Wolf Mods, Skyrim (and more!) for Oblivion Options

[Lena Wolf]

I mentioned this in a couple of other threads already, it started as a small "let me change this tree" idea, and has now grown into a proper project of mine. So I am starting this thread to share with you what I've been doing in the hope to get feedback and ideas well before the mod is in any shape or form ready for release.

First of all, this is an add-on for TWMP Skyrim Improved which is a part of the TWMP project that very ambitiously wants to bring the entire Tamriel into Oblivion. They've got pretty much everything covered, too! And I fully intend to load it all up and see what happens, but I started with Skyrim, and that needed some tweaks... or so I thought.

To install existing TWMP mods, start with TWMP Locations and follow the dependencies mentioned in the description. Then install High Detail Dynamic Map TWMP which gives you a proper map to use with Dynamic Map. Also recommended TWMP Skyrim Guard Armours and Shields. Then go play.

If you wanted to try installing the whole of Tamriel, including Elsweyr, Valenwood, Somerset Isle and Morrowind (Morroblivion), you are not alone - it is apparently possible! People have done it! With success! I'm not there yet, but here is a post explaining in which order you need to install the mods for it to work: How to bring all of Tamriel to Oblivion.

But back to Skyrim.

There are three roads from Cyrodiil into Skyrim:
- Eastern route: North from the Temple of the Ancestor Moths.
- Central route: North from the Cloud Ruler Temple.
- Western route: somewhere North West of the Shrine of Hermaeus Mora.

It may also be worth while talking to Agata at the Mages Guild in Leyawiin. Just saying.

I was impressed with TWMP Skyrim, but I wanted it to be more similar to Skyrim The Game. I have been exploring South East so far, so that's where I started - in what was supposed to be The Rift.

But it's not The Rift if it's filled with snow-covered white pines, it's got to have birches and aspens in autumnal colours. So I did that. Added grid paths to the land too, so that the roads are now recognised by the AI as well as by the player. Then I extended Riverwood and populated it with familiar characters - just pop in to The Sleeping Giant Inn.

Next on the list is Riften. There isn't a city there, and there needs to be one - because I say so. I've got a plan, now the fun of building can begin.

Some pictures to start with, I've got more, will add them shortly. This is already in my game, so it actually works, most of the times.

Map of Southern Skyrim

Trees in The Rift

Stairs to Riften Watch

Riften Watch. In the original TWMP Skyrim Improved this is actually Riften, but I decided to build a new Riften next to it. So then this area is a perfect spot to house some guards. Well, it was a perfect spot to house some guards...

Riften Watch after the Oblivion gate is closed

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Oct 11 2021, 03:53 PM

[macole]

Nice pictures, hope your project goes well. I do like the gate desstroying Riftn's Watch House.

Mehrunes Dagon really misused placing his gates, thankfully.

[Lena Wolf]

Thanks, Macole! I'll be posting a lot more pictures here than what fits in Lena's story, but her travels in Skyrim do prompt the development.

There are apparently 100 Oblivion gates in Skyrim! Wow. I found three in game so far... But I can see a lot more in the Construction Set, however I try not to peek. Exploring in game is so much more fun!

[Lena Wolf]

A quick update. I am building Riften - the actual real Riften, to make Skyrim the Game jealous. I have 12 houses of multiple occupancy at the moment, plus Mistveil Keep, some towers, the Ratway, extra catacombs, ships, boats and the Temple of Mara. Oh, and some burned down remains of what used to be Riften Watch (the barracks). The population is mostly a mix of Nords and Argonians with some Dunmer and a few other races, I've got about 20 NPCs at the moment, including children, but there will be more. No guards or Jarl yet - but they will appear. All have schedules - work and hang out at the inn, mostly. Some also go to the chapel from time to time. We have two inns and various shops to make it into a proper city. Pictures will follow when I get it loaded into the game - it's just in the Construction Set at the moment.

In the meantime, a map of Southern Skyrim as a reminder, and a few pictures of the previously done areas (already in the game).

Just outside Greenwall

The Rift

Sunset

Evenings at the Greenwall Inn - I have filled it in quite a bit.

Look who we ran into in Riverwood This was meant for the player, so I changed it around a bit. I might release it as a separate mod.

I feel this is the game...

[Acadian]

Wow, nice work Lena!

[mirocu]

Are you doing this yourself, Lena? Cause this is impressive!

[Lena Wolf]

Thanks, yes, all myself... It started literally with the idea of replacing some trees in The Rift to make it look like The Rift... and from there it snowballed. I am of course building on the work of people behind TWMP Skyrim Improved, but they had only a burned down Riften, so I felt like I wanted more. Now I'm completely sucked into it!

