So as I am lurking around seeing what I want to add to my game, I happened across this mod.

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=706

It looks to be a really old mod that has recently gone through a bit of a tune up. It surprises me I haven't heard of this mod before, or at least come across it till recently. It does seem like it might be of value, what with it having a land mass with a town and factions. But there seems to be complaints about a bank there being really unbalancing. Now a bank I can avoid, but are there any other imbalances that I should be aware of, like over powered items or something?

After a learned of such an obvious yet unfixed balance issue, I have become concerned this mod may not be worth a download and so need advice on it.

I played through Havish (or at least most of it) a year or two back and I enjoyed it. I don't remember any balance issues, but if there are any then I'm sure they are very easily mendable in the CS. In my opinion, some *much* more important things to look for in a quest mod are the writing, the incorporation of the quest into the existing game, and the level of detail of new landmasses, cities, etc added to the game by the mod. I think the authors of Havish performed masterfully in these categories. :^)

Ya see, if the dialogue in a quest mod is written poorly then the mod isn't worth your time because you won't care about the quest or anyone involved in it because you don't want to read anything they have to say. If the quest is placed in the game in a tasteless or jarring way then it may interfere with other quests and normal play so much that you'd rather live without it. If the scenery is boring, bland, or just plain bad then you'll probably lose interest in the quest again because actually doing it is just so darn boring. However, if none of this is true of a mod, if it is written very well and is very fun to play, but at the end of a dungeon you find a pile of "too much" gold or a weapon with "too much" damage... who cares? Those are problems that are very easily mendable in seconds. That's not really an issue at all.

So I recommend you give Havish a try. :^)

Havish is highly recommended!

I think I went to the Bank once, and that was for a Thieves Guild quest.

There is a http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7313, although I never used it and never encountered the glitch.
And a http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7803 add-on if you use NoM.
The forested add-on is now part of the main download, so you don't need it.

I haven't noticed any balance problems with Havish, although I haven't done all its quests or explored every cave/ruin. Just make sure the landmass doesn't conflict with anything else you have loaded. I know Silgrad Tower clashes, and I'm sure there are others.

Havish is indeed a great adventure and I also recommend it.

I played through it with a mage a few years ago. The town does look a little spartan, probably due to age and trying to save FPS on older PCs, but it's probably as large as Vivec and there's a good deal to do. A few of the models, faces etc are a little dated compared to stuff today but it doesn't detract from the story IMO. Plus it adds a few interesting things to the game overall, like the teleport crystals. I don't recall anything unbalancing but then I usually ignore that sort of thing or maybe I missed it. I do remember the main reward which I thought was fine.

Definitely use forested Havish as suggested and if you're up to it generate some grass for the island.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg282/MrKWMonk/MGEScreenshot538.jpg that I took when I revisited the island a few months ago.

As mentioned http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg282/MrKWMonk/Map-nonlorestuff.jpg

:)
-kwm

Any chance of sharing that grass ESP for Havish, Mr KWMonk? I think uploading it to PES or somewhere would be well worth doing...

I've considered doing it in the past but... All my grass esp files are region texture based and then cleaned up to not conflict with my own load order. So the grass I see on Havish is not specific to the island but to where ever the texture used on the ground there occurs, including other landmass mods (see the other pic). I don't know exactly what's been used on Havish but it could easily have some ground cover from my Bitter Coast esp and some from the Ascadian Isles one and some from any of the other 8 I use (about 160Mb of grass esps not including Vurts Solsthiem one). I also use forested MW so any ash like ground textures would get lush grass. There'd be a lot of deleting cells, checking things, merging esps... Probably simpler to start from scratch!

:blush: if it was 5 years ago I'd probably do it but now with a wife, 2 kids 2.5 years and 2.5 months old, I get very little spare time. Maybe one day but I cannot make any promises. Sorry.


-kaos

No need to justify yourself . I can imagine that it would be a lot of work to finetune. OnTopic: Havish is a great mod, so go play it

What's so unbalancing about bank in Havish? Is it this particular implementation of a bank, or bank principle in general you find unbalancing?

(I have vested interest, you see )

I don't the details I'm afraid, just had a few people tell me that bank interest stacks up too quickly or pays too much interest I guess, and if enough money is used it can make money no object at all, because the interest begins to really pay for itself. Apparently if you put most of your money in there, and leave it alone, then come back later, say after doing a quest line that takes awhile, you'll find yourself needing for nothing anymore.

Something like X amount gets put in..

Time passes and you get your interest on X amount

More time passes and X amount plus Y (interest) become the new X amount interest is paid on..

this results in a larger Y amount..

Over time this grows and grows, so when you come back to get your Z amount (full amount) it's much larger than the X amount you put in.


This means that you can keep most of it in, using only part of the Z amount for your expenses while still collecting a Y amount and getting a massive increase in your gold all the while, because it collects faster than you spend it. No need for sales, just use the bank.

I don't know if this really is the case cuz I don't have the mod yet, but I saw no reason to doubt what I was told. Perhaps if it had a cap on it, so you couldn't just afk it.. you had to come collect so you could continue growing funds? :shrug: Wish I could say more, but that's all I know atm. If it does stack up really high, couldn't hurt to turn payment on it down some or slow it.

I see. Well, that's technically the case, although unless you already have more than 10,000gp on your account (at which point you can consider yourself financially secure anyway), interest rate is 0.3-0.4%, which gives you 12% increase per month or x4.3 per year. By IRL standards, it's pretty absurd, but compared to the speed you gain money by other means in this game... [shrug]. And anyway, you can edit the mod yourself to set more appropriate interest rates.

