stops moving + gets 'lost' during "lead me"

[uglycat]

so the subject of this topic is kind of weird... so i'll explain properly here.

there are a couple of bugs i've noticed during play, but haven't seen much mention of from searching around with google.

specifically,
"stops moving"
it seems after finishing a combat with any hostile NPC, occasionally, vilja becomes locked in place and can no longer move. (i have encumbrance DISABLED, but I have her way overloaded with stuff)
the player can fix this by either saving and reloading or use the summon spell to 'unstick' her feet (for the summon spell, you have to choose the teleport option, simply telling her to come to you has no effect). note that telling her to stay and then telling her to follow has no effect. telling her to lead you somewhere also has no effect.
this isn't game breaking, however in a dungeon, for example, where you can encounter up to a dozen (or even more) NPCs, she can get locked into place fairly often and at that point, it becomes rather annoying.
i *think* it has something to do with her getting the killing blow as it seems to happen more often if i contribute very little (or 0) damage during a fight. but possibly it may be linked to ME damaging her (i play a caster, but my aim is pretty bad....)
but it's not consistent. i've tested just letting her kill an NPC one on one and that doesn't make her get stuck.

i believe the readme warns about custom monster mods. i use Static NPCs (http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4905) which, while not adding anything custom, perse, does mess with leveled lists.

have you ever heard of this happening before and is this a known issue with another mod maybe?

gets 'lost' during "lead me":
essentially, vilja seems to get 'lost' while she is trying to lead me somewhere (surprise me option).
she will be leading me along the road or whatever, when, after waiting for me to catch up, she'll suddenly change direction completely.
i'm fairly sure this is not intended because when it happens, she will stop waiting for me if i get too far away. she'll actually just keep walking in the new direction, forever. if you tell her to hurry and she's running, i've just sat back and seen her run right out of visibility range!
anyway, simply talking to her and choosing 'please continue' fixes it. but when running, it happens very often because she runs slightly faster than me so she stops to wait for me often.

anyway, as you can see, the two bugs are not really serious but they do get annoying and mar what would otherwise be probably the best companion mod i've ever seen. if anyone's got solutions for this, i'd love to hear them!

thanks.

[uglycat]

played a little more today.
i'm not sure but i may have another idea of what causes the "stops moving" bug.

i use supreme magicka, and it modifies the elemental magic damage to randomly have special effects:
fire: makes npcs run in fear for a short while
lightning: shocks npcs and tosses them around
frost: freezes them in place.

like i said, i have bad aim and i was using a touch frost spell as my main damage spell earlier. i've since gotten some better lightning spells and haven't been seeing the stuck in place bug lately. of course, it's always random when it happens, but i wonder if it's possible that the special 'freeze' effect somehow doesn't get removed from vilja?

more testing (read: playing!) is needed i think to narrow it down more.
still no idea about the 'randomly running off and not waiting' bug when having her lead me somewhere.

[Emma]

It sounds like you have pinpointed the problem with why she is getting stuck. I haven't heard about the problem before, and I would think that if you change cells that should unstuck her and make her follow you. You can also try and start the Vilja Start Combat spell on Vilja to reset her AI and hopefully reset her. Obviously, the spell effect is meant for hostile npcs which you are supposed to kill, so if they get "stuck" until they are dead, I guess it might be the same also with friendly npcs that are hit by accident (I don't use Supreme Magicka, myself).

As for Vilja getting lost when leading, it very much depends on the area you are in, and the area you are in when you decide that she will lead. When Vilja leads, she is following "path-grids" added to the game-world by Bethesda. In areas with complicated nature (especially up in the north) these path-grids are a bit unreliable and can cause her to take the wrong way. Like you say, talking to her normally makes her find the right track again.

[uglycat]

it's unfortunate about the pathfinding stuff. while it is kind of funny watching her just ditch me and run away, it really puts a damper on the whole 'surprise me' thing.

i'll do a bit more testing re: freezing in place tonight.

[uglycat]

rats. i thought i was on to something.
there's a way to trick supreme magicka to apply the freezing 100% of the time, but after doing that and blasting vilja with a frost spell, she did freeze and fall over, but then she got right back up and started moving just fine.

i have absolutely no idea now. i guess i'll just have to try to ignore it.

[OldRPMDaddy]

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but following Vilja all over creation while she insists that she knows exactly where she's going is pretty funny!