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About this mod
Short, sweet and crafty, Ninara is my take on a Gnome follower for Skyrim, woven into Dwemer lore. Original, unique voice, 850 lines of dialogue. Features a gameplay mechanic where she creates new, unique items based on being inspired when reading schematics. Includes interaction and quest content. ESL-Flagged and compatible with SSE/AE.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
- Donations
Nether's Ninara
** Ninara uses a Digitally Generated Unique Voice that is not based on voice actor performances. **
In the case of vanilla voices, in-game lines were re-used or spliced.
REQUIRES:
SKSE
https://skse.silverlock.org/
XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended - XPMSSE
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1988
MOD FEATURES:
INSTALLATION:
PERMISSIONS:
HOW TO START:
- Travel to Mzinchaleft, southwest of Dawnstar. She will be located (from the main entrance) in the first large area. An introduction quest will start when you get near her. After helping her and acquiring her as a follower, there will be a follow-up deeper in Mzinchaleft.
BASIC FEATURES:
RACE:
Dwemer Drone (Gnome): 25% Resistance to Magic, 50% Resistance to Fire, Double normal carrying capacity (600).
Physical appearance is shorter than Bretons or Bosmer, with pointed ears and often on the plump side. Skin color ranges from fair to deep tan with brightly colored eyes and lighter hair colors.
ABILITIES:
Baseline, Vanilla: Sweep, Devastating Blow, LightFoot, Alchemy and Skill Boosts.
Baseline, New: Custom Fit: 30% Bonus to worn light or heavy armor.
Crafting: Ninara can smelt down Dwemer junk items for you when she's near a smelter. These items must be in her inventory. Items are converted at the same ingot to material rate as the vanilla game. She receives a 10% material bonus after you get to know her a bit (this means that 10 items actually returns 11 ingots, starts at her relationship rank 1). She becomes more efficient at smelting when she gets to know you better. She must be a teammate to smelt and the player must not be sneaking or their weapon drawn.
Training: Ninara can train the player in Smithing once she gains her first relationship rank with them, up to a skill of 75.
APPEARANCE:
- You can give Ninara a variety of wigs to wear via dialogue. You can include wigs from any wig mod that you'd like but she also can offer to include 5 wigs she likes (a one-time dialogue choice). This is just author's choice and are included in this mod (uses KS Hairdos). She will periodically change to a new wig randomly.
- Just like the wigs, you can give her a variety of different jewelry items to wear, such as earrings, necklaces, cat ears, nose rings, hair bows or whatever you like. No jewelry items are included at this time.
STARTING GEAR:
Dwarven Shock Hammer - 1-handed version of the Warhammer, kitbashed. 12 base damage with 10-point Shock enchant. Can be created at a forge and comes with the enchant.
Dwarven Lightshot Rifle - Kitbashed using crossbow, fires ammo or dwarven bolts from Dawnguard. 16 base damage. Is able to stagger opponents. Can be created at a forge. You help Ninara recover a personal version of this item which also hits with light shock damage.
Dwarven Lightshot Ammo - Standard - She starts with 125 standard rounds, modified from Guns of Skyrim. These rounds are cheap to produce and cause 18 damage.
Dwarven Launcher - Poison - Kitbashed using game resources, works as a staff. Creates and fires smoke canisters that do poison damage to the living. Can be created at a forge.
Dwarven Researcher Armor - Kitbashed armor using mage + dwarven armor and considered to be light armor. Armor Rating 28. Provided as part of an outfit but can be created at a forge.
Dwarven Precision Spectacles - Nina's eyeglasses, original creation. Armor Rating 3, uses slot 55. Provided as part of an outfit but can be created at a forge. She also has these loose in her inventory.
DISCOVERIES:
Ninara has a learning system based on reading Dwemer Schematics - this means you trade them to her using the normal trade menu. They basically can give her "ideas" and she builds up idea points - each schematic is worth 10-15 points when first viewed. It takes 25 points for her to come up with an idea for a new device.
Schematics can be found on Dwarven Automatons and Falmer enemies that you or your teammates kill, at a 15% chance (rolling chance that increases by 15% for each failed roll) that has around a 30 second cooldown. Bodies will glow (similar to Kyne's Peace effect) if a schematic is on them (can be turned off if you don't find it immersive).
You can also sometimes find schematics in dwarven or falmer chests and court wizards sell 1-2 of them at any given time, but they are expensive to purchase.
She can build up a idea points here and there when she works a nearby forge (she can do this once per 8 hours).
When Ninara learns how to make something new, it is selected randomly from a list. The list is randomized when she's first installed in your game and further randomized if any updates or addon add new things for her to make.
All discovered items can be created by the player at the forge if they have 50 Smithing or higher, 25 if Ninara is currently your teammate. It doesn't require any specific perks as she can guide you. This also allows it to play well with any perks overhauls.
