If I'm not mistaken, the default Better Clothes plugin is the one that allows for male shirts on female argonians because in the vanilla game they don't have briasts. The alternate Better Clothes_v1.0_nac.esp keeps female shirts for female argonians for those people that use beast replacers that adds the briasts to the lizzies.

All right, here's the new "Alchemy Balance" magic effect settings I came up with:

Drain Health: 0.10 (down from 0.40)
Drain Fatigue: 0.02 (down from 0.10)
Drain Attribute: 0.20 (down from 1.00)
Paralyze: 1.00 (down from 5.00)
Poison: 2.00 (down from 7.00)

Dispel: 0.20 (down from 2.40)
Invisibility: 1.00 (down from 20.00)
Feather: 0.32 (up from 0.06)
Swift Swim: 0.20 (up from 0.10)

Most of these shouldn't need to be retested, since mym's *awesomely* helpful post above already demonstrates what results many of these current settings have in potions. My only two concerns are drain fatigue (may be overkill) and poison (still may not be strong enough). Dispel, Poison, Paralyze, Invisibility, and Drain Fatigue have all been removed as custom spellmaking/enchanting effects because my changes here would have rendered them imbalanced to hell in back. I'm hoping that my selection of pre-made spells, along with the various enchantment edits in the "Equiipment" plugin will make the loss of these effects palatable, but we will have to wait and see how the public judges it.

Feather was a tough one to crack, because mym's post pretty much nailed home that, unless I jacked the cost of it up significantly, carrying capacity just is no longer going to be an issue for anyone with a decent set of alchemy equipment. I had to settle for just raising the cost enough that the pre-made spells will still be (more) useful earlier on. This does have the nice effect of balancing out custom feather enchantments (which would be superior to the spells solely due to the fact that they can be recharged a lot easier than magicka can), though it does sort of kill the prospect of anything resembling a useful custom feather spell.

Water breathing I decided to leave alone since I'd have to lower the cost by a significant amount in order to make it more viable in potions, which in turn would have imbalanced the spellmaking beyond a point I felt like tweaking. And I didn't want to go the "remove spellmaking/enchanting privileges" route on this one because you can have a lot of fun with custom water breathing [censored]. It differs from water walking in the important sense that even very low magnitudes can be useful, as even a single second will reset your "breath" meter (and the advantage over just consuming an ingredient is that it's a guaranteed effect). I have personally raided Nimiwa grotto using 1-second water breathing potions, so the idea works in practice.

EDIT: speaking of water walking... I still don't think that it's very useful, either in spells or in potions. I'm lowering the effect cost to 1.20 and the pre-made spell cost (for 60 seconds) to 3.

Anyways, moving on now to the "Equipment" plugin.

Well, I had the invisible guard problem, I removed my edits to the Royal Guard armor, and the problem went away.

Now, let's add them back and see if the problem comes back.

EDIT: okay, it's fixed.

Really weird, too. It looks like for some reason the body part data got stripped out from most of the armor at some point. And since I haven't edited these items in ages, that means that they've probably been there for awhile now, and somebody just now noticed. It makes me wonder how many other pieces of armor that this could have happened to... or how many invisible guards could be watching me as I speak.

:unsure:

On the other hand, I think I just discovered a really cool way to add invisible people to the game.

8.1 is up now.

As always, if the current version isn't up on PES yet, you can get it from my site: http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_btb.zip

Ooh, and check out that awesome 1/11/2011 release date on PES. I don't think I want to update my mod for awhile :whistling:

Really? I'm sure you prefer to wait for some mods to reach a new release like MPP 1.6.5, MCP 2.0 or BTB GI 8.1 9.0 10.0


2s seemed long enough for me.
With your alchemy plugin, when I select ingredients for potions like restore fatigue or restore healing, I often have to choose between different negative effects: burden, blind and paralyze.
Burden is my favorite as it doesn't alter my fighting performances, then blind (slightly reduces chances to hit) and finally paralyze as it simply prevents me from attacking while increasing the chances to be hit.
With a paralysis of 2 secs, I'm not sure I'll select that negative effect, and if it has a longer duration, I'm sure I will *always* find other ingredients to create my potions.

BTW, how's the duration for low level PCs (30 in alchemy skill, and an apprentice M&P)?


I think all elemental and poison damages are really useful, depending on the situation.
There are monsters resistant to most elemental damages but not to poison.
Therefore I think mage need efficient poison spells.
I think there are also poison PC profiles for players who love that kind of evil damage. Such players won't be able to have a full range of poison spells anymore.


Maybe I should slow down my feedback flow, haha


It will make the exploration of huge places without stairs more difficult for profane of the alteration school.
Though it may encourage the player to use the (funny) jump effect more often, and it's a good thing.

