As requested. A more moderate version of hand placed enemies. Unlike the original, battles will now be more consistent and capped at around 4 enemies per fight. No more bandit armies holding forts.
If you are switching from the original, please uninstall the original, install this version and START A NEW GAME!!
Released as a new mod for better version management. Sorry for any inconvenience.
For the moment, I do not have access to skyrim or the creation kit. I could see myself releasing an ambush only version in the future but it might be several months down the line, however, if it happens. I'm monitoring the forums for any major bugs, should they arise, but I'm largely on support only mode for now. (Answering questions and making sure nothing broken is discovered)
The mod draws from your leveled lists and the ratio of male to female bandits will be equal to the normal game. It sounds like you might be using another mod that adds a bunch of female bandits to those lists.
This mod comes with LORERIM but I personally do not enjoy fighting so many enemies, even with the light version. I prefer fewer, but stronger enemies. But if I disable this mod, I can`t load any save. Do you have any ideas of how to go around this? I do realize that you do not officially support what I'm trying to do and this is ultimately entirely on me, but if you have any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it!
Happy to help regardless, though I'm not sure how much help I will be in this situation.
Disclaimer: I don't officially recommend removing mods mid game, I don't support Lorerim, use at your own risk...blah blah blah.
Ok, on to trying to help. I took a look at Lorerim. (Didn't even know that was a thing). Anyway, if I understand correctly, it looks like they do alot of pre-adjusted customization and, likely, patches on top of that. It might make removing any mod extremely difficult if not impossible. But my first suggestion would be to head to a city, away from any dungeons, and do the classic "wait 30 in-game days" approach. Wait 31 times for the full bar (to make sure at least 30 in-game days go by) and then create a new save and try to remove the mod at that point. As long as you are in a city and 30 days have passed by, theoretically any traces from my mod and any scripts applied by other mods, to my npcs, should be gone. That's your best bet.
If that doesn't work. Honestly, I'm not sure anything will. While I never recommend removing mods mid-game, I tried to build this mod to be easily removed mid-game cause I know people are going to do it anyway.
But, I'll still try another suggestion. If the above does not work, you could try replacing my mod with a blank mod with the exact same name. BACKUP MY MOD FIRST. Once my mod is backed up, open the creation kit, make a new empty mod with all DLCs checked, save it with the EXACT same name as my mod, and overwrite wherever my original mod is installed. If you're gonna try this, make sure you've done the 30-game wait thing, with a new save, first.
The reason this second option could work (emphasis on could) is because larger load orders tend to get upset if anything is moved around. Something as simple as taking a mod that was loading 50th and moving it to 49th in the load order can still break things. (Due to the way the game keeps track of mod addresses for loading things). If that doesn't work, overwrite the empty file with the backed-up version of my mod to undo the changes.
Those two things are all I can suggest I'm afraid. That, and to wish you luck.
Is my understanding that LORERIM is becoming quite popular and so far I'm really enjoying all the changes is just that I personally prefer a different approach when it comes to the amount of enemies I face in each encounter. Regardless, I think your work here is brilliant and you're the best for even trying to help me with such detailed reply.
I'm at work now, but I'll for sure try this tomorrow! Thanks again for the patience :)
"Officially", I never recommend removing a mod mid-game.
Unofficially, as long as you are in town and it's been at least 10 minutes playtime since you were last in a dungeon, you should be fine. I use a single enable/disable script for the ambushes that will clean up the corpses ten minutes after the ambush (This is done for a handful of reasons.) As long as it's been ten minutes since your last ambush, you're almost certainly fine to switch.
Sorry, should have clarified. I use Bethesda's default enable/disable script that's included in the game. (The same script they use hundreds of times). That way I know it works, that it's stable, and I don't have to worry about packaging a custom script in the mod.
It's only used to enable the ambushes when the player enters a trigger box. (A specific location for each ambush) and then to disable them ten minutes later.
Edit for further clarification: It is also NOT a constantly running script. The player enters a trigger box/ location, the script enables the enemies and then runs a timer before disabling them again. The timer is ten minutes long, so you don't have vanishing corpses. Once the ten minutes pass, no scripts are active.
Great mod, been using it for a while now, and far more stable option over other increased enemy mods. My only genuine criticism is that many of the added enemies are statues. Bandits could use some sandboxing, patrols, and draugr could be awakened while sleeping or popping out from tombs instead of staring at a stone pillar 24/7 lol. That sort of stuff. Little things to make them feel like they weren't just plopped down without reason.
A legit criticism, but one of those "Time vs. Benefit" matters I'm afraid. Reasonably speaking, adding patrols to even 1/3 of the enemies in my mod would take at least 50 hours (between determining where patrols should go, adding them, and testing). While it would add a bit of realism to some of the encounters, many people (myself included) wouldn't even see the patrols as we charge in too quickly.
