I adopted Runa and the Lucia. They are perfectly fine and no doubt interchangeable with any of the other girls you can adopt. But now when I go to Windhelm and see Sofie I fell horrible that I can't adopt her. Even worse, I found out where she sleeps at night: on the cold, hard stone pavement near Calixto's house. In the middle of a blizzard. And all I can do for her is buy flowers.

PRAISE SITHIS AND KILL HER!!

Three things...

1. Runa and Lucia needed good homes too. Lucia was arguably the neediest of the lot, since at least Sofie has some employment. And Runa... you can't tell me she doesn't melt your heart, begging to be adopted the way she does!
2. You can't save everybody. That's the tragedy of HF: Eight (or more) kids need a home, you can only give that home to two.
3. RP solution - just have another character (one who's married to a different spouse and lives in a different home) adopt Sofie and a 4th youngster. Then, effectively, you've adopted four children instead of two. Once I get HF, I intend to adopt five or six that way.

That's exactly the reason why I adopted Sophie. The sight of her sleeping in an ice cold blizzard on that bench was incomprehenisble. Sophie and Lucia are the 2 most needest of the orphans IMO. Unlike these 2, the other Hearthfire orphans both have jobs and some relatively decent form of shelter. And all the Riften orphans have the best shelter and care once that old witch gets a free permanent vacation to visit Sithis realm.

I'm still holding out for the updated version of that adoption mod though. I'm hoping the modder will really update this and allow us to adopt even more kids. Four would seem more reasonable so you could have 2 boys and 2 girls. Or maybe they could add a new quest to find all the orphans new homes with NPCs. Or allow the Dovahkin to place/move (not adopt) them in his many mansions and homes around Skyrim. Then the housecarls could look after them.

It"s either that, or cross fingers and hope Tyantis adds this in somewhere.

I want to adopt someone from the Honorhall, but I don't want to do the DB questline. If I just kill Grelod, and talk to Aventis, am I forced to continue that questline?

QUOTE: That's exactly the reason why I adopted Sophie. The sight of her sleeping in an ice cold blizzard on that bench was incomprehenisble. Sophie and Lucia are the 2 most needest of the orphans IMO. Unlike these 2, the other Hearthfire orphans both have jobs and some relatively decent form of shelter.

I count Blaise as comparable to Sofie, since he has to sleep in a stable, presumably outdoors. And he's a Breton, so he lacks Sofie's cold resistance.


QUOTE: want to adopt someone from the Honorhall, but I don't want to do the DB questline. If I just kill Grelod, and talk to Aventis, am I forced to continue that questline?

You have to talk to Aventus to calm Constance gone, sadly, which advances it.

Before HF was announced, I designed an adoption system that would have worked whethed Grelod was alive or not. Unfortunately, I don't work for Bethesda, so you got their very flawed one instead.

You should feel horrible. The money she gets from selling flowers is probably going towards a skooma habit that she picked up just to escape the pain of her situation. Today she sells flowers. In a few years time, she'll be selling the rest of her. Assuming she's still alive by then and hasn't been recruited into some bandit gang.

I don't know how you can sleep at night.

QUOTE: You should feel horrible. The money she gets from selling flowers is probably going towards a skooma habit that she picked up just to escape the pain of her situation. Today she sells flowers. In a few years time, she'll be selling the rest of her. Assuming she's still alive by then and hasn't been recruited into some bandit gang.

I don't know how you can sleep at night.

Well, don't forget that the certain members of the Companions were eyeballing Lucia like she was a walking burrito. Also, you know why there are so few girls at Honorhall? Because Constance sells them to the Dunmer slave traders, to finance her own brandy, skooma, and sweetroll addiction. So you saved Runa and Lucia from an appalling fate.

One of the many problems I have with trying to role-play in Skyrim. I don't like being FORCED to murder in order wipe out the DB or adopt from the orphanage. That is beyond lame.

I think this is just one of those things where limitation to the extent of options given to players really kills the RP. If every option is given 10 solutions then it would take 10 years to make one game, so for Beth to actually advance quests etc they have to make the decisions for us. And also, lets just say there are 3 options per issue, it exponentially increases as the number of connections are increased (each option has 3 new options etc). Imagine the logistics nightmare if a quest requires say, 5 decision making points.

Anyways, I just had a minor question to ask about Hearthfire. How many unique NPCs are there which can be adopted?

At least eight. Certain other children become adoptable if their parents die, not sure which or how many.

It's not a math problem. It's crap storytelling. Having to drive down "Murder an old lady" street just so you can get onto "Destroy the Dark Brotherhood" avenue is poorly-planned storytelling. It casts the PC into a very narrowed, very specific morality type: Someone who is so appalled by cold-blooded murder that they'd eagerly sign on to destroy a group of assassins, but not so appalled that they take issue with whacking an old lady at the request of a child.

I came across Sofie sleeping on the cold stone ground and I realised that she wasn't even wearing shoes! So I adopted her.

Yeah, I do agree with some of these things. They should not force you to murder someone until you're actually in DB. Probably why I loved Oblivion's entry so much.

Interesting occurance from Oblivion: I was in the arena with a shield that reflected spells. Apparently my opponent hit me with a calm spell that bounced back and hit him. I didn't notice this and continued fighting him until he was dead. Once he was dead I got the message that a higher power had observed my act of murder. MURDER?! Dude, he was trying to kill me. We are in the arena, capiche?

So without meaning to I commited a murder as far as the game was concerned. Yikes!

Eh, at least Lucia gets a pretty tree to sit under, and a warm tavern to sleep in at night. She'll be fine. Sofie is stuck in that cold ass city. I know she's a nord n' all, but she's so tiny...I know that cold wind hits her hard.

Agreed. One of my fondest Skyrim memories is watching Tiberius put his battle axe in Grelod's head. No one brutalizes kids on his watch.

Lucia doesn't sleep in the Tavern. She sleeps on the ground out back.

Oh, well at least she can hang around in the tavern and get warm before she goes out back...gotta be warmer than Sofie is.

I send that [censored] to the soul cairn.

To elaborate on my earlier comment, when I saw Sofie I just desperately wanted to wrap her in one of my fur cloaks and a fur hood, pop a pair of snug fur boots on those cold bare feet. Hustle her off to the tavern to warm up and get some warm food in her, before escorting her to my cosy mansion and her new sister, Lucia. Cause the first thing she said to me when I woke her up from sleeping on the stone ground was, 'I am sooo cold.'

But of course you can't do that. Just arrange to meet her at your house.

Then I wanted to go have it out with self obsessed Ulfric, who is more concerned with war then with the fate of a little girl whose father served the Stormcloaks and gave his life for them.

A couple of posts have gone away, disrupting a topic, flamebaiting and general rude posts are not acceptable.

And people wonder why I don't support Ulfric. Well, actually, I don't think anyone wonders.

If someone had fought for my cause and given his life for it, leaving his daughter an orphan, I would not rest until I was assured that the child was in good safe hands.

But then again, it could be looked at that if it weren't for the Imperials, she would not be an orphan. There's always 2 sides......