I (finally!) finished it! As others have said, this is a very high quality experience. Sleuthing around is one of the many joys of Morrowind, and this mod plays that feeling to the hilt. Do you come from a legal background yourself? The writing felt very "I've lived through this," lol.
I have three mild critiques: 1) Some of the quest rewards are a little on the OP side, particularly the stuff the MT assassin gives you in the final quest. Likewise with the final reward ring. +25 skill bumps feel a tad extreme. +10 tends to be more reasonable, imo, but your mileage may vary. 2) Having to schlep out to the Verulas Pass guild hall was a bit of an unwelcome surprise, given the distance from what had been the "main questing area" around Old Ebonheart. It doesn't help that I find the Verulas Pass guild hall and its inhabitants a little, uh... edgy. I grant that it makes sense to do something with a part of TR that most people probably never see, but yeah. 3) The final boss is a pretty incredible jump in challenge. An unprepared PC will get demolished, as I very nearly was.
All that aside, this was fantastic. Great job, and I hope to see more from you eventually :)
Thanks! Yes, I have a legal background so I think that was a factor behind this. As for your points, thanks for sharing them. I think reducing the OPness of the quest rewards is a good idea, so I may consider that in a future update. But my time is limited so I'm saving updates only for game-breaking bugs like the Andothren rename, so probably won't do this until the next TR release maybe. As for the other points, those were intentional. Verulas Pass was the only place I could think of where a MT assassin in "training" would make sense for purposes of the plot, and since the boss in that quest is on the difficult side, I wanted it to be sufficiently far from OE to echo the vanilla advice of greater distance away = more difficulty. Plus I wanted to give the place more visibility for MT players. The final boss at the end of the last quest was also carefully planned to give the player a bit of a surprise before getting inevitably saved by the guards. After all, I wanted to give the player some echo of what %PCName is feeling throughout the whole thing. Considering you were only "nearly" demolished, I think it did the trick nicely. Otherwise, glad you enjoyed the questline!
ATTENTION - This mod should now be compatible with TR 25.05 (Grasping Fortune), but like TR, the updated questline may not be compatible with existing saves from TR 24.12 or earlier.
First of all, absolutely loving the mod so far. Was just wondering, I'm on "thief in the treasure room" and I've just discovered the dagger lodged in the hinges of the hidden door. The guy in charge of the room was asking for other evidence (for me to prove Varadrin wasn't armed), I've been searching for like an hour. Help me out, how do I prove he wasn't armed?
When you first are sent to talk to Varadrin in the cell, the intent was for you to talk to Gaulus the Jailer to get directions/access. He gives you the evidence you need (a recent prisoner log). However, it seems you bypassed him and just searched for Varadrin yourself, so it's too late to get it from him now. You'll have to console in the recent prisoner log to your inventory. The command is player->AddItem "lev_BG_OE_3_log" 1. That should allow you to move the quest forward.
The team work with the crusader from the temple in the tomb for the necromancy case is remarkable ! What kind of spell does he have to be able to one shot any undead like he does ? It looks like some absorb or drain health spell, but a high level one to be able to one shot anything ! Anyway really great mod, thanks for releasing it despite the strange rejection from TR !
edit : just finished the mod, for now at least ! A burning question : do you plan another part of it, after all the mastermind escapes in the end... ? And I can't help to think that a normal prisoner would have been stripped of all his equipment, we would be like at the very beginning of morrowind, when leaving the prison boat, and it would make all this escape much more difficult ! I guess even if it's less realistic, it's a lot more playable this way ! Anyway thanks again for the mod, fantastic work ! :)
edit 2: after looking using openmw-cs, it seems the crusader was using "daedric bite", which is a redoran only spell (taught only in indarys manor), but using damage health effect, so it can be made from other spells for the others. It's pretty effective, 50 points on target, well when you make the spell it eats mana very fast too! For the tomb it was very well done, the guy was almost out of mana in the end, but all the undead were destroyed, I think I had the 1st one, and he had all the others with his spells ! For those who are not specialized in destruction, the mysticism way (absorb health) is usually easier to cast, based on righteousness which is a cheap touch spell, and then just make a target version from spellmaking...
Glad you enjoyed the mod! The crusader was adapted from an existing NPC with that spell who I don't remember, so I didn't think too much of where the spell came from so long as he did the job of helping you clear out the tomb (which it sounds like he did). The mastermind escape was deliberately open ended, just in case I want to use him again later if I do another barrister's questline, but that may not be for a quite a while if at all. As for removing the player's equipment, maybe that could be manageable in Lua, but I wanted to keep this questline engine-agnostic using MWScript (and I don't know Lua right now anyway).
Wow what a fantastic mod! Will be a must-stay in my playthroughs from now on. Especially since Old Ebonheart often becomes my base of operations for Tamriel Rebuilt.
The limeware platter is almost invisible because of its placement in the room, at eye level at least for the height of my character, you see only the side of it, almost nothing, and in a filled room like this one it's quite a challenge to find it ! Actually I doubted there was a bug, so I looked for the platter name in game and checked its coordinates, that's how I found it... A weird way to investigate in game, but really, it was hard to find !
54 comments
I have three mild critiques:
1) Some of the quest rewards are a little on the OP side, particularly the stuff the MT assassin gives you in the final quest. Likewise with the final reward ring. +25 skill bumps feel a tad extreme. +10 tends to be more reasonable, imo, but your mileage may vary.
2) Having to schlep out to the Verulas Pass guild hall was a bit of an unwelcome surprise, given the distance from what had been the "main questing area" around Old Ebonheart. It doesn't help that I find the Verulas Pass guild hall and its inhabitants a little, uh... edgy. I grant that it makes sense to do something with a part of TR that most people probably never see, but yeah.
3) The final boss is a pretty incredible jump in challenge. An unprepared PC will get demolished, as I very nearly was.
All that aside, this was fantastic. Great job, and I hope to see more from you eventually :)
I saw that in Narsis are also barristers. Maybe this could be used for future expansions of your quest.
Just saying.
(Seeing as how this was the BEST quest mod in many years..)
Thanks in advance!
Anyway really great mod, thanks for releasing it despite the strange rejection from TR !
edit : just finished the mod, for now at least ! A burning question : do you plan another part of it, after all the mastermind escapes in the end... ? And I can't help to think that a normal prisoner would have been stripped of all his equipment, we would be like at the very beginning of morrowind, when leaving the prison boat, and it would make all this escape much more difficult ! I guess even if it's less realistic, it's a lot more playable this way !
Anyway thanks again for the mod, fantastic work ! :)
edit 2: after looking using openmw-cs, it seems the crusader was using "daedric bite", which is a redoran only spell (taught only in indarys manor), but using damage health effect, so it can be made from other spells for the others. It's pretty effective, 50 points on target, well when you make the spell it eats mana very fast too! For the tomb it was very well done, the guy was almost out of mana in the end, but all the undead were destroyed, I think I had the 1st one, and he had all the others with his spells ! For those who are not specialized in destruction, the mysticism way (absorb health) is usually easier to cast, based on righteousness which is a cheap touch spell, and then just make a target version from spellmaking...
Actually I doubted there was a bug, so I looked for the platter name in game and checked its coordinates, that's how I found it...
A weird way to investigate in game, but really, it was hard to find !
Great mod so far anyway, thanks ! :)