[macole]

Lena, it is amazing what you are doing. Looking forward to seeing the results.

[Renee]

I feel this is the game...

Mm hmm, it certainly can be!

[Lena Wolf]

I have been having so much fun yesterday populating the Warrens in my Riften... Some familiar characters make their appearance (hint: skooma pipe and candle and no shirt, for example ), but also some new ones turn up - it's fun to make the very furnishings of their cells tell a story of why this person could be hiding in the Warrens. It's almost ready for screenshooting, I just need to populate the Rugged Flagon. I've got the Wrath of Mercer Frey guarding the Vaults already... And no, I am not reproducing the Thieves Guild members for the reasons I won't divulge - it's all in Lena's story. Also, this isn't Skyrim the Game, so it is not quite the same anyway.

[macole]

"having so much fun" Yes I know that feeling well. The same thing happened to me when I put together mods for my current world. It really does become its own game.

[Lena Wolf]

I find that I also get frustrated pretty quickly when things don't work and I can't see why. Like when I was trying to build a new Mages Guild quest line - I'm sure there was a perfectly logical explanation why some lines of dialogue didn't appear when they should have appeared, but I couldn't see it and it made me give up after a few frustrating hours. So no more quests for me, thanks. Not complex ones anyway.

Another thing is mod stability. When I was making my Kvatch Duplicated mod, I was working with two and a half (literally) other mods that were never meant to work together and were both meant to only kick in after you've completed the main quest. Problem was, I never even started the main quest (never delivered the amulet), so I couldn't get into Kvatch the way those mods were meant to work. I had to remove them from the game because they caused crashes, I think the whole foundation was just really unstable. I do like the idea though, and eventually I shall redo it all - starting from scratch. I learned how to do it now that I'm building stuff for TWMP - I must say this is a very nice and solid foundation to build on, and it does come with a lot of stuff in Northern Skyrim and Hammerfell filled in, ready to explore (I saw it in the CS but tried not to peek).

[Renee]

That is true about the frustrating part. That's the part of modding nobody told me about back when I was pure console player. All I heard was how great mods are, but there is definitely another side. You WILL have plenty of "learning experiences" along the way.

Of course it also Depends how far you want to get into it with your own ideas (quests for me, which as you've noted, can get really really frustrating), or with adding mod after mod of other peoples' work. You know all this Lena, I'm not telling you anything you don't know, I am just reiterating. War stories, and all.

On the other hand, seems like you're making progress with some of your work. Whatever you do, always make sure you keep notes! So if something goes right, you have a ready-made page to look at to make sure it goes right again in the future. That's all my modding thread is--my personal notes, except I copy/pasted them here, which (for me) makes them easy to find than digging into folders on my computer every time.

Ciao.

[Lena Wolf]

Riften is ready for screenshots!

Note: When you click on a picture, WordPress frames it in its own window, cutting down the resolution. But if you return here and click the same picture again, it opens it directly without fuss - and you can see it much better. At least that's the way it works in Firefox and Chrome...

A bird's eye view

Mistveil Keep and the Cloud District - and Morrowind beyond, as seen from the Watch.

Again, seen from the lake

The lake seen from the Keep

The town and the docks

At the docks... oops! Time to panic!

View from the Watch... What happened here?!

Apparently generating LOD can result in deleting LOD instead... This was fixed by reinstalling original TWMP mods (with LOD included) and then regenerating LOD cell by cell where needed. No bulk generations next time!

A cell in the Warrens - they are all different.

A shrine in the Warrens. Was the worship of Talos banned in Skyrim?

There are people in each and every house, as well as in the chapel (a better picture is to follow - at the moment you just see the spire behind the houses). But the AI is not complete yet, they are not venturing out much. Also, we need sailors to man the ships. But things are progressing!

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Oct 19 2021, 08:12 AM

[Acadian]

Wow, you've been busy, Lena! Nice work!

[Renee]

Yeah this is neat. Really proud of you, Lena. I like the fact that the place is populated, too.

[Lena Wolf]

Thank you both!

Population: yes, I agree that's important. We don't want ghost towns. Even if I don't do any quests, I am still populating it - people give life to towns. Plus of course we want shop keepers and publicans and such. For the same reason I think every house needs an interior - no empty shells here, and that includes the larger ships.

