Lydia: Redefined - The Affinity System
Updated: Feb 9, 2022

What Is The Affinity System?

The affinity system, in a nutshell, is a means for Lydia to measure your deeds and how that influences her feelings towards you. Much like in Fallout 4, certain actions have a positive effect and others, not so much. As you increase or decrease in standing, based on your good or bad deeds, her responses to you will change to reflect her current feelings about you as a person. The whole purpose of the affinity system is to slowly work towards earning her hand in marriage, rather than being able to marry her within seconds of first meeting her.

What If I Play An Evil Character?

Then the Affinity System is not for you. At all. If you look at Lydia, she is a sheild-maiden for a Jarl of Skyrim. A stalwart of justice, order, law and good. A reflection of the Jarl's beliefs. To be awarded to a Thane, as a Housecarl, sworn to die if needed, to protect them, she would be someone highly placed within the Hold, someone the Jarl trusted above all others to remain true to her duties and responsibilities. She would not be evil, by any measure. And so, no, the Affinity System would not be for you, as I coded it to reflect the reality of who the character is, not who this or that player wants to pretend she is.

How Long Does It Take To Marry Lydia Now?

That depends. There are three different accumulation methods with the Affinity System. Default gains should take, on average, about 40 real-world gaming hours, if you are playing the actual game normally. There is also Double Gains, which makes you accumulate POSITIVE gains at twice the speed, which would reduce the time it takes to around 20 hours. Last, there is Half Gains, which obviously makes the time it takes to marry her, double, upwards of 80 real-world gaming hours.

How Will I Know Where She Stands?

She will tell you. Everytime you shift from one affinity level to the next, she will tell you that she wants to speak to you for a moment and a new dialogue entry will appear in her feed. You need simply click on it, listen to what she has to say (to it's completion) and then you will shift to the next level. At certain points, it will be more interactive and she will ask for your thoughts on what she's said. And, when she is ready for marriage, she will let YOU know that it's time.

But beware! Just as you can increase in affinity rank, so too can you slide downwards into the preceeding level, though she will not talk to you about that unless you slip into the negative end of the spectrum and enter into what she finds as distasteful, viewing you with contempt and disdain.

No, this is not the meek Lydia you remember. She can be QUITE scathing in her appraisals of you.

Are Her Likes And Dislikes Static?

No. Most of her affinity bumps are weighted. Which is to say, positive affinity gains have diminishing returns, while conversely, negative hits have more impact the more you do them. I mean, let's face facts, when someone kills their first dragon in front of you, for example, its impressive as all f@#k. But by the time they kill their twentieth dragon, you'd be yawning. You'd still like it, but it wouldn't impress you as much. Same thing applies here. The more of a kind of good thing you do, the less it impresses her. The more crappy things you do, the more pissed off it makes her.

When She's Ready For Marriage, What Happens?

After she speaks to you and you decide if you wish to marry her or not, the mod will set all applicable game variables as if you had spoken to Maramel about weddings, bought an Amulet of Mara and spoken to Lydia while wearing it. Upon conclusion of her dialogue, you will be prompted to go speak to Maramel to book the wedding for the day after, just like in the normal game.

What Happens Once We're Married?

At that point, the Affinity System has no more use, so it shut itself down and no longer processes events in a fashion that alters your standing with your new wife. It will still say she likes this or that, but her position will not alter  - to simulate the fact that she has your back in all things, no matter what it is. And besides, creating systems to unspool that and make her divorce you would be a complete pain in the ass. Not to mention, I am making this mod for me and sharing it with y'all, and I don't plan to lose my gal, so... its a useless make-work project, with high overhead, for nothing.

But just because the Affinity System shuts down, doesn't mean she just turns back into "normal Lydia". With the spousal autonomy subsystem activated, she will take on a new life when entering and exiting a player owned home. So, there's that.

Thats All Fine And Good, But What Does She Like and Dislike?

Well.. think about WHO and WHAT she is for a moment and then ask yourself what it is someone like Lydia would view positively and what she would look down upon. I won't tell you what they are. Its for you to discover, just as you would a real-life partner. What I will say is that she likes more than she hates. But what she hates, she REALLY hates and the penalties for those things are much more affinity altering than any of the positive things.

Does The Affinity System Interact With Other Mods?

Great question! Yes, yes it does. It is able to process hugs from I'm Glad You're Here and it is also able to intercept Flower Girls events, specifically if you install the optional ESPfe file, which disables Lydia as a target for all Seduction based events and will only allow her for, ummm, art expression, once you reach married status with her. The Affinity System can take these events, from both of those mods, when married, so Lydia knows how long its been since you showed love, interest, intimacy with her. Too much time between events and she will gently remind you that she is a woman with wants and needs too.

Can I Permanently Lose Lydia If I Use The Affinity System?

Again, think about who she is and why she was chosen to be your sword and shield. While you may lose all chances of a relationship with her, and that can happen if you're a real dirt turtle, she will never actually lock off from being a travelling companion(*). She will just forever be locked into the disposition of loathing you via the Affinity System and her commentary to you will constantly reflect that. So yes, you can lose her respect and friendship, but you will (mostly) always still have your sword and shield.

(*) Mostly, because there is a special circumstance she will not tolerate, one very specific thing. Odds of it ever happening are HIGHLY on the side of 1 in 10000, so its not really anything to worry about AND more importantly, if you are the (un)lucky one, you get a warning the first time and a HUGE popup with plain text telling you that a repeat offense will result in a complete loss of Lydia. And it is irrecoverable. But again, the odds of it happening are SO incredibly slim, its not even worth worrying about (plus, as said, you get a warning, so you will know what not to do in the future).

Does It Change Anything About The Follower System?

Nope. Lydia Redefined will always remain a parallel control system. But that said, the affinity system has unique functions that require you to use a NEW menu for recruiting and dismissing Lydia. You wont be able to miss it, as it plainly says "USE THIS" beside this. Aside from that, no changes. Everything is status quo.

Great! So When Does This Thing Release?!?

I'm literally almost done. The code is 100% in place. There are still some outlier dialogue lines to generate in xVaSynth to go along with events in the Affinity System and there are some tangential causality events I still need to put in place. The guts of those are there, they just need to be fill in with dialogue events and the consequential scripting to alter the affinity between you and her. I am sincerely aiming for February 14th, 2022 for release of v1.0.4, because what better day to release an update centered on romancing Lydia than Valentine's Day? LOL.