Is Companion Friendly Inns compatible with Better Cities?

[valandril]

I'm playing Oblivion with Vilja, so I'd like to make the Inns companion-friendly if I can - but I'm also using Better Cities, I know the CFI readme says it's not compatible with anything that alters the interiors of inns, I don't *think* BC does that, but does anyone know for sure, either way? Also, I'm a Mages Guild member, can Vilja sleep in the Guild houses? (Also, unrelated, I am rather excited by the fact that apparently Oblivion Vilja has Thieves' Guild dialogue by Terry Pratchett, have been a fan of his since I was 12!)

[valandril]

Okay, while this is open, I have a couple of other questions - one, I tried installing Give A Gift but it caused the game to CTD repeatedly, so I uninstalled it. Any idea of known conflicts for this mod, or anything like that? And two, I love Maple Cottage, but I've got Fergus staying in the top floor bed and my character plus Vilja are sleeping in the basement, so I'd like to edit the basement to be a little prettier - I presume this is okay? I'm obviously not going to upload it anywhere or anything, but I feel like I should ask permission first! (Also, thanks to Emma for some fantastic mods!)

[Emma]

Hi Valandril,

I don't think there should be any problems with Open Cities and Companionfriendly inns. I doubt that the Open Cities alters the interiors. What could happen, if they do, is that the companion bed might be inside another static in certain inns, but that's hardly a disastrous incompatibility.
Vilja can sleep also in the guilds.

Yes, most of Vilja's Thieves guild comments are written by Terry Pratchett, same goes for many of her comments in regards to goblins. He has also been so kind and brainstormed over Vilja with me, so there are other features, in particular the "Lead the way"-feature, that originates from him.

He has also participated in the "Give a gift"-mod; among other things, he named all the perfumes and aftershaves , so I hope you will be able to use the mod. My suspiscion is that the bsa isn't correctly installed in your game and that this is causing the CTDs. I've never heard anything about CTD-problems with this mod before. During which circumstances will you get a CTD?

Of course you can alter any of my houses for your personal use as much as you wish . Maple cottage doesn't have any specific Vilja-bonuses, so later on you might want to try out Red Rose Manor, Lakeside home or Aleswell cottage as well.

I'm glad to see that there are still people playing Oblivion, too, and not only Skyrim. It's almost a bit sad to think that so many Viljas and packdonkeys and houses now are "abandoned" in Cyrodiil... . I must say that personally I think that housemodding is ten times as fun in Oblivion as in Skyrim.

[valandril]

Thanks, I'll probably give the inns mod a try, then - sometimes one doesn't feel like spending the night in a dormitory full of wizards!

The CTDs were after I installed it - I forgot to make an extra save before I installed it and so I had an autosave and then a proper save about half an hour earlier than that. Vilja and my character were standing somewhere in Skingrad, I think, and I gave her the amulet then went through a gate (to the castle, maybe?) and the game CTDd. Reloaded the same auto-save and somehow the amulet was already in Vilja's inventory, headed back through the gate, I think, and CTD again, next couple of times I reloaded it CTD straight away so I deactivated the mod and the CTDs stopped. Weird. I've re-extracted the two files, it's just a matter of activating the .esp in my mod manager, right? I'll give it another go next time I play, fingers crossed it was just a temporary issue or something went wrong the first time I extracted the files!

I'm really enjoying Oblivion - I bought it a few months ago but didn't really get into it as I couldn't get my head around the levelling, skills etc, so I just kept dying because I was terrible at most of my combat skills... Oops! I'm getting on much better this time, I had a couple of false starts (went too quickly with the MQ and couldn't justify just ignoring the Oblivion Gates based on what my character was like, and then started, got a bit into it, but then decided I wanted to change some of my mods and restart) but absolutely got drawn in by some of the side quests (especially Rythe Lythandas's disappearance...) I'm playing with Vilja and Fergus, I suspect my character has crushes on both of them...

[valandril]

Oh, Lakeside looks lovely (as does Red Rose Manor, but it's a bit grand for my current character) - I'm getting increasingly tempted to get COBL, too, is it safe to install on an existing game, do you know?

ETA: I've just tried out Give A Gift briefly and there was no insta-CTD which I'm taking as a good sign. Haven't been able to test it properly, yet, though, but fingers crossed!

I'm now wondering how hard it would be (for me...) to make a little mod where you could arrange for a regular delivery of groceries to make the soups and so on. I can never remember what I need to pick up in the inns for cooking back at the cottage. I suppose I could just make a shopping list...

[Emma]

Good that Give a Gift now works properly! The only thing I can imagine is if you were using some texture replacer for amulets previously and somehow this caused an issue in combination with Vilja's amulet; from your description, it sounded like the crashes were more related to Vilja's inventory than to the mod itself. So it could be anything in there.

It would be very easy to make a little grocery delivery mod, at least if you think it's enough with a "delivery box" in the neighborhood of your favorised housemod.

In the construction set, go to the section "Containers" Choose anyone, give it a new ID and save it (a new ID is necessary, else you will influence the containers all over the gameworld). Doubleclick on your new container, remove the content in the inventory and instead add the ingredients you want a supply of. Make sure the little box "Respawn" is ticked. Place an instance of the container in the gameworld where you want it. Let's pretend that you are using my Lakeside Home mod - then place it a bit away from the house (so that the exterior changes I made in my Lakeside mod doesn't affect your container).

Save the mod, activate it and play. Thanks to the "respawn" check, you should get new ingredients every 3rd day. But, remember that anything you put in the container will be gone after three days! When the container respawn, the previous content will vanish.

[valandril]

Thanks, that's pretty much exactly what I was hoping to do, so the instructions are very much appreciated I might have to see if there's a mod that will let me put a few septims in the box for payment (that would also disappear when it respawns, right?)

[valandril]

Hmm, I've made the chest, placed it in the 'Dzonot Cave Exterior' cell, activated the .esp, looked for it in game and it's not there. Trying to figure out what I've missed...

[Emma]

Maybe you are using a mod that changes the area outside the cave?

Make a dummycell, place an instance of the chest in it and COC to the dummycell to check if that chest works properly. Or try it by putting the chest in an interior cell that you know isn't changed.

[valandril]

I reinstalled my game and forgot to save a backup of the mod, so it's gone, oops! Oh, well, I'll just have to make a shopping list. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep it in mind if I try again

Meanwhile, Vilja bought Estoril (my armour-eschewing mage) an Orcish helmet in Colovian Traders. Naturally, she is wearing it: cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/3298073806073477058/6916BD9C4DB8143A36F079B187A3DCFD1812BCD8/ (She actually put it in The Luggage for safekeeping, but now feels a bit guilty.)

Oh, btw, now I've got Cobl, it puts the Luggage in the same place as the CFI beds (well, in the two inns I've been in so far) - is this anything I should be worrying about, other than from a 'well, this looks a bit comical' standpoint? (Sorry for the endless questions!)