Hello, all! Geeze, it's been forever since I was here...Forever since my computer decided it liked Oblivion! (They had a fight...) It's been a few years since I modded, but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. Mostly weapons and items...maybe some clothing/armor if I get adventurous.

But that brought me to wonder - how do you prefer getting items from mods in-game? A quest to obtain them? Seeking them out in the vast wilderness? An added merchant, or an existing one? Or maybe just a script to add it to your inventory on start-up. I can never quite decide which way I like. I usually prefer a merchant, new or existing, but then I always worry about compatibility with the cell and such...

What do you think? Do you have a preferred method? Does it really even matter?

I guess it doesn't matter greatly, but I generally prefer to find stuff out in the wilderness or in ruins, rather than simply buying from a vendor. Makes life more interesting for me, and feels more satifsying.

In the past if I've liked an armour I've downloaded (or even thrown together myself from other people's meshes), I've gone on to hand-place it in the depths of a dungeon somewhere, giving my character a hopefully fun way of acquiring it. For me, it beats vendor-buying or grabbing it from a chest in the Arena District or something.

I absolutely hate it when an item is either dumped somewhere in a city or IC District (usually in a container, not always) or magicked into the player inventory. So boring, and with the city-dumping, a real annoyance with regards requests for compatibility patches for Better Cities (or Open Cities) when the object has been placed in a corner against a wall, where BC has added a nice new house or shop so that it cannot be reached without using the console.

Quest rewards or lying abandoned somewhere in the wilderness or in a dungeon/ruin/cave/fort - always in my opinion the best way to acquire new equipment, and especially if it happens to be outside of Cyrodiil's borders, somewhere in the land added by http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1158602-tamriel-worldspace-modding-project/. Another good alternative would be a new merchant, living or travelling outside Cyrodiil's borders, which you might come across while wandering about.

Depends. If it's "ordinary" items I prefer to have them distributed via leveled lists so NPCs also use them. But if it's unique items I prefer if they are handplaced in the world or guarded/wielded by bosses.

Really, having it placed in the wilderness somewhere, available for sale from a merchant, or acquired from a quest are all fine with me. In part, it has to do with the nature of the item. Finding it via a quest or in a dungeon or wilderness area is usually more satisfying, but for some items, it might make more sense to have them sold by a merchant, new or existing. Whatever you do, I'd rather not have the item just placed in a city or added by script to the player's inventory, because I want to have to work for modded items, whether that work involves doing a quest, exploring a dungeon, or just paying for them. I don't like having powerful items just sitting there for me to get without any effort.

Of course, there's also the approach of adding items to leveled lists, but that works best if you have many different items in your mod, and I'm a little cautious of mods like that as I fear it may run the risk of conflicting with other leveled list altering mods.

Hey!

Personally I prefer to have them added to the leveled lists if they are "common". That way they're integrated into the game world and you actually see them used by other people.

For unique items, either a fort, ruin or some cave or, otherwise, a quest works fine.

Placing them somewhere in town doesn't really do it for me, nor does adding them via a script.

If they're common, merchants could sell them and it would make sense

Cheers!

cc

A reward from a quest would be nice, and having them added to the leveled lists. So that way when you are dungeon crawling, you may stumble upon a chest with nice stuff. Plus loot from enemies.

I'm a fan of lost in the wilderness as well - I've only used it once though. I'm always worried about it being incompatible with things like Unique Landscapes. Perhaps more along the route of "lost" in an Ayleid ruin or cave would work better then?

Have to agree with that one, receiving after a quest is all well and nice but unless you play with no map markers or POI you pretty much know where you have to go, what you have to do and kind of what to expect, but if randomly placed and guarded by bosses it's any ones guess where that placement could be and what you might find hiding in a bush waiting for you.

So my vote has to go to being lost in the wilderness

I prefer common items to be added to an existing merchant if it's only a few items (<5), a new merchant's always cool if it's a lot of items, or as a quest prize if it's something powerful and unique.

I don't like mods that add a chest of goodies in the middle of a city. Any mods I use that distribute things that way, I tend to open the CS and put the items into an existing vendor's inventory to avoid the "random chest of clothes" thing.

Are there any mods out there that place items as random boss treasures? I didn't know that was possible. I do like having rare and powerful items be difficult to acquire, but putting them at the bottom of a particular Ayleid ruin kinda gets old fast because after you've found the thing once, the fun is gone and now you're always making excuses for your character to go hit that ruin early in the game to get the treasure. Bag of Holding, I'm looking at you. I know you can have an item be placed randomly in treasure, but that means the item in question may well end up as the very first chest in the "easy" part of a 1st level goblin cave. If there is a way to ensure that a particular item is always found after a difficult boss fight, but it's random as to which cave\ruin\fort it'll be in, that would rock. I've never seen any mods that do that so I assumed it wasn't possible.

