CROSSBOW:



Bolts for keening are just the standard Dwarven ones I invented as far as damage goes, so everything is balanced. Since they are "keening" bolts though, I made them heavier, and because it sounds like they are going to be scripted, I removed their value to discourage them from being sold.

The bow DOES have the keening increases however, so you're still wielding keening.

As for the enchant values on the regular bolt, I left this blank till I can understand what determines how much magic a bolt can have.

No worries.

Just had a look at http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7903 by a familiar face. Looks good enough to me. The bolt channel is hidden well enough that a little imagination makes it plausible to have Keening's blade hidden inside it.

Only one more mesh to find. A Keening staff. :whistling:


KF


Edit:

Those numbers look great Maholix. I like your formula. Seems to work across the board as well. Thanks for the help.

No problem, it's nice to be useful once in a while.

I gotta go run some errands, but when I get back I will tackle the mace, and most likely the staff.

Hey Jac,

Any of http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7355 strike your fancy? They aren't listed as a resource, but MA is around to ask permissions.


KF

Of course, the next question is what about characters that don't specialize in Heavy Armor and have Wraithguard?

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/Misc/art_wraith_amulet.jpg

My personal line of thought (YMMV) for the speshal crossbow idea that everyone seemed to come up with independently is that the bolts Keening shoots shouldn't in any way compromise the blade, from a logical and lore standpoint ("eh, well, I heard you hate poking things, so I broke Keening up for you. If it doesn't work, we're all screwed, but at least you'll be comfortable.") Infinitely restocking bolts, while awesome, aren't strictly balanced, but I think that the crossbow should generate them somehow by flaying the ether or whatever, because pre-creating special bolts doesn't work without breaking Keening. A few balanced solutions:

- My favorite solution, I don't know how it'd be scripted, though: imbuing Keening with a soul from a gem (preferably a 400-point one, it's not like there won't be any Ascended Sleepers around) gives it enough metaphysical juice to shoot off 5 or 10 bolts of slicing energy. I guess 10 would work best unless you can charge it up more beforehand.

- Do a check for the Heart Chamber and make it create bolts while it's in there. Not sure exactly why it would do that (unless it draws power from the Heart?)

- Make it so if you equip certain bolts, Keening "charges" them (in which case you could use the pretty Keening bolt model). A bit more complex, as it would presumably involve checking for the bolts to be equipped, deleting them, replacing them with "charged" bolts, and checking if those are unequipped so it can revert them back.

Also, random thought, but shouldn't Yagrum need to borrow Wraithguard to work on Keening, or is he reeallly careful?

Edit: That amulet is sixy. I guess you don't need to have Wraithguard on the specific hand you're using the Tools with, seeing as the jury-rigged one works. Also, the only thing left at this point is a hand-to-hand Keening

Wraithguard is a little bit different. The only downside to wearing it if you don't use heavy armor is a few points of AC. With Keening it was hard to hit the heart at all unless you had at least moderate skill with shortblades.

It's a great looking amulet though. Maybe it could be a seperate mod? Would there be interest? :whistling:



Edit: Version 1.3 is up at GHF and PES. This version sets the stats to where they should be for the new forms of Keening. Thanks, Maholix.

I like the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=81556; it looks like a Dwemer mace mounted on a pole, which Yagram could do by combining a mace with Keening's handle. The blade could be said to be inlaid within the staff.

@DD: Here's a http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m313/gulfwulf/Morrowind%20-%20Wolfie/MGEScreenshot66.jpg of the Dwemer sniper rifle from AA. The bolt rifle is the same design without the scope on top.

I love the amulet, Alaisiagae.

I think it's great that in a one player moddable game, people can actually have whatever they want, instead of being completely locked into the game developers' ideas of what fun is. I don't mean to just throw caution to the wind here, but IMHO, Morrowind is fictional, not just fictional, but fantasy. The restraints of lore are broken by Bethesda between each release, so I'm thinking it's pretty open to interpretation.

Could be that over many thousands of years, Yagrum has gotten to the point where tinkering is more important to him than saving the world. It's completely possible that the lethal enchantment on the blade doesn't affect his race. It could be that Wraithguard was made to protect non-Dwemer from Dwemer technology. The psyche of the last living Dwarf, I can handle. Working within the laws of physics, not too much of a problem.

In any case, for my part, breaking a blade into arrowhead sized shards is a whole hell of a lot easier to write than slicing through the ether with non-existent magical projectiles. I'm not sure what connection the Dwemer might have had to soul gems or whether or not Yagrum would have the ability to change the enchantment on any weapon. In other words, if the plot gets too far out there . . . I'm not the one to write it. Please, don't feel like I'm being argumentative, but I know my limitations and pulling magic out of thin air is one of them.

I love the amulet too, Alaisiagae. I'd be more than happy to add it if Elaura is up for the dialogue. I just don't want this to get more additions forever.

In fact, one of the reasons for this post is to ask if http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/Misc/art_keening_mace_2.jpg can have it's handle lengthened like http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/fms/Image.php?id=81556? It would be the final mesh we need to complete the Keening set.


As for the ranged weapon, I think I've got it pretty much figured out. I was thinking of using our great mesh artist's work http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7903 to make a Keening crossbow. This particular model has an enclosed chamber of some sort above the bolt channel. This feature will allow us to use the mesh with no retexturing at all. The chamber would hold Keening's blade in close proximity to a very special type of bolt made by YB. These "Keening" bolts would absorb some of the magic of Keening due to close proximity to the blade before firing. The crossbow itself would have the Keening enchantments and scripts, while the special bolts would be a one time only package of 15-20 bolts. Only these special bolts will be capable of hitting the heart, and only if fired from Keening. The crossbow would function as a normal dwarven crossbow with any normal bolts.


