Current Version: 8.9

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7904 <-- Download Here!

http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_btb.zip <-- Or Download Here!

Link to old thread (with poll... that I miss): http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1138759-btbs-game-improvements-the-topic/

Thank you for the new version! :foodndrink: Question, did you also modify the Alternate settings plugin esp with the new changes?

Also I want to make sure that I use the correct load order:

BTB Spells
BTB Alchemy
BTB Equipment
BTB Settings (Alternate)
Better Clothes complete (BTB Edit)

Is this correct?

Hey, a few minor issues with the new Equipment plugin. Mainly, the Daedric boots are still valued at 5000, and the cuirass at 7500. Some unique Daedric too, Therana's greaves (daedric_greaves_htab) and cuirass (daedric_cuirass_htab)--the ones with the feather enchantments--are still valued at 9000, and there's a similar issue with the Prelude Wakizashi (daedric wakizashi_hhst). Though maybe those aren't errors if you didn't intend to bring the uniques down in line with the basic armour.

And a request: would you be able (and willing) to incorporate the fixes from the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6764 into your modified Better Clothes plugins? It conflicts with changes you made to some unique shoes so we can't run both.

Finally, any recommendations on the MCP beta changes with your mod? In particular, the alchemy problems fix, game formula corrections and movement speed fix. I know you're working on the alchemy one, but do you think the others are balanced or even useful additions?

Oh and good work so far on what you've done here. You've made some inspired changes - the Misc Skills fix in particular I feel invalidates all the levelling mods for the better.

I have a major problem. First I noticed a MCA NPC without foots. Then going to MH a vanilla royal guard was almost completely invisible. Only a piece of I don't kniow what was visible. After a few attempts to find out what was wrong ( I installed NOM 3.0 almost at the same time too) I unchecked the Equipment plugin and everything went back to normal. I don't know if this is a conflict or else.

edit: to be more precise, ALL royal guards are almost invisible.

edit2: just tried without any other mods. Something wrong with the Equipment plugin indeed, though I don't really know what of your chenges could cause this. Am I the only one with this problem?

First off let me say thanks of this. I plan on using the equipment and spells plugins alongside GCD for my next playthrough (since I believe there are conflicts with the character and settings plugin when using it alongside GCD?).



I would second this. Also there is a mod called http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=6736 would a patch be needed for this as well? I'm also wondering, is the mod http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=8713 compatible? I know there are esp files included in almost all of the zip files except one.

Again, thank you for this awesome mod!

I'm glad to help.
I like your careful attention to our feedback and your reactivity.


I'm glad you plan to do it

I just did some alchemy tests with BTB 8.0, my grand master set M&P, my master alembic/retort/calcinator and my 78 INT.
I've commented out each test according to what I except with my "master" skills in alchemy.

- Blind: 9% for 18s. Fair enough.
- Burden: 69pts for 137s. Ok.
- Drain Fatigue: 55pts for 110s. Ok.
- Drain Health: 14pts for 27s. Fine I guess.
- Drain Willpower: 5pts for 11s. Maybe not penalizing enough.
- Paralyze: 2s. Not sure I'll use in while in a fight, but restore fatigue/health potions with paralyze could still be useful between fights. Moreover, I sometimes resists the paralysis as my wisdom is not so low.
- Poison: 1pt for 2s. Too weak.

- Detect Enchantments: 64pts for 126s. Fine.
- Dispel: 12%
- Feather: 414pts for 826s. Duration fine, magnitude maybe too high.
- Fortify Magicka/Personality: 27pts for 52s. Ok.
- Frost Shield: 27pts for 52s
- Invisibility: 4s. Not enough!!
- Levitate: 11pts for 19s. Short duration.
- Night Eye: 126pts for 250s. Magnitude too high.
- Reflect: 13% for 23s
- Resist Fire: 33% for 64s. Ok.
- Restore Agility: 4pts for 5s. A bit low.
- Restore Fatigue: 44pts for 85s. Generous. Handful for a series of fights.
- Restore Health: 7pts for 11s. Not enough.
- Restore Magicka: 7pts for 12s: May be not enough for mages.
- Sanctuary: 13pts for 23s. I guess it's fine. Abuse by potion stack not so easy.
- Spell Absorbtion: 13pts for 23s.
- Swift swim: 250pts for 497s. High magnitude, I like that.
- Water Breathing: 14s. A bit short.

I use equipment, spells, alchemy, and settings (alternate) together with GCD and din't notice any obvious problems. What would be the problem with Settings alternate as long as it removes the changes to skill advancement?

And I confirm that Character plugin does have a problem with GCD, and that is that it has almost no effect on the GCD calculations, actually the only effect is that it makes your beginning character weaker and the birthsign changes are mostly ignored.

