I'm wondering.. if one were to reduce the quality for Calcinators/Retorts, wouldn't that stop the player from making truly overpowered potions? I thought you might be the right person to ask.

I have a quick question regarding the Character plugin and the recommendation to disable the setting in the MCP that allows NPCs to use race powers. In short, is it really that brutal if you leave that setting enabled? I imagine it's pretty rough in the early going, but intuitively it feels like something that might make gameplay more challenging down the road. But I could be dead wrong, and leaving this setting enabled may be setting myself up for an experience that's too frustrating to enjoy the challenge. Anyone have any advice to that end? Thanks in advance.

Also, if I really do need to disable race powers for NPCs, is there something extra I need to do if I have since run the 4GB patch? I know you have to run this patch after running the MCP, but I'm not entirely clear on the procedure if you have to re-run the MCP. Is it as simple as re-running the MCP and then the 4GB patch, in that order? Or do I first need to restore one of the backups that was created when these programs initially ran? Sorry, I know this is not directly related to BTBGI... but I do want to get this right, especially if changing that setting is really the best thing to do.

Thanks again!

Yeah, it would, in the same way that editing any part of a mathematical formula will affect the final product. The challenge isn't discovering the "sweet spot" for Retorts and Mortar/Pestles (those are the two big ones, for the record), but rather identifying what is and isn't really, really broken. Thus, most of the balancing is done to the spell effects themselves rather than to the equipment. The edits to the equipment are really more to make each progressive set valuable in its own right, rather than making players better off just gettign the top-end stuff right off the bat.


Two words: Ancestor Guardian

Turn that setting on, and you're pretty much spending an hour trying to hit 90% of the game's population.

(Not that any of the other powers are any more pleasant to be hit by.)


If you've already applied that change, just restore the backup, re-run the MCP with the setting unchecked, and then apply the 4GB patch afetrward.

And feel free to stop by if you want any more advice. It's good feeling useful around here again >.>

This seems to be one of the overriding themes in this suite of mods... re-introducing progression. It's one of those things I have felt was just wrong about the (vanilla) game, but couldn't quite put my finger on. I am anxious to see this in effect not only for alchemy equipment, but much of the other gear as well.

Gotcha. That's what I figured you were getting at, but I figured it was worth inquiring about.

Simple enough, thanks!

Sweet. I've done a ton of reading over the past couple of days, and I think I've just about got everything set. I do have a question about Equipment, though. Taking a quick look in TESTool, I see that (as expected) I'm going to need to do something about the Divine Domina mods and the Equipment plugin. After a cursory once-over of the conflict report, it appears as though the differences are merge-able. What is your opinion on using TESTool to handle that for me in this case, vs. manually making the edits myself and creating an actual compatibility plugin? I've always felt I know just about enough to royally screw things up when it comes to the CS, so I tend to favor idiot-proof tools where applicable... (though I have argued myself that there is no such thing as an idiot-proof tool!)

And thanks again for your efforts... the mods are awesome. The readmes are some of the most entertaining I've ever read, to boot!

EDIT: I have another quick question, kind of on topic, but not really... State Based Hit Points says you need to drink a potion (or something) that alters your Strength and/or Endurance, and then wait for it to wear off in order to calculate your baseline Health. Makes sense. But is this also required for new characters? I'm guessing the answer is "yes", but perhaps not. Thanks again.

Another EDIT: I just finished the packaging and installation of pretty much all the "main" Gameplay change mods, most notably HF Eco Adj Merchants and Crime, all BTBGI modules, Service Reqs, State-Base HP, and MW Advanced. I did end up using Merged Objects to handle the Domina mods and BTBGI's Equipment... looking over the log this seems to have worked as desired (I made sure only BTBGI Equipment and my merged ESP of the Domina mods were selected, ensuring I didn't merge changes that Equipment was meant to overwrite. At least I think I did that correctly... I'm kind of learning as I go, so I easily could have made a mistake somewhere, or not quite fully understood something. Nevertheless, quick in-game tests are giving promising results so far.)

I am going to start a new PC now and see how things go... I do see how a lot of the changes will only fully be experienced when staring out fresh. That said, my two "senior" PCs now have something else to do with their stockpiles, and I'm curious to see how their gameplay styles will need to adapt under these new, considerably harsher conditions.

In any event, should be fun...

I've always been an advocate of hand-making those kinds of changes to ensure that they're done proerly 9as you said, there's no such thing as an idiot-proof tool). I only use automated tools like TES3CMD when making all of the changes by hand would literally drive me crazy (namely, the cell edits in the "Settings" plugin).


It's funny, because I'm working on getting my FF6 mod released, and a few people have complained about how long-winded the readme for it is.

It's about a quarter the size of the readme for BTBGI.


For new characters, this isn't necessary, since it will automatically calculate your health after character generation (though see my note on the bug about the bonus to health for starting strength).

What he's abscially saying there is that the mod will only re-calculate your maximum health when your strength/endurance changes, so it'll remain at its old value if the mod is applied to an existing game until it's forced to do a re-calculation.


You'll learn a lot through experience. I knew squat about modding before I actually started doing it myself.

Thanks for the answer BTB. I have another question too. If i were to actually lower the quality value of the Calcinators/Retorts, would that make it impossible to create exclusive/quality potions or is that determined by the Mortar/Pestles?

Just to be clear, you'll never be able to hand-make some of the exclusive/quality potions as they're set in my mod.

But yes, the quality of the Mortar & Pestle is the single largest determining factor in the overall strength of the potion.

I won't go on and on about this, but it warrants a more thorough treatment... I fell into the ES world with Oblivion. My step-son had it on console, I played it, loved it, got it for my PC, discovered mods, got a better PC, modded the ever-loving-[censored] out of my game, and for a short while, it was good. Then it gradually became more and more of a chore to keep my game running, and I slowly started spending less time playing and more time screwing with the damn thing. FCOM (the wonderful, and terrible, beast that it is) proved my undoing, and when I got a demanding new job I said, "you know what? [censored] Oblivion." (Ever see Adaptation? [censored] fish?)

Anyway, I promised myself that this would not happen with Morrowind. "I'll keep it in check", said I, "No diddling with mods in the CS... just take 'em, or leave 'em." Right. Because defying my nature always works.

But for what it's worth, your list of mods has been something of a godsend for me. Besides being focused primarily on compatibility (thus allowing me to go a long time without having to dig deeply into modding), the mods on your list generally line up with changes I would like to make myself. Your GI mods, in particular, fix so many of the problems I had with my mostly-vanilla playthroughs. Personally, I like that Misc skills don't level on their own anymore... this was a problem I had with TES4, let alone TES3.

Anyway, I have gotten deeper into modding than I expected to, and now that I think I have my "build" all set, I'm looking forward to playing a new PC. But I'll end up digging deeper again; I always do. And when I do, I'll keep your words in mind. Hell, I'll probably be back asking about how to do this or tweak that... but hopefully not for a little while yet!

By the way, I am pleasantly surprised that you are around and active. I am, once again, very late getting into a game, and I fully expected most modders to have moved on by now. It's awesome to find some that are still here and still talking with folks about their mods. Thanks for sticking around!

Kids these days... no attention span.

Thanks for the clarification!
By the way... the bug about the bonus to health for starting strength is only at CharGen, right? And even then only if you make an edit? It sounds like once you complete it and leave the census office it corrects itself.

Moving on isn't my thing. I'm not sure how clear it is from my Readme, but I really, really don't like modern games.


Other way around. The bonus for starting strength is applied *unless* you go back and change something. This bonus will stick around throughout the entire game if you don't remove it (as the re-calculation seems to ignore it completely).

So the "bonus" for starting strength is the undesired effect? Sorry if I'm sounding dense (again)... just trying to reconcile what you're saying here with this:
The way this says the incorrect value is the one shown if you elect to make a change is throwing me off... I had taken this to mean that if I don't edit anything, then the correct value would be shown, and used. But it sounds like I actually do need to make an edit in the CharGen process if I want base Health to be calculated correctly. Sorry, again, for not quite getting this...

OK, quick question about Enchant... Without really digging into the Changes, I had assumed that you found a way to disable player enchanting in the UI. I was trying a few things out in the game and was surprised to see the normal recharge/enchant options when I activated a soul gem. It never occurred to me that the ban on player enchanting was implemented by forcing a 100% failure rate, but now that I look a little harder at it, it seems that's how it works. It's actually a very simple solution (simple == good)... I just want to be sure the behavior I'm seeing is what's intended!

EDIT: Yep... doing things by hand is the only way to be sure... I took the time this morning to look over every object in Merged Objects, and sure enough there were some items that did not quite merge as I expected them too. Still, this Merged Objects ended up being the foundation for my patch, so I only needed to make the necessary changes to it as opposed to writing it from scratch. Every little bit helps...

And hey, early on I'm really digging the changes... I haven't ventured far from Seyda Neen yet, but that's coming shortly. But yeah, already I'm seeing how a lot of the stuff that had been useless before is now suddenly relevant.

Also, I have yet to see any "drastic pussiness in enemies"... I've had a couple cut and run when they were about to die (like, one-more-hit-and-you're-dead about to die), but none that refused to put up a fight, or fled after being smacked in the mouth once. Just tossing that out there...

Ok, no, you're right. I was confusing Talrivian's update with the bug from the original version.


Yup, I just jacked up the difficulty to force a 100% failure rate.

Cool, thanks.
Excellent. One day in, and so far this is awesome. Alchemy is so much more interesting now. And great work on the new pre-made spells... they don't svck anymore!

I have another question BTB. Did you find any solution to reduce the amount of Daedric weapons/armor drops from Dremoras, without removing their weapons? My only idea would be through bound weapons but I'm not sure that would work.

trancemaster, I don't know if this helps or not, but having just installed BTBGI + Morrowind Advanced and a little of HotFusion's Economy Adjuster, I've got most of that in my head still. This is from http://btb2.free.fr/morrowind.html:
Does that help?

ALSO...

BTB, on the same site, you mention your personal edits to the LGNPC project. I would like to hear more about that... is this a good place to inquire?

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

I need to go back and revisit those changes eventually >.>

Ah, excellent... thank you! I'll be looking at the LGNPC modules over the next few days. I want to get in there and make sure there won't be any conflicts with anything else in my load order.

Update: After thinking a lot about this, and reading a lot in the forums, I think I've decided to pass on the LGNPC project. This looks like a great idea that, unfortunately, 1) still has a lot of problems that need to be worked out, 2) has issues with consistency, and 3) will probably never be "finished". I say that with all due respect to the folks trying their best to get this done... honestly, I applaud the effort, and I can tell some have gone to great lengths to make LGNPC as good as it can be. I may revisit it later, but for now I'll pass. Thanks again for the link, though!


While I'm here, I'll mention that my current playthrough with the gameplay changes listed on your site is going really well so far. Man, this is a much more intense Vvardenfell than the one I got used to! I have to think about everything now, and the wilderness is just damn deadly for the unprepared. It's awesome. Seriously. Thank you.

Quick note on "one-hit fleeing": I have noticed that guars behave a little differently now, but I'm not sure that it's solely due to the flee setting. They do tend to run after being smacked, but then they regroup and come back... usually. I have also noticed, however, that they also seem to behave differently based on whether or not I'm armed with a ranged weapon. So, that has me thinking maybe this is more due to changes in Morrowind Advanced than in the Settings module of BTBGI. That's just a preliminary guess though... I'll have to dig a little deeper to be more certain. In just about every other species I've fought (NPCs not included), I have seen more of the behavior mentioned above where they fight until they're about to die, and then flee.
Great work, man! This is a lot of fun!


EDIT: I went ahead and created a couple of compatibility patches (for my own use) to handle the conflicts between the (merged) Domina mods, Daggerfall Books, and BTBGI. This seems to be working much better than relying on Merged Objects. I'm still using TESTool to generate the initial patches, but then I edit them by hand in Enchanted Editor and rename them appropriately. I just tested out a new character, and was very pleased to find Arrille selling your spells and soul gems right alongside the Daggerfall books. Anyway, you were right... it's best look at each change individually in the long run!

ONE MORE EDIT: I think I figured out how to "reset" a merchant in an existing save... It seems, at least in Arrille's case, that two records must be deleted in EE (or whatever you choose, I guess). There is a record that seems to hold instance data for Arrille (like inventory items you've sold him) that is listed under "NPCs Altered/Killed by Player", and then another more generic "Non Player Character" record one level up in the tree. I'm not entirely clear on which record holds exactly what data, but the full "merchant reset" didn't happen until I deleted both of them. Of course, this also deleted the Disposition I had with him, but I recorded it beforehand and fixed that with the console. In the end, I had a new Arrille with a shiny new inventory, complete with BTBGI items and Daggerfall books, as well as the new pre-made spells. Oh yeah, and there's the added advantage of removing a bunch of clutter from his inventory... you know, all the cheap stuff you sell him trying to get off the ground in the early going!

Still, as great as this seems, I don't have a ton of experience with deleting instance data from a save, so if I've made a grave error please let me know. It seems fine... nice and stable, and everything where it should be... but I could have easily overlooked something. These things happen from time to time!

Just poking my head in to say thanks for your mods, btb.

I played morrowind with wakims since it came out. Finding BtB's last year, after a long hiatus from playing, was a godsend.

Also: fantastic readme.

Naked Telvanni Report!
Hello again... sorry to keep spamming your thread. At least this one is to report something, you know, mod-related. Ha ha!

Seriously though, I have spotted a few more Telvanni NPCs who have "come to the (albeit correct) conclusion that they'd be better off without any armor", and are thus manning their posts in the buff. (Of the five, four are female... Alright! Oh yeah, but three of them are Orcs... Oh no! I gotta fix that...) So how about some details?

Tel Naga Upper Tower
Ivramie Sarandas, the Dunmer Nightblade at the top of the levitation shaft

Tel Aruhn, Underground
Mogak gra-Ugruma and Urzoth gra-Bargamph, the two Orc Warriors in there

Tel Aruhn (Exterior)
Shagdub gra-Murz and Shuzug gro-Bug, the two Orc Warriors patrolling near the Slave Market


Following what you did with the Telvanni Guards (raising their Med. Armor rating to 50 so they'd wear the Bonemold they're equipped with), I raised the above-mentioned NPCs' Lt. Armor rating to 50 to match the armor sets they're equipped with. I did this in a tiny little "fix" mod that I'm loading late in the order. I didn't want to mess with BTB - Settings directly, but now that I think about it I probably should load it right after Settings instead of just before Mashed Lists where it is now... I can't think of any reason this tiny fix needs to load so late.

Anyway, hope that helps. Let me know if you need more info. And thanks again for BTBGI!

Also, I've been thinking about re-enabling the enchanting chance of success for the player. I'd like to introduce some sort of limiting aspect to it, such as requiring other skills (say one armour, one weapon, one magic) to be at a certain level prior to enchanting being achievable (ie have a success rate above zero). I don't think this is superior as a balance mechanic, I just want to see how it plays out. Mostly so that my brother will stop grumbling about your hard ass changes, and install the mod Are these sorts of requirements possible? I assume...no.

Well, it was nearly a two-year diversion from Morrowind modding, but I'm happy to say that my Final Fantasy VI mod has finally been completed and posted to my website. Give me a few weeks to bask and recover, and then I'll eventually start coming back around here more often again

I'm sure they're possible, but probably not without a script extender.