All discoveries and basic gear should be usable by you, Ninara or other followers. Her rifle acts as a crossbow, so is governed by Archery skill. Canister launchers are classes as staves and are governed by the Destruction skill. Her hammers are 1-handed and governed by the same skill.
The weapon class choices were made to allow her to vary what she uses by skill and situation and do have inherent limits from Skyrim's design. While it might not be fully realistic to have a canister launcher as a staff, it restricts the ammo to only being used by the rifle. Further, the rifle can use any bolt ammunition, be in Dawnguard or another mod, which is another limit of the game but possibly a benefit as well.
By default, Ninara creates one prototype of any item she discovers once she's near a forge. You can turn this on or off by speaking to her (under Options).
Discovered Hammers:
Dwarven Thunder Hammer: Causes 12 shock damage when striking, with an 18% chance of striking again doing the same damage and hurling the opponent backwards. Bonus damage doesn't affect dragons.
Dwarven Electro Hammer: Causes 12 shock damage and absorbs 8 energy as health. Doesn't affect machines.
Dwarven Voltage Hammer: Causes 18 shock damage and has a 10% chance to paralyze living opponents for 2 seconds. Doesn't affect dragons, restrained or those immune to paralysis.
Discovered Ammuntion:
- All ammo is used in her lightshot rifle but (due to game limitations) can be used in crossbows or any rifles from Guns of Skyrim.
Expert Ammunition - Base 22 damage that causes an additional 10 Stamina damage and a 25% chance to knockdown.
Explosive Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 15 fire damage in a small radius with a 25% chance to knockdown.
Shrapnel Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 7 bleeding damage for 3 seconds in a small radius. Bonus damage only affects the living.
Silver Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 10 fire damage for 2 seconds in a small radius. Bonus damage only affects lycanthropes and undead.
Discovered Canisters:
- Several new canister launchers can be discovered. They are short range and always affect a fairly large radius. They work as staves and you can recharge them (due to game limitations but to provide weapon swtiching for npcs). Notes: NPCs will use these as left hand weapons. They emit gas but the effect comes from the explosion, not from a hazard due to some limitations between playability and getting NPCs to use them.
Dwarven Launcher - Corrosion - Causes 6 Fire (burning) damage for 4 seconds and does double damage to automatons.
Dwarven Launcher - Freezing - Causes 6 Frost damage for 4 seconds to opponents and greatly slows them.
Dwarven Launcher - Vitality - Causes 12 Health damage to main target and heals all allies near impact for 8 Health and Stamina for 4 seconds.
Important Note: While developing this mod, I ran into the infamous perma-blocking bug (NPC blocks and won't take any other actions). I found that using a staff in the off hand can help to cause it if they have an item in each hand and they go into bleedout. If Ninara goes to 20% health or lower, she will unequip a staff (launcher) if it is in the off hand. Furthermore, when talking to her, under Options, you can ask to reset her if for some reason she is still blocking. This takes her items and moves them to a container and resets the character, causing her to refresh. There's also a power that can be added to the player that can be used to reset her or any other NPC on command.
Discovered Fabricators:
- She can learn to create staves that fabricate (summon) a Dwarven Spider, Sphere or Ballista. All mechanicals are 75% of the player's level. The spider moves fast and is small. The ballista moves and fires slow but ignores 50% of opponent's physical resistance. The sphere can fire exploding bolts.
Important Note: A ctd fix is included for the ballista actor when it is dying (this will also fix other ballista dwemer in your game). Uses Animation Event fix from "Dwemer Ballista Crash Fix" by zhongjiedong, discovered by Jelidity (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/73859).
Discovered Sidepack Power Items:
- Ninara can discover Sidepack Power items. These are small half-orbs that strap to an NPC's waist on the left side. They use slot 58. They provide occasional benefits under certain conditions. Unless otherwise stated, they have a 3 minute (1 hour in normal game time) cooldown after applying their effect.
- All provide 5 points of light armor.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Healing Injector: Heals the wearer when critically hurt (under 25% health) for 125 Health.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Magicka Injector: Refreshes Magicka when critically low (under 25% magicka) for 125 Magicka.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Displacer: Creates a field of electricity around the weared that functions as a shock cloak for 15 seconds. Is able to teleport to remote targets. Occasionally paralyzes the combat target upon arrival. Takes 30 seconds to recharge.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Decoy: Creates a Gnome decoy for 60 seconds during combat when attacked (95% health or less). She is equipped with standard dual hammers and rifle. Decoy has slightly reduced perks and is 70% of the player's level. Is auto-summoned in addition to any other summoning spell effect.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Adrenaline: Increases carry weight by 40 and restores 25 Stamina when low (under 15% Stamina). 1 minute cooldown on restoration effect.
