Arrived? No way, Ghastley has been an extremely highly respected modder on Nexus for a looooong time.

I may have to put out an update to this, as it might conflict with the Argonian one. It appears that both mods can't make the same change to the story manager node for the Making Friends event, and I need to do it a different way. I'm not sure if I can do that only in one of the two, or if they'll both have to do it the same way.

Orc Hearthfires updates the number of quests to start on a ChangeRelationshipRank event to two, so that the quest that counts Hold favours can update, as well as the one for my Orc favours. When I did the same for the Argonian mod, I discovered that both mods set the value to two, but I'd need three! So I may have to set the Shared Event flag instead, as that doesn't imply a specific number of quests. The game will just keep going down the list until it find a non-shared one. My concern is that someone else's mod could add a non-shared node in between, and break the chain.

I was wondering how you avoid conflicts if you want to achieve the same results as a game quest (like developing friendship or getting a note or a random re-occurring quests like the book retrievals in the college) - and then not conflict with other mods too ... Gaaaaah!

The conflict between Orc and Argonian Hearthfires may be a false one that shows in TesVEdit, but isn't a real one, but I still have a potential problem with duplicate dialog at the Lumber Mills if both are installed.

However, on the positive side, I've almost cured Uzi of taking her clothes off if you give her a dress she can't wear. All that's left to clear up is an unused pair of human shoes in her inventory, which might just get ignored.

I'd have ignored the stripping issue too, how funny! (and fun!)

I don’t think I’d know if Uzi had unused shoes in her inventory. I’m glad she’s cooperating and keeping her orc clothes on!

Good luck with the dialog issue. As ever I’m following your reports with great interest but without a clue.

The released version of Uzi is now an optional file for Orc Hearthfires on the Nexus

There's code in the script that reverts her outfit that should ensure the regular child shoes don't build up in her inventory, so I won't worry about catching each pair.

Oh, she is a child! No wonder you wanted her to keep her clothes on! But that really is just like a child, if you give them some thing they don't want to wear they will refuse to wear anything,

Yay, thank you, ghastley!

Coming back to this one to resume work on the Wise Woman.

The original location for the cave entrance to her temple ruin was not a good one, as the rocks weren't really tall enough to cover the back of the entrance mesh. I found a better one on an obscure pass NE of High Hrothgar, on the Throat of the World mountain. You can get there on a trail past the Stormcloak camp, and the other end of the trail joins the one that zig-zags up past Lost Knife Hideout towards Iverstead. There's nothing along that trail at all in the un-modded game. It's a bit hard to follow in the usual blizzard, unless you're going NE.

I'm currently expanding the interior cells to provide a bit of opposition on the way to find her. Lots of cluttering still to do, and minor loot to place. She'll still need voice acting, but I think I can keep it down to one unique voice, which may make it viable. If I add a smith later, I believe he can use existing dialog only.

I've added some more clutter to the Nordic ruin, called Hervik's Lair, where you'll find the Wise Woman. I still need a lot more.

After that, I have to wire up the traps to their triggers, add all the draugr spawns, put in the room bounds, nav-mesh the entire dungeon,and create the scene where she destroys the mask. Not much, really.

I'm having problems, too, making this esp dependent on the main one. Esmifying doesn't seem to do all I expected in the CK, and I want to determine why before I waste time building something broken. So I'm concentrating on the stand-alone stuff, and leaving the connections to last. Those include things like providing AI packages for sleeping in the hut, enabling statues of Malacath and Dibella in there, and making the quest to find her depend on the stronghold build.

More clutter added, more still to go. Added a temporary auto-generated nav-mesh in case I run through with a follower. I'll replace that with a hand-generated one later. There are levelled draugr in place to obstruct you from getting the key to the final chamber.

Next job is putting the Yarob encounter part together. She needs to start hostile, and then yield and destroy the mask on bleedout. I should be able to clone a lot from the Moth Priest in Dawnguard for that (apart from the mask bit).

As usual, my test character is developing a taste for adventuring, and has already become Arch-mage.

Great progress, ghastley! Too funny about your ‘test’ character. I’m trying to picture a diagram of how a test character from one of your mods leads to another mod with a new test character, who decides she needs a different thing that can only come from a mod, which needs to be tested…

The one who revived Orc Hearthfires was started to check out UUNP bodyslide stuff. Then she wanted to build a stronghold, and nudged me to get back to the wise woman.

Meanwhile, I have a pair of Bosmers waiting for me to be inspired for their home. I'm still looking for no-wood furnishings that they'd like.

(And I have to avoid Argonians in case they think of anything new for Illinalta Den.)

Work has started on the quests for the mod add-on.

