[REL] Vegtabill’s Threads of the Webspinner : III

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 7:52 am

Vegtabill’s Threads of the Webspinner 1.0

GREETINGS!

It is with great pleasure that I am finally able to announce that this mod is complete and ready for download! After making significant progress with this last year, my computer died and I was unable to continue work. But things have improved this autumn; I got a new machine, I was able to reinstall Morrowind bigger and better than ever before, and work soon commenced on my Threads of the Webspinner mod. With the help of a friend or two, I was able to complete this mod and now I am very proud to be able to offer it to you! :cool:

DOWNLOAD

http://download.fliggerty.com/download--1157

http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43893

To spare me from re-writing a bunch of text, I'm going to copy a couple of sections from my readme here. I think this will cover most of the initial questions you might have, so take a few minutes to look over the following info and see what you think. Of course, if you have any follow-up questions or comments this is the place for them, so fire away! I look forward to hearing some of your feedback!

RATIONALE

I love the Morag Tong (MT). I only saw a tiny glimpse of them in Oblivion and, let's face it, that glimpse was pretty pathetic! But I was intrigued nonetheless, so when I finally got around to playing Morrowind I was thrilled to find that the MT is a big factor in the game, ~and~ that they are a playable faction! No kidding, that little detail was a huge factor for me; I would have bought the game for the MT alone!

The MT in Morrowind is indeed an awesome faction, but most of the quests are execution attempts. Don't get me wrong; there are uncountably many ways to pull off the executions, providing plenty of potential for variety. Plus, once the player has reached high enough levels, some unique quests become available. But by and large the MT's quests are execution runs. There is, however, one very notable exception...

TotW is a truly unique series of mini-quests and non-quests that all add up to a final big reward: Mephala's Skill. Mephala's Skill is a powerful, low-cost (30) spell that never fails as long as your player character (PC) has enough Magicka. Further, once Eno Hlaalu decides to step down as head of the MT, your PC has an opportunity to reclaim the entire TotW collection depending, of course, on how you choose to let the old Grandmaster leave. There are quite a few threads and most of them have little to nothing said about them in the vanilla game. In a sense, that makes TotW one of the most open, unguided quests in the game, and I didn't want to do so much that I ruined that aspect.

But the truth is, TotW is actually a little too open and too unguided to be a functional, completable "quest". Put another way, it is nearly impossible to finish TotW and acquire Mephala's Skill without 1) consulting some out-of-game resource (like the UESP Wiki, or even these forums), or 2) abandoning your role-play and killing people almost at random (unless you're role-playing as a homicidal berzerker, in which case why is Eno Hlaalu still alive?

). In all seriousness though, there is just no way to complete TotW by following any kind of natural, in-game progression.

To prove my point, have a look at some of the results from my research:

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 are at a minimum two 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 two more non-hostile NPCs that do have rumors, but in both cases only one 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 Construction Set, a wiki, or some other reference, is statistically improbable and practically impossible.

Once I put all of these facts together, I knew something had to be done. I had never made a dialogue mod before and my only other public mod was on a much smaller scale than TotW, but I was determined to come up with something that would improve the MT's biggest quest.

WHAT THIS MOD DOES

In a nutshell, this mod aims to give players what they need to figure out the locations of the Sanguine items without going on random killing sprees or exiting the game to search wikis and forums for answers. Existing topics have been more fleshed-out and completely new topics have been added, all with the purpose of getting the player to the right places with enough information to connect the dots and find the items.

As I said earlier, I kind of liked the open, unguided feel of vanilla TotW and I wanted to preserve as much of that as I could while still giving players enough information to complete the quest. So to those with concerns about making it too easy, rest assured; I've tried really hard not to turn this into "scavenger hunt" where you're told what to do and where to go every step of the way. At the same time, anyone looking for a quick and easy way to get the items is probably going to be frustrated. You are going to have to think a little and use detective-like skills to put the pieces together. Some of the NPCs you will need to talk to aren't necessarily going to tell you what you want right away, and still others won't be able to do any more than point you in a very general direction. This will make you have to work a little harder, but I thoroughly believe it will make the rewards that much greater. Nothing beats that "aha!" moment, does it? I don't think so!

