if you're planning on running Arkngthand 2.0 and using TES3Merge, be sure to blacklist the .esp in the TES3Merge.ini. trying to merge it will cause a fatal error that will prevent the merge from completing.
for anyone who hasn't done it before, all you have to do is go to your Morrowind directory, open the TES3Merge.ini file, and paste "Arkngthand_2.0.esp = false" (without quotes) under the [FileFilters] heading.
Endorsed!! I haven't explored the areas beyond the locked door yet, but the main area is far easier to get around, the NPCs a little more interesting (no more just wearing regular clothes), and the loot beefed up a bit. Just a couple of suggestions
(1) In the room where Cristus Lync (hostile NPC) is positioned, there is a floating Dwemer furnace door (2) With this layout, I feel like it takes a little too quick to get to the room where the puzzle box is. I know this is the first dungeon of the main quest, but it would be awesome to have a little more action to get through before collecting the box (3) is there a way to make the dungeon darker? the first crate at the beginning contains a handful of torches, but with how light the dungeon is they're never really necessary
Conflicts: There is a very minor conflict with Stuporstar's "Beautiful Books: Grimoires" mod, which adds a tome to the cell Heaven's Gallery. You can still get the tome, but it's floating in midair
Edit: Came back with the key and went through the final two areas. I love what you did with them. It really feels like the player can successfully work his way to a part of the ruin full of loot that remained untouched by the bandits. The loot was quite balanced for the challenge as well!
The only thing I'd suggest changing in the lower areas is to make them a bit larger/longer to extend the already-great experience. It was over just a little too quickly!
I liked this mod, but I ended up just using the NPC changes and tossing the rest because I wanted the cell changes in Dwemer Ruins Fix 2.5 more, and I didn't want to put the work in to make the Weepinghall cell compatible with it. Also, I didn't want to put in the work in to make this mod's Land's Blood Gallery cell compatible with the Dwemer Tunnels mod. A couple of weeks ago, I would have (it's not really that much work), but I've gotten lazy. It's just easier this way because I don't really like faffing around in the CS editor. Cool mod, though -- I do enjoy the npc changes.
This mod is a lot of fun. I myself was never happy with the design of this dungeon and am pleased with many of your changes, most all to the observatory. Though I am curious if you had considered locking the door to the dwemer cube and giving the key to one of the goons deeper in the ruins. The quest here always felt like a drive by mission rather than an actual dungeon crawl with how much of it is optional. Regardless, this is excellent work. kudos.
For example, the guy in the Dwemer observatory (the dome thing across the broken bridge) now carries a Dwarven Mace and a Belt of Leaping instead of just a almost worthless (value-weight) Steel Warhammer.
Just to clarify. Darknut's mod =/= "Greater Dwemer Ruins"
GDR was a project to expand all the Dwemer ruins. Sadly it never really got off the ground. Nedius released "Greater Dwemer Ruins Preview" back in 2003, which changed Arkngthand. Unfortunately that's not on MMH, I'll have to upload it sometime. These were the guys who released the GDR ESM which Darknut, Trainwiz etc. use.
Back in 2009 Julian K. Spire tried to get things rolling again with GDR 2009 + Aleft. IIRC, he greatly increased the resources used in GDR from those defined in the original GDR ESM (new file called "GDR 2009.esm")
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for anyone who hasn't done it before, all you have to do is go to your Morrowind directory, open the TES3Merge.ini file, and paste "Arkngthand_2.0.esp = false" (without quotes) under the [FileFilters] heading.
(1) In the room where Cristus Lync (hostile NPC) is positioned, there is a floating Dwemer furnace door
(2) With this layout, I feel like it takes a little too quick to get to the room where the puzzle box is. I know this is the first dungeon of the main quest, but it would be awesome to have a little more action to get through before collecting the box
(3) is there a way to make the dungeon darker? the first crate at the beginning contains a handful of torches, but with how light the dungeon is they're never really necessary
Conflicts: There is a very minor conflict with Stuporstar's "Beautiful Books: Grimoires" mod, which adds a tome to the cell Heaven's Gallery. You can still get the tome, but it's floating in midair
Edit: Came back with the key and went through the final two areas. I love what you did with them. It really feels like the player can successfully work his way to a part of the ruin full of loot that remained untouched by the bandits. The loot was quite balanced for the challenge as well!
The only thing I'd suggest changing in the lower areas is to make them a bit larger/longer to extend the already-great experience. It was over just a little too quickly!
GDR only affects Dwemer ruins inside the Ghostfence.
I'm actually not aware of any other mod that changes the interiors of Arkngthand, which was also the main reason that I started to work on this mod.
GDR was a project to expand all the Dwemer ruins. Sadly it never really got off the ground. Nedius released "Greater Dwemer Ruins Preview" back in 2003, which changed Arkngthand. Unfortunately that's not on MMH, I'll have to upload it sometime. These were the guys who released the GDR ESM which Darknut, Trainwiz etc. use.
Back in 2009 Julian K. Spire tried to get things rolling again with GDR 2009 + Aleft. IIRC, he greatly increased the resources used in GDR from those defined in the original GDR ESM (new file called "GDR 2009.esm")
Ah! GDR team's resources is here on Nexus.
Another mod affecting Arkngthand is Crazyboy's Dwemer Ruins Fix.
Anyways, DNGDR is compatible, which is what he most likely meant instead of DGR.
Similar named projects with similar content can be quite confusing ^^
None of it trivial, oh no.