Of course, my name isn't actually Doory - much like anything else in Skyrim, I have a different name. My name is 00077FA2, but you can call me Doory, it's much easier ^_^. My actual name is what's called a "hexidecimal number" - each character can be 0-9, A, B, C, D, E, or F. That means theoretically (not actually but that's a lot more advanced discussion) there could be 2^32, or over 4 billion doors! I would have so many friends! ^_^ Anyway, the first two characters of my name are based off of the load order of my parent - 00, in this case, means that my parent is Skyrim.esm, or the base game. They're the ones that made me! A few of these numbers are fixed: 00 is Skyrim.esm, 01 is Update.esm, 02 is Dawnguard.esm, 03 is Hearthfire.esm, and 04 is Dragonborn.esm, and on the other end FE and FF are reserved and can't be used. The rest of the numbers are what you modders like to call your "load order." It's different for every one of you! But more on that later.
When you know my real name, you can find out a lot of information about me, like my home address! This is where I like to hang out. When using JK's Jorrvaskr, my address is X: 616, Y: 120, Z: -472. But it turns out this is a different address than what my home address was in Skyrim.esm! Back then, I lived at X: 994.989075, Y: -298.034088, Z: -103.047318. It's a great place to live too, but when my surroundings change, I like to change along with them otherwise weird things like this happen:
Oh no, look at me, I'm off over here where no one can find me, and there's a giant open space looking into a black void which is normally hidden behind me where I used to be! But the real problem is that I'm what's called a "Persistent" Reference. That means "Persistent Location." It's marked by the little P next to my name. These are special types of references that are explicitly mentioned in things like quests, or NPC AI packages, or other things. The game needs to know that we'll be at our address, so it doesn't let our address change once the game has started (unless it's changed by a quest or script). So unlike temporary references, whose address can just be looked up, mine is written down in your save game! This means that my address is known from the instant you press "New Game" from the main menu, and it can't be changed without a quest or script doing it. In my case, this is because I'm important to the quest C04JorrvaskrCommotion. So once I've moved in to my address, that's where I live! So if you're thinking "new game" means loading up a save with no mods installed just after Helgen, that doesn't work - I've already moved in to my original address, and can't be moved.
And then we have to consider when many people are telling me to live at different addresses. See, I'm a flighty little door, and don't remember things easily. I told you my name isn't actually Doory, right? ^_^ Well if lots of people are shouting at me about what my address is, I can only remember one address at a time, so the last thing I hear is what I believe. This is why load order is so important! The last person to talks to me is the one I can remember.
Why look here: Skyrim.esm gives me my original address, but then JK's Jorrvaskr.esp gives me my new one. But then, because Immersive Citizens tells me I connect to a different navmesh triangle (that's too confusing a topic for today, sorry!), they actually tell me to go back to my ORIGINAL address. But then there's additional other patches which put me back into my new position and tie into the navmesh differently, and it's all enough to make a poor door's head spin.
However, there is a few way to get Persistent refs to move - console commands, or scripts! That's why JK's Jorrvaskr comes with a quest that calls a script the first time you install it to move all Persistent References to their new addresses!
Of course, the important thing is that the script can only tell me what my most recent address is, so if your load order isn't correct, it'll still tell me the wrong place. Oopsie!
Console commands can also potentially work. Two suggestions have been tossed out. First:
prid 77fa2 [enter]
recycleactor [enter]
The first command gets my attention so you're talking to me. The second one says "pretend you're starting anew." So if I know what my address is supposed to be, I'll go there! Yay! However, if I still don't know my right address, it'll send me right back to the wrong place. Oh no! The third suggestion:
prid 77fa2 [enter]
setpos x 616 [enter]
setpos y 130 [enter]
setpos z -468 [enter]
This is a more manual way of telling me my address. It's moving me to a specific place, which happens to be the address that JK's Jorrvaskr wants. However, I still think my address is wherever I did previously, so if I were to recycleactor after this, it'd send me right back to my previous location. >_<
(These also are technically not the right coordinates, but they're close enough that I'm not going to confuse people by having two separate bad pieces of advice floating around)
However, ultimately, both of these are just little band-aids instead of fixing the problem: you see, I'm not the only persistent reference out there, you just notice I'm missing because you use me so much.
