[Prue]

"Beware what treasure ye seek?
When finding it, one sees the truth of what ye are truly searching for?"
Summersky, High Priestess of the Mnymer


Introducing...

The Heart

Of The Dead


Official Download Links:
http://www.heartofthedead.com
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21176
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=5139

Previous Threads:

Official Release Thread #1: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=919965
Official Release Thread #2: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=925061
Official Release Thread #3: http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=950331

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/Middark2

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You approach the beggar slowly, the man's sickly smile reminding you of the horrors of living on the street. "Spare a coin?" He asks. Reluctantly you toss him a gold piece and tell him to go get dinner. "Ah, what mercy," the man says. "You might be just the one I'm looking for?"

Thus begins "The Heart of the Dead", an 10+ hour quest adventure that will take you across the length of Cyrodiil in search of a rare Ayleid artifact. Visit old places with new twists, crawl along ancient dungeons and ruins, and follow the trail of clues as it leads you ever closer to the item known only as the Heart of the Dead.

The basic setup is this: The player is hired by a dying beggar to find an ancient Ayleid artifact called the Heart of the Dead. Armed only with a single clue, the player must head all over the continent, finding clues that lead him deeper into the mystery of what the Heart is, and what it's capable of. Along the way, he'll meet up with Kat, a freewheeling thief who holds a dark secret, Dublin, a dark elf mage who's looking to find his dead sister again, and Wintermoon, the Mystic Elf with a hidden connection to the Heart.

The quest will take the player to hidden places inside well known locations, as well as to all new lands and dreamscapes, as he tries to uncover the mystery of the Heart of the Dead...

Featuring:

- 10+ hours of in-depth storytelling and dozens of new dungeons, along with many different puzzles and riddles, to create a grand adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones or National Treasure.

- Dozens of new NPCs with over a thousand lines of dialog in a character-based quest

- Three fully realized NPCs, with their own personalities, who might become your companions, depending on your actions and interactions with them. Share their joys and tears, and maybe even fall in love?

- New weapons and armor

- Dozens of unique artwork, used with permission by dozens of the best modders in the community. Some you'll recognize, and some will surprise you?

- A new unique home, with plenty of storage and surprises.

BONUS: Also included is an extra music pack, for those who want to listen to pieces that are appropriate to this quest.


Requirements:
The Heart of the Dead requires that Shivering Isles must be installed

Also recommended is a character 15th level or higher. A character lower than 15 can still play, but the quest can get quite tough for beginning levels.

===================================
Credits
===================================

All Quest Dialog, Scripting and Story: B. Freyermuth (Middark)
The Companions use a heavily modified version of "CM Partners" by Cutthroat Mods.

Testing: Thanks to the wonderful SickleYield for her many selfless hours at bug killing and advice.

Many talented and wonderfully supportive artists gave permission to use their art in the game:

Ren's Mystic Elves and Hair: Ren
Dreadweave Complete (WK Armor): Nicoroshi
Dublin's Robe: Original Mesh: Blackheart, Conversion: SickleYield, Texture: AlienSlof
Kat's Hairstyle: Soya
Kat's Face (Nina): Luchaire
Kat's Armor (Blood Ice Mesh): Petrovich
Kat's Armor (Blood Ice Recoloring): Luchaire
Hunters' Outfit (Assassin's Elite): Petrovich
Dragon Torch: Saiden Storm, B. Freyermuth, and SickleYield
Dead White King Armor: Cinkei, Ami Yoshida and Bloke
Loreless Creature Pack: Koldorn and Phitt
Akatosh Mount: Saiden Storm
Kagernacs Tools: Star Boi aka Earrindo
Daedric Statues: Cinnamon & Trey Leavens
Forgotten Shields: Pain Killer
Dwarven Ruins: mr_siika
Magic Shields: KZ
Shadow Staffs: Trollf
Underwater Beds: Kalikut
Static Water Texture: Texian
Shadow Weapons: Andragorn
Real Lava: CptJoker
Deadworld Fractals: Cory and Catska Ench
Bab and:
FF Bodies:
Ceedee for BAB
Corwyn, Daede and TeamFF

The following clothing and armor are BAB converted to UFF:
Mystic Elf Armor, both male (Fantasy) and female (Ebony Revamped)
Wintermoon's dress (Bloodrayne)
And Kat's dress (White Plain Velvet)

All other meshes and textures are either created by Bethesda or Brian Freyermuth.

