Morrowind Mischiefs, A Characters Update thread Options

[ghastley]

Thudd took a trip to Caldera, then walked up the road to find Pemenie, and took her to Gnaar Mok. With the Boots of Blinding Speed in her possession, she took a boat trip to Dagon Fel, and took a Master Class in Unarmoured from the Orc in the Vacant Tower, so now she has 100 in that skill, to go with her 100 Strength, and Endurance. It was expensive, but she's not wearing all those glass pieces, so she sold them.

Her Axe skill needs to be next, as well as some magical skills, so she can Enchant successfully. Not just Enchant itself, but others that raise Intelligence. If that helps with spells she uses, it's a bonus.

Since adding the twins required turning on Tribunal and Bloodmoon, she'll do a trip to get a Fortify Skill spell to use in enchanting. Fortifying her Unarmoured well past 100 will make it comparable to using Heavy. She's happy with her Orcish Battle-axe, and doesn't see anything in the game she likes better, but it may get enchanted in case of normal-immune enemies, and for a bit of extra damage as needed. I'm thinking of a "When used" rather than an "On Strike" enchantment, just for the tough ones.

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Silanu did the quest to get the Ice Blade of the Monarch, and she's giving that a try. It has slightly lower base damage than Chrysamere, but more than makes up for it with the magical damage, while that's available. I'm not generally happy with weapons that can run out of charge, but this may be enough to win before it does so, and it's not a weak weapon when discharged.

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Delilah is still low-level, and letting the twins do most of the work, as she's really testing them, rather than doing her own thing. I'm getting a decent idea of appropriate stats for the pitchforks, and may even need to add another at the top end. A regular Daedric spear is not all that powerful a weapon, and she could use a "unique" level one eventually.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Mar 20 2017, 06:54 PM

[mirocu]

Oh, my. You seem to have been quite busy in Morrowing, ghastley. I've only been visiting briefly and then it's business as usual on Solstheim. Little else

[ghastley]

I need to create a published mod before I decide I've "done" Morrowind, and it could either be the Angeline/Diablita companion set, or more likely just some rigged hair. I need to make that for those two, and I have a few player characters who want theirs rigged. It has taken a lot of fiddling and experimentation to find out how the one mod (MacKom's Skinned Hair) does it. That unfortunately only works with MacKom's heads, as the ears are part of the head, not the hair. Since all other head replacers don't have ears, I'm doing my own.

I've made quite a few outfits for the various characters I use, mostly because what they wanted to wear didn't fit their body (and I've tried most of them - Better Bodies, Roberts, DMRA, and my own edited variants of each of those), but because nobody else would have the same requirements, they'll stay private.

[ghastley]

Thudd, the big Orc with the battleaxe, defeated Dagoth Ur last night, and will likely move on to Mournhold. She's trying to get the hang of enchanting first, so she can boost her Unarmoured with some Constant Effect items.

Her Diablita has been testing the unimesh hair (all parts including ears are a single NiTriShape with a single texture) that is the first step to rigged hair. I'm getting there slowly with the rigged hairstyles, and have only one fully working.

Hedi has had a change of hair (to a MacKom rigged style similar to her old one) and a change of body. She's now using a modifed Roberts mesh, which means her dress doesn't fit any more, but will soon. Since she wears the Fists of Ranagulph as part of her heavy armour outfit, she's at 123 strength somehow.

Delilah's hair keeps going wrong, but she's moved along a bit and is now looking for the Cavern of the Incarnate.

Silanu, and the player character instances of Angeline and Diablita get fired up from time to time, too. Enilwen the Archer may be the next to take on Dagoth Ur.

[ghastley]

Thudd went to Mournhold, and has only a couple of quests before she confronts Almalexia. However, one of those requires some artifacts for the museum, so she'll have to do local quests to get some, or return to Vaardenfell for a while.

