Enhanced Skyrim Factions:
The Companions Guild

By DreamKing

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/22650

Skyrim's Companions guild questline suffers from being too short and too linear; it is possible for a low-level character, and/or one with minimal combat skills, to quickly accend to the highest ranks of this famed guild of warriors. Moreover the questline railroads the player, denying them the opportunity to make several key choices. ESF: Companions is a project that aims to improve this situation in several ways:

1. Add skill, level, and time requirements for each of the guild's milestone quests.
2. Add new choices and consequences to those milestone quests.
3. Add new radiant and story quests, both during and after the vanilla questline.
4. Miscellaneous other additions and tweaks.

Project Status:
Version 0.1 is now available, with #1 above--skill, level, and time requirements for quests.

ReadMe:

This looks very good .

Those requirement look very good.

This seems good. The requirements seem strict but by no means hard. I like it.

Level 70 for a main combat skill, while feasble, is a bit to strict for someone who really uses multiple weapon types. I would lower this to 60.

The only time I've reached level 70 quickly in one-handed was when that was literally my only method of combat. Two-handed takes much longer to level up due to the damage/speed difference as compared to one-handed.

I think you're wrong, since XP is granted based on damage done, not number of strikes. I'm not saying that they both leveled at the same speed for you, but I AM saying that if they did not, it was because of other factors not directly related to their one- or two-handedness.

I would actually like to see higher requirements. The only way you're not going to have 30 in one armor and one weapon skill by level 10 is if you're a mage. I would suggest for the last two of those rungs that you include a total number of skill points the character must have in "combat" type skills that's much higher, like 200-ish.

Actually, that would probably be a great way to handle the whole thing... Companions are the Warrior guild of Skyrim, and the way leveling works an all-around number is better than a specific number in a handful of skills, in my opinion. Hunter types would be at a disadvantage because light armor is in the stealth section, but you'll tend to get a very high marksman skill built up and if you're playing as a combat archer/hunter (which is the type you'd expect to be suitable for the Companions), you'd probably have some block and 1 or 2 hand skill as well, some smithing, etc.

By level 10? That's insane.

30 in one armor and one weapon skill at level 10 is entirely reasonable. The mod I'm working on caps major skills at 45 and minor skills at 15 until level 15. A battlemage might only have one weapon and one armor skill. As a combat class (albeit a hybrid), he should should be able to join the Companions.

I really like this. I thought it was funny how the Companions let my girly man mage in so easily.

Thanks for your kind words, folks, and your comments on the requirements. That I have people saying the requirements are too strict, and people saying the requirements aren't strict enough, suggests to me that they're reasonably well balanced.

A few more questions:

- For people who use shields extensively (or parry with weapons), what do your block and armor skills look like? Is block higher than armor; should I include Block in the list of armor skills?
- I haven't done a 2-handed focused character yet, so I am a little concerned--does that skill indeed level slower? What do your skills look like at level 20-25?

I may make some small tweaks now to accomodate these things, and I can always do further tweaking in updates after the initial release, if players are consistently finding one particular requirement onerous to fulfill.

Great idea! I would love to see next segment done for the Thieves guild ^^ Thieves have always been my favorite, no contest, but Skyrim guild is just so lackluster and doesn't give any feel at all.

It needs a serious revamp, but aside of those cool stuff you have mentioned here for the companions, I fear it would need quite a bit of roleplay and NPCs added in as well. And that would a big pile of work, I fear :< Still, any improvement is an improvement :>

I think you should include block in the armor skill category.
I level block much faster than armor skills..this is because i often change between heavy and light armor ( if i find a fancy and nice armor i change it purely for the looks..sometimes ).
Viridian Echo asked for more improvements with the guild....why not join forces with another modder (http://www.gamesas.com/user/831849-deadarmour/) who also is building a companions guild overhaul, but seems to be more focused on the atmosphere of the guild.

No, only the first bit I listed was referencing the level 10 requirements (the very first ones) stating that 30 seemed low. Even if you started as a mage-focused race you've only got to raise 30 points to get one armor and one weapon skill to 30 total. The higher numbers I stated, if you look again, were suggestions for the highest rung, i.e., completing the Companions.

As an aside, Ishmael, that mod concept seems odd to me. If you cap skills at a particular level, aren't you just forcing hybridization on a character? Do you choose your own majors, are they your racials, or what?

Back on topic, the lowest requirements the author lists aren't to join, they're to get into the "real" Companions quests. No requirements at all to join as far as has been stated. So basically, you join, have to do 10 radiant "gruntwork" quests, get to level 10, and have the skills of a level 4-5 warrior type character.

I'd like it of there were some options here, because I think it's clear this will effect different play-styles differently. The way I play a warrior, the only thing that would possibly change is artificial level requirements to do the major quests. My skills will be above the required level by the time I'm halfway to that level, because I almost always play focused character types. Personally, I think joining a guild for a particular archetype should be easier for purely focused characters of that type, and by extension harder for hybrids. My suggestion would be to remove the artificial level requirement entirely and only use skills... and I still think my earlier suggestion was a good one, rather than mark out certain numbers in specific skills, put a total requirement split among all the relevant skills, so that both skill-focused characters and more generalized (in the proper set of skills) can advance.

