So I played this mod and I think this issue I found is only my end. The new cave dungeon that requires me to open a path with a mining pick ax and leads to a Tomb filled with Spider Daedra. For some reason this place hits my FPS hard, everything is low for some reason. And its only that tomb area, no other dungeon I visited modded or not modded does this.
That's odd. I can't think what might be causing that, I'm afraid. Nothing special in there at all. Is it before or after you open the tomb up, or both?
I noticed the framerate getting hit hard the moment I first arrived in the Spider Daedra Tomb, and its only in that tomb mind you, the Lava Cave you arrive before that is fine.
For the sake of testing, can you give me a console command of teleporting to the new dungeon as is?
Not the correct dungeon, I said it was this cave that just recently opened up, and than I have to use a Shovel or Pickaxe to break open a path inside the cave that leads to a different ancestral tomb, only this one is filled with Spider Daedra.
Ok I decided to just play the dungeon as is, enduring the low framerate, but than eventually the framerate goes back to normal and I did the get out and get back in, and the the framerate did not dip again.
Building staircase/caverns/Gate House through the Eastern and Southern Mountains would make this mod more travelable, otherwise this mod is too off-the-beaten-path to keep.
The concept behind this mod is solid, but I have some feedback of the shack cobble.
Why would they build vertically? That's usually done when there isn't enough space to build horizontally. It's also a region battered by strong winds so a tall wooden shack would get destroyed very quickly.
The design of the entire thing is a bit too intrusive. Something with a smaller profile would blend in much better with the surrounding landscape.
Cobbling isn't a good practice in general.
Just my two cents but there's room to simplify the entire thing while keeping the vibe you were going for.
I'm only familiar with "cobble" as a noun to mean the grade of stone that forms the floor of my local marketplace, so you're going to have to illuminate me on that. I'm guessing, given that you've also used it as a verb, that you mean that it is "cobbled together" from disparate parts. In which case how can that be bad practice? I had a box of pieces and I put them together in the way I wanted, so how can that be "bad"?
Height = visibility. I hunt, and being able to observe is always useful.
The part about the structural integrity of the entire thing is crucial in my opinion, and if you need to hunt, you usually grab your stuff, go to a high point and then come back.
About the concept of cobbling, the point is to use assets in the way they were intended to be used, for a number of reasons. In this case, the market stall being used like that has multiple issues, just to give you an example:
The most important one is that the market stall is already used, by TR and by multiple mods, as a market stall. So when it appears in your mod used for a different purpose, it's going to be perceived as a market stall used in the "wrong" way. That's how it looks to me for instance.
The second issue is that parts that were not meant to go together, are not going to align properly, like the market stall sitting on two wooden pillars on one side, and then on the wooden platform on the third leg because the two pieces don't align (they were never meant to, after all).
The third point is consistency. The base game never uses the tapestries as makeshift curtains.
Not relevant in this case, but assembling different parts to put together something that's not available as a proper asset also leads to high ref count which can be problematic in terms of performance.
Another issue I noticed and that also should be fixed is the asset mismatch: dock set, hlaalu well (in the middle of the ashlands?), and a nordic rack, ashlander clothing, redoran pieces, com, de, middcle class, poor class furniture ecc all mixed together If these were smugglers it could maybe work, but the base game never mixes pieces and sets to this degree so it should be toned down in any case.
It may sound like a nitpick, and to you the nordic rack might look just like any other wooden rack would look, but we go back to point 1, and it's also the reason we have a de_p bench that's a simple wooden bench, and a com_p bench that doesn't look that different but it's meant for common interiors, just as an example. All the points combined contribute to an addition looking "moddy", for lack of a better word. If you were to submit something like this to TR, they'd probably give you the same feedback, for the same reasons. You might not care of course, and decide that you're 100% happy with the mod, and that's completely fair. It's just some feedback from a stranger.
"All the points combined contribute to an addition looking "moddy", for lack of a better word. If you were to submit something like this to TR, they'd probably give you the same feedback, for the same reasons."
As much as I really do love TR, I think this is one of the areas where it could be improved. Simply, a slavish adherence to "good practice", without deviation from what is considered the accepted "norm". It's not only a recipe for blandness, but it's also not how people or the real world work, so yes, I'm happy with what I produced on an aesthetic level. What you call "moddy" I'd suggest was the texture of reality, which doesn't tend to care whether somebody has made the faux pas of placing their Denby tableware next to the IKEA rubbish. Put simply, I didn't want to make "Generic Common Dunmer Shack #840, Style Guide TR 2024".
