This Alpha Lord of the Rings-inspired mod adds Nazgul/Ringwraith-inspired Black Riders and a One Ring-inspired Ring of Power.

* Please Back up your Saves and use a separate save game for testing this mod, pretty good chance a lot of people will die. *

I have never released or packaged a mod before, so let me know if anything is screwy.

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* The Nine and The One
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By Andy Rink (personman_145@hotmail.com)


DESCRIPTION:

This mod is designed to put some of the many great LOTR inspired modding resources
together in to a cool mod.

The Black Riders patrol the main roads around cities.

The Ring of Power test version can be found in the middle of the table in the
Imperial City Tower.

This is an early alpha release that is mostly for novelty, eye candy and testing.


INSTALLATION:

Place these files in your Oblivion/Data directory, make sure to activate the .esp
in Oblivion's Launcher, under "Data Files."


CREDITS:

Nazgul Robes and Armor v2 by The Bloke

Witch-King Sword v1.1 by Grimdeath and TemplarGFX

Nazgul Sword by Isil

The Oblivion Community for ideas, support, and resources

Bethesda, for making a great game and excellent tools

http://e-buy-it.com/Downloads/get=2.html

Fun project so far, here is what made it in, this is just testing, so nothing is carved in stone:

The nine black riders w/ robes, armor and their respective swords. They are a custom race and a custom class.

They are immune to normal weapons, paralysis, poison, and have an 85 shield rating, w/ 33% weakness to fire.

Their minimum level is 50 for the witch-king, and 40 for the other eight, and they will always be 25 and 20 levels above you, respectively (IIRC).

They are currently marked as essential, so best not to try killing them.

They are skilled in blade, block, blunt, & illusion (for future demoralize spell)

In daylight, from 7am to 8pm, they are 70% blind. From 8pm to 10pm, and 5am to 7am, they are 50% blind, and from 10pm to 5am they are 30% blind.

Someone brought up the idea of giving them detect life, according to the construction set wiki, NPCs do not make use of this.

Equipping the ring makes them 0% blind, increases their sneak skill by 100, and gives them a disposition toward the player of -200 for the witch-king, and -100 for the other eight.

and now the ring...

The ring is fairly simple so far. It gives 99% chameleon. I tried to do 100% chameleon, but at that point even setting the Black Rider's sneak to 500+ wasn't sufficient for them to detect the player.

With a chameleon level of 99%, boosting sneak by 100 seems to be sufficient.

The AI packages are iffy... The nine don't exactly run screaming for the player when you equip the ring... I hope to improve this in the future, if possible.

When they do react, they head for the last known location that the ring was equipped. Once they get there, they wander for 24 hours in the area, then return to their patrols.

If any modders have any ideas on improving the responsiveness of the AI, I'm certainly open to suggestions. Perhaps equipping the ring could force the 9 to reevaluate their AI, rather than leaving it up the game engine?

I had some issues with misbehaving Nazgul that delayed release... You bring 'em up the best you can... What are ya gonna do?

The last-known-ring-equipped location is tracked via an ingenious technique I found in the CS wiki called a "marker rat."

A lot of what the mod does isn't readily apparent, but a foundation has been laid for some hopefully interesting possibilities in the future.

Any feedback and ideas are welcome!

-Andy

Could really use testers. Does the ring show up where it is supposed to? (Middle of the table in the Imperial Palace Tower?)

Do the nine show up around cities? They should have large swords and whoop your butt if attacked...

Is there any weirdness?

Let me know, thanks.

-Andy

Hey man! like the sound of this, is it possible that you could put a few screenies up???

Sure, I only have one so far, as there isn't a lot to show yet.

http://e-buy-it.com/ScreenShot3.jpg

I have been making some decent progress with the AI since the last release, so hopefully I'll have a new release up fairly soon.

:)

-Andy

Perhaps try uploading it to TES Nexus or something, I wouldn't download anything from that site you linked there.

Ok, maybe I'll wait till the next release is ready, and put it up on planetelderscrolls or tesnexus. This is just a test release I put on my own webspace to make sure it actually works before I submit it other places.

-Andy

Few things I'm thinking about. Maybe picking up the ring should be enough to set the black riders' disposition against you, rather than waiting for you to equip it.

They still won't swarm on your location unless you equip the ring though...

Also thinking about looking in to making them flee if their health goes below a certain point. That way even if you can't kill them, you can still fight them off.

your obviously a very good scripter, would be cool if you were on the MERP team to help with the questline! (i noticed you have posted there), i think that if you can make the black riders AI do this then it would be a good idea! and having them flea would be better than them dying... though i dont think my archer would want to try to stand up to the level 50 rider haha

Oh and i would also prefer downloading on Tesnexus

Oh and PS
the pic looks good!

Thanks! I love scripting. The credit for the look is all The Bloke for his excellent robes and armor.

For an archer, if you have decent speed and sneak, arrows that do fire damage, and sneak attack from a distance in daylight, you might stand a chance. No promises though!

They are currently marked essential, and don't yet have flee code, so a face to face confrontation at night is probably a bad idea for practically anyone.

In alpha one, as long as you only equip the ring briefly and unequip it, you shouldn't have a problem with the nine, they will ignore you unless attacked.

I think for the second release though, possessing the ring will be enough to put them on your bad side, and equipping it WILL send them running for your location. As they are largely blind in daylight, you might be able to sneak by them with relative ease, as long as you don't equip the ring.

-Andy

are they essential or are they a bit scripted (IE can you kill them )

As it stands they are marked as essential so they can't be killed. Might be able to knock them out and run though!

I'm doing more work on this right now. I'd like to make them flee when their health gets below a certain amount.

I'd like to keep them essential, but make fighting them off more realistic.

-Andy

I'm officially part of the MERP team now.

It's truly an honor. I will continue to develop this mod as a test-bed and novelty though.

It's really a dream, I love LOTR and Oblivion...

We are currently brain-storming ideas for the nine, and I'm eager to implement them.

Heh, this is FUN.

I should have a second release up soon. All the current changes are in the .esp only, so people who have already downloaded the first alpha will only need the new .esp file.

-Andy

Version 0.2 is up now.

Changes:

The nine riders have invincible armor.

The nine will flock to your location as soon as you equip the ring.

The nine will attack you on sight if you possess the ring.

http://e-buy-it.com/Downloads/details/id=2.html

Once I have a work around for damaged weaponry, I'll post this on external sites like tesnexus and planetelderscrolls.

Just a matter of time.

-Andy

good work Andy.... nice to see your part of MERP now!
would definately love to see this implemented into the main MERP quest (when its finished)

Just thought I would post an update. This mod is now available from both TESNEXUS, and Planetelderscrolls:

TESNEXUS: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32494

planetelderscrolls: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=6328

I do plan to do more with this, but for the moment, all my efforts have been concentrated on MERP. I think once our next release is out and any subsequent issues are dealt with, I'll have more time for this.

-Andy