I downloaded this mod a while ago and never played I until now and I'm having a issue where he keeps taking my horse and refuses to get off, even to go inside building. If I teleport him to me he will simply leave and get back on my horse. How do I stop him.
I found a solution that worked for me. The Construction set - load files (a folder icon) - set rtt as active file - ok- view - object window - npc (those who from rtt should be colored green) - argonian - Ruined-Tail (he is the first in the list) - edit - script - then delete one of endif (it marked as a mistake by CS. There is a red Cross at the start of this line. Located before "If (Player.IsRidingHorse == 1) && (OnHorse == 0) && (ZZRTT1.RuinFollow == 1) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory >= 8)" May as well delete the sound of the spell. Some people have crashes because of that sound. Also save unchanged copy of this script somewhere else. Just in case.
I'm getting a reproducible CTD in the Shadowscale sanctuary after the Shadowseekers set the traps, and having closed the portcullis, then waiting while they're sneaking.
Okay, I ended up getting through by reloading a save from before I went in and I finished the mod.
And I gotta say, this mod is kinda bad. In a large number of ways. This is gonna have spoilers in it, you've been warned.
For starters Ruin develops his relationship with you in a very jarringly rapid manner, the entire thing goes way too fast and feels forced/rushed. In less than a week of traveling together he was acting like we're best friends who've known each for years. It feels awkward and unnatural. Vilja had a far better, and more natural feeling, sense of progression to your relationship with her.
He also talks way, way too fuccking much. It was cool hearing his perfect voice with the AI mod, I couldn't imagine playing this with no voice acting and just having to read all the dialogue for him and all the other characters, but seriously after a few conversations I found myself just telling him to STFU and clicking through after quick reading what he had to say. Ruin also kept stealing my horse.
Secondly, the mod makes way too liberal use of cutscene moments. You know, those times when the game forcibly freezes you in place and you just have to wait it out? There was a time where I actually had to use console commands because the scene was stuck otherwise.
It was right at the end, at the Shadowscale headquarters with the Shadowseekers. Gloom, or Twilight or whatever the Nord's name was, tried talking to me but I was behind a table which was placed so badly and ill-fittingly that he couldn't make it to me and kept walking against the table because the walls were too narrow for him to make it over. I had to target him with the console and then do moveto player. Bad.
Another really odd thing about this mod is the fact they don't let you loot the Shadowscales. Why? I killed them, I want to check their corpse for anything useful like any other creature/NPC. You can get around this by using the console to select them then do the command "activate" - but you shouldn't have to do this in the first place. Also, you can't loot items in their lair? I got a 42 gold bounty for picking up a couple arrows and a claymore.
Like what the fucck?
These are murderers, operating as part of an illegal group of paid assassins and you can't steal from them??? Lol like who even reported me there? The Shadowseekers? The guys who came in with me to kill these people?
What were they thinking?
It also makes entirely no sense for the Shadowscales to be operating, basically out in the open, in the Imperial City. Was the mod author not aware of Adamus Phillida? The guy who is obsessively trying to rid the city of Dark Brotherhood presence? Also the NPC's referring to Sithis as the "Dark Father" just hits the ear wrong, he's the Dread Father.
Has the mod author never actually played through the entirety of the Dark Brotherhood questline before?
Another oddity with crime reporting is I got a 2k bounty from defending myself at the end when the Shadowseekers turned on me and attacked me unprovoked. Makes completely 0 sense.
This is one of the buggiest Oblivion mods I've ever played, and that's really saying something.
Oh, and I forgot the best part. At the very end of this Companion mod, you don't get to keep the companion. He dies and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. What a shitload of fuuck.
Thank you for posting this. Saved me a LOT of irritation and headaches as I started getting the horse glitch and was a little put off by the rapid fire "talks" with Ruin. I was literally in the middle of the Kvatch quest and he's over here giving me some in-depth conversations in the MIDDLE OF COMBAT.
There used to be voice acting before version 3.0. I'm honestly wanting to find out who did the voice acting for Ruin so I can make my own sort of revoice of the mod. Although I have no clue where to start.
