A Strange Door is my attempt at creating a mod that makes it possible to either set custom requirements for starting the Shivering Isles questline or prevent it from starting at all. The inspiration for this came from the other, similar mods here on the Nexus, and I recommend you to at least have a look at them before trying this one. This may not be bug-free, and will certainly not be of professional quality. So it might cause all kinds of issues.

By default, this mod adds the option to set the requirements for starting the Shivering Isles questline to any combination of:

• Ranks in Mages, Fighters and Thieves Guilds, The Dark Brotherhood, the Imperial City Arena, Blades and two other small factions
• Main quest completion (Light the Dragonfires)
• Player's level, fame, infamy, bounty, health, fatigue, magicka, intelligence, willpower and a few others
• Game days passed

The mod will require every condition set in the ini file to be true before requirements are considered met. It is possible to add faction rank requirements for new factions, mod-added ones, for example. To add a faction rank requirement, the FormID of the faction, the mod from which it originates and the number of the rank desired are needed. It is also possible to add custom quest completion requirements. To add a quest completion requirement, the Form ID of the quest and the name of the mod from which it originates are needed. Custom player actor value requirements are also possible, although the choices might be limited to the ones listed in the OBSE Command Documentation under Actor Value Codes category, as the values must be defined as integers and the integers must be ones that OBSE recognises. Within the limits set by these requirement types, it is possible possible to build a custom set of requirements for starting the Shivering Isles questline.

The way the quest starts (the first journal entry of A Door in Niben Bay appears in player's journal) can be set to one of the following:

• Add the "I have heard a rumour" journal entry after requirements have been met
• Add the journal entry only after the requirements have been met and player is around the island
• Have a courier deliver a cheese wheel that, when eaten, adds the journal entry (this is the default choice)
• Fight a courier in a new location to receive a cheese wheel that, when eaten, adds the journal entry

This mod also has the option to prevent the Shivering Isles questline from starting at all, or use a requirement that slightly resembles the vanilla one (game days passed must be greater than one). The island in Niben Bay also appears only after the requirements have been met. The mod can and should be configured using the ini file. By default, the mod uses the modified conditions for starting the questline with player level of 20 as the only requirement.

Requirements

• Shivering Isles DLC
• The Unofficial Oblivion Patch
• The Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch
• Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE)
• Pluggy (the OBSE plugin)

Should you wish to hide the island also when it is viewed from a distance, there is a LOD file available in VCI Shivering Start mod that hides the island when it is viewed from a distance. Only the LOD file must be installed from VCI Shivering Start by Valkyr81, no .esp files, as they will conflict with this mod. The LOD file will also need to be removed when you want the island to be visible from a distance again.

Installation & Removal

Please note that this mod should only be installed before loading the game for the first time with Shivering Isles. After the first quest, A Door in Niben Bay, has started (journal entry has appeared), the mod will be useless. It would therefore be best to use this mod with a new game. It will, however, stop itself, should someone install it on a game where the questline has already started. To install this mod, a mod manager would be recommended. The contents of the archive need to end up in your ...Oblivion\Data folder. You can then use the ini file to configure the mod. Make sure no other mod overwrites the changes made by this one, as it will likely prevent this mod from working properly.

To uninstall this mod, remove the files that came with this mod from ...Oblivion\Data folder. I am not sure what will happen after the mod is removed, though. But it only modifies the first quest that ends after the player has arrived in The Fringe. So uninstalling it should not break the whole Shivering Isles questline if you uninstall it after A Door in Niben Bay has been moved to the completed quests section of player's journal and you have reached Passwall. But I cannot promise anything.

Compatibility

Incompatible with anything else that modifies the island in Niben Bay, the first quest (SE01Door), the script of the quest, the script of the trigger zone in front of the gate, or anything else related to A Door In Niben Bay.

Compatibility patch is available for ZuTheSkunk's Shivering Isles Overhaul. It requires ZuTheSkunks Shivering Isles Overhaul Patch by migck. Compatibility patch is also available for OOO Shivering Isles. Both can be found in the downloads section.

There is a patch in the downloads section that should make it possible to use other Shivering Isles starting condition mods with SM Plugin Refurbish by Strategy Master. The patch requires the merged version of SM Plugin Refurbish, and has to be loaded after it, but before any other Shivering Isles starting condition mods. What the patch does is it disables the rumour topic from SM responsible for starting A Door in Niben Bay. SM already modifies the quest script so that the journal entry is not added automatically, so disabling the aforementioned topic should be enough to prevent SM from starting the Shivering Isles questline. The patch does not require this mod, but only the merged version of SM and the plugins it requires. So it can be used without this mod.

Known Issues & Bugs

See the bugs section of the mod page for bugs. The bugs section tab is right next to the comments section tab. Should you find any bugs or something else that clearly should not be there, do be so kind as to report it in the bugs section. It might also be a good idea for people considering whether to use this mod to see what bugs have been reported.

Credits

Bethesda for Oblivion and the Construction Set
The creators of Oblivion Script Extender
The creators of TES4Edit
The authors of similar mods for inspiration
shadeMe for the Construction Set Extender
QQuix for the invaluable posts I read on the forums
forli for instructions on easily reading .ini files into arrays
Striker879 for informing me of SM Plugin Refurbish incompatibility
Pinkertonius for requesting the OOO Shivering Isles patch

Permissions

See the permissions button just below the images.