Technical issues I'm very keen to improve on however - for instance, I had no idea at the point of making this that "getdisabled" was a thing!
A comparison with real world isn't really fair as Morrowind, and most games, are highly stylized. You won't find 100 different types of wardrobes like you would in the real world simply because there's just one type of de_p, de_m and de_r wardrobe and so forth, and the style being used is meant to communicate something about the place.
I personally don't mod following TR standards, but some rules they set come from having almost reverse engineered Morrowind. I called TR into the discussion as it's the only modding project that has set some clear rules, but every single point I raised was backed up by an explanation.
My point was that you can achieve something that looks just as creative, but more consistent with the base game. Cobbling and set-mixing are not necessarily creative, and at the same time following a structured framework doesn't mean you can't be creative. Case in point: the most recent TR releases have some of the best, and most unique content I've seen for MW. Likewise, there's super creative mods that follow most of the "untold rules" I mentioned.
What does using 4 different furniture styles achieve? Why do these hunters have a redoran firepit inside, and a hlaalu well outside? These choices raise some questions, but there's no answers as the choices were probably not even intentional.
There's an interesting principle expressed by TR that I think is interesting to share.
Principle of Alienity: What is boring and mundane is wrong; what is interesting and alien is right. Alien in excess is mundane.
All in all, it was a fun conversation, have a good one!
Looks like a skill increase which we get from guar quest, doesn't contribute to level up in any way at all. Would be probably safer to give a skill-book for a player instead.
I installed this earlier, and love it so far! When starting the first quest... I was actually scratching my head and wondering if I'd ever, through all these years, even been in that little area. Then, I found Danirai Caverns, and that name definitely feels familiar; I suspect it has been a long time though. Thank you for a mod that encourages me to explore "new" / forgotten areas in one of my favourite games. I haven't yet progressed very far, because an ash storm hit when I began scouting around, which made things difficult, but, I've really enjoyed even that little bit. Like your other mods.. it fits wonderfully into the vanilla game, and if I didn't know it was a mod, I'd never guess.
It's a hostile landscape, that's for sure. I'm using Map and Compass (no dynamic worldmap or localmap), and a HUD mod that totally disables compass (though I do have another mod that gives you a physical compass to buy and use..). Ash storms can be interesting!
I don't know if you're aware but one of the cells in the cave that you're first pointed to has an opening above that leads out of that cell. Found it when I was levitating around
So, now that I've had time to play with this mod, I thought I'd comment again to say how much I really like it. Its not too invasive that it feels like a different region, but instead it makes this a place I want to visit in all my playthroughs henceforth eventually. A truly permanent load-order mod you've given me here. Looking forward to what you make next!
I enjoyed the addendum very much indeed. Thank you! It was a nice surprise finding that today. And the new area was very very beautiful. Absolutely wonderful textures and atmosphere. I liked it there. I enjoyed the sleuthing very much. Only thing I noticed was that
Spoiler:
Show
Olveso continues to talk of Follie afterwards.
I was amused by the news sheet on his table! Nice little touch that!
Oh dear. I should update their dialogue to reflect the tragic loss!
Yes. Good country folk, worried about the creeping crime from the urban areas.. Very much rooted in reality, that mindset!
Glad you had fun. I did some searching and I couldn't actually find any existing lore about where the certain figure was buried or what had happened to the certain artifact. So I thought, screw it, I'm doing it!
I'm glad you did. It's very calm there. I enjoyed seeing Olveso and his wife again. They feel like friends. I thought maybe they were going to ask me to help with their loss - and I knew someone in Ald'ruhn who might just help - then I realised... different mod. I say all that just to explain how immersive it was. :-)
It's only Olveso - perhaps he is struggling with reality.
Bear in mind that's my own mash together of Devilish Red Mountain and the Beacons. You should download those mods to install their assets, though you won't need to use their ESPs with that combined version. With gratefulness to the original authors: great mods, but they didn't work together perfectly out of the box.
I also made that to work with the Ossuaries of Red Mountain, which is also fantastic. Having said that, I use the excellent landscape merging tool, which might be hiding some extant conflicts between my load order, but with that tool I haven't noticed anything wrong.
I went to Ghostgate for testing and a bunch of the new rock meshes were blocking the side areas of ghostgate. I'm using BCOMs Ghostgate, which works fine with the original devilish red mountain.
Also a dumb question but where is the bar with the note that starts the quest? I searched the tower of dusk but couldnt find it.
Oh dear. Does BCOM change Ghostgate both internally and externally? If so, the note on the bar might not be present... (I've never used BCOM.)
