Version 3.3.2, april 30, 2010
..... 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 3.3.2 http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16316 (TesNexus), http://www.invision.tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=292 (TESAlliance), or http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=4203 (Planet).
WHAT'S NEW:
This is, content-wise, the final version of The Ayleid Steps. It has the full background story for the Steps Network sytem, which unfolds as the player progresses through a line of 9 new quests. You will learn why the Ayleids built the Steps, where they went after soing so, and what the hero of the first quest really went through before he died. Many new locations are added - mostly dungeons, a small worldspace containing a domain which you can own and care for, and a miscellany of other interior cells; all are quest-specific (unlike the 40+ Lost Dungeons in previous versions).
The new quests have many (silent) dialogs, books, letters and notes.
To have them blend into the vanilla game these quests are time-driven. To start them, you cannot do much else than use a certain amount of Steps, play the game as usual, and pay attention. Certain events have to develop in faraway locations, dictating the progress of the quest line. Between two consecutive quests you often have to wait 4 days. Some of the quests themselves can take a week to complete, so that finishing the entire questline may take 6 to 10 (game)weeks.
The purpose of the quests is to tell the Stepstones story. Part of that 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. At the end of the final quest all bits and pieces will fall into place. Although there is plenty to do for you the story is not player-centered, so there are very few alternatives, choices or multiple questlines.
The full series of quests:
1. The Ayleid Steps (from earlier versions)
2. Retracing the Steps (from earlier versions)
3. Welkynd Worries
4. Murder Masquerade
5. The Daring Dunmer
6. The Audacious Argonians
7. The Dungeon Dabblers
8. Mapping Mayhem
9. The Ingred Inauguration
10. The Vanuasecul Venture & Aryarie's Artifact
11. The True Descendants
For the impatient:
After this, the quests generally take off when you are in the Imperial City. From the 'Audacious Argonians' quest on, someone will approach you. You can facilitate this by traveling to the IC on the 8th or 9th day after completing the former quest, stay there and wait. Be patient. It can take 'them' some time to find you.
CHANGELOG, release 3.3.2
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* Moved entrance step for Lost Varlavale from cell 0,3 to 2,2 to fix map marker problem causing occasional crashes.
* Fixed script glitch which would stall Vanuasecul quest when player escaped the dungeon using mark & recall.
* Fixed script glitch which sometimes stalled final quest (Tertia's squad refusing to show up for the final journey).
* Losing the watchman in an interior cell during Mapping Mayhem quest will no longer break the quest.
* Many minor questscript tweaks and typo corrections.
* Welkynd stone base price is now capped at 510 septims.
* Added named bosses to 12 of the lost dungeons.
CHANGELOG, up to release 3.3.1
-------------------------------------------------
* Language edits completed. All dialogs and books/notes of the quests 6 through 12 were proofread and edited by Ed Waldorph.
* In the Mapping Mayhem quest fast travel is now disabled during Player's mapping journeys.
* The Dead Mages Guild messenger (Intro Quest) is relocated from Wellspring Cave's entrance to the northeast. She can now be found on the roadside near the Ayleid Well.
* Several very minor quest and dungeon tweaks.
* Start of Vanuasecul Venture slightly altered: the beggar will now set out to find the Player in the IC instead of waiting in the Market district.
* Several objects will no longer be marked as quest items after Vanuasecul Venture is completed.
* Fixed a dialog bug which would affect all NPC's if Player elected to abandon the final quest.
* Fixed a script glitch that prevented proper use of the handles in the Guardian's Hub room.
* Changed Steps adjustment script to avoid conflict with DLC Frostcrag Spire.
* Fixed a few layout problems in the dungeons as pointed out by Khettienna.
* Added 4 new Lost Dungeons. We now have 51 new Dungeons, 3 of which are quest-specific.
* Placed more bedrolls in third Fefandor level to prevent cultists from sleeping in the Selatus family hideout.
* Closed a big gap in the second Crater Passage cell.
* Fixed a layout problem in lower level of Lost Megund Rael.
* Steps adjustment script can now recognize West Roads 1.1 mod.
* Corrected Jannus Mercium's script so he won't chase Player after completion of main quest.
* Teleporting NPCs will no longer pop up when Player is in a lost dungeon.
* Shortened time between quests from Murder Masquerade on to final quest to 4 days.
* Tweaked spell for Purple Welkynd recharge; Alteration level governs how often you have to cast the spell.
* Deathgems capacity is now grand, although the Core will continue to use 1200 points of it at maximum.
* Replaced a mesh in the .bsa for the 'shiny' Stepstone variant.
* Fixed a mesh-texture path bug (for the cultists' banner).
* Added new textures & meshes for the Deathgem and special Imperial Legion armors, all designed by Bleral.
* Packed resource files into a .bsa file; added a batch file to remove earlier versions' file clutter.
* Resolved a conflict with the new UL-module Skingrad Outskirts.
* The mod now recognizes the German UL-filenames (thanks to Chaky for sorting these out).
* Fixed another missing mesh bug (for the tombstone)
* Implemented a few cosmetic fixes in the SSotA worldspace as pointed out by Chaky.
* Removed object script from welkynd stones.
* Fixed a bug in the Daring Dunmer quest (quest would halt if Norb Gro-Rukhol didn't like player).
* Fixed some Lost Dungeon architectural problems in Morra and Carnivore Cave.
* Pimped one of the Lost Dungeons (Tocrec) with a new large room and enemies.
* Rewrote AI script and packages for the cultists. They should now behave as intended.
* Fixed a few problems in the Talos Bridge Hideout as pointed out by Khettienna.
* Added meshes & textures for the Guardian's diary, a tombstone, a True Descendants banner and a street poster (all designed and produced by Bleral).
* Added new textures for the Stepstones. They are now seamless; some have nice glinting scraps of welkynd embedded (Bleral).
* Added new custom Ayleid Steps quest icon (Bleral).
* (WIP) Covered essentials of the version 3 questline in the Spoilers file.
* Added a few new Steps here & there.
* Added 2 new Lost Dungeons. We now have 44 Lost Dungeons plus 3 quest-specific dungeons.
* Texts in books, dialogs and quest updates from the Intro Quest up to the Daring Dunmer quest were corrected and edited by Qbit.
* Corrected missing mesh bugs introduced in previous versions.
* Changed a StepstoneScript to avoid a nasty problem in the Mapping Mayhem quest.
* Added Cobl's alchemy sorter to the Talos bridge tower hideout.
* Removed Ayleid arrows from leveled loot lists in the Lost Dungeons.
* Fixed several small (Lost) dungeon layout problems.
INSTALLING/UPGRADING:
Nothing has changed in the contents of the previous version (2.6), so you can install this package overwriting the older files, and play on with existing save games. Backup those saves however, for safety's sake. As there are no voice files in the package, you will probably need Elys Universal Silent Voice v0.93 (OBSE plugin).
COMPATIBILITY:
Playtested with the same old install as previous versions: refer to the Readme excerpt below. The dialogs 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: cell -14,-3 and -13,-3, a small building, pathgrids & slight height changes). These areas are not affected by currently finalized UL-landscaping mods as far as I know.
TO-DO'S FOR THE FINAL VERSION:
* Extend the Spoilers file to cover the new quests and locations.
* Cosmetics: fix the usual building/dungeon problems, add a few custom textures. The latter are being worked on by a fellow forumer.
* Fix quest bugs as they emerge from the player community.
* Maybe add a post-questline-quest for more
* Maybe have vendors, trainers and other semi-important vanilla people take a day off regularly to go teleporting and generally add to the chaos.
* Maybe extend the post-quest dialogs and activities in the domain.
* The domain may need distantLods and local maps. Not sure about this. Tell me.
Please save your game often, and report any bug/quirk/language mistake and whatnot in this thread to help make it a better mod. Oh, and remember to use
Readme excerpt:
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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 sunken ruins, 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 waste bin), and an enormous 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. During the quest you have to visit a rather hairy location, so OOO-players can hardly do this before level 12-18. There are no quest markers in your compass - 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 and after some time has gone by, an epic storyline starts to unfold in 9 consecutive quests. You will be witness to a series of strange events of which you cannot make much sense at first; but gradually you will become more involved in a story about politics, history, love and death.
(Please refer to the paragraphs at the bottom of this file for more info on the first two quests. )
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 20-30. 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.
* Cobl (Common Oblivion Library) version 1.72 or newer.
and a highly recommended OBSE plugin:
* Elys Universal Silent Voice v0.93. Unless you can super-speedread - this mod has no soundfiles. Link: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16622
COMPATIBILITY:
-------------------------------
UNIQUE LANDSCAPES & BETTER CITIES:
The mod detects which (if any) Unique-Landscape-mods or Better Cities IC mods are activated, and adjusts certain Stepstone positions accordingly. It does this once after each savegame loading (and at the start of a new game). Note that this will ONLY work if you have not altered the original .esp filenames! If the mod cannot find a plugin, the Steps in the area will be reset to their default position. So no more displacements after you change your plugin load order. How Oblivion stores the Steps positions in its savegames is of no importance at all, since the adjusting is repeated with every game loading.
Better Cities, Open Cities and Open Better Cities (non-IC modules): compatible in so far that there are no Steps in exterior town cells, so no conflicts.
Other mods that The Ayleid Steps can adjust to, are listed under "Reference".
OTHER PLUGINS:
The mod is built with only Vanilla Oblivion, aforementioned official patch, OBSE 18 and Cobl 1.72. It is playtested with UOP, FCOM (OOO, MMM, Francesco's, WarCry), the UL mods and many smaller mods activated; so far no severe conflicts were found.
This mod may conflict with other plugins that:
- alter the vanilla landscape (House and village mods for example)
- alter vanilla interiors, change architectural layout, move furniture, etc.
- alter availability and/or prices of Welkyndstones. (To be sure, load after such mods).
If you teleport somewhere and don't see a Stepstone where there should be one, an other mod may have buried it. As a consequence you can't use it. This is not necessarily a problem - there are so many Steps in the world that you can easily do without some.
The mod is tested with the Valeria Caresse companion; there were no issues so far. Every companion that can teleport to the player should work.
ISSUES & KNOWN CONFLICTS:
---------------------------------------------
* 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 Mapping Mayhem quest requires the Player to find a sequence of Stepstones within a given stretch of time. To be able to monitor this the mod has to pick a reference timescale, so the quest script memorizes the current timescale and then replaces that with the vanilla value of 30. When the Player is done, the timescale is reset to its initial value. This reset may go completely wrong if other timescale-altering mod(s) is/are active. Solution: temporarily disable them while you're doing this quest.
THANKS:
-----------
* to the OBSE programmers for their nifty script extender.
* to MadCat221 (madcat221@gmail.com), RDjeke (rdjeke@gmail.com) 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, Jack Whitehead, Khettienna 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.
Screenshots:
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The former forum thread is http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1027326 (version 2.6).