Just play this game since there are so many good reviews about this mod. I am also not sure whether I will get any reply but I'm stuck *possible spoiler
I am at the stage where me and Ruin need to find Drop Dead in a tree stump in Anvil.. The problem is that there is no tree stump at all when I arrive at the correct I am not installing any 'Better Cities' or similar mods So I can't move forward from this
Im stuck on the part where you have to activate Missing Tooths grave,the grave gets activated once and its shows the scripted message but not again,where you are supposed to dig his body,i cant activate it no matter what,and console commands dont help either
same here, I'm using MOO which turns the shovels into blunt weapons which im not sure if that affects this, but this script also was NOT popping off for me EDIT: fixed by altering a line in the MOO ini, just search Shovel.
I'm really glad too because this mod is really engaging. I can't wait to see the end to this.
Thank you very much brother,I played oblivion so much and after 150 hours of playthrough i really wanted to have Ruins back and i was stuck on this part after trying many hours to fix it .I stopped playing the game for a while cause i didnt want to go solo...Yet the solution was very simple all allong.Time to play this game again thanks friend
Love this mod. I only had one major bug that I had to work around (the Part 2 Twilight bug), and a minor bug near the end that was my own fault (a combination of other mods and using the Shivering Isles' Risen Flesh on a scripted necromancer). But this mod was one of the formative narratives of my life back in 2010 when I first played it, and I still love it today.
A few notes for anyone playing it in $current_year
You NEED the Better Cities patch if you're running BC. It can be found in the Better Cities zip file that contains the main mod.
The guide is pretty comprehensive. If you encounter any places where you're stuck, read it.
Simyaz invents some elements of lore. He does not violate any existing lore, and the story primarily uses existing factions and history, but there are parts of this mod that are novel concepts. I personally did not find it lore-breaking, but it is lore-expanding.
There are some typos. Most mods for this game have typos, but I'm a stickler for that so I'm obligated to point it out.
This mod is HEAVILY scripted. This single fact is the cause of most bugs you will encounter. Also, many of the scripts start running well before you actually encounter the situations in which they run. This means that your best bet for finding a solution is opening up the Construction Set and reading all the if statements for a particular situation. If you can get those if statements to trigger, you're golden. I'll talk more about this at the end of my comment.
Ruin does want to talk to you rather frequently. If you find it too frequent - I found it much too frequent - you can change the time between talks by editing the script files. Note that you MUST do this before you recruit him and ideally before you load the mod up for the first time, as it's the same script file for ALL conversations. See point #1 about why it's difficult to work around bugs. See "Editing Conversation Timers" below for how to change this.
If you run into the quest-breaking Twilight bug, you have two options. One, you could try this patch. I couldn't get it to work for me, so I had to find another solution. See "Gaming the Conditionals" below for how I personally fixed it.
