Faralda prematurely ends her walk up to the college

[bjornk]

After talking to her and taking the test she is supposed to escort you up to the college door while lighting the magic beacons on the way with her magelight spell. In my game she casts all of her magelight spells way too early and she prematurely ends her walk without reaching the gate.

 

I'm having trouble finding the mod causing this problem, but disabling both Player Voicesets and Better Dynamic Snow and cleaning up the save game after that seems to fix it. I still don't know which one of these causes the problem. Has anyone else had something like this before?

 

Edit: The effect of disabling both Player Voicesets and Better Dynamic Snow was probably random. It didn't fix the problem.

 

 

 

[endgameaddiction]

Feralda lights all 3 beacons and turns around and walks back down for me. She never escorts me straight to the actual  gate, or to any door/npc. Never has. Not sure about the early spell casting. I know once I interrupted her and she didn't cast mage light on one of the beacons but kept doing her thing.

[bjornk]

If I disable every mod she goes back to her vanilla behavior and does her thing as she is supposed to.

 

The problem, however, with mods, she casts her first magelight spell as soon as you finish your dialogue with her and this isn't NOT the vanilla behavior. She is supposed to cast her spells when she gets near to the beacons, but in my game she seems to aim the ones which are one level above our current position. In other words, she casts one magelight to the first beacon as soon as you exit the dialogue and then as we approach to the first beacon, she casts all the other ones aiming towards the other beacons at higher levels. The number varies, but she casts more than 3 spells by the way.

 

Edit:

 

I think, the USKP is the reason why she casts the first spell immediately. However, the vanilla behavior is also bugged. After she casts the 3rd spell she walks back towards Winterhold and if you follow her, she cast a 4th spell towards the 3rd beacon but to the ground and then walks again to the 3rd beacon, then she walks past it a bit and casts a 5th spell, again to the ground. I think she is supposed to open the door and cast another spell to light the beacon inside the garden but fails. I can't see another reason for her to cast the 4th and 5th spells.

 

After wasting a whole day trying to find the problem, I've decided not to use the unofficial patches from now on. At least vanilla bugs are better documented.

 

Edited 23 August by bjornk

[Nickolos1818]

It has been one of those " known issues " with USKP and a lot of the College overhaul mods for a while now.  She also has a tendency to cast the magelights into the encline / walls.  There is a mod on nexus ( tried it about a year ago ) that does a complete texture / look overhaul and expands the college.  Author also changed some scripts for the npc's where one of them was Faralda greets you and sends you on your way, as you pass the beacon they light up.

 

Will see if I can find that mod for you again, if nothing else could extract her script and apply it to your game to fix that issue.

[bjornk]

Thank you, I didn't know that. I couldn't find anything similar on Google. Yes, she seems to cast the spells to the pillars while aiming towards the beacons on the upper level.

[bjornk]

If Faralda fails to activate the magic beacons for some reason, you can do it yourself with this script:

 

 

Shoot a magelight towards slightly above the magicka wells and they will light up. Only you and Faralda can do this.

 

You may either extract it inside your Data folder (or MO Overwrite folder) or install it as a mod.

 

Source code isn't included as this is the only change in the vanilla script:

if Aggressor == MG01FaraldaAlias.GetReference() || Aggressor == Game.GetPlayer()

I have failed to find what is wrong with the USKP. Judging by the number of packages, Faralda is supposed to use magelight 5 times, but the placement of movement and targeting markers doesn't make any sense. I think she is supposed to open the gate with magelight as well and then light the beacon in the garden, which makes a total of 5 magelight spells. One of the travel markers sends her back towards WH, and then towards the college again. Also the packages for Faralda for this particular task clearly weren't designed very well. They don't even check if the previous one was successfully executed, so if something goes wrong in the game, she casts all her magelight spells at the wrong time, sometimes to the ground or towards the walls.

 

[bjornk]

Here's what I have found out so far:

 

Problem:

 

• Faralda seems to skip her "move to marker" AI packages even though they are flagged as "Must Complete".
  
  FYI, this is roughly her package stack for the quest MG01:
  
  Travel to travelmarker 1       (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Cast magelight to castmarker 1 (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Travel to travelmarker 2       (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Cast magelight to castmarker 2 (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Travel to travelmarker 3       (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Cast magelight to castmarker 3 (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Travel to travelmarker 4       (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Cast magelight to castmarker 4 (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Travel to travelmarker 5       (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Cast magelight to castmarker 5 (only runs when MG01 is running and at stage 30)
  Forcegreet for shout           (only runs when MG01 is running)
  Forcegreet for magic           (only runs when MG01 is running)
  Wait outside the college       (only runs when MG01 is running)
   
• She casts her first magelight as soon as your dialogue ends, before reaching the first "travel" marker, this is NOT the vanilla behavior. She then walks a bit more and if you are still within the "escort" distance, she casts other magelights towards the other cast markers, but again, before reaching the 2nd and 3rd "travel" markers. This indicates that she either somehow skips all of her travel markers, or ends them prematurely.
• Her spells fail to activate the 2nd and the 3rd magicka beacon, as the projectiles fail to reach the target due to the premature casting of the spell.

 

Findings:

 

• I don't have any mod that modifies the quest's AI packages or the markers.
• I have checked every travel and cast marker used by the AI packages individually, and they are all there where they are supposed to be.
• The only mod I have that modifies MG01 quest, is the USKP, but it doesn't change anything related to markers or the AI packages.
• The navmesh seems okay, as Faralda can walk up to the gate if I disable "magic cast" packages.
• I have tried disabling every mod I have one by one up to the USKP, but that didn't change anything. Only when I disabled the USKP together with all the other mods and cleaned the save, she reverted back to her vanilla behavior. Now, I have already run into two USKP bugs in this playthrough, but I still don't have any "solid" evidence that suggests the problem is indeed caused by the USKP.
• MG01 is indeed at stage 30 while she runs the package stack and the "shout" variant of the quest isn't running.

 

Other Thoughts:

 

• I have no idea why she fails to complete "travel to" packages properly (well, they are actually "escort" packages). The only possible reason I can think of is that she is targeted by another unknown quest which has a equal/higher priority than MG01 (i.e. 70) and it interferes with her MG01 AI package stack. I can't think of any such quests though. Also, it would interfere with magic cast packages as well, if that was the case.
• Not sure if this is relevant in any way, but I use a timescale of 12. Reverting it back to 20 didn't do anything.