The kicker quest will be triggered by the player levelling up after building the complete WW hut, including bed, and both crafting stations, AND the double bed in the long-house. That should ensure the player doesn't need to use the bed in the hut as their own. A courier will deliver a letter from Atub at Largashbur, who will ask the player character to search for her niece Yarob, who went looking for Hervik's tomb.

Reading the letter will start the main quest to find her. The two-cell lair is just about built and cluttered, and just needs spider webs, mist effects etc. added. It has various traps, and functions as a regular dungeon before the quest is started. There's a locked door to the room containing Yarob, whose key will only exist (held by the dungeon boss) when it's running. Encounter zone, boss marker and all the required keywords are in place to make this radiant-friendly. The location will reset if you cleared it before the quest was started.

I still need to script the fight with Yarob, which is mainly just faction-switching and enable/disable player controls when needed, and the destruction of the mask. I'm looking for a good existing effect for that. She'll use flames and sparks together (one in each hand) to do so.

I'm debating whether to make her a follower who offers to become WW when taken to the Stronghold (as in the steward dialogue in Hearthfires, or to have her become WW right away. The hut gets extra clutter (statuettes, ingredients, personal items) when she moves in. Malacath statuette doubles as cure shrine. Dibella is just ornamental. Still trying to decide on an appropriate "blessing" from Malacath.

More progress:

Levelling up with all required furniture in place starts the courier. Reading the letter from Atub starts the quest to find Yarob, and marks your map.

I need to build a leveled list of masks to buff Yarob appropriately so she's a challenging opponent, but not an overpowered NPC once she destroys the mask. I figure putting all the buffs on the mask will do that best.

Letting her be a follower complicates the decor changes back at the stronghold, so I'm abandoning that idea.

I've adapted the script for the Dexion fight for her, and just have to sync it up with the overall quest. Still need to create the mask-destruction scene.

Sounds like great progress. For the blessing, something with Stamina and/or disease resistance maybe? Or a boost to damage or magicka resistance? I think of orcs as being hardy.

For the blessing, how about something that boosts the Orc's Berserker Rage ability? Either granting an extra use for day, or extending its duration, or increasing it to doing triple damage, etc... Granted, it would be no use to non-orcs. But this is Orc Hearthfire after all.

Or grant a new version of the Rage ability, separate from the Orc Racial one. That way non-Orcs would get it too, and it would allow Orcs to use it as well as their natural Berserker Rage. That would give them two Rages in one day.

SubRosa, I like that idea, but I don't think it's possible to grant a single-use ability. That's what scrolls are for.

All the other blessings increase something, typically a skill, from the moment you get it, for an extended period (mostly 8 hours, but a couple of them last for 12), so I'm really looking for an appropriate skill. Boethia's gives one-handed, so maybe Malacath's should be two-handed. That would mesh nicely with Hulking out, so I think I may go with that, and using both mods together would be enhanced.

If you’re thinking of a single-use blessing, the All-Maker Stones in Solstheim grant powers that can be used once and then need to be reacquired at a stone to use again. There might be a clue in the CK in their records or in the Summon Karstaag power you gain from defeating him (which could be three different single-use powers all given at the same time).

A Two-Handed boost would also be most welcome!

Well, before Yarob can start putting statues in her hut, we have to get her out of Hervik's Lair. So I went back into the CK over the long weekend and worked on the mask destruction scene. Each piece is working, but without a voice for the dialogue, it seems that I have to activate her at each step, or the scene won't progress. I'll probably have to record some place-holder dialogue files, so the voice actor can replace them later.

I've figured out how to provide a custom colour for her hair, but it's a tedious process, as I have to fire up the game to review the shade on the hair. The render window doesn't look the same as the in-game version.

TJ, the test character who's rescuing her, is already 50 hours into the game, and has completed Dawnguard and Dragonborn and half the MQ. She's never been to Winterhold in all that time. She has dual Dragonbone Maces, and light armor (she needs a little so she can enchant something ) She was a test-builder of the Stronghold, and I re-opened her game to continue with Yarob.

Hervik's Lair needs a manual re-build of its nav-mesh. Yarob gets stuck too easily on the generated one. I tweaked a small area to get through the scene development, but it all needs work. That will get tedious, too.

I wondered what you were working on this weekend! Sounds great, but not fun for you. Just reading “nav-mesh� puts me in a sweat.

Already had a PM at the Nexus asking when the SSE version will be available!

Edit: CK was released late Oct 31st, so I'll download tonight and get to work. Expect it on Nexus for PC, and Bethesda.net (for XB1 only). Does anyone her have an XB1?

Downloaded, and the SE version is currently being tested in my game. I'm still reading up on how to build the bsa files, as apparently there are multiple methods, and most don't work. Plus the XBox ones are different from the PC ones.

I thought I'd taken some screen-shots, but I didn't have Fraps running, and nothing happened.

I've put out the base Orc Hearthfires for the Special Edition, and started on the add-on for the adoptable Orc Child. I've run into a problem with that, because they've changed the .nif format, and her modified head isn't working any more. I thought I had it, but when she started talking, her mouth exploded out of her head, because there were conflicts between the mesh and the speech morphs. I have a buncch of work to do, and I'm not sure the tools have caught up yet.

So I'll probably move to the other Hearthfires mods first.

Edit: Uzi's head has stopped exploding! However, you can't move her into the stronghold, until the Hearthfires Multiple Adoptions mod gets ported over, and I suspect that may require SKSE64. I know my Hulk Out! mod needs it to do the colour changes, so I can't touch that one for a while, either.

Can you make the changes needed for your own mod and make it standalone and not dependent on the SKSE or that other mod? Or have you talked to the author of the Multiple Adoptions to see if they are even working on porting their mod over? (because I'm sure there will be a ton of demand for it).

Hearthfire Multiple Adoptions has an SSE beta, and I've checked it out with the Stronghold and Uzi.

It works!

That's also Lucie over on the right, I wanted two kids to check out the name-calling scene, for which I have the markers.

I'm fairly amazed how much this one still gets downloaded. Most mods taper off, but this seems to be steadily getting more downloads over time as more folk find it. Now over 30,000 across all the platforms.

Wow, that's impressive, ghastley! Testimony to your skill and reputation as a modder.

I started to do some more cluttering in the Diablo mod, so I'm not sure what made me open this one up in the CK. I was probably going to copy something I'd done before.

After all this time, I just noticed what was causing the scene to break when you defeat Yarob. It was just a bad nav-mesh preventing her from reaching all the locations. So now it's fixed, and I have another project back in progress.

Assuming I can remember what I was going to do next!

It may be possible to gather all the references I need using SKSE functions GetModByName, and GetFormFromFile. The first to check if the base Orc Hearthfires mod is present, and then multiple calls to the other can get the quest stages, disabled objects, marker id's, AI packages, etc. that Yarob will use. That avoids making it depend on the other one as a master, and gives me a few options as a stand-alone mod.

I find that I stopped development just before writing the conversation that recruits her, after she's destroyed the mask. That needs alternative dialog depending on whether the player is male or female, an Orc or not, and maybe also on the construction of the Stronghold. Which would explain why I haven't done it already. The last one needs the same linkage to the original mod that I'd be putting off.

I found I needed to make changes to the original mod, whatever I did with the Wise Woman supplement, so I spent the evening merging it into the base, which is a tedious process of changing all the form id's, and resolving any conflicts. But now I can load it all up in the CK at once, and that makes everything a lot simpler.

I'll be attempting to allow for several requirements at once: The players that want a conventional Orc Stronghold, where their male Orc player is the chief. The opposite extreme, where the player character is a female non-Orc. Several intermediates, that will share aspects of the end-cases.

That will probably require alternate NPCs for Smith, hunters, etc. The only constant is Yarob, and she may need to be conventional or not to match the overall vibe. Since she has her own hut, I'm not making her marriageable, but with Orc polygamy, that's not a big deal. It just leaves the primary bed for the "conventional spouse" role, and "lover's comfort". I have dialog code for outfit choice, that I used in Conina's case, that can be re-used for Yarob.

There are beds for four "staff", plus the double and two child beds for the player spouse and adopted kids. So I'll limit the staff to four, one of which is Yarob, of course. Smith can be Yarob's squeeze, or player's forge-wife. Hunters could be a couple, or two females, hunts-wife and other.

Since it's easiest to steal from the steward set-up in Heartfire, I'll do the hiring through the Wise Woman, even if it's "wives".

I ran a fresh character through the existing stuff this weekend, and found a problem very quickly. It was probably a result of the merge process, but the quest for the Wise Woman rescue was triggered by the kicker on the first level-up, without any of the pre-requisites met. You're only supposed to get the quest once the main bed, the bed in the hut, and the Alchemy and Enchanting stations are in place.

I had to re-force all the Aliases to fix that, but the quest is already in the journal, so I can't re-test without another new character. I was using the current one to check out face-gen and equipment for the staff characters, (including a sex-change), and I could use another for the gender-specific dialog anyway.

Current plan is to enable recruitment one role at a time, maybe on subsequent level-ups, for Smith/Forge-wife, Hunter/Hunts-wife and Guard. Player will get gender choice each time. All by dialog with Yarob, who should be the only one needing custom Voice Acting. She's already marked as having a unique voice.

I tried to do the rescue, but the masked Yarob is effectively a Dragon Priest, and not fodder for low-level characters. I need a way to scale her damage. However, since the one at the Stronghold is a separate formid, who gets enabled after the rescue, I could just do that via console for now.