You can always use Ninara's talk menu to see how many discoveries are left, how many are found and how many schematics she has read. You can also get a list of the things she has learned that you can craft.
INTERACTION and COMMENTARY:
Currently:
- Variety of follower based Recruit, Dismiss, Trade, Wait, Follow and Command lines.
- Comments when sensing danger, seeing interesting sights or finding the entrance to caves, Dwemer ruins and Nordic ruins.
- Comments when the player levels.
- Location aware idles: Can talk about books (in general or about those you specifically give to her), sweetrolls (if you give them to her at Relationship rank 1 or higher), general thoughts, in inns, in dungeons (general and specific dungeon comments), wilderness comments and city/town comments. Dungeon comments support locations in Dawnguard that don't properly have dungeon keywords.
- She can comment once about specific Dwemer dungeon locations, giving her take on them or if she had been there before.
- Full range of Combat lines, including those about specific opponents.
- Comments when the player loots bodies, loots boss chests and loots loose items in dungeons.
- Nirara builds an affinity for books and sweet rolls. You can give these items to her to help raise her relationship with you.
- Comments at various points along the Main Quest, Dark Brotherhood, Dawnguard, Companions and Winterhold College questlines.
- She interacts with Sorine and Serana during the Dawnguard questline.
- She can interact with city guards.
- She can interact with Nether's Elana.
- You can change comment frequency under Options to: Hourly, Less Frequently (2 hours), Occasionally (4 hours) or Never.
RELATIONSHIP BENEFITS:
Relationship Rank 1:
- She can train you in smithing, up to level 75.
- 10% Bonus to ingots returned from smelting Dwarven scrap. (Increases +15% per rank).
- Asks you to give her books so she can learn more about the world.
- Flirtatuous behavior if you've bumped into her enough (front or back collision, which she is initially annoyed at but eventually she thinks you're flirting). Can be turned off in Options, once she becomes flirty.
Relationship Rank 2:
- She and the player share Combat Ingenuity, which reduces Stamina cost of Power Attacks by 10% as long as Ninara is a teammate.
- Flirtatuous behavior if not granted at Rank 1.
- Develops an interest in Skyrim's Sweetrolls.
Relationship Rank 3:
- She and the player share Dwemer Precision, which adds 5% to Critical Hit chance as long as Ninara is a teammate.
- You can marry her.
You can always use her Talk menu to check her relationship rank, along with how many points you are away from the next one.
COMPANION SYSTEM:
If you want to free up follower space, you can activate Ninara's Companion System under options. This allows her to act just like an additional follower and she counts as a teammate. She has a catch-up mechanic if too far away and will sandbox while you are reamining idle.
WEAR ITEMS IN INVENTORY:
You can ask Ninara to wear the items in her inventory that you give her. This will remove the outfit that comes with her. When active it will try to keep the items that she is wearing equipped, even if she is not currently a teammate.
WIGS AND JEWELRY:
Under Ninara's Talk menu, you can ask her to wear wigs or jewelry. Each selection will open a container that you can trade items into. In the case of wigs, the first time she will ask you if you'd like her include her favorites. This is just a way to give you a few wigs to start with. You can include any wigs you wish from other wigs mods you have installed, if you have wigs in your inventory. She will randomly choose a new wig once per day, give or take. This is the same for her jewelry box, which allows her to randomly select and wear accessories. For jewelry, hair bows, earrings, necklaces, chokers and similar items are recommended, that would be outside of a normal outfit.
HOME BASE:
You can set the player's current location as Ninara's home base by talking to her. This drops a marker that she will stay near when she isn't being retained as a follower. Once you set a home location, you can choose a different location that she'll stay at during the day or at night (these choices also drop markers where the player is currently standing). Furthermore, you can pick a location that she sleeps at and have her sleep during the day, the night or evening.
QUEST CONTENT:
Ninara has an introductory quest when you approach her location in Mzinchaleft. Once you help her defeat some treasure hunters and other enemies in the area, you can learn more about her and she can become a follower.
Almost immediately after becoming a follower, you help her retrieve one of her signature weapons, which can be found deeper in Mzinchaleft.
Once you leave Mzinchaleft with her, she talks about learning more about Skyrim and the outside world by getting ahold of some books.
When reaching relationship rank 1 with Ninara, there is a quest that involves ramifications for leaving Mzinchaleft.
Finally, Ninara has a quest involving trying the various sweets that Skyrim has to offer once she has reached relationship rank 2.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (spoilers):
When I First Meet Ninara After Defeating the Enemies, She Won't Talk to Me.
It's a game bug. Smack her with your weapon. It's okay. She can take it. She is not in a crime faction.
Can I Change Her Size/Height (she is too short, tall, etc)?
Height is on the race record and is 0.88 by default. You can change this in xEdit or patch it. Making her too tall does make her head larger as she is proportioned.