The note isn't really needed. All it does is point you towards the start location, which is in the southwest corner of the ashlands area to the southeast of Ghostgate, near the Thalas tomb.
Yeah I think BCOM heavily edits Ghostgate. Too bad, I guess I'll have to wait for a patch to fully enjoy your mod with beacons of mameae and the new red mountain rocks.
I've just uploaded a version which moves the note to Ald-ruhn, Ald-skar. Though as I said, the note isn't needed really anyway.
I have to say that even though I use quite a few of RP's mods as standalone units (and I love them), I really don't like the "all in one solution" approach of BCOM. I do think it's much better to pick and mix. And honestly, even though I have looked at a few Ghostgate overhauls, I actually really like the simple Velothi modesty of the base game.
I'm not a huge fan of the all in one bcom either but its compatibility with so many mods kinda forces me into using it. I also really like randompals Vanilla Friendly Wearables Expansion and that one is BCOM exclusive.
I guess I will now just use the Beacons with Devilish Red Mountain and do my best to ignore the eissues that will come up
I don't think it would be a big job to open my Devilish Red Mountain ESP in the CS and delete the offending statics. That's the thing about compatibility: when you learn the basics of the CS it becomes very easy to just hack things yourself to your own tastes.
Edit: I just edited the standart devilish red mountain esp to move 2 offending rocks at the first 2 beacons near ghost gate. Should work fine with the quests but I just checked the first one.
You refer to Ossuaries of Red Mountain. Do you mean 'Memento Mori' ?
Assuming you have a free account on WeTransfer, your replacer will be deleted after 7 days. I suggest you include your patch/ replacer as an optional file here.
I'm not entirely sure I'd want to "officially" provide my hacked version - it definitely works for me, but as has been pointed out here already, it conflicts with BCOM, and I think it's possible that it needs the land merge tool to be run as well in order for it to be truly seamless. For me, Devilish Red Mountain was the "Red Mountain to rule them all", but everybody has different tastes, right? I'm very happy to have it working alongside Beacons of Mamaea, but everybody has a different load..
It's your call to include it here as an option, afterall it's your work. No pressure from me. Perhaps with a caveat stating the possible need for "Merged Lands", (what a great tool for fixing seams!).
I, like you, am not a fan of AIO monolithic overhauls. Beautiful Cities of Morrowind has its place as a well crafted, feature rich installation which addresses content compatibility very well for the content it provides. But there is other content I use which Beautiful Cities of Morrowind does not cover and that means using Construction Set, Enchanted Editor et al to build patches/ replacers for additional content.
Yeah unfortunately, the DRRM+Beacons merge has disappeared. I recommend uploading it to Google Drive, or maybe mediafire, or MEGA, so the link stays permanent
78 comments
For the sake of testing, can you give me a console command of teleporting to the new dungeon as is?
"Unknown Ancestral Tomb"
No patch from me, I'm afraid. Making something compatible with BCOM is a bit of a fool's errand, as far as I can see.
Just my two cents but there's room to simplify the entire thing while keeping the vibe you were going for.
Height = visibility. I hunt, and being able to observe is always useful.
About the concept of cobbling, the point is to use assets in the way they were intended to be used, for a number of reasons.
In this case, the market stall being used like that has multiple issues, just to give you an example:
Another issue I noticed and that also should be fixed is the asset mismatch: dock set, hlaalu well (in the middle of the ashlands?), and a nordic rack, ashlander clothing, redoran pieces, com, de, middcle class, poor class furniture ecc all mixed together
If these were smugglers it could maybe work, but the base game never mixes pieces and sets to this degree so it should be toned down in any case.
It may sound like a nitpick, and to you the nordic rack might look just like any other wooden rack would look, but we go back to point 1, and it's also the reason we have a de_p bench that's a simple wooden bench, and a com_p bench that doesn't look that different but it's meant for common interiors, just as an example.
All the points combined contribute to an addition looking "moddy", for lack of a better word. If you were to submit something like this to TR, they'd probably give you the same feedback, for the same reasons.
You might not care of course, and decide that you're 100% happy with the mod, and that's completely fair. It's just some feedback from a stranger.
As much as I really do love TR, I think this is one of the areas where it could be improved. Simply, a slavish adherence to "good practice", without deviation from what is considered the accepted "norm". It's not only a recipe for blandness, but it's also not how people or the real world work, so yes, I'm happy with what I produced on an aesthetic level. What you call "moddy" I'd suggest was the texture of reality, which doesn't tend to care whether somebody has made the faux pas of placing their Denby tableware next to the IKEA rubbish. Put simply, I didn't want to make "Generic Common Dunmer Shack #840, Style Guide TR 2024".