Note that there is still a magical dagger in leveled lists which provides levitate by enchantment.
Once you find it there is no more need of levitate potions, provided you can refill it of course.


Agreed. Stacking healing potion can become a "fighting strategy" if it is possible. I don't like that.

The sad thing is that I honestly feel like every release is going to be "the one", as numerous people have noted with my 1.0 release ntoes >.>



Well, paralyze (like most other negative effects) isn't really detrimental unless you're using it in a fight. 2 seconds is bad, but at least bearable. But when I was arranging the ingredient effects, I selected paralyze with the intent of it being the single most detrimental one amongst them so that players would avoid it if at all possible, and so I need it to act that way.

Not only does it keep the balance of effects the way I want them, but it also really highlights that resistance to paralysis that I give Bosmers in the "Character" plugin.



I'll get back to you on that... possibly tomorrow when I can finally start the damn game



I recall seeing a thread someone made about how useless poison was, where it was shown how most of the creatures in the game are either resistant or immune to it. What I gathered from that is that poison is really most useful against NPCs... or at least the ones who aren't immune to it.

Also bear in mind that it costs more than fire and frost damage, which are thus the preferable method of damage in any applicable case, and is equal in cost to shock damage. So, poison is only going to be the method of choice in a custom enchantment in a situation where it loses out to the three other forms of elemental damage... which, honestly, I can't even think of an example where that's true.

Of course, this is coming from a man who needs to justify removing it as a custom effect, so take that as you will.



Yeah... though you're never really going to get much height out of a self-made potion due to the high effect cost. I figure that jump will probably be used more often for travel than exploration, anyways, so I'm not too worried about it.



There are quite a few enchanted items that have a levitation effect, actually. I know this from editing each and every damn one of them in the "Equipment" plugin, all the while trying to find ways to make them all stand out from one another

Agreed. I guess it's interesting to have potions that need to be used between fights.


Agreed.


Actually, many tall rooms in MW have physical elements helping you getting higher, provided you have a jump effect active on you. Using them is like a platform game, and is funnier than using a slow levitate potion. So I'm ok with short duration levitate potions and effective jumps.


True, I recently started to use it for fast travel in conjunction with a feather potion. Best way I found since the blinding boots of speed

I see you got rid of the Better Clothes "NAC" plugin. I don't really care whether Argonians have tytties or not, it's just that this NAC version doesn't introduce some silly inventory item and dito conversation topic to accomodate its changes. That's why I always use the NAC version.

So, my question... Did you change something about the Better Clothes plugin? If not, I can keep using the NAC version of your 8.0 mod, you see? Otherwise I'll have to manually dig into it, and I'd really rather not.

edit: Also, a question about the new script for restocking soulgems. All you did was remove the individual scripts from the BTB soulgem items, and replace them with a new global startscript, right? Since I've heavily modified your Settings plugin, I need to manually update it, can't just overwrite. That's why.

Huh. I thought it was the other way around.



No, nothing's changed. Go ahead and keep using the old one.

OK, great!

And uhm... I asked another question in my post, one minute after you replied, apparently...

Hi. Here is some feedback about your list on the web. I don't yet have feedback on the actual content of the plugins, but perhaps I'll write about those when I get to play the game.


1. Newest Mesh Improvements is now version 1.7.1.

2. Area Effect Projectiles

Your link to arrows file does not work: http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_arrows.zip

3. MGE:

In your description, you link to Visual c++ runtimes, but there is a newer version available, which includes a few security fixes.

Old link in your site:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9b2da534-3e03-4391-8a4d-074b9f2bc1bf&displaylang=en

New link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=A5C84275-3B97-4AB7-A40D-3802B2AF5FC2&displaylang=en

4. Better heads section:

The link to Gorg's site is dead: http://gorg.ufrealms.net/Better_Heads/Better_Heads_v1.rar - leads to generic site for sale or something.

5. Alternate Enchanted Item Icons

Your download link (in your own site) points to morrowind_crosshair.zip, not the correct file. Copy & paste error, I would guess.

6. Better Bodies

Link to Tesnexus file leads to "file does not exist".

7. And, Diety Replacers (section title) should probably be Deity Replacers


And once again, thanks for your hard work with this, can't wait to really start playing.

edit:

8. Oh, and Forgotten Halls was updated, this probably means that your edits to the mod are no longer valid?

Well, I did a few things to the script. Best thing to do is to copy the script from the new one over, set it as a startscript, and then delete the old ones.



Thanks for the info. I've been neglecting the mod list because I've been updating this mod. Hopefully, I can turn my attention back to it now.

Yeah, I did just that. But just to be sure.

BTW, Mesh Improvements 1.7.1 contains some meshes that link to wrong textures. ArmedDefender is currently working on this, so expect a new update.

