Hello all!

Before I introduce this mod, I should say that I have *not* been part of the Oblivion Modding community up 'till now, so I am not familiar with everything going on. That said, I do know my basic editor, and have been able to completely clean these mods with Tes4Edit, so they should be clean. This will be my first mod here, and I'm posting it to receive feedback on my ideas. That being said, I should probably introduce you to what I'm making here:

Delayed DLC

A mod by PikachunoTM for Oblivion

Delayed DLC is an attempt by me to remove the appearance of the annoying pop-up messages and immediate access to DLC that occurs during the starter dungeon. This has been done by altering a minimum level of lines in scripts to provide a slightly more immersive experience to the DLC, while still letting all levels have access to it. There are now two potential routes for accessing the DLC: one which is level dependent (relatively easy to access), and the other is slightly difficult to access, but can be done at any level.

Currently, the different modes for access (per DLC) are:

I have all the files ready except for two (I'm running into issues http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1604240-an-issue-with-plugin-loading-causing-crashes/, and I need help ), but if there's someone who's willing to help, I can provide the script edits for them to add to the plugins. If you'd like to provide any feedback on what requirements you'd like to see, please comment!

That sounds really good! Hope you'll be able to fix the problems. I'll be sure to check out your mod, thanks for making it!

I like nearly all of these ideas. The one exception is the Shivering Isles. Both of the requirements seem a little strict to me. Personally I like the way Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul handles this: he places a notice about "A Strange Door" on a notice board in Bravil. It's immersive and it allows a player to have control.

In fact I have long thought that most of the DLCs could be started this way, via notice boards. Do you think perhaps this could be a third option? Anyway, this sounds like a very nice mod. Great work!

Of course. Supposedly there is one or two similar mods, but I've been unable to locate them, and I figured I may as well make one myself as an introduction to Oblivion modding. Hopefully, this will be released very soon, and I'll be certain to inform you that it has (just got to solve my "little" problem :3)

Gah, that's a great idea! Hm... for now, I'd like to keep it as low-impact as possible (for compatibility reasons), but I will do my best to see if I can add Billboards (and perhaps even NPC dialogue, as some of the quests mention "hearing rumors" about the quest start) after an initial release (I'll see about expanding it to provide optional "Immersive Startings" for people who aren't as worried about compatibility, though the changes will be more extensive than minor altering for one script per-DLC). As for now, though, do you have any suggestions for what could be done for Shivering? This and knights are probably the two hardest ones to think of pre-req's for.

This is the long established mod that also does this sort of thing : http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11474/?. But it's always nice to have alternatives to spice up alternative starts

Wow, thanks Artorius! I had heard about plugins like this, but all the links beforehand were for tesnexus (which, when clicked, led to the Nexus game selection page). I'll definitely give these a look for some more inspiration

Yeah Strategy Master kinda made it difficult to find by not giving the mod a particularly memorable name, I only know about them because I've used them since I started using mods for Oblivion in 2010

Haha, I suppose so. Especially because there's no specifying what plugins are being refurbished... but at least now I know of one! Supposedly, there's one more "bigger" DLC delayer, but I've been unable to run into any of them until now.

Well I haven't heard of another mod that delays the Bethesda DLCs, however there is this one that delays the start of many of the well known quest mods : http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/25946/?. It's a Wrye Bash Filter Patch so you don't need every quest mod for the delayer to work, just leave it deactivated and let BOSS sort it (should be very near the end of load order) and the Bashed Patch do it's thing.

Hm... would it be in any way possible to make this mod a Wrye Bash filter patch? Just asking hypothetically, as it only touches one script per DLC, and that would be much, much simpler to use for everyone else... It's already Wrye Bash friendly, after all.

Oh, and thanks for the link again! Definitely saving it for later

I'm certain it would be possible, I have no idea how it's done (other than tagging it with the Filter and Deactivate tags but I don't know if there's anything more involved). Ask on the Wrye Bash thread . If you do manage to do this it will make your mod the more viable choice as everyone appreciates a one fit for all solution that saves them plugin slots .

True that. Although as it stands currently, the mod is 100% safe to merge with a Bashed Patch (though I'm still uncertain how to tag for scripts, but I'll read through some of the Wrye Bash posts and check there, I suppose :3). I'd like to see what the UOMP/UOSIP have done to those scripts so I can "fix them" to match, but I'd like to get my issue with Knights and Frostcrag Spire solved first... I'll try reinstalling the CS from version 1.0 and *then* update it to see how that works for it. Who knows, maybe it'll help (though what it has against KotN and Frostcrag Spire is beyond me).