So we have to cleansave between betas? Think I forgot between .2 and .4 or didn't notice the instructions.

.4 isn't released yet But yes, generally you should cleansave. If you don't and everything works, that's good, but if something stops working it might very well be because you forgot a clean save Forgetting to clean save won't crash or mess up your entire game, it might just break certain features from this mod until you do make a clean save.

bah, you're correct (although I certainly didn't cleansave between .2 and .4 then, so so am i )
It was probably .1 and .3 then, I know I skipped one...
I should run one then, if I'm going to test things any more.

well i think i got my game to where i want it, so when .4 comes out i will certainly give this a spin!

Just uploaded a new version 0.40 BETA. Changelog:

0.40 BETA (4 July 2012)
- Added Horstar's shop. This shop sells various items, including the newly added items from this mod,
and the shopkeeper Horstar allows you to configure some options through dialogue.
You can teleport to his shop using the ''Shadow's Refuge'' lesser power automatically added to your
spellbook when the mod loads.s
- Can now choose to show confirmation boxes before slitting throats/knocking out. This option is off
by default and can be turned on through dialogue with Horstar.
- By default it is now impossible to slit throats of essential NPCs or kill sleeping NPCs in their sleep.
Through dialogue with Horstar you can allow for using these moves on essential NPCs, and if you do these
moves will now properly kill the NPCs (even though they are essential).
- When pointing the crosshair at an NPC and the conditions are right to knock out or slit throats,
and menu pop-ups are not enabled, the default red ''Pickpocket'' text will be replaced by either
''Knock Out'' or ''Slit Throat'' to properly indicate what will happen upon activation.
- Added the vanilla faction ''Tribal Orcs'' to the list of factions which is affected by identity-concealing
masks.
- It is now possible to slit throats with one-handed swords.
- It is now possible to knock out with one-handed maces.
- NPCs should now be less inclined to talk while unconscious (especilly Heimskr the preaching priest in
Whiterun was notorious for doing this).
- Collision detection for Rope Arrows has been greatly improved. This means they should be much more reliable
and they should succesfully drop down much more often. Generally a rope should now succesfully drop down when
a Rope Arrow is fired into the side of a wall (no longer only working on flat surfaces above the player).
- Rope Arrows will now not instantly spawn, but only actually spawn when the collision detection has ensured
that there is enough space to drop. This means you should no longer see short pieces of rope appearing and
quickly after disappearing again.
- Rope Arrows now deal less damage than Iron Arrows.
- Dark Cowl now has a lower armor rating and a much lower gold value.

Congrats on the release Borgut. It is truly amazing to see how fast you work.

Nice. One thing: firstly, will Shadow's refuge put you back where you were after you return from the shop, so as not to break quests?
Secondly, I can see it being a true refuge, I.e. being used as a way to escape difficult battles and lick your wounds. Which is an option that personally I'd rather not have.


edit:
...that's two things.

Yes, it will save the exact spot you were at before teleporting to the shop and the only way to leave it is through the same power, which will then place you back at the exact same spot you were. As for being able to cheat your way out of combat, yes I did indeed intend to put a condition to prevent you from using it while in combat. I'll be able to fix that quickly but won't immediately update again.. such a small change, I trust that until the next big version is ready people will be able to hold themselves from cheating

Hi, love the mod so far after giving it a spin last night. I run Open Cities and see many uses for the rope arrows, but i ran into a problem when trying to scale the walls to the back of whiterun. I posted the issue on the open cities thread too.


Also is there a way to make the ropes longer? when i shot the small wooden guard hut on top of the wall the rope just made it half way down. I was just able to jump up and activate it.

Actually I noticed the same when testing in whiterun (the vanilla version, I don't use Open Cities). This is not a problem I can fix. The ropes from my mod always spawn in the exact area where the arrow hit. This means that the collision of those walls was very badly made by bethesda (even worse than the collision in the upper parts of most other pieces of architecture) and the arrow actually goes through the wall a bit before hitting any collision.

To fix this would be up to a modeller, although I'm not actually sure if even they can change collision (I know it's currently impossible still for modellers to add new collision to their new models, not sure about scaling existing collision)

As for making ropes longer, I just picked some maximum length which felt right to me and figured that climbing up higher heights would then require multiple rope arrows placed at various heights so you can climb from one onto the other, but it can be easily changed (in the scripts that is, not in-game)

hmm, so i would have to got to them then and see if they could add collision closer to the actual wall instead of inside of it.

Well i was thinking about another 1.5 - 2 meters or about 4 - 6 feet of rope would probably be enough for most long rope situations.

