I went through the quest near the Ahemmusa camp with that Ashlander-hating trader who lost his guarskins and I was amazed at how thorough you'd been. First Julan starts commenting on how we should... Treat the gentleman, then I approached the camp. He told me he wasn't welcome there anymore, so I left him behind and tried to find information on the thieves. I get back, and Julan reacts as though I just told him what I found out, which was exactly what I intended.

Julan is so awesome it hurts. My only issues arise not from the mod but from the limitations of the game itself. It's hard to get his disposition up when I play a character who's been in prison for so long she has the social skills of an angry baboon (translation: she has low speechcraft and personality scores ), and the persuasion system of the game just doesn't work that well.

He's also such a fast learner that I had to leave him in Ald'Ruhn for a while so I could train.

I have a few questions, the first one is a biggie:
When I read that the mod needs to be activated in a new game or at least before you get the Vivec informants quest, I took this to mean that as long as I start a new game I could role-play my way to Julan at my leisure and ended up picking him up right after Vivec. Did I make a stupid, stupid mistake here, or can I just take him to Vivec real quick? We've already paid Shani a visit and I talked to her alone for a while, so I'm now traveling alone with Julan in Ald'Ruhn, unaware that I spoke to Shani about him.

Second question: Attributes. You say in the read-me that his attributes raise with his skills. Does this mean he uses Galsiah's system? If I want to increase his health, for example, I could train acrobatics and heavy armor, right?

Last question: How long did all of this take you? I'd love to try my hand at making a similar companion, specifically with the interactions with other companion mods.

Thanks a lot for this, I think I may actually bother to beat the game now that I have someone to whine about the weather.

That shouldn't be a big problem with him. Every character I make who isn't born under The Lady is never popular. Plus Julan has natural disposition increases and decreases for certain actions you perform. So when you need to get on better terms with him, just take him to a bar and shove mazte down his gullet until his gut bursts, he always seems to forgive me after that.



Easy solution for that, pay a trainer for him. Every trainer in the vanilla game should have a '-Train Julan' topic that you can use to... Train Julan! Whodathunk, eh? Another great bonus to that, well it looks to me like he's actually cheaper to NPC train then you are! Might just be my imagination though. It also confers a multiple point bonus rather than 1.



I believe what she did was make him refuse to join up with you if you've done all the objectives in the Vivec Informants quest AND talked to Caius to end the quest. If you did everything in Vivec but haven't talked with Caius about it yet, I think Julan is still obtainable. But I never risked dabbling that far in it to find out for myself, longest I ever waited to get Julan once, was until I gave the Skull to the Orc lady in the Mage's Guild, and that was just to roleplay him never thinking of me as a grave robber.

-DL :chaos:

Hiya, and thanks for the kind comments!



If you were able to pick him up, then you're fine. If you were too far into the main quest, he'd have refused to join you.



It's a custom system, so not identical to Galsiah's, but it's the same idea, simplified. Lemme see... ok, it's like this:

Strength - based on Long Blade, Axe, Blunt Weapon, Hand to Hand, Armorer.
Endurance - Heavy Armor, Medium Armor, Spear
Agility - Sneak, Short Blade, Light Armor, Unarmored, Block.
Intelligence - Alchemy, Conjuration, Security, Enchant
Willpower - Mysticism, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration
Personality - Illusion, Speechcraft, Mercantile
Luck - An average of the above stats.

Health - based on Strength and Endurance
Magicka - Intelligence x 3

The folowing are not based on anything, but are determined either by preset amounts, or by the player's settings: speed, athletics, acrobatics, marksman, fatigue.

Note that when I say "based on", the exact calculation varies, since you don't have to raise every skill to maximum in order to max his stats, and some stats are affected by more skills than others. But that's the gist of it. It's not highly sophisticated like GCD, but it mostly works ok. Suggestions for improvements welcome!



Nine months working on the first release, and there were patches and additions after that, of course.

K.

Yeah, once I got on his good side after I met him it didn't bother me, but it still doesn't feel right and the same problem crops up when dealing with Shani. Of course, it also crops up with a metric ton of vanilla NPCs. Better than Oblivion conversation pie, I guess.


No. I told him I would train him and that's what I'ma gonna do. :stare:

And he's makin' me feel inadequate by comparison anyway...

I may start "accidentally" casting drain spells on him...


I actually did talk to Caius before going to meet Julan, I think. I did not however talk to him again after initially passing him a copy of Progress of Truth, so maybe I dodged a bullet, there. And, uh, is the grave thing going to be a problem in the future? I popped into one just to see what he'd say.


That is a huge relief, starting over at this point would drive me to stop playing and... Force me to... Spend more time outside? :mellow:


I think it sounds perfect, and quite complicated enough! Thank you, that will really help me in deciding how to train him.


Wow... Mostly writing, I assume? Maybe once I'm a little less wet behind the ears I'll give it a go. I hope you don't mind if I pick Julan's code apart just to see what I can learn?

No, it shouldn't. Like I said, I did that for RP reasons, because Julan won't hate you for that. But if it was real life, any native Dunmer would hold it against you.

So don't sweat it.

-DL :chaos:

He doesn't always mind. Take the Hlaalu ancestral tomb, for example.



Actually, a lot of that time was spent learning how to script! Feel free to pick em apart though - that's exactly how I learned!

Sometimes roleplaying and cultural sensitivity take a backseat to hearing Julan say something sarcastic. :shrug:


Oof, all the scripting I know is for web design and math programs. Better get to studyin' then.

