i don't expect simyaz to do it after all these years (unless he wants to of course) but i really hope he's still around to approve a port and that someone else wants to. hell i would try it if i could figure it out. i love oblivion without mods of course but i'm playing the remaster now and i already miss ruin so much lol
If more complicated quest mods turn out to be doable for the remaster, I will definitely be looking into porting Simyaz' trilogy (RTT, TOTF and Malevolent) as a combined 'Fiend Saga' quest mod, unless he wishes to do so himself.
To the next player - downloading the Construction Set and disabling the horse summon completely is recommended due to its effects reliably crashing the game. Another bug is that my horse got stuck in Cheydinhal (teleporting out with the console is an option, of course), and the game kept crashing upon fast-travelling to the Cheydinhal West Gate (fast-travelling to the stables works fine).
I would also add that starting the mod at the start of the game leads to odd dialogue pacing (e.g. referencing being a hero when you are clearing your first Ayleid dungeon), the writing in general is uneven with the options presented having clear logical flaws and serving for the companion to deliver his next line "exposing" these flaws. There are also quite a few events with the PC being unable to act because reasons, most of the quest NPCs cannot be killed early due to their "Essential" status, and the final boss was explaining their plan at length (one of the most annoying tropes).
However, the first half of the mod, before the immortal NPCs and heavy scripting kicked in, was quite engaging, despite the continuity issues, while the dialogue options were at least present, unlike many of the main game’s quests. In general, it is a quite impressive achievement, despite the flaws. It is also largely dungeon-free (there is 1), which was preferable to the labyrinthine and too arcade’y dungeons of the main game.
More information on the resolving the horse-summon CTD: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/3027?tab=posts&comment_id=2620473
I finished this a while ago - had to watch a video with AI voice acting, and skipped to the best parts, but overall, I'm ready to give a review on this! I might be very critical, but I still really enjoyed this.
First of all... man, the dialogue from Ruin never fails to make me depressed. You can definitely feel the 'Hollywood/clichés' in a lot of parts, including dialogue or quests, but Ruin's dialogue is so incredibly philosophical in the most depressing manner, but also in the best way possible. The writing here gave me more insight in life than many stories from other games ever did. That was arguably the best part - the writing itself is very creative and doesn't get repetitive, still being very insightful and unique.
It's a very old mod, and it definitely has it's missed potential/negatives. On the topic of the Shadowscale stronghold, the underworld, etc - I feel like those were all used way too quickly? Like, I was actually invested in learning more about the Argonians and their mind-set, but we immediately escape, and we don't really learn much other than "big bad expository dialogue" in the final quest. The first quest where we slowly got to meet them was very good, until it ends in a rushed direction. Would be cool if they took us prisoner for a while, we could get a choice to become an assassin or not, etc...
I think Ruin being resurrected was kind of unnecessary. Again, the idea of the underworld was used in a very rushed manner, and as sad as it is (and it did emotionally affect me) - I feel like Ruin having this depressed, unfair ending about moving on from life because he felt worthless should've been something potentially determined by a choice. Like, 'good ending, neutral ending, bad ending' - but that's way too ambitious for an older mod. I guess there's good irony in Ruin constantly disliking the gods and suddenly having to rely on them for a good after-life, but it wasn't quite my cup of tea.
The assassins were very fun, but used VERY sparingly. They felt like a very overly convenient plot device and not like their actual characters. This is an issue with a lot of the plot lines and additional characters in the mod - they just feel like plot devices and aren't really used to their full potential. It's cool you get different choices with what to do with them by the end, but it's still such a waste.
Again, a lot of the ideas in the plot were unfortunately reduced to plot devices or only served for one reason, and then it gets forgotten about. I think there is a lot of potential to maybe remake this mod and over-haul it in the best way possible, with maybe a few alternative endings and re-written quests. But that's just me, and modding isn't so easy. Much less writing.
Overall, I rate this a 6.5/10. Ruin's dialogue cuts through you like a knife - seriously, his dialogue resonates deeply within my soul, he shares a lot of traits and fears that I do, and I can't deny that it genuinely made me emotional - but, the usage of the plot elements are very barren, and I kinda felt like something was amiss, by the end. I think Ruin needed more 'mini-companion' characters to bounce his dynamic off of and interact with, because as much as his dialogue is really good, it can get a bit overbearing at points.
I'm going to watch Tears of the Fiend now and leave my thoughts when I'm done. Really hyped!
Love this mod. I only had one major bug that I had to work around (the Part 2 Twilight bug), and a minor bug near the end that was my own fault (a combination of other mods and using the Shivering Isles' Risen Flesh on a scripted necromancer). But this mod was one of the formative narratives of my life back in 2010 when I first played it, and I still love it today.
A few notes for anyone playing it in $current_year
You NEED the Better Cities patch if you're running BC. It can be found in the Better Cities zip file that contains the main mod.
The guide is pretty comprehensive. If you encounter any places where you're stuck, read it.
Simyaz invents some elements of lore. He does not violate any existing lore, and the story primarily uses existing factions and history, but there are parts of this mod that are novel concepts. I personally did not find it lore-breaking, but it is lore-expanding.
There are some typos. Most mods for this game have typos, but I'm a stickler for that so I'm obligated to point it out.
This mod is HEAVILY scripted. This single fact is the cause of most bugs you will encounter. Also, many of the scripts start running well before you actually encounter the situations in which they run. This means that your best bet for finding a solution is opening up the Construction Set and reading all the if statements for a particular situation. If you can get those if statements to trigger, you're golden. I'll talk more about this at the end of my comment.
Ruin does want to talk to you rather frequently. If you find it too frequent - I found it much too frequent - you can change the time between talks by editing the script files. Note that you MUST do this before you recruit him and ideally before you load the mod up for the first time, as it's the same script file for ALL conversations. See point #1 about why it's difficult to work around bugs. See "Editing Conversation Timers" below for how to change this.
If you run into the quest-breaking Twilight bug, you have two options. One, you could try this patch. I couldn't get it to work for me, so I had to find another solution. See "Gaming the Conditionals" below for how I personally fixed it.
Gaming the Conditionals (note: this has spoilers. I try to use vague terms to keep it spoiler-lite, but it still has spoilers. Scroll down to 'tl;dr' if you just want something to input into the console to solve the Twilight bug) How Scripting in this Mod Works If you open this mod up in the Construction Set, you'll be able to read all of the scripts that trigger. This gives you a resource to check if you run into any issues. I'm going to walk through figuring out and solving the Twilight bug, and you might be able to use this information to solve any other bugs you encounter. First off, you need to do some research. For the Twilight bug, I'm just going to give you the solution, but for any other bug you're going to want to load up RTT.esp and open Scripts in the Construction Set. Either click on the pencil icon, or click on Gameplay > Edit Scripts. Open up the scripts using the open icon, and scroll to the bottom - Simyaz prefixed all of his scripts with ZZRUIN so they all appear in the same place. There's a lot of scripts here for various different parts of the mod, but the main meat of the mod is actually in ZZRUINScript1 through ZZRuinScript5. These scripts are in order, following them from 1 to 5, top to bottom, should reflect your entire journey with Ruin and your conflict with the main antagonists. The Twilight bug occurs in ZZRuinScript3, about 3/4ths of the way down the file, under the comment that says ; SHADOWSEEKER BUILD UP. Take this code for instance - If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 44) && (Player.GetInWorldSpace CheydinhalWorld == 1) ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player endifYou might recognize that this is where Twilight approaches you in Cheydinhal after you wake up there. As you can see, it only triggers if ZZRTT1.RuinStory is at 44 (this is how Simyaz keeps track of the quest, not through quest stages in a journal but through that particular variable) AND the player is in CheydinhalWorld (which is the interior of Cheydinhal). Once those conditions are met, Twilight will walk up to and start a conversation with the player. During the conversation, Twilight will actually set the ZZRTT1.RuinStory variable to 45 to indicate that he's talked to you. Then, the next part of the script: If (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker <= 200) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 45) set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46 ZZRUINTwilightRef1.MoveTo ZZRUINShadowSeekerMarker7 enableplayercontrols endifThis is when he walks away after talking to you. And this might be a place where a bug could happen - see the first part of the conditional, where it checks distance? If for some reason he's not within that distance, the quest WILL NOT progress until he comes within 200 range of the ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker. Essentially, he'll never leave and you'll never get your controls back. This bug might occur if you get impatient waiting for him to walk up to you (and enableplayercontrols and walk up to him yourself) or if you have a mod conflict that causes the marker to not be at the proper spot. To get around this you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46, but then you'd probably need to move Twilight manually in the future to trigger another conditional since he's not walking where he needs to walk. It gets messy fast if you don't keep track of where everyone is supposed to be. So it becomes a game of "what can I do to trigger the if statements that I want?". Let's apply this to the Twilight bug. The Solution The Twilight bug is caused by the if statements for the ShadowSeekers' trip to the Imperial City failing to trigger. It's actually rather simple to solve! Scroll down to the bottom of the ZZRUINScript3 file and you'll see the final things that Twilight wants from you in order to give you access to the next part of the quest:
