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About this mod
An awkward but endearing dark mage follower with a mad scientist bent. Unique-voiced with an intro quest, discoverable formulas, unique potions, custom spells, wacky and weird summoned allies, darkly humorous. Full featured follower that is esl flagged.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
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Nether Presents:
Elana and her Fiendish Friends
Elana and her Fiendish Friends
An awkward but endearing dark mage follower with a mad scientist bent. Unique-voiced with an intro quest, discoverable formulas, unique potions, custom spells, wacky and weird summoned allies, darkly humorous.
** All NPCs represented in this mod use Digitally Generated Unique Voices that are not based on voice actor performances. **
REQUIRES:
SKSE
https://skse.silverlock.org/
RECOMMENDED:
SkyUI (for inventory filtering)
INSTALLATION:
- She uses your installed body for female characters, including textures (CBBE, UNP, Vanilla, whatever you use).
- Fomod Installer will add the appropriate follower script (NFF, AFT, Vanilla/EFF).
MOD FEATURES:
- Unique Breton "mad scientist" follower, Elana.
- Hand-crafted, high-poly appearance. She uses your installed textures and body but has her own makeup and hair applied.
- One of a kind voice (uniquely, digitally created), with hundreds of voiced lines, including combat responses, idles (town, inn, general, weather) and follower dialogue. Also can respond if the player picks up items or levels up.
- Fleshed out with introductory quest and backstory.
- Engaging spell system based around using components that she carries in her satchel. Customize what spells she uses by what she is carrying. This inventory is separate from normal inventory. Use her special staff to transmute ingredients to easy to use gems (for swapping spells).
- Elana can create potions for her and the player, a mix of healing and strange, unique elixirs.
- Hunt through dungeons in Skyrim to find new formulas so that she can learn unique spells.
- Unique spells with custom visuals and sounds. Spells are balanced against each other, requiring you to make interesting choices for which spells Elana uses.
- Interesting and humorous tongue-in-cheek summonable creatures.
INFLUENCES:
Mods: Misty Skye
Media: The Addams Family, Classic Universal Monster Movies, Corpse Bride, Nightmare Before Christmas, Re-Animator (and sequels), From Beyond, Weird Science, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde, Fright Night, Sugar Hill (1974), Dead Heat, Ghostbusters, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cabin in the Woods.
PERMISSIONS:
- You are allowed to create any mod that expands on her or adds new features, as long as requires this mod as part of the master files list.
- You are allowed to use the custom voice to create voice lines for specific Elana interactions with other followers.
HOW TO START:
- After installing the mod, go to Bleakfalls Barrow (even if you've been there before). You'll help her to recover components and a formula. Speak with her after completing the quest to learn about her backstory and how to use her unique features.
INTERACTION and COMMENTARY:
- Lots of commentary and interaction, much of it tongue-in-cheek.
- Supports the vanilla style of comments when Elana gets near the entrance to a dungeon, sees an impressive view or senses a dangerous situation. Can comment when healed.
- Comments on player actions and situations such as collisions, leveling and being sick.
- Comments in dungeons, inns, miscellaneous locations, weather, wilderness and general comments that are thoughtful or humorous.
- She can comment on the things that the player picks up or when boss chests and bodies are looted.
- Quest Awareness lines at different points for most main quest chains in the base game: Dawnguard, Dark Brotherhood, The Companions, The Thieves Guild, The College of Winterhold and the Main Questline.
- You can interact with Elana to ask here where to find all kinds of ingredients in the game.
- Elana can make specific comments in Alchemy shops and occasionally purchase ingredients.
- Further direct interaction under the "Can we talk for a moment?+" dialogue choice.
- Options under "Can we talk" allow you to set her idle frequence, her ability to make potions or purchase ingredients from Alchemists.
OUTFIT SYSTEM:
Elana can use a "wear what is in your inventory" system. By default, she has a normal outfit system but you can change this by talking to her (under Can we talk for a moment?+).
