Showing posts with label Khajiit Sense of Smell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Khajiit Sense of Smell. Show all posts

2019-08-28

Khajiit Sense of Smell done right



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SPOILER INFO
Mild spoiler, maybe.
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One frequently occurring annoyance during Skyrim combat is the impossibility of conveniently distinguishing between enemies and allies or simply seeing enemies properly because they are of almost the same color as dungeon walls.

It is particularly annoying to be unable to tell who is friend and who is enemy in melee combat when people are moving back and forth and almost all of them are wearing various shades of gray with an occasional touch of brown.

The mod Khajiit - Sense of Smell is a godsend for Skyrim players who, like me, would rather be able to help defend a town against a bandit attack without the constant risk of accidentally hitting a guard instead of a bandit and then having all the guards in the city attack you.

Khajiit - Sense of Smell  allows you to use a special power that makes all nearby creatures glow in different colors, depending on hostility.

I have used the mod for hundreds of real-world game hours and recommend it heartily. However, it has a slight flaw – it gives the player too big an advantage, especially in dungeons. The first few times, it can be really awesome to just sit on a high place and shoot every enemy dead, but when that keeps happening all the time, one gets disappointed because it's just too easy.

That's why I decided to edit the mod with TES5Edit, decreasing the special power's range from 250 to 100.

To do that, look for the section Spell.
It has only one record titled Sense of Smell.

Note that under Effects > Effect, the record has 6 entries titled Area.
The value of each is 250.
Change all of them to 100.

After 100+ hours of playing with the decreased range, I can assure you that I'm very happy with this change. I can still deprive nearby enemies of the absurd chameleon-like undetectability which they have in vanilla game, yet I don't feel like a cheater.

The change from 250 to 100 units is a vast improvement. For example, when you are on top of the southern tower of Valtheim, your Sense of Smell won't detect bandits who are in the northern tower. Try it and you'll see what kind of a thrill it is to wait for them to come out of the door.

Also, in that huge cavern where you interrupt the Potema ritual, you won't be able to see the location of the people in the other end of the cavern. You actually have to move closer to see who is where. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Further, there are situations in places with good visibility where you can see targets with your physical eyes (and shoot them) before your Sense of Smell detects them. That is pure delight.

By the way, I also decreased the duration of Sense of Smell , because I found it very tedious to wait until it wore off so I could take proper screenshots.

This is how to do it:
Note that below each 6 entries Area, there's an entry titled Duration. Its default value is 120 (seconds). I decreased it to 20 which I find very reasonable.

Of course you can change those two values to anything you like, as well as experiment with different values. Just remember to change all six entries – or, for that matter, you can have different values for different kinds of targets if you want to.

To the best of my knowledge, it is safe to make such changes anytime during your game. However, I always play short test games to try out any changes in my mod configuration. During my actual game, I alter things only when it's absolutely necessary.








2019-06-14

General rehearsal game, hours 25..28



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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 wanted to sell as much as I could before going into (near-)wilderness. In order to pass the time until the shops would open, I broke into a house and stole some cash and food and ingredients. After selling all I could, I noticed I was sleepy. In order not to waste a whole day, I slept only 4 hours. Then I had a bath and we headed southwest.

slender woman stands facing two big men, bar counter in the background
I feel kind of safer in Stenvar and Vorstag's company, you know. They are sometimes a nuisance in combat,
getting ahead of me and blocking my shots. Most of the time, they are very helpful, though.
They are efficient and strong enough not to get killed easily, so I don't have to take care of them.

We discovered a house which was apparently a part of the mod Beggar Prince . Its author is one of those who just gives you all the lines available, without bothering to check if you are actually supposed to know anything about all those things you say. Apart from which, I was able to pick up a lot of free stuff in the house which is just not right. But it doesn't matter as I had already decided that I would switch off Beggar Prince  for my main game anyway.

We discovered the village of Pinewood and spent the night there. Then we went further southwest along the road and reached the edge of the explorable world. Going clockwise along the edge, we found a couple of buggy caves created by Falkreath Hold Extended . In one of them, the cave entrance would take you into a completely dark space where you couldn't go anywhere. By turning in various directions and pressing W , you would eventually end up outside again.

Here is some scenery from southwestern Falkreath:

I decided to use the remaining time to find out if me and my boys can take on a bandit camp which I knew would be there somewhere. We found it and approached it very conveniently from above. Now, I guess I forgot to tell you, but recently I altered the parameters of the Sense of Smell  special power. In order to make it less cheaty, I decreased its range from 250 to 100. I also decreased the duration from 120 to 20, because it's really very annoying to have to wait for the glow to disappear in order to take screenshots, and no one would ever need it to last for 120 seconds anyway. As for the distance, 100 is just about perfect. It spares you the utter confusion in dungeons, but in the open there's a good chance that the enemies will discover you before you discover them, so you no longer have this huge unfair advantage you used to have. (Mind you, distance 100 doesn't mean 100 Skyrim distance units. I don't know which units that parameter uses. Maybe it's 100x10 or something.)

Back to the current assault. I had a perfect shooting spot overlooking the camp, but unfortunately it was too far for the Sense of Smell  to detect the enemies. A delightful challenge, an opportunity to exercise my tactical thinking! I sneaked slowly closer (as well as lower) until one of the enemies detected me, and when he began to move, I was able to see him with my physical eyes and kill him with a number of shots, and then I killed another one. We had to descend all the way to the ground in order to get the remaining two. They kept looking for us, but we stood there in stealth mode and eventually they gave up. Then we sneaked in and my boys killed them while I was watching their backs. It was awesome.

There were a couple of doors. I was about to go in, but then I noticed I was past 28 hours of the real-world playtime which I had planned for this rehearsal game. So that particular challenge will remain unsolved in this life.

This is it. The general rehearsal is over. I have gained very valuable experience and after a few final adjustments I will start the real game – starting in Helgen, the vanilla opening. I can't stress enough how excited I am.

Thank you for being with me so far. My report of the real game shall be written in a different style and I hope it will be much better than this one.



next part: my final mod configuration