Rathunas01-README.txt
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Welcome to Rathunas! This mod for "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" consists
of a village, a large dungeon, and a custom home that is given as the quest
reward. There are over 100 voiced characters, three quest stories, and hundreds
of custom-created dungeon tiles and clutter objects.

This mod is the result of four years of work by Syscrusher and Vermicula,
a married couple who collaborated on the design, story, and technical work. The
characters in Rathunas are voiced by over thirty dedicated volunteer actors, and
the custom musical scores for the game and the promotional trailers were created
by Chris Schlee, Pedro Murino Almeida, and Samuel Gossner.

This is a large and complex mod, with thousands of lines of in-game script code,
so please take the time to read this documentation before you install the mod.

TWO REQUESTS:

Thousands of hours of work have gone into this mod, trying to bring players a
fresh and new experience in a long-familiar game. PLEASE, be considerate of
other players, and don't spoil the dungeon's visual surprises by posting spoiler
screenshots or video online!

If you like this mod, please take a few minutes to browse through its credits.
Several dozen people collaborated to make this mod possible, and over one hundred
published modders' resources are used with permission. Please take a moment to
recognize those who shared their time and talent with the Rathunas team.

PREREQUISITES:

* Oblivion version 1.2.0416 (this is the latest official patch level from Bethesda)

* Shivering Isles (official DLC from Bethesda) is required to be present, but your
character is not required to do the SI quests.

* Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) version 21 or later. Earlier versions may work,
but they are not supported.
URL: http://obse.silverlock.org/

* Unique Landscapes - Brena River Ravine is required. Rathunas does not modify the
main area of UL, but it touches the edge of UL's land area.
URL: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/23573

* Common Oblivion (COBL) version 1.72 or later (1.74 recommended) is required.
URL: http://www.theassimilationlab.com/forums/files/file/951-cobl/ (latest version)
URL: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/21104 (slightly older version)
Only COBL core is required for Rathunas; all other COBL components are optional.

* Enhanced Music Controls 2 (EMC2) is strongly recommended.
URL: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45925
Several alternatives are supported; see Rathunas01-MUSIC.txt for details.

* Ely's Universal Silent Voice (recommended for Rathunas test releases)
URL: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/16622

* Runtime Editor IDs (recommended, but not required, for Rathunas test releases)
URL: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/40132

SUPPORT FOR OFFICIAL DLC:

Shivering Isles official DLC, either standalone or part of a combined purchase
(such as Game of the Year edition), is required for Rathunas. If your character
has visited at least as far as The Fringe, you will find a selection of Shivering
Isles fungi in the Gweldafon Root Cellar. Not all fungi are included, because
some of the plants from SI are too large to be grown indoors. Amber armor and
Madness armor will be available as appearance options for the Gweldafon armor
dummies if your character has been to the Isles. (Specifically, the trigger
is completion of stage 5 of quest SE02.)

Knights of the Nine and other official DLCs are compatible with this