SKYRIMLE Death Alternative - Your Money or Your Life by BralorMarr

[Kuldebar]

Just putting this out here for those who might wish to know.

 

Don't click the spoiler button if you don't want foreknowledge of what you can expect from Death Alternatives.

 

 

 

 

 

SPOILER:

 

 

 

 

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Introduction:
The quest added by this mod are divided into two categories: Quest that start at the moment where the player is defeated (Primary Quests) and quest that trigger off the Primary Quest (Secondary Quest). For example, all the rescue events are secondary quests.

OnBleedout Quest:
1) Necromantic absorption: On entering bleedout, you get a chance to use either the Avoid Death perk, a black soul gem or a dragon soul to instantly regenerate some or all of your health, and get back in the fight.

Primary (OnBlackout/OnDefeat) Quests:
1) Crime: This quest solves the vanilla bug of guards and civilian fighting the player to death for no reason whatsoever (minor crimes, accident and whatnot). They will still fight you of course, but now you will be sent to the prison of the crime faction that defeated you, if it exists. You can then serve your time as normal.

2) Bandit: When you are defeated by Bandit (or sometimes forsworn), they steal some of your gear and loot and leave you in a ditch close to the location you were defeated or near the entrance to a nearby town. A quest to recover you gear is then started (see Recovery Quest).

3) Animal: When you are defeated by one of the many predator of Skyrim, they either leave you for dead or drag you to a nearby animal lair. One of the many secondary quest can then trigger.

4) Draugr: When you are defeated by a draugr, they will sometimes stash your armor and weapon in one of the many funeral urn of the tomb you happen to be in, and dress you in ceremonial nord garment. They will also often carry you to the entrance of the crypt. The rational is that they assumed you would rise again as a new draugr and defend the crypt. They'll soon realize their mistake once you start moving away from where they left you.

5) Dwemer: Dwemers are automated defence and, as such, are content with throwing you out of the current dwemer ruins. One of the many secondary quest can then trigger.

6) Dragon: Dragons can absorb souls of other dead dragon, or that of the dragonborn himself. If you are defeated by a dragon, they will absorb all your unspent dragon souls (which can be recovered later from the same dragon) and greatly weakens the dragonborn, who held to his own soul by a tether. The dragon will then lose interest in fighting you, considering that you are not a challenge anymore, and fly around passively.  One of the many secondary quest can then trigger after you are defeated.

7) Forsworn: Forsworn can capture the player on defeat. You are then transported to one of their many camps and put into a cage under guard. The guard will provide you some food if you need it (talk to him/her through the cage door). They will strip you of your armor and weapons but leave any other item. You can either try to break free by pickpocketing the key or using lockpicking skill on a randomly leveled lock (note that if you leave without recovering your item from the jailer they will eventually sell them and they can be recovered from a pawnbroker (see the Gear Recovery quest). If you can't free yourself, your only option is to wait for rescue. However, the Jarl won't accept to pay your ransom if you are a known criminal in which case you might be freed once the Forsworn realize their mistake.

OnDeath Quests:
None so far.

Secondary (Radiant) Quests:
1) Random Adventurer: Random adventurer will sometime stumble upon you as you regain consciousness. They will offer to accompany you and/or offer you a weapon (iron or steel). If you chose to have him/her follow you, they will act as a normal follower for a configurable amount of time, after which they will say their goodbye and leave your side. I recommend to not transfer any item to the follower since you won't be able to recover them after he/she leaves your side.

2) Random Brigand: The random brigand will see you as an easy prey and will demand your gear/loot or fight you for it. Since you will be gravely injured at that point, fighting might not be an option.

3) Companion: Vilkas and Farkas sometimes go on an adventure around Skyrim. They may stumble on the player. If the player is not a member of the companion, they will simply remind you of their guild. If you are already a member, they will offer to assist you for a short time. If you are the harbinger, they will offer to assist you of course, and you can request an extra weapon (skyforge).

4) Thief Guild: Random thief guild member can stumble on the player. If you are not a member they will attempt a holdup though they can be convinced that you actually have nothing. If you fail, you may have to hand over your gear or fight. On the other hand, if you are a member, they will share some of the loot they stole on their last job.

5) College: The college also have random member walking about. If you are not a member they will only remind you of the college. If you are a member they will offer some extra potions and scrolls. If you are archmage they will offer the previous and you can request an extra sets of clothes (mage robes) in case you lost yours.

6) M'aiq: M'aiq is as helpful as ever and will give you a rare daedric artifact, a certain cursed fork. This quest can only trigger once ever.

7) Temple: In the temple quest, you are carried unconscious to a nearby temple. As you wake up, one of the priest may attempt to heal you. You can then repay their kindness if you so desire.

8) Inn: The inn quest is similar to the temple quest except that you wake up in an inn, presumably carried by a random adventurer. The innkeeper will offer you something to eat and you can repay his/her kindness doing some manual labor (cutting some wood for the fire).

9) Gear Recovery: If you ever lose gear, they can be recovered in two ways: either you get revenge directly from the thief or you can query vendors (of the pawnbroker variety). If you find the said vendor, he will offer you to repay him for a fraction of the price of the loot.

10) Markarth Ransom: The housecarl of Markarth will deal with ransom demand in Markarth hold. When the quest start, the housecarl start negotiating for your release which may be more or less difficult depending on if you are known as the Dragonborn or not. Your lost gear is then returned to you as you are released and escorted back to Markarth's keep. She/he then proceed to explain the situation and that you need to reemburse their loses since it was your fault you got caught. As long as you haven't repaid your ransom no other rescue will be offered.

 

[Kuldebar]

Well, as much as it pained me to let go of the idea, I uninstalled Death Alternative - Your Money or Your Life per instructions, still had to run the SaveTool script cleaner to remove quite a few #'s DAYMoYL related script orphans. All is well with my game, I usually never resort to such extremes without simply starting over...but I really don't feel like starting another character -I like my current game. 

 

My reasons?

 

Five "defeats" and 3 of the five were glitched or weird in some way or another...

 

Firstly, sometimes I'd be hit one time and <boom> my character would enter "death alternative" mode. Not saying the mod caused that, but it made for a very disjointed experience.

 

I'm playing on Adept (I am using YASH's YASH_CombatAI, YASH_ImprovedClasses and YASH_OpenEncounterZones) but getting attacked from a distance by a Frost Spider while I am on horseback and immediately keeling over seems rather much. But that would be fine except for how the rest of it unfolds.

 

 

Here's some of the scenarios* I ran into problems with:

 

 

Frostbite Spider attack while I was on horseback outside Ivarstead: I am rescued by the Priest from Temple of Mara but the screen is completely black except for the UI elements although all the dialog and interaction works...in the dark. Reloading after save does nothing, have to revert to earlier save.

 

Fort Greenwall Bandits Attack on approach:  I succumb to vastly outnumbered enemies. Vilkas/Farkas of the Companions spawn in a rescue attempt (I think?) after the fadeout (my character is a member of the Companions) The two brothers almost immediately get in a losing fight with the Greenwall Bandits. Meanwhile, my totally naked character gets engaged in a conversation with a bandit involving my gear recovery...seems very unrealistic and disjointed.

 

Shroud Hearth Barrows dungeon lock out: This one really sucked. My character was overwhelmed by Draugr in the room that locks you inside until you clear it out and trip the lever. Everything works as intended, I awake dressed in old Draugr armor with my gear hidden somewhere in the dungeon...but I can't proceed further into the dungeon because the gate has blocked off the part of the dungeon I need to delve into and I have no way to open it without cheating. (which I will never use a console command to progress a game, ruins it for me totally)

 

So, three out five defeats had problems. It makes me sad but the mod is still very much a work in progress.

 

For now, I'm more interested in playing the game then testing mods, so I have removed and cleaned Death Alternatives from my saved game.

 

* there was one other "fail" death but it involved being in werewolf form in the initial part of the Underforge Companion Quest line.