How does this sound?


KF

Sorry I haven't posted the staff stats, my block had a power outage. Now that I can see a model, I should be able to post them very soon.

Looking at that staff though, is there any way to reflect the blade somehow? To me, there is nothing on this model to set it apart from a normal staff. Even glowing blue runes, possibly around the outside of it, around the head of the staff, would help. If it had something like that, it would imply that a powerful object is inside and the runes help bring the power out.

EDIT:

Somehow I thought you meant that the staff had the blade inside it. :blush:

Still, it might be cool to have the runes on it anyway. lol

Please excuse the DP here, but as this post has to do with the staff stat's, it's prolly important everyone know I've posted them now, and an edit would not do this very well. I'll refrain from posting additional comments in this post as a compromise.

STAFF:

When I was looking at the dialogue in the first version of Keening Reforged, I noticed Yagrum's dialogue involving the backpath wraithguard has higher priority, even after the backpath wraithguard is complete. In case you haven't already, it would be a good idea to ensure the player can reforge after jury-rigging wraithguard. You may also need to ensure compatability with how the MPP changes the backpath dialogue for wraithguard.

As far as I know (with my limited dialogue knowledge) Yagrum's Keening dialogue and jury-rigged wraithguard dialogue are completely independent of each other. If this becomes an issue, it will be fixed.


I've decided to keep version 1.3 as it is and support it as a "purist friendly" version of Keening reforged. All the reasoning and dialogue are well within the realm of "lore friendly". If any issues are found, they will be fixed and the version number will be 1.x

I've also decided to make a version 2 with the longer list of weapon choices, as well as a replacer for Wraithguard as an amulet. This project should be considered a WIP for the time being. I'll continue gathering resources and permissions for this and keep you all updated in this thread. As long as Alaisiagae, Jac, and Elaura are willing to continue with this, there will be a v2.



KF

I checked the dialog and if you do the back path (kill Vivec and give Yagram his gauntlet), you can't have him reforge Keening. One way around that is to have the blade reforged before you give Yagram the gauntlet: just drop it somewhere before you talk to him.

Sunder reforged?

Into what? Sunder is a hammer because the heart has to be toned properly before it can be broken apart by Keening. Changing Sunder into something else would basically make it into something else. Still, if you want a new Sunder, please start a new thread. Thanks.

Is there a way to fix this? If not, I'll put a warning in the readme.



KF

I was thinking about unarmored characters... so, I stuck some of the parts on wraithguard onto a glove (it looks like wraithguard with the bracer and knuckle-strap, but everything else looks like an expensive glove with the morag tong glove textures. Then I started sticking a blade textured to keening onto the knuckle-strap to make a katar. It looks pretty awesome, but I can't get the blades to show up in-game because I don't know how to add skin references in Nifskope. >.< Copy and pasting skin ref branch from another mesh piece didn't work. I haven't fully finished the katar yet - I've got 2 of the 3 blades set up. Plus, It's possible it'll look like crap if the blades waggle around with the character's knuckle idle animations in "spell hands" I wanted to make the blade jutting out from the huge bracer along the outside of the forearm, but it clipped with the bracer and my ability to manipulate meshes in Nifskope is limited.

If anyone is interested, I can try to sketch what I mean by doodling on a screenshot of wraithguard.

Definitely interested in that glove. I've got a monk character who, if not for the tools, would never hold a weapon or put on a scrap of armor in his life.

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr50/Alaisiagae/Mod%20Screenshot%20MW/Misc/art_wraithkeening_katar.jpg

But, as I mentioned, the blades don't show up in game because they don't have skin references, and maybe other stuff that I don't know about.

EDIT: Yeah, exactly - unarmored characters can't get their full armor bonus if they equip any armor at all. So, while medium and light armor characters can sort of get some AR benefit from Wraithguard, unarmored characters are handicapped.

I have to say I like the http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Mods.Detail&id=7903 best and it has the benefit of already being Alaisiagae's work,

I'm also liking the idea of a Wraithguard for unarmored players. My mage would be squished flat by the sheer weight of the thing otherwise, if she hadn't become a vampire at level 1 and wasn't completely insane, cruel and uninterested in saving the world before she's conquered it totally that is.

I can ask around about the blade attachment but I might not hear back before you solve it on your own or someone else pops up with the goods.

It's mostly a matter of moving the dialog up over the parts that deal with the back path, but that'll require cleaning again to remove the parts that got "changed" because of the move. I can fix it for the next version unless somebody needs it right now.

Considering we're talking about a version 2, with a possibility of swapping out wraithguard as well, I think that fix can wait for now. I'll make a note of it for the readme.


I like the Idea of switching out wraithguard for an amulet and somehow attatching Keening's blade to a glove of some sort for hand to hand players. I was thinking more along the lines of "brass knuckles" made from Keening. It fits better with the hand to hand style imho. Is it safe to assume that a character who specializes in unarmed combat would also go unarmored? I need opinions here folks.



KF

the parts you are trying to nifskope together may not have had a complete skin partition to reference? swords and weapons in particular....a sketch might be helpful. perhaps a bit of blender is the way to go here.