I also use GCD along with BTB plugins and alternate settings.
I do some cleanings on the character plugin: Using MWEdit, I clean the birthsign script in "Start script" and "Script" sections and I reduce the effect of the Lady's Grace spell in order to fit with GCD skill system: I reduce both Fortify attributes to 15 (instead of 20).
I haven't much tested without such cleanings though.

I played couples of PCs with such settings, up to level 10-20, since early versions of BTB without any compatibility problem.

I reach ~level 20 after doing ~half of the quests of 3-4 factions and the main quest. I think I may finally switch to GCD hard settings as level 20 unlocks most of the highest leveled lists (creatures, equipment) and I still have to do lots of quests, traveling, and also tribunal and bloodmoon areas.

BTB GI + GCD + MWA is expected to offer a good level of difficulty, but I suppose I need a little more

Can someone do this test to see if I am the only one having missing armors (and bodies!) on royal guards and other NPCs?

Open the console and type: coc "mournhold, royal palace: courtyard"

Only if you have Tribunal of course. The BTB-Equipment plugin has to be used. Thanks.

Yes, I tested it, and I can confirm the bug. The royal guards are almost invisible.

Hi BTB

Again, many thanks for your rapid rollout of updates and fixes.

I was just trying to download your edited ESP of the area affect arrows mod, but the file seems to have been taken off your abusemynipbles host.

Any chance you could re-up it?

Cheers

I too am experiencing problems with MH gaurds



I also wonder if the patch is needed for the better clothes tribunal?

BTB, just in case you have used an auto merger tool, I recall a similar issue when PirateLord's Trade Enhancement has been merged with Better Clothes to create a PTE patch. I don't trust the old mergers anymore.

Actually i think this is just a broken link. Currently it points to

http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_arrows.zip which doesn't exist, it should be

http://btb2.free.fr/files/morrowind_projectiles.zip

Cheers

It doesn't do anything for me :-/ and I triple checked the spelling.
I have GOTY (MW, TB, BM), English version.

If I type:
coc "mournhold"
it works and I'm teleported to a small weird room.

Waiting for BTB then.



That could be a reason. However I don't know why one should use a different mod merger. The one inside CS is the best in the world.



The name is right, I don't know why it doesnt work for you.
Try "mournhold temple: basemant" or "mournhold, armory" - remember to use (") and not (') [well if you were able to enter "mournhold" cell you typed right. And that is a cell not used by the game, but very useful!]

Just tried again, didn't worked at first, and suddenly all coc commands have started to work properly, and I have no idea why. Thx for the help anyway.
So I can now also confirm your bug with almost invisible guards.

8.0 already? You're an update machine. How's your sound working these days?

Ever since a little snag back around 3.0 where the alternate "Character" plugin didn't get updated with a change, I now always generate a new alternate plugin every time I update the original to ensure that the changes are made uniformly.



Yes. I set the modified dates of the plugin so that the default load order is the correct load order.

That being said, the only things that *need* to be true are that the "Settings" plugin loads after the "Spells" plugin and that both compatibility plugins load after the "Equipment" plugin.



Good catch. I will fix that.



Therana's Greaves were intentional (you'll notice they are listed separately in the value edits. The Prelude Wakizashi I just forgot about... I'll fix that, as well. Again, good catch.



I had heard about this... what does it do again?

And is it a replacement of the original Better clothes plugin, or an addition?



The race speed thing is legit, and the game mechanics changes mostly just enable GMSTs that should already be in use by the game, but aren't (and thus will have no effect unless someone decided to modify their values).

The only thing about the beta update that sort of irks me is that I can't map 0 and my other weapon to the same controller button anymore, but that's a personal issue.



Well, thanks. It's a controversial change, for sure, and I know it's not for everybody. But, I am glad to know there are others out there who think like I do.

W...t...f...?

If you run TESPCD (or whatever conflict detector you use), can you tell me if anything besides my Equipment plugin is modifying the Royal Guard armor? My immediate assumption is that you're using alternate meshes that call for new textures. Or maybe it's related to that Better Clothes patch issue thingie.

I can't think of any other thing it may be, since *all* that my mod edits for Royal Guard armor is the values and the armor ratings of the boots and greaves.



Not really conflicts, but I have heard of the level-up birthsign remover causing some issues with GCD (I can tell you how to remove it if that's the case... I really should make a compatibility plugin for that). As for the Settings, just use the alternate one in place of the original.



I can't say I've heard of it. I'll have to look.



Haven't heard of this, either. But here's the quick answer: anything that edits items directly with a plugin will likely conflict. Better Clothes only does this to unique equipment so that it can give them unique textures that they previously lacked. Anything that's a straight-up texture replacer shouldn't conflict.



You're welcome. Thank you (all) for the slew of detailed feedback, and damn you all to hell because I was going to actually start playing today.