Yarob now has at least six costumes. The rescue has three - masked, hood without mask, no hood. The one at the Stronghold has variants of robe, and a forsworn-like Wild Woman option. The staff may also get outfit choices.

The female recruits are likely to get outfit options. I have not decided if that will be via dialog with each, as I did with Conina, (except that there may be more than two choices), or making the choice when negotiating with Yarob. Much may depend on what existing dialog can be re-used.

Now my memory is returning, it was going to be the Dibella statue that controlled the outfits. The Malacath shrine is a regular blessing/cure one, but Dibella's would prompt for outfit styles.

Fiddled around with this one a bit more.

The Dibella statue now controls the outfits, and dialog with Yarob recruits the staff, giving a male/female choice for each job. Smith is giving me issues, as the female's bump map is not working. It's OK in Nifskope, but she's too soft in the game.

I'm still working on a (currently separate) piece that adds a nearby small mine and a few miners. If i get it all to work then I'll merge that in, too. The mine door is blocked by rocks, and a variant of the rubble-clearing script from the Argonian Hearthfires mod will clear them. The added part is that you can't clear the rocks until the activator is enabled, and the enable/disable is breaking things right now. Then Yarob will get more recruit dialog for miners. The Dibella statue setting will apply there also.

The mine is now merged in, and I'm replacing the "instant" recruitment of the staff with quests to get them. The Hunter/Hunts-wife is now rescued from capture by the Forsworn, using the existing mechanisms provided for teh Companions' rescue quests, including the dialogue for "thanks for rescuing me".

I need to do the same for the Smith/Forge-wife, and the Guard/Shield-wife. I don't want to repeat the rescue thing again, and I need to avoid the need for new dialogue. Yarob the Wise Woman will have a unique voice, so she's not an issue, but the other staff have to get by on what's already in the game. She can write a letter to one of them, and just have him/her turn up a few days later, without the player needing to do anything, but again, I don't want to do that twice, so either Smith or Guard needs a quest. Any ideas?

The documentation has been updated a bit too. See it here, but beware of the boobies on the staff page, if you follow all the links. I added pages for the Wise Woman's quest, Hervik's lair, and the staff, with more to come as I add more quests.

Now my site is in action, I am working on packaging up a 2.0 beta for Orc HF. It is still lacking a recruitment quest for the guard, and voice for Yarob, but it is workable without those. You just get the guard instantly, and need to turn on subtitles.

The hard part is ensuring that fixes for problems I find in one version of the game get copied over to the other. I usually build on LE, convert to SE, and then test there. But sometimes it’s a problem in LE original, and sometimes it turns out to be a conversion problem. Building the bsa is a different process, too, and will doubtless introduce new issues.

Stay tuned! Links to beta at bottom of downloads tab here. Orc Hearthfires.

Voice for Yarob is in progress, maybe.

I downloaded xVASynth and started playing with it. It looks like I can use Lynda Carter’s voice from Oblivion for adding lines for Azura in the Diablo mod, and I may use the same voice for Yarob. If it worked for Mazoga, then it should work for her. Nocturnal also needs some extra lines, but her VA’s voice is already a Skyrim option, as she did Dunmer.

The synthesis produces a rather flat, expressionless reading of the text by default, but the pitch, emphasis etc. are all adjustable, and you can get a realistic result with some work. It supports a phonetic alphabet for words that have no pre-defined pronunciation, like names of NPCs, and the games’ character names are mostly supplied already. This has promise.

They've done complete voicing of Morroblivion with it. That's a lot of lines, there's no way they could have fine tuned them all. Like you say, it is a bit flat here and there, but very acceptable, and I'm playing with it as I prefer it to silent. This has promise, indeed! Especially if you don't have thousands of lines and can fine tune it manually. I plan to try it out at some point for my own mods. May be.

Of course, xVASynth adds a whole new level of “just need to tweak this a bit� to the mod-making process. I shall now spend another lifetime mastering another tool.

The few lines for Bothela for the Forsworn mod seemed to come out right the first time, but Yarob just sounds bored. Keep trying!

This is probably because I wanted her to have Mazoga’s voice from Oblivion. Lynda Carter’s voice is available from the older game, but the extra file for fully expressive AI has not been trained from that game. She only voiced Azura and Gormlaith in Skyrim, so there is not enough source material there. Still, it sounds like a very bored version of her, so the potential exists.

I created a 2.1 release that gives Yarob the standard Orc voice, but she may get an alternate set later. Using a separate bsa for voices should make that easier.

I tried using Uzi (the Orc child) in my AE game, and she crashed it, as soon as she tried to speak. The mouth issues may have returned.