Had a curious situation pop up. My new character (now level 2) was in the process of completing the Leyawin Mage Guild recommendation quest. Dagail had no topic for her father, and the Fort BlueBlood icon didn't show up. I was able to pay 500 gold pieces to substitute. Went to Bravil and finished that recommendation quest, and quit. That was last night.

When I loaded back in today, I've been getting CTDs 10-15 seconds after entering the game. If I go back to load last night's game before the paying the 500 gold pieces, there's no CTD no matter how long I hang around.

I'm going to try running through it again, and see if the problem repeats. I'm also going to take C&C out of the loop, and see if that makes any difference. It may not, and even if it does, that could be a conflict between C&C and some other mod.

Not sure about the CTD, but I know that I had some trouble with this quest this time around. I'm not sure if it's what you were getting or not -- Dagail was not giving me the quest and Agata was just telling me to talk to Dagail and come back to see her if it wasn't clear.

It turned out that the problem was that my Mysticism was less than 25, preventing me from doing the certification, which in turn prevented the topics for the recommendation from even showing up. It was unclear, though, as the option to do the certification wasn't even there until I boosted my skill to 25, at which point the option showed up and I was able to do the certification and the recommendation.

I was one of the people, like you, who mentioned that the certification didn't trigger, and found out Mysticism had to be 25. But the difficulties with the recommendation postdate getting my character's Mysticism up to 25, and receiving the accreditation. I wonder if having approached Agata and Dagail first when Mysticism was too low meant that even later on, the recommendation wouldn't fire at all stages correctly? Dagail simply wouldn't discuss her father, and I never got the fort's icon. The necklace was there, and Kalthar then showed up for the final confrontation, but the stuff between just didn't work.

I do know that after I finished this, got the necklace back, and did Bravil's rec, saving the game and reloading it didn't cause CTDs. Still, there are any number of other factors, including problems between mods, that could have caused this.

Bug reports:

1. There seems to be a conflict between this mod (v 2.2) and Enhanced Economy 3.3.4.

When I do the journeyman Blade examination in Leyawiin, everything goes fine until the end when the examiner speaks to me to give me the diploma. At that point an Enhanced Economy window pops up telling me that the mod is not initialized. I've tested repeatedly and it always happens.

2. There seems to be a conflict between this mod (v 2.2) and Reneers Guard Overhaul 2.05.

After the Blade examination in Leyawiin, the examiner sheats his sword, but then pulls it back out and starts to attack me. Tested and reproduced repeatedly.

It would be nice if someone could confirm those, so we can report the errors in the relevant mod threads. Also migck, will you be able to take a look and see if we can fix the bugs somehow?

I can confirm those:
Enhanced Economy: this is wacko but true. There's no "conflict" as you are used to it, but for some reason the scripts in Enhanced Economy detect something strange when the dialogue scripts from the examiners run, and issue that messagebox. No idea how to fix it.
RGO: I'm not using it right now, and I can't understand why that happens. Mods that alter the psychology of NPCs tend to mess with the examiners, and I don't know if there's a way to avoid it.

Paying your way through the MG recommendations: I'm guessing this is prone to be extremely problematic due to the method it uses. It simply sets the quest to stage 100, and doesn't check anything else. So even if the quest gets finished, it has not been properly set so that all the stuff associated to it also gets finished. Possibly the script from the Leyawiin MG recommendation quest is checking for something that returns a faulty value due to the quest not having advanced properly and causes a CTD. I'm tempted to remove the pay method to avoid incompatibilities and problems like these.

Good, I've just finished failing miserably again all my exams this semester so I'll get to work on it this week.

I wish there could be a simplified version of guild advancement requirements. Instead of getting any extra items in the inventory to tell you how to advance, or actual events, I just want a simple Morrowind-style advancement requirement thing.

By the way, is anyone still fixing/adding onto this mod?

Migck's back at work on it, when school permits.



I'm afraid you're correct. Either it probably should be fixed, or removed--and removed makes more sense, since a mage could easily generate enough income to bypass the guild quest through potion merchandising. It's just too easy to skip many of the quests in this fashion, and hell: they're quests. They're not supposed to be skipped, but reinforced.