Incredibly useful information, though some of it is a bit worrisome. I lowered the effect cost of paralyze in the "Spells" plugin to 5.00 in the last update... the duration should not still be that low. Ditto for poison... I may have to do the same thing with it as I did with paralyze in removing it from custom spells/enchantments, as much as I don't want to. Then again, it's not like there aren't *plenty* of poison spells and enchantments in the game proper, and it's not really one of the more useful types of damage, either.

The drain effects also strike me as a bit low. I'll need to adjust their costs further.



Again, this is incredibly useful. I'd kiss you if you weren't a dude.

Anyways, here's my thoughts:

Dispel seems pretty damn worthless. Given that I've taken the spells and enchantments as far as the effect itself can possibly go, I'll probably just go ahead and turn off enchanting/spellmaking and tank the effect cost (which seems like it's going to be the solution in several cases, here). I also agree about Invisibility, which seems to be in the same boat.

Feather, yeah, I'm going to have to raise the cost on that a bit. It's actually a bit more balanced that way, I think, because I set the spell cost according to what I set the spells to, not thinking that the effect cost should probably be considerably higher if you're trying to make enchantments with it, given that Feather is one of those effects that people are more likely to use as an enchantment instead of as a spell. The pre-made spells should hopefully still be cheap/effective enough to be useful, in any case.

The fortify potions look pretty spot-on. Stacking is always going to be something of an issue there, but I don't particularly mind in this case. I did my best when setting the new ingredient effects in the "Alchemy" plugin and made all "fortify" effects set to at least relatively uncommon ingredients, so anyone who has 50 Dreugh Waxes to burn through probably deserves the 50 seconds of godhood that comes with it.

Levitate doesn't bother me that much. It's a very abuseable effect because of how stupid the AI is, so I like to see its use in potions limited to short bursts.

Night-Eye also doesn't strike me as too problematic, since anyone concerned with the magnitude can just not use a calcinator/retort. If you're getting ridiculous magnitudes with just a mortar & pestle, then I'll edit the effect cost.

Reflect, spell absorption, and sanctuary came out *PERFECTLY*. I can only hope that balancing the other effects turns out to be this easy.

Restore attribute seems like it should work just fine... 5 points for 4 seconds is 20 points. Granted, this is a grandmaster build. I'd have to see it made with a crappier set of equipment to make a final call.

Restore health seems fine where it's at, given the abhorrent use of "stacking" that players seem to employ when in battle. Getting disemboweled? Just quaff 20 restore health potions in a row! I'll probably lower the effect cost of restore magicka, though, since I'd like to see that be more effective.

Swift swim is a bit insane. I will probably lower it a bit, though not by *too* much.

Water breathing I will likely lower the cost on, as well, as I've already done for water walking.

I'll give this a shot myself to see if it's me who's crazy, or just all of you people.



Yeah, that's just a broken link (that I thought I had fixed, actually). My mod list actually needs yet another updating since the release of the More Better Clothes mod, but I've been too busy with updates to this mod to pay it any attention.



I do not use merger tools, except occasionally the one in the CS. For the Better Clothes plugin, I manually made all of my edits to it.



No problems so far, but I'm still sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I feel like the moment I tell you that everything's working all right, my computer will grow a leg and kick me in the balls.

Status Report:

-Better Clothes Patch conflicts with the Equipment plugin, it looks like. I will update the compatibility plugin. BC Tribunal does not conflict, so there's no *need* to include it in my compatibility plugin except that I think it would be nice to present a single "complete" Better Clothes plugin instead of four different ones.

-Daedric Cuirass/Boots and Prelude Wakizashi value edit omissions confirmed and fixed.

-Still working on spell effect rebalances. Invisibility, Poison, and Dispel will all be removed as custom effects. Not sure about drain fatigue yet. Burden, water breathing, drain attribute, and restore magicka costs will be lowered; feather and swift swim will be raised.

-Haven't looked into Royal Guard issue yet. Will most likely clean the edits out of the "Equipment" plugin and, if that works, add them back in and see if the issue persists.

-Merged the "Alchemy" plugin with "Heartwood" mod by MidgetAlien so that you can now find Heartwood past level 3.

-I'm debating getting rid of some of the crap in my "Extra Stuff" folder, too... namely the "Spoilers" file. I really want to get rid of the alternate Better Clothes plugin that goes out of its way to avoid putting [censored] on Argonians, too. Does anybody actually use this thing?

The Better Clothes Patch wasn't the best idea, there are reports of feet clipping through shoes with it on. Better Clothes uses the right foot part assignment for displaying items against the body without being covered by other slots, shoes are bound to just the left foot in the nif, hence the warnings. I need to find exactly what the slot assignment is, but my research fails me so far.

Edit for posterity:

*Crosses that off of the list of things to do*