When activated, she will wear what you give her as long as there aren't multiple competing items for the same location. She should wear these items even when dismissed or not with you. This will also apply to wigs.
This will allow you to improve and enchant items for her.
Under the hood, whenever you trade with Elana and exit the trading menu, an array of what she is wearing is checked against and enforced when necessary.
RELATIONSHIP:
Elana has different relationship ranks that are acquired when the player scores so many points with her. These are Acquaintence (0), Friend (125), Ally (250) and Enamored (500).
You raise these points by spending time with her, fighting alongside her, finding formulas and asking her how she's doing (once per hour for the latter).
Relationship determines how friendly she can interact with you. At a certain point of asking her how she's doing, she will say that she thinks she's starting to develop feelings for you. If you reciprocate, she will say more flirty things in the future. Marrying her also unlocks flirty lines.
You can always ask her how you and her are doing, specifically and she will comment based on her relationship rank with you and give you your relationship point total (message box).
Besides the various ranked benefits listed further below, getting the highest rank with her, allows you to marry her.
FORMULAS:
One of the mechanics of the mod is that you can expand Elana's spell casting abilities by finding spell formulas in boss chests in the world (can be dungeon chest or any area that is clearable). They are found in a random order. There is a general 60% chance to find a formula in a given chest. This increases to 80% in draugr tombs and to 100% if you are in a necromancer or vampire lair. Elana should provide an voiced hint if there is a formula to be found in an area.
Formulas are understood once the player reads the formula. However, Elana can't cast it until you find the materials that are required. After acquiring the materials for a given formula and placing those in her specimen satchel, she can cast the spell that the formula represents.
To help you gather ingredients, there are several quality of life features. Of course, a formula itself lists all the ingredients required. This information is also on the tooltip for the formula, which you see in an inventory. Also if you read and close the formula, you will receive a (messagebox) list of all the ingredients you already have and which you are missing - this list only includes what is in your inventory. Tip: Elana might have some spooky ingredients in her own inventory.
Each formula always requires some kind of soul gem. You can use already filled, player filled or empty soul gems for this purpose.
There are 11 formulas total. She starts with 1 and you help her find another during her intro quest. That leaves 9 to discover out in the world.
You can always ask her how many formulas are still out there. A message box will show you how many you've found and how many are left to find.
Most of the formulas require a variety of "spooky" ingredients.
The spells from formulas are listed under Spell Types, further below.
SPECIMEN SATCHEL:
Elana keeps all of the components used to cast her spells in her recipe satchel (besides the baseline spell, Darkbolt). In order for her to be able to use spells after finding the formulas for them, the components used to cast the spell must reside in her satchel.
Besides Deadly Vermin (part of the intro quest), the player must also read the formulas to make the components valid, which you should do organically to know what components to acquire.
You can more efficiently handle working with components by asking her to use her staff to distill components down into gem form. This allows you to simply remove a gem to disable a spell and add a gem to enable one.
IMBUE GEM:
Through dialogue, you can ask Elana to imbue any components in her specimen satchel. She will convert these components into gems. She can convert ingredients to multiple formulas at once. She cannot make duplicates of the same formula if that gem is already present in her satchel.
SWITCHING SPELLS:
Elana will attempt to cast any spells that she has components for that are in her specimen satchel. The easiest way to handle this is to make sure that you've turned all the components into gems. To switch spells around, ask to look in her specimen satchel and (if you have SkyUI installed), enter "imb" in the filter box (all the gems start with "imbued") to just show the gems. Trade the gems for the spells you don't want her to cast to your inventory and the ones you do want her to cast from your inventory to the specimen satchel. All of the gems have a zero weight in order to not add to your encumbrance (they are magic, so magically weightless?).
Another convenience is to keep the formulas of which you still need ingredients for in your own inventory instead of hers, so it's easy for you to see which you might still need.