The other cities in Skyrim and Hammerfell are quite fleshed out, there are a lot of NPCs with schedules and quests and all. I wanted Riften to be on the same level. They don't have all the cities done, but they do have Windhelm, Solitude and Snowhawk which was meant to be Markarth, but it was built before Skyrim the Game came out, and it is very different and not quite in the right place. So the creators renamed it into Snowhawk rather than removing it. I believe they also have something of Winterhold and its college, but like I said I don't want to look it all up in the CS, I'd rather go and explore it in game eventually. There are smaller settlements and villages in between, too.

[macole]

From what I understood was that the Skyrim city names where based on the original names given in TES1 Arena. Snowhawk was a walled city-state rival to Solitude. At that time Markarth was a much smaller village between the two rival cities. Smaller even than the town Dragon Bridge.

What happened in the resulting 300-hundred years to cause the population shift is anyone's guess. The collaspe of the empire, the Oblivion crisis, or something else who knows. I suspect the silver mine had something to do with it.

This post has been edited by macole: Oct 19 2021, 03:32 PM

[Lena Wolf]

Oh this is interesting about Snowhawk - thanks, Macole! I haven't played Arena or Daggerfel, so didn't know about it. The same as those other people who thought that Snowhawk was supposed to be Markarth - I actually read it somewhere. In which case I can report that TWMP Skyrim Improved has no Markarth. However, it has Granitehall which Skyrim the Game lacks, although there is a mod for that, but it is not follower-friendly, seems to lack path grids. I tried it on PS4, but when we got there, my follower just turned around and left. Very odd. He waited for me in Rorikstead.

In Riften I've been filling out big ships with interior and crew. The ship that's moored at the posh end of the docks is called Tharstan Glory and is owned by a local family living in one of the big houses in the Cloud District (what a surprise). The captain goes there for dinner - his sister lives there with another character of unknown purpose. The other big ship that's moored at the Town Quay is called The Black Pearl. Are they pirates? We don't know, but I suggest you don't pose such questions to Captain Octavius Rex. Just a thought. The sailors of both ships hang around the port during the day and spend their evenings either at the Rugged Flagon or at The Bee and Barb (I figured out how to randomise their comings and goings).

Generally, people start venturing out of their houses, although no one goes to the chapel yet.

I've also been using a follower-friendly scheme to rent rooms at the inns. Rather than unlocking just one door and pointing you at one bed, I don't lock doors at all and change ownership of all rentable beds to PlayerFaction. This allows you and your followers sleep in any of the available beds. Perhaps I should raise prices too, seeing how you're basically renting the whole inn.

This post has been edited by Lena Wolf: Oct 21 2021, 09:50 AM

[Lena Wolf]

More Riften construction was going on over the weekend. I have completed the ships: there are three larger ships docked in the harbour: Tharstan Glory, The Black Pearl and Sirens' Bane. The first two are larger ships (galleons?), the last one is a cargo ship. They each have a captain and four sailors on board, they sleep on their ships and wander around the deck quite a lot, but they also wander around the docks and go to the inns for their evening meal and/or drink. Their schedules vary. Some even go to the chapel for a prayer.

Tharstan Glory is owned by a local family who have a fancy mansion in the Cloud District - the captain's sister lives there (I think I already said this in a previous post). The cargo ship Sirens' Bane is also owned by a local family - they live in a simple wooden house in town. Their son hangs around his uncle's cargo ship a lot... The Black Pearl are visitors.

The city has three taverns: The Bee and Barb, The Honeydew Inn and The Rugged Flagon. The first two are also inns. All this is now set up and working, with schedules randomised. It should be getting quite busy.

In terms of shops, the city has a smithy (the smith working outside, an apprentice working inside, both trading), a warehouse (and yes, you can buy stuff from the warehouse master), an alchemy shop "The Right Potion" selling all kinds of potions, including... umm... the less allowed variety. Also wine and beer and stuff. He's an alchemist, Eridor of Riften, he brews stuff... There will also be a general trader - not yet done.

The warehouse is quite large but understandably locked. It has several vaults inside - that's already behind common gates. You can find all sorts of stuff in there, we even spotted an Ordered Chest... I was toying with an idea of letting the player rent one of the vaults to safely store stuff, seeing how you can't buy a house here. But then I got distracted by other things.

There are several trainers among the people of the city, they are the normal "unmarked" individuals, as in other places.

Things to do still include: The Minotaur Manor - a fancy mansion that needs a story (it's an ex-Fighters Guild, but there's no Fighters Guild in Skyrim, so I can't quite figure out who the people are that live in it); the general store; and Mistveil Keep with guards. I don't know if I'll be able to make a jail - apparently it's a bit tricky. Perhaps your crimes will just have to go unpunished then.