Skyrim - Removing Immortal/Esstenial Status

[DEAD34345]

Seeing as how a dragon can't actually spawn into any of the major, major cities, the only real way to break any of the major quests by accident would be to have a dragon kill one of the Blades or your side's Second-In-Command.

Besides, most of the essential NPCs are tough enough where if you're any good at fighting dragons or anything else the dragon will die before the NPC.

At least make it so that they're immortal to everything but your attacks.

Uh... that's not true. I've had dragons land in the middle of Solitude more than once.

OT: There's probably a console command, but I wouldn't do it if I were you. The game isn't set up to accommodate any essentials dying, so lots of quests will break in very glitchy ways if it happens. At least wait for a mod that will probably come along and fix most of those problems...

 

[Levethian]

Or better yet, since its 2011........just make the main quest adapt to the loss of a character. Now you just have to figure out what needs to go down by yourself, or you skip unnecessary things; like the whole Civil War thing if I'd gotten the ability to assassinate Ulfric.

I'm not sure it being 2011 makes that 'just' much less nightmarishly difficult to program.

 

[NeutralDrow]

I have a simple request: does anyone know the Console Command to remove the Immortal/Esstenial tags from the NPCs in the game, thereby rendering them all vulenrable?

It really gets under my skin that somehow the Jarls and leaders are spared from my murderous rage somehow, or that there is little danger in mis-casting a spell or something.

I was really pissed when I found out I just can't assassinate all the enemy Jarls and leaders to end the war.....why wasn't this a built-in option?

I feel your pain. You can probably guess how I felt when I first reverse-pickpocketed enough poison into Maven Black-Briar to down a mammoth, and the ***** just took it. I'm slowly building up a head of rage against the Thieves' Guild (even though I'm a member), but I suspect they're all unkillable, as well.

I mean, I guess I can understand the reasoning behind immortal NPCs, but...so frickin' many of them?! Most of the ones I've come across that are actually worth assassinating simply won't die. It was a brief hallelujah moment when I slit Thonar Silver-Blood's throat and it actually worked.

 

[Kragg]

Or better yet, since its 2011........just make the main quest adapt to the loss of a character. Now you just have to figure out what needs to go down by yourself, or you skip unnecessary things; like the whole Civil War thing if I'd gotten the ability to assassinate Ulfric.

I'm not sure it being 2011 makes that 'just' much less nightmarishly difficult to program.

yeah i think someone is VASTLY underestimating what kind of computing power is needed to make all that work

 

[willis888]

I'm sad about the immortals that need to die too. As much work as went into making Skyrim, you'd think Bethesda could have gone the extra mile and programed in appropriate responses to currently immortal NPCs dying.

For example,

Spoiler

When the Blades asked you to kill Parthunax, the reasonable thing to do is kill the Blades instead (but you can't). All that would be required is a new dialogue during the peace summit. "Huh, I wonder why the Blades didn't show up, oh well, moving on..."

When a Thalmor agent shows up at High Hrothgar, I felt obligated to poke her with a pointy metal stick when nobody was looking (but you can't). She gets kicked out of the room in the first 30 seconds anyway, so instead of Ulfric ranting about her being there he could just say something like "Good riddance".

Morrowwind was great. It just gave you a message, "You probably shouldn't have done that." Then it's up to you to decide if you want to reload an earlier save, or just power through the game without the quests and/or clues the deceased would have given you.

 

[Hoboape]

I have a simple request: does anyone know the Console Command to remove the Immortal/Esstenial tags from the NPCs in the game, thereby rendering them all vulenrable?

It really gets under my skin that somehow the Jarls and leaders are spared from my murderous rage somehow, or that there is little danger in mis-casting a spell or something.

I was really pissed when I found out I just can't assassinate all the enemy Jarls and leaders to end the war.....why wasn't this a built-in option?

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Console
all the console commands are here

the one you want is setessential <1/0> and is under targeted commands
but i would recommend reading the info first (or at least make a separate save) as it sounds like it can fuck your game up

 

[Substitute Troll]

There's a reason they are essential.