Can anyone brief me on the current status of EQR? How buggy is it? Is it playable at all?

The great thing about EQR is that is little harm in taking it out and putting it back in.

So if you find that a quest is blocked or conflcits with another mod (as has been the case a few times) then just deactivate it and finish the quests.

I'm not aware that it actually makes outcomes that depend on it being installed. I could, of course, be wrong. Taking it out may only interrupt the ability to have an outcome that only it gives. If you already have a unique outcome then taking it out will not change that to my knowledge and then putting it back in only then provides more choice for the next quest you encounter that it touches.

Honestly, it's buggy as hell, and may prevent you from completing some quests. I fixed some things but there are just too many to check. Migck dropped it for a reason. If you're ok with reloading before the beginning of a quest when you notice that it's bugged, you could still use the mod, I guess.

Edit: @Psymon: not true unfortunately, it changes/adds to quest stages and removing the mod once the quest has already begun (and especially has already advanced beyond the initial stage) has high chances of permanently breaking the quest.

I defer to you on that but I have taken it out twice mid way through quests and it turned out ok.

Making sure to take the good path of the completion and not putting it back in till quest was over.

But that was only twice. Not near as much a pain as taking C&C out.

Upon thought, what strikes me as most problematic with the whole "pay to get out of the quest" idea is its anti-RPG aspect. In the Leyawiin mage guild in particular, you have to help someone regain their sanity through finding an object--and hey-presto, if you come up with 500 septims, suddenly they're sane again, and addressing you directly. Agata, who seeks your assistance on Dagail's behavior, would never accept money in lieu of solving this crisis confronting the guild. In fact, I would think that Agata's opinion of you would take a small swing downwards merely from bringing it up. The same applies in Anvil and Bravil. Neither guild leader would or should look kindly upon an offer to buy your way out of an important quest. Kud-Ei is too caring, Carahil too responsible.

Now, I can see alternatives working elsewhere. Falcar, for example, might sell out in Cheydinhal for a lot more than 500 septims.

I think it would be better to allow "donating" money to certain individuals within the guilds to increase your reputation (you're buying powerful friends in high places), but not to skip the quests. Later on we could add some consequence or risk to bribing people, such as randomly determining who is corrupt (so it's not the same every game), and lowering your reputation if you try bribing an honest guild member.

Edit: but yeah, ONE quest being skippable with money, such as Falcar's, would be ok.

I just came up with an idea for the Thieves' Guild. I'm not sure if someone suggested this, or if it's worth implementing, but... Shady Sam buys stolen items. Let's say he has contacts in the guild... he's kind of a "front man". It would make more sense to have them (the guild) contact you when you've sold him a certain amount of stuff - say 50-100 gp. This shows that you're a decent thief, and Sam's already vetted you, so they know that you're worth approaching. As opposed to some idiot who just got thrown in jail for who-knows-what.

Okay. So. I love the idea of this mod. It seems to work really well for the Mages Guild, especially -- having to hit apprentice level in all the magic skills before completing the recommendation quests makes finally gaining entry to the Arcane University seem like a real accomplishment (especially using Progress with x7 skill slowdown . . . it took me a long time to get that far).

But the Fighters Guild accreditation portion seems hopelessly broken on my game. Admittedly, my game is heavily modded, so this isn't really surprising, but I'm not really sure what to do. I have two major problems:

1) Every time I try to do one of the tests, I lose all my equipment. It is taken away when I start the test, and not returned afterwards (except quest items, which do not go away). I can kind of work around this by dropping everything beforehand, but that's a huge pain, and anyway . . .

2) The armor accreditations are really broken for me. There's no way I can survive them. I usually die within two or three hits. I tried cheating to bump my light armor and heavy armor skills up to 100 and I still can't survive even the apprentice level certifications. This is probably due to Deadly Reflex and/or OOO increasing the damage levels, but it's a real problem.

I wonder if a simple Morrowind-style skillcheck of base skill values wouldn't have been a more compatible and less bug-prone approach to take. Although, I can certainly see the immersion advantage in requiring you to actual perform the skill being tested (and it does work great for the mage guild).

In any case, this is preventing me from doing any Fighters' Guild quests, and I would like to do so with this character (I've never really played the Fighters Guild questline to its completion). The readme posted in this thread says that uninstallation is as simple as removing the files. Is that really the case, or are there things I might need to adjust with the console? Will it cause problems with open quests? (I've been accepted to the Arcane University, and am on the 3rd quest there, if that means anything, but have only done the rats quest for Fighters Guild, since I can't advance.)

This is extremely serious and I will look into it ASAP, I was fearing it could happen and it happened. Supposedly all your equipment is returned to you when you finish the test either satisfactorily or failing, when the examiner talks to you. If your equipment isn't returned, does it happen in all tests, or only in a particular one?

For the second issue, again one of my fears come true. Yes, its because your damage settings are too high, but it's my fault not providing a way to prevent the player's accidental death in these tests. Cobl does provide such a thing however, but I don't know how to implement it... yet. For surviving the tests, my idea was for the player to move around trying to evade the examiner's attacks instead of passively taking the hits, is even that impossible to accomplish?

Uninstalling this mod has no trouble associated at all, and there is already at least another mod which does things in a simpler way like you say.

@WalkerInShadows: I'm not touching the TG more as I said, its just asking for trouble. Besides, Sam doesn't buy stolen stuff, despite his shady name and shady ways he's a decent guy.

All the tests that I have tried: apprentice level tests for block, marksman, and both heavy and light armors. I haven't tried any others.

I wonder if it's because I'm using kuertee's "Inventory Is A Backpack" mod? That's the only thing I have that strikes me as being likely to cause a problem.



I seem to be mostly locked in place once the armor tests start. I actually thought that was intentional . . . that does go away when the fight is over. I thought the intention was that with sufficient armor skill, we would simply be able to survive the hits.

The only way I've found to survive the tests is to drop a few potions beforehand so that I can pick them up again after my inventory has been removed. Even then, though, when I survive the test, my inventory is not returned to me.



Regrettably, I think I will go ahead and do that, then. Like I said, I love the ideas behind the mod, but it just doesn't work right with my game. Thank you for taking the time to address my concerns.

If you're taking suggestions, and have plans to work more on the mod . . . I think it might be good to make it modular. If it were, I would definitely still use the Mages and Thieves portions, even though the Fighters bit doesn't work for me.

Well, your game does sound heavily modded, and honestly I think you can expect more trouble from mod interactions in the future. Instead of removing C&C altogether, why don't you disable Deadly Reflex and some other script-heavy mods (kuertee mods, duke patrick mods, and the like) that can be added or removed without problem, just for the time of the examination? Just re-enable them once you have your diploma. This way you can have the best of both worlds.

Alternatively, I'm sure you could set the strength and blade/blunt skills of the examiner to 1. (Open console, click the guy, setav strength 1, and so on.

Personally I think migck did a great job with the scripted exams, they are conflict-prone but very cool and immersive. And you suggest a simple skill check instead of that? The horror, the horror... I suppose you'll also suggest simple text boxes saying "you decapitated the NPC" instead of visual decapitation in the DR thread ?

That's not a bad idea . . . but to me, that eliminates the whole purpose behind the scripted examinations, which is their immersiveness. Having to quit the game, disable a mod, take the examination, quit, reenable the mod, and start again every time doesn't have the same effect.

And you're right, my game is heavily modded -- I wasn't trying to say that C&C ought to accommodate Deadly Reflex and my other mods, I was mostly just asking to make sure that uninstalling is okay and explaining why I needed to do so. That said, so far I haven't really had any major mod conflicts (although I did have one annoying CTD issue with one of the UL mods), and I'm at 85 hours playtime on this install. I'm generally pretty careful about choosing mods that won't conflict with each other, but I didn't really think about this issue -- I was thinking of this mod primarily as strictly a quest/faction mod, rather than one that depends on combat settings.



That's an excellent idea, I might do that rather than uninstall it. Then it would effectively have the behavior I'm looking for, since the option to ask for the test doesn't even show up until you have the necessary skill levels. I just wish taking the exam wouldn't take away my inventory.



I agree! I think it's very impressive. It just doesn't work for me.



Heh, fair enough. I wouldn't actually mind not having decapitation animations in DR, though, just like I would be fine with only having skill requirements in C&C. I care more about the gameplay effects of mods than I do about their presentation. In Deadly Reflex, I like that combat becomes dramatically more complex and deadly. In C&C, I like that you actually have to be competent at the skills used by a guild in order to advance within it. I also really like the little repeatable mini-tasks/bounties for increasing faction reputation (and the very concept of faction reputation), which make being a member of a faction much more meaningful. The presentation (heads flying off for DR or immersive scripted exams for C&C) is nice, but mostly incidental to my enjoyment.

Notwithstanding my sarcasm, the inventory being taken away and not given back IS really annoying. Does it also happen to you with the blade examination in Leyawiin? Curiously, with that one I have a different conflict with Deadly Reflex: the examiner attacks me after the exam. I guess I must be a very bad student :rolleyes: .

I'm sure the conflict is solvable somehow, so if you do pinpoint the conflicting mod(s) please post here. I hope to have to look at the scripts next week.

I'd better add a notice this time:

Basically, right now its almost impossible for me to continue modding or supporting, though I'll try the latter if I get the time. University is getting more and more demanding as I speak, and I'd rather avoid touching a computer for non-academic purposes as much as possible to avoid fatal distractions (yes, in my case they ARE fatal).
So, to sum up, I'm sorry but I can't continue developing this mod for the moment. I would love if Gabba could put some work in this while I'm away, after all, he knows more about advanced scripting than me, like the array-stuff for the "auto-rep chests" or whatever they will be called if they get implemented.

I have to disagree on the Sneaking. In my previous game, as a Khaijit Thief/Archer Sneak advanced at about twice the rate of my other skills. It was harder to advance in Security, especially after obtaining the Skeleton Key.

Can you point my in the direction of the mods that make it harder to get noticed by the Dark Brotherhood recruiter?



I like the sound of that!




This is weird...my copy of EQR (Lingwei's original one, and not the BETA version) only edit 27 vanilla quests, but the the above mentioned two are not among them. Also, in my previous game I was able to complete most of the quests without any problems. I didn't start all the quests (like the MQs), but of those I did start none of them had problems.
So I'm a bit puzzles about the talk about EQR being so buggy, as I found C&C to be more buggy and I had to use TES4EDIT or the console some times to progress.
Anyway, is there any later versions, edited by Migck or Gabba, that is avilable for download?

Eh. Moot point, since migck's dismissed it.


It's called http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12971 - it increases the number of murders required to 6.

Ouch, bad news. I understand perfectly your situation, I've been there more than once.

Right now I can't publicly commit to update the mod, since I've already done that for other stuff.
I'll monitor this thread and answer from time to time. What you can expect though is that at some point this summer I'll integrate the scripts I've written above, and probably try to fix the problem with the Blade/Blunt examinators as well. And maybe improve the way we know about guild reputation.


My latest update CandCandEQR 1.2, had two fixes for EQR quests. I don't know what else migck had fixed, or if he exclusively worked with C&C.
Since 2.0 migck doesn't include the EQR esp anymore.
So in theory you could download my 1.2, but unfortunately it seems migck has removed most old versions.

As far as bugginess is concerned, there were at least those two that I fixed in aforementioned version:
- (EQR) Fixed the alternate ending of "No Stone Unturned", so you actually have a choice of who you give the papers to.
- (EQR) Fixed the directions to Redguard Valley Cave you're given in "Sins of the Father": it would send you west instead of east.
And I experienced others which I strongly suspect of being from EQR. There are many, many quests affected by this mod, and I got discouraged at checking them or heaven forbid, playtesting them all.

I have a problem. I turned in four apprentice diplomas to the head of the Fighter's Guild, then I wanted to advance to apprentice, but Azzan says I'm not yet ready for advancement. What's going on?... You only need four apprentice diplomas, at least that's what the book says.

Some suggestions for this mod:

• It makes more sense for examiners not to be new nameless characters, but the already existing members of the Fighters Guild with whom you can train your skills with.
  
• I would prefer a different system for advancing in rank entirely, Morrowind's system where you just need to raise your skills instead of going to examiners to advance. Guild Skill Requirements does this, but it adds a bunch of documents in your inventory. Instead, you should receive a paper from whomever lets you join in and it tells you the skill requirements for advancement.