Name: The Sundered Keep
Version: Dunno, really.
Requirements: Oblivion Patch 1.2.0.416
Author: ub3rman123
Download: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37587, (More mirrors later)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rxwVHWrVEI


Description:
The Sundered Keep is a large quest mod that will take you from the swamps of Blackwood to the depths of the earth to the Sea of Ghosts. It's an epic quest chain, with tens of new enemies and monsters, possibly tens of new NPCs, and many unique rewards. Travel across the world to stop an ancient god from gaining a foothold in the long lost city of Witherstone. Meet interesting new characters, wield amazing new weaponry, and explore vast forgotten caverns and ruins.

Note:
I'm finally releasing this mod after ~6 months of work. Thanks to Ranakoa and David Brasher for starting the contest that got me into it. I'm posting this mod with the feeling of relief at finally getting it off my drive, because I'm somewhat sick of it by this point. If you like the mod, please don't forget to endorse/vote for the File of the Month!

There is a separate discussion tab for spoilers in the discussions area. Please use that if you think what you're saying might be a spoiler.

I have also added on a bug reports section. Sorry for the disorganization in the early stages of release. This is a mod I'm sick of by now. Download it!

Features:
Hundreds of new models and textures!
A completely unique player home that can be relocated to literally anywhere you like!
Many new weapons and armor!
An intriguing questline and a stunning epic finish!
A gigantic multilevel dungeon with more fiends than you can wave a poleaxe at!

A wandering mage has discovered in her scrying that a long forgotten god, Leer, has recently discovered a loophole to access Tamriel, a relic from his last incursion. The mage will need your help in stopping Leer from entering the realm of mortals.

Beginning the mod:
When the mod is loaded, a quest stage will appear, informing you that the mod is loaded. A minion of the mage's should start making its way towards you.

Known bugs
At one point, you're asked to sleep on a bed. There's not a recorded sound file for the section, so you'll just have to sit there for 8 seconds and pretend.

LEAVE YOUR COMPANIONS BEHIND! They can mess up the scripting, as well as getting stuck in areas when MoveTo is called on the player. I don't know how to make a MoveTo affect you and modded companions, so I have no choice.

I haven't received reports of it from other players, but I get a bug where the monster at the very beginning of the mod doesn't do anything, and instead just sits where it is. That's what I added in a quest marker to it for.

As with the previous, I have had AI problems with a few enemies, particularly the spirits of Leer and a certain group of pirates. They just sit there. This might be on other computers, but nobody's mentioned it yet.

The pirate clothing can mess up on a vanilla skeleton. If you're neither playing a best race nor using a compatibility/replacement skeleton, the pirate's gear will clip and fly around crazily. This is because the bottom of the coat is rigged to the tail bone, which is not present on the vanilla non-beast skeleton.


Change log:

1.00: Release
1.05: Fixed a bug with Myria that caused crashing
Altered the Witherstone City world
Fixed a small bug with a note
Fixed scripting on a book

Credits:

All the people on the forums who've helped me with my problems! Among them: Pronam, WillieSea, Ranokoa, Alonsomartinez, and many others who my horrible memory can't remember. Thanks also goes to the BTA Guild on TESA & the beta testers on the Nexus for their thorough and extensive testing.

Treleth for the ingenious scripting on his http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=oblivionmods.detail&id=1449
Zotman12 (Hentai) for resources used from http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34179
Mr_Siika for his http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33033*,Siege Engines* & http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17184*
Pale_Rider for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17597*
Sinblood for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33823* & http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19177*
Gizmodian for thehttp://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20498* & http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20637*
Andragorn for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26490*
VanillaBeans and Hentai for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25871
Dall for the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15319*
Oriphier for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3277*
Necrospawn for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5019*
Throttlekitty for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18846*
Stroti for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34764*
Waalx for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12365*
Phitt for the http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20993*
Texian for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8930*
Leo Gura for http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12997*

While I don't think I've missed anyone (And I've lost sleep trying not to), please message me if I used your resources without putting up credit here.


Items with an asterisk are marked as modders' resources.

Edit: And yes, this is a blatant copy-paste of the ReadMe. I'm lazy.

Looks promising.

A few questions: Compatibility with major mods? FCOM, Better Cities, ULs?
How about appropriate level to start this quest?

Also, is this lore-friendly? THere is already a Sea of Ghosts in Tamriel - north of Skyrim. Are you using the same location for your setting?

Ani-
Should be compatible with those mods. There may be a slight conflict with the UL Blackwood Forest but thats it. I would also suggest being level 15 minimum before attempting this questline. The Sea of Ghosts also surrounds Morrowind where this goes to. I would call it lore-friendly

I haven't heard of any incompatibilities, but I don't run any UL mods. It only alters 5 areas in Tamriel: A small dock near the Upper Niben on the eastern side south of Culotte, an area in the Blackwood swamps west of Fort Doublecross, a small spot in the Jerall Mountains south of the Temple of the Ancestor Moths, no alteration but a minor addition south of Fort Ash, and a number of objects added to the coast south of Leyawiin. All other locations mentioned are new areas without mod dependencies (Usually created through making an interior or exterior and faking it).

