A remedy against your followers' suicidal combat behavior

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SPOILER INFO
This article doesn't contain any spoilers, only reveals a bug.
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The biggest problem with followers is them running recklessly into melee combat which not only puts them in great danger of getting killed, it also prevents you from shooting at the enemies (unless you are prepared to take the risk of hitting your followers).

As everyone with some experience with Skyrim is bound to have noticed, ranged weapons are far superior to melee weapons. (That is as long as you have a mod such as Skyrim Realistic Archery to correct vanilla Skyrim's most outrageous feature – automatic deflection of your arrows from where you're aiming.) Unfortunately, your followers don't know it, even though they are supposed to be seasoned warriors created specifically for the Skyrim universe.

This article tells you how to correct that.

Of course, the first thing to do with a new follower is to change her combat behavior from "attack whenever you see an enemy" (most incredulously, the Bethesda insectbrains have made this default!!) to "don't attack until I have started combat". This keeps your followers from fucking up all your attempts of covert approach, but it still doesn't prevent them from charging at the enemy as soon as you have fired your first arrow.

Going into the follower menu and setting her to be "Archer" doesn't seem to affect anything at all.

It was only after a thousand hours of Skyrim that I found out what to do about the followers unspeakably detrimental combat behavior:

Do not give them any melee weapons!

That's the only thing I've found that actually makes your followers keep proper distance from the enemy. It's incredible how much easier fighting became, as well as safer for the followers.

There's one caveat: at least one follower (Ghorbash) is unable to use ranged weapons, so he actually attacks the enemy with his bare fists rather than use a bow or a staff. Still, such swordmorons are rare, so going without using them or even putting up with them occasionally is nowhere near as infuriating as being unable to fight properly ever.

Deflorator's game, 2–9 Sun's Dusk (Dånstar – Amber Creek – Stargazer)

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SPOILER INFO
This unfinished story follows closely my actions in an actual game, so it's inevitably a spoiler.
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previous chapter






The author has chosen to remove the text of this unfinished game report, because he is no longer happy with it.

This is Warmth's Edge Caverns, the place into which Audmund's cow had ran.

next chapter

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.