A Quest is Stuck or Doesn't Complete, Can You Help?
All quests should complete properly. But if for some reason they do not, these are the console commands to complete them:
"This is my Boomstick"
setstage nwsninaqboomstick 200
(Gun is located in last room before the lift back to the surface on the floor).
"Containment"
setstage nwsninaqcontainment 200
"How Sweet of You"
setstage nwsninaqhowsweet 200
"Neverending Stories"
setstage nwsninaqneverending 200
If the intro doesn't start because of another mod blocking the trigger, in console try:
startquest nwsninaqintro
She or a Follower is Stuck Blocking After Using a Launcher.
Under Options in dialogue, you can learn a spell can be be used to reset a character. This takes all their items and does a reset on them. It is possible that it will duplicate some inventory items, so should only be used as a last ditch effort. Ninara doesn't start with any items - they are quest alias provided so won't have this issue if it's used on her.
Doesn't Summoning a Dwemer Ballista Cause a CTD When It Expires?
Fix is built into this mod.
Her Outfit Pokes in Some Poses or Body Settings.
The outfit is kitbashed from game assets. It is lower resolution that the body of the character, which causes poke through easily unfortunately. She'll use whatever you give her if you talk to her about switching her outfit.
RESOURCES USED:
Resources used ---
Glasses are custom created by me. Outfit, Launcher, Sidepack, Staves are used from in-game assets and kitbashed.
KS Hairdos by Kallies
(Hair used)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68311
High Poly Head by KouLeifoh
(Head and head sculpting)
https://vectorplexis.com/files/file/283-high-poly-head/
Koralina's Makeup Tweaks
(For face makeup)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63024
Lore Friendly Guns of Skyrim (Formerly Rifles) by ENR
(Ammo meshes used and modified, some rifle ideas used)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/60183
Resources used (from Skyrim LE versions) ---
Maevan2's Eye Brows created by Maevan2, uploaded by Shiva182
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98309
Natural Eyes by nevenbridge81
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3589
Improved Eye Reflections and Cube Map (only cubemap) by fadingsignal
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67447
** Ninara uses a Digitally Generated Unique Voice that is not based on voice actor performances. **
In the case of vanilla voices, in-game lines were re-used or spliced.
REQUIRES:
SKSE
https://skse.silverlock.org/
XP32 Maximum Skeleton Special Extended - XPMSSE
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1988
MOD FEATURES:
- - Ninara, a short and voluptuous gnome follower, called a "drone". She has her own custom race (Breton-based), with larger nose, pointed ears and shorter limbs, approximately 5' in height. She is tall enough to not have clipping issues with most furniture.
- - She is a smithing/tinkerer follower with a magi-punk aesthetic, bred by the Dwemer, good in combat and with an emphasis on weapon design. She is found in Mzinchaleft in the first main area while being attacked by treasure hunters.
- - Original digitally-generated voice with over 850 unique lines. Location and quest aware. Supports the main quest, Dark Brotherhood, Dawnguard, the Companions, Winterhold College and can comment on many Dwemer ruins that she has varying knowledge of. Also comments about various locations: dungeons, inns, cities, wilderness, along with generic comments. She can tell (bad) joke and recite funny rhymes. She can comment about things the player picks up, looted bodies and looted chests. She is curious about the world, has a fondness for books and eventually has an interest in sweet rolls.
- - By default she can interact with Skyrim's guards, Sorine (Dawnguard), Serana (Dawnguard) and Nether's Elana.
- - Ninara has a relationship system that starts at rank 0 and goes to rank 3. This increases as you spend time with her, if you find her Dwemer Schematics to study or you give her things she is interested in.
- - She comes with custom armor, glasses, a poison canister launcher and recoverable or discoverable weapons, devices and ammunition (all created from in-game assets). All new items can eventually be crafted and tempered (where applicable). All items can be used on Ninara, your followers or yourself.
- - You can ask Ninara to wear what's in her inventory when she's a follower. You can also ask her to wear wigs or jewelry, which she will change around periodically, depending on what items you give her. When choosing wigs, she comes with a few that she likes and will offer to let you start with those (you can use any wigs from other mods). Jewelry can be any wearable items but it's recommended you choose from head accessories such as bows, earrings, collars or necklaces.
- - Aquisition of Dwemer Schematics that help Ninara to learn how to create new devices by inspiring her (by trading them to her, where they become read). Can learn 4 new types of ammo for her rifle (or any crossbow-like weapon, she starts with standard ammo), 3 canister launchers (hits areas with gas, she starts with poison canister), 3 fabricator staves (summons), 3 kinds of 1h hammers and 5 sidepack items (extra armor items with conditional benefits). 18 new items to discover in total.
- - For additional interaction, she can smelt down dwarven scrap on her own, she can sell books and read schematics to vendors and spend time at the forge.
