Arissa – The Wandering Rogue
Arissa is an Imperial with an independent, rebellious spirit and a gift for making expensive things disappear. She is a Skyrim companion character with over 600 lines of dialogue, professionally recorded and beautifully voiced by the talented Nikkita.
Arissa is a Skyrim companion character with over 600 lines of dialogue, professionally recorded and beautifully voiced by the talented Nikkita. She is designed as a game-long companion that can accompany you from start to finish. She is inspired by Bethesda’s Serana from Dawnguard, and the kinds of characters found in Bioware games.
Arissa is an Imperial with an independent, rebellious spirit and a gift for making expensive things disappear.
Arissa is a rogue-type character with a dual-wielding combat style. She will readily use blades, bows, and any armor given to her. She levels as the player levels, favoring thief-oriented skills such as light armor, lockpicking and one-handed weapons. Her level is uncapped.
Enjoy getting to know Arissa along your travels as you take part in her short-but-sweet two-part main quest line, complete with a new dungeon to explore. She earns every bit of her title of “wandering rogue”, having criss-crossed Skyrim the better part of the last decade. She will readily chime in with witty, interesting, and insightful comments about over 40 areas across Skyrim as you travel together. If you were searching for a bold and knowledgable companion to accompany you on your long travels, look no further. She is fully embedded in Skyrim’s world and fully lore-friendly.
We promise an obsessive devotion to detail and quality while offering an experience that feels like a natural extension of the normal game. The voice acting and recording quality should sound as good as any NPC you’d encounter in the main game. The recordings are very high quality; it needs to be heard to be appreciated. The mod should also be free of typos and other grammatical errors. Every battle cry, “Uh huh”, “Sure”, “No thanks”, and “Lead on” was carefully voice-acted and recorded by Nikkita; all dialogue spoken by Arissa is 100% original.
Special attention was paid to adding a high level of variety to common phrases in order to keep things from sounding repetitive. Attention was also paid to trying to find a “sweet spot” in her talkativeness, erring on the side of staying quiet and allowing the player to enjoy the game. We never wanted her to be annoying or repetative, and I think you’ll be pleased with what we’ve been able to accomplish. For us, she is a joy to adventure and spend time with, and we hope you feel the same.
Arissa does not use the standard follower system in Skyrim, so she can be recruited in addition to any other follower you might have.
Special Note: Users that are arachnophobic may have a difficult time completing a portion of Arissa’s main questline. Please install a spider replacer mod if this will impact you.
Visit the Dead Man’s Drink in Falkreath. Arissa will be waiting for you there.
Arissa can talk about the general surroundings (“What do you know about this place?”), as well as her background. She will be elusive at first, but will begin to open up as you move through her main quest.
Arissa has been all over Skyrim, and will offer comments for a wide variety of locations in the base Skyrim game (DLC areas are not yet supported). When you come close to one of these areas, Arissa will chime in. She will only speak these lines unprompted once in a fixed amount of time in order to avoid repetition.
You can select “Keep it down for a while.” in order to surpress her ambient dialogue for up to 12 hours, or until you ask her to speak up again.
She will also comment on successfully picking locks, choice of armor, nearby dungeons, and more.
We wanted to give Arissa a mind of her own and add some depth to Arissa’s behavior, and have her behavior change over the course of your time spent with her. Arissa features a Regard system which determines how she feels about the player, and what tasks and favors she will be willing to perform.
Arissa will respond naturally to your actions over the course of the game. As her Regard increases, her disposition toward you will improve, unlocking new abilities. Her normal dialogue options will change in tone as well, ranging from dismissive to enthusiastic. Her Regard can also be affected (sometimes greatly) by certain dialogue options.
Arissa responds positively to acts of heroism and cunning, such as defeating difficult foes, winning brawls, performing successful sneak attacks, and more. She responds negatively to acts of murder and intimidation. She will also respond negatively to being hit by the player.
Regard: COMPANION
Effect: Call of Oakshore unlocked. Summon Arissa from anywhere in Skyrim.
Regard: FRIEND
Effect: Will give lockpicks and leveled poisons to player once / day.
Regard: ALLY
Effect: Willing to do favors.
Regard: DISTANT
Effect: Willing to Trade and Manage Equipment. Willing to Wait.