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 48) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 <= 300) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance Player <= 500) set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 DisablePlayerControls endif
If ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 49 ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player Endif Now, importantly, you should not ignore all the scripts that trigger before this. You will be skipping a bunch of scripts with this solution, so if you're investigating a bug on your own you NEED to know what the scripts you're skipping do. Luckily, the code we're skipping just move people around and assign horse ownership, so we're safe to skip those. You may have to disable the ShadowSeekers in Cheydinhal later, but that's not a huge bug. So he wants ZZRTT1.RuinStory to be set to 48, he wants to be within 300 distance of the ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16, and he wants to be within 500 distance of the player. At that point, ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be set to 49, your controls will be disabled, and immediately in the next script segment he'll talk to you since ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be at 49. ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 is a certain well in the Waterfront. Open up the console while in Cheydinhal, click on Twilight so you've saved his ref, then travel to the Imperial City. Find the well in the Waterfront (you may want to check the Waterfront in the Tamriel worldspace to find the location of the marker if you don't know where it is). Teleport Twilight to you using moveto player while he's still selected in your console, then type in set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48. If Twilight is within those distances of you and the well, he'll disable your controls and talk to you. Alternatively, you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 to get him to talk to you anywhere, though that's riskier since he won't be in the worldspace he's expecting to be in.
tl;dr To solve the Twilight bug, select him in Cheydinhal, go to the well in the waterfront district, and enter moveto player set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48viola, he'll talk to you.
Editing Conversation Timers To edit conversation Timers, you want ZZRUINScript2 and ZZRUINScript3. You'll notice a pattern of code that looks something like this in both of them, in the upper half of the script: If RunTimer2 == 1 If Timer2 > 0 Set Timer2 to Timer2 - GetSecondsPassed Else If (RuinDialogue == 0) && (RuinFollow == 1) && (RuinWantsToTalk == 0) set Timer2 to 500 set RuinDialogue to 1 set RuinWantsToTalk to 1 Player.addspell ZZRUINTalkSpellYou can see here that it's running a timer, and when that timer counts down, it'll trigger the alert that he wants to talk (the spell added to your inventory) and then set the timer again to count down. That means that to edit the time between conversations, you simply need to go in and change what number the timers are set to, in both of the scripts I mentioned above (there are two separate sections for part 1 and part 2 respectively). Remember to set them for ALL conversations, so you'll want to go through the entire if statement and every time you see set Timer1 to 500 or set Timer2 to 500 in that section you'll need to change it. 500 refers to the number of seconds, so 500 seconds is every 8 minutes. I like RTT part 1 to run conversations every 5000 seconds instead (80 minutes) and RTT part 2 to run conversations every 2500 seconds (40 minutes). Keep in mind when you're choosing a delay between conversations that he only talks to you 8 times in part 1, and even fewer in part 2, and he gets pretty attached to you during that time if you're playing the light route, so longer is likely better. I recommend editing this before you load the game up with the mod installed, because these edits will not take effect if Ruin is already following you, because the script has already been instantiated and is running.
Anyway, I hope this helps anyone running into issues. The mod's worth it, in my opinion.
Thanks for this post!! I also think the effort here is genuinely incredible. I tried this mod once long ago in 2022 but my game just crashed after the burning inn part and I was never able to progress past that. Gonna try it again in 2025!
I downloaded this mod a while ago and never played I until now and I'm having a issue where he keeps taking my horse and refuses to get off, even to go inside building. If I teleport him to me he will simply leave and get back on my horse. How do I stop him.
