[MOD] Mercenaries
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:36 am
Having trouble with monsters and bandits? Why not hire a little help?
This mod gives the player the ability to hire mercenaries at certain taverns, both to healp with though fights and to serve as a moneysink for you to spend all that hoarded gold on.
How does it work?
This mod uses the quests system to occasionally spawn an NPC in random taverns who will sell you a "mercenary contract". They will spawn 6 hours after you enter any city, hamlet, village or inn, and they will be despawned and replaced with another npc at a different tavern (if possible) every 6 hours. Activating this contract from your inventory will cause 4 adventurer NPCs to spawn and fight by your side. As these mercenaries will be tied to your level, the cost will increase as your level increases. The cost will start at 1000 and will increase by 1000 for every 3 level ups, up until 10000 at level 27. Asking around for rumors can help you find what tavern this NPC is at.
Have in mind that the contract can only be used once and NPCs summoned with this method will do nothing if there's nothing for them to fight, and they can't move from exterior to interior locations or viceverse, so if you use this contract at a location where there are no enemies you essentially wasted your money. Have in mind too that most quest enemies don't have infighting activated, so they probably won't get attacked by these mercenaries (two enemies will only fight each other if they have infighting activated and they're assigned to different teams). Sadly, short of editing every quest to activate infighting for every quest enemy, there's not much I can do about it.
UPDATE for version 2.0
I updated the mechanics to make it so that you'll be able to summon the mercenaries more than once. Now you'll be able to hire the mercenaries for a month, and you'll be able to summon them into battle up to 30 times within that month. However, you will only get a new contract to summon them into battle again if you enter/exit any world location (city, hamlet, village, dungeon, etc) to prevent you from just summoning them several times in a row to have an army.
I think that's as good as I can make it with the quest system as it currently exists. It's still got some problems, like being able to summon the mercenaries again after you've seen them die (i tried to somewhat remedy this by displaying a popup message that says they're "incapacitated") and mercenaries randomly switching genders every time you summon them (this is an inevitable quirk of the DFU quest system, as the gender of human foes will always be random)
Also, mercenaries now talk to you if you click them
UPDATE for version 2.1
Okay so... after playing around for a bit with version 2.0, I realized how clumsy the "get a new contract to summon the mercenaries again every time you enter/exit a site" thing was, as you'd inevitably end up with multiple copies of the contract from repeatedly entering and exiting sites (especially if you use Tedious Travel), so I decided to just allow the player to summon the mercenaries once a day for 30 days. Every day you will get a new contract in your inventory to summon them, and the contract from the previous day will disappear if unused. I think that's a much more elegant solution than the one I implemented in version 2.0, even if it means I had to buffer the quest out with 30 different timers :p
UPDATE for version 2.2
Replaced the flats for the NPC that sells you the contract for more appropriate ones
UPDATE for version 2.3
I finally addressed the biggest problem with this mod. Everyone knows by now it's very annoying when you summon your allies, but after they've finished helping you they keep teleporting to your location, interrupting your fast travel, and preventing you from resting. That's over now. Now when you use your mercenary contract, you'll receive a bell in your inventory. You can ring this bell to give your allies the order to retreat. They won't disappear right away, but they will stop teleporting to you location and preventing you from tavelling/resting.
Installation
1. Download the file.
2. Unzip the file inside StreamingAssets/Questpacks
3. If you're starting a new game, it should start working right away. If you're using it on a game you already started, you'll need to open up the console and type startquest MCMASTER to get it running. If this doesn't work, your version of DFU might only be able to start quests inside StreamingAssets/Quests from the console, so try moving the contents of the folder to StreamingAssets/Quests and try again.
You can download it at the Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/111/
Or simply get it from this post!
This mod gives the player the ability to hire mercenaries at certain taverns, both to healp with though fights and to serve as a moneysink for you to spend all that hoarded gold on.
How does it work?
This mod uses the quests system to occasionally spawn an NPC in random taverns who will sell you a "mercenary contract". They will spawn 6 hours after you enter any city, hamlet, village or inn, and they will be despawned and replaced with another npc at a different tavern (if possible) every 6 hours. Activating this contract from your inventory will cause 4 adventurer NPCs to spawn and fight by your side. As these mercenaries will be tied to your level, the cost will increase as your level increases. The cost will start at 1000 and will increase by 1000 for every 3 level ups, up until 10000 at level 27. Asking around for rumors can help you find what tavern this NPC is at.
Have in mind that the contract can only be used once and NPCs summoned with this method will do nothing if there's nothing for them to fight, and they can't move from exterior to interior locations or viceverse, so if you use this contract at a location where there are no enemies you essentially wasted your money. Have in mind too that most quest enemies don't have infighting activated, so they probably won't get attacked by these mercenaries (two enemies will only fight each other if they have infighting activated and they're assigned to different teams). Sadly, short of editing every quest to activate infighting for every quest enemy, there's not much I can do about it.
UPDATE for version 2.0
I updated the mechanics to make it so that you'll be able to summon the mercenaries more than once. Now you'll be able to hire the mercenaries for a month, and you'll be able to summon them into battle up to 30 times within that month. However, you will only get a new contract to summon them into battle again if you enter/exit any world location (city, hamlet, village, dungeon, etc) to prevent you from just summoning them several times in a row to have an army.
I think that's as good as I can make it with the quest system as it currently exists. It's still got some problems, like being able to summon the mercenaries again after you've seen them die (i tried to somewhat remedy this by displaying a popup message that says they're "incapacitated") and mercenaries randomly switching genders every time you summon them (this is an inevitable quirk of the DFU quest system, as the gender of human foes will always be random)
Also, mercenaries now talk to you if you click them
UPDATE for version 2.1
Okay so... after playing around for a bit with version 2.0, I realized how clumsy the "get a new contract to summon the mercenaries again every time you enter/exit a site" thing was, as you'd inevitably end up with multiple copies of the contract from repeatedly entering and exiting sites (especially if you use Tedious Travel), so I decided to just allow the player to summon the mercenaries once a day for 30 days. Every day you will get a new contract in your inventory to summon them, and the contract from the previous day will disappear if unused. I think that's a much more elegant solution than the one I implemented in version 2.0, even if it means I had to buffer the quest out with 30 different timers :p
UPDATE for version 2.2
Replaced the flats for the NPC that sells you the contract for more appropriate ones
UPDATE for version 2.3
I finally addressed the biggest problem with this mod. Everyone knows by now it's very annoying when you summon your allies, but after they've finished helping you they keep teleporting to your location, interrupting your fast travel, and preventing you from resting. That's over now. Now when you use your mercenary contract, you'll receive a bell in your inventory. You can ring this bell to give your allies the order to retreat. They won't disappear right away, but they will stop teleporting to you location and preventing you from tavelling/resting.
Installation
1. Download the file.
2. Unzip the file inside StreamingAssets/Questpacks
3. If you're starting a new game, it should start working right away. If you're using it on a game you already started, you'll need to open up the console and type startquest MCMASTER to get it running. If this doesn't work, your version of DFU might only be able to start quests inside StreamingAssets/Quests from the console, so try moving the contents of the folder to StreamingAssets/Quests and try again.
You can download it at the Nexus https://www.nexusmods.com/daggerfallunity/mods/111/
Or simply get it from this post!