I did consider it when first creating the mod, and I did add patrols to a handful of enemies (a very small number) but overall, decided it wasn't worth the time investment for now.
I've been playing around with this for a few hours now, and you're devious! I love it. My favourite type of mods tend to be dungeons, as I've played the vanilla locations to death by this point. This has made same said locations feel fresh. Easily endorsed 👍
You're more than welcome. Btw, this works brilliantly with the popular High Level Enemies Redux mod. An ambush by skeletons is not to be sniffed at when they're not one hit kills. Almost lost my battle hardened orc in Dimhollow Crypt!
At the bottom of Nchuand-Zel just past the door to the final section there's about ten falmers all ready to fight at once which feels like far too many, especially if you're going there early. I'm not sure if this is an oversight or just due to the enemy groups from the corridor being close enough to gett roped in.
HI there i was just wondering if there was a reason your enemies would not agro me, i just started a new heavily modified playlist (nolvus 6) I entered Embershard mine there were two enemies in the usual position i killed them and as i moved forward I'm presuming that the 4 that ran at me were your ambush ones, after that one called a champion, he killed me i have Shadow of Skyrim installed so i woke up outside Riverwood I've returned to the mine to collect dropped gear and now they are all my friends shouting "hey why are you attacking" etc they just stand there with no agro currently image.
Actually i lowered the bridge and so two normal enemies came and they couldnt see me at all so something is interacting badly but its probably not this if normal enemies also ignore me!
I havn't had anyone else report issues like this and, since the normal spawns are doing it to, I'd say it's likely something else in your load order, sorry.
Hey, I've been using your mod for quite sometime now and noticed this *bug* i guess?
Your mod never leave my load order since I've taking a fond of it, so I know what to expect every time I came exploring Bleak falls Barrow. But in my save where Alternate start is installed and activated; something occurred rather unexpectedly. The hand-placed enemies are gone, I was confused at first but as I go deeper in to the dungeon, the more it resembles the vanilla enemies placement. Funny, because the ambushes are still working.
There something you should know: I've been playing in that save for quite a while now 3-4hrs-ish or so, and I never leveled up my character once. As I'm typing this, my unsuspected Imperial character is still level 1 (just letting you know, because maybe that is one of the key factors why enemy placements haven't respawn)
I also seeking advices from you because my load order might be at fault too since I follow this general rule I found in the internet:
STRUCTURE: 1. Bug fixes (e.g. UnofficialSkyrim Special Edition Patch)
5. Buildings; A. Mods that add distributed orworldwide content (Dolmen Ruins or Oblivion Gates) B. Mods that add or expandsettlements C. Mods that add individualbuildings D. Mods that modify buildinginteriors
6. Items; A. Item packs B. Individual items
7. Gameplay; A. AI mods (e.g. ImmersiveCitizens) B. Robust gameplay changes(e.g. Marriage All, Alternate Start) C. Expanded armor (e.g. MagicBooks, Pouches) D. Crafting mods E. Other gameplay mods (e.g.Rich Merchants, Faster Greatswords)
8. NPCs; A. Overhauls (e.g. DiverseDragons) B. Populated series C. Other additions
9. Appearance mods; A. Hairdo mods B. Adorable Females C. Face mods D. Body mesh mods (e.g.Seraphim, Beautiful Mistresses, Dimon99 and Maevan2 Female body) E. Natural Eyes F. Other appearance mods
10. Texture mods;
11. Patches; A. Patches for earlier mods(e.g. the Apocalypse-Ordinator Compatibility Patch) B. Patches that alter content C. Patches that disable contentor purport to improve performance
12. Mods that mod creatorsrequest should appear last (e.g. Go Away Clouds!).
My first thought was gonna be to have you check to make sure the mod is still active but you said the ambushes are working. With that in mind, honestly, I think it's just skyrim being skyrim. I use alternate start LAL myself, so that wouldn't matter. (assuming that's the alternate start mod you use, there are a couple) And level definitely doesn't matter cause I sometimes COC directly from the title menu for testing purposes. And with the nature of the mod, load order wouldn't cause what you're describing. (Load order with my mod is only important to ensure your lighting and sound mods take effect in the dungeons).
Sometimes skyrim doesn't fully load everything properly during a new game. It's extremely rare, but it does happen. My advice is this:
If you're willing, and havn't already done so, enter embershard mine (The mine by riverwood, across from bleak falls barrow). In the first room where you have to lower the bridge, there should be 4 enemies. Two vanilla spawn by the fire, and two hand placed enemies in the room with the lever to lower the bridge. If you are not stealthed, all 4 should aggro. There should also be an ambush from the mine entrance when you reach the lever / lower the bridge. (The ambush is from the mine entrance, not the two that cross the bridge) If the two by the lever are there, and the ambush triggers, then I think the skyrim engine just had a minor hiccup and didn't properly place the spawns in BFB. I wouldn't be worried about it, but you could always go to a town and wait for 30 in-game days to ensure all enemies respawn. This should make sure it doesn't happen in another dungeon.
If the two enemies are not at the lever in embershard mine, then I suggest going to whiterun or another city, waiting 30 in-game days, and try again. This should cause everything to respawn. If they are still not there, then I think your game failed to properly initialize all mods at launch. In this case, please triple check to ensure the mod is enabled, and then I recommend starting a new game. Not the most desired answer but, if it makes it this far, there is concern that other mods may not have initalized as well.
You could also hit ` (tilde, upper left keyboard) and then type in coc bleakfallsbarrow01 from the title screen for a quick test. If the enemies I add are in BFB, then the mod is working properly.
I posted this problem in the skyrimmods subreddit a while ago while waiting for your reply and uhh... it resolved itself : Never mind I found something interesting through my testing. I thought it was the load order but it's my character the whole time. Remember when I said I was level 1 the whole time? Seems like the hand placed enemies updates every time you leveled, once I finally levelled up my character I went in the Barrow and saw the familiar placements of bandits again, I tested this multiple times while moving the hand-placed enemies mod up and down my load order. Might be because of the mod arena: This one
Glad you got it fixed! I'll be honest, how you got it fixed is...uh, really weird...lol. Cause i've never seen that in testing, and I've used arena in the past. But, either way I'm glad it's working now.
228 comments
If you are switching from the original, please uninstall the original, install this version and START A NEW GAME!!
Released as a new mod for better version management. Sorry for any inconvenience.
This mod comes with LORERIM but I personally do not enjoy fighting so many enemies, even with the light version. I prefer fewer, but stronger enemies. But if I disable this mod, I can`t load any save. Do you have any ideas of how to go around this? I do realize that you do not officially support what I'm trying to do and this is ultimately entirely on me, but if you have any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it!
Disclaimer: I don't officially recommend removing mods mid game, I don't support Lorerim, use at your own risk...blah blah blah.
Ok, on to trying to help. I took a look at Lorerim. (Didn't even know that was a thing). Anyway, if I understand correctly, it looks like they do alot of pre-adjusted customization and, likely, patches on top of that. It might make removing any mod extremely difficult if not impossible. But my first suggestion would be to head to a city, away from any dungeons, and do the classic "wait 30 in-game days" approach. Wait 31 times for the full bar (to make sure at least 30 in-game days go by) and then create a new save and try to remove the mod at that point. As long as you are in a city and 30 days have passed by, theoretically any traces from my mod and any scripts applied by other mods, to my npcs, should be gone. That's your best bet.
If that doesn't work. Honestly, I'm not sure anything will. While I never recommend removing mods mid-game, I tried to build this mod to be easily removed mid-game cause I know people are going to do it anyway.
But, I'll still try another suggestion. If the above does not work, you could try replacing my mod with a blank mod with the exact same name. BACKUP MY MOD FIRST. Once my mod is backed up, open the creation kit, make a new empty mod with all DLCs checked, save it with the EXACT same name as my mod, and overwrite wherever my original mod is installed. If you're gonna try this, make sure you've done the 30-game wait thing, with a new save, first.
The reason this second option could work (emphasis on could) is because larger load orders tend to get upset if anything is moved around. Something as simple as taking a mod that was loading 50th and moving it to 49th in the load order can still break things. (Due to the way the game keeps track of mod addresses for loading things). If that doesn't work, overwrite the empty file with the backed-up version of my mod to undo the changes.
Those two things are all I can suggest I'm afraid. That, and to wish you luck.
I'm at work now, but I'll for sure try this tomorrow! Thanks again for the patience :)
Unofficially, as long as you are in town and it's been at least 10 minutes playtime since you were last in a dungeon, you should be fine. I use a single enable/disable script for the ambushes that will clean up the corpses ten minutes after the ambush (This is done for a handful of reasons.) As long as it's been ten minutes since your last ambush, you're almost certainly fine to switch.
It's only used to enable the ambushes when the player enters a trigger box. (A specific location for each ambush) and then to disable them ten minutes later.
Edit for further clarification: It is also NOT a constantly running script. The player enters a trigger box/ location, the script enables the enemies and then runs a timer before disabling them again. The timer is ten minutes long, so you don't have vanishing corpses. Once the ten minutes pass, no scripts are active.