SPELLS CHEAT MODE:
You can enable a cheat mode for ingredients. Once you have discovered all the formulas, you can talk with Elana and let her know that you aren't really interested in hunting for materials. She will try to talk you out of it but you can go through with the cheat or cancel it (either choice is one-time). If you decide to cheat, Every Imbued Gem that isn't in her Satchel will be placed there. This is for folks that want to use the follower's abilities but aren't keen on spending time looking for materials.
ALCHEMY:
Elana was designed to be able to work with formulas and ingredients "in the field" in order to not require you to hang near an alchemy lab all day, messing around. However, she is near an alchemy lab and want to imbue materials that are in her satchel to a more convenient gem, only 1 less material is required. This means you can skip any 1 material that you like. So if a formula requires 1 void salt, 1 common soul gem and 2 bone dust and you are missing the void salt, it will still make the gem. Or you could be missing 1 of the 2 bone dust, but have the other materials.
Elana can specfically make comments in Alchemy shops. She will also buy extra ingredients from time to time if she has an extra 100 gold to spend in her inventory - this gives her a mixed selection of ingredients.
You can ask her where to find certain alchemical ingredients if you just want general knowledge or are having difficulty aquiring them.
Other benefits attributed to alchemy depend on your relationship rank with Elana.
Alchemy Training - At relationship rank 1 and higher, Elana can train the player in Alchemy, up to a skill rank of 75. Alchemy training still costs gold.
Elana can brew up some interesting, unique potions at rank 1 (and higher). Around once per day, when she's near an Alchemy Station. There are a variety of these:
-- Witches Brew (always created, 2-4, for herself and the player): Restores Health and Magicka, with different leveled variants. Strength is around 60% of single Health or single Magicka potion at the same level. Elana will also use the Witches Brew when hurt in combat, using the strongest to weakest potions in her inventory.
-- Instant Skeleton (random chance, player only): Summons a skeleton for 60 seconds that is 25% of the player's level.
-- Detect the Dead (random chance, player only): Detects the dead and undead in the area for 60 seconds.
-- Bewitching Bats Brew (random chance, player only): Attracts a swarm of bats to surround the imbiber for 30 seconds, doing damage to nearby hostile targets (only affects the living).
-- Vial of Subject 13 (random chance, player only): Summons a white skeever for 60 seconds.
-- Spider in a Jar (random chance, player only): Summons a spider that can melee or fire webs at range for 60 seconds.
-- Skyclad Potion (random chance, player only): Removes body armor from all hostile humanoid npcs in the area and has a 25% chance to remove armor from allies or friendly targets. Lasts 10 seconds. Targets can resist versus magic.
-- Bottle of Undead Terror (random chance, player only): Causes undead in the area to flee for 10 seonds. Targets can resist versus shock.
At rank 2 or higher, the player gains a new perk, Necromancer's Brewmate, that gives him a 20% chance to brew additional potions when Elana is a teammate.
At rank 3 or higher, the player gains a new perk, Efficient Fluids, that allows beneficial potions with a duration to last 15% longer and single-fire beneficial potions to be 10% more potent.
SPELL TYPES:
Some formulas have spell types. These are Summon (includes reanimation/raise), Armor, Damage and Healing.
Summon
Protection
Damage
Healing
Elana can only use one type of a spell at one time. If you have multiple spells with the same type active, she will use the strongest one she has Magicka for.
Summon includes raising a creature from the dead or summoning one in, such as Test Subject and Stony Guardian. Creatures other than Test Subject are 70% of Elana's level.
Armor includes any armor type spells, like Strength of the Damned.
Damage includes spells that work independently of her normal attacks and can be small groups of creatures that can be dispatched easily but cause additional damage if they are not dealt with, such as Deadly Vermin and Skelly Horde.
Healing is any healing that happens in an aura around Elana, such as Corpse Healing.
Spells:
Initial --
- Test Subject (Summon): Can revive a nearby ferocious animal for 60 seconds. Subjects have slightly enhanced health and stamina.