 

[Paragon Fury]

There's a reason they are essential.

And that reason is BS.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

I have a simple request: does anyone know the Console Command to remove the Immortal/Esstenial tags from the NPCs in the game, thereby rendering them all vulenrable?

It really gets under my skin that somehow the Jarls and leaders are spared from my murderous rage somehow, or that there is little danger in mis-casting a spell or something.

I was really pissed when I found out I just can't assassinate all the enemy Jarls and leaders to end the war.....why wasn't this a built-in option?

I feel your pain. You can probably guess how I felt when I first reverse-pickpocketed enough poison into Maven Black-Briar to down a mammoth, and the ***** just took it. I'm slowly building up a head of rage against the Thieves' Guild (even though I'm a member), but I suspect they're all unkillable, as well.

I mean, I guess I can understand the reasoning behind immortal NPCs, but...so frickin' many of them?! Most of the ones I've come across that are actually worth assassinating simply won't die. It was a brief hallelujah moment when I slit Thonar Silver-Blood's throat and it actually worked.

Yeah, Skyrim went overboard with it. Oblivion just made main quest NPCs essential which made sense. It seems like everyone in Skyrim with a named side quest attacched to them is essential, like Thonar until you do his quest. It is unnecessary, immersion breaking hand holding.

 

[F4LL3N]

There's a reason they are essential.

And that reason is BS.

Most people would rather NOT break the game. Although it could be optional. My next playthrough I won't be questing so therefore won't have anything to break. But this playthrough I'd be pissed if I could no longer finish a questline because I accidently killed someone important.

 

[Scabadus]

It makes essentials double over in pain then stand back up

Curses, foiled again!

Well, if modders could remove immortality from children, I bet they'll be able to do it for Essentials.

Actually, children were suspiciously easy to make mortal in a totally we-can't-get-this-game-rated-otherwise-but-yet-we-think-you-should-be-able-to-kill-them sort of way. They simply belong to a child race along with one of the playable ones, and this data is one of the very, VERY few things that shows up if you load the Skyrim file into a Fallout 3 editor. Alter that child race so it's mortal and poof! every child in the game suddenly pops up on the Grim Reaper's radar.

Essential characters, on the other hand, have their essential status applied to each and every one individually making it much more time consuming to alter them.

 

[Something Amyss]

There's a reason they are essential.

Yes, but it ruins my immersion!

 

[Loonyyy]

Or better yet, since its 2011........just make the main quest adapt to the loss of a character. Now you just have to figure out what needs to go down by yourself, or you skip unnecessary things; like the whole Civil War thing if I'd gotten the ability to assassinate Ulfric.

I'm not sure it being 2011 makes that 'just' much less nightmarishly difficult to program.

Actually, it makes it even more nightmarish. You see, in a text adventure, you could set up a random name generator and simply generate a new NPC to take over every role, just copy pasting the dialogue. With newer, animated games, you'd have to create a skin, made up of textures, and for more advanced animations, movement, and finally motion capture. Then for modern games, you'd have to record dialogue. Now, all of this is possible in say Skyrim, but it is much more difficult, especially if you want the voices of the successors to be different, and if you want to procedurally reference killed characters, and especially if you want to include the NPCs before they ascend to their position. You could randomly spawn a new second in command every time the last one is removed, by being promoted or dying, but then it gets kind of ridiculous if you abuse that by killing them over and over.


If you want the quests to reflect multiple options, (Like assassinating the Rebels or Imperials out of quests) that's also made harder by facial animations and voice acting. You have to write, record, and animate the entire thing. If you have, say, 10 hours of plot (Voiced and written, not necessarily gameplay) in the game, and then you decide to give each story element two alternatives, making 3 times the stuff, you quickly increase the amount of work. Suddenly, you've 30 hours of stuff to set up and record. Add to that procedural stuff, you doing amusing stuff like assassinating the leaders, and you'll have to account for that too. That's part of the reason why, with the increased quality of graphics and voice acting in RPGs, the choice and freedom is ever-reducing. Don't get me wrong, I'd love this stuff, but the choice seems to be a decision between prettiness and freedom.