Technical issues I'm very keen to improve on however - for instance, I had no idea at the point of making this that "getdisabled" was a thing!
I personally don't mod following TR standards, but some rules they set come from having almost reverse engineered Morrowind.
I called TR into the discussion as it's the only modding project that has set some clear rules, but every single point I raised was backed up by an explanation.
My point was that you can achieve something that looks just as creative, but more consistent with the base game. Cobbling and set-mixing are not necessarily creative, and at the same time following a structured framework doesn't mean you can't be creative.
Case in point: the most recent TR releases have some of the best, and most unique content I've seen for MW.
Likewise, there's super creative mods that follow most of the "untold rules" I mentioned.
What does using 4 different furniture styles achieve? Why do these hunters have a redoran firepit inside, and a hlaalu well outside? These choices
raise some questions, but there's no answers as the choices were probably not even intentional.
There's an interesting principle expressed by TR that I think is interesting to share.
Principle of Alienity: What is boring and mundane is wrong; what is interesting and alien is right. Alien in excess is mundane.
All in all, it was a fun conversation, have a good one!
Would be probably safer to give a skill-book for a player instead.
Thank you for a mod that encourages me to explore "new" / forgotten areas in one of my favourite games. I haven't yet progressed very far, because an ash storm hit when I began scouting around, which made things difficult, but, I've really enjoyed even that little bit. Like your other mods.. it fits wonderfully into the vanilla game, and if I didn't know it was a mod, I'd never guess.
It's funny you should say that - I've actually started something else..
I was amused by the news sheet on his table! Nice little touch that!
Yes. Good country folk, worried about the creeping crime from the urban areas.. Very much rooted in reality, that mindset!
Glad you had fun. I did some searching and I couldn't actually find any existing lore about where the certain figure was buried or what had happened to the certain artifact. So I thought, screw it, I'm doing it!
It's only Olveso - perhaps he is struggling with reality.
Bear in mind that's my own mash together of Devilish Red Mountain and the Beacons. You should download those mods to install their assets, though you won't need to use their ESPs with that combined version. With gratefulness to the original authors: great mods, but they didn't work together perfectly out of the box.
I also made that to work with the Ossuaries of Red Mountain, which is also fantastic. Having said that, I use the excellent landscape merging tool, which might be hiding some extant conflicts between my load order, but with that tool I haven't noticed anything wrong.
Merged lands tool: https://github.com/DavidVonDerau/merged_lands
Also a dumb question but where is the bar with the note that starts the quest? I searched the tower of dusk but couldnt find it.
The note isn't really needed. All it does is point you towards the start location, which is in the southwest corner of the ashlands area to the southeast of Ghostgate, near the Thalas tomb.
I have to say that even though I use quite a few of RP's mods as standalone units (and I love them), I really don't like the "all in one solution" approach of BCOM. I do think it's much better to pick and mix. And honestly, even though I have looked at a few Ghostgate overhauls, I actually really like the simple Velothi modesty of the base game.
I guess I will now just use the Beacons with Devilish Red Mountain and do my best to ignore the eissues that will come up
Edit: I just edited the standart devilish red mountain esp to move 2 offending rocks at the first 2 beacons near ghost gate. Should work fine with the quests but I just checked the first one.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TEYtqLdRQeYlfpVEcgSo8QWoxnYlUq9X/view?usp=sharing
Thanks for uploading your replacer for Devilish Rocky Red Mountain and The Beacons of Mamaea
You refer to Ossuaries of Red Mountain. Do you mean 'Memento Mori' ?
Assuming you have a free account on WeTransfer, your replacer will be deleted after 7 days. I suggest you include your patch/ replacer as an optional file here.
I'm not entirely sure I'd want to "officially" provide my hacked version - it definitely works for me, but as has been pointed out here already, it conflicts with BCOM, and I think it's possible that it needs the land merge tool to be run as well in order for it to be truly seamless. For me, Devilish Red Mountain was the "Red Mountain to rule them all", but everybody has different tastes, right? I'm very happy to have it working alongside Beacons of Mamaea, but everybody has a different load..
I, like you, am not a fan of AIO monolithic overhauls. Beautiful Cities of Morrowind has its place as a well crafted, feature rich installation which addresses content compatibility very well for the content it provides. But there is other content I use which Beautiful Cities of Morrowind does not cover and that means using Construction Set, Enchanted Editor et al to build patches/ replacers for additional content.
That said, thank you for Forgotten Wastes.