- - Comes with 5 Quests, 2 involving her introduction.
- - Supported in Vanilla and NFF, AFT, EFF and similar follower managers but also has a Companion system that allows her to seamlessly be used outside of any follower framework, so that you can her them in addition to other followers. She has normal follower functions plus a catch-up teleport (so that they don't get lost) and a sandboxing system. The latter features can be toggled on an off.
- - Compatible with AE and SSE. Does not use the extended esl or record changes in later editions of AE.
INSTALLATION:
- - Uses XP32-based skeleton. Supports CBBE (Physics), 3BA and BHUNP bodies.
- - FOMOD installer will install the main files (provided in archive file) + your choice of Follower manager and your choice of body type.
- - Ninara uses your installed textures for skin.
- - You SHOULD use bodyslide to build her armor for your game, otherwise it defaults to CBBE Physics. CBBE (Physics), 3BA and BHUNP are supported in bodyslide. Groups should start with Nether's Ninara. You are welcome to convert to other bodies and upload those bodyslides but I'm not covering every variation under the sun.
- - You may opt to have her installed with Dwemer Armor if you have a replacer you'd rather use or a body other than CBBE Physics, 3BA or BHUNP or just want her to start with this armor.
PERMISSIONS:
- - You are allowed to create any mod that expands on her or adds new features, as long as requires this mod as part of the master files list for your modification.
- - You can create mods that are variations on her appearance.
- - You are allowed to use the custom voice to create voice lines for specific Ninara interactions with other followers.
HOW TO START:
- Travel to Mzinchaleft, southwest of Dawnstar. She will be located (from the main entrance) in the first large area. An introduction quest will start when you get near her. After helping her and acquiring her as a follower, there will be a follow-up deeper in Mzinchaleft.
BASIC FEATURES:
- - General theme is discovery, exploration and curiosity. I also wanted to bring a smaller character to Skyrim and make it fit into the lore of the world. Ninara is a fish out of water, a Dwemer-engineered race designed for crafting and labor. She has been preserved for thousands of years and has just been accidentally released from her stasis. She isn't a cyborg type character but was designed to be efficient and logical, though she has her own kind of whimsical charm.
- - Ninara can create new devices through a discovery system. Though she can do this on her own, dwemer schematics can be dropped from Falmer and Automaton enemies, retrieved from Dwemer Boss Chests or purchased from court wizards. Trading these to her, causes her to read them, possibly giving her "ideas" in the way of breakthroughs.
- - Ninara is fully voiced using an original, generative AI voice. She reacts to a lot of game situations or when you give certain things to her.
- - She is very customizable. You can have her wear what's in her inventory, you can give her a selection of wigs provided by other mods that she can choose from and you can give her accessories (jewelry) that she can choose from. She changes wig and jewelry choices periodically.
- - A follower manager is recommended but not required. She has a sidekick (companion) system that you can activate. It will be activated by default if you don't seem to have enough follower slots available. Companion mode can be turned on and off at any time.
- - You can get a lot of statistics and change features by using her Talk and Option dialogue choices. Things that you might do frequently fall more under "talk". Things that are a bit more fire and forget are presented as "options".
- - She has a relationship system that is outside of the game's relationship system so that it can gradually increase. It is based on a 700 point system. It takes 25% of that for her to be friendly towards you, at 50% she feels like an ally and at 100% she is enamored and can be married.
- - She will eventually flirt with you as she gets sweet on you. You can turn this off once it becomes active. She will verbally cue being flirty with you. She verbally cues a lot of things that happen, so try to pay attention to her sometimes.
- - This is presented as a mod that falls in-between Elana and Jenna in terms of seriousness and it leans more on fun.
RACE:
Dwemer Drone (Gnome): 25% Resistance to Magic, 50% Resistance to Fire, Double normal carrying capacity (600).
Physical appearance is shorter than Bretons or Bosmer, with pointed ears and often on the plump side. Skin color ranges from fair to deep tan with brightly colored eyes and lighter hair colors.
ABILITIES:
Baseline, Vanilla: Sweep, Devastating Blow, LightFoot, Alchemy and Skill Boosts.
Baseline, New: Custom Fit: 30% Bonus to worn light or heavy armor.
Crafting: Ninara can smelt down Dwemer junk items for you when she's near a smelter. These items must be in her inventory. Items are converted at the same ingot to material rate as the vanilla game. She receives a 10% material bonus after you get to know her a bit (this means that 10 items actually returns 11 ingots, starts at her relationship rank 1). She becomes more efficient at smelting when she gets to know you better. She must be a teammate to smelt and the player must not be sneaking or their weapon drawn.
Training: Ninara can train the player in Smithing once she gains her first relationship rank with them, up to a skill of 75.
