Give Feedback
0 of 0
About this mod
Reconciles Valenwood Improved, Elsweyr Anequina and Elsweyr Pelletine such that they could be used together.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
TWMP Southern Alliance is a project aimed to reconcile Valenwood Improved, Elsweyr Anequina and Elsweyr Pelletine such that they could be used together.
Version 4.1: Improved landscaping of the shores and the sea bed South of Valenwood all the way to the West until we hit the open ocean. Finally got rid of ghost mountains in LOD! Hopefully all of them, but who knows.
If you find any more ghost LOD mountains, please let me know the cell coordinates. To see that, open console and type "tdt".
__________________________________________________
My first aim is to repair all land tears, not reposition every rock. In this sense, this is a rough solution, where I paid attention to the border between Valenwood and Elsweyr and to the areas of conflict between Elsweyr Pelletine and Valenwood Improved. These areas should be reasonable, although there bound to be floating trees. Well, see it as an enchanted forest. If you find anything big amiss, please let me know! I tried to reposition things rather than throw away, but I may well have missed something.
I made this patch for my own game. This is just the means to explore Pelletine and Valenwood together, and I doubt it will ever become a polished solution because the author of Pelletine has got Valenwood Regrown which is a much bigger and better way to reconcile everything. Except of course that it's unfinished and currently unavailable... So in the meantime, there's the Southern Alliance.
Manually checked the roads on the Valenwood-Elsweyr border, that is from where Pelletine meets Anequina (just South East of Haven) and all the way to Dune and on to Skingrad. A lot of landscaping, land repainting and tree and rock moving was involved. New path grids generated and manually made painted land into roads with preference nodes. NPCs do actually use them. Then did the same going South, but there I discovered that roads didn't actually go all the way to Torval, instead you had to take an underground passage. The horse couldn't do it, so I made roads going to Torval and Senchal. Again, this involved quite a lot of landscaping and gardening.
Added a new road to connect the Torval-Dune thoroughfare with Haven, so you don't have to go all the way to Arenthia to get to Valenwood. I have released an updated version of the Tamriel HD module for the Dynamic Map which includes this unified solution. As an alternative I also made a new Tamriel in-game map for those people who don't run the Dynamic Map.
Checked all map markers in Valenwood, Anequina and Pelletine for their "visible" and "can travel to" status to make it adhere to the vanilla Oblivion strategy: only city markers are visible from the start, and none can be fast traveled to. This was already so in Valenwood and Pelletine, but in Anequina a number of markers had to be reset. A secret cave should not have a marker that's visible and can be traveled to from the start... Just saying.
I did have trouble with land textures. For some reason my edits often would not "take", and you can still see straight lines in many areas. I don't know how to do it right! So if you know how to fix it, please contact me. Please also contact me if you fancy having a go yourself!
This solution is based on TWMP. As such, you need to use the TWMP version of Valenwood Improved - TWMP_ValenwoodImproved.esp - not the original version. However, you still need to download the full German(!) version of the original in order to get the resources. You most likely also need the resource updates, but I am not certain. You don' t need the ESPs. Do not worry about HG Eye Candy requirement - it was removed in TWMP Valenwood Improved.
You do not need the Elsweyr patch provided with TWMP Valenwood Improved - the Southern Alliance replaces it (there were too many new land tears for me to deal with, it was easier to remove the patch and start again).
Elsweyr Pelletine is based on TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr.esp from Under the sign of the dragon - Tamriel Landscapes. Unfortunately this module conflicts with either version of Valenwood Improved. To resolve these conflicts, I edited TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr and deleted all cells that conflicted with Valenwood Improved. This redacted version is included in this solution - you must use this instead of the original to clear the conflicts.
You need to download the original BSA resources for TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr from Under the sign of the dragon - Tamriel Landscapes.
Finally, there's the patch - TWMP Southern Alliance.esp. This file closes the land tears and attempts to repaint the landscape, with variable success.
Optionally, you can add Valenwood Islands and New Senchal.
The LOD resources for Southern Alliance are freshly generated and include the new land layout and New Senchal. They are provided as a separate download because of the size of the file. If you have other mods in the area or if you are not using New Senchal, please generate your own.
These LOD resources are provided as loose files as I found that LOD from BSAs does not always load correctly. Some mods provide LOD as BSA, some as loose files, which makes it all very complicated. Some mods also pack LOD resources together with the other resources, so you need to check their BSA files to be certain (look inside a BSA using BSA Commander, for example). All in all, you will have conflicting LOD data, and which data is actually going to be used, is a bit of a lottery. The safest thing to do is to remove LOD from any BSAs and keep it separate from regular resources. Beware of things overwriting each other... I assume you know what you are doing.
