sounds good, it makes more sense for them to have companion share. what else are you using from the expansions?

Hmm, I wouldn't know how to go about implementing that...there is a lot of weapons and armor available for replacement throughout the expedition however. With companion share implemented, the player can easily swap out worn armor and weapons on the mercenaries for better conditioned ones found, or supply them with better equipment altogether. Armor does get worn fairly fast on this expedition.

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I implemented Dinkum-Thinkum's NPC potion saver code into the mercenaries' scripting, it's more versitile than what I came up with, and it's been proven too. I've moved the NPCs off the boat and into the courtyard of the dock, which should prevent any drowning issues a few people report. This also lets the player speak with and supply the mercenaries before heading to Firemoth. Lots of little things here and there. ^_^

I will have to try the new version. Played through it on the last version with quite a strong character, and managed to keep everyone alive right up until the end, where they all got slaughtered. *chuckle* Man, that guy is hard to kill - I must have gone through thousands of health points before I finished him off. Despite that, it was an excellent experience, good work!

Yay! Companion share!

Sounds great since I haven't done Firemoth yet on my current character.

Though my only gripe is that unlike most people, I'm not a fan of "change", fixing general dialogue bugs, cleaning references, making followers follow better and fixing terrain texture mistakes is fine and something I would definitely use.

However changing the equipment followers have or changing the skeletons/increasing difficulty and what not is probably the only thing stopping me.
Most people seem to love changing their game beyond belief until it looks as different as Michael Jackson did in the 80's.

I tend to only use mods that fix things or improve annoying issues, such as follower AI etc.

Quorn, it sounds to me like you're doing some seriously awesome work here, man. I just hope I'll play Morrowind again one day and enjoy this mod. ;^)

Never played this quest before but i think ill wait until you release the next update before I finally start it.

Made a little more progress. ^_^

I've finished up the dialogue for the mercenaries, it's fairly generic but it'll work for now. The player can give limited orders to the mercenaries, and the mercenaries can report health and specialty, as well as explain their contract and obligations. Much of the dialogue is similar to the Tribunal mercenary in regards to profit, etc. Writing dialogue isn't a strong point of mine, which is why this is taking longer.

The crates, barrels, and sacks found throughout the fort will now have a chance to yield some supplies like healing potions, fatigue potions, armorer hammers, lockpicks, torches, along with the usual clutter. As healing potions are a highly sought commodity for companions, searching these containers is now worthwhile to the player.

I've uploaded the next beta version. ^_^

This now requires the expansions, mostly for the companion support.

The biggest addition in this update is the mercenaries, the player can now give limited commands and utilize companion share. The skeletons are now slightly levelled. The interiors of the fort have been tweaked slightly, and the containers found now can contain potions and useful tools. . Lots of little fixes and adjustments for general improvement.

Try it out and let me know of any feedback or issues! ^_^

Also to note, I moved the mercenaries off the boat in Seyda Neen, which should prevent any issues of them disappearing or drowning from plug-in conflicts, and also makes it easy to create a compatibility patch with any plug-in that also adds a boat to the dock. Let me know if you still experience any issues with the mercenaries with this update. ^_^

I'm conflicted as to whether to test this for you and spoil the fun of truly playing it, or waiting until the final version is released and playing it without ruining all the fun surprises.

i tried this out for a little bit, i like the new companion features, and talking to them before sailing out. the new skeletons are great for the darkness, and didn't run into any issues. i made it to the fort before i had to quit, the battles were tense, especially crossing the bridge. the only thing that bothered me is that the companions tend to attack the archers instead of the grunts, and they die fast when that happens.

I've kept the expedition fairly close to the original, most of the changes were to make the expedition more immersive & interesting. It's worth a try if you liked the original. ^_^



The main thing I need tested is the mercenaries, most of the surprises would be inside the fort. There still some more content I haven't added, mainly the dialogue that involves Firemoth and its background. I'm still developing that aspect. ^_^



Thanks for trying it out! Glad to know it's working well. I don't think I can do anything about how the mercenaries choose their targets, though.

Added a couple screenshots of the new crew and the army of undead the player will face advancing towards the fort. ^_^

I've had fun playing through this again, but this time I encountered a few bugs, one especially that prevents my game from loading...

1. I spoke to the sailor and traipsed around the exterior of Firemoth with my companions for a while before returning to Seyda Neen, however after being deposited there was no sailor to return us. I checked under the dock (and RA'd) before swimming back to find the Firemoth sailor offering a trip to Firemoth - which, presumably, did nothing (he must have flunked navigation in school). I got around this by consoling another sailor at the SN docks, which fixed the issue.

2. The exteriors were fine when saving and loading, however as soon as I made saves in Firemoth itself and tried to load them, I had persistent crashes, with one in ten telling me 'unable to load spell 'resist shock_50', likewise for 'immune to frost', along with 'unable to find referenced object 'fm_warrior" in script fm_sailor_scpt' and 'exception encountered accessing laststate hit target on actor 'fm_skeleton_guard_key00000002'. I attempted a repair with mash on each, but it only deleted all my companions. I never resolved this, so I reverted to an earlier save then got #3

3. My companions disappeared completely when traveling to the . This happened twice in one runthrough, and also once with another character with fewer mods loaded. I also lost the last companion in a similar manner when exiting that room. I see no rhyme or reason to this, so I simply continued on without them.

Besides those issues, I had a great deal of fun; fighting the new and improved Grurn was a blast, and I really liked the skeleton model you chose. Hope these bugs get the axe so v1 runs smooth as can be.

I think a lot of this is because I'm still using a lot of the original dev's scripting for the initialization of the quest, which I'm noticing causes unforeseen issues. I've began writing the scripting from scratch, which I'll get uploaded fairly soon. The new way no longer needs to alter Seyda Neen, so I hope this kills any conflicting issues (well as long as the Census and Excise dock isn't altered drastically).

The issues in #2 seem like the savegame somehow has references from an older version of this plug-in, or maybe the original Firemoth plug-in. Or more likely it could be a local ref issue. I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the input, I think I can get a new version up and testing shortly. ^_^

I think you hit the nail on the head. At first I accidentally used the last beta's esm and made exactly one save before I realized my mistake. I didn't think of it because I wasn't anywhere near Firemoth then, plus I updated the masters. I'll do it the longer, safer way next time. One down, but the others still stand.

Barring any interuptions, I'll have the next update loaded up this evening. ^_^

This sounds Great! Immersion is the main thing I look for in games - yeah, I'm one of those sad sods that only play from first person POV...

Is there any chance you might be releasing a patch for "Census And Excise Travel" mod?
Otherwise many of TR users will be force to ditch that one...

In any case, BIG thanks for all of your hard work (the MPP especially! :tops: ).
Cheers.

New update posted!

This update should resolve some of the issues reported, which seem to be local ref issues. Grurn now has a unique model, and .

Any feedback? ^_^

A patch would be easy to make, I'll have one for the next update. ^_^

Is it supposed to be an .ESM?

oooh looks good, cant wait to give this a try

"A patch would be easy to make, I'll have one for the next update."

Great! Thank you VERY much for that! I just reinstall MW after over a year of absence. I'm still trying few things with my new setup and having major problems with merging objects - some mods seem to size to work, but I would love to add this one to the list too! :celebration:
Cheers.

p.s.
Now... if I only learn how to delete a couple of these f%$&@*$g trees... :banghead: