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Issue Data
Status: Closed
Issue Type: Bug Report
Project: Unofficial Skyrim Legendary Edition Patch
Component: Skyrim LE: Vanilla
Category: Actors
Assigned To: Nobody
Platform: Windows PC
Severity: Low
Votes: 0
Watching: N/A
Opened By Siham on Apr 18, 2014 3:46 am
Closed By Arthmoor on May 2, 2014 3:24 pm
Resolution: Fixed

Issue #15376: In Ustengrav, bandits don't fight back the necromancers

 
When you enter Ustengrav, you will see at the very end of the first large room a necromancer who attacks two bandits who are mining and don't give a damn about this attack... They stay idle (or do the mining animation) without fighting back.

If you approach, the necromancer and the bandits will both attack you.

If I remember correctly, we should witness an epic fight between bandits and necromancers in Ustengrav.

Related Issues: 29339  

Comments

16 comment(s) [Closed]
Siham said:
 
After watching more carefully, these two bandits at the end of the first room seem to be thralls, because they have this glow characteristic of thralls.

There are two necromancers in Ustengrav entrance. The first one remains idle, while the second one, who is just near the two thralls at the end of the room, is attacking one of the thralls.

When you approach, the first necromancer and the two thralls will attack you, while the second necromancer still attacks the thralls.

Siham said:
 
This bug is here since day one. I found a video released on Youtube on November 13, 2011, and you can see at 0:26 this bug.

<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=vBpx6kBL6og#t=26'>http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;v=vBpx6kBL6og#t=26</a>

Siham said:
 
For the first time in like ten tests, the second necromancer was not attacking the thralls.

I could even for the first time witness an interesting conversation between the two necromancers about the thralls, how they use them to mine, how they get weaker each time they are resurrected, etc !

When the conversation ended, the two necromancers left the first room and they joined the combat between draugrs and other necromancers which was happening further.

So it seems that most of the time the second necromancer, for an unknown reason, attacks the thralls and that prevents the conversation from happening between him/her and the other necromancer.

Hexaae said:
 
For still unknown reasons the whole Ustengrav quest is broken, also in the exterior...

The root bug is simple: the Necromancers DO attack their thralls/zombies which is definitely WRONG and shouldn't happen (they have also the same Warlock faction).

...As a consequence you'll see some issues related to this quest and the missing dialogue scene reported by Elgar:
in the exterior you'll see a ridicule scene with thralls attacking their own master and dying right after they kill him (or when the player does). In the interior you won't see the scene+dialogue: two subdued bandits (they are in same faction of Necromancer + Conjurer, and under the defaultOwnZombie script influence and linked to a piece of ruins supposed to disappear if you already completed MQ105) start to fight each-others or against the warlocks.

This is totally wrong and won't let the scene dunUstengravQSTEntranceScene to be played as it should:
- 4 mining thralls
- the dialogue between warlocks when player enters trigger zone
- one of the thralls dies and gets resurrected following the dialogue
- the dialogue (should) ends with the warlocks running deeper into Ustengrav because they heard something (if MQ105 is complete)...

The strange thing is that from a deeper look into the quest, aliases, factions, scene, scripts, properties etc. nothing seems wrong, but for sure the warlocks should NOT fight with their bandit thralls and break the whole thing....
Notice UESP description and explanation of the quest mentioning the supposed fight between factions are originated by a misunderstanding due to another Bethesda bug.

1/10 actually you'll see the warlocks not attacking their thrall bandits both in exterior and interior, and everything will run as smooth as expected. I still have not found/have no idea why.

Add to this I've also read somewhere (= unconfirmed) that the Necromancers+bandit thralls respwan after you cleaned up the site...

This game is a real mess with too many bugs ;)

Hexaae said:
 
...Notice that if you disable player detection from console (tdetect) everything will work as expected and bandits/warlocks won't fight each-others, also on the surface...
Ideas?

Arthmoor said:
 
I don't know if it matters much, but these "thralls" are not generated in the usual manner. Dead NPCs who get raised as thralls will not be attacked by their masters. These NPCs are not dead - only given an effect to make them look that way.

They are in every respect, regular ordinary bandits.

Hexaae said:
 
Yes. Probably a choice by Bethesda to avoid them dying prematurely, hence they opted for a sort of (buggy) curse.

EDIT: fixed in the SMCP 1.52. If you'll ever find a better, optimal, solution I'll remove it from my patch mod

Arthmoor said:
 
Fixed for USKP 2.0.4.

Turned out this was merely a timing issue. The trigger box to start the hidden quest being inside the dungeon left too much wiggle room for script delay. I've moved the trigger box to the outside of the dungeon instead, and in 5 trials I've been able to observe the scene all 5 times without interruption.

Simple. Clean. Elegant.

Won't do anything about the ones outside because they were never covered by any of this anyway.

Siham said:
 
What will happen if the player activates the trigger box outside the dungeon, but for any reason leaves the zone without entering the dungeon ? Will the scene start when the player enters the dungeon later ?

Sorry if it's a dumb question, and thank you to both for having investigated this bug ! :)

Arthmoor said:
 
Yes. The scene start trigger remains where it's always been - just past the bottom of the steps inside the dungeon.

Stage 0 (which is what the first trigger box sets) just starts the quest to populate the aliases and stuff. It's not going to hurt anything for it to be active if the player turns around and leaves.

Siham said:
 
I understand. Thank you !

Hexaae said:
 
<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Arthmoor" data-time="1399062454">
<div>
Fixed for USKP 2.0.4.

Turned out this was merely a timing issue. The trigger box to start the hidden quest being inside the dungeon left too much wiggle room for script delay. I've moved the trigger box to the outside of the dungeon instead, and in 5 trials I've been able to observe the scene all 5 times without interruption.

Simple. Clean. Elegant.

Won't do anything about the ones outside because they were never covered by any of this anyway.

</blockquote>

The idea of moving the trigger outside is indeed a smart workaround, but... then I'll keep my fix in my SMPC since it goes a step further and solves also the problem outside with the other necromancer + 2 bandits, and won't conflict at all with the USKP of course ;)

BTW, I noticed there's another bug because of the "fake-thralls" solution by Bethesda: if you enter, exit, and re-enter Unstengrav the "cursed shader" will be gone... but this is a very minor glitch nobody should notice ;)

Arthmoor said:
 
:shrug: The exterior bandits were never covered by Bethesda's intentions here. They're not even part of the aliases. Starting the quest prior to the trigger really means nothing since they're going to detect you for combat well before you approach the ruin.

I doubt there's anything that can be done about the fake thrall shader problem.

Hexaae said:
 
They where: take a look at the Necromancer. He's attached the defaultOwnZombie script, and they have the cursed shader too... They have the Alias_ExteriorCursedBanditxxx alias (but the quest trigger was inside Ustengrav!). Moreover the exterior bandits actually die when they kill their master (LOL!).

My simple solution was editing also this script adding a StopCombatAlarm() that gets called very early on the references. It works fine, both for exterior and interior (and the bandit slaves will still attack you, don't worry...).

About your workaround: did you check if the bandits inside still have the cursed shader when you moved the trigger outside?
In vanilla situation it disappears only if you enter, exit, enter, but with your fix there's the risk they'll never show the shader... This result can be a less polished dialogue scene inside...

Arthmoor said:
 
They show the shader. I noticed that when I first got inside. As I said, I don't think there's anything that could be done about entering, leaving, then entering again. I doubt most people play the game doing things like that either.

All the trials I ran to approach Ustengrav outside resulted in the necro and the bandit thrall charging my position. They never tried to fight with each other.

IsharaMeradin said:
 
I think this needs to be revisited. Detailed info post on the <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.afkmods.com/index.php?/topic/2804-relzwipz-unofficial-skyrim-patch/page-36#entry151636'>USKP thread</a>

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