Some of the music gathered came from Sinblood's Additional Music pack. While he didn't create the
music within, he did modify some to fit Oblivion, as well as brought them to my attention.
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20227

[~Sylvia~]

*click* im downladoing as we speak you have my thungs up....i love goiod quest mods

[Jade]

Hi Middark

I'm having another problem, I've just killed the elven lich in the caverns and make my way to the Cathedral, but there's no ghost of the Father in the Cathedral, so i'm just stuck in there at the moment, i checked the readme and guide, but all it says is that the Father is angry and that i should defeat him to make the flame go out and pick up the helmet... Am I doing something wrong?

(Really enjoying the quest so far)

[Jeremy Kenney]

Bravo! wonderful wonderful mod. Please continue with your work. the sotry line was intense and i felt as though i had a connecton to the charcter when they

Spoiler

died

i will endorse the mod when i get the chance

[Kirsty Collins]

Hi Middark

I'm having another problem, I've just killed the elven lich in the caverns and make my way to the Cathedral, but there's no ghost of the Father in the Cathedral, so i'm just stuck in there at the moment, i checked the readme and guide, but all it says is that the Father is angry and that i should defeat him to make the flame go out and pick up the helmet... Am I doing something wrong?

(Really enjoying the quest so far)

I've had this happen once before. It's very strange. A quick way past it is to open the console and type:

SetStage 0HOD01 77

This should do it.

-Middark

[M!KkI]

First off I have to say, increadible mod! 10/10 One of the best I have ever played. Having said that, there are a couple of bugs I have noticed: SPOILER WARNING (wish i knew how to black out text like the other ppl who posted did)



I went with romanticizing Dublin, i'm at the very end where i'm running for the exit, but for some reason when I use the portal (Dublin is alive and next to me) Dublin does not come with me. Instead I wake up and Wintermoon is there to greet and request to join me. What happened to Dublin? Using V. 5.3

The other glitch I have noticed, just after having stolen the statue and heading to the three sisters inn. Dublin and Kat don't say word one to eachother before they make you decide between the two, no sub titles no nothing.

Oh, I have a rather interesting work around for the whole modav health thing, I use nGCD.
Hope to hear from ya soon B)

[David John Hunter]

I went with romanticizing Dublin, i'm at the very end where i'm running for the exit, but for some reason when I use the portal (Dublin is alive and next to me) Dublin does not come with me. Instead I wake up and Wintermoon is there to greet and request to join me. What happened to Dublin? Using V. 5.3

This is a nasty bug that I haven't been able to pin down. There is a work around in the readme, however. Load the game right before you enter the last Dead World portal that leads to the house. Open the console and type:

Set HODDublinAttitude to 1000

Then enter the portal.

The other glitch I have noticed, just after having stolen the statue and heading to the three sisters inn. Dublin and Kat don't say word one to eachother before they make you decide between the two, no sub titles no nothing.

This is also a known bug that I haven't figured out how to fix yet. It happens on only a few people's machines, and that's why I had the player choose with Kat, even if the conversation didn't happen. So that you wouldn't be stuck.


Hope this helps.

-Middark

[Yama Pi]

hey i'm haven a problem when you are suppose to find the 2 statues and one of them comes from getting back the countesses amulet. The person im suppose to talk to to find the thief is not were i believe hes suppose to be i cant find him and the marker just leads me to an empty spot in the castles entrance room.

[tannis]

Hey, just came to ask about a problem I'm having, but found the issue on the previous thread. The trouble is, you can't search for this thread because of certain keywords :-/

Anyway:

Got a bit of a problem:

After I show the high elf guy the gloves and I go to sleep for the dream, I appear in the room and the two guys in the room appear chest deep in the floor and are immediately rendered "dead," coming back to life a couple times only to die again

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=950331&view=findpost&p=14536164


I had the same problem and found that Oblivion Stutter Remover (or whatever it's called now smile.gif ) was causing the problem. I just moved the osr .dll until the cutscene was over, saved, moved the .dll back and continued playing - no problems. I think the fixes to the stuttering cause a timing problem with cutscenes. Hope this helps.