There are four versions of the plugin included in the mod. Only activate ONE (1) of the plugins at a time. They are each built off the same core plugin (veg-TotW.esp), so they all contain the changes it makes plus a few additional edits. All you need to do is decide which version has the right changes for you, and then install and activate only that one plugin.

veg-TotW.esp

This is the core mod the other three are built off of, and it is the least likely to conflict with any other mods. In short, it is strictly a dialogue mod; no edits were made to any NPCs, items, locations, spells, or anything else you can think of. Some of the vanilla game's topics were edited with new content and new filters. In addition, new topics were created to provide more depth and variety. But from a technical standpoint that's all the mod does, so it's highly unlikely that this plugin will conflict with any other mods at all. The worst case might be that some dialogue from my mod might not make sense when compared with the topics in [hypothetical] Dialogue Mod X, but that's about it. Further, LGNPC mastermind Cyrano has assured me that there should be no problems using LGNPC’s Khuul plugin alongside my TotW mod. [If anyone has a different experience with LGNPC or any other mod, PLEASE let me know!]

veg-TotW-books.esp

This plugin does everything veg-TotW does, plus it adds a journal and a few letters to certain NPCs ("books" for simplicity). The "books" are all added using a method shown to me by Cyrano. To keep from editing the NPCs directly (which is more likely to cause a conflict), I placed invisible activators in the cells where they can be found. The activators add the books to each NPCs' inventory when the PC enters their cells. Once the NPCs have been dealt with, the books will be there for looting along with the Sanguine items. This mod has a low risk for conflicts, but it could interfere with any mod that edits the same cells. There are only three cells changed and all three are in Daedric ruins so I believe the risk of a conflict is very low.

veg-TotW-MSrestored.esp

This plugin does everything veg-TotW does, plus it restores Mephala's Skill. In its original form, Mephala's Skill had a Fortify Short Blade effect in addition to the Chameleon and Fortify Attack effects it currently has. When I first mentioned on the gamesas forums that I was considering making a mod like this, some people had said they would like to see Mephala's Skill returned to its earlier state if the mod was ever made. Well, I remembered you folks (you know who you are!), and this plugin does just that! Because this plugin edits a spell, it could potentially conflict with any mod that also edits spells. This mod only edits Mephala's Skill so if you want to keep the change I made simply load my mod after your spell mod(s).

veg-TotW-books-MSrestored.esp

This plugin does everything veg-TotW does, plus (yep, you guessed it) everything the other two plugins do as well. So in addition to the dialogue changes in veg-TotW, you get the journal and letters from veg-TotW-books ~and~ the original Mephala's Skill from veg-TotW-MSrestored. This plugin has the same possibilities for conflicts as veg-TotW-books and veg-TotW-MSrestored. The risk remains relatively low, but it is worth mentioning.

So there you have it! I think that pretty much covers everything, but please do let me know if you need more info or clarification about what this mod does. I hope you enjoy it! :yes:

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 1:29 pm

Cool beans. Excellent work, vegtabill! :thumbsup:

At a guess this will conflict with http://mw.modhistory.com/download--5667 by Curmudgeon & LostInSpace? Checking the readme it seems there are no specific load order rules needed? E.g. it'll play fine with LGNPC wherever it is in someone's load order.

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 12:54 pm

Hey Dragon32! Thanks!

You know, as counter-intuitive as it seems, I don't think Threads of the Webspinner Completed will directly conflict with my mod because we don't edit the same things. I only gave their mod a quick read, but it looks like the one possible exception might be Mephala's Skill (though I'm not even sure if they edited that spell). Even then, only two of the optional versions of my mod male a change to Mephala's Skill, so it's entirely possible that Threads of the Webspinner Completed and my mod could happily coexist without causing any direct conflicts.

That said, I don't think there's going to be much of a reason for anyone to want both mods in the same game, because the mods are so different from each other. My mod is very minimalist. I tried to keep it as close to the vanilla TotW quest as possible, and I edited very few things directly. The most expansive version of my mod, veg-TotW-books-MSrestored.esp, only edits three interior cells (all in remote Daedric ruins) and one spell (Mephala's Skill). The least expansive, veg-TotW.esp, doesn't edit any objects at all; it is a pure dialogue mod. Threads of the Webspinner Completed on the other hand, adds a lot of material, edits lots of objects, and is pretty far removed from the vanilla quest... from what I can tell, anyway. So while I think it's possible for someone to run both mods together, I have no idea why anyone would actually want to!

Regarding LGNPC, we're on much safer ground. Cyrano was involved with the creation of my mod, and he saw everything my mod does in the process. He assured me that there shouldn't be any problems running my mod along with LGNPC, and it really shouldn't matter where either is in the load order. Now to be clear, this has not been thoroughly tested, so if anyone has a different experience please let me know. But by and large I don't see any reason why my mod and LGNPC would have any issues running alongside each other, and their respective positions in the load order should not matter.

Regarding load order, the only mods I can think of that might likely be an issue for people would be mods that change the game's spells. If any mod changes Mephala's Skill, it will overwrite the changes my two optional plugins make to that spell. Since mine only edits that one spell, I recommend loading my mod after any spell mod that changes it (unless the changes from the spell mod are desired, in which case one should use one of the versions of my mod that do not edit Mephala's Skill).

Other than that, I think we're good to go, but please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks again, Dragon! :foodndrink:

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 8:04 pm

Good work Vegtabill, open ended collection quests are literally my favourite type of quests in TES. I find they offer more player driven narrative than that created by the devs. I'll definitely check this out at some point!