I found a solution that worked for me. The Construction set - load files (a folder icon) - set rtt as active file - ok- view - object window - npc (those who from rtt should be colored green) - argonian - Ruined-Tail (he is the first in the list) - edit - script - then delete one of endif (it marked as a mistake by CS. There is a red Cross at the start of this line. Located before "If (Player.IsRidingHorse == 1) && (OnHorse == 0) && (ZZRTT1.RuinFollow == 1) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory >= 8)" May as well delete the sound of the spell. Some people have crashes because of that sound. Also save unchanged copy of this script somewhere else. Just in case.
I'm getting a reproducible CTD in the Shadowscale sanctuary after the Shadowseekers set the traps, and having closed the portcullis, then waiting while they're sneaking.
Okay, I ended up getting through by reloading a save from before I went in and I finished the mod.
And I gotta say, this mod is kinda bad. In a large number of ways. This is gonna have spoilers in it, you've been warned.
For starters Ruin develops his relationship with you in a very jarringly rapid manner, the entire thing goes way too fast and feels forced/rushed. In less than a week of traveling together he was acting like we're best friends who've known each for years. It feels awkward and unnatural. Vilja had a far better, and more natural feeling, sense of progression to your relationship with her.
He also talks way, way too fuccking much. It was cool hearing his perfect voice with the AI mod, I couldn't imagine playing this with no voice acting and just having to read all the dialogue for him and all the other characters, but seriously after a few conversations I found myself just telling him to STFU and clicking through after quick reading what he had to say. Ruin also kept stealing my horse.
Secondly, the mod makes way too liberal use of cutscene moments. You know, those times when the game forcibly freezes you in place and you just have to wait it out? There was a time where I actually had to use console commands because the scene was stuck otherwise.
It was right at the end, at the Shadowscale headquarters with the Shadowseekers. Gloom, or Twilight or whatever the Nord's name was, tried talking to me but I was behind a table which was placed so badly and ill-fittingly that he couldn't make it to me and kept walking against the table because the walls were too narrow for him to make it over. I had to target him with the console and then do moveto player. Bad.
Another really odd thing about this mod is the fact they don't let you loot the Shadowscales. Why? I killed them, I want to check their corpse for anything useful like any other creature/NPC. You can get around this by using the console to select them then do the command "activate" - but you shouldn't have to do this in the first place. Also, you can't loot items in their lair? I got a 42 gold bounty for picking up a couple arrows and a claymore.
Like what the fucck?
These are murderers, operating as part of an illegal group of paid assassins and you can't steal from them??? Lol like who even reported me there? The Shadowseekers? The guys who came in with me to kill these people?
What were they thinking?
It also makes entirely no sense for the Shadowscales to be operating, basically out in the open, in the Imperial City. Was the mod author not aware of Adamus Phillida? The guy who is obsessively trying to rid the city of Dark Brotherhood presence? Also the NPC's referring to Sithis as the "Dark Father" just hits the ear wrong, he's the Dread Father.
Has the mod author never actually played through the entirety of the Dark Brotherhood questline before?
Another oddity with crime reporting is I got a 2k bounty from defending myself at the end when the Shadowseekers turned on me and attacked me unprovoked. Makes completely 0 sense.
This is one of the buggiest Oblivion mods I've ever played, and that's really saying something.
Oh, and I forgot the best part. At the very end of this Companion mod, you don't get to keep the companion. He dies and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. What a shitload of fuuck.
Thank you for posting this. Saved me a LOT of irritation and headaches as I started getting the horse glitch and was a little put off by the rapid fire "talks" with Ruin. I was literally in the middle of the Kvatch quest and he's over here giving me some in-depth conversations in the MIDDLE OF COMBAT.
There used to be voice acting before version 3.0. I'm honestly wanting to find out who did the voice acting for Ruin so I can make my own sort of revoice of the mod. Although I have no clue where to start.
Just play this game since there are so many good reviews about this mod. I am also not sure whether I will get any reply but I'm stuck *possible spoiler
I am at the stage where me and Ruin need to find Drop Dead in a tree stump in Anvil.. The problem is that there is no tree stump at all when I arrive at the correct I am not installing any 'Better Cities' or similar mods So I can't move forward from this
1407 comments
I would also add that starting the mod at the start of the game leads to odd dialogue pacing (e.g. referencing being a hero when you are clearing your first Ayleid dungeon), the writing in general is uneven with the options presented having clear logical flaws and serving for the companion to deliver his next line "exposing" these flaws. There are also quite a few events with the PC being unable to act because reasons, most of the quest NPCs cannot be killed early due to their "Essential" status, and the final boss was explaining their plan at length (one of the most annoying tropes).