Gaming the Conditionals (note: this has spoilers. I try to use vague terms to keep it spoiler-lite, but it still has spoilers. Scroll down to 'tl;dr' if you just want something to input into the console to solve the Twilight bug) How Scripting in this Mod Works If you open this mod up in the Construction Set, you'll be able to read all of the scripts that trigger. This gives you a resource to check if you run into any issues. I'm going to walk through figuring out and solving the Twilight bug, and you might be able to use this information to solve any other bugs you encounter. First off, you need to do some research. For the Twilight bug, I'm just going to give you the solution, but for any other bug you're going to want to load up RTT.esp and open Scripts in the Construction Set. Either click on the pencil icon, or click on Gameplay > Edit Scripts. Open up the scripts using the open icon, and scroll to the bottom - Simyaz prefixed all of his scripts with ZZRUIN so they all appear in the same place. There's a lot of scripts here for various different parts of the mod, but the main meat of the mod is actually in ZZRUINScript1 through ZZRuinScript5. These scripts are in order, following them from 1 to 5, top to bottom, should reflect your entire journey with Ruin and your conflict with the main antagonists. The Twilight bug occurs in ZZRuinScript3, about 3/4ths of the way down the file, under the comment that says ; SHADOWSEEKER BUILD UP. Take this code for instance - If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 44) && (Player.GetInWorldSpace CheydinhalWorld == 1) ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player endifYou might recognize that this is where Twilight approaches you in Cheydinhal after you wake up there. As you can see, it only triggers if ZZRTT1.RuinStory is at 44 (this is how Simyaz keeps track of the quest, not through quest stages in a journal but through that particular variable) AND the player is in CheydinhalWorld (which is the interior of Cheydinhal). Once those conditions are met, Twilight will walk up to and start a conversation with the player. During the conversation, Twilight will actually set the ZZRTT1.RuinStory variable to 45 to indicate that he's talked to you. Then, the next part of the script: If (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker <= 200) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 45) set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46 ZZRUINTwilightRef1.MoveTo ZZRUINShadowSeekerMarker7 enableplayercontrols endifThis is when he walks away after talking to you. And this might be a place where a bug could happen - see the first part of the conditional, where it checks distance? If for some reason he's not within that distance, the quest WILL NOT progress until he comes within 200 range of the ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker. Essentially, he'll never leave and you'll never get your controls back. This bug might occur if you get impatient waiting for him to walk up to you (and enableplayercontrols and walk up to him yourself) or if you have a mod conflict that causes the marker to not be at the proper spot. To get around this you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46, but then you'd probably need to move Twilight manually in the future to trigger another conditional since he's not walking where he needs to walk. It gets messy fast if you don't keep track of where everyone is supposed to be. So it becomes a game of "what can I do to trigger the if statements that I want?". Let's apply this to the Twilight bug. The Solution The Twilight bug is caused by the if statements for the ShadowSeekers' trip to the Imperial City failing to trigger. It's actually rather simple to solve! Scroll down to the bottom of the ZZRUINScript3 file and you'll see the final things that Twilight wants from you in order to give you access to the next part of the quest:
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 48) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 <= 300) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance Player <= 500) set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 DisablePlayerControls endif
If ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 49 ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player Endif Now, importantly, you should not ignore all the scripts that trigger before this. You will be skipping a bunch of scripts with this solution, so if you're investigating a bug on your own you NEED to know what the scripts you're skipping do. Luckily, the code we're skipping just move people around and assign horse ownership, so we're safe to skip those. You may have to disable the ShadowSeekers in Cheydinhal later, but that's not a huge bug. So he wants ZZRTT1.RuinStory to be set to 48, he wants to be within 300 distance of the ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16, and he wants to be within 500 distance of the player. At that point, ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be set to 49, your controls will be disabled, and immediately in the next script segment he'll talk to you since ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be at 49. ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 is a certain well in the Waterfront. Open up the console while in Cheydinhal, click on Twilight so you've saved his ref, then travel to the Imperial City. Find the well in the Waterfront (you may want to check the Waterfront in the Tamriel worldspace to find the location of the marker if you don't know where it is). Teleport Twilight to you using moveto player while he's still selected in your console, then type in set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48. If Twilight is within those distances of you and the well, he'll disable your controls and talk to you. Alternatively, you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 to get him to talk to you anywhere, though that's riskier since he won't be in the worldspace he's expecting to be in.
tl;dr To solve the Twilight bug, select him in Cheydinhal, go to the well in the waterfront district, and enter moveto player set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48viola, he'll talk to you.
