» Mon Dec 14, 2015 4:28 am The Ayleid Steps 3
..... Vast teleportation network across Cyrodiil with over 800 Steps
..... 51 new dungeons with 125 levels in all for you to find and explore
..... Ten quests with lots of exploring, searching and puzzles to solve
..... Ayleid Meteoric Iron Weaponry and Ayleid Clutter to be found in the dungeons
..... Large player home in a private domain to supervise and be responsible for
..... Self-adjusting compatibility with Unique-Landscapes- and Better-Cities plugins.
Download at http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16316 or http://www.invision.tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=292. Note that the version on TESAlliance is old (3.5) and no longer updated.
==Latest version: 3.6.5, updated 12 Dec 2015==
* Updated the patch script for three steps outside of the IC (Better Cities IC Imperial Isle).
* Various minor fixes.
Readme excerpt:
INTRODUCTION:
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As long as anyone can remember, hundreds of ancient Ayleid stones sit in Cyrodill's wilderness and in Ayleid structures such as ruins and wells. What almost nobody knows however, is what these so-called Steps are supposed to do. Doing the intro Quest, you find out that this network of stones is in fact a teleporting system. Each time you want to teleport, you have to energize the Step with a Welkynd stone.
You can teleport directly into Ayleid ruins, to Ayleid wells, and to lots of locations that the Ayleids once considered important. But you have to prepare yourself: many Steps are defective and will refuse to work, or beam you to random locations. You can land in someone's basemant, in government buildings, in caves in the middle of a bunch of goblins, and in very remote and unusual places. Or you can discover about 50 new dungeons, hitherto unknown to man, where lots of treasure and enemies await you. There are two new homes to be found, too - a small one on completing the introduction quest (not very pretty, but it has a bedroll, a private Stepstone (no doors) and many safe containers), and a large one at the end of the final quest, situated in an Ayleid ruin in a private domain.
To start the intro quest you have to try to activate one Stepstone, and read a book on the topic. There are no quest markers in your compass during the intro quest - you have to examine, read and think a bit, and search a lot. When you can actually use the Steps, the quest is not over before you find a certain location mentioned in the clues. But after that, you can imagine your own neverending quest: try to map the Network, search for those VERY hard to find lost ruins, and of course hunt for Welkynd stones.
After you have used a certain amount of Steps you will notice that many vanilla NPC's start to teleport through Cyrodiil, and then an epic storyline unfolds in 9 quests. You will learn why the Ayleids built the Steps, where they went after doing so, and what the hero of the opening quest really went through before he died.
To have them blend into the vanilla game these quests are time-driven. To start them, you cannot do much else than explore the Steps and pay attention. Certain events have to develop in faraway locations, dictating the progress of the quest line. Between two quests you often have to wait 4 days. Some of the quests themselves can take a week to complete, so that completion of the entire questline may take 6 to 10 (game)weeks.
The purpose of the quests is to tell the Stepstones story. Part of it is developing while you play but somewhere far away, another part is history. You'll often find yourself involved as an onlooker who performs tasks without fully comprehending what is going on. The NPCs have their own agendas. Although there is plenty to do for you the story is not player-centered, so there are very few alternatives, choices or multiple questlines.
This plugin intends to offer a reason to keep on exploring and adventuring for experienced characters, i.e. those that have completed all default game quests and have attained a level over 20. However, it can be played well by low level characters, except for the final quest in which you face some powerful enemies.
Playing the Ayleid Steps with FCOM, or OOO and MMM, or other overhaul mods is highly recommended!
REQUIREMENTS:
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* Vanilla Oblivion with the latest official patch 1.2.416.
* OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) version 18 or newer, get the latest version here: http://obse.silverlock.org/.
* Cobl (Common Oblivion library) version 1.72 or newer, find it here: http://tesnexus.com/...e.php?id=21104. For use with this mod, you merely have to install "Cobl Main.esm" and the Meshes, Sound and Textures folders in the "Cobl Core" folder, and activate "Cobl Main.esm").
* Elys Universal Silent Voice v0.93. Unless you can super-speedread - this mod has no voice files. Link: ?id=16622
ISSUES & KNOWN CONFLICTS:
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* Some users reported getting stuck when trying to reach a particular Stepstone near the invisible borders of the game. The scripts were corrected for this one. In case you find another problem Step, you can correct it by editing this line in your Oblivion.ini file: "bBorderRegionsEnabled=1". Change the 1 to a 0, and save the file.
* Playing with MMM, you may encounter bands of adventurers in the Lost Dungeons. If you find this immersion-breaking, use the MMM-provided "Mart's Monster Mod - No Adventurers.esp" to prevent them spawning in dungeons.
* Should stepping activity of NPCs cause problems, it can be altered with the (Cobl) Options menu in your inventory. Look for the "Ayleid Steps - NPCs behavior" option. You can determine if NPCs will go teleporting, and if they should be set to essential when they do so, to protect them.
* The dialogs in version 3 are mostly performed by custom NPCs, but several vanilla NPCs are involved with a few lines, and they must be alive in your game to ensure quest progress. These are Angalmo, Aryarie, Calindil, Carahil, Gundalas, Hlidara Mothril, Mog-gra-Mogakh, Orintur, Suurotan, Tumindil and Ungarion.
* There are a few landscape edits far northeast of Cheydinhal (pathgrid edits) and south-southeast of Skingrad/West of Silorn (a small building, pathgrids & slight height changes). These areas are not affected by currently finalized UL-landscaping mods as far as I know.
* There is a minor conflict in the Murder Masquerade quest and Open Cities; you'll have to toggle Skingrad to "closed" in order to proceed with the quest.
THANKS:
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* to the OBSE programmers for their nifty script extender.
* to MadCat221 (/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection), RDjeke (/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection) and Sotobrastos for the Ayleid Meteoric Iron Weapons.
* to Meo, Cryptic_Rain and Vacuity for the Ayleid Clutter objects.
* to Wrye and anyone who contributed, for Common Oblivion Library (Cobl).
* to several people in the gamesas and TesNexus forum threads or sending e-mails, for suggestions that helped improve the mod - notably Skyranger for the Hubs concept, WalkerInShadows, Khettienna, Jack Whitehead and Dazu for bughunting, Chaky for general helpfulness, Shadowborn for pointing out conflicts and script bugs, and Wrye for constructive criticisms.
* to PresetM (up to 2.3.1) and SuzieQ (from 2.6.1 on) for the German versions.
* to Bleral for designing and producing the custom meshes and textures.
* to Qbit for correcting and editing all texts of the first 5 quests.
* to Ed Waldorph for correcting and editing all texts of the remaining 8 quests.
* to WalkerInShadows for updating & editing this final version.
(Screenshots removed, as the links no longer work.)
Anyone still playing this mod?