However, the first half of the mod, before the immortal NPCs and heavy scripting kicked in, was quite engaging, despite the continuity issues, while the dialogue options were at least present, unlike many of the main game’s quests. In general, it is a quite impressive achievement, despite the flaws. It is also largely dungeon-free (there is 1), which was preferable to the labyrinthine and too arcade’y dungeons of the main game.
More information on the resolving the horse-summon CTD: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/3027?tab=posts&comment_id=2620473
First of all... man, the dialogue from Ruin never fails to make me depressed. You can definitely feel the 'Hollywood/clichés' in a lot of parts, including dialogue or quests, but Ruin's dialogue is so incredibly philosophical in the most depressing manner, but also in the best way possible. The writing here gave me more insight in life than many stories from other games ever did. That was arguably the best part - the writing itself is very creative and doesn't get repetitive, still being very insightful and unique.
It's a very old mod, and it definitely has it's missed potential/negatives. On the topic of the Shadowscale stronghold, the underworld, etc - I feel like those were all used way too quickly? Like, I was actually invested in learning more about the Argonians and their mind-set, but we immediately escape, and we don't really learn much other than "big bad expository dialogue" in the final quest. The first quest where we slowly got to meet them was very good, until it ends in a rushed direction. Would be cool if they took us prisoner for a while, we could get a choice to become an assassin or not, etc...
I think Ruin being resurrected was kind of unnecessary. Again, the idea of the underworld was used in a very rushed manner, and as sad as it is (and it did emotionally affect me) - I feel like Ruin having this depressed, unfair ending about moving on from life because he felt worthless should've been something potentially determined by a choice. Like, 'good ending, neutral ending, bad ending' - but that's way too ambitious for an older mod. I guess there's good irony in Ruin constantly disliking the gods and suddenly having to rely on them for a good after-life, but it wasn't quite my cup of tea.
The assassins were very fun, but used VERY sparingly. They felt like a very overly convenient plot device and not like their actual characters. This is an issue with a lot of the plot lines and additional characters in the mod - they just feel like plot devices and aren't really used to their full potential. It's cool you get different choices with what to do with them by the end, but it's still such a waste.
Again, a lot of the ideas in the plot were unfortunately reduced to plot devices or only served for one reason, and then it gets forgotten about. I think there is a lot of potential to maybe remake this mod and over-haul it in the best way possible, with maybe a few alternative endings and re-written quests. But that's just me, and modding isn't so easy. Much less writing.
Overall, I rate this a 6.5/10. Ruin's dialogue cuts through you like a knife - seriously, his dialogue resonates deeply within my soul, he shares a lot of traits and fears that I do, and I can't deny that it genuinely made me emotional - but, the usage of the plot elements are very barren, and I kinda felt like something was amiss, by the end. I think Ruin needed more 'mini-companion' characters to bounce his dynamic off of and interact with, because as much as his dialogue is really good, it can get a bit overbearing at points.
I'm going to watch Tears of the Fiend now and leave my thoughts when I'm done. Really hyped!
A few notes for anyone playing it in $current_year
Gaming the Conditionals
(note: this has spoilers. I try to use vague terms to keep it spoiler-lite, but it still has spoilers. Scroll down to 'tl;dr' if you just want something to input into the console to solve the Twilight bug)
How Scripting in this Mod Works
If you open this mod up in the Construction Set, you'll be able to read all of the scripts that trigger. This gives you a resource to check if you run into any issues. I'm going to walk through figuring out and solving the Twilight bug, and you might be able to use this information to solve any other bugs you encounter.
First off, you need to do some research. For the Twilight bug, I'm just going to give you the solution, but for any other bug you're going to want to load up RTT.esp and open Scripts in the Construction Set. Either click on the pencil icon, or click on Gameplay > Edit Scripts. Open up the scripts using the open icon, and scroll to the bottom - Simyaz prefixed all of his scripts with ZZRUIN so they all appear in the same place.
