Hod stuck in his house

[Nocturne]

Hi, on this my 2nd playthrough I've been stuck with this wierd bug where Hod in Riverwood won't come out of his house.

 

According to uesp.net it says that this bug was fixed already "by version 1.2.6 of the USKP" but obviously it's not. I have the latest USKP patches for Skyrim and all the expansions, ordered with Loot.

 

Anyway this is a relatively small bug as I can just go back to his house to sell firewood, but it's still annoying. I've tried all of the solutions on the Uesp-page but none of them works to "fix" him. I don't recall having this on my first playthrough as I remember him standing by the mill most of the time.

 

Since I haven't gotten very far, I don't mind restarting from an earlier save if there is someone who knows how/why this happens. I just follow Ralof to meet with his sister and after a small talk abotu what happened at Helgen, Hod says he'll show us to the house. So I follow him inside and then he simply never leaves again, just sits on his bed and eats/drinks all day.

[tyrel68]

ive always seen him at the lumber mill myself

Since hes a starting area actor, i can say with certainty its been fixed hah

[Nocturne]

If it was fixed I wouldn't be having the problem. Guess what, I'm having the problem. Pretty sure my load order is correct and everything, I only have the USKP patches and SkyUI and the Loot has ordered them so I don't think I've messed anything up.

 

Also, I've noticed that if you buy Embry a drink, you are suddenly free to take everything in the Sleeping Giant Inn...not sure if that's a bug, but sure seems fishy to me.

[tyrel68]

I don't know, i have been playing around with mods and have reloaded a bazillion times and gone to Riverwood every time, aside that odd stump being locked in the house and bugging the kids, everything is fine for me.

[Arthmoor]

Pretty much what Tyrel said. It's been fixed, and has remained so for some time. I rarely ever find Hod in his house when he should be out working.

 

If it stopped working for you, the only way that's even possible is if another mod has overridden his edits. Which is why I hope you understand that when we here "all I have is USKP + SKyUI" in a situation like this, we tend to not believe that.

[BlackPete]

I can confirm that the fix from the USKP still works [screenshot]. Prior to the fix with USKP 1.2.6, the bug would happen to most (or all) NPCs who are lumberjacks.

[Nocturne]

Then how is this even possible? I understand your skepticism and am at a loss myself. I guess I should reinstall my mods and see if that sorts it.

 

Either way, any word about buying Embry a drink? Wondering if it's a bug or not that I'm allowed to take everything inside the Inn.

[Arthmoor]

Then how is this even possible? I understand your skepticism and am at a loss myself. I guess I should reinstall my mods and see if that sorts it.

 

Either way, any word about buying Embry a drink? Wondering if it's a bug or not that I'm allowed to take everything inside the Inn.

The thing with Embry is kind of dumb, but that's actually how the game works. Make friends with someone who lives in a cell, you can pillage it of low value items. It's the same in every house. It's a somewhat poorly thought out feature, but it's not a bug. Situations like Embry's can't really be fixed without displacing him from the cell and we're not going to do that.

[Nocturne]

Ok, I've now checked and doublechecked and everything looks to be installed in the right place. I installed everything manually since, well, it's not that hard to do and I didn't feel like learning another mod management tool at the time. But it all looks in order. My Load Order:

 

Skyrim.esm

Update.esm

Unofficial Skyrim Patch.esp (2.0.5)

Dawnguard.esm

Unofficial Dawnguard Patch.esp (2.0.5)

HearthFires.esm

Unofficial Hearthfire Patch.esp (2.0.5)

Dragonborn.esm

Unofficial Dragonborn Patch.esp (2.0.5)

SkyUI.esp (4.1)

 

Loot actually discovered that I had an older version of SKSE - 1.6 which I've now updated to 1.7 - could this be the cause of the Hod-situation? Either way, updating to 1.7 didn't seem to fix anything - he's still stuck in the house and never leaves.

 

Loot gives me warnings about dirty edits - Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm, HearthFires.esm and Dragonborn.esm contains dirty edits. Could any of these edits be undoing the USKP-changes to Hod - should I go ahead and clean them with Tes5Edit?

 

The Nexus Mod Manager says "WARNING: This plugin has the file extension .esp, but its file header marks it as an esm!" in regards to all the USKP-patches, does that make any difference?

 

EDIT I can't find anything about Hod's bug in the changelog for ver 1.2.6, where is it? I'd like to see the cause and the fix.

 

Arthmoor: Well, yes, I sort of suspected this was the case, it just seemed strange to me since Embry obviously isn't supposed to own anything in the Inn. I know you can become friends with people and share their items, it just doesn't seem right but I understand the situation now, thanks, now I know it's indeed not a bug. Makes me wonder if there are similar situations where befriending the town drunk actually let's you take stuff from Inns?

[tyrel68]

Its highly suggested to clean the DLC's and update.esm of dirty edits(but clean them one by one in order). The skse probably wouldn't cause this issue.

[Nocturne]

Thanks I will try that and see if it helps. I realize this seems strange, but I'm not trying to waste anyone's time - I wouldn't be asking for help for naught, I just want a working game. :/ As I said in the OP it is a  minor bug but what worries me is if the USKP fix didn't get applied for this bug, others may have slipped through aswell. The only reason this could still happen with the patch installed is if I messed up somewhere I just can't figure out how. :/

[Nocturne]

Hello and sorry for the late reply, I haven't gotten around to testing this until now. Tonight I've cleaned the Update.esm, Dawnguard.esm, Hearthfires.esm and Dragonborn.esm by following the instructions for the process in the TES5Edit-wiki. Everything went well except that Loot still reports 6 dirty ITM records in the Dawnguard.esm, otherwise everything else appears clean (no warnings). I opted to leave it as is and tried a few different savegame loads to see if anything's changed, but the bug is still there.

 

Basically I follow Ralof out of Helgen and when he arrives in Riverwood he calls to Gerdur and Hod to come speak with us. After abit of conversation, Hod says "I'll let them in the house and, yknow, show them where everything is..." and he and Gerdur walks off to their house. After that he seats himself on the bed and begins eating/drinking and basically never leaves this position no matter what. I've tried disabling and enabling him with the console, I've even tried moving him to me at the mill, but he just walks straight back to his house...

 

First time I did this I didn't realize you could follow Ralof all the way to Riverwood (Indeed he says to split up after the escape from Helgen, wierd choice of dialogue there) so when I got there I went straight to the Inn. I heard some dialogue about Ralof from behind the mill but I didn't think much off it at the time. After spending some time speaking to the hosts at the Inn my char retired to his room and the next morning everything was working as it should - Hod was at his mill and everything. And this was WITHOUT the USKP or any mods installed at all.

 

I've decided to start over again one more time and see if a new game still results in this bug and if it does I guess I'll just have to live with it.