Re-spawn/replace own NPC house guard

[Daimonicon]

Hello,

I have created two guards for my house mod to help me with enemy encounters while at home. I have set the respawn flag for both of them when I didn't realise that a respawn takes 30 days. Of course, 30 days makes the guard concept completely obsolete. Now I wanted to set it to essential to prevent them from dying. I also made them a bit more resistible, but the game ignores these changes during the current playthrough.

I assume that after 30 days the game only spawns the known reference and not a new copy of the base actor? So changes like daily routines, better armor/weapons unfortunately don't work.

What I actually want to get at - Can I kill the guards currently placed in the game (Console?) and then spawn a new ref of the Base ID with changes? Or can I place my own spawn instead of the actor that is not bound to these 30 days ?

[TechAngel85]

You'll likely just going to have to experiment on this one. I'm not super familiar with all the mechanics at play here. Logic would suggest killing and respawning them would use the updated record; however, we all know stuff is baked into saves. What's baked there is what is in question. If baked, they will more than likely be pulled from the save and not the new record.

One way that should work would be to simple duplicate the actors into new records and replace the old references with the new ones. That should force the new records to be used as they will also be new to the game (new formID).

[Daimonicon]

19 hours ago, TechAngel85 said:

You'll likely just going to have to experiment on this one. I'm not super familiar with all the mechanics at play here. Logic would suggest killing and respawning them would use the updated record; however, we all know stuff is baked into saves. What's baked there is what is in question. If baked, they will more than likely be pulled from the save and not the new record.

One way that should work would be to simple duplicate the actors into new records and replace the old references with the new ones. That should force the new records to be used as they will also be new to the game (new formID).

Yes, not knowing what all is embedded in the game files is a pain in the ass.

But removing the current actor and replacing him with a new one was exactly the right thing to do - thanks for the tip.