Morrowind

File information

Last updated

Original upload

Created by

MikeL - fixed and completed by Redondepremiere

Uploaded by

redondepremiere

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Safe to use

About this mod

The 3.2 version of the old mod A Grand Abode by MikeL, cleaned and with new assets so as to be fully usable.

Permissions and credits
Mirrors
A great house sits on the western slope of Balmora beckoning to be owned. But wait, why is such a grand abode empty? Where is the high lord who resides in such a fortress?

In 2004, MikeL, the creator of this little plugin, made the beta of the 3.2 version of A Grand Abode available on his site along with the textures he planned to use for a new secret set of armor. Unfortunately, this work was left unfinished, though it remained available thanks to the Web Archive and Morrowind Modding History.

Having found out about it while working on updating a french translation of the mod, I set out to complete this release so that all may enjoy it, english players included; since the author gave full permission to use the mod and its assets, I felt it ought to be shared.

Enjoy this little blast from the past, at least if Balmora isn't too crowded already for you!


Description
=========
As said above, this mod adds a big house in the western part of Balmora. It is freely accessible, but some parts may require a rather powerful character to explore if you want to survive what may be discovered.
It contains a number of somewhat overpowered objects that can be freely taken from the start; it's up to you to use them or not.
The roof of the abode is also a convenient shortcut from Balmora to Hla Oad if you don't feel like looping down the Odai river and back up the coast.
If you can go past some high-level locks, you may be able to reach sections that were blocked off by the previous owner and find out the reason for this; if you are daring and strong enough, you might be rewarded with a new set of armor.


Installation
=========
Copy the contents of the Data Files folder from the archive to the Data Files folder of your Morrowind installation, then activate the plugin with the launcher or your mod manager.
You may want to regenerate distant land if you use them, or the abode will only show up when you are close enough to it.


Uninstallation
===========
Make sure you're not inside the abode, then make a new save.
Remove the mod's files (plugin, meshes, textures, icons) from your Morrowind installation.
Don't forget to clean your save with Wrye Mash.
Regenerate distant land if you use them.


Changes from the beta of version 3.2 (light spoilers)
=========================================
The plugin has been thoroughly scrubbed to remove all dirty edits that could be found: it went through Wrye Mash's Repair Refs function, tes3cmd, TESTool and the leftovers were taken out with TESAME, reducing the plugin's size by 50%.
Since the secret armor depended on meshes and icons that were ultimately never created by MikeL, I had to recreate them: the meshes are simply duplicates of the vanilla glass armor ones (as was seemingly intended) that make use of the new textures. The icons are amateurish recolors of the vanilla glass armor icons that look blue-ish/white-ish to fit with the textures.
Since this was my first time using GIMP to edit pictures, I can't say the icons are of particularly good quality, but they shouldn't look too out of place on a (close-to-)vanilla installation of the game.


Permissions
==========
Do as you please with this mod. Simply credit the original author, MikeL, as per his wishes.
You're welcome to create better icons, as I feel this aspect in particular deserve to be enhanced.


Credits
======
Thanks to MikeL for creating this mod and giving full permission to edit/complete/modify it.
Thanks to Wolfen from the site La Confrérie des Traducteurs for translating the first version of this mod into french, as this is how I discovered it in the first place.
Thanks for the Morrowind modding community for still being awesome after all those years; consider this a little thanks on my part for the non-french players.