Edited June 2, 2014 by Kuldebar

[keithinhanoi]

  On 6/2/2014 at 8:44 PM, Kuldebar said:

Well, as much as it pained me to let go of the idea, I uninstalled Death Alternative - Your Money or Your Life per instructions, still had to run the SaveTool script cleaner to remove quite a few #'s DAYMoYL related script orphans. All is well with my game, I usually never resort to such extremes without simply starting over...but I really don't feel like starting another character -I like my current game. 

 

My reasons?

 

Five "defeats" and 3 of the five were glitched or weird in some way or another...

 

Firstly, sometimes I'd be hit one time and <boom> my character would enter "death alternative" mode. Not saying the mod caused that, but it made for a very disjointed experience.

 

<snip>

 

So, three out five defeats had problems. It makes me sad but the mod is still very much a work in progress.

I read your posts on his comments thread, and I think it would be nice to quote / link to his replies about these issues here.

 

For me, although I haven't gotten "stuck" or experienced any glitched Death Alternative scenarios, I will continue to use the mod, because it's still for the greater part a much more interesting alternative to simply having to reload your last saved game.

 

He does advise users of Death Alternative to save often, thus allowing the player to fall back to the age-old magically-resurrect-my-character-by-loading-the-previous-save method of gameplay if something in the mod doesn't work as expected.

[Kuldebar]

I also discovered, and this was before I uninstalled Death Alternatives that the mod caused Danica Pure-Spring to no longer be capable of training in restoration. Her voice file is deactivated for the appropriate line but the training interface never pops up. This issue persisted after the uninstall, I suspect her behavior has been permanently changed in this save game.

 

There wasn't anything earth-shakingly enlightening in the mod authors response. The gist of it is...he's accepting that some really rough edges will continue to persist and not be addressed or resolved.  I'm fine with that, but it's not something I'd continue to use if that is his design goal.

[DocClox]

Similar issues here. One encounter saw my PC collapse into bleedout, and then after a while it says "you still have some life left in you". After which the bandits are suddenly non-hostile for no reason I could make out.

 

I also had a case last night. A new and somewhat under-prepared PC meets a thief on the road, briefly toasts the blighter, and then goes sprinting back to the protection of a follower. At which point the thief decides he isn't hostile at all. Which I could almost write off as "immersion" if I wasn't convinced it was a bug.

 

I love the idea of DA, but I don't think it's ready for prime time yet.

[Kuldebar]

I think if the mod was just a tad less ambitious and concentrated on having a solid base set of features it could really have mass appeal.

 

At the present there's way too much "glitch" involved throughout. I've said the same for Touring Carriages...great, genius projects but not polished in its execution. Let's be honest, putting lipstick on a pig doesn't make it "not a pig". Modding Skyrim has the same limitations. Only very rarely do we see those limitations shattered and surpassed: Sheson, ENBoost, SKSE, etc.

[Garfink]

I have totally converted to using Death Alternative, works fine 95% of the time in my experience which is good enough for me.  Until there is a DA Alternative!!  I love not having to reload save games and not bothering with saving at all (apart from timed saves just in case Skyrim decides to crash), any thing that happens (that isn't bugged of course) just adds to my character's story in very interesting ways.

 

Speaking of bugs, the bugs or bugged out situations I've seen aren't frequent, my current level 17 (dead slow leveling character) has had one bugged out event that is more the product of me adding mods than DA.  

[Kuldebar]

@Garfink

 

It was a tough call for me, but I had a slew of glitched defeats that really ruined the scenario for me. The problem was compounded, I'm sure, because I had a number of difficulty adjustment mods, so getting one-shotted happened more than it otherwise would. Even so, I think the mod author should have scaled back on some of the scenarios or added a few branched alternatives/black-lists to avoid the dungeon lock out, for instance.

[DocClox]

I must admit, the most recent version seems to be pretty solid. I've been using it on one of my profiles and (once you get used to how it works) it seems to work quite well. My characters get a lot more "gung ho" if I know they're not going to die.

 

It's also shocking how hard it can be trying to get killed when you're testing this baby. (I can never really bring myself to just stand and let them hit me :)