You must throw away the LOD from Pelletine and some of Valenwood Islands (LOD relating to Tamriel worldspace) because it will produce a wall in the sea South of Valenwood - there is no such thing as an "empty" LOD file, instead you get no file, so if you don't remove the LOD from Pelletine, you will have those files still hanging around as they will not be overwritten.
If all else fails, download LOD as loose files from here and extract it into your Oblivion\Data folder. It should - in theory - overwrite any LOD from BSAs when the game is loaded.
Load order
If you have TWMP Locations in your load order, you must load this suite after TWMP Locations, otherwise all the lakes in Valenwood will be dry.
Below is the correct load order if you are using TWMP_Locations. Obviously, that block with Skyrim is optional. If you are using TWMP Summerset Isle or Black Marsh, place those mods right after Tamriel.esp.
- Tamriel.esp
- TWMP_Hammerfell.esp
- TWMP_HighRock.esp
- TWMP_SkyrimImproved.esp
- TWMP Skyrim Guard Armors & Shields.esp
- TWMP_Locations.esp
- TWMP Skyrim Alive.esp
- ElsweyrAnequina.esp
- TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr.esp - from this suite!
- ElsweyrPelletine.esp
- TWMP_ValenwoodImproved.esp
- Other mods for Valenwood or Elsweyr
- TWMP Southern Alliance.esp
- ValenwoodIslands.esp
- New Senchal.esp
It is important to place TWMP Southern Alliance after additional mods in order to keep the roads as many settlement mods tend to build along the road with slight modifications to the landscape. I did not see any conflicts, so all your new settlements should still be fine.
Known problems
Landscape textures: where cells with different landscape textures meet, straight lines may be visible. I am attempting to repaint the landscape everywhere and smooth it out, but I am obviously doing something wrong because I am not always successful. Unfortunately I have no idea how to fix it! If anybody knows, do tell!
Khajiit without tails: I encountered a number of Khajiit characters around Torval and Senchal that had the wrong skeleton associated with them - the human skeleton instead of the beast skeleton. The difference is the tail. Assigning a human skeleton to a NPC with tail results in lines across the screen that crash the game shortly after appearing. Please use this patch by theredcurtain to fix it!
Version 4.1: Improved landscaping of the shores and the sea bed South of Valenwood all the way to the West until we hit the open ocean. Finally got rid of ghost mountains in LOD! Hopefully all of them, but who knows.
If you find any more ghost LOD mountains, please let me know the cell coordinates. To see that, open console and type "tdt".
__________________________________________________
My first aim is to repair all land tears, not reposition every rock. In this sense, this is a rough solution, where I paid attention to the border between Valenwood and Elsweyr and to the areas of conflict between Elsweyr Pelletine and Valenwood Improved. These areas should be reasonable, although there bound to be floating trees. Well, see it as an enchanted forest. If you find anything big amiss, please let me know! I tried to reposition things rather than throw away, but I may well have missed something.
I made this patch for my own game. This is just the means to explore Pelletine and Valenwood together, and I doubt it will ever become a polished solution because the author of Pelletine has got Valenwood Regrown which is a much bigger and better way to reconcile everything. Except of course that it's unfinished and currently unavailable... So in the meantime, there's the Southern Alliance.
Manually checked the roads on the Valenwood-Elsweyr border, that is from where Pelletine meets Anequina (just South East of Haven) and all the way to Dune and on to Skingrad. A lot of landscaping, land repainting and tree and rock moving was involved. New path grids generated and manually made painted land into roads with preference nodes. NPCs do actually use them. Then did the same going South, but there I discovered that roads didn't actually go all the way to Torval, instead you had to take an underground passage. The horse couldn't do it, so I made roads going to Torval and Senchal. Again, this involved quite a lot of landscaping and gardening.
Added a new road to connect the Torval-Dune thoroughfare with Haven, so you don't have to go all the way to Arenthia to get to Valenwood. I have released an updated version of the Tamriel HD module for the Dynamic Map which includes this unified solution. As an alternative I also made a new Tamriel in-game map for those people who don't run the Dynamic Map.
Checked all map markers in Valenwood, Anequina and Pelletine for their "visible" and "can travel to" status to make it adhere to the vanilla Oblivion strategy: only city markers are visible from the start, and none can be fast traveled to. This was already so in Valenwood and Pelletine, but in Anequina a number of markers had to be reset. A secret cave should not have a marker that's visible and can be traveled to from the start... Just saying.
