NPC initiating dialog with player does not work

[ZenonSeth]

Hi, so I searched for roughly half an hour and saw two other people having a similar issue, but no solution in their threads.

 

In a lot of cases, when an NPC attempts to engage a conversation with me, nothing happens, and instead my character casts invisibility.

This is an issue because it breaks a few quests (e.g.: The Order of the Virtuous Blood where Seridur has to talk with me, but it cannot trigger at all, maybe since he's a vampire)

 

However, it's stranger than that:

 

1. This doesn't seem to happen every time, I can't find a way to test it, but it may be the NPC has to have some sort of hostile intentions (maybe high hostility or something) - because I went through all the main questline, with Martin initiating conversation with me, just fine.
2. Removing all invisibility spells does not fix it. When I remove them, the character does not cast them, however NPCs (e.g. guards arresting you) still will not initiate dialog.
3. This isn't simply due to a mod being enabled (though it may be some mod effect). I reloaded an old save from near the game start with the exact same mods I have now, and a guard trying to arrest me initiated the conversation with me perfectly fine. Feels like maybe some sort of event happened in game that caused this.
4. Two big mods that modify gameplay I have are Ultimate Leveling and Supreme Magicka, I have tried disabling both, and it did not fix the issue. I have also tried disabling the Steve - Thieves Guils HQ mod or the Brotherhood Renewed mod, but neither fixed the issue. (Full mod list below)

 

Has anyone else encountered this or has any idea how to help me?

 

Here is my load order:

 

Oblivion.esm

Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items Mod.esm

Better Cities Resources.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp

Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp

UOP Vampire Aging & Face Fix.esp

DLCShiveringIsles.esp

Francesco's Creatures and Items Resources.esp

Better Cities .esp

Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp

DLCHorseArmor.esp

DLCHorseArmor - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCOrrery.esp

DLCOrrery - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCVileLair.esp

DLCVileLair - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCMehrunesRazor.esp

DLCMehrunesRazor - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCSpellTomes.esp

DLCSpellTomes - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCThievesDen.esp

DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch.esp

DLCThievesDen - Unofficial Patch - SSSB.esp

DLCBattlehornCastle.esp

DLCBattlehornCastle - Unofficial Patch.esp

HrmnsOblivionScriptOptimizationv1.0.esp

DLCFrostcrag.esp

DLCFrostcrag - Unofficial Patch.esp

Knights.esp

Knights - Unofficial Patch.esp

Ultimate Leveling.esp

StolenItemOwnership.esp

Spell Delete And Item Remove.esp

Oblivion Scaling Unclusterf*#@ed.esp

Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp

SupremeMagicka.esp

SM_NoSpellLights.esp

Steve - Thieves Guils HQ.esp

Rooftop Rewards cleaned.esp

Immersive Weapons.esp

BrotherhoodRenewed.esp

DS Storage Sacks.esp

Is It Safe.esp

SpellEnchantAltars.esp

EnchantmentMastery.esp

SimpleTalosPlazaHomeBase.esp

TimeEnough.esp

Francesco's Optional Leveled Arena.esp

Punk Stevo - Brutal Underground.esp

Barber Mod.esp

Smarter Mercantile Leveling - Multi.esp

Map Marker Overhaul.esp

Waterfront Shack Overhaul.esp

GB_Oblivion Tournament.esp

Better Water-1830.esp

More Effective Enchantments.esp

Enchantment Splitter.esp

Enchantment Splitter - Frostcrag.esp

LightSpellWhiteDimmer.esp

Francesco's Optional Dungeon Chest Locks.esp

Francesco's Optional Dungeon Chest Loot.esp

Moist - Gate Room.esp

Francesco's Optional House Chest Loot.esp

Francesco's Optional Leveled Guards.esp

Francesco's Optional Vendor Tweaks.esp

Regrowing Nirnroot - Dissappear Reappear.esp

Enemy Weapons dont drop.esp

BetterMenuControls.esp

Custom Autosave.esp

LINK.esp

Balanced Creatures - DLC.esp

Balanced Creatures.esp

Days&Months.esp

Skill Perk Descriptions.esp

SimpleHUDClock.esp

Almost Weightless Ingredients SI.esp

Almost Weightless Ingredients VL.esp

Almost Weightless Ingredients.esp

EVE_KnightsoftheNine.esp

Dynamic Map.esp

Weightless Repair Hammers-7731.esp

Torch Hotkey.esp

ArrowsWeightNothing.esp

ArrowsWeightNothingSE.esp

Dungeon Actors Have Torches 1.6 CT.esp

Dungeon Actors Have Torches 1.6 DT.esp

P1DkeyChain.esp

Stolen Goods Unlock Limited-2628.esp

EVE_StockEquipmentReplacer.esp

Kart Hair Replace v01.esp

Cazy Hairs.esp

EVE_ShiveringIslesEasterEggs.esp

Real Lava v1.2.esp

Countess.esp

FasterArrows175.esp

Quest Award Leveling - Finger of the Mountain.esp

Quest Award Leveling.esp

nu_dwarven_f_cuirass.esp

sr_super_hotkeys.esp

Map Marker Overhaul - SI additions.esp

SM_ShiveringIsles.esp

Better Cities Full.esp

Better Cities Chorrol - Knights of the Nine.esp

Better Imperial City.esp

Better Imperial City FPS Patch.esp

Bashed Patch, 0.esp

Edited January 20, 2021 by ZenonSeth

[ZenonSeth]

The worst part is, here's one of the other threads about this issue, at least it sounds very, very similar: https://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/97062-troublesome-bug-involving-invisibility-spell/

 

The modlist that user posted compared to the mods I have, have these in common: (used a tool to find common ones):

 

Oblivion.esm
HrmnsOblivionScriptOptimizationv1.0.esp
Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp
DLCShiveringIsles.esp
DLCHorseArmor.esp
DLCOrrery.esp
DLCVileLair.esp
DLCMehrunesRazor.esp
DLCSpellTomes.esp
DLCThievesDen.esp
DLCFrostcrag.esp
Knights.esp
GB_Oblivion Tournament.esp
Bashed Patch, 0.esp

obviously HrmnsOblivionScriptOptimizationv1.0 and GB_Oblivion Tournament are the main suspects, however i disabled both and the bug still happens :sad:

Further, a save I have from just a couple of days ago does NOT have this issue. I've done a bunch of stuff since then, and I don't know what is causing this, so I really don't want ot have to replay all those quests..

EDIT: I'm just going to keep updating with my findings.

I narrowed it down to when it first happened. I believe it happened with the Order of the Virtuous blood, when I initially talked to Seridur, he said "follow me" and never moved. So originally, to solve this, I forced the quest to progress with console commands. From then on I remember that none of the people could initiate conversation, e.g. Roland (the suspect in that quest) would also not talk to me.

So I'm not sure if this is a game bug, or a mod bug, or a combination of some game/mod interaction that breaks the quest and sets the flag.

But replaying that quest, instead of using console commands i simply used the Wait function, and eventually Seridur ended up in the right place (his basement) whereupon he was able to initiate conversation with me. Then Roland was also able to initiate conversation with me when i visited him in his cabin. I'm not sure if this is the root cause of this, but I will try to replay all the quests I did between those two saves, and hopefully narrow it down more. It's a really strange bug.

Edited January 20, 2021 by ZenonSeth