pornaga's Elf Companions 5-02-09 CONTENTS: --------------------------------- INSTALLATION ESSENTIAL SUPPORTING MODS FEATURES KNOWN ISSUES CREDITS DISTRIBUTION AND EDITING HELP INSTALLATION --------------------------------- Simply extract the Data folder to your Oblivion directory (most likely C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion). Start Oblivion, select Data Files, check pornaga's Elf Companions.esp AND Easy_Companion_Share.esm, then click Okay. IMPORTANT! When enabling the plugin, be sure to enable Easy_Companion_Share as well, it's required for Elf Companions to work! ESSENTIAL SUPPORTING MODS: --------------------------------- This mod benefits greatly from the use of these other mods: -Reznod's Easy Companion Share (Included as separate plugin, REQUIRED for Elf Companions to work!) Elf companions will work without the following, but is so much nicer if you have these: -A body replacement mod, such as HGEC or Exnem's -A clothing replacer mod, there are some available for both HGEC and Exnem's. I HIGHLY recommend "Clothing and Armor Replacer for Exnems Complete by Grhys" as it works just fine for HGEC too. The purpose is to make the clothing in the game match up with the new bodies. Without it, 98% of the shirts and a good many of the pants don't look right on the companion NPCs because the skin tones differ. If you do use Grhys' replacer, note that the included plugin won't work with Francesco's or Oscuro's overhaul mods, in which case just using the new meshes and textures is good enough. -Any mod that disables the use of Fast Travel, such as Modular Oblivion Enhanced, or Cyradil Transportation Network. (More on this later!) FEATURES: --------------------------------- -Two new NPCs specifically designed to accompany and assist the player in any type of environment. -They are both set to level with the player, with an offset of -2 levels. -The ranger Anowyn is tied to the Arena quest line - defeat Agronak gro-Malog (The Gray Prince) and become the Grand Champion, and she will gladly accompany you! You can find her wandering around the Arena district. (She should still join you even if you finished the arena before installing Elf Companions.) -The warrior-to-be Aislin can be found near the wooden houses at the Imperial City Waterfront. Reduced to life as a beggar, she'll be more than happy to follow you around the countryside as opposed to living the rest of her life on the streets. -Both companions have their own inventories and can be given individual instructions to STAY PUT, FOLLOW, or WANDER. Stay put is good if you're in a dangerous place and want them to remain in a certain spot. Follow, of course, makes them follow you around, and telling them to 'Wait around here' puts them in Wander mode, nice if you want to leave them in a purchased home or hideout. -An option to apologize is present, to fix any lost disposition from accidentally hitting them in combat. (They are set to ignore friendly hits, as accidentally hitting them in a town before would cause an insane fight between both of them and the guards! The ensuing chaos could be AI breaking, sometimes guards would fight other guards!) -Two new spells, one per companion, designed to summon them to your current location regardless of theirs (Useful if you've left them in another cell), upon acquisition of a companion, you automatically learn the spell. -If while in the same cell as your companions and they are set to FOLLOW, once a certain distance is reached they automatically appear at your location (not entirely realistic, I know, but it compensates for any pathing issues you may encounter - for example, before I added this feature, it was impossible to get them to follow you into a body of water). -Neither companion can actually die. They are simply knocked out, and after a short amount of time, will regain consciousness. Please note, however, that they will drop their weapon if KO'd in combat, so be sure to pick it back up and give it to them, if they don't do it themselves! (They are not set as essential, however, so no crown icon. Setting them to essential conflicted with them appearing at your location if they were KO'd - they would crumple up and move through the air towards the player, VERY silly looking.) -Reznod's Easy Companion Share (included as it's so vital to this mod) makes it easy to equip them with whatever items you want, and you can have them carry extra stuff for you. It's easy to use, too, it's just like using any container in the game. Also, you can see the NPC's encumberance on screen while you manage their inventory, so no accidental over-encumbering! -Any additional equipment and body mods should work with great effect with this mod. See what they look like wearing custom armor! -Finally, both companions are set to sneak whenever the player is sneaking. KNOWN ISSUES: --------------------------------- #1. Don't use fast travel while using this mod. Actually, I believe it's the same with all companion mods. For whatever reason, when you fast travel with a companion NPC, a duplicate of that NPC is made that occupies exactly the same space as the original. This does two things. Firstly, the NPC remains expressionless, even during dialogue. Secondly, it causes any items equipped on them through Companion Share to only appear on ONE of the NPCs, while the other will continue wearing its' default equipment. This looks as bad as it sounds like it would. There are mods out there that serve as an excellent workaround to this problem, and will implement a more 'Morrowind-like' transportation system - basically set travel points and even the teleportation oriented Mark and Recall spells. Two popular ones are listed near the beginning of this readme. To anyone that can't stand to lose Fast Travel, my apologies. #2. The fair skinned facial textures used on the girls do not match the default body skin tones at all. Simply put this looks terrible. It's most noticeable on the ranger, as she's wearing a small top and you can see most of her torso. The solution to this is to use a body replacer mod and a clothing replacer mod. The two most popular bodies (I believe) are Exnem's and HGEC. For the clothing replacer I suggest "Clothing and Armor Replacer for Exnems Complete by Grhys". They can all be found on the TES Nexus mod site: www.tesnexus.com CREDITS: --------------------------------- I have stood on the shoulders of giants to make this mod and would like to acknowledge the authors of mods incorporated into this one. I take absolutely no credit for the following: Reznod, for the Easy Companion Share mod, which makes companion NPCs so much cooler and more useful. *The ranger's face and hair come from: Terimer race and Companion, by jclyde6108 and CapsAdmin, and their team: Westly - eyelash texture throttlekitty - head mesh, eyelash mesh Scanti - merged mouth resource Acidoangel - cute elf ear mesh, Cute Elves esp Flonne - eye textures Ren - Eye Meshes, original hair mesh and texture Babe, Maya, Koazaburo Babe Hair meshes and textures Spirited Treasure, et al Modified Ren's Hair 7 mesh and texture *The warrior's face and hair comes from: Cute Elves race by Acidoangel *This mod was greatly influenced by the mod Female Adoring Fan, by John Anthony Curran. I used that one mod more than any other to learn the different components of a working companion NPC. This is not to say I took his mod and altered it, quite the opposite - I created Elf Companions from scratch, only using Female Adoring Fan as reference if I got stuck. DISTRIBUTION AND EDITING HELP --------------------------------- *pornaga's Elf Companions can be distributed freely and modified as anyone sees fit, all I ask is that I be given credit for the existing dialogue and functions present in the original. To anyone looking to mod it, note that both NPCs are part of a custom faction (you'll find it at the top of the list) which is tied to their quest conditions (verifies their NPC IDs and faction), also the faction is set so if you kill them, the Dark Brotherhood doesn't notice and guards won't come for you if you accidentally attack the companions. The ranger's different greetings are tied to how many arena combatants you've killed. She's set to offer to join you when NPC Agronak gro-Malog's death count equals 1 or more. (In case of some glitch I heard about.) Also, I changed one of Ysbeth's lines so it looks for gro-Malog's death count to be one or higher. Each AI package is set to work only if the others are turned off. Started Monday July 28, 2008, finished after 19 major stages on Saturday May 2, 2009 after a long hiatus!