Just a couple thoughts, first going by how you stated the mod starts it like many other mods will have an anoymous message appear before you no matter where you are. Fine since a lot of mods do that but some like to stumble into the quest as they travel around. So perhaps if you don't want to make any change yourself see if aellis will make a quest delayer for this mod. Second thought, trailer looked interesting but the framerate from the gameplay captures were extremly low so left the trailer hard to watch which was unfortunate. Finally looking at the resource mods you used in this there are some strange and anime style things among them which can sometime be very contrasting to a normal oblivion world, not that I don't like anime but I tend to keep that kind of stuff separated from Oblivion since they are very different styles. However from what I was able to see in the trailer I didn't see anything really oddly standing out so maybe you blended things in well or have good explanations for certain things and it all works out. I've added to my list of mods I'm going to put in my next install since the description sounds really interesting, just giving you my opinion on how the mod may be perceived by those who find this post.

I checked it for compatibility issues with major mods, and it manages to just miss a few so it's not something that needs to be worried about too much. I've given it an appropriate location in the BOSS masterlist.

Can't wait for the mirror's so I can take a peek at this. It's quite a nice looking mod!

THe message isn't exactly the start of the quest.. It's a monster that should begin following you around until it finds you. The message is just there so you can have a compass to the monster. Mostly because I don't trust the thing to be smart enough to find you on its own.

Hey man,

Congrats on releasing a big quest mod! I just copied the archive in wrye bash installer folder, and it will skip the following upon installation: "meshes\WitherstoneColony\Statues\Shieldthing.rar" Is this OK, or should I extract the rar manually somewhere?

I'll let you know my first impressions after I've played the mod a bit.

Probably. How'd that end up in the archive anyways.. It's just an extraneous test mesh.

Sounds very interesting. I wonder how could I miss it on Nexus. Anyway, thanks for sharing! :foodndrink:

Great, thanks for letting me know. I'll go ahead and have fun

Edit: nevermind, wrong topic

Looks fantastic, will give a try very soon

This sounds great. I love quest mods.

Hey man,

I had a chance to play the quest, and although I don't know where I am in terms of progression, (I'm in the ) I think I spotted a couple of errors.

1. some characters avec black eyes, and I'm talking about pitch black eyes, not only the iris color . I seem to remember something about editing characters.

2. the icon for the fallen champion's shield is missing in the inventory. FormID finder reports the following: Icon not found at expected location: textures\menus\icon\VBMOD\Armors\shadow shield.dds. Maybe it's because of the space in the dds file name?

I would have a suggestion: could you remove the autosave you implemented? Oblivion defaut autosave is notorious for breaking mods, especially when you have a lot of them.

So far I like it, I was not expecting to become so I don't know where I'll end

Good job, I'm having fun and my character has a worthy challenge.

Still, I'm not sure if there's a better method for autosaves. If a forgetful person doesn't quicksave, they might be put all the way back to the beginning of the mod when they die. As for the icon, I'll look into it. Probably just forgot to include the folder.

But that's exactly the way it works in Oblivion everywhere else, so people are used to taking the type of saves they want when they feel they need it. This mod seems very interesting and well done, btw. I'm going to test it

No problem man, that was just a suggestion Autosave/quicksave are a good thing in most games, but Oblivion that doesn't handle them very well. Again, I haven't broken anything so far, it's just to cover everything.

Version 1.15 is up! Those who have a previous version are strongly recommended to download it from the updates section for the numerous bugfixes it has. Please refer to the Version History in the ReadMe for more information.

The new music is awesome - where did you get it?

One note: You should consider pyffi-ing your meshes; I'm not sure how much smaller they are uncompressed (forgot to compare before I pyffied them), but the compressed archive is 8 MB smaller.

This is great Salamaar One minor thing that bugs me is that the Clanfears seem to have a high reflect damage ability. Nothing worse than getting killed because you're a hard hitter I think I'm in the final line of the mod.

Cheers!

WalkerfsinShdwaos: THe musidc is by an excellent compsoder called Marios Aristopoulos. The link to hswi ewbsite is f=foudn on th ecredidts list of the NExsu filepage. How do I pyffi the medshes? Is ti just thew ones I made myelf or al of them?

Dazu: Whic h CLannfeard? THe ones in Balckwood memory oir tee study? All clann feare in thr game seem to have that abikity. I;ll look into it when I wcna think wslightly more clearily. (JUst had surgery; cant feel my fingeras.)

Just the ones included in your mod. http://pyffi.sourceforge.net/ (that's a link), and follow the instructions. It's really easy, and it reduces the size of meshes, which improves performance in game.

Yes, the ones that attack the in blackwoods. I'll use my magic against them, no problem.