Denina's Morrowind Forums

[Denina]

I'm trying to make a personal mod that will add an existing spell to existing merchants to sell. All the providers I've chosen have the spell's college as a major skill and are adequate level. Yet when I go into game to test it, they have all their normal spells for sale, but not the one I added.

I cannot figure out what is wrong. I tried to search for this problem at Bethesda's forum but all my search parameters came up a lot of garbage that had nothing to do with my problem and I could not think of any other way to phrase the problem without getting back error messages there.

Does anyone know what the problem could be? I made the mod not dependent on the expansions, if that matters.

Thanks.

[Toccatta]

If they all have their normal spells, then their AI is already set up correctly for selling spells. Spell merchants sell any spell they have in their inventory, so it isn't necessary to worry about their spell school or level. For example, Arrille sells several destruction spells even though his destruction skill is only 16.

On the other hand, you can't change the inventory of an NPC that you've directly interacted with because it's stored in your character's save game. You should try starting a new character and use the console to get yourself to one of the spell merchants and see if the spell is available. If so, the problem is entirely in your save.

However, if the spell is STILL not available, you should check to see if any other mod has edited those merchants. Some NPCs are changed by mods like Better Heads, so that might be interfering with it.

NPCs are saved as a single unit, so any change (no matter how small) will cause the entire NPC to be stored in a mod. If another mod is loaded later that edits the same NPC, then all the previous changes will be lost. That's why it's normally not a good idea to change the inventory of an existing NPC. There are simple tricks to add physical items to existing merchants without altering their inventories, but those tricks don't apply to spells. You could easily create new NPCs to sell those spells without any conflict, but I don't know of any easy (and safe) way to add those spells to existing ones.

[Denina]

Well, don't I feel dumb now. I had tested the mod with an existing test character, not a brand new one. I knew it couldn't have been from a mod conflict, but I never thought that an existing test character that had only been in Seyda Neen and the house beside Arrille's would matter. I learned something new today.

Thanks, T!

[Arakhor]

Couldn't you use the console window to click on the character and then use the "addspell" command? I often use this trick to manually add shoes in-game to someone I find walking around barefooted.

[Denina]

In game about the only thing I ever use the console for is "RA" and "TFH". If I'm going to just add through the console, why even play? Kind of ruins the point, I think. If I'm going to do that, I may as well just add Sunder and Keening to my inventory too.


B - O - R - I - N - G!

[Arakhor]

I meant adding the spell to the NPC if your savegame is overwriting the modded character, so that you can buy the spell in question. I wasn't suggesting wholesale cheating!

[Denina]

Ok, I see what you mean. Sorry, I misunderstood. I'm just glad to find out that it was just an oversight on my part and not something horribly flawed with the game engine. It has enough flaws as it is.