I got somewhat distracted by the process of creating skinned hair that doesn't clip into the back and shoulders when the head moves. Both Diablita and Angeline have hair that does so. I'm also experimenting with other bodies for Diablita, as I may wish to create a non-nude option for her, and it would also be nice to have her chains and tattoos from Oblivion, although as a transparent texture, rather than modelled.

The hair problem has also led me to investigate hats as separate clothing items (not linked to hair) using one of the available BB extra slots. This grew from investigating equippable ears, as the skinned hair came without them. That's still in the mix, as it would be fun to equip earrings, too (probably by swapping ears). I'm not sure if the chargen could be made to provide an extra option, or if hair and ears, (or head and ears) have to stay bound together. I suspect it's in the engine, but I hope I'm wrong.

[ghastley]

Thudd is on the last quest of the main sequence in Tribunal, and finding that it's built to require certain skills and spells that she simply doesn't have, so we reloaded to let her gear up a bit.

She's unreasonably fond of her Orcish battle-axe, mostly because its minimum damage is higher than usual, even though the max isn't anything that special. She prefers 28-35 to 1-80 even though the average damage per swing is less, perhaps because progress is steady, not erratic.

Adding an enchantment to bring it up a little is on the cards. She has a Golden Saint soul in Azura's star, and was working on doing her own enchantments, when I find out how the "chance to fail" works. It looks like she needs to boost her Enchant skill, intelligence, and luck all at the same time to get any reliable results. I'd intended a constant effect boost to unarmoured first, but a weapon damage on strike may be what we do.

I've reworked her body mesh to bulk up her arm muscles, which looked a bit thin compared with the rest of her, and I'm researching ways to have the player character separate from the rest of her race. At least in Morrowind, each race has a separate mesh, so only the Orc women are big, or should that be BIG!!

I've also rolled up a Redguard to play with "Short Spears". I'm trying to create a one-handed Spear weapon, but so far it has to be classified as a long blade, probably because of animations, and so using them adds to the experience for that skill. The sword thrust animation looks OK, and with the damage stats biased that way, it gets used like a spear. Example 1 Example 2 The rest of her gear is new, but doesn't break any new ground.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Feb 28 2017, 08:11 PM

[ghastley]

I'd been working on Diablita's hair, trying to get it rigged to the skeleton, so it wouldn't clip into her back when she looked up. So that meant revisiting her solo game.

When I left off, she'd just defeated Dagoth Ur, and I didn't have the expansions active. Thudd had been to Mournhold, so Diablita got Solstheim. She was only level 20, so needed a bit more training, and has had to go back for more a few times.

In particular the quest to get the Nord eco-protester away from the mine entrance meant a few levels back in Vaardenfell raising her Hand-to-hand skill (from 5!). Now she's actively hunting for the unarmed berserkers and having a naked fist-fight to raise it further. I think I managed to catch a few non-indecent screenshots; I'll run through and pick some out soon.

Incidentally, most of the berserkers have been carrying the bear helm and boots in inventory, but not wearing them. I thought it was a consistent bug, until the last one I met was wearing both. Now I just don't know what's going on.

We found the smugglers quest a bit beyond us, so her Legion comrade is patient waiting back at the Fort for her to level up some more. Mus Roscius went down, but the others band together, and are a bit too much. Once her health can stand up, we'll be back! I let her use the Boots of Blinding Speed to train Unarmoured up to max, although she shouldn't really be able to wear them. That will help, too, as the game expects you to use at least Medium, or be a spell-caster. Naked with a pitchfork wasn't in the design.

She's about half-way through the Raven Rock quests, about to get into a bar brawl.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Mar 6 2017, 03:59 PM

[ghastley]

Diablita has now completed the Raven Rock quests, and has her house there. She's done most of the Skaal Village quests, too, and just has one more before the Hircine one (which I assume will be lengthy and hard, like the final quests in the base game and Tribunal.)