APPEARANCE:
- You can give Ninara a variety of wigs to wear via dialogue. You can include wigs from any wig mod that you'd like but she also can offer to include 5 wigs she likes (a one-time dialogue choice). This is just author's choice and are included in this mod (uses KS Hairdos). She will periodically change to a new wig randomly.
- Just like the wigs, you can give her a variety of different jewelry items to wear, such as earrings, necklaces, cat ears, nose rings, hair bows or whatever you like. No jewelry items are included at this time.
STARTING GEAR:
Dwarven Shock Hammer - 1-handed version of the Warhammer, kitbashed. 12 base damage with 10-point Shock enchant. Can be created at a forge and comes with the enchant.
Dwarven Lightshot Rifle - Kitbashed using crossbow, fires ammo or dwarven bolts from Dawnguard. 16 base damage. Is able to stagger opponents. Can be created at a forge. You help Ninara recover a personal version of this item which also hits with light shock damage.
Dwarven Lightshot Ammo - Standard - She starts with 125 standard rounds, modified from Guns of Skyrim. These rounds are cheap to produce and cause 18 damage.
Dwarven Launcher - Poison - Kitbashed using game resources, works as a staff. Creates and fires smoke canisters that do poison damage to the living. Can be created at a forge.
Dwarven Researcher Armor - Kitbashed armor using mage + dwarven armor and considered to be light armor. Armor Rating 28. Provided as part of an outfit but can be created at a forge.
Dwarven Precision Spectacles - Nina's eyeglasses, original creation. Armor Rating 3, uses slot 55. Provided as part of an outfit but can be created at a forge. She also has these loose in her inventory.
DISCOVERIES:
Ninara has a learning system based on reading Dwemer Schematics - this means you trade them to her using the normal trade menu. They basically can give her "ideas" and she builds up idea points - each schematic is worth 10-15 points when first viewed. It takes 25 points for her to come up with an idea for a new device.
Schematics can be found on Dwarven Automatons and Falmer enemies that you or your teammates kill, at a 15% chance (rolling chance that increases by 15% for each failed roll) that has around a 30 second cooldown. Bodies will glow (similar to Kyne's Peace effect) if a schematic is on them (can be turned off if you don't find it immersive).
You can also sometimes find schematics in dwarven or falmer chests and court wizards sell 1-2 of them at any given time, but they are expensive to purchase.
She can build up a idea points here and there when she works a nearby forge (she can do this once per 8 hours).
When Ninara learns how to make something new, it is selected randomly from a list. The list is randomized when she's first installed in your game and further randomized if any updates or addon add new things for her to make.
All discovered items can be created by the player at the forge if they have 50 Smithing or higher, 25 if Ninara is currently your teammate. It doesn't require any specific perks as she can guide you. This also allows it to play well with any perks overhauls.
All discoveries and basic gear should be usable by you, Ninara or other followers. Her rifle acts as a crossbow, so is governed by Archery skill. Canister launchers are classes as staves and are governed by the Destruction skill. Her hammers are 1-handed and governed by the same skill.
The weapon class choices were made to allow her to vary what she uses by skill and situation and do have inherent limits from Skyrim's design. While it might not be fully realistic to have a canister launcher as a staff, it restricts the ammo to only being used by the rifle. Further, the rifle can use any bolt ammunition, be in Dawnguard or another mod, which is another limit of the game but possibly a benefit as well.
By default, Ninara creates one prototype of any item she discovers once she's near a forge. You can turn this on or off by speaking to her (under Options).
Discovered Hammers:
Dwarven Thunder Hammer: Causes 12 shock damage when striking, with an 18% chance of striking again doing the same damage and hurling the opponent backwards. Bonus damage doesn't affect dragons.
Dwarven Electro Hammer: Causes 12 shock damage and absorbs 8 energy as health. Doesn't affect machines.
Dwarven Voltage Hammer: Causes 18 shock damage and has a 10% chance to paralyze living opponents for 2 seconds. Doesn't affect dragons, restrained or those immune to paralysis.
Discovered Ammuntion:
- All ammo is used in her lightshot rifle but (due to game limitations) can be used in crossbows or any rifles from Guns of Skyrim.
Expert Ammunition - Base 22 damage that causes an additional 10 Stamina damage and a 25% chance to knockdown.
Explosive Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 15 fire damage in a small radius with a 25% chance to knockdown.
Shrapnel Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 7 bleeding damage for 3 seconds in a small radius. Bonus damage only affects the living.
Silver Ammunition - Base 18 damage that causes an additional 10 fire damage for 2 seconds in a small radius. Bonus damage only affects lycanthropes and undead.
Discovered Canisters:
- Several new canister launchers can be discovered. They are short range and always affect a fairly large radius. They work as staves and you can recharge them (due to game limitations but to provide weapon swtiching for npcs). Notes: NPCs will use these as left hand weapons. They emit gas but the effect comes from the explosion, not from a hazard due to some limitations between playability and getting NPCs to use them.