Liberated from the corpse of my foe.

I'll have to do research on the leveled list option. Some of my mods would work with that, particularly for the civilians. I feel so behind now!

I like when unique items are placed in the depths of huge dungeons. I even made a few new dungeons for me to crawl through to get the new gear that I made for myself.

I was just about to say this very thing. Yes, this.

I voted quests, but It'd be really cool if weapons were added in a unique and original way. Like instead of making it a container at the end of a dungeon, a quest reward, a boss character wielding it, etc. what about just adding a NPC to a town or travelling about. Like a http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/character+study. Granted I wouldn't expect a weapon modeler/texturer to be able to make a huge mutli-quest storyline centering around some person and their custom equipment.

Maybe just like 3 or 4 topics and a greeting.
"Hi I'm *blank* pleasure to meet, Is there a reason you decided to stand in front of me and stare blankly?"

*a joke about being unable to say anything until someone else starts the conversation*
* Oh, sorry I was just mesmerized by that sword you have.*
*You looked riveting, whats your story?*
*Just curious what you were up to...*

Then the characters replies and maybe they'd offer you a simple quest in order get their item, or you'd have to steal/kill/buy it off them.


Two good examples of what I'm talking about would be Sentient Weapon, and Malevolent; but you know not to the extent of the weapon being the person like in those two.

In theory, i like via quests, but that becomes problematic if you have over a hundred armors and clothes added to the game. All you do is hunt down that ONE armor you just had to download. So prefer for most of them to become available from merchants, so you at least know where you can find them quickly if you really want to wear that armor and that sword NOW.

Quests would be cooler, but if it is a huge amount of items added, then it simply is better with merchants. Doesn't really matter if it is new ones or old ones. I made my own shop where i put in all the items for sale that were placed for free anywhere and also merged any quests with it. I can buy the things from quests once i already found them once (unless they are supposed to be unique by lore or design, then only in the quest). The shop is pretty much designed like the Apachii store, but i gave the shopkeepers some dialogue options that can start quests for "legendary" items (instead of having the quests start automatically).

I guess that would be my preferred way to go. Hear about a quest from merchants or bards (if we had bards), and then go on said quest. But for sanity's sake if a mod adds a huge amount of items, a new traveling merchant is good too.

I remember when i first started adding armor and weapon mods, i spent literally months just to collect them all and bring them to one (or more than one) of my homes, so i could then decide what i wanted to keep/wear and give to my companions. By the time i actually started playing any quests i was already level 20, lol. That wasn't so much fun.

Short answer for me is that it makes sense.
Quest rewards for "special" items is a good idea. But also found deep in a dungeon or whatever, after a decent amount of effort to get there. And/or found on a "boss" enemy (Fought through his minions, killed him, took his armour; score! )

I just HATE those mods that add the items to a chest (or laying around) in the Imperial City of similar. When I come across such mods, as soon as I see that in its "location" I close the page and move on, not interested.

But for more common items; having them added to the levelled lists is a good idea as well. Perhaps coupled with adding them to the relevant merchant lists as well (or a single seller, one of the regulars unless it especially makes sense to add a new specialist merchant.)

I love buying items, or finding them on bosses. idk, its just one of my quirks

At the moment I'm really particular about not having any special items added to the game, aside from stuff like the Farmer's Strike Back items and other various silly things that have no impact on gameplay. I just don't want to touch the balance of the game for now, though in the future I plan to do a playthrough with FCOM and as much extra stuff I can find. So I'm all about finding items in dungeons or getting them as quest rewards, and also occasionally buying from a merchant if they have something that looks good. I hope I'm not the only one that's somewhat obsessed with keeping the game's balance unmodified.

This is my opinion too.

I don't really care. Free chest is fine.
I like variety in the world itself. Let NPCs use it and sell it.

When it is too foreign, too alien, then as others have said...


But here's a few other things:

FREE CHESTS LOCATIONS - put them in testinghall. Testinghall will conflict less. Imo, it's the same result. YOu go behind a statue in IC market or arboretum... or you go to testinghall. I put stuff I make for myself in a tiny barrels in a fighting Chance. Rohsan always looks at me funny.

FREE CHESTS RESPAWN - I like to have multiple copies of items for my dudes. They tend to lose weapons a lot so I just give them an entire stack of them. Put maybe 3 of each item in there and then have it respawn.

