Was just doing a test run to actually get a notion if it was a "hidden feature" so we could get some control and access to the most important companion governor types (spicevendor and swift), but what I actually found was a really messy result. Doesn't matter how you complete their quests, once you do you can go back to the exact village you've left them and the recruitment dialogue will pop up. The issue is that they won't work properly. Inventory access will be locked-off as if they weren't in your party, they won't show in the list for potential governors, they can't be called back to party, nothing. They can be useful, however, to inflate caravan zergs, and they'll work fine for that. Thing is they are a glitch of which may or may not corrupt saves overtime, because they are partially read as companions and partially as NPCs.
I'd advise anyone actively using this trick to avoid it at all costs, it's better to have mods that let you have some companion control than risking spaghetti coding loop-holes.
It's sad, however, because my whole perception of "wanderer RNG system's just another layer to force you to stare at loading screens and re-create the same character 300 times over" to be 100% true, idk who thought that was a good idea when you obviously have a plethora of virtually useless wanderers with very few over-specialized and much more efficient ones. For governors you have only 2 choices for any efficient companions, either you roll Swift / Spicevendor and just pump them into a relatively time consuming loop of leading caravan + leading parties for the fastest most useful trees for governors, or you take the low level ones (if you get them) and go through an excrutiantingly long grind to pump their skills to acceptable levels, leave it at that, or take 10 in-game years to actually get them to be as efficient as the other 2.
It is a problem, and more and more I'm coming to realize that wanderers are a waste of time investment to opt instead into the very OP choice of using Distinguished Service mod. I mean, at least I get to tailor the companion and skip a good portion of the non-sense indirect grind to leveling a toon which we have little to no control of.
The big offending part of all of this' that the game was tailored around the constant use of companions for way too many things, delegating tasks' crucial since Warband, in which we saddly couldn't without mods. I'm in awe that TW deliberately chose to cut us off any control over which companions we get by placing a hard RNG on which of them spawns, that's simply terrible design and the reason why I was curious to test the whole "missing daughter" thing, for I had a theory that maybe it was intended and that maybe we'd get other interesting interactions where we could pick and choose companions with some sort of control. I was wrong.
I'd advise anyone actively using this trick to avoid it at all costs, it's better to have mods that let you have some companion control than risking spaghetti coding loop-holes.
It's sad, however, because my whole perception of "wanderer RNG system's just another layer to force you to stare at loading screens and re-create the same character 300 times over" to be 100% true, idk who thought that was a good idea when you obviously have a plethora of virtually useless wanderers with very few over-specialized and much more efficient ones. For governors you have only 2 choices for any efficient companions, either you roll Swift / Spicevendor and just pump them into a relatively time consuming loop of leading caravan + leading parties for the fastest most useful trees for governors, or you take the low level ones (if you get them) and go through an excrutiantingly long grind to pump their skills to acceptable levels, leave it at that, or take 10 in-game years to actually get them to be as efficient as the other 2.
It is a problem, and more and more I'm coming to realize that wanderers are a waste of time investment to opt instead into the very OP choice of using Distinguished Service mod. I mean, at least I get to tailor the companion and skip a good portion of the non-sense indirect grind to leveling a toon which we have little to no control of.
The big offending part of all of this' that the game was tailored around the constant use of companions for way too many things, delegating tasks' crucial since Warband, in which we saddly couldn't without mods. I'm in awe that TW deliberately chose to cut us off any control over which companions we get by placing a hard RNG on which of them spawns, that's simply terrible design and the reason why I was curious to test the whole "missing daughter" thing, for I had a theory that maybe it was intended and that maybe we'd get other interesting interactions where we could pick and choose companions with some sort of control. I was wrong.
