[WIP] Threads of the Webspinner Revisited : III

» Wed Apr 09, 2014 4:47 pm

Greetings!

As some of you may know, I've been http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1497541-thoughts-on-the-threads-of-the-webspinner/ on the Cheats, Hints and Spoilers forum about enhancing the Morag Tong's "Threads of the Webspinner" (TotW) quest. I have felt for some time now that this "quest" is so patchy and incomplete that it's hard to call it that. Here are a few quick facts that I compiled and shared in the other thread:

There are a total of 20 NPCs with Sanguine items.
Of these, only 7 have MT quests that lead you to them.
Of the 13 left, 3 are in the same locations as the targets of those MT quests.
That leaves 10 NPCs with no MT quests to lead you to them, or even near them.
Of these 10, only 3 are in locations that other, non-MT quests lead you to, and one of these 3 NPCs is not hostile. (Gluronk gra-Shula in the Gateway Inn is not hostile. There is a rumor about her, but it is only spoken by 1 NPC in the entire game.)
That leaves 7 with no quests that lead you to them; they are only discovered by exploring.
Of these 7, only 1 has a rumor that might lead you to him. The rumor is very vague, and is only spoken by 1 NPC in the entire game.
Of the 6 left, 2 are not hostile.

From this, you can see that there at a minimum 2 NPCs that pretty much have to be killed at random. No dialogue leads you to them, and they will not attack when you encounter them. There are 2 more non-hostile NPCs that do have rumors, but in both cases only 1 NPC in the game knows the rumors. Further, Dro'Zaymar's rumor simply says, "Dro'Zaymar, a Khajiit in St. Delyn, can jump higher than anyone I know. I wonder what his secret is." To me, that's hardly enough to murder poor Dro'Zaymar! And then you have several more NPCs that you would literally just have to "happen upon" in order to find and collect the items. Vvardenfell is big, and with so many locations to explore I'd argue that finding all of the Sanguine items organically, that is without consulting the CS or some other reference, is statistically improbable and practically impossible.

So, I decided it was time for a mod to address this! In short I wanted to make a mod that modified existing topics and added enough new ones to make the TotW quest totally complete-able in-game, with no need to consult the Wiki, CS, or anything else. I had my own ideas, and then got some really good insights over on the other thread, and then went to work. As of now, I have a more-or-less complete plugin that I've been testing. It took me quite a bit longer than I thought it would (man, dialogue is a completely different thing altogether!), but I think it's been worth it... this "WIP" is almost complete in a lot of ways, and what's left has pretty much been worked out already, just not actually written into the plugin yet. But for all intents and purposes, it is very close to being done.

I was a little torn on whether or not to do a WIP thread, or just to go ahead and release it. I decided on the former for a few reasons. Mainly, I haven't done a mod like this before. It's my first stab at dialogue, and it touches quite a few different areas of the game. Right now it is 100% dialogue; no NPCs, cells, scripts, etc are edited. I have merely edited some existing topics and journal entries, and added some new topics of my own. Still, the NPCs are in a number of different locations, and though I know the game well I'm not confident enough to say I've thought of everything! Ha ha! Seriously though, it's a lot to think about, and I could very easily have overlooked something. And of course, there are still a few more things I'd like to do before the (first) final version is released... I still have a little more work to do!

So, for the next few days I'll be working through it a bit more, adding a few things, tweaking a few more. In the meantime, I'd like to offer a "beta" version for anyone who would like to test it out. If you're interested, shoot me a PM and I'll hook you up with a link or two. Of course, you'll be getting an inside peek at how the hints and clues come together, so if you want to work through them on your own I recommend holding off a few more days for the release. It will be worth it! :yes:

But if you feel like giving it a once-over, I'd love to get some feedback from some different sources. I'll try to reply to any PMs I get ASAP (I'm in the Eastern Time Zone, Daylight Savings... just for frame of reference!)

OK, so there's my current WIP! It probably won't be one for much longer, but for now it's a WIP. I hope you find it interesting! :smile: