Now, a full decade later, modder mannygt is back with a freshly overhauled 10th Anniversary Edition, giving both longtime fans and new players a chance to experience the adventure all over again.
I sat down with mannygt to talk about their modding journey, what it took to bring The Cowl of Nocturnal into the present, and why some legends are worth revisiting.
Thank you so much for agreeing to chat with me today mannygt! For those of you who, somehow, don't know who you are, why don't you introduce yourself and let us know how you got into gaming & modding!
Greetings! My name is Nicola and I'm Italian. My first ever mod was for the original Oblivion and it was a texture for sunglare.
When the Creation Kit for Skyrim was released I was really curious about how to make mods and so I followed some tutorials from the original creation kit web site. This site is now gone but the UESP team did an excellent job of copying all the information from that site - something I'll be forever grateful for.
So when my curiosity grew I started to make some mods and released them on Nexus Mods. The first one was TheFlicker, a little illumination overhaul. Basically I've tweaked all the lights of candles, sconces and brazier to make them flicker for a more realistic appearance.
On your Nexus Mods profile, you mention that you make mods to increase immersion and to add very hard dungeons to games - what is it about immersion in games (and difficulty) that’s important to you?
For me, immersion is all about the small things you can do or see in the game and that by creating mods that introduce them, players feel more connected to the world. For example I made a mod called Books of Skyrim, which adds a book store in Solitude. I noticed that book stores in Skyrim were missing so I added one in the cosmopolitan capital of Skyrim. I even gave the vendor a background story inspired by Oblivion.
Other immersion mods I’ve made are Drinking Fountains of Skyrim, where you can grab bottles of water; Dramatic Helgen, which removes the music soundtrack from the cells of Helgen to increase the feeling of devastation and desolation; Earthquakes, which is pretty self-explanatory; Silence of the Divines, where it removes music score from all the temples in Skyrim; Windhelm Lighthouse, as Windhelm is really missing a lighthouse; and Lantern Caretakers, which adds NPC encounters that light up some of the lanterns in certain places and times.
When it comes to difficulty, I felt that the vanilla dungeons in Skyrim were simply too easy to beat with a high level character. Even Forelhost, which is well known to be hard to beat, can be too simple.
That’s why I made The Secret of Dragonhead, where all the mobs are incredibly tough and even added a little story about the Oblivion Crisis. This dungeon also has some unique gameplay in certain areas like having a torch equipped and fighting with the other hand: If you unequip the torch, the area drains your health very quickly. It’s not that straightforward though as it also has another area where you have to make sure to not equip the torch in a dark area full of Draugr Overlords.
Another couple of mods I made together with MurderWrath, another Italian modder, are The Oblivion Realms Serie Chapter 1 and 2 (the missing "s" of "serie" is intentional). These mods bring you to the plane of Oblivion and challenge the player greatly. These mods were made for those who have insane weapons and armors after making use of alchemy and/or enchantment exploits. In fact, vanilla items are weak for the mod and you'll be kicked hard in the ass at the beginning, especially in Chapter 2.
Do you have a favourite mod you’ve made?
Most of you will vote for The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal which is really only one of my favourite mods as I also have the Lanterns of Skyrim in my heart. This is because it was a surprise for me and I never thought it would have so much success in the modding scene. I spent so much time on that mod by making patches for other mods, MCM menu, etc.
I also like the fact it has a "successor": Lanterns of Skyrim II by wizkid34. He did a good job.
So, you’ve been modding for quite some time now! In fact, you’ve recently released the 10th Anniversary Edition of one of the mods you just mentioned: The Cowl of Nocturnal. Can you tell me a bit about the development of this mod?
The development started in 2014 and then released in 2015.
The initial plot of the mod was very linear. The Alik'r Desert was just a little area, just from point A to point B. I thought "Why not make a new worldspace, instead?", so I started to study how to make worldspaces, LODs and also new assets.
One of the easiest assets to make was The Gray Cowl itself, as that was made by using the bust seen in the game. I also made assets for the Mausoleum area and tried experimenting with the background sky that you can see in the Mausoleum and in the Akavir area. I've intensely used NifUtilsSuite to add collision meshes to the assets I made. However I had dozens and dozens .nif files to be converted. As a programmer, I made a VB application to batch the conversion. It was a very useful tool which was able to convert 120-240 assets per minute!
