General Troubleshooting/FAQ

Is this Lore-Friendly?
How many angels can sit on the head of a pin? The second question is no easier than the first. Different people interpret what is lore-friendly in different ways. There is argument about the authenticity of some of the Creation Club output for example. I don't think there is anything about this mod that is intrinsically lore unfriendly. It is a tool and as such can be used to do things that are clearly against lore, such as in combination with an alternative start mod, allowing you to play as other than the Dragonborn for example.

You say you support alternative gameplay but your story forces me to be the Dragonborn.
No, the game does that not me. The Dragonborn is a legendary hero. That does not have to be you. It is hardly surprising that the Dragonborn would be of interest to Herma Mora. By your inadvertant action in reading the book you have scattered objects that are of significance to the Dragonborn, perhaps now, perhaps in the future, but that does not automatically mean that they relate to you. You may just be a town merchant who stumbled across the chest, however knowing what you have done, you feel responsibility for fixing the mistake and perhaps ultimately supplying these artifacts to the Dragonborn (if you can find them)

Problem - The Lost Artifacts quest will not start.
This mod does use a couple of scripts, though they are not that weighty, but if your game is already bogged down by other scripts running, they may take a while to activate. It is also a good idea to wait a few seconds after visible feedback has finished before starting another script (for example when choosing Control options and then reading a book, or reading one book after another).

Problem - My map does not show the place the artifact is.
That means it is in an alternative worldspace such as Solstheim, or perhaps one added by a mod such as Bruma.

Problem - An item is not recognized by a house mod.
These are legitimate copies of the appropriate objects (usually the lowest level possible for levelled weapons). However they are not the quest objects and I cannot guarantee that any particular house mod will recognize it. Since you did not obtain them through the normal route you may fail a check that a mod author has put on, for completion of a particular quest for example.

This mod sends me to some odd places. Can you prevent this?
Not easily. It uses official lists and anomalies upon them are largely the fault of Bethesda coders not myself. What they choose to call a house may not match your view for example. There are also undeniably errors. For example I found in Markarth an apparently unreachable chest floating beyond a building that is labelled as the storage place rather than the one inside it. I apologize if things like this occur. Notify me and I will compile a list of my own that assignments can be checked against to avoid this occuring in a future edition of the mod.

I have found all the artifacts I ever want to. How can I permanently shutdown the quest?
Type setstage QFL_LOST_ARTIFACTS_MAIN 200 into the console. At some point I will add this to the menu.

Some of these objects are very obscure. Why are they here?
Someone may want to display the item in their house if they have a mod like Jagonz Positioner. Even though some items like Olava's token are supposed to be disposed of, there are house mods that have a place for them.

This means there is a room with all the important items in game? Yay! Off I go -
This is why we cannot have nice things. A knife is a tool. It can be used to cut, to carve or to stab and that is a decision you make. This is not a cheat mod, it is a way to provide alternative gameplay that some people will find more consistent with their characters. Yes you can go empty all the chests and then you have deprived yourself of hundreds of hours of gameplay but you really can do it if you wish. Should you not have the self control to avoid doing this, you have problems well beyond the abilities of this mod author to fix.

Will you add an object to this mod for me?
I have provided an ingame way for you to customize the lists, via adding and removing items from the chests. That said, if I have forgotten anything that should obviously belong on a list, I am willing to add it if you can provide the creation kit name (ID) for the item (not ref/base id). I have to find and add these items to chests by hand in the creation kit and it can take a long time to find them due to Bethesda having very little consistency in its naming schemes. To give you an idea of the issues I face, most of the dragon claws are named after the place they are found, such as dunDeadMensRubyDragonClaw. However the Amethyst halves are named after the DLC and quest they are found in, ie DLC2SV01HalfClawLeft and for reasons that are known only to someone at Bethesda, the sapphire claw is FFI01Claw. So if you want an object added you can do the research. I also have to say that I made a mistake in choosing too small a location for the chests to be based at. So there is limited room for chests right now. It is possible I may extend it in future but manipulating room pieces is the bit of the Creation Kit I find hardest, so this is not a task I am going to be rushing to.

This is all too complex. Can you add some in game instructions?
I did intend to. My first book object corrupted which I found disheartening as I had to redo a lot of work. I then decided to make the book used to control the mod, rather than the original series of rings which accomplished the same functions in a much less structured way. You might think making a book open for the user through a menu is simple but I know only one mod that accomplishes it and hours of searching only brought up one solution, for Fallout4, which did not work for me. So the Control Book is currently used just for the menu and has no actual text. Who knows that may change in a future revision.

Will you convert this to LE?
I had to make a difficult decision about my SSD when there was not enough space to install both versions of Skyrim. So I do not have LE and cannot convert to it. If someone else wants to do it, I am prepared to talk to them.

Will you make this an ESL/ESP(FE)?
It is something I am willing to look at. Right now there is not much advantage to me since Wyre Bash still only recognizes 254 maximum files and Mator Smash seemed nowhere near ready for mainstream last time I looked at it. I also wonder about the effect of all these mods occupying Master positions in the load order. Right now I don't know enough about it but am willing to investigate in future.

Could you limit this mod to just Skyrim locations?
Not easily. Nothing readily identifies a place in Skyrim from any other location. A mod like Quests Are In Skyrim has to compile its own list of Skyrim locations and compare to that, which is a lot of work, both research and data entry. So I do not see my doing that anytime soon.

Can I reuse your scripts?
I would advise you not to. I still have a lot to learn so I am sure they are full of issues. Come talk to me though if you really want anything from the mod.

I found a bug!
Sorry. I have spent many hours testing this mod but I know how things are supposed to work which means I may miss things. It is also possible I made a last minute mistake like commenting out a vital line of code, rather than a debug message. Notify me of the bug and I will get to fixing it as fast as I can.

Why is this mod called Questing Freedom: Lost Artifacts?
To take those as separate segments. It is the first in my planned Questing Freedom mods which are intended to support alternative forms of gameplay in the same modular way.

I could have called it something like Lost Treasures but some of these items are far from treasures. As an archaeologist knows though, the significance of an item is separate from its material worth. The Arentino heirloom is an unremarkable silver plate, perhaps even just-silver plated for all we know, but in combination with the events of the civil war, it has the potential to topple an Empire. Artifacts is a neutral term used to describe all the portable items found on an archaeological site so it seemed appropriate to use here.

What are your plans for this mod?
Fix any bugs. Add one more type of gameplay that allows artifacts to be placed on people rather than in chests thus supporting the "Assassin" archetype of gameplay.