Ruined Tail's Tale - Unofficial Patch
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(by jaime74)

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When should you use this patch?
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This unofficial patch tries to fix/bypass a quest-breaking issue in Ruined Tail's Tale (http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/3027), which occurs in some games around a certain quest stage (115) and - if it is affecting your game - will show itself by one or more of the following effects:

a.) When standing outside the ShadowSeekers' Headquarter in Cheydinhal, the ShadowSeekers won't start leaving for the Shadowscale Stronghold.
b.) During travelling to the Stronghold, the ShadowSeekers tend to get lost and never arrive at the expected destination.
c.) When arriving at the Stronghold's entrance, Twilight won't do anything except for standing around.

This issue has been reported repeatedly by various people, and I've tried for months to find a known solution to it - without success. I contacted Simyaz, the author of RTT, but never got a reply. That's why I finally decided to publish this patch, hoping that Simyaz won't mind my doing.

This patch doesn't claim that there's any "bug" in RTT, and neither in Better Cities. It's just a pragmatic workaround for an unresolved problem, in order to help others to continue with the quest.

It has been a horribly complicated task to analyze what's going wrong with RTT in same cases, and some issues have never become really clear to me. So there is NO GUARANTEE AT ALL that it will work in your game! Consider creating backups of your savegames before using it (as it should go without saying for any new mod)!

Credits go to Simyaz in the first place, and also to Vorians from the Better Cities team for helping me with investigating the issue. Feel free to endorse this mod, if you like to.

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What does it do?
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The patch overrides some parts of the original script code that are responsible for detecting when certain conditions for proceeding the quest are fulfilled.
In addition, it adds a spell that can be used to summon the ShadowSeekers, which will bring them back to assemble next to you whenever they may have gone astray during their journey.

The patch comes as a separate esp that needs to be installed and activated. Once the patch has been applied and played through successfully, it can be uninstalled to free up the additional plugin slot.

There are two versions:
- One default esp for the vanilla game, located in subfolder "00 Default"
- One alternative esp for use in combination with Better Cities, located in subfolder "01 Better Cities"
Use only one of both!

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Requirements
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- OBSE 20 or higher (do not use any lower version, this may cause failures).
- RTT.esp (latest version 3.0.1!) must be installed and active.
- For the default version, nothing else is required.
- For the Better Cities version, both Better Cities and the BC patch for RTT (Better Cities - Ruined Tail's Tale.esp) must be installed and active.

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Installation
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The archive is BAIN-friendly, but it can also be installed manually.

MANUAL INSTALLATION:
Extract one of both esps into your game's data folder.

BAIN INSTALLATION:
Copy the 7zip archive to BAIN's installation folder. From the BAIN installer in Wrye Bash, tick one of both subfolders, then choose "Install".

LOAD ORDER:
Ensure that this patch loads after RTT.esp and (if present) after the BC patch. ie.:
[...]
RTT.esp
[...]
Better Cities - Ruined Tail's Tale.esp
[...]
RTT_Unofficial_Patch.esp

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Uninstallation
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Just remove the esp. In BAIN, simply choose "Uninstall" and delete the 7zip from the package list.

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How to run the patch?
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This section contains roughly the same text as the book that will be added to your inventory upon activating it and loading the game. You can either study it now, or just run the patch and then read it ingame.

1.) Make sure you've got a RTT savegame where the ShadowSeekers are still hanging around in front of their headquarter. If you haven't, you can use any savegame prior to this stage.

2.) Load that savegame.

3.) After some seconds, you will get a confirmation message, and a book with this text you're reading will be added to your inventory.

4.) Now go and visit the ShadowSeekers in front of their HQ.

5.) Wait for at least 5 seconds and check if Twilight starts walking away towards Cheydinhal's City Gates.
If he doesn't, try one of the following alternatives (one of them MUST work, otherwise this patch doesn't apply to your problem):
a.) talk to him once (sometimes this is required to "trigger" him).
b.) run the following console command:
set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48

6.) You'll receive another confirmation message, stating that part 1 of the patch was successful, and a new a Lesser Power (RTTPatch Summon) will be added to your spell list.

7.) Now the ShadowSeekers should start walking towards the gate. Follow them until you're outside the city walls. They'll mount their horses and ride off, so that you can continue following them (this is what the quest expects).
At this point, several issues can occur:
a.) At least one or even all of the three ShadowSeekers and their horses can be trapped inside the gatehouse, thus unable to proceed and mount up (you can check this by casting a Detect Life spell).
b.) They are already mounted and riding, but can't find a path, thus riding left and right, without finding their way.
c.) Once you accidentally fast-travel or lose sight of them for other reasons, they might get lost. Even when arriving at the destination on your own (given that you know where it is), they'll never show up there.
If anything of this happens, place yourself on a freely accessible spot in the wilderness and cast the "RTTPatch Summon" spell. This will make the ShadowSeekers materialize next to you.

8.) In addition, Twilight might sporadically stop travelling, either because he prefers talking to people he's passing by, or immediately after being summoned with the above spell. If this happens, simply talk to him. This will trigger him to go on.

9.) Follow the ShadowSeekers by foot or by horse! This is what the mod expects.

10.) Once you arrive at the Imperial City's gates, they will dismount and enter the city on foot. Do the same and follow them through all their way from here.
Note that inside the IC you can't use the summon spell anymore (you will receive a message if you try)! Just follow them and try to keep them out of conversations as described above.

11.) Finally, they should lead you to a special place, where Twilight will speak to you, announcing that you have reached the destination.

12.) Once the patch detects that it has finished its work, you will receive a final confirmation message. Now save, quit the game, and disable the patch.

Congratulations! You can now storm the Stronghold and save Ruin and the world from all evil!
Have fun!
jaime74