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SPOILER INFO
This story follows closely my actions in an actual game, so it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous part
I spent the next three and a half days having sex 16 times and earning 574 septims. My per-fuck earnings are increasing, because a couple of men have come to take a liking in me and therefore give me nice bonuses. However, I'm getting totally bored with this. I'm particularly pissed off by one man. He fucks me more often than anyone else, but he still despises me, so, unless he does anything unusual, I end up with the lousy default 25 septims per fuck.
On the one hand, I know I ought to use the opportunity to milk those two suckers to the fullest. On the other hand, I'm dying to get out of this place. This inner conflict is killing me. I just can't come to a decision. It would be silly to leave with only a couple hundred septims more than I came with. Then again, this being a rehearsal game, I ought to go places and try out many different things.
I decided to take a break from the game in the real world, in order to think this over.
This is how I have to approach men offering myself (except that I would really have to wash that sperm off first.)
Observe how the light makes it look like I have thick black hair all across my belly. Actually, it's only a shadow. ;-)
Observe how the light makes it look like I have thick black hair all across my belly. Actually, it's only a shadow. ;-)
* * *
In the meantime, two technical problems emerged I needed to do something about.
The first was bathing. During this playing session, I went to the river and bathed like 10 times in a row, and I still wouldn't get Clean. Does Bathing in Skyrim have a rule that you can never get above Not Dirty unless you use soap? The mod's description doesn't say anything about it, but judging by user comments, it seems to be the case. Well, I had soap in my inventory, so why wasn't it being used when I bathed??
I did some experimenting and eventually found out you have to open Inventory and press E on a soap. That causes you to exit Inventory automatically, as well as be told you can't equip that item. After a second or two, a washing animation starts. The soap is actually used and you'll become Clean .
If so, what is the point of having a Bathing hotkey?
Oh... It's for the case when you have neither soap nor a wash rag and want to bathe with just plain water. Right.
While researching that weirdness, I came across this bug report:
I tested it and indeed, when you are already Clean and bathe using a washing rag, you'll become Not Dirty, meaning dirtier than you were before bathing.
I can't believe the mod author has the nerve to dismiss such a blunder as "not a bug". When washing yourself makes you dirtier, it is obviously a bug. It's childish of the mod author to try to deny something so manifestly true.
Even without knowing the Skyrim scripting language, it is clear that all the author had to do was to insert one instruction to the place where the new value of cleanliness was being calculated upon completion of the bathing subroutine. The engine would have to determine if cleanliness > computed_new_value_of_cleanliness. If yes, nothing further would be done. If no, cleanliness would be set equal to computed_new_value_of_cleanliness.
I doubt there is a programming language in the world in which that task is even remotely difficult.
The point is: there is no way the author of Bathing of Skyrim can be too stupid to do that. There can be only one reason why he would have omitted the correction of this rather elementary mistake when it was reported to him: he is so lazy and/or indifferent that he can't be bothered to spend the maximum of 1 minute on amending the script and the maximum of 10 minutes on re-compiling, re-packing and re-uploading.
Add to that the user report on the mod's page that Bathing in Skyrim can cause your gear to lose its enchantments when re-equipped, and it's hard to avoid the urge to uninstall Bathing in Skyrim simply for the reason that it's wrong to support a mod author who doesn't give a rat's ass about users getting screwed by his dirty code.
As I'm so forgiving and open-minded, though, I decided to leave the mod switched on for the time being.
The second problem was waking up with health damage. Admittedly, it goes away automatically in about 10 real-world-seconds, so it doesn't do any real damage, but it's so fucking annoying. I don't want to see such screaming nonsense hundreds of times. The physiological purpose of sleep is (of course) to restore your organism, not to damage it.
I have found out that this is a bug of Vitality .
