Was wondering : do these random encounters reset the "dungeon" (or cell) in question ? For example, if you already cleared cave X, but the game randomly selects same cave X as the random mercenary quest, does that cave suddenly get reset? I don't think so, but was wondering.
It seems that they simply add a location on the map, that you may probably have already found.
I presume this mod does not change the underlying system.
You wrote "If you fail to do any of these, he/she won't talk to you anymore". Not sure what that means: does it mean the mercenary stays there forever until the target location is cleared, does it mean no new random mercenaries will spawn, ?
EDIT: works great by the way ! Nicely done. PS : I do not know yet if location are reset by the random encounter. My single encounter up to now chose a spot I had not cleared.
Love immersion mods like this. Can't wait to try it out. Also, I am not saying this to be rude but out of concern, since you misspelled mercenaries in the mod's name it will make it harder for people to find it when they search for mercenary related mods.
Not working for me, not sure why I spoke to mercenary, persuaded her to tell me the location... the notification said "map updated" but I didn't get a letter, tried sneaking and pickpocketing, but mercenary didn't have a letter.
well, let's start with an obvious thing: is the mod properly activated? Do you have any other mods that overwrite the quest I edited? You can check it in Tes5Edit, if you know how.
Also, it was possible the mod was installed after the game has already generated a mercenary in the world, and in that case, the quest won't be updated, you would have to wait until another random overworld event.
Wow! I love simple mods like this. I can't try it right now, but I'll download it as soon as possible. By reading the letter on the image I had a few ideas.
1) Add more information about the place they're going go to and why. Something like Even Better Quest Objectives. This would encourage players to explore or decide where they're going first. What locations are more interesting. An example would be additional information like "a giant's camp near Whiterun". Maybe the giants could be trying to steal farm animals like cows or goats. Other letters could mention what is causing trouble. Draugr, Falmer, Necromancers, Bandits, etc.
2) Add little immersive and lore-friendly details like making the letter refer to the Mercenary by name (no need to change the NPC name, just the text on the letter). You could get a lot of names from the UESP. Example: Hamvir, you are supposed to (...)". Also, what if the letter is signed by the person who possibly wrote it and hired the mercenary? Like in this case it could be Proventus or any other Whiterun NPC.
While nice ideas, the problem is that the vanilla quest does not supply those details - only the location. (More exactly, it notices which hold you are in and chooses a random location based on that.) So adding such details will mean making far more complicated and numerous changes to the quest and its scripts.
The location draws from a list, but there is no associated list of what is located at the locations in the first list, so including such information would require quite a bit of added scripting rather than just drawing the location from the associated radiant quest. And the NPC who carries the letter is himself just an unnamed generic spawn from a template (LvlWEAdventurerSpellsword), so getting the same name associated with the letter to also associate with the NPC would be a little tricky without changing even more.
The only one that would be not very difficult (but also not nececessarily easy) to pull off would be getting the steward's name and placing it in the letter.** But is the steward the only one who issues such quests to mercenaries? I could easily see any of the wealthier members of a hold making such a request - either because they had an interest in the location or because they want a favor owed to them by those that do. I could even see the imperial or stormcloak soldiers using mercenaries to clear out problematic areas rather than risk soldiers' lives on matters not directly involving the civil war.
**(The hold location and its CW status (held by imperials or sons) can be found in the quest, so one would need to write a script that looks up the name of what should be the only person who is 1) in that hold's crime faction, 2) in the faction jobsteward, and 3) is associated with the current CW faction in charge of that hold. The result could be placed in a global of type string which could then be called upon by the letter.)
That would require a lot of work, and some of it mightnot be possible to be extracted just from the location. - BrinaSair has already explained it very well.
I was able to convert this .esp to a ESP-FE (flagged .esl), but for those who don't know how to do that, it'd be nice if you can do that. Thanks for this mod -- should have been vanilla.
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It seems that they simply add a location on the map, that you may probably have already found.
I presume this mod does not change the underlying system.
You wrote "If you fail to do any of these, he/she won't talk to you anymore". Not sure what that means: does it mean the mercenary stays there forever until the target location is cleared, does it mean no new random mercenaries will spawn, ?
I will try it then ...
EDIT: works great by the way ! Nicely done.
PS : I do not know yet if location are reset by the random encounter. My single encounter up to now chose a spot I had not cleared.
I spoke to mercenary, persuaded her to tell me the location... the notification said "map updated" but I didn't get a letter, tried sneaking and pickpocketing, but mercenary didn't have a letter.
Please help
Also, it was possible the mod was installed after the game has already generated a mercenary in the world, and in that case, the quest won't be updated, you would have to wait until another random overworld event.
1) Add more information about the place they're going go to and why. Something like Even Better Quest Objectives. This would encourage players to explore or decide where they're going first. What locations are more interesting. An example would be additional information like "a giant's camp near Whiterun". Maybe the giants could be trying to steal farm animals like cows or goats. Other letters could mention what is causing trouble. Draugr, Falmer, Necromancers, Bandits, etc.
2) Add little immersive and lore-friendly details like making the letter refer to the Mercenary by name (no need to change the NPC name, just the text on the letter). You could get a lot of names from the UESP. Example: Hamvir, you are supposed to (...)". Also, what if the letter is signed by the person who possibly wrote it and hired the mercenary? Like in this case it could be Proventus or any other Whiterun NPC.
The location draws from a list, but there is no associated list of what is located at the locations in the first list, so including such information would require quite a bit of added scripting rather than just drawing the location from the associated radiant quest. And the NPC who carries the letter is himself just an unnamed generic spawn from a template (LvlWEAdventurerSpellsword), so getting the same name associated with the letter to also associate with the NPC would be a little tricky without changing even more.
The only one that would be not very difficult (but also not nececessarily easy) to pull off would be getting the steward's name and placing it in the letter.** But is the steward the only one who issues such quests to mercenaries? I could easily see any of the wealthier members of a hold making such a request - either because they had an interest in the location or because they want a favor owed to them by those that do. I could even see the imperial or stormcloak soldiers using mercenaries to clear out problematic areas rather than risk soldiers' lives on matters not directly involving the civil war.
**(The hold location and its CW status (held by imperials or sons) can be found in the quest, so one would need to write a script that looks up the name of what should be the only person who is 1) in that hold's crime faction, 2) in the faction jobsteward, and 3) is associated with the current CW faction in charge of that hold. The result could be placed in a global of type string which could then be called upon by the letter.)
Thanks for this mod -- should have been vanilla.