Just uploaded version 0.50. Changelog:

0.50 BETA (6 July 2012)
- It is now possible to use the throat slit, knock out and kill in sleep moves on children, even when
the Non-Essential Killable Children mod is active.
- It is now not possible to teleport to Horstar's shop using Shadow's Refuge when the player is either
in combat or trespassing.
- Added an alternative recipe to craft 15 Rope Arrows at any forge using Firewood and an Iron Ingot as
materials instead of Iron Arrows.
- Added an optional .esp file which adds identity-concealing mask functionality to appropriate vanilla
skyrim masked headwear from Thieves guild and Dark Brotherhood (ONLY those with visible masks)
- Added an optional .esp file which adds identity-concealing mask functionality to all vanilla Skyrim
Dragon Priest masks.
- Forces subtitles to be shown on Horstar's dialogue (since there is no voice acting), even when subtitles
have been disabled.

Also included in the download is a short guide for other modders how they can make a patch for their armor mods to add the same identity-concealing functionality to their newly modded masks.

lol wow! Nice update Borgut. Now i can knock those little tattle tale brats out!

Also love how you made the vanilla masks conceal your identity.

Looks good! but this might cause some problems, I don't think mods that allow child-killing are allowed on this forum.

Actually my mod doesn't allow it by default. However, I used to only check for the keyword ''ActorTypeNPC'', and that one specific child-killing mod removes that keyword from children, so I added some other conditions to also allow the actions to work on children if that mod is installed. However, by default without such a child-killing mod you'll only see the animations and they won't actually die, so my mod still doesn't allow child-killing by default without such a mod. I just fixed a compatibility issue.

But i'll still be able to knock the the little.... i mean put them to sleep right?

Yeah knocking them out works perfectly fine even without a killing mod. I don't think that should be seen as an issue on these forums though... Could even see it as especially good! It's the only mod out there which offers a way in gameplay to prevent children in skyrim from reporting your crimes without involving killing them

Aaah, I misunderstood you. Glad to hear it's just compatability, and if knocking out removes them from the witnesses (although the last witness system is pretty poor anyway) then that's another reason why those people with mods that enable childkilling will be more inclined to not kill them.
That said, let's stop talking about it before anyone gets into a debate about morals...
I'm glad to see your little anticheating mechanism, and I'm really liking the idea of using Dragon Masks to hide your identity. How conflicty is this likely to be? (yes, that's a word now)
As in, does your optional mod edit dragon masks, or does it ask "is the player wearing [a dragon mask], if so, hide them" (to put things in the most pseudo of pseudocodes )?

No unfortunately scripts do have to be added to the armor objects themselves, so that would put it on the conflicty side of things. However, if you have some mod touching these armor objects which is really important to you, and you do know your way around the Creation Kit a little bit, then you could follow the new extra guide I've included in the download which is intended for modders to add the functionality to their own newly modded armor pieces.

if you know enough about the creation kit to follow that guide, you could also open up the mod you currently have installed which touches these items and inside that mod follow the guide and add the script and set properties yourself.

I'm guessing this is compatible withhttp://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/9752, which is just armor replacer, the stats though are the same. Just load this after it right?

so, anything we can expect in upcoming updates?

I've been thinking of a few tools that could be of use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrote - can either knock out or kill and could probably rework the slit throat animation to make it look like your fitting the loop over their head. The upside to this is that it could probably be tweaked to where the target makes no/low noise which would lower the chances of being detected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caltrop - a small peace of metal that when dropped always has a sharp point sticking up, can be used to force actors in pursuit to stumble when they encounter them and cause a small amount of damage.

Something for distractions would also be nice. Maybe something like http://chemistry.about.com/b/2012/06/08/how-tnt-pop-its-snappers-work.htm where when they are thrown and hit an object they make a loud pop sound, any one on look out would more than likely go check on it.

If he only replaces the model and did not touch the items in the CK, yes it should be.

As for the new tools you mentioned, I'm not so sure about the garrote since tweakin animations isn't exactly my cup of tea... noisemaking arrows are definitely something I'll be doing at some point too, and the caltrops might be an idea too. I am slowing the updates down a bit now though... partially because the necessity for a clean save means people lose crafted/bought content, and partially becaues the things I did now were what were most missing for me in skyrim, and after one more thing I'll be updating in Deadly Combat tomorrow I'll also want to actually play skyrim again (haven't done so for months)

lol the only time i actually played it was when i had it for 2 months after release on xbox. I built my computer and got it on pc and have been modding ever since. I'll probably get around to actually playing though when Dawnguard releases.

I'm having a problem getting this mod to work. I've added all three .esps yet whenever I launch the game, nothing works. I do get the shadow refuge added message and another weird box saying something about sneaks2324!#@! and that's about it. Everyone recognize me with my volsung mask. What am I doing wrong? I did a clean save without a mask just to be sure but that didn't help.

Did you check if the load order is correct? The optional .esp files should load after the main Sneak Tools.esp mod. If it still doesn't work then, it might be possible that you have some other mod which changes those same armor items loading after, so then you need to move the optional files further down the load order.

As for the weird messagebox, yes I'm aware of that, it's a debug message which happened to slip into the release, I've also warned for this in the red letters at top of the download page, but it's a harmless message which only shows up once when you first load the mod so figured it wouldn't be necessary to upload an entirely new version just to fix that small thing.