[Ross]

Also, a question - if I'm using elys' silent voice, I could delete all the mp3s from the BSA and repack it without them, right? Seems they're all generated silent mp3s, adding up about 150MB

[Sabrina garzotto]

hey i'm haven a problem when you are suppose to find the 2 statues and one of them comes from getting back the countesses amulet. The person im suppose to talk to to find the thief is not were i believe hes suppose to be i cant find him and the marker just leads me to an empty spot in the castles entrance room.

Have you talked to Laythe in the throne room about the stolen items?

-Middark

[Shannon Lockwood]

Also, a question - if I'm using elys' silent voice, I could delete all the mp3s from the BSA and repack it without them, right? Seems they're all generated silent mp3s, adding up about 150MB

I have no clue if this will work, but you can try.

-Middark

[Stephanie Nieves]

No issue now, I've finished the mod. Really, really amazing work there, fair play. The mod felt long, full of quality throughout and I experienced no crashes. There were some [censored] parts like

Spoiler

Dublin setting the palace on fire

.

Now it's over, I'm left with an active quest relating to

Spoiler

Wintermoon

- will this ever disappear? I'm guessing not, kinda bugs me having left-over active quests from mods, but it's no big deal really.

I also found the final person you battle much easier to kill than any of the enemies leading up to him/her/it (I'm leaving this vague on purpose for anyone else reading)


oh yeah, I had to turn on 'general subtitles' to read what people are saying during the 'cutscenes' - I only realised this in the 2nd dream, so I missed what was said during the first one.

[Caroline flitcroft]

I'm having an issue with one of my saved games. This has nothing to do with Heart of the Dead, but I thought someone on here might have a solution as searching has yielded nothing. The iron gates that are switch-activated (be it by wall switch or pressure plate) are not opening in the couple of Ayleid ruins I've been in with my newer character. One or two will, but most of the time they won't and I have to TCL to get through them. I don't know what the issue is or why it's happening, since it doesn't happen to my other saved games, at least as far as I can remember. Any help would be great.
Also, Middark, how's the voice acting coming?

[CSar L]

I'm having an issue with one of my saved games. This has nothing to do with Heart of the Dead, but I thought someone on here might have a solution as searching has yielded nothing. The iron gates that are switch-activated (be it by wall switch or pressure plate) are not opening in the couple of Ayleid ruins I've been in with my newer character. One or two will, but most of the time they won't and I have to TCL to get through them. I don't know what the issue is or why it's happening, since it doesn't happen to my other saved games, at least as far as I can remember. Any help would be great.
Also, Middark, how's the voice acting coming?

The VO version kinda stalled a bit. All that's left al Dublin's and Kat's companion lines, but real life has taken its toll on my actors, so I'm patiently waiting for these. I'm still hoping for an end of August release, but it might go into Sept.

-Middark

[Davorah Katz]

I'm having an issue with one of my saved games. This has nothing to do with Heart of the Dead, but I thought someone on here might have a solution as searching has yielded nothing. The iron gates that are switch-activated (be it by wall switch or pressure plate) are not opening in the couple of Ayleid ruins I've been in with my newer character. One or two will, but most of the time they won't and I have to TCL to get through them. I don't know what the issue is or why it's happening, since it doesn't happen to my other saved games, at least as far as I can remember. Any help would be great.
Also, Middark, how's the voice acting coming?

How long have you been playing with your current character? It could be the "abomb" bug: the animations play very slowly. If you have Wrye Bash, go to the saves tab, right-click on a save (backup first of course I don't want to die) and chose "repair abomb".

[Roberta Obrien]

I don't use Wrye Bash, don't have enough mods running to really need it..but I've had the animation bug before with my older character and fixed it using a saved game cleanup tool...but that was for almost every slow animation (spell effects, switches, doors, etc..) this is just with iron gates switch activated or pressure plate....very odd.

[Suzy Santana]

Nevermind.

[Kim Bradley]

Anyone happen to read http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=950331&view=findpost&p=14523817 It was at the bottom of page 9 and pretty long, don't recall seeing most of those bugs being mentioned by anyone else.

Anyway, I guess Kate and Dublin didn't like what I said about them because they've decided to occasioinally haunt me. Rarely they will suddenly spawn near me and then immediately fall over dead. In the begining it was just Kat and I haven't had her haunting me in quite some time, but now a looong time since completing HotD Dublin fell over dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the third floor in the Two Sisters Lodge. looking at Vow's and Covenant's death log I also saw that Kat had also died recently, but I hadn't seen her corpse haunting me.

