LOL hauahaha that would be epic

The loyalty thing would be great, I would also say a "Guard this location till relieved" option would be good as well, say if you have a Nice house or something and don't want the local rabble amoungst your things.

It just crossed my mind that this mod allows for a fat of the land Merchant style play through. Little if any combat skills or magic. Speech & pickpocket, and whatever else to make money. Just pay your way through the game and be protected all the time. I'm certainly going to mess around with the idea once a direction gets established.

Edit: Especially with alternate start/economy mods.

Great observation. It really adds a total new kind of gameplay. You wouldn't need to involve yourself in much combat, they can do the work for you. Really nice concept, reminds me of Fallout.

Curiosity: the Mercs menu, the one you select "follow, dismiss" etc, works on the RB button. Someone else plays using an xbox controller? It's pretty good that the menu is so easy to access.

I wouldn't know anything about that; I play with keyboard and mouse.

Just wanted to drop a Big THANK YOU in here in case you all happen to come back to review our discussion. This is great inspiration and I will be referring to this thread regularly for it's creative content.

Yeah... I play with the XBOX controller too. Wondering if it's convenient for the mouse-users or not.

Sorry, I was too busy campaigning through Whiterun with my mercenary army to check the boards. lol

I highly request you put a 3 or 4 merc limit on there. At least as a separate install option.

The mouse interface is clean. More so than vanilla menus, I believe.

Damn, I love this mod though. It's cool how they wear random armor with a good deal of fur. They look awesome. Having more than 3 is a bit on the godlike side though, and I've always had a problem refraining from burninating the villiage/countryside/people.

I'm just now finding a nice niche in difficulty, after applying a slow level mod to my load out I'm almost ready to play this game all the way through for serious this time. Just waiting to see how this mod fleshes out because it's certainly the icing on the cake imo.

Rather than hardcapping the number you can have, what if each mercenary massively increased upkeep costs?
So if the first follower is 50 per day, the second would be 100 total, third would be 200, fourth 400, etc.

I love it!


Yes... it seems like cheating to have a whole army. I really wanted to be the first to release a mod that truly has UNLIMITED followers. I was hoping people could discipline themselves and not buy too many, but I can't even discipline myself Hidden in the mod is actually an NPC multiplier that can make the game so intense that you need a lot of mercs (i do mean a lot) to take on a town, or clear a tower. Unfortunately that code is not ready for prime-time. Still occasionally goes CTD. Not sure if it'll ever get released, but lemme tell you a dozen giants, 20 mages, 5 dragons, bandits everywhere, wild packs of wolves or SabreCats... I've had some pretty insane battles. I nerfed the dragon duplicator, but it still happens sometimes.


If you want to try it sometime you can force it from the console:

set H_IntensityMultiplier to 4

(4 is the highest that I planned on, not sure what happens at 5, just try 1-4, or 0 for off)

Oh great, don't tell me that! lmao

I got papers to write ; ;

Oops. heh. my bad.

I think that there should be no limitations or increased upkeeps etc. If one wants to the game to play itself, there's also the "easy" option for difficulty. I admired how Lydia killed everything before I could even summon my atronach before I found out the some patch had set my difficulty back to "Easy". After setting it back to "Master" I needed to swing the axes few times myself too
It's same here, if you want easy game, hire 100 mercs, if you want some challenge hire only 2. The choice should be yours. If you are going to add those insane (2x per new merc) costs etc, please make them at least a separate mod or option.

There are so many ways to "cheat" and achieve easy walkthrough (make yourself invulnerable?), that there should be no reason to start adding those limitations to a mod "that truly has UNLIMITED followers"
If you add limitations here, you might make it impossible for one to muster a force to be reckoned with for just specific situations thus taking away a lot of the potential the mod offers for gameplay

I haven't downloaded this mod yet, I'm going to in a minute, but I what I gathered is that the cheap mercs are kind of poop compared to the expensive ones, so maybe that would imply that they are 'desperate' for money and food etc.

So maybe you could pay the lower ones with food and alcohol if you don't want to pay money, as they will accept anything that helps them live?

and I'm not sure if this is already in the mod but can you give them armour and weapons? because you could make it so that the lower level ones can only use steel and iron, whereas the expensive skilled ones can use Ebony and Daedric and Glass etc

They sure as hell pay for themselves with their own gear when they die >.>

@ El Kinkku: If he can do an optional download with/without restrictions it would be great. If not, I'm sure you or I could deal with it either way.

You can trade with them, and they should wear whatever you give them. You may have to take away something if they keep wearing something you don't like. They can wear virtually anything, but armor level will be affected by their skill level. (you can check their stats)

if there are any quirks with how this works, please... let me know. I've not been able to test everything fully.

Well perhaps if your 'gang' gets too big it might attract the attention of another merc gang and you and your army might get ambushed. Say after you have at least 5 followers. Compelling you to keep smaller numbers unless you want to be like the Montagues and Capulets every time you get near Markarth.