I did have trouble with land textures. For some reason my edits often would not "take", and you can still see straight lines in many areas. I don't know how to do it right! So if you know how to fix it, please contact me. Please also contact me if you fancy having a go yourself!
This solution is based on TWMP. As such, you need to use the TWMP version of Valenwood Improved - TWMP_ValenwoodImproved.esp - not the original version. However, you still need to download the full German(!) version of the original in order to get the resources. You most likely also need the resource updates, but I am not certain. You don' t need the ESPs. Do not worry about HG Eye Candy requirement - it was removed in TWMP Valenwood Improved.
You do not need the Elsweyr patch provided with TWMP Valenwood Improved - the Southern Alliance replaces it (there were too many new land tears for me to deal with, it was easier to remove the patch and start again).
Elsweyr Pelletine is based on TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr.esp from Under the sign of the dragon - Tamriel Landscapes. Unfortunately this module conflicts with either version of Valenwood Improved. To resolve these conflicts, I edited TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr and deleted all cells that conflicted with Valenwood Improved. This redacted version is included in this solution - you must use this instead of the original to clear the conflicts.
You need to download the original BSA resources for TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr from Under the sign of the dragon - Tamriel Landscapes.
Finally, there's the patch - TWMP Southern Alliance.esp. This file closes the land tears and attempts to repaint the landscape, with variable success.
Optionally, you can add Valenwood Islands and New Senchal.
The LOD resources for Southern Alliance are freshly generated and include the new land layout and New Senchal. They are provided as a separate download because of the size of the file. If you have other mods in the area or if you are not using New Senchal, please generate your own.
These LOD resources are provided as loose files as I found that LOD from BSAs does not always load correctly. Some mods provide LOD as BSA, some as loose files, which makes it all very complicated. Some mods also pack LOD resources together with the other resources, so you need to check their BSA files to be certain (look inside a BSA using BSA Commander, for example). All in all, you will have conflicting LOD data, and which data is actually going to be used, is a bit of a lottery. The safest thing to do is to remove LOD from any BSAs and keep it separate from regular resources. Beware of things overwriting each other... I assume you know what you are doing.
You must throw away the LOD from Pelletine and some of Valenwood Islands (LOD relating to Tamriel worldspace) because it will produce a wall in the sea South of Valenwood - there is no such thing as an "empty" LOD file, instead you get no file, so if you don't remove the LOD from Pelletine, you will have those files still hanging around as they will not be overwritten.
If all else fails, download LOD as loose files from here and extract it into your Oblivion\Data folder. It should - in theory - overwrite any LOD from BSAs when the game is loaded.
Load order
If you have TWMP Locations in your load order, you must load this suite after TWMP Locations, otherwise all the lakes in Valenwood will be dry.
Below is the correct load order if you are using TWMP_Locations. Obviously, that block with Skyrim is optional. If you are using TWMP Summerset Isle or Black Marsh, place those mods right after Tamriel.esp.
- Tamriel.esp
- TWMP_Hammerfell.esp
- TWMP_HighRock.esp
- TWMP_SkyrimImproved.esp
- TWMP Skyrim Guard Armors & Shields.esp
- TWMP_Locations.esp
- TWMP Skyrim Alive.esp
- ElsweyrAnequina.esp
- TWMP_Valenwood_Elsweyr.esp - from this suite!
- ElsweyrPelletine.esp
- TWMP_ValenwoodImproved.esp
- Other mods for Valenwood or Elsweyr
- TWMP Southern Alliance.esp
- ValenwoodIslands.esp
- New Senchal.esp
It is important to place TWMP Southern Alliance after additional mods in order to keep the roads as many settlement mods tend to build along the road with slight modifications to the landscape. I did not see any conflicts, so all your new settlements should still be fine.
Known problems
Landscape textures: where cells with different landscape textures meet, straight lines may be visible. I am attempting to repaint the landscape everywhere and smooth it out, but I am obviously doing something wrong because I am not always successful. Unfortunately I have no idea how to fix it! If anybody knows, do tell!
Khajiit without tails: I encountered a number of Khajiit characters around Torval and Senchal that had the wrong skeleton associated with them - the human skeleton instead of the beast skeleton. The difference is the tail. Assigning a human skeleton to a NPC with tail results in lines across the screen that crash the game shortly after appearing. Please use this patch by theredcurtain to fix it!