Dwarven Launcher - Corrosion - Causes 6 Fire (burning) damage for 4 seconds and does double damage to automatons.
Dwarven Launcher - Freezing - Causes 6 Frost damage for 4 seconds to opponents and greatly slows them.
Dwarven Launcher - Vitality - Causes 12 Health damage to main target and heals all allies near impact for 8 Health and Stamina for 4 seconds.
Important Note: While developing this mod, I ran into the infamous perma-blocking bug (NPC blocks and won't take any other actions). I found that using a staff in the off hand can help to cause it if they have an item in each hand and they go into bleedout. If Ninara goes to 20% health or lower, she will unequip a staff (launcher) if it is in the off hand. Furthermore, when talking to her, under Options, you can ask to reset her if for some reason she is still blocking. This takes her items and moves them to a container and resets the character, causing her to refresh. There's also a power that can be added to the player that can be used to reset her or any other NPC on command.
Discovered Fabricators:
- She can learn to create staves that fabricate (summon) a Dwarven Spider, Sphere or Ballista. All mechanicals are 75% of the player's level. The spider moves fast and is small. The ballista moves and fires slow but ignores 50% of opponent's physical resistance. The sphere can fire exploding bolts.
Important Note: A ctd fix is included for the ballista actor when it is dying (this will also fix other ballista dwemer in your game). Uses Animation Event fix from "Dwemer Ballista Crash Fix" by zhongjiedong, discovered by Jelidity (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/73859).
Discovered Sidepack Power Items:
- Ninara can discover Sidepack Power items. These are small half-orbs that strap to an NPC's waist on the left side. They use slot 58. They provide occasional benefits under certain conditions. Unless otherwise stated, they have a 3 minute (1 hour in normal game time) cooldown after applying their effect.
- All provide 5 points of light armor.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Healing Injector: Heals the wearer when critically hurt (under 25% health) for 125 Health.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Magicka Injector: Refreshes Magicka when critically low (under 25% magicka) for 125 Magicka.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Displacer: Creates a field of electricity around the weared that functions as a shock cloak for 15 seconds. Is able to teleport to remote targets. Occasionally paralyzes the combat target upon arrival. Takes 30 seconds to recharge.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Decoy: Creates a Gnome decoy for 60 seconds during combat when attacked (95% health or less). She is equipped with standard dual hammers and rifle. Decoy has slightly reduced perks and is 70% of the player's level. Is auto-summoned in addition to any other summoning spell effect.
- Dwarven Sidepack - Adrenaline: Increases carry weight by 40 and restores 25 Stamina when low (under 15% Stamina). 1 minute cooldown on restoration effect.
You can always use Ninara's talk menu to see how many discoveries are left, how many are found and how many schematics she has read. You can also get a list of the things she has learned that you can craft.
INTERACTION and COMMENTARY:
Currently:
- Variety of follower based Recruit, Dismiss, Trade, Wait, Follow and Command lines.
- Comments when sensing danger, seeing interesting sights or finding the entrance to caves, Dwemer ruins and Nordic ruins.
- Comments when the player levels.
- Location aware idles: Can talk about books (in general or about those you specifically give to her), sweetrolls (if you give them to her at Relationship rank 1 or higher), general thoughts, in inns, in dungeons (general and specific dungeon comments), wilderness comments and city/town comments. Dungeon comments support locations in Dawnguard that don't properly have dungeon keywords.
- She can comment once about specific Dwemer dungeon locations, giving her take on them or if she had been there before.
- Full range of Combat lines, including those about specific opponents.
- Comments when the player loots bodies, loots boss chests and loots loose items in dungeons.
- Nirara builds an affinity for books and sweet rolls. You can give these items to her to help raise her relationship with you.
- Comments at various points along the Main Quest, Dark Brotherhood, Dawnguard, Companions and Winterhold College questlines.
- She interacts with Sorine and Serana during the Dawnguard questline.
- She can interact with city guards.
- She can interact with Nether's Elana.
- You can change comment frequency under Options to: Hourly, Less Frequently (2 hours), Occasionally (4 hours) or Never.
RELATIONSHIP BENEFITS:
Relationship Rank 1:
- She can train you in smithing, up to level 75.
- 10% Bonus to ingots returned from smelting Dwarven scrap. (Increases +15% per rank).
- Asks you to give her books so she can learn more about the world.
- Flirtatuous behavior if you've bumped into her enough (front or back collision, which she is initially annoyed at but eventually she thinks you're flirting). Can be turned off in Options, once she becomes flirty.
Relationship Rank 2:
- She and the player share Combat Ingenuity, which reduces Stamina cost of Power Attacks by 10% as long as Ninara is a teammate.
- Flirtatuous behavior if not granted at Rank 1.
