Every single ghoul does poison damage?

[LucidLady]

I've been having this problem ever since about the start of July. Every single ghoul in my game is doing poison damage, and I have no idea why.

I've been trying to figure it out for four months, but have gotten nowhere. So here I am to ask for help.

 

I checked my download history for all the mods that I installed around the time that I noticed this problem, and two look suspicious.

One is the Vault 1080 mod that was uploaded to the Nexus here - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/46083

However, i've started new games without the mod installed - and all ghouls still do poison damage.

 

Another is the Children of Ug Qualtoth mod - https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/43527

I'm pretty sure this is the actual mod that started the problem for me.

However, i've started new games with the mod completely uninstalled (as I don't care for it), and all ghouls still do poison damage.

 

I've also selected ghouls via the Console, using the Better Console mod, and no mod involvement shows up.

Lastly, i've tried disabling every mod I installed within an entire month surrounding the first time I noticed the problem.

I've even tried looking at the Poison effect specifically to see if anything is referencing it and ghouls, but I couldn't find anything that looked wrong.

To be clear, i'm getting the whole range of vanilla ghouls. Gangrenous, basic Feral, Rotten, Charred. Only one of those is supposed to do poison damage, but in my game they all do.

 

This is annoying because I want to use the SKK Feral Replacement mod - but that mod doesn't work if you have any other mods which alter Ghouls in some way. You might think that this would make it easy to narrow down the source of the problem - but I loaded up every single mod I have installed with FO4Edit and searched through SKK's mod, and there were no conflicts to be found whatsoever. However, it made it easy to determine exactly when the problem first started, because the effect was immediate. It was Ug Qualtoth - zero ghouls spawned until I disabled SKK in-game. Everything was working just fine before that brand new playthrough with the Ug Qualtoth mod.

 

And yes, i've tried starting new games with the SKK mod uninstalled in case that mod somehow became the problem - done a complete re-install of it, and still the problem persists. My load order has also remained just about the same the entire time. I've added mods since then, but all of the mods I had installed before the problem first showed up are in the same order. I'm very meticulous with my Load Order.

 

I've loaded every single mod up in FO4Edit and tried to search for everything that references Ghouls, but I can't find any conflicts anywhere.

But i'm not very good with FO4Edit, so I could have missed something. That's kind of the main request i'm making with this thread - could someone please teach me how to look at everything to do with Ghouls in FO4Edit? What can I do to look for the cause of this?

Edited November 9, 2020 by LucidLady

[robotized]

Feral ghoul unarmed attacks(except for the glowing ones, they have their own race and unarmed attacks) do poison damage alongside the radiation damage. This is what I can conclude by looking at the Fallout4.esm. Check Weapon category, the form is called UnarmedFeralGhoul "Unarmed Feral Ghoul" [WEAP:000C2C2C]. Hold Ctrl and click on the Object Effect dtRadiationEnchFeralGhoul "Radiation Damage" [ENCH:000DB3B2]. This will open the Enchantment and will show you what magic effects it contains. One of the effects is crPoisonEffect "Damage Type Poison" [MGEF:001FE6A2]. Hold Ctrl again and click on that to open the magic effect. For this effect to work, there are two conditions:

 

Target.HasKeyword(crInfected [KYWD:00115A92]) = 1.000000 AND

Subject.HasPerk(ImmuneToPoison [PERK:000A2776]) = 0.000000 AND

 

If I understand this correctly, only NPCs that have the keyword crInfected [KYWD:00115A92] should do the poison damage. From the feral ghouls, these are:

 

encFeralGhoul05 "Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:0007ED08]

encFeralGhoul05AmbushLegendary "Legendary Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:002499DF]

encFeralGhoul05Legendary "Legendary Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:00165564]

encFeralGhoul06 "Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:0011669E]

encFeralGhoul06AmbushLegendary "Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:002499E0]

encFeralGhoul06Legendary "Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:00165565]

 

Maybe you have a mod which overrides one or more of the forms mentioned above - weapon, enchantment, magic effect. Or maybe a mod edits most of the feral ghouls' NPC forms and adds the keyword to ones that don't have it. The Non-Player Character records usually start with enc.

[LucidLady]

Feral ghoul unarmed attacks(except for the glowing ones, they have their own race and unarmed attacks) do poison damage alongside the radiation damage. This is what I can conclude by looking at the Fallout4.esm. Check Weapon category, the form is called UnarmedFeralGhoul "Unarmed Feral Ghoul" [WEAP:000C2C2C]. Hold Ctrl and click on the Object Effect dtRadiationEnchFeralGhoul "Radiation Damage" [ENCH:000DB3B2]. This will open the Enchantment and will show you what magic effects it contains. One of the effects is crPoisonEffect "Damage Type Poison" [MGEF:001FE6A2]. Hold Ctrl again and click on that to open the magic effect. For this effect to work, there are two conditions:

 

Target.HasKeyword(crInfected [KYWD:00115A92]) = 1.000000 AND

Subject.HasPerk(ImmuneToPoison [PERK:000A2776]) = 0.000000 AND

 

If I understand this correctly, only NPCs that have the keyword crInfected [KYWD:00115A92] should do the poison damage. From the feral ghouls, these are:

 

encFeralGhoul05 "Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:0007ED08]

encFeralGhoul05AmbushLegendary "Legendary Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:002499DF]

encFeralGhoul05Legendary "Legendary Withered Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:00165564]

encFeralGhoul06 "Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:0011669E]

encFeralGhoul06AmbushLegendary "Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:002499E0]

encFeralGhoul06Legendary "Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul" [NPC_:00165565]

 

Maybe you have a mod which overrides one or more of the forms mentioned above - weapon, enchantment, magic effect. Or maybe a mod edits most of the feral ghouls' NPC forms and adds the keyword to ones that don't have it. The Non-Player Character records usually start with enc.

Wow, thank you for the instructions. I didn't know about the cntrl-click function, that really helps.

Come to think of it, it seems more like all ghouls were doing Acid damage, rather than poison. It was the effect that coats the entire player's body in a moving greenish film.

I got to the "dtRadiationEnchFeralGhoul "Radiation Damage" [ENCH:000DB3B2]" part of your post, and it looks like the mod NPC Scaling added a BUNCH of additional entries there.

I just reset that to vanilla, and now ghouls are behaving normally in my game again! :o

 

Another case closed by robotized.

[robotized]

I also didn't know that at first, it's useful.

 

Most of the damaging magic effects in the game are just reducing health. Whats important in these magic effects are the keywords(used in determining who is immune and for various conditions) and the resist value(type of resistance to counter the effect). What you describe is a Hit Shader, but this one I think it's really for the poison damage of the Bloatfly and other creatures. The shader is not tied to any type of damage, so it can be re-used for different purposes.

 

That was quick. Glad to hear the issue is resolved. You are welcome.