Editing Conversation Timers To edit conversation Timers, you want ZZRUINScript2 and ZZRUINScript3. You'll notice a pattern of code that looks something like this in both of them, in the upper half of the script: If RunTimer2 == 1 If Timer2 > 0 Set Timer2 to Timer2 - GetSecondsPassed Else If (RuinDialogue == 0) && (RuinFollow == 1) && (RuinWantsToTalk == 0) set Timer2 to 500 set RuinDialogue to 1 set RuinWantsToTalk to 1 Player.addspell ZZRUINTalkSpellYou can see here that it's running a timer, and when that timer counts down, it'll trigger the alert that he wants to talk (the spell added to your inventory) and then set the timer again to count down. That means that to edit the time between conversations, you simply need to go in and change what number the timers are set to, in both of the scripts I mentioned above (there are two separate sections for part 1 and part 2 respectively). Remember to set them for ALL conversations, so you'll want to go through the entire if statement and every time you see set Timer1 to 500 or set Timer2 to 500 in that section you'll need to change it. 500 refers to the number of seconds, so 500 seconds is every 8 minutes. I like RTT part 1 to run conversations every 5000 seconds instead (80 minutes) and RTT part 2 to run conversations every 2500 seconds (40 minutes). Keep in mind when you're choosing a delay between conversations that he only talks to you 8 times in part 1, and even fewer in part 2, and he gets pretty attached to you during that time if you're playing the light route, so longer is likely better. I recommend editing this before you load the game up with the mod installed, because these edits will not take effect if Ruin is already following you, because the script has already been instantiated and is running.
Anyway, I hope this helps anyone running into issues. The mod's worth it, in my opinion.
i love this mod and recently started a new Oblivion playthrough, can't wait to play through this again! however Ruin is wanting to advance his quest a bit too fast for me (i've got him alongside the main quest), is there a way to change how quickly he wants to talk again? or can i just wait to talk to him until i'm ready? didn't know if it would mess up anything if i didn't speak to him right when it said he wanted to again.
Hello. So uh, I tried playing through this mod but it looks like the last update for it stops right on the part where you're supposed to sleep with him? The notes mention the "Part IV" for the mod being removed, too. Tried going to bed right after the conversation, but nothing happens. Actually blue-balled ending? Uhh... No wait, I had to sleep like 30 hours in my bed to get it to activate. After already trying this beforehand but with 72 hours of sleeping instead. I dunno.
Ok, beat the mod now. Eh... I mean, Ruined Tail was an ok companion but did a looot of talking about philosophical stuff that was lost on me after a while. The Shadowscale/Seekers capture stuff would've been fine if my character "build" wasn't awful for it. And the Abyss and Resurrection stuff was...out there, even for Oblivion. If it stayed with the Shadowscales and Seekers, that would've been fine as is. But I just can't help but laugh when hearing Baldur's Gate sound effects for the magic casts in the scripted scenes.
And there's is NO need to be following Twilight all the way to Imperial City from Cheydinhal. No scripted moments happen, no side conversations. You really are just following him the whole time, just because. Even when he could just tell you right then and there where to go.
This is without a doubt the single WORST quest mod I have ever played. No joke this mod makes the Dovah Bear from Skyrim look like a masterpiece. The quest starts out fine the only issues I had were sometimes you had little idea what to do next but thankfully the guide helped with that. Besides that for the most part the beginning 75% of the quest was ok. Not great but still pretty good. But then the last major assault on the villain's lair is where the mod tanks and man does it tank HARD. First there's all the issues with the people you team up but I've seen other commentators already state the issues with that part so I'll refrain from rehashing the same complaints. But what I will say is the fact that this mod required an unofficial patch shows just how broken and buggy they were. But by FAR the biggest issue and the thing that ruined it for me was the ending. I won't go into details to avoid spoilers but needless to say it is the single most broken thing I have EVER experienced in my over 25 years of gaming. I tried absolutely EVERYTHING to get it to work even suggestions from years old threads but in the end it just simply didn't work. And so I decided screw it if the mod creator has had YEARS to fix these very well known issues and simply refused to fix them then clearly they just don't respect the people who play it enough so why should I bother. I looked up the ending, was incredibly disappointed, and proceeded to wipe this mess off my hard drive. If by chance anyone is looking through the comments to decide whether or not to play this mod, let me take this chance to warn you now: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE PLAY THIS MOD. ITS A GLITCHY UNPLAYABLE MESS THAT WILL LIKELY NEVER BE FIXED AND IT WILL LEAVE YOU RIDICULOUSLY FRUSTRATED WITH HOURS OF YOUR TIME WASTED. There are MUCH better mods on this site worth your time and this isn't one of them
Yes, everyone. Ignore the tens of thousands of downloads and thousands of endorsements this mod has received. Ignore the lists placing this as one of the best mods in existence for Oblivion, and follow the advice of this one person against all of that.
