Bit rambly, sorry!
So, I was chatting with Lissette last night about my practice playthrough for SSE (FINALLY I once more have a PC that can handle, well, games at all, to be honest. Poor old PC got a bit poorly.) I was noodling around with the idea of making a build based on two of my favourite follower mods - Vilja and Inigo. My other favourite game series is Dragon Age, and I love the combination of gameplay and entertainment that comes from a 'party system' of having up to three companions in tow. Obviously there's no way to have the exact same gameplay experience in Skyrim - even followers like Vilja and Inigo (who are relatively configurable, particularly Vilja (I need to properly explore her communication horns for my playtest...)) can't actually be controlled by the player mid-fight, and Skyrim doesn't have a comparable set of abilities.
Still, I'm intending to do my best to use Vilja, Inigo, and an as-yet-undecided vanilla follower (likely choices are Lydia, Kharjo, Meeko/Vigilance, Mjoll, and Erik) to create a four-way build. Vilja can, when you complete various of her quests, learn to both heal the player and perform 'bard chants' in combat - that is, on entering combat, she can for instance buff the player (I need to check if it includes other allies) or have a chance to paralyse enemies (I forget the other chants' functions right now...) Inigo is an excellent archer. With a tanky vanilla follower, this leaves the player as mage. I've done Destruction to death, and I'm planning to use Ordinator (this will be a fairly heavily modded build), with a focus on Conjuration (summons, possibly bound weapons at the start for survivability, NO UNDEAD, ew) and Alteration (specifically the Vancian Magic branch.)
As I mentioned, Vilja has these options after her quests have been completed - however, she also has the option to skip some of her quests when you first meet her (I think this can also be used later, but I'm inclined to think it's best to do it at the start, if you're going to). For my playtest, I will be skipping most of her quests, but I won't actually activate her abilities until a suitable amount of time has passed - probably around level 18-20. This is just because, while I quite enjoyed the quests on my proper Vilja playthrough, there is a fair amount of busywork and collecting ingredients that I can't entirely be bothered with. I'll probably skip the bardic quests up until "we have a flute and a lute to return to their owners" and the antepenultimate stage of her main quest. (The other reason, aside from fairness, that I won't be completing her quests immediately/enabling her abilities immediately, is that (mild spoiler, I suppose) at the end of her main quest she's clearly developed a crush on the player character, but if you skip straight to that point, her disposition rating is still fairly mediocre, so it can be a bit incongruous. Waiting until level 18 or so to complete her questline and activate her abilities will give ample time for the player character and her to 'bond'. You don't *have* to romance Vilja, you can tell her she's just a friend, etc, but I probably will be, just because it opens more quests and dialogue stuff, and this will be as much a character-driven build as a gameplay one.)
I'm also thinking of using Disparity, Imperious, and a few other mods that will affect stuff like racial abilities, possibly standing stones, and so on. Disparity has a pretty cool option to have a more classic 'build' in terms of starting off with really low stats in non-preferred skills, and a slight boost to preferred skills, more in line with the previous two games' starting stats. I usually use this (it also lets you pick starting spells, which means I don't have to have a useless Flames spell for my Conjurer, and can start with a -flesh or -light spell) but am not sure if it might be out of keeping with the TV character build ethos?
So, planned skills to perk: Armour (haven't decided which, yet - I usually go with Light, but I think Heavy might be sensible... Though with -flesh spells, maybe less needed), Conjuration (Summons), Alteration (Vanican), Alchemy or Smithing (probably Alchemy). Plus possibly Speech. Ordinator has a boggling array of perks to choose from, but I'll be limiting myself mostly to one branch per tree (or only aiming to go halfway up two branches, or similar), the idea of the mod is to specialise, after all! I may also use some other skills (such as unperked one-handed/archery if I decide to use bound weapons) but I don't at this point intend to perk them. I haven't crunched any numbers yet, though, so I'm unsure how many perk points I'm likely to have to play with.
Planned quests: Main Quest, possibly College or Companions. NO DARK BROTHERHOOD. Probably no Thieves' Guild. Vilja and Inigo are both, I would say, fairly 'good' characters (I should probably have a look at alignment charts and figure out my own character's position, too...) and while I don't think they object to DB, it still feels wrong. Plus, the idea is to have the party for most quests, which probably means that questlines which expect you to sneak around on your own don't make a whole heap of sense.
Planned mods: Vilja, Inigo, Ordinator, Disparity, Vigor (because lbr with three followers you need something to make the game a bit more challenging...), Advanced Adversary Encounters or Revenge of the Enemies (leaning towards AAE), Apocalypse (more interesting spells, goes well with Ordinator), possssssibly Wintermyst (enchantments... Basically I just really love Kryptopyr and EnaiSiaion's mods), most of Kryptopyr's mods where they don't conflict with Ordinator (debating using CACO with the Ordinator patch, but it might be too much faff.) Mammoth Manor player home, because it's adorable, and because I've finally got a PC that can handle mods like SFO so I'm hoping to get the game looking pretty danged nice, and Falkreath hold is just so blooming gorgeous with all the grass and whatnot, plus it's ideal for Vilja for various reasons. It's basically free to get, but I plan to impose some kind of restriction such as having to complete a certain tough quest, or a certain number of bounties for the Jarl of Falkreath, or something like that. Possibly Frostfall. Immersive Horses, most likely. This will be a Legendary Edition playthrough, but where possible I'll try to suggest alternatives for the Special Edition.
Oh, and the title? It's Wayne's World, party time, excellent... (No, this will NOT be the final build name!)
