Traveler that randomly appears when entering a town. So far it seems to be working just fine but I would like to share it with the community and figured i should ask if how i did it was okay.

 

I found the file with the ID "DLC1RadiantDisguisedVampireLordChance" (with the "TAR") symbol, opened it up and changed the value from 25 to 0.

 

Is that fine? Also, just curious, what does that "TAR" symbol stand for?

 

Thanks!

[maxarturo]

If it is for personal use, then YES, you did right.

If it is for a mod, then NO !

This kind of direct intervention is considered (and it is) a "Dirty Edit".

The TAR stands for... wait.... s***! is way too late and my brain is shuting down.... sorry, i'll come back to this later.

[cumbrianlad]

Hey.

 

I don't see the problem that Maxarturo has mentioned, or at least I don't understand it. Maybe we'll both learn here. maxarturo is generally right. Personally, I've never gone near files like this, but then again, I'm really precious about editing vanilla files. The reason? It edits the vanila game and unless you know all of what it effects, leave it well alone... that's my reasoning.

 

That said, I've edited 'death items' without a second thought, but then I've checked it out and found out what it affected before I did it.

 

Give me a bit of time and I'll see what I can dig up about 'DLC1RadiantDisguisedVampireLordChance'.

 

In the mean time, I've just taken delivery of a new NAD amp. The speakers are waiting. Linkin Park seems good.

[SuperDuperRon]

Thank you both for your replies. After some more playtime the Traveler appeared again. So what i edited didn't seem to stop him. I have since tried adjusting the value some more, but he still seems to pop up from time to time. If there is a different way of achieving the goal I'd be happy to learn it. There are several other files in creation kit that have "DLC1RadiantDisguisedVampireLord" in the name.

 

From what you were saying, maybe i could create a file that stops him from spawning. As i was looking for information before i remember reading about a file in the game that stops the dragons from randomly appearing (MQ106TurnOffRandomDragons). Maybe that could work as a template?

 

Just to reiterate, I'm trying to stop the "Traveler" Vampire that randomly spawns when entering a town.

 

This guy... https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Traveler

 

UPDATE: I decided to try and tinker around to see if i can make some sort of difference. I believe i have now. In CK among those "disguised vampire" files i edited on marked "DLC1RadiantDisguisedVampireLordSpawner". The format type is "QUST". I went to the "Quest Alias" tab, there i edited the "location" alias. I switched it from "find matching location" to "specific location". I picked a small cave i seldom visit, Graywinter watch. Atm it seems to have stopped the traveler from showing up.

 

I am still completely open to other options though. If i can find a good and safe option I'd like to share with the community. I'd like to learn a little more about what i'm doing. I am curious to know for sure what i edited. My guess was that him spawning can now only happen if i travel to that cave. Any help and advice is always appreciated. :)

[cumbrianlad]

I've looked at this and all I can see is that the form is a global variable set to 25, as you say.

 

From what I can see of the use info, it is only used in the quest 'DLC1RadiantDisguisedVampireLordSpawner'. The only use I could find is in the story manager under 'change location event' for this one quest. It is used as one of the conditions for the quest to trigger: 'GetrandomPercent' <= the value of that global. The other conditions that need to be met are that the player is a member of the Dawnguard, Harkon is still alive, the time must be between 10pm and 4am and the aliases in the quest must be able to be filled when the player fast travels to any cell with the Location type 'LocTypeHabitation'.

 

So if everything else holds true, there is a 25% chance of a disguised vampire spawning, when you arrive.

 

By setting it to 0 there's no chance. Set it to 10 and there's a 10 percent chance, etc.

 

I can't see anything else that it affects, so it should be safe enough to do and will accomplish what you want. I'd test it for a good long time, though, just in case these attacks are tied to anything else with the Dawnguard. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything but better safe than sorry... I could have missed something.

 

Maybe Maxarturo can shed more light on it.

[SuperDuperRon]

Thank for your help! I was wondering exactly what the 25 stood for, being the % chance of it happening was my guess. Its odd because the first time i tried to adjust it I set it to 0, which seemed to work for a while but eventually the traveler appeared again. Just to test it some more I tried setting the value to 1 and 100, just to see if it made any change in how often he shows up. It didn't really seem to change anything though. Perhaps i did something incorrectly or maybe I just didn't test thoroughly enough.

 

I had never heard of the Story Manager before, so thank you for teaching me. I knew there had to be a place that had the conditions needed for him to spawn, i was just looking in all the wrong places lol. So i decided to jump into the story mangager. Once i had more of a grasp on it, I decided to restart the mod over from scratch. I added two more node conditions, the player must have stamina and magicka at 9,999 points. I still changed that global variable from 25 to 0, just for good measure.

 

I'll have to thoroughly test this, if it works out fine I'll end up uploading it. Thank you both for you help!

[cumbrianlad]

I'm not certain how the game will treat global variables. According to Arthmoor changes made to them by script get baked into your save. It could be that this variable is being reset somewhere else. Either way, the save you are testing on should never have seen your mod.

 

I have a set of saves from level 1 up to level 60 in a separate directory from the regular SSE save directory. To test, I copy and paste one of these into the SSE save directory and use that. I'll do a bit more digging to see if I can see any script that may be re-setting this variable. If you are using a save that hasn't seen your mod, you can rule that out of the problem.