I did consider it when first creating the mod, and I did add patrols to a handful of enemies (a very small number) but overall, decided it wasn't worth the time investment for now.
Actually i lowered the bridge and so two normal enemies came and they couldnt see me at all so something is interacting badly but its probably not this if normal enemies also ignore me!
Your mod never leave my load order since I've taking a fond of it, so I know what to expect every time I came exploring Bleak falls Barrow. But in my save where Alternate start is installed and activated; something occurred rather unexpectedly. The hand-placed enemies are gone, I was confused at first but as I go deeper in to the dungeon, the more it resembles the vanilla enemies placement. Funny, because the ambushes are still working.
There something you should know:
I've been playing in that save for quite a while now 3-4hrs-ish or so, and I never leveled up my character once. As I'm typing this, my unsuspected Imperial character is still level 1 (just letting you know, because maybe that is one of the key factors why enemy placements haven't respawn)
I also seeking advices from you because my load order might be at fault too since I follow this general rule I found in the internet:
STRUCTURE:
1. Bug fixes (e.g. UnofficialSkyrim Special Edition Patch)
2. Structure and UI Mods;
A. Overhauls (e.g. Campfire andFrostfall)
B. Mission and contentcorrection (e.g. Cutting Room Floor)
C. Difficulty/level list mods
D. Race mods
E. Perk mods
F. UI mods
G. Cheat mods
3. Missions/Quests;
4. Environmental mods;
A. Global mesh mods (e.g. SMIM)
B. Weather/lighting mods
C. Foliage mods
D. Sound mods
5. Buildings;
A. Mods that add distributed orworldwide content (Dolmen Ruins or Oblivion Gates)
B. Mods that add or expandsettlements
C. Mods that add individualbuildings
D. Mods that modify buildinginteriors
6. Items;
A. Item packs
B. Individual items
7. Gameplay;
A. AI mods (e.g. ImmersiveCitizens)
B. Robust gameplay changes(e.g. Marriage All, Alternate Start)
C. Expanded armor (e.g. MagicBooks, Pouches)
D. Crafting mods
E. Other gameplay mods (e.g.Rich Merchants, Faster Greatswords)
8. NPCs;
A. Overhauls (e.g. DiverseDragons)
B. Populated series
C. Other additions
9. Appearance mods;
A. Hairdo mods
B. Adorable Females
C. Face mods
D. Body mesh mods (e.g.Seraphim, Beautiful Mistresses, Dimon99 and Maevan2 Female body)
E. Natural Eyes
F. Other appearance mods
10. Texture mods;
11. Patches;
A. Patches for earlier mods(e.g. the Apocalypse-Ordinator Compatibility Patch)
B. Patches that alter content
C. Patches that disable contentor purport to improve performance
12. Mods that mod creatorsrequest should appear last (e.g. Go Away Clouds!).
Sometimes skyrim doesn't fully load everything properly during a new game. It's extremely rare, but it does happen. My advice is this:
If you're willing, and havn't already done so, enter embershard mine (The mine by riverwood, across from bleak falls barrow). In the first room where you have to lower the bridge, there should be 4 enemies. Two vanilla spawn by the fire, and two hand placed enemies in the room with the lever to lower the bridge. If you are not stealthed, all 4 should aggro. There should also be an ambush from the mine entrance when you reach the lever / lower the bridge. (The ambush is from the mine entrance, not the two that cross the bridge) If the two by the lever are there, and the ambush triggers, then I think the skyrim engine just had a minor hiccup and didn't properly place the spawns in BFB. I wouldn't be worried about it, but you could always go to a town and wait for 30 in-game days to ensure all enemies respawn. This should make sure it doesn't happen in another dungeon.
If the two enemies are not at the lever in embershard mine, then I suggest going to whiterun or another city, waiting 30 in-game days, and try again. This should cause everything to respawn. If they are still not there, then I think your game failed to properly initialize all mods at launch. In this case, please triple check to ensure the mod is enabled, and then I recommend starting a new game. Not the most desired answer but, if it makes it this far, there is concern that other mods may not have initalized as well.
You could also hit ` (tilde, upper left keyboard) and then type in coc bleakfallsbarrow01 from the title screen for a quick test. If the enemies I add are in BFB, then the mod is working properly.
I posted this problem in the skyrimmods subreddit a while ago while waiting for your reply and uhh... it resolved itself :
Never mind I found something interesting through my testing.
I thought it was the load order but it's my character the whole time. Remember when I said I was level 1 the whole time? Seems like the hand placed enemies updates every time you leveled, once I finally levelled up my character I went in the Barrow and saw the familiar placements of bandits again, I tested this multiple times while moving the hand-placed enemies mod up and down my load order. Might be because of the mod arena: This one