If you want an example of what I'm talking about here's http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/phoenix7/Oblivion/ScreenShot149.jpg. I was walking through a corridor when she suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and fell over dead behind me. I didn't even notice her until I looked back at the corridor. I've tried disabling them (it crashes my game), resurrecting them, everything I can think of but no matter what they still end up catching up to me and having their corpses occasionally pop up around me.

[Kim Bradley]

Hi,

I was wondering if you have a moment to investigate a compatibility issue? Reports have been coming in that HotD has some small landscape conflicts with my recently released http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1022968&hl=. I'd check it out myself but I don't have Shivering Isles, so my game crashes instantly if I try to use your mod.

I'll go in more detail if you can help. It should be a relatively simple fix from what I've heard.

[Spencey!]

Anyone happen to read http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=950331&view=findpost&p=14523817 It was at the bottom of page 9 and pretty long, don't recall seeing most of those bugs being mentioned by anyone else.

Anyway, I guess Kate and Dublin didn't like what I said about them because they've decided to occasioinally haunt me. Rarely they will suddenly spawn near me and then immediately fall over dead. In the begining it was just Kat and I haven't had her haunting me in quite some time, but now a looong time since completing HotD Dublin fell over dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the third floor in the Two Sisters Lodge. looking at Vow's and Covenant's death log I also saw that Kat had also died recently, but I hadn't seen her corpse haunting me.

If you want an example of what I'm talking about here's http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v189/phoenix7/Oblivion/ScreenShot149.jpg. I was walking through a corridor when she suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and fell over dead behind me. I didn't even notice her until I looked back at the corridor. I've tried disabling them (it crashes my game), resurrecting them, everything I can think of but no matter what they still end up catching up to me and having their corpses occasionally pop up around me.

Yeah, this is a bug that I've been trying to track down for months now. I'm hoping to have some kind of fix by the time the VO version of HOD comes out.

-Middark

[james kite]

Hi,

I was wondering if you have a moment to investigate a compatibility issue? Reports have been coming in that HotD has some small landscape conflicts with my recently released http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1022968&hl=. I'd check it out myself but I don't have Shivering Isles, so my game crashes instantly if I try to use your mod.

I'll go in more detail if you can help. It should be a relatively simple fix from what I've heard.

I'll look through the thread and see what I can do. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: Actually, do you know which area is conflicting? Is the report in the thread, and if so, on which page. I'm getting slammed at work and I don't have time to read through all 11 pages...

-Middark

[Jennie Skeletons]

I'll look through the thread and see what I can do. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Edit: Actually, do you know which area is conflicting? Is the report in the thread, and if so, on which page. I'm getting slammed at work and I don't have time to read through all 11 pages...

-Middark

It's a house near Dive Rock, connected to the povsscindyhouse interior cell, in the wilderness cell (34,35). Supposedly it floats in the air when HotD is installed, and from what I can see in the details section of the construction set HotD does edit things around that area.

The patch should be a simple matter of grounding the house, the door marker, two NPCs and a note. The IDs of the NPCs and the note start with 'pov' and are just outside the house.

Your mod sounds very good, I'll be sure to play it some time if I ever get Shivering Isles.

[lauren cleaves]

I recently finished this mod, and now I have a permanent 'restore health ' effect, it lists as an ability of heal 50000.
I dropped all clothes, weapons and jewelry received in this mod, and the effect is still there.
If I take healing potions, it just adds to the 50000 until the potion wears off, then the value goes back to 50000.
What can I do to remove it?
The effect happened somewhere near the end of the mod.

[Jennifer Rose]

I finished the quest and I must say it is nothing short of amazing. The blending of story, character development, and cool use of puzzles, were great. I am now experiencing the same problem as others, but it is Kat and Wintermoon both showing up. They randomly appear behind me and are just standing there. I can loot them like they are dead, but their eyes move around. It is kind of creepy. First time it happened was when I was organizing a bookshelf. I turned around to see them and it scared the crap out of me. I know it is a bug but it is kind of funny. If it can not be fixed outright, it would be kind of cool to change them into ethereal form so they look like ghosts. Just a thought, but I did like the mod a lot.