Well over 100,000 downloads and 2,497 endorsements is not a good thing actually. Sooooooo....yeah. I mean, there is almost as many comment posts as there are endorsements.
Mod works fine. Not sure what this person is/was complaining about. There is one point where your game might slow to a crawl (it's at the end) but that is dependent on your PC hardware more than anything else. The problem and solution are addressed and given in the Ruined-Tale documentary attached to the second portion of the mod on the files page.
To crossroads: Perhaps you've learned a bit about how modding works now in the year or so since this rant, but in case you weren't aware: Modders incorporate the changes made by unofficial patches because those unofficial patches FIX something broken or incomplete with the base game. Not with their mod. Smart modders rarely create a mod that runs fine ONLY on the base game. This is because Bethesda does not release products reliable enough for that. It's the modding community that keeps games like Oblivion, Morrowind, & Skyrim functional through unofficial patches (and script extenders). Without them, creating mods becomes increasingly difficult as the limits of what the base game can handle are reached, or the poor programing of the base game creates conflicts. Ultimately, citing this mod's dependency on a FIX for Oblivion itself is ludicrous.
Lastly and for future reference, it might be a good idea to post your mod order, as there might be conflicts occurring between mods competing for resources.
I have an extremely high end PC, and those horrendeous speed tanks you mentioned, I had those in one Shivering Isles dungeon, and in ONE room before a load-door. And this happened just once, the next time I visited the place during the main quest I believe, it was fine. So this can be attributed to just some expected jank from a 13 year old game.
I must agree with him. I played this mod almost 10 years ago. It was when I was trying Oblivion mods and had a high disposition to get mods working.
Well, this is one of the mods that took that disposition away. I remember there's a part we're in a dungeon with some bars and we fight some enemies. These enemies are damn unbalanced and too much strong. I simply couldn't win them and died all times.
So I decided to give up and use cheat console command to kill them and move on. But they are too heavily scripted, and ignore the game killing them. Even "dead" they keep fighting, because their script doesn't recognize they were killed by console command.
There was nothing I could find that would make me win them. And I tried a lot. I had lost some hours playing the mod and a lot of hours trying to get it to work.
Of course, modders work hard for free and they aren't professional developers nor game creators. They owe us nothing and we play their mods if we wish. And also of course this is a 2006 game, one of the most bugged games in history, and this is one of its oldest mods.
But author could just had stayed active longer, read bug reports - which yeah most of time are filled with anger - and fix some of them. And not leave the mod with annoying bugs that freak damned souls who dare to play it.
Mixed up my mods, was thinking of that horrible elf princess companion mod from Skyrim. I did a review of this mod years ago. For me it worked fine and I detailed my feelings on it on like page 10 or something of this comments section. Maybe it just hasn't stood the test of time or you have some serious mod conflicts. I'm not a huge fan of the mod but it was well-made, at least back in 2013 it worked on my rig.
Give Feedback
1395 comments
Also save unchanged copy of this script somewhere else. Just in case.
portcullis, then waiting while they're sneaking.
Has anyone else experienced this?
And I gotta say, this mod is kinda bad. In a large number of ways. This is gonna have spoilers in it, you've been warned.
For starters Ruin develops his relationship with you in a very jarringly rapid manner, the entire thing goes way too fast and feels forced/rushed. In less than a week of traveling together he was acting like we're best friends who've known each for years. It feels awkward and unnatural. Vilja had a far better, and more natural feeling, sense of progression to your relationship with her.
He also talks way, way too fuccking much. It was cool hearing his perfect voice with the AI mod, I couldn't imagine playing this with no voice acting and just having to read all the dialogue for him and all the other characters, but seriously after a few conversations I found myself just telling him to STFU and clicking through after quick reading what he had to say. Ruin also kept stealing my horse.
Secondly, the mod makes way too liberal use of cutscene moments. You know, those times when the game forcibly freezes you in place and you just have to wait it out? There was a time where I actually had to use console commands because the scene was stuck otherwise.
It was right at the end, at the Shadowscale headquarters with the Shadowseekers. Gloom, or Twilight or whatever the Nord's name was, tried talking to me but I was behind a table which was placed so badly and ill-fittingly that he couldn't make it to me and kept walking against the table because the walls were too narrow for him to make it over. I had to target him with the console and then do moveto player. Bad.
Another really odd thing about this mod is the fact they don't let you loot the Shadowscales. Why? I killed them, I want to check their corpse for anything useful like any other creature/NPC. You can get around this by using the console to select them then do the command "activate" - but you shouldn't have to do this in the first place. Also, you can't loot items in their lair? I got a 42 gold bounty for picking up a couple arrows and a claymore.
Like what the fucck?
These are murderers, operating as part of an illegal group of paid assassins and you can't steal from them??? Lol like who even reported me there? The Shadowseekers? The guys who came in with me to kill these people?
What were they thinking?
It also makes entirely no sense for the Shadowscales to be operating, basically out in the open, in the Imperial City. Was the mod author not aware of Adamus Phillida? The guy who is obsessively trying to rid the city of Dark Brotherhood presence? Also the NPC's referring to Sithis as the "Dark Father" just hits the ear wrong, he's the Dread Father.
Has the mod author never actually played through the entirety of the Dark Brotherhood questline before?
Another oddity with crime reporting is I got a 2k bounty from defending myself at the end when the Shadowseekers turned on me and attacked me unprovoked. Makes completely 0 sense.
This is one of the buggiest Oblivion mods I've ever played, and that's really saying something.
Oh, and I forgot the best part. At the very end of this Companion mod, you don't get to keep the companion. He dies and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. What a shitload of fuuck.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/53292
*possible spoiler
I am at the stage where me and Ruin need to find Drop Dead in a tree stump in Anvil.. The problem is that there is no tree stump at all when I arrive at the correct
I am not installing any 'Better Cities' or similar mods
So I can't move forward from this
I honestly don't know what to do, please help
EDIT: fixed by altering a line in the MOO ini, just search Shovel.
I'm really glad too because this mod is really engaging. I can't wait to see the end to this.
A few notes for anyone playing it in $current_year
Gaming the Conditionals
(note: this has spoilers. I try to use vague terms to keep it spoiler-lite, but it still has spoilers. Scroll down to 'tl;dr' if you just want something to input into the console to solve the Twilight bug)
How Scripting in this Mod Works
If you open this mod up in the Construction Set, you'll be able to read all of the scripts that trigger. This gives you a resource to check if you run into any issues. I'm going to walk through figuring out and solving the Twilight bug, and you might be able to use this information to solve any other bugs you encounter.
First off, you need to do some research. For the Twilight bug, I'm just going to give you the solution, but for any other bug you're going to want to load up RTT.esp and open Scripts in the Construction Set. Either click on the pencil icon, or click on Gameplay > Edit Scripts. Open up the scripts using the open icon, and scroll to the bottom - Simyaz prefixed all of his scripts with ZZRUIN so they all appear in the same place.
There's a lot of scripts here for various different parts of the mod, but the main meat of the mod is actually in ZZRUINScript1 through ZZRuinScript5. These scripts are in order, following them from 1 to 5, top to bottom, should reflect your entire journey with Ruin and your conflict with the main antagonists. The Twilight bug occurs in ZZRuinScript3, about 3/4ths of the way down the file, under the comment that says ; SHADOWSEEKER BUILD UP.
Take this code for instance -
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 44) && (Player.GetInWorldSpace CheydinhalWorld == 1)You might recognize that this is where Twilight approaches you in Cheydinhal after you wake up there. As you can see, it only triggers if ZZRTT1.RuinStory is at 44 (this is how Simyaz keeps track of the quest, not through quest stages in a journal but through that particular variable) AND the player is in CheydinhalWorld (which is the interior of Cheydinhal). Once those conditions are met, Twilight will walk up to and start a conversation with the player. During the conversation, Twilight will actually set the ZZRTT1.RuinStory variable to 45 to indicate that he's talked to you. Then, the next part of the script:ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player
endif
If (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker <= 200) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 45)This is when he walks away after talking to you. And this might be a place where a bug could happen - see the first part of the conditional, where it checks distance? If for some reason he's not within that distance, the quest WILL NOT progress until he comes within 200 range of the ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker. Essentially, he'll never leave and you'll never get your controls back. This bug might occur if you get impatient waiting for him to walk up to you (and enableplayercontrols and walk up to him yourself) or if you have a mod conflict that causes the marker to not be at the proper spot.set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46
ZZRUINTwilightRef1.MoveTo ZZRUINShadowSeekerMarker7
enableplayercontrols
endif
To get around this you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46, but then you'd probably need to move Twilight manually in the future to trigger another conditional since he's not walking where he needs to walk. It gets messy fast if you don't keep track of where everyone is supposed to be.
So it becomes a game of "what can I do to trigger the if statements that I want?". Let's apply this to the Twilight bug.
The Solution
The Twilight bug is caused by the if statements for the ShadowSeekers' trip to the Imperial City failing to trigger. It's actually rather simple to solve! Scroll down to the bottom of the ZZRUINScript3 file and you'll see the final things that Twilight wants from you in order to give you access to the next part of the quest:
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 48) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 <= 300) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance Player <= 500)
set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49
DisablePlayerControls
endif
If ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 49
ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player
Endif
Now, importantly, you should not ignore all the scripts that trigger before this. You will be skipping a bunch of scripts with this solution, so if you're investigating a bug on your own you NEED to know what the scripts you're skipping do. Luckily, the code we're skipping just move people around and assign horse ownership, so we're safe to skip those. You may have to disable the ShadowSeekers in Cheydinhal later, but that's not a huge bug.
So he wants ZZRTT1.RuinStory to be set to 48, he wants to be within 300 distance of the ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16, and he wants to be within 500 distance of the player. At that point, ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be set to 49, your controls will be disabled, and immediately in the next script segment he'll talk to you since ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be at 49.
ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 is a certain well in the Waterfront. Open up the console while in Cheydinhal, click on Twilight so you've saved his ref, then travel to the Imperial City. Find the well in the Waterfront (you may want to check the Waterfront in the Tamriel worldspace to find the location of the marker if you don't know where it is). Teleport Twilight to you using moveto player while he's still selected in your console, then type in set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48. If Twilight is within those distances of you and the well, he'll disable your controls and talk to you. Alternatively, you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 to get him to talk to you anywhere, though that's riskier since he won't be in the worldspace he's expecting to be in.
tl;dr
To solve the Twilight bug, select him in Cheydinhal, go to the well in the waterfront district, and enter
moveto playerviola, he'll talk to you.set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48
Editing Conversation Timers
To edit conversation Timers, you want ZZRUINScript2 and ZZRUINScript3. You'll notice a pattern of code that looks something like this in both of them, in the upper half of the script:
If RunTimer2 == 1You can see here that it's running a timer, and when that timer counts down, it'll trigger the alert that he wants to talk (the spell added to your inventory) and then set the timer again to count down. That means that to edit the time between conversations, you simply need to go in and change what number the timers are set to, in both of the scripts I mentioned above (there are two separate sections for part 1 and part 2 respectively).If Timer2 > 0
Set Timer2 to Timer2 - GetSecondsPassed
Else
If (RuinDialogue == 0) && (RuinFollow == 1) && (RuinWantsToTalk == 0)
set Timer2 to 500
set RuinDialogue to 1
set RuinWantsToTalk to 1
Player.addspell ZZRUINTalkSpell
Remember to set them for ALL conversations, so you'll want to go through the entire if statement and every time you see set Timer1 to 500 or set Timer2 to 500 in that section you'll need to change it.