All the guilds need expansion, I agree. I'm doing this one because it fits nicely alongside my Aela follower project--neither mod will require the other, but they'll be designed to work well together. In my head, it's really all one mod, that I'm splitting in two because some people may want this who don't want to have to use Aela as a follower, and that's easy enough for me to do. Other guilds, I'll have to leave to other modders.


He has some fine ideas, but also some that I don't think fit very well. Other people may not like some of my ideas. Choice is good. He did give me permission, in his thread, to use some of his ideas; and I may, in modified form. But I have a lot of ideas of my own that I want to get to, first.


As I mentioned in the first post, any of the stated values will be editable by individual players to fit their specific situation. Players using a skill/level uncapper may want to set higher values. A player who is joining the Companions after being the hero of the Civil War--or Dragonborn--may reasonably think there should be fewer required quests before their Trial. If you don't want level requirements, set them all to 0. Etc. I'm just trying to determine a sensible set of default values.

I may add an optional "total combat skills" factor...would be easy enough to do. In general, though, what I am trying to do is balance things so that characters with focused combat skills (one preferred weapon type and one preferred armor type) will not bump up against any of the requirements other than the number of radiant quests. If less focused characters do bump into other requirements, that's okay; it's kind of the point. It makes sense to me that more multi-skilled characters will take longer to progress through the guild. If, say, a member of the Circle doesn't think any of your individual combat skills measure up to their own, then they'd be hesitant to let you into the Circle.

This sounds like an excellent concept, looking forward to trying it, DreamKing.


I think the skill requirements are interesting, but I'd propose just adding the radiant quest requirement alone will be a tremendous improvement to the Companions questline, and actually would be great for all the factions if you plan future expansions. I already try to do a lot of radiant quests before each major stage of the faction questlines, and incorporating this as a requirement would be wonderful.

I'm not so sure whether the time passing requirement is a good idea, however, as a lot of us use non-vanilla time scale. I don't know about the level requirement, either, I suppose I'd have to play it to see how it feels. Without difficulty enhancing mods like Deadly Combat and ASIS, I find that characters become a bit overpowered around level 30 or so, so in the past I usually started a new character around level 25-30.

You may want to consider incorporating a configuration menu so players can choose whether to use all or some of the requirements.

EDIT: Might also be good to add Block as an additional option for the skill requirement, as I've learned focusing on Block can be a fun alternative sort of build for a warrior.

Leveling one-handed weapons takes far less time than two-handed in actual practice. Yes, it's based on damage delt, but only by the weapons base damage.

From the Wiki:

So, if you look at the base damage of, say, a Daedric Sword vs Daedric Greatsword (14 vs. 24 damage, or 71% difference) and factor in swing speed, it makes sense. Also mirroring my own experience trying to level each tree. The problem is how pathetically slow swing speeds are with two-handed weapons, unless you're using Iron ones, which are OK... Swing a Daedric greatsword or a Dragonbone one around and it's just agonizing. I feel like I'm swinging a tree trunk or something.

The only real exception to this is if you use the Ebony Blade, as it's swing speed is about as fast as a one-handed weapon. But who takes the two-handed tree to use THAT?

Initial release with skill, level, and time requirements for the Companions quests http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/22650! I'll update the original post.

Great to hear, I look forward to trying this one.

Thanks!

I did add Block to the armor skills, as you and schtan requested. And I did add the possibility of a "total warrior skills" requirement, as Caffeinated asked for, although it is off by default.

I did not change the default weapon skill requirements. Testing with both archery and one-handed focused characters, I was in the upper 30s in those skills by level 10. And even if characters focused on two-handed weapons level slower, there is a two-handed trainer among the Companions who can train you 5 times each level. That should allow players to easily hit the weapon requirements. Actually, the only requirement I had trouble meeting in my testing was armor skills--if you're an archer, you probably don't get hit very often, and if you're sword & board, your defense stats tend to be split between armor and block. That's why the ultimate armor skill requirement is less than the weapon requirement.

And anyway, the requirements are all customizable, so people can adjust them as they like. And if there are consistent issues with any particular requirements, I will adjust the defaults in some future update.

That's great, sounds like it will be perfect for anyone looking for a more in-depth Companions faction experience.

Instant download.

This sounds like an essential mod. Really nice.

One suggestion: I wouldn't mind seeing minor entrance requirements. Not anything extreme, but enough of a skill/level requirement that a character has to have done a couple of quests and proved that they have potential.

This looks great. I just have 1 request-

Can you make it so that you can refuse becoming the leader/Harbinger?

I thought about this. What I decided--and I'll be making this more explicit as I make more edits to the guild--is that the Companions are really pretty desperate for recruits. They've had four or five members leave, wash out, or be killed recently (according to what we learn in various other parts of the game), Kodlak is deathly ill, most of the able-bodied fighters are off in the Civil War...so beggars can't be choosers, basically. If you're interested and you can pass the fight that's required for entrance, you're worth taking a chance on.


Yep, that's one of the "choices & consequences" (#2 in the first post) that I have in mind, along with a few others that people often ask for.

Fantastic,
works like a charm so far. This mod and your enhanced follower mod for Aela is now a "must-have" in my load order.
btw, are they still compatible? I havent really run into any problems, but can I expect that?