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 9:52 am

Congrats on this release! My next character probably won't get much use out of this as I'm going for the "total pacifist" route, but the Morag Tong is one of my favorite factions so I'm quite certain a future character will.

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:28 am

Great stuff, thanks for taking the time to reply, and to make the mod, both are much appreciated :smile:

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 8:49 am

A great idea. Thanks for this.
BTW, I think I might want to actually run this and Completed (or possibly an edited, more balanced version), they seem to do different things (the latter looks like basically an added uberquest and writ difficulty increaser)

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 9:09 pm

Thank you, Ethetan, I hope you like it! From the sound of it, it may be right up your alley. :thumbsup:

Thanks, Zaarin! I've often toyed with the idea of a semi-pacifist, non-violent, more "zen" build, but I keep getting caught up in the spell of Morrowind's marvelous weapons! I just can't resist using them, ha ha! :toughninja:

If you ever do get around to it, I'd be very interested in seeing how you think it turned out. Keep this thread mind and drop by anytime!

No problem! Actually, back when this was a WIP you had mentioned that some info on the load order would be great if I ever finished the mod. I didn't forget that, and I put some pretty detailed info in my readme... but I completely forgot to include it in my announcement post! :facepalm: I blame lack of sleep!

Seriously though, I appreciate that you're as proactive as you are. Because of you and mlox, I think about these things a lot more now when I'm messing around with mods. Thanks for everything you do, Dragon! :yes:

I hope you enjoy it, Nakashi! And yes, TotW Completed is very different from my mod. However, I don't know how much of my mod you would actually use if you also had TotW Completed installed. If you follow my mod through to the end, you will have already acquired all of the Threads by the time you kill Eno Hlaalu (a requirement for TotW Completed, apparently). I'm not 100% clear on it, but that would seem to invalidate the "Mephala's Ordeal" part of TotW Completed. On the other hand, if you kill Eno Hlaalu as instructed by TotW Completed, he won't be there to give you most of the starting points for finding the Threads in my mod. I think they will work together in a technical sense, but I don't know how much sense it makes to actually do it. I suppose you could use my mod for the Threads of the Webspinner part, and then have the extra cells and loot that TotW Completed adds on the side. But doing the reverse definitely wouldn't be fruitful: out side of the TotW quest itself my mod really doesn't do anything! :no:

Did that make sense? Let me put it another way... Despite the fact that the mods probably won't conflict in the technical sense, using both my mod and TotW Complete for the collection of the Threads probably won't work very well, if at all. But if you want the extra stuff from TotW Complete, you could probably use my mod for collecting the Threads and TotW Complete for everything else.

And by the way, Nakashi, I'm using your comment to address anyone else who might be interested in trying this. You probably have this all sorted out already! Thanks for your comment, and I hope you enjoy my mod! :thanks:

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:54 pm

Wow, this looks really awesome! Congratulations on the release, Vegtabill! :celebration:

I will certainly give this a try

Well, if I understand it correctly, your mod basically expands on the original way to solve the quest, while TotW Completed adds additional way. So there is no use in one playthrough, but if you use both, you have more freedom in the way you want to approach the quest.

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 3:36 pm

Hey Reaper! :wave: Thanks! I hope you like it... definitely let me know if you have any feedback! :yes:

Well yes, except for one thing: TotW Complete requires killing Eno Hlaalu. If you do that before collecting all of the Threads, there's really no point in using my mod at all. Eno must be there to provide at least the starting points for my additions, and to receive the last Thread so he can reward you with Mephala's Skill. I think you can use TotW Complete for the same things (acquiring the Threads and Mephala's Skill), but with Eno having to be dead all of my threads would be irreparably cut, so to speak! So as you say, in one playthrough using both at the same time is pretty useless with respect to collecting the Threads. Using my mod in one playthrough and TotW Complete in a different playthrough might give you the freedom to approach the quest in different ways, but not using both in a single playthrough.

At least, that's how I understand it. If I'm misunderstanding something about TotW Complete and someone with more knowledge can fill me in on the details please do so, but please PM me with the info, OK? I don't want to spend that much time talking about TotW Complete in this thread, but I'll definitely correct anything I've said about it said if I have misunderstood anything. I promise! :angel:

Thanks again, Reaper! (By the way, this is why I haven't been as active with the Better Clothes thing... but I haven't forgotten it!) :thanks:

» Thu Oct 22, 2015 6:45 pm

It's something I've wanted to do for a long time--though I'm going to make an exception for undead, Daedra, and Sixth House monsters to make the main quest playable (the first is already dead, the second can't be killed, and the third it's a mercy to kill). Should be an interesting challenge, at any rate.

Will do. It's a shame my last character already hunted them down with the UESP, or I'd have her try it out. I actually have my next two characters planned, and the second will almost certainly join the Morag Tong--so he should be able to give it a shot.