Not like that, silly! But you shouldn't forget about other persistent references, like my friend Grumpy Old Mr. XMarkerHeading! Look at him with all of his other marker friends, letting NPCs know where they need to be for scenes, or places people can sweep or talk, or if things are enabled, or where they can sit.
They're all grumpy because everyone ignores them because they don't notice them. ;.; But they're important too! When they matter, if NPCs can't find them, that can cause your game to crash! Or have people sitting in the middle of the air, or lots of other things I think are called "jank" or things like that! See, mod authors, when making mods, don't know what else you might have installed - they can only make their mods based off of what's originally in the base game, and others can "patch" combinations of mods together. But mods can't automatically adjust themselves to one another, and when you toss mods in willy-nilly without consideration for conflicts, problems arise. But that's not something the mod author can handle themselves in their original mod! It just doesn't work that way. ._. That's not to say there can't be problems - I'm sure mod authors want their bugs fixed if they're found. But since any individual is working with a load order unique to them, it's best to approach things from the perspective of "what am I missing" or "what am I doing wrong" instead of "hey you broke my game when I installed your mod mid-save like I wasn't supposed to, how are you going to fix it for me?" Remember: there's very few mod authors for a single mod, and many many more mod users, and constant repetition of the same questions which have already been answered can wear down and make even the strongest door a little cranky.
So remember: when trying to figure things out with your load order, any number of mods could be impacting things you don't expect in ways you don't expect, and installing things mid-playthrough (and that INCLUDES installing them on a "clean save" which was made with nothing installed - to have a new game you need to hit "New Game") can break things very easily, so it's not recommended! And finally, it doesn't matter if the mod in question attempts to work around that if your load order isn't correct. LOOT is a wonderful tool that can help with it, but it's only as good as user reports as it's a crowd-sourced database, so if you find something wrong, try submitting a correction through their process!
Always remember: Don't be an Idiodorry, check your load order....y!
Thanks!
50 comments
BTW, uninstalling mods mid-play is an even worse idea than installing them after you started a new game. It's the easiest way to irrevocably destroy your current playthrough.
If you want to verify for yourself, load up a new profile in Vortex/MO2, enable only this mod, boot the game, and from the console type "coc whiterunjorrvaskr" - this will load a generic default character in a new save and start you inside jorrvaskr - you can go down to the door and see that it's in the right place. It being in the wrong place is something that happens based off user load order, or adding mods mid-save.
So basically what is happening is this:
"Mod User A: Hey, this mod is broken, fix it.
Me: No, it's not. Here's an explanation as to why what you are seeing is happening, it's completely understandable, and here's how to fix it.
Mod User A: No, it's broken. What are you going on about?
Mod User B: Here's some command lines to fix the mod.
Mod User C: Thanks, that worked for me!
Me: Guys, that's a band aid that only fixes the thing you can see, you really need to address the original problem if you want a stable load order. Please read the explanation I gave.
Mod User A: Didn't work for me, this mod is poop from a butt, I'm uninstalling it.
Me: <sighs inwardly after repeating this process with 100x different Mod User A's over 3 different pages despite tens of thousands of other people being able to install and use the mods and eventually get burnt out enough from trying to help mod users who refuse to listen to where I stop making new things because it's not fun anymore but I still try to give customer support on pages because I'm a giant f*#@ing masochist apparently>"
The first command didn't work, but the second one did. So now I can easily enter the basement whenever I want. The problem comes from trying to enter back into Jorrvaskr from the basement. The exit is in the void under the map, and it seems the exit position is still at the original door location the game loaded. This is fine-ish as the game automatically places me back on the map after falling for a second, but it doesn't do the same for NPCs. So I had to manually tp Vilkus to me for the training session bit and have to wait for my follower who goes missing under the map until I fast traveled somewhere.
Is there a different command line that anyone knows that changes the player exit position as well?
This is free content, and I appreciate you so much for all you've done. Keep up the good work. and f*#@ THAT DOOR! But... Doory is nice :( I can't be too mean now.