There's a lot of scripts here for various different parts of the mod, but the main meat of the mod is actually in ZZRUINScript1 through ZZRuinScript5. These scripts are in order, following them from 1 to 5, top to bottom, should reflect your entire journey with Ruin and your conflict with the main antagonists. The Twilight bug occurs in ZZRuinScript3, about 3/4ths of the way down the file, under the comment that says ; SHADOWSEEKER BUILD UP.
Take this code for instance -
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 44) && (Player.GetInWorldSpace CheydinhalWorld == 1)You might recognize that this is where Twilight approaches you in Cheydinhal after you wake up there. As you can see, it only triggers if ZZRTT1.RuinStory is at 44 (this is how Simyaz keeps track of the quest, not through quest stages in a journal but through that particular variable) AND the player is in CheydinhalWorld (which is the interior of Cheydinhal). Once those conditions are met, Twilight will walk up to and start a conversation with the player. During the conversation, Twilight will actually set the ZZRTT1.RuinStory variable to 45 to indicate that he's talked to you. Then, the next part of the script:ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player
endif
If (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker <= 200) && (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 45)This is when he walks away after talking to you. And this might be a place where a bug could happen - see the first part of the conditional, where it checks distance? If for some reason he's not within that distance, the quest WILL NOT progress until he comes within 200 range of the ZZRUINTwilightGraveyardMarker. Essentially, he'll never leave and you'll never get your controls back. This bug might occur if you get impatient waiting for him to walk up to you (and enableplayercontrols and walk up to him yourself) or if you have a mod conflict that causes the marker to not be at the proper spot.set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46
ZZRUINTwilightRef1.MoveTo ZZRUINShadowSeekerMarker7
enableplayercontrols
endif
To get around this you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 46, but then you'd probably need to move Twilight manually in the future to trigger another conditional since he's not walking where he needs to walk. It gets messy fast if you don't keep track of where everyone is supposed to be.
So it becomes a game of "what can I do to trigger the if statements that I want?". Let's apply this to the Twilight bug.
The Solution
The Twilight bug is caused by the if statements for the ShadowSeekers' trip to the Imperial City failing to trigger. It's actually rather simple to solve! Scroll down to the bottom of the ZZRUINScript3 file and you'll see the final things that Twilight wants from you in order to give you access to the next part of the quest:
If (ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 48) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 <= 300) && (ZZRUINTwilightRef1.GetDistance Player <= 500)
set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49
DisablePlayerControls
endif
If ZZRTT1.RuinStory == 49
ZZRUINTwilightRef1.StartConversation Player
Endif
Now, importantly, you should not ignore all the scripts that trigger before this. You will be skipping a bunch of scripts with this solution, so if you're investigating a bug on your own you NEED to know what the scripts you're skipping do. Luckily, the code we're skipping just move people around and assign horse ownership, so we're safe to skip those. You may have to disable the ShadowSeekers in Cheydinhal later, but that's not a huge bug.
So he wants ZZRTT1.RuinStory to be set to 48, he wants to be within 300 distance of the ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16, and he wants to be within 500 distance of the player. At that point, ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be set to 49, your controls will be disabled, and immediately in the next script segment he'll talk to you since ZZRTT1.RuinStory will be at 49.
ZZRUINShadowScaleMarker16 is a certain well in the Waterfront. Open up the console while in Cheydinhal, click on Twilight so you've saved his ref, then travel to the Imperial City. Find the well in the Waterfront (you may want to check the Waterfront in the Tamriel worldspace to find the location of the marker if you don't know where it is). Teleport Twilight to you using moveto player while he's still selected in your console, then type in set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48. If Twilight is within those distances of you and the well, he'll disable your controls and talk to you. Alternatively, you could just set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 49 to get him to talk to you anywhere, though that's riskier since he won't be in the worldspace he's expecting to be in.
tl;dr
To solve the Twilight bug, select him in Cheydinhal, go to the well in the waterfront district, and enter
moveto playerviola, he'll talk to you.set ZZRTT1.RuinStory to 48
Editing Conversation Timers
To edit conversation Timers, you want ZZRUINScript2 and ZZRUINScript3. You'll notice a pattern of code that looks something like this in both of them, in the upper half of the script:
If RunTimer2 == 1You can see here that it's running a timer, and when that timer counts down, it'll trigger the alert that he wants to talk (the spell added to your inventory) and then set the timer again to count down. That means that to edit the time between conversations, you simply need to go in and change what number the timers are set to, in both of the scripts I mentioned above (there are two separate sections for part 1 and part 2 respectively).If Timer2 > 0
Set Timer2 to Timer2 - GetSecondsPassed
Else
If (RuinDialogue == 0) && (RuinFollow == 1) && (RuinWantsToTalk == 0)
set Timer2 to 500
set RuinDialogue to 1
set RuinWantsToTalk to 1
Player.addspell ZZRUINTalkSpell
Remember to set them for ALL conversations, so you'll want to go through the entire if statement and every time you see set Timer1 to 500 or set Timer2 to 500 in that section you'll need to change it.