I restarted Clark, to test the latest changes to the Diablita and Angeline companion mod scripts. He's doing the Legion quests, as none of the ladies wanted to wear a uniform, so they haven't been done before.

Thudd's game was put on hold in the final Tribunal quest, as she has no way of passing the "speed trap", so I need to reload before the Clockwork City entry and go get an appropriate spell, and/or lighten her load enough to carry the elixirs the fabricants drop. Considering that she has no armour, and 120 strength with Ranagulf's gauntlets, she's carrying a lot of clutter right now.

Lwanda is still playing with short spears and throwing weapons. She's done a couple of Hortator/Nerevarine sets, but hasn't completed either trial yet. I'm wasting her playing time looking for a way to make her shield not lower her defence rating (she has 100 Unarmoured now, so adding ANY shield lowers defence!)

Angeline is putting her feet up at Tel Uvirith, and contemplating re-decoration/rebuild, while her identical twin runs around with Clark. Silanu may get a run at Dagoth Ur soon. She'll need a bit of fill-in training first, to raise a few stats and overall level.

[ghastley]

Thudd - 1 : Almalexia - 0

After instant replay, because the soul trap didn't take the first time.

Edit: I also took my Bosmer archer Enilwen to go battle Dagoth Ur, but she met one more Greater Bonewalker than she had Restore Strength potions, and had to return to Ald'ruhn for a re-stock. She does have Sunder and Keening, so she can make a more direct approach on her next trip. We'll probably also pay the mudcrab a visit, to sell off her heavy loot, so that won't be an issue next time.

Prior characters have all had 100 Strength by this time, but as an archer, she's maxed Agility instead. I need to adjust my play style to match hers.

Today (3/21) she managed to get back there, missed a shortcut, but eventually re-entered the Citadel and killed Dagoth Ur, or rather did the heart-disable that eliminates him. Again the collapse of Akulakhan failed to happen - I've had it work only once in three visits - but the quest advanced anyway.

My replacement Azura (Daggerfall-style) was bald. I have some issue with her hair alpha that I'm still trying to figure out, but I have a save just before the scene so I can re-test as much as I like.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Mar 21 2017, 01:36 PM

[ghastley]

Hah! Found one!

This is about the only screen capture without flailing boobies showing all over.

I shot a series with one wearing the bear helm, but they'd all need retouching.

[ghastley]

Thudd used her Azura's star filled by Almalexia to add to her Orcish Battle-axe. It now does Soul Trap (to feed itself) plus a random amount of Damage Health (1-50). She named it Big Hurt. At her level, she can beat most things to a pulp with her fists, so she may go Berserker-hunting on Solstheim soon. She got a five-point boost to Unarmored from Almalexia, and enchanted one ring already with 24 more, so she's reached around AR 100 at a skill level of 129.

I've been running some more of my lower-level test characters through the MQ, mainly to test the rigged hair I've been working on. Delilah and Arwina essentially have the same hair, in black and blonde, with round and elven ears respectively. Delilah is two-handed long blade, Imperial, The Lady. Arwina is pure(?) mage, Altmer, Atronach. Delilah has the twins in tow, Arwina going solo. They're both still in single-digit levels, but not for long.

Lwanda wants me to sort out the shield problem (she loses defence by equipping one) as she needs to wear one for screen shots. Her outfit has had a retexture, using assets from Bloodmoon, but is still minimal, so as not to reduce her AR.

[ghastley]

Continuing testing of rigged hair and the D&D twins with Delilah, who is now Archmagister of House Telvanni. I added Uvirith's Legacy to her game, to see how they behave with another mod running that uses companions.

I found an error in Diablita's leveling script that stopped her getting a better pitchfork, but I haven't completely fixed it. Now she gets an extra one.*

I also get a strange situation where they leave the PC and go heading for some distant location. They usually break out of it when they get into combat, but that requires following them, as they only fight in support of the PC. I'm unsure if that is a direct result of adding UL, or just that the trigger for it is more likely now.