500 refers to the number of seconds, so 500 seconds is every 8 minutes. I like RTT part 1 to run conversations every 5000 seconds instead (80 minutes) and RTT part 2 to run conversations every 2500 seconds (40 minutes). Keep in mind when you're choosing a delay between conversations that he only talks to you 8 times in part 1, and even fewer in part 2, and he gets pretty attached to you during that time if you're playing the light route, so longer is likely better.
I recommend editing this before you load the game up with the mod installed, because these edits will not take effect if Ruin is already following you, because the script has already been instantiated and is running.
Anyway, I hope this helps anyone running into issues. The mod's worth it, in my opinion.
So uh, I tried playing through this mod but it looks like the last update for it stops right on the part where you're supposed to
sleep with him?The notes mention the "Part IV" for the mod being removed, too.
Tried going to bed right after the conversation, but nothing happens. Actually blue-balled ending? Uhh...
No wait, I had to sleep like 30 hours in my bed to get it to activate. After already trying this beforehand but with 72 hours of sleeping instead.
I dunno.
Ok, beat the mod now. Eh...
I mean, Ruined Tail was an ok companion but did a looot of talking about philosophical stuff that was lost on me after a while. The Shadowscale/Seekers capture stuff would've been fine if my character "build" wasn't awful for it. And the Abyss and Resurrection stuff was...out there, even for Oblivion.
If it stayed with the Shadowscales and Seekers, that would've been fine as is. But I just can't help but laugh when hearing Baldur's Gate sound effects for the magic casts in the scripted scenes.
And there's is NO need to be following Twilight all the way to Imperial City from Cheydinhal. No scripted moments happen, no side conversations. You really are just following him the whole time, just because. Even when he could just tell you right then and there where to go.
No lie, I beat this mod on
Day 69in-game. Nice.If by chance anyone is looking through the comments to decide whether or not to play this mod, let me take this chance to warn you now: DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE PLAY THIS MOD. ITS A GLITCHY UNPLAYABLE MESS THAT WILL LIKELY NEVER BE FIXED AND IT WILL LEAVE YOU RIDICULOUSLY FRUSTRATED WITH HOURS OF YOUR TIME WASTED. There are MUCH better mods on this site worth your time and this isn't one of them
To crossroads: Perhaps you've learned a bit about how modding works now in the year or so since this rant, but in case you weren't aware: Modders incorporate the changes made by unofficial patches because those unofficial patches FIX something broken or incomplete with the base game. Not with their mod. Smart modders rarely create a mod that runs fine ONLY on the base game. This is because Bethesda does not release products reliable enough for that. It's the modding community that keeps games like Oblivion, Morrowind, & Skyrim functional through unofficial patches (and script extenders). Without them, creating mods becomes increasingly difficult as the limits of what the base game can handle are reached, or the poor programing of the base game creates conflicts. Ultimately, citing this mod's dependency on a FIX for Oblivion itself is ludicrous.
Lastly and for future reference, it might be a good idea to post your mod order, as there might be conflicts occurring between mods competing for resources.
13 year old, Bethesda, game.
Well, this is one of the mods that took that disposition away. I remember there's a part we're in a dungeon with some bars and we fight some enemies. These enemies are damn unbalanced and too much strong. I simply couldn't win them and died all times.
So I decided to give up and use cheat console command to kill them and move on. But they are too heavily scripted, and ignore the game killing them. Even "dead" they keep fighting, because their script doesn't recognize they were killed by console command.
There was nothing I could find that would make me win them. And I tried a lot. I had lost some hours playing the mod and a lot of hours trying to get it to work.
Of course, modders work hard for free and they aren't professional developers nor game creators. They owe us nothing and we play their mods if we wish. And also of course this is a 2006 game, one of the most bugged games in history, and this is one of its oldest mods.
But author could just had stayed active longer, read bug reports - which yeah most of time are filled with anger - and fix some of them. And not leave the mod with annoying bugs that freak damned souls who dare to play it.