Thanks for the help, I tip my imaginary hat to you!

So, does training his armorer skill make his prices for repairing go down, or does it simply increase his strength?

Only biff I have about his combat style is that he'll never stop using the bow even when he should be using melee. MCA added thug starts whacking him with a magic axe, he's trying to shoot the guy in melee (without even backing up). Oh well, he provided a nice distraction to the guy while I paralyzed him and beat him down with a frosty staff.

Re: the armorer skill, I have no idea how the money is calculated. It's all the game engine - if I had my way, I would make him do it for free (probably with some other mitigating factor like a higher failure/other mishap chance, to keep it balanced), as it's hardly in character for him to demand money, but there's nothing I can do.

Re: ranged combat - it all depends on a few factors, like how good his bow is vs his m?l?e weapon (I suspect), and how high his skill is in the weapon he has. If he has a good sword and reasonable long blade skill, he'll generally use it in battle if you tell him to go m?l?e, I find. There may be other factors affecting combat AI that I'm not aware of however.

:rofl: Too true! I find myself making my character join factions he'd never actually join, just so he can hear what Julan has to say about it!

You did not understand what I meant. I do now know that I was wrong about the ring though. I mean when I use Shani's ring to get her to go to the ahemusa camp, she disapears there. I did not take him in fresh(in mods that is), I trained him very well. It's just that there are so many tough enemies that he gets surrounded. Also, I went to the Ahemmusa camp, and julan started walking(out of the blue) towards Tel Vos. Shani and I followed him all the way to the otherside of the map. He was just walking. Telling him to stop of follow did not work. When he got to a certain point in the molag amur, he stopped, and went back to normal. It was quite odd. Also, is the silt strider driver supposed to be male? Because it is always a woman in my game, no matter the mods. I keep hearing her referred to as "he". I have no mods effecting Curio, but Julan still didn't say anything. Still the best companion mod to date though, and I look forward to the master release.

I'm really sorry, maybe I'm just half asleep, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe you could ask Fliggerty to come and translate for you?


edit - ok, I'll try and be more specific:

- You did not "take him in fresh"?? Do you mean that you added the mod to an old savegame? That shouldn't be an issue... unless you messed around with the console in some way because you were too far in the main quest. Else, I don't understand.
- The walking endlessly thing is an AI bug that all companions can get on occasion, you generally fix it by opening the console, clicking them and typing "startcombat->player", pressing return, then typing "stopcombat".
- What siltstrider driver? And why are you asking me?
- What master release?

I think he means the silt strider in Seyda Neen, which is changed from male to female by - I think - Living Cities of Vvardenfell.

OT: actually, LCV changes the adorable and definitely female Darvame Hlaren to MALE! It's the reason I can't use it!

Yes, that is kind of weird...

Will Julan use home-made cast when used enchanted items?

Possibly. I really don't know what the rules are here, as I don't think a lot of research has been done on how NPC AI really works with enchanted items. I do know that generally NPCs will use combat-type items, like rings of fireball and suchlike, but not necessarily all the time, it might depend on other factors, like their current weapon/magic. I'm not sure if their Enchant skill factors into it at all. As far as I know, player-made items should work the same as ingame items. I'm even less sure about non-combat items.

Please try it and report back!

If Kateri doesn't mind I'll try to answer Cosmar's question. My last playthrough with Julan (and several other companions) was with a Sorcerer, so I experimented a lot with enchantments.

Julan, as well as all NPCs and creatures, will use their Cast-When-Used items as soon as they enter combat. However, they only seem to be able to use fully-charged items, so even if only once charge of the enchanted ring you gave him is missing, Julan will ignore the ring until it finally recharges itself (or until you take the ring and recharge it with a soul gem). According to my tests, the character's Enchant skill has no role in this, though I'll probably do some more experiment, just for the heck of it. Of course, if you give your companion a scroll, it will be consumed in the process (so it is generally not a good idea to give scrolls to companions).

Furthermore, both NPCs and creatures seem to only use offensive enchantments, or enchantments that have at least one offensive component. A pure Restore Health amulet, for example, will never be used. Anyway, it's possible to combine a On Self effect with an offensive (On Touch/On Target) one: the resulting item will be used, as normal, at the start of a battle. With this method I have been able to have my Shock Centurion summon Clannfears, and it was certainly fun . I've found that sometimes, if you combine an On Target effect and an On Self one, the On Self one becomes permanent - this may actually be the Soul Trap bug manifesting itself on an NPC.

How interesting! Many thanks, Knef!

Exploring Vvardenfell with Julan...

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot18-1.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot16.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot13-2.jpg
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b120/iamerik/MW%20and%20Oblivion/MGEScreenshot23-1.jpg

Yeah, like that'll stop him from complaining about it.

I'll just give him Matze, then he won't feel anything anymore.

I started using this for the first time about 2 days ago.

I really didn't expect him to make comments about so many things. I also got him drunk already. Too bad he still doesn't aprove the fact that I joined the Hlaalu and the Imperial Legion.

LGNPC - Seyda Neen does the same thing. That mod also makes him married to one of the townsfolk.

Maybe I was thinking of LGNPC Seyda Neen... I knew there was a reason I never use that one. Leave my Darvame alooone! She's mine, I tells ya...

And thanks for the lovely pics, povuholo - I love the one of Julan in the fluffy jumper ready for Solstheim! Don't let him at the mead!