Endorsed, as largely functional, though it has some issues.
I do like that it is less sprawling and confusingly laid out than Battlehorn Castle Upgraded, and I get better frame rates in Ruhester than an BCU.
However, parts of this are glitchy. Most interior doors do not work unless you are standing at exactly the right spot (I think it's a collision/bounding problem). There were several places where I ended up walking through things and falling into the void. The NPCs have no purpose. They're just there, and don't do anything interesting dialogue-wise, you can't command them or do inventory sharing, they don't offer services, etc. A workaround for this might be to also install Battlehorn in some form, and move or copy NPCs from it to Ruhester. However, the NPC pathgrids in Ruhester are all messed up, and NPCs spend most of their time walking directly into walls. The resident NPCs actually border on hostile for no reason, with Dispositions in the 40s even if you have pretty high Personality. I also ran into some texture seam glitches, like bits of the floor flickering due to overlap, but this is minor (and Battlehorn Upgraded has a few as well).
On the up side, the secret-ish dungeon (which is very hard to find) provides a modicum of challenge, in the form of a lich (or something like one) with very high Health. Killed me about a dozen times. To get to the dungeon:
Spoiler:
Show
Look in the towers, and move around the crates. The entrance is hidden inside one of the broken crates, which makes no sense at all.
Also on the up side, this place provides a LOT of companion facilities. Whole barracks full of beds and tables and such. There's also a lot of storage, though given the other glitches, I would strongly suggest using a mod that provides a means of forcibly converting containers to safe storage (AoG has this feature, among many others), since some of the containers are probably respawning (and for food ones you might want them to be).
One other minor gripe is the amount of free loot that is fairly high-end. The companion barracks shouldn't be full of gear, it should require you to provide it. Similarly, it should not provide Master- or Expert-level alchemy gear, because these are very high-end items that are hard to get. You should not have access to them at level 5 or whatever.Finally, this lacks plausible story and questing. You're told (if you dig around and find the note - the NPCs won't tell you anything) that "the hero of Cyrodiil" has been bequeathed this castle (and there's lots of "so-and-so next had this castle and added some tapestries" story stuff written that is all irrelevant, because they are not real NPCs), but you get the place for free without actually having to do anything at all, much less completing the Main Quest (or any quest). While the vanilla DLCs also often have problems like this (you can get something like 5 homes for nothing but upgrade costs and one or two quick fights if you install them all), with Ruhester it's really rather glaring because the place is basically a huge palace, is staffed, and doesn't require any fight or other activity.
I agree with others' comments that Ruhester is probably ideal if you're running a battle/invasion mod of any kind that generates hordes of enemies that might assault the place. It'll actually put the otherwise useless NPCs to work defending it (and you might have to recruit more over time, with some other mod). Ruhester definitely will be defensible due to the high walls, though the proximity of one tower to a cliff wall provides a possible ingress point to keep an eye on.
In the end, I'm going with the expanded version of Aranmathi as my go-to "companion storage facility" (though it also provides some free ueber-loot and doesn't require a fight or a quest), just because the NPCs are more functional, the location is central, there are few glitches, and the place is much better lit than almost all home mods (which is nice for telling your companions apart, hard to do in candle light).
One cool update, as it seem this fortress is meant for combat, is if a esp can be created that causes a army to attack the fortress every once an while.
I shouldn't need any meshes for this one, but there's one I'm planning that may require some. As far as a quest goes, I may add one but probably not a lenthy/complex one.
8 comments
I do like that it is less sprawling and confusingly laid out than Battlehorn Castle Upgraded, and I get better frame rates in Ruhester than an BCU.
However, parts of this are glitchy. Most interior doors do not work unless you are standing at exactly the right spot (I think it's a collision/bounding problem). There were several places where I ended up walking through things and falling into the void. The NPCs have no purpose. They're just there, and don't do anything interesting dialogue-wise, you can't command them or do inventory sharing, they don't offer services, etc. A workaround for this might be to also install Battlehorn in some form, and move or copy NPCs from it to Ruhester. However, the NPC pathgrids in Ruhester are all messed up, and NPCs spend most of their time walking directly into walls. The resident NPCs actually border on hostile for no reason, with Dispositions in the 40s even if you have pretty high Personality. I also ran into some texture seam glitches, like bits of the floor flickering due to overlap, but this is minor (and Battlehorn Upgraded has a few as well).
On the up side, the secret-ish dungeon (which is very hard to find) provides a modicum of challenge, in the form of a lich (or something like one) with very high Health. Killed me about a dozen times. To get to the dungeon:
Also on the up side, this place provides a LOT of companion facilities. Whole barracks full of beds and tables and such. There's also a lot of storage, though given the other glitches, I would strongly suggest using a mod that provides a means of forcibly converting containers to safe storage (AoG has this feature, among many others), since some of the containers are probably respawning (and for food ones you might want them to be).
One other minor gripe is the amount of free loot that is fairly high-end. The companion barracks shouldn't be full of gear, it should require you to provide it. Similarly, it should not provide Master- or Expert-level alchemy gear, because these are very high-end items that are hard to get. You should not have access to them at level 5 or whatever.Finally, this lacks plausible story and questing. You're told (if you dig around and find the note - the NPCs won't tell you anything) that "the hero of Cyrodiil" has been bequeathed this castle (and there's lots of "so-and-so next had this castle and added some tapestries" story stuff written that is all irrelevant, because they are not real NPCs), but you get the place for free without actually having to do anything at all, much less completing the Main Quest (or any quest). While the vanilla DLCs also often have problems like this (you can get something like 5 homes for nothing but upgrade costs and one or two quick fights if you install them all), with Ruhester it's really rather glaring because the place is basically a huge palace, is staffed, and doesn't require any fight or other activity.
I agree with others' comments that Ruhester is probably ideal if you're running a battle/invasion mod of any kind that generates hordes of enemies that might assault the place. It'll actually put the otherwise useless NPCs to work defending it (and you might have to recruit more over time, with some other mod). Ruhester definitely will be defensible due to the high walls, though the proximity of one tower to a cliff wall provides a possible ingress point to keep an eye on.
In the end, I'm going with the expanded version of Aranmathi as my go-to "companion storage facility" (though it also provides some free ueber-loot and doesn't require a fight or a quest), just because the NPCs are more functional, the location is central, there are few glitches, and the place is much better lit than almost all home mods (which is nice for telling your companions apart, hard to do in candle light).
Allan -
I shouldn't need any meshes for this one, but there's one I'm planning that may require some. As far as a quest goes, I may add one but probably not a lenthy/complex one.
If you would like an custom mesh's making just give me a message, this is really looking cool.
Just a question, but will you be making a (hard) quest to complete before owning a fort?
I prefer that to just.....finding and owning it ^^