- Deadly Vermin (Damage): Summons 3-5 Murder Bunnies that seek out nearby opponents and explode upon impact. Cause decent damage when they hit.
Discovered --
- Corpse Healing (Healing: For 30 seconds, any corpses in the area can be disentigrated to heal the caster or her allies. Moderately strong heal, only affects 1 target at a time.
- Strength of the Damned (Protection: For 60 seconds, the caster and their allies have their physical defense increased by 25, their cold and poison resistance increased by 25 and are immune to disease damage.
-Stony Guardian (Summon): For 3 minutes, summons a gargoyle, Boris, that protects the caster and taunts all allies in a fairly large area to fight it (resist versus shock).
- Skeleton Horde (Damage): For 30 seconds, summons a horde of small, giggling skeletons to aid the caster. Counts as a damage enhancement.
- Withering Flesh (Damage): Causes nearby enemies to wither, doing 3 damage to health per second and reducing Magicka and Stamina regeneration by 25%. Lasts for 8 seconds. Counts as a damage enhancement. Only affects targets in line of sight.
- Zombie Cat (Summon): For 3 minutes, summons a zombie sabrecat cub, Creepers, that protects the caster and her allies. Can knock down opponents on a power attack.
- Whispering Shroud (Healing): Heals all moderately hurt allies in the area for 8 Health and Magicka and 5 Stamina every second for 6 seconds. Can only occur once per 10 seconds.
- Infernal Ward (Protection): For 60 seconds, all allies have their physical defense increased by 25, Fire Resistance increased by 30 and their Magic Resistance increased by 10.
- Vampiric Assistant (Summon): For 3 minutes, summons a vampiric assistant, Seraphina, that assists the caster. Can use vampiric drain, reanimate weaker foes and use cold magic at high enough level. Her vampiric drain can mesmerize opponents, paralyzing them for a few seconds.
Baseline Spell --
Darkbolt: Causes 25 health damage (similar to firebolt), resisted against fire. Lower's enemy's magic resistance by 10% and has a 15% chance to stagger when hit.
SCRIPTED SPELLS:
Some spells require using a script to look through the spells that Elana has, determine if she has the Magicka for the spell and if so, cast it. This happens pretty quickly and is only checked once per 10 seconds during combat. The order in which she checks spell types is (top to bottom): Protection, Summon, Damage and Healing.
FUTURE ADD-ONS:
I am keeping the main esl/sem flagged mod for core work and then may expand with (esl-flagged where possible):
- Quest pack that fleshes out her backstory and adds new fun quests.
- Interactions pack with community characters and other npcs.
- Comments about other community lands packs, such as Wyrmstooth or Grey Cowl locations.
FAQ:
There are too many ingredients. I'm lost.
Just convert the ingredients to imbued gems. It makes it much easier to keep track of which spells she has available. The gems also are named for each formula, making it easier to understand what they are used for. You can always ask Elana where to find certain ingredients. Alchemy shops are a good source as well, as well as Valerica's study during the Dawnguard questline. Once you have all formulas, you can by talking to her to acquire all the imbued gems.
Can I put other things in the specimen satchel?
You can easily use the satchel as a separate inventory. I would avoid adding ingredients or miscellaneous materials, such as skins and animal parts if you are still planning on creating imbued gems.
Why is this an ESP instead of an ESL/ESM?
Just for ease as a developer, using the CK and other tools, this is a esp flagged as esm and esl, a light master. I can make any CK edits without it destroying versioning information and having to constantly rename the mod. It will load after any normal esm and before any esp that aren't flagged esm.
RESOURCES USED:
Resources used ---
KS Hairdos by Kallies
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/68311
High Poly Head by KouLeifoh
https://vectorplexis.com/files/file/283-high-poly-head/
Resources used (from Skyrim LE versions) ---
Maevan2's Eye Brows created by Maevan2, uploaded by Shiva182
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/98309
Natural Eyes by nevenbridge81
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3589
Improved Eye Reflections and Cube Map (only cubemap) by fadingsignal
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/67447