I should post a few screen-shots, now I have an alternate body for Diablita with a bikini. I'll take a few of Lwanda's new hut while I'm at it.

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Edit: * It turned out not to be just one. An error in the level-up logic gave her 1700+ Daedric ones, and ~400 Dwemer ones, and she couldn't walk for the weight of them.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Apr 7 2017, 02:40 PM

[mirocu]

I can see how movement would be slightly limited with that amount of pitchforks

[Vital]

I have a breton battlemage named Mercer who I adventure with every once in a while. Upon his arrival in Vvardenfell he joined up with the Mages Guild, although he eventually found the Great House Telvanni to be a better fit for his eccentric personality and desire for greater magical power. He's advanced quite quickly through the ranks of the Telvanni, most recently gaining Master Aryon's support as his Mouth after completing a few errands for him. Mercer likes Aryon the most out of the Telvanni master wizards... he seems just a little more open-minded and present.

Now he's travelling from Tel Vos to Fort Buckmoth. He's also the Nerevarine (not that he even really knows what that is yet), and has been gradually completing a series of missons for the Blades agent Cauis Cosades, the most recent of which involves investigating a supposed 'Sixth House' base.

I'm not sure how much I'll be playing Mercer's game ATM - most of my gaming is with Eldys right now - but Morrowind is a nice change of pace so I'm sure I'll have some adventures to update you guys on every now and then.

[ghastley]

Went back to Morrowind for a bit more Uvirith's Legacy, this time with a character that's ignoring the MQ, and just concentrating on being Telvanni. She's reached Archmagister, and is just finishing the additions to her tower. I'm getting tempted to download a few more mods that expand the surrounding area into a complete city.

And I've also re-visited Heidi's game. She'd really like a full set of Daedric Armour, but of course the pauldrons are only in the expansions, one per. And she won't be wearing the cuirass, because it wouldn't fit. However, at 100 in HA, she has 118 AR from just the boots, greaves, and her Eleidon's Ward and Fists of Randagulf. She also has 100 in Long Blade, and is using a Daedric Katana (unenchanted at present). The Fists add Strength, which she needs to carry that heavy Daedric stuff. I can't get that past 120 (20 of which come from the Fists).

Lucrezia is an Imperial who likes poisoned daggers. Since they're light, she collects them, so she can switch when one runs out of charge, and keep up the stabbity, stab, stab with added venom. Trying to be sneaky with her too, but backstab's not what I'd like it to be. Maxed Unarmored (with help from Boots of Blinding speed to get Master Training) and Short Blade is almost there, too. Will raise enchant, so she can make her own poisoned daggers.

I looked in on my other characters, but Lwanda is happy hunting deadra in the Grazelands, and doesn't really want to progress beyond that. Thudd has done everything an Orc wants to do, too. I may have to play Clark a bit more and let the sisters loose again.

[ghastley]

And I've also re-visited Heidi's game. She'd really like a full set of Daedric Armour, but of course the pauldrons are only in the expansions, one per. And she won't be wearing the cuirass, because it wouldn't fit. However, at 100 in HA, she has 118 AR from just the boots, greaves, and her Eleidon's Ward and Fists of Randagulf. She also has 100 in Long Blade, and is using a Daedric Katana (unenchanted at present). The Fists add Strength, which she needs to carry that heavy Daedric stuff. I can't get that past 120 (20 of which come from the Fists).

It was Morrowind's turn again this weekend, so Heidi finished off her House Hlaalu quests, including building her stronghold, and finally dealt with that Dagoth Ur nuisance as well. That left her not much she wanted to do on Vaardenfell, so we started down the path toward the first of those Daedric Pauldrons. So far, she's seen off the Dark Brotherhood, and the Goblin Army, and has just helped cleanse the ancient shrine beneath the Temple.