Thank you for the info about the load order, I wanted to make sure for good how its done correctly.

Some other questions, I hope you don't mind too much . GCD has a restore potions fix. From the readme: "This addon fixes the problem where restore attribute potions from the standard game will not restore an attribute over 95 with GCD. This is because these potions have instantaneous duration, so the effects cannot be measured by GCD. This esp simply changes the duration of these potions from 0 to 1. These changes might conflict with other potion changing mods, so you might need to merge them, or change the durations to 1 in the other mod yourself."

So this fix is incompatible with the alchemy plugin right?

And another one related to load order. Since the Better Clothes Complete plugin incorporates the additional edits from Plankgye's More Better Clothes addon that means that it should load after More Better Clothes esp, right? Mlox moves the BTB plugin above that esp in the load order.

Also, with these updates I have to start a new game every time? Or just reload my last save. I am asking because when I loaded my last save in Balmora I got some errors about some missing soulgems, not sure what was all that about.

Err........are you sure?

As I said above I saw other almost invisible NPCs around other than royal guards. You seem to have fixed only the latters. I had a look at the esp in the CS, it seems there are still these armors needing to be fixed:

Adamantium armors
BM Bear armors
BM Wolf armors
Darkbrotherhood armors
Almalexia Hands' Indoril armors
MH Guards Indoril armors

I think there aren't others, but I may be mistaken. I'll check another time.

edit: here's other two:
BM Ice armors
BM NordicMail armors

I hope those are all.

EDIT2: BTB, have you used MWEdit by chance to, well, edit it? It's highly recommended not to use it for anything except scripting it is forbidden to use it for anything that is not scripting only (and sometimes it's not reliable even with scripting).

Yes, they are incompatible. Merge them with TESTool (BTB's loaded later) or use EE to modify restore potion durations in the Alchemy plugin.


Use Wrye Mash to clean the save and you'll be right.

No offense BTB, but it would be wise to find out what caused it. Because who knows what else is invisible now. Are all the clothes/Better Clothes entries still intact, for instance?

edit: since only Tribunal/Bloodmoon armor is affected, maybe that's a lead.

Thank you for the info. Unfortunately I am relatively new to playing with mods in Morrowind so what you said isn't very clear for me. I don't know how to merge, I don't know what EE means.

Also how do I clean the save with Wrye Mash? That sound important.

Mergin objects is very important when more mods modifiy the same objects. Download TESTool and use the Merge OBject function. Read some tutorials around about object merging (I was able to find a very interesting one long ago, don't recall now). Don't use any other function of TESTool. You'll be sorry if you do it!

EE stands for Enchanted Editor. And about WM, you have to use the Sync and Repair All function. Read the WM documentation, it's well done.

edit: example about merging, the Alchemy plugin modifies value and power of a potion, GCD fix modifies the duration of the same potion. Merging them you'll have that potion with value and power from BTB's plugin, and duration from GCD fix plaugin.

here's a good place to start: http://yacoby.silgrad.com/MW/Tuts/LoadOrder/LoadOrderTut.htm#mergedobj

The Werewolf enchantment on Hircine's Ring (BM) is gone. Is this intentional? 'Cause it's not mentioned in the readme.

(edit) Enchantments on Hunter's Amulet of Speed & Hunter's Amulet of Strength are gone as well, without notification.

(edit) Same for Resist Frost enchantments on Bloodmoon Snow Wolf & Snow Bear armor.

(edit) Dwemer Battle Shield, Goblin Buckler...

The Hircine's Ring hadn't an enchantment (vanilla), but it had a script attached, that makes you turn into a ww, and that is gone. Hmmm...

EDIT: I smell MWEdit disaster... I hope I'm wrong.

Very helpful tools and link, thanks! And how do I clean the saves with Wrye Mash?

Uninstall any previous version of a mod, go to the saves tab, click on the save, on the right you see the list of mods loaded in that save, right-click on the "file" part of the section, then "synchronize loaded list" (or something like that, I have the italian version), then save. Right-click on the save and "repair all". then you can add the new version of the mod and you have to synch the list again.

BTB-Alchemy's restore potions already have their durations set to 1, there is no need to merge them with GCD potions fix.

EDIT: GCD potions fix can be disabled.

So, pretty much every piece of armor item from Bloodmoon and Tribunal that I've edited.

That actually makes me feel a little better, because I at least know what caused it. I don't specifically remember using MWEdit to [censored] with the plugin, but I must have.

Anyways... should be an easy fix. Just delete all of the items from TB and BM that I edited and edit them again in the CS. And then send an email to the guy who makes MWEdit:

"Instead of Morrowind editing tool, download contained Bobcat. Would not buy again."