Regard: DISTRUSTFUL
Effect: Nothing (Attitude of some dialogue options affected)
Regard: RESENTFUL
Effect: Nothing (Attitude of some dialogue options affected)
Regard: RIVAL
Effect: Leaves your service. You can wait and recruit her again.
WARNING: Arissa hates cannibalism. If you feed on someone while wearing the Ring of Namira while Arissa is in your service, she will leave permanently. You will not be able to re-recruit her after this, so be careful!
Currently, Arissa is indifferent towards vampirism and lycanthropy. She will not currently care if this is your playstyle.
When visiting a major city in Skyrim, you can tell Arissa “You go ahead. I’ll catch up with you later.” Arissa will the leave your side to freely roam the city while you remain in it. She will rejoin you if asked or if you leave the city gates. Arissa will prefer to hang around and shop in alchemy and general good stores. She will retire to the local inn after dark. Arissa will not want to roam around Winterhold, it’s far too cold for her tastes.
If you allow Arissa to roam past midnight, she may get up to no good… who knows what she might find?
If you leave the city, Arissa will run to rejoin you; you don’t have to track her down yourself.
I hope this feature allows you to have some time apart from each other while in cities without disturbing gameplay, leading to a more organic feeling experience. Town Roaming is compatible with Open Cities of Skyrim.
Arissa will attempt to intelligently get out of the player’s way when Arissa and the player are too close, hopefully un-jamming her from doorways and halls.
When riding a horse, Arissa will automatically call her own and ride right behind you. Her horse is dismissed as soon as you dismount. Arissa is also compatible with Convenient Horses! (Please use the Compatibility Patch, found in the Files section.) If you would like mounted combat options for Arissa, please use Convenient Horses.
Arissa’s Weatherworn Burglar armor (equipped shortly after her introduction quest) is sub-par and should be upgraded at the earliest opportunity. Arissa was designed with the modded game in mind, so please upgrade her gear to whatever you find suitable.
Arissa changes to her more casual attire when left to her own devices when roaming in towns or when dismissed. She will re-equip her best equipment when you rerecruit her.
When Arissa’s regard for you is high enough, you can begin managing her worn equipment. Note that this is distinct from trading with her; things given when saying “I’d like to trade some things with you.” will not be worn. Select “Let’s manage your equipment.” instead.
The latest version of Skyrim.
Compatible with other custom follower mods.
Compatible with Convenient Horses. Please download the compatibility patch.
Compatible with Wearable Lanterns.
Compatible with Campfire.
Compatible with Become A Bard.
Compatible with Open Cities of Skyrim.
Compatible with Imperious – the Green Pact ability will count as cannibalism.
Compatible with Amazing Follower Tweaks. (Avoid managing Arissa with “Tweak Make Follower”, or bugs may occur.)
Compatible with Extensible Follower Framework 4.0+.
Compatible with iNeeds follower features (Note: You must give Arissa food and beverage, or gold, using “Let’s manage your equipment.”, NOT “I need to trade some things with you.” Arissa will find her own food when her Regard for you is too low to trade with her, so don’t worry.)
Wet and Cold: You may need to temporarily disable Follower / NPC behavior, or Arissa may attempt to go back inside during the introduction quest instead of leading the player where they need to go.
No compatibility was added for multi-follower mods; however, your gameplay should not be negatively impacted.
Arissa has already been cleaned with TES5Edit of errors and idential-to-master (ITM) edits and the edits that remain are intentional. Cleaning it is unnecessary and not recommended.
“I asked Arissa “What do you know about this place?”, but the response did not have any subtitles.”
Arissa’s new dialogue system works around the vanilla Skyrim dialogue system to sift through hundreds of lines of dialogue very rapidly to find the most topical, relevant, and non-repetitive thing to say. A known artifact of this system is that the subtitles don’t appear when you ask her about what she knows about an area directly. I hope this doesn’t detract too much from the experience.
“I asked Arissa to lock-pick a door for me, but she said that she wouldn’t do it.”
Followers in general cannot be ordered to pick doors; this is a base game restriction. She will pick chests and disarm traps.
“Arissa seems to be stuck in sneaking mode (crouching).”
This is a bug in the original game that I cannot fix. It has been present since the game launched. A solution is to save your game, exit, and reload. This shouldn’t happen any more often than a normal follower.
“I lost Arissa! I can’t find her!”