She'd happily go charging in to the tomb where the pauldron is waiting, but the entrance doesn't open up until right at the end of the expansion, so there are a lot of pre-requisite quests to do. She might also consider another trip back for training, so she can raise her unused skills to get levels (and the resulting health increase). It's getting hard to avoid Intelligence skills, and she might not be a dumb blonde for much longer.

Edit: We went into the dwarven ruin to fetch the pauldron last night, so her armour is up to 149. That was ahead of the usual sequence of the quests, so now she has to decide whether to continue the Tribunal quests and take down Almalexia, or move on to Bloodmoon and go looking for the other pauldron.

Further edit: We went for the Bloodmoon option. It turned out that she was able to just take the boat over and march up the middle of the island, opposed only by wolves, a couple of spriggans, and a few reavers that weren't well-coordinated. The rieklings near Castle Kaarstag were a bit more of a nuisance, as they actually managed to attack in pairs! Then she levitated up to the tower, killed the one riekling on guard, and came back out with the other pauldron. We've left all the quests untouched, and may come back later to do some.

Also did a side-trip to pick up Auriel's Bow, took it to Mournhold to enable the topic, and then swapped it with Therana for a Daedric Cuirass and greaves (with feather enchantment). I re-tailored the items for her, and she's now well-enough armoured to consider the Lost Hand quest back in Mournhold. AR=251.

Wearing Daedric makes encumbrance an issue. Her armour, sword and shield add up to 380 so without added strength from the gauntlets, and the feather enchantments, she'd get stuck every time she met a bonewalker. She has a ring enchanted just for those occasions.

Latest: She now has an extra 5 points of Heavy Armor skill from Almalexia's reward, so her AR has gone up further. She's retrieved all the pats of Trueflame, and is waiting out the two-day remake in misc quests. She already got the Pyroil Tar on her first trip, as that's in the area before the one with the pauldron she wanted. So the re-enchanting will go quickly, even if the Clockwork City slog won't.

This post has been edited by ghastley: Aug 11 2017, 04:52 PM

[ghastley]

Heidi took on Almalexia and failed. Trueflame doesn't harm A as much as it should because she's immune to fire, and Heidi ran out of health potions just before the end. So she'll restart from an earlier save and go back with a bigger supply.

Meanwhile, Clark has been doing the Legion quests (which I'd not done before) with his companions Angeline and Diablita.

He started off looking like this.

But now he's got a uniform

An Angeline's-eye view of Diablita and Clark

And completion of the quests

That means he's wearing the Lord's Mail, and wielding Chrysamere. He also has Templar Greaves, Boots and Helm, and uses Imperial Chain Pauldrons as they go better with the cuirass (and are surprisingly high-rated).

We're considering retirement, and not doing the whole Hortator/Nerevarine thing. The big question is where to live.

[Acadian]

... The big question is where to live.

Oh, that's an easy one, Clark! With Angeline and Diablita of course!

[Renee]

Last Seed 18, Mid-morning

Yor Assizmyyn has been spending several days in Seyda Neen, getting to know his new surroundings (while I spend time getting to know this game, and how things work). So far, he's got a crush on one of the Dunmer ladies there, who noticed he was hurt. She actually said that: "You are hurt," with a touch of concern in her voice. Even though this is 'just a videogame' I actually shed a tear over that moment. And it surprised me that she said this to Yor at all, know what I mean?

Anyway, Yor is nowhere near to being the bad-ass he wants to be. He's got only 56 gold, seems to have lost the armor he bought a day ago, and it's raining, and he has nowhere to sleep. He's going to try to sleep on the very top of the lighthouse, where there's at least a warm fire by his side.

Resting is illegal though. ... and even worse, it doesn't allow him to regain any health. But once he awakes (after 4 hours) at least the rain has ended. He spends the rest of the day looking for ingredients he can collect and sell.

This post has been edited by Renee: Aug 15 2017, 02:42 PM

[Renee]

He started off looking like this.

Nice. He looks like a medieval dandy in this one.