Bit rambly, sorry!
So, I was chatting with Lissette last night about my practice playthrough for SSE (FINALLY I once more have a PC that can handle, well, games at all, to be honest. Poor old PC got a bit poorly.) I was noodling around with the idea of making a build based on two of my favourite follower mods - Vilja and Inigo. My other favourite game series is Dragon Age, and I love the combination of gameplay and entertainment that comes from a 'party system' of having up to three companions in tow. Obviously there's no way to have the exact same gameplay experience in Skyrim - even followers like Vilja and Inigo (who are relatively configurable, particularly Vilja (I need to properly explore her communication horns for my playtest...)) can't actually be controlled by the player mid-fight, and Skyrim doesn't have a comparable set of abilities.
Still, I'm intending to do my best to use Vilja, Inigo, and an as-yet-undecided vanilla follower (likely choices are Lydia, Kharjo, Meeko/Vigilance, Mjoll, and Erik) to create a four-way build. Vilja can, when you complete various of her quests, learn to both heal the player and perform 'bard chants' in combat - that is, on entering combat, she can for instance buff the player (I need to check if it includes other allies) or have a chance to paralyse enemies (I forget the other chants' functions right now...) Inigo is an excellent archer. With a tanky vanilla follower, this leaves the player as mage. I've done Destruction to death, and I'm planning to use Ordinator (this will be a fairly heavily modded build), with a focus on Conjuration (summons, possibly bound weapons at the start for survivability, NO UNDEAD, ew) and Alteration (specifically the Vancian Magic branch.)
As I mentioned, Vilja has these options after her quests have been completed - however, she also has the option to skip some of her quests when you first meet her (I think this can also be used later, but I'm inclined to think it's best to do it at the start, if you're going to). For my playtest, I will be skipping most of her quests, but I won't actually activate her abilities until a suitable amount of time has passed - probably around level 18-20. This is just because, while I quite enjoyed the quests on my proper Vilja playthrough, there is a fair amount of busywork and collecting ingredients that I can't entirely be bothered with. I'll probably skip the bardic quests up until "we have a flute and a lute to return to their owners" and the antepenultimate stage of her main quest. (The other reason, aside from fairness, that I won't be completing her quests immediately/enabling her abilities immediately, is that (mild spoiler, I suppose) at the end of her main quest she's clearly developed a crush on the player character, but if you skip straight to that point, her disposition rating is still fairly mediocre, so it can be a bit incongruous. Waiting until level 18 or so to complete her questline and activate her abilities will give ample time for the player character and her to 'bond'. You don't *have* to romance Vilja, you can tell her she's just a friend, etc, but I probably will be, just because it opens more quests and dialogue stuff, and this will be as much a character-driven build as a gameplay one.)
I'm also thinking of using Disparity, Imperious, and a few other mods that will affect stuff like racial abilities, possibly standing stones, and so on. Disparity has a pretty cool option to have a more classic 'build' in terms of starting off with really low stats in non-preferred skills, and a slight boost to preferred skills, more in line with the previous two games' starting stats. I usually use this (it also lets you pick starting spells, which means I don't have to have a useless Flames spell for my Conjurer, and can start with a -flesh or -light spell) but am not sure if it might be out of keeping with the TV character build ethos?
So, planned skills to perk: Armour (haven't decided which, yet - I usually go with Light, but I think Heavy might be sensible... Though with -flesh spells, maybe less needed), Conjuration (Summons), Alteration (Vanican), Alchemy or Smithing (probably Alchemy). Plus possibly Speech. Ordinator has a boggling array of perks to choose from, but I'll be limiting myself mostly to one branch per tree (or only aiming to go halfway up two branches, or similar), the idea of the mod is to specialise, after all! I may also use some other skills (such as unperked one-handed/archery if I decide to use bound weapons) but I don't at this point intend to perk them. I haven't crunched any numbers yet, though, so I'm unsure how many perk points I'm likely to have to play with.
Planned quests: Main Quest, possibly College or Companions. NO DARK BROTHERHOOD. Probably no Thieves' Guild. Vilja and Inigo are both, I would say, fairly 'good' characters (I should probably have a look at alignment charts and figure out my own character's position, too...) and while I don't think they object to DB, it still feels wrong. Plus, the idea is to have the party for most quests, which probably means that questlines which expect you to sneak around on your own don't make a whole heap of sense.
Planned mods: Vilja, Inigo, Ordinator, Disparity, Vigor (because lbr with three followers you need something to make the game a bit more challenging...), Advanced Adversary Encounters or Revenge of the Enemies (leaning towards AAE), Apocalypse (more interesting spells, goes well with Ordinator), possssssibly Wintermyst (enchantments... Basically I just really love Kryptopyr and EnaiSiaion's mods), most of Kryptopyr's mods where they don't conflict with Ordinator (debating using CACO with the Ordinator patch, but it might be too much faff.) Mammoth Manor player home, because it's adorable, and because I've finally got a PC that can handle mods like SFO so I'm hoping to get the game looking pretty danged nice, and Falkreath hold is just so blooming gorgeous with all the grass and whatnot, plus it's ideal for Vilja for various reasons. It's basically free to get, but I plan to impose some kind of restriction such as having to complete a certain tough quest, or a certain number of bounties for the Jarl of Falkreath, or something like that. Possibly Frostfall. Immersive Horses, most likely. This will be a Legendary Edition playthrough, but where possible I'll try to suggest alternatives for the Special Edition.
Oh, and the title? It's Wayne's World, party time, excellent... (No, this will NOT be the final build name!)