If Arissa disappears, you can:
* Fast travel to another location and see if she re-appears
* Wait one in-game hour
* If you told her to Wait and forgot where, she will return to the Dead Man’s Drink in Falkreath after 2 days.
* If you dismissed her, she will be waiting in the Dead Man’s Drink in Falkreath.
* If you told her to roam freely while in a city, leave the city. She will run to you. You may need to wait an hour for her to catch up to you.
* If none of these solve the problem, open the SkyUI MCM or the Configure: Arissa spell, and select Troubleshooting -> Recover Arissa. She should return to your side within a few seconds.
“Arissa said “Excuse me” when I bumped into her, and then cowered, as if frightened.”
This is a known issue that is part of her “avoidance” package to try to get her out of your way when you bump into her.
“Arissa started sandboxing / started waiting somewhere, and now she’s not following me even if I move away.”
Chances are high that your game (specifically your scripting system) is running poorly and my scripts are not being allowed to run. Try a new game or try disabling all other mods and see if it still happens. Arissa uses a system identical to the one used by Serana in Dawnguard to allow her to sandbox around an area when you are standing still.
“Arissa and other NPCs can become stuck when pathing near the Dwemer exit to Skygrove Cavern.”
Since I’m extremely hesitant to edit a navmesh in the base game, and since this affects a very small area in the game, this issue may occur and I will not be changing the location or position of the elevator. If you move away from the elevator, any followers that may have become stuck when walking near this elevator should catch up to you.
“Sometimes Arissa appears that she is continuously running even though she is standing still.”
This is a bug in the vanilla game. Unsheathing and sheathing your weapon usually fixes the problem.
“Arissa is stuck in Broken Oar Grotto.”
This is a bug in the game and I cannot fix it. See link for details. To get Arissa out if she is stuck, please enter set RecoverArissa to 1 into the console and wait a few seconds.
“Does Arissa use a custom body, face, hair, etc?”
Yes. Her body mesh and textures in the main install are the CBBE Slim Nevernude body. Her eyes are from The Eyes of Beauty. Her hair is a custom combination from Kalilie and ApachiiSkyHair. Please use the Arissa Customizer and The Hairstyler to choose exactly how you would like Arissa to look.
“Can you marry Arissa?”
Not at this time. Making her a fun and pleasing character to adventure with was more important during development.
“I am a cannibal and now Arissa hates me. Is there any way to re-recruit her?”
No, sorry.
“I made Arissa angry (killed a bunch of people, attacked her, etc) and now I can’t re-recruit her.”
Wait 24 hours in-game. If that doesn’t fix the problem, you may need to manually adjust her regard in order to get her to agree to join you again. Open the console (~) and type:
“set _Arissa_Regard to 9.8” (note the space between “set” and the underscore)
This should allow you to recruit her again. That said, if your playstyle is this incompatible with Arissa’s moral outlook, perhaps it was not meant to be.
“Is Arissa compatible with mod XYZ?”
I don’t know. Why don’t you try it, and let me know? There are too many things for me to test by myself. Please report incompatibilities.
“Is Arissa compatible with Dawnguard / Dragonborn / Hearthfire?”
We have not yet added any special content related to areas and features added by these DLC. Base game only.
“Can Arissa die?”
Only during a certain segment of her introduction quest. It is a choice the player must make and is not accidental. After that, she will be Essential and cannot die.
“Why won’t Arissa do what I tell her to do?!”
Because her Regard is too low for what you’re asking her to do. See “Regard”, above.
“Is Arissa compatible with multi-follower mods such as EFF, UFO, and AFT?”
AFT is compatible, but it is advised not to use the “Tweak Make Follower” function and simply use her along side the rest of your AFT followers.
EFF 4.0+ is compatible.
UFO is not compatible.
“How do I max out her Regard from the get-go?”
Open the SkyUI MCM or the Configure: Arissa spell and turn off the Regard system. Her regard will now be at maximum and all features and abilities unlocked.
“If I clean-save or uninstall Arissa, will all of her progress be lost?”
Yes.
“I don’t like the Regard notifications. How do I disable them?”
They can currently be disabled through the console (~) by entering:
Disable changes to Regard notifications: “set _Arissa_Setting_ShowRegardChanges to 0” (note the space between “set” and the underscore)
Disable Regard level notifications: “set _Arissa_Setting_ShowRegardLevels to 0” (note the space between “set” and the underscore)
Set either of these to 1 to turn these features back on.