EDIT: Hah! I just noticed that there's a possibility to transfer money to/from Indybank if player has both mods at the same time. Cu-u-ute! :foodndrink:

Whew.. glad to hear that's all. I will get to enjoy it then and that's good cuz it looks like it took a lot of work. I guess I'll have to figure out how to mod the bank though.

See, a little bit of interest is fine, but MW cash is plentiful as it is, let alone with mods installed. All it takes is one slightly overpowered or over generous mod and you are rolling in it. I finally got into white wolf of lokken the other day. Money galore there. Most the weapons and armor are cash cows, even if a little heavy, and during the quests, I almost ran away with a few of the items rather than giving it to the NPC's because the enchantments meant for another purpose end up modding you pretty good.

So 10K is no big deal really. I used to break a few million by just looting houses, killing guards and selling off all the junk.. and that was just vanilla. When mods come into play, it becomes even easier. Most forget to set ownerships in some houses or what have you. Even a few good ones are guilty of this. My concern is that 10K being next to nothing can trickle in quite fast.. steal an enchanted blade, sell to creeper.. more or less done. No creeper, no problem. Kill generics and loot. Set up a route with a few favored traders so they have high dispositions and a travel route near them.. (even the one in seyda neen works) 1000 a stop, and they refill as your traveling to the next guy.



A flaw with many mods out there is that they even take the work of that out of the mix.. they give you the means to gain a lot of easy constant money, usually via a quest of some sort, and then give you no way to waste it out.. so your game becomes more inflated and vendors are meaningless. I tell you, if MW was real, dirt would litterly be worth more than gold. So I get nervous when a balance issue has to do with money, cuz it's an easy way out of most reward systems, and a major balance problem if left unchecked. Most people know this and do what they can to at least tweak it.. so when it's not well thought out or adjusted, it can be a sign of additional balance problems.

Sure items can be modded down in the CS, but if there are many of them, I usually just don't bother with a download.. cuz if an item is over powered, then the quests expect it, so those needed modded to avoid overpowered bosses or something. (and god forbid if you break the quest) I mean, you do hope to use stuff elsewhere right? Otherwise why go through all the work? You'd have to just to toss it aside at the end, then return to your balanced game spaces with high enough stats to do one hit kills even without the items.

This is why I had to check. Even if a mod has a really awesome town and dialogue, it may still have internal scarring of a sort that is not easy to fix via the CS. When I was informed of the fact that it was really inflating money values, I had to be sure that was all.. that it wasn't just pretty to look at, but viable for use.


Geez.. that was long. Maybe I should edit it down. I get talkative when I can't sleep. Btw, do my eyes deceive me Kir, or does it say you joined the forum before MW was even out? Don't see many like that anymore.

A veeery well done mod. Lots of quests, scripts, and adventures where you have to use your intelligence and you have to roleplay.

Old quest mods are the best mods, in my opinion( Havish, Annastia, Children of the Night, The goblin Lab, The black mill, Booty island, Lokken... : p )

Exactly. My point is, if you don't abuse PROFIT-prone mods and game's own imbalances, and care for money to make sense, 10K is a considerable sum, and if you succumb to easy money temptation, the unreasonable bank interest is the least of your problems and too late to worry about.

If you plan to take the issue seriously enough to modify the mod, you'll need to edit the script ZH_NPC_Bank_Cashier and to find a following fragment:

			if ( ZH_Bank_Account < 5000 )				set ZH_Bank_Interest to 0.3			elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 10000 )				set ZH_Bank_Interest to 0.4			elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 50000 )				set ZH_Bank_Interest to 1.0			elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 100000 )				set ZH_Bank_Interest to 1.3			else				set ZH_Bank_Interest to 1.6			endif			set ZH_Bank_Interest to ( ZH_Bank_Interest / ZH_Bank_Robbery_Effect )		endwhile	endif	set  Account_Changed to 1		Activateendif; Interest is determined by the sum off the player's account, and lowered if; halfed/tripled if the player has entered the safe (Bank Robbing Thieves Guild Quest...); Also the two Dialogue-Dummy Globals are set to Player's Gold and interest per day (in Gold)if ( Account_Changed == 1 )	if ( ZH_Bank_Account < 5000 )		set ZH_Bank_Interest to 0.4	elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 10000 )		set ZH_Bank_Interest to 0.7	elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 50000 )		set ZH_Bank_Interest to 1.5	elseif ( ZH_Bank_Account < 100000 )		set ZH_Bank_Interest to 2.0	else		set ZH_Bank_Interest to 2.5	endif

The main mod is an .esm, though. If you're not proficient with mod editing, the easiest way to solve it would be load Morrowind.esm and Havish.esm without selecting an active plugin, edit the mentioned script, and then save as a patch that you'll have to use along with the mod itself.

Yeah, played through this many years ago.

Pros:
- Good quest ideas and design
- Quests that integrate well with Vvardenfell
- Good scripting ideas

Cons:
- Not so hot grammar/english in the dialogue spoils immersion
- New island not too detailed
- New city quite empty

Overall I considered it not worth being in my future games. I consider another of his mods, Haldenshore, to be a bit more interesting and integrated. However because of the writing I couldn't justify keeping that in my games either.

For good classic quest mods with top-notch writing, I recommend The Illuminated Order, Juniper's Twin Lamps, Sorefoot Enterprises and Beyond YsGramor.