- Develops an interest in Skyrim's Sweetrolls.
Relationship Rank 3:
- She and the player share Dwemer Precision, which adds 5% to Critical Hit chance as long as Ninara is a teammate.
- You can marry her.
You can always use her Talk menu to check her relationship rank, along with how many points you are away from the next one.
COMPANION SYSTEM:
If you want to free up follower space, you can activate Ninara's Companion System under options. This allows her to act just like an additional follower and she counts as a teammate. She has a catch-up mechanic if too far away and will sandbox while you are reamining idle.
WEAR ITEMS IN INVENTORY:
You can ask Ninara to wear the items in her inventory that you give her. This will remove the outfit that comes with her. When active it will try to keep the items that she is wearing equipped, even if she is not currently a teammate.
WIGS AND JEWELRY:
Under Ninara's Talk menu, you can ask her to wear wigs or jewelry. Each selection will open a container that you can trade items into. In the case of wigs, the first time she will ask you if you'd like her include her favorites. This is just a way to give you a few wigs to start with. You can include any wigs you wish from other wigs mods you have installed, if you have wigs in your inventory. She will randomly choose a new wig once per day, give or take. This is the same for her jewelry box, which allows her to randomly select and wear accessories. For jewelry, hair bows, earrings, necklaces, chokers and similar items are recommended, that would be outside of a normal outfit.
HOME BASE:
You can set the player's current location as Ninara's home base by talking to her. This drops a marker that she will stay near when she isn't being retained as a follower. Once you set a home location, you can choose a different location that she'll stay at during the day or at night (these choices also drop markers where the player is currently standing). Furthermore, you can pick a location that she sleeps at and have her sleep during the day, the night or evening.
QUEST CONTENT:
Ninara has an introductory quest when you approach her location in Mzinchaleft. Once you help her defeat some treasure hunters and other enemies in the area, you can learn more about her and she can become a follower.
Almost immediately after becoming a follower, you help her retrieve one of her signature weapons, which can be found deeper in Mzinchaleft.
Once you leave Mzinchaleft with her, she talks about learning more about Skyrim and the outside world by getting ahold of some books.
When reaching relationship rank 1 with Ninara, there is a quest that involves ramifications for leaving Mzinchaleft.
Finally, Ninara has a quest involving trying the various sweets that Skyrim has to offer once she has reached relationship rank 2.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS (spoilers):
When I First Meet Ninara After Defeating the Enemies, She Won't Talk to Me.
It's a game bug. Smack her with your weapon. It's okay. She can take it. She is not in a crime faction.
Can I Change Her Size/Height (she is too short, tall, etc)?
Height is on the race record and is 0.88 by default. You can change this in xEdit or patch it. Making her too tall does make her head larger as she is proportioned.
A Quest is Stuck or Doesn't Complete, Can You Help?
All quests should complete properly. But if for some reason they do not, these are the console commands to complete them:
"This is my Boomstick"
setstage nwsninaqboomstick 200
(Gun is located in last room before the lift back to the surface on the floor).
"Containment"
setstage nwsninaqcontainment 200
"How Sweet of You"
setstage nwsninaqhowsweet 200
"Neverending Stories"
setstage nwsninaqneverending 200
If the intro doesn't start because of another mod blocking the trigger, in console try:
startquest nwsninaqintro
She or a Follower is Stuck Blocking After Using a Launcher.
Under Options in dialogue, you can learn a spell can be be used to reset a character. This takes all their items and does a reset on them. It is possible that it will duplicate some inventory items, so should only be used as a last ditch effort. Ninara doesn't start with any items - they are quest alias provided so won't have this issue if it's used on her.
Doesn't Summoning a Dwemer Ballista Cause a CTD When It Expires?
Fix is built into this mod.
Her Outfit Pokes in Some Poses or Body Settings.
The outfit is kitbashed from game assets. It is lower resolution that the body of the character, which causes poke through easily unfortunately. She'll use whatever you give her if you talk to her about switching her outfit.
RESOURCES USED:
Resources used ---
Glasses are custom created by me. Outfit, Launcher, Sidepack, Staves are used from in-game assets and kitbashed.
KS Hairdos by Kallies
(Hair used)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68311
High Poly Head by KouLeifoh
(Head and head sculpting)
https://vectorplexis.com/files/file/283-high-poly-head/
Koralina's Makeup Tweaks
(For face makeup)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/63024
Lore Friendly Guns of Skyrim (Formerly Rifles) by ENR
(Ammo meshes used and modified, some rifle ideas used)
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/60183
Resources used (from Skyrim LE versions) ---
Maevan2's Eye Brows created by Maevan2, uploaded by Shiva182
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98309
Natural Eyes by nevenbridge81
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3589
Improved Eye Reflections and Cube Map (only cubemap) by fadingsignal
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67447