500 refers to the number of seconds, so 500 seconds is every 8 minutes. I like RTT part 1 to run conversations every 5000 seconds instead (80 minutes) and RTT part 2 to run conversations every 2500 seconds (40 minutes). Keep in mind when you're choosing a delay between conversations that he only talks to you 8 times in part 1, and even fewer in part 2, and he gets pretty attached to you during that time if you're playing the light route, so longer is likely better.
I recommend editing this before you load the game up with the mod installed, because these edits will not take effect if Ruin is already following you, because the script has already been instantiated and is running.
Anyway, I hope this helps anyone running into issues. The mod's worth it, in my opinion.
Also save unchanged copy of this script somewhere else. Just in case.
portcullis, then waiting while they're sneaking.
Has anyone else experienced this?
And I gotta say, this mod is kinda bad. In a large number of ways. This is gonna have spoilers in it, you've been warned.
For starters Ruin develops his relationship with you in a very jarringly rapid manner, the entire thing goes way too fast and feels forced/rushed. In less than a week of traveling together he was acting like we're best friends who've known each for years. It feels awkward and unnatural. Vilja had a far better, and more natural feeling, sense of progression to your relationship with her.
He also talks way, way too fuccking much. It was cool hearing his perfect voice with the AI mod, I couldn't imagine playing this with no voice acting and just having to read all the dialogue for him and all the other characters, but seriously after a few conversations I found myself just telling him to STFU and clicking through after quick reading what he had to say. Ruin also kept stealing my horse.
Secondly, the mod makes way too liberal use of cutscene moments. You know, those times when the game forcibly freezes you in place and you just have to wait it out? There was a time where I actually had to use console commands because the scene was stuck otherwise.
It was right at the end, at the Shadowscale headquarters with the Shadowseekers. Gloom, or Twilight or whatever the Nord's name was, tried talking to me but I was behind a table which was placed so badly and ill-fittingly that he couldn't make it to me and kept walking against the table because the walls were too narrow for him to make it over. I had to target him with the console and then do moveto player. Bad.
Another really odd thing about this mod is the fact they don't let you loot the Shadowscales. Why? I killed them, I want to check their corpse for anything useful like any other creature/NPC. You can get around this by using the console to select them then do the command "activate" - but you shouldn't have to do this in the first place. Also, you can't loot items in their lair? I got a 42 gold bounty for picking up a couple arrows and a claymore.
Like what the fucck?
These are murderers, operating as part of an illegal group of paid assassins and you can't steal from them??? Lol like who even reported me there? The Shadowseekers? The guys who came in with me to kill these people?
What were they thinking?
It also makes entirely no sense for the Shadowscales to be operating, basically out in the open, in the Imperial City. Was the mod author not aware of Adamus Phillida? The guy who is obsessively trying to rid the city of Dark Brotherhood presence? Also the NPC's referring to Sithis as the "Dark Father" just hits the ear wrong, he's the Dread Father.
Has the mod author never actually played through the entirety of the Dark Brotherhood questline before?
Another oddity with crime reporting is I got a 2k bounty from defending myself at the end when the Shadowseekers turned on me and attacked me unprovoked. Makes completely 0 sense.
This is one of the buggiest Oblivion mods I've ever played, and that's really saying something.
Oh, and I forgot the best part. At the very end of this Companion mod, you don't get to keep the companion. He dies and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. What a shitload of fuuck.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/53292
*possible spoiler
I am at the stage where me and Ruin need to find Drop Dead in a tree stump in Anvil.. The problem is that there is no tree stump at all when I arrive at the correct
I am not installing any 'Better Cities' or similar mods
So I can't move forward from this
I honestly don't know what to do, please help