A funny story though is that I had to change the ending of the mod at the last minute thanks to some guys of TES Alliance (the guys of Beyond Skyrim) where they literally said "you're doing some bullsh*t" because I hadn’t considered the Shivering Isles. You know, you meet the Champion of Cyrodiil at the end of the quest and the original name seen at the tomb was... BENDU OLO!
The TES Alliance team turned to me and said, "Hey, Manny... That was just a placeholder name for your character by Bethesda even if it related to the king of Anvil during the First Era."
I had never been so ashamed but I'm still grateful to the TES Alliance guys. Thankfully I've corrected that, modified the plot and searched for a good voice actor for Sheogorath (because you meet him too).
The rest is history!
What inspired you to make the Cowl of Nocturnal?
The reason I made this mod is because I love the Thieves Guild questline of Oblivion; a masterpiece for me. I decided to make my own version of the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal because there was no quest about that.
What challenges did you face while making the mod?
I think the terraforming of the Alik'r Desert was the biggest challenge. The initial one was big enough to contain the whole Province of Skyrim. However it was too big for me, so I've reduced it to a quarter.
Another thing that caused a headache was the "persistent location" of NPCs. If you use the wrong persistent location and you play the mod without using coc command, all the NPCs disappear! Then I discovered that you have to set the "persistent location" to the top parent location of where the NPC goes according to the AI packages it has.
Let's make an example:
- Alik'r Desert is the topmost parent of the world space.
- Ben Erai City which is child of Alik'r Desert
- Black Mesa Inn which is child of Ben Erai City
- Aretino's house which is child of Ben Erai City
Now, Aretino had the AI packages of breakfast at home, wandering in Ben Erai plaza until 6pm, going to Black Mesa Inn for evening and then going back home to sleep. Therefore the "persistent location" must be set to Ben Erai City!
How different is this new anniversary edition? What new features have been added and changes you’ve made?
I've decided to make a 10th anniversary edition by adding some things or changing things I didn't like, such as updating the background story of Ben Erai, adding shortcut exits from main dungeons, adding new locations such as a new player home and dungeons, new items, new shrines and a new easter egg. Also fixed some bugs like unreadable books due to UTF characters.
Are you primarily a mod creator more so than a mod user? Do you have a favourite mod at the moment that’s a “must have” in your load order?
There are many mods I like, however my load order always has Alternate Start, The Paarthurnax Dilemma, SkyUI and Community Shaders.
Is there anything you’re working on at the moment, or anything you can share with us that’s in the pipeline?
Yes! I'm currently working on an expansion mod for The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal: "Syloria's Legacy - Between Two Worlds". The new mod will involve Syloria, the leader of Ben Erai.
Finally, is there anything you'd like to say to the community or any shoutouts you'd like to make?
Thanks for this question, really, because I want to spread some words for old and new fellow modders:
Guys, you can do whatever you want with Creation Kit and other tools! I received many messages from you that you were so inspired to make new worlds, new cities, new factions, total conversions, by my work.
Do it! But first you have to face your abilities like I did. I started by making a simple mod (theFlicker), Lanterns of Skyrim, a quest to learn papyrus scripts and so on.
The old Creation Kit website had very good tutorials that I followed one by one. Again, thanks to UESP for giving us a mirror of that site.
There were also forums where I met some great experts who helped me to learn workflows about world building, assets, voice recording and papyrus. And in turn, I also helped new users.
So, let me say that if you have never seen the Creation Kit before and you want to make a "Total Conversion" then I say "Yes, you can!" but first you have to start with tiny steps before going far. There is a lot of technical information you need to know first and some of it doesn't have any official documentation. We had to test by ourselves.
DON'T RUSH! TAKE IT EASY!
A big thank you to mannygt for speaking with me today! Have you played The Cowl of Nocturnal yet? Are you going to? Let me know in the comments and as always, if there’s someone you’d like us to interview next, send SlugGirl a DM! See you next time!
18 comments
Non ero sicura se lasciarti un commento perchè non gioco a questo gioco, poi l'ho fatto perchè ho visto che sei italiano come me e questo mi rende orgogliosa. Sono anch'io una "modder in piccolo", molto in piccolo XD e per un'altro gioco.
Continua così!
Orgoglio italiano del modding su Skyrim e anche gran persona! Ti devo ancora un Sweet Roll 😁
MannyGT is a legend of the TES modding scene!
Grazie di tutto, Nicola.
Thanks a lot!