» Sun Aug 09, 2015 1:22 am I don't know who would have betted on this release, but I guess many know that OOO always has been incomplete: The SI expansion has never been included and no other comparable overhaul of it exists, except the half finished one by ZUTheSkunks. It has been abandonned by the author and looked like a nice foundation to built on, so I took it over with the intention of turning it into an overhaul that will complement OOO as well as possible.
That means the Isles have now proper expansion character. You better get out of your apprenticeship before you attempt to set a foot there and to actually finish the main questline that is probably not enough. Come well prepared and bring enough survivability to deal with the forces of madness.
The mod does not technically require OOO, it is just designed in a similar way. Only OBSE is required. Using combat and magic changes of at least OOOs scope is a good idea though to have good gameplay.
Here is an overview of my most important addtions. The mod changes just about anything in the Isles, so I won't mention every little detail. Incompatibilities with other mods that change original content are very likely.
-completeley remade balance and leveling system of items, creatures and NPCs
-greatly increased encounter variance with new creatures who may also fight each other, stronger enemies may spawn at lower level and vice versa
-many new items
-weapons have OMOBS stats
-rank specific equipment for Zealots and Heretics
-merged all necessary fixes by migck (only the eye fix is still separetely included)
Then there are of course ZUs original features:
* Amber and Madness sets were expanded and fixed; mostly for weaponry, which is now complete and doesn't lack any weapon type found in the sets from vanilla Oblivion.
* As above, the weaponry of Golden Saints and Dark Seducers was expanded too.
* You can now turn Vitharn Keep into your personal estate, and get your own smith in there to forge weapons and armor from Obelisk Shards, found on e.g. bodies of the Knights of Order.
* All clothing and armors that were present in vanilla SI but were unavailable (either from the beginning or as a result of your choices) can be now obtained as you make your progress through SI's main questline. You can find them in Sheogorath's Palace, among other trophies from your journey.
* Aureals and Mazkens have a much better appearance now (no more ugly faces) and their disposition towards you will be updating properly as you make your progress through SI's main questline.
* After completing the main quest, you will be able to summon portals to take you from and into Shivering Isles (based on Wrye Shivering).
* All areas that were inaccessible during the main quest will become available and free to explore once you complete it. This includes also Pinnacle Rock and Brellach (the strongholds of Aureal and Mazken).
Now I would like the interested users of this forum to try the mod first, before I officially put it on tesnexus. I don't impose any special restrictions regarding that, just update the NPC levels in Wrye Bash and play as you normally would and tell me how the experience was(maybe include your mod setup), if you encountered any bugs and suggestions for improvement. The automatic updating of items should be disabled, so if anything still updates without another mod doing it I'd like to know. I also wonder if the Exnem meshes ZU provided will also work with its successor HGEC, in case anybody uses it and if the patches are still valid. I don't use any of these mods and didn't check them out. I hope some experienced users who have any of these mods in their load order may do that.
I hope to get reports from many different character levels to see if the difficulty progresses well.
Installation is straight forward, for uninstallation follow the steps ZU provided:
First and foremost, DO NOT REMOVE THE MOD'S FILES YET. My mod messes a bit with some objects from vanilla SI, so before you can remove the files, you must do something in-game in order to prevent odd errors from occurring.
1. Load your save.
2. If you're standing in Xedilian, Brellach, Pinnacle Rock or Vitharn, go somewhere else. If you wish to be certain about standing someplace safe, it's best to go to Cyrodiil.
3. Once you're away from those places, type in the console "setstage ZUSEUninstall 1". Wait for a few seconds and do what the pop-up message tells you to do.
4. Once you've done it, save the game.
5. Now you can safely remove the mod's files. If you're using meshes for Exnem's female body, then don't forget about removing the "AmberMadness" folder in "Data/Meshes/ZU" as well.
Load order should be after OOO, aside from that I don't know yet if any special place is necessary.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/0s7awcdjihb886x/OOOShiveringIsles.zip
Special thanks go to ZUTheSkunks for the original mod, migck for his patch and gamingsrc who helped me with some legwork.