VENDOR VARIETY - Some mods add the items to vendors, but they only do it one specific vendor. So when you go to the others, nothing special, when you go to that particular one it's all in that one. I'd say, add the items to several vendors. One might even go as far as adding some items to this and other items to the other vendors. Plate armor plus does this.

VENDOR OVERLOAD - If there's more than 10 items in total, I'd say, add an entirely new vendor NPC. Just make sure he has a merchant container so he doesn't start wearing the stuff you sell to him. Also, you can add other, normal vanilla items to this guy, or like I do in my own personal mods, cobl items. Magic item vendor could also sell potions and ingredients, armour/weapon guy can sell hammers, ores, that kind of stuff. Without much fiddling you add an entire dimension to a vendor. Just letting him sit there with only the mod items makes him feel alien.

PRICING - I just player.additem F lotsofmonies anyway. At first I went with enhanced economy and really playing the immersive economy game stuff, but then clothing mods happened and I ran out of money. I'd say, keep it in line with vanilla oblivion, same goes for ..

ITEMSTATS - ok this is starting to get off topic but please no stronger than daedric/glass.

QUESTS LENGTH - If quest is long, maybe add i-forgot-the-word duplicates of the items in shops. Like a leather/iron stat version that breaks easily. That way you can try the items on. Lost Paladins does this for example.

NEW SPECIFIC ENEMIES WEARING IT - please make them respawn, reasons above

hope this helps

Hi! I'd say make two versions of the weapon/armor, one is a replica (fairly weak and can easily be found) and a stronger one that can be obtained through a quest/monster or bought from NPC. My reason for a replica is because sometimes I just want my character to wear a cool looking item immediately without searching for it wherever the mod maker placed it and making the freebie fairly weak is good for balance and will motivate the player to find the stronger version.

I voted:

Quest Items
Lost in wilderness
Other: Loot drop from enemies. Not all items need to be super-duper strong. Plain unenchanted items are also preferred thanks to enchanting possibilities.

For the most part, I think I'd just like a chest sitting somewhere. That way, I can just walk up, get what I want, and be on my way.

In some situations, I'd rather have a quest, but only if it's good. In that situation, it should be advertised as a quest mod that just happens to reward custom armor/clothing/weapons. I'd prefer that over just a chest, that way I have something to do and I feel like I earned the reward.

Merchants are okay, but in some situations, like when they're selling powerful spells or armor, the price is way too high. It typically doesn't make sense for a vendor to be selling something so expensive anyway, so either a player has way too much money in the first place if they can afford it, or the player is just going to use player.additem to get the gold they need to buy it, so why even bother? Just put it in a chest and save us the trouble.

Having it in a cave or ruin is one of the most annoying things for me, especially if it's in the common method of using a vanilla dungeon but with some unscaled monster with too much HP. Even if there are no added protectors to the chest in the cave/fort/etc, I still don't want to go through the hassle of getting to the end of the vanilla dungeon. It's just busy work with the illusion of making the player think they earned it when they didn't.

The worst thing to do in most situations is place it in the players inventory. It's fine with weightless items like the Actor's Ball in the Actors In Charge mod, but if it's weapons or armor or anything with weight, I don't want it in my inventory. I play on multiple characters at once and maybe I want that item on only one of my characters, then I have to drop it out of every other characters' inventory, which is annoying and unnecessary when it could just be placed in a chest somewhere.

Just my two cents. I've downloaded tons and tons and tons of weapon and armor mods and those are my experiences. Ease of access is important for most things. Sometimes I download armor that looks nice in the screenshots only to decide I don't like the way it looks on my character, which makes going through caves and forts even more frustrating. If it's a nice quest though, where someone actually put time and effort into the quest instead of throwing it together as an excuse to make a challenge for the armor/weapon, and I end up not liking the armor/weapon, then at least I can say I had fun playing the quest and my time wasn't totally wasted.

tl;dr - If you want the player to work for the reward, make it good. If not, put it in an easily accessible chest.

Another set of votes for the "it depends" choices. I'd like run-of-the-mill items in the leveled lists, so that vendors have them and they drop from random enemies and containers. I'd expect Rare items to be guarded by, or wielded/worn by, boss-level enemies.

But Unique items should have a quest that matches the reward, whether you find it, fight for it or make it. These should be the things you'll keep even if you don't use them, in a display case to remind you of the quest. Quirky items like Dawnfang/Duskfang are the perfect example, but I'd have liked a better quest for that one!