I use Vitality to decrease the ridiculous stamina renegeration speed. I could install SkyTweak instead, but that's the mother and father of all overkills. It has so many adjustable parameters that there is simply no way I will study it all and find out what each one of them does. Of course I could just ignore those SkyTweak settings I don't care about, but how can I be sure none of them screws up something another mod does? It would require a blatantly unacceptable amount of time and effort to find that out. Apart from which, SkyTweak is a gigantic spoiler. I don't want to be informed about all those parameters. I want to enjoy not knowing exactly what is going to happen in the game and why, rather than have all the game mechanics dissected.
To sum up, if I have to choose between:
a) put up with the pointlessness of stamina potions due to the stamina fully auto-regenerating in a few seconds;
b) waking up from sleep with brief health damage every single time;
c) using SkyTweak, 99% of which is irrelevant to me but might possibly have undesirable influence on my game,
I will choose the option a , especially because I have Southwarth Stamina Regeneration Debuff .
Looking at my Mod Organizer, though, I made one unfortunate discovery – switching off Vitality and switching on No Health Regen and Southwarth Stamina Regeneration Debuff would leave me with 254 plugins, meaning the game would still run but TES5Edit wouldn't.
That's why I switched on only No Health Regen and put up with almost instantaneous stamina regeneration.
* * *
As to what to do in the game, I decided that, for the experiment's sake only, I'll stay in the brothel until I have 1600 septims.
I adjusted my weight, because I had been feeling I looked a bit too fat on pictures. I also adjusted the size of my butt. Now I think my character creation is complete. I have a body I'm happy with – except that little face bug impossible to get rid of, but that's almost invisible with proper hair. Speaking of which, I decided I'll be alternating between three hairstyles. After all, I'm a woman. I'm not supposed to have one and the same hairdo my life long. (Thank you, RaceMenu, for making it possible to play as a proper woman!)
Gathering 1600 septims went surprisingly fast, thanks to those two men who were in love with me and gave me generous tips. Even the penny-pinching prick I mentioned earlier began to warm up to me by the end.
All in all, it was hard and tedious work at the brothel, but still a pleasant and educating experience. Apart from which, I can now return any time for a few hundred relatively quick and easy septims.
I know, some people would rather chop firewood. Just like I've heard some people would craft a thousand daggers to increase their Smithing skill. That's not my thing. I like to do something meaningful to earn my living, even if it gets rough at times.
Leaving The Naked Dragon Morthal, I headed east where I expected the town of Morthal to be somewhere. I met three poison spiders on the road and they were really tough. I had to run away after each kill to restore my health. Finally the third one was dead.
During that run-and-sneak-and-fight, I made a wonderful discovery – my stamina regeneration rate was still very slow even though Vitality was no longer included in the game!! Meaning, the adjustment made by Vitality had apparently been stored in my savegame.
This means that you can switch Vitality on, start a new game, make your desired adjustments, save your game, exit Skyrim, switch Vitality off, execute Skyrim, load your savegame, and the changes you had made with Vitality will be permanently there even though Vitality itself is no longer active. (And, mind you, if you want to change something, you can switch Vitality temporarily on again.)
I'm very happy with that. For my next playing session, I'll turn No Health Regen off as well, to see if the disabling of health regeneration has also been carried over from Vitality. (Logically, it should, but it's better to find out for sure.)
Traveling on, I discovered the town of Morthal. There was a group of angry men arguing with a man who appeared to be the jarl's steward. I learned about a mysterious fire and got some Alchemy and Conjuration training. Luckily I can afford it now. There was also a braggart who was practically asking to be beaten to death (as brawls can't be surrendered with essentialness disabled). I succeeded in that, but just barely. The Claws power is not all that mighty after all. I wonder what influences your fistfighting skill. Weight? Anything else? Until I find out, I'd better be careful with brawls. This one was a really close shave.
I walked from house to house, talking to people. There was a woman at the inn to whom I was forced to say something about some guy called Reaver, and she told me a story that meant absolutely nothing to me. Whatever. I am currently planning on having sex, and I'm hesitating between the jarl's wizard and one of the guards. Guess I'll better go with the wizard. He would make a more useful boyfriend.
next part