Well, let me try to organize some of the ideas that can come on the next updates if the modder is able to make them:

Things that may be "easy" to do: (I know they won't be easy, but as the mod is now I think these updates wouldn't be too hard to apply within the next days)
1. New places for hiring mercs. Place them around some of the major cities. I would suggest Winterhold, Markath and Riften. (sorry if the names aren't correct).
2. More variation to the mercs faces and races. They are all the same, that's definitely not good. Would be nice to contract different ones, and the races according to the city/place.
- If the two updates above are made, then would be nice to work on the variation of types of mercs. Mage mercs, ranger mercs, heavy armored mercs, thief mercs, etc.
3. Change the prices

Things that will require time:
- Daily wage
- Loyalty features
- Contract for the job/Normal contract

Later on:
- Quests for the Mercs Guild (or whatever the name may be)


Needing any help with scenario brainstorm (helping you to match the mod within the game) or script you can tell me, I would be glad to help. If I knew anything about the Creation Kit then I would gladly help too, but I don't.
Anyway, I thank you so much for creating this. My experience in the game has leveled in many ways.


Things that I noticed mercs doing and don't know if it's normal:
They change the items with each other. If one item is best for merc X skills, the merc Y will give him the item I gave him.
They pick up better items on the ground. I saw one of them taking a Forsworn bow today.

Well yea, at least I will be playing this mod even if all the minor details are not just the way I'd like them to be. It's already amazing by concept and the mechanics (+ all the "promised" stuff) make it even greater.

About latest discussion:
I don't think that need to have a limit of mercs. Like was said, if someone wants to cheat to make it an easy game, it can be done in many ways. Limiting the mod would just take some of the overhaul experience that it provides. Don't think it's needed. But this idea is cool:

Liked it.


I think that's one of the best ideas this far. Really interesting. But these kind of mercs shouldn't be hired with Saad, for example. You would find them over the cities, like beggars. You talk to them and can hire them offering booze and food.

About the Xbox controller:
I used to play Oblivion on the PC, many years ago. Then I brought an Xbox 360 and started playing there. Why? I simply couldn't enjoy it on the PC. The only reason was the controller. Oblivion and Skyrim weren't well designed to work with mouse and keyboard. I strongly suggest buying an xbox controller for the PC if you can. 'Cause playing on consoles you will be left off the modding experience, which is the best part of Bethesda games.

auto deduction. But before it deducts you get a window saying to keep your merc you must pay him X amount of gold. Not doing so will end your contract with him/her.

Agreed with auto deduction / warning window.

Agreed with unlimited mercs. Suggesting level cap for balance.

@Thiago,

Thanks for putting it together... It helps me tremendously.

@Everyone

This morning's update should quell the rest of the bugs that were holding me back from expanding the MOD further. Now I can look into tackling some of these great ideas you;ve all contributed. I think Thiago pretty-well nailed the order of precedence based on difficulty. With maybe a slight variation or two.

Here's his list with some Dev notes from me.

1. New places for hiring mercs. Place them around some of the major cities. I would suggest Winterhold, Markath and Riften. (sorry if the names aren't correct).
Yes, Yes, Yes... I cannot wait for there to be more Hiring Mercs. Was thinking Orc Camp (if you're orc-blood whatever), and I really wanted Argonian Mercs too.. any suggestions where they might hail?

2. More variation to the mercs faces and races. They are all the same, that's definitely not good. Would be nice to contract different ones, and the races according to the city/place.
- If the two updates above are made, then would be nice to work on the variation of types of mercs. Mage mercs, ranger mercs, heavy armored mercs, thief mercs, etc.
Yes, I figured all the Mercs near winterhold would be Mages. This will take a bit of effort and thought though. You would have to specify with the Merchant what 'type' of mage you are hiring in addition to skill level. Most of the code was designed to be easily upgraded, but new code must be implemented to match Robes with Skills and Spells (i.e. Destruction bonuses on a restoration mage is useless). Also, if Restoration Mages are added, I will need to create new AI to make them heal other.... that wont occur by default.

3. Change the prices
This Can be Done ASAP. But I think I'd like to implement a discount based on Speech, like other vendors. Quick to do though, and requests for raised prices are pretty high.

Things that will require time:
- Daily wage
I think this will not take too long if we really do it with the suggested Auto-Detuct and WarningWindow. That's easy code... I hope just the pop-up every day doesn't get annoying to players.

- Loyalty features
- Contract for the job/Normal contract
Yes, these will take the most time, but are the most intriguing ideas to me. This will make the MOD very sophisticated, and we could all have great pride in how it turns out.

Later on:
- Quests for the Mercs Guild (or whatever the name may be)
Keep the ideas flowing on this if you like. I'm still a little fuzzy on this as I'm focusing on the others but I would love to hear more about this topic.

So, Daily-Wages I will re-prioritize to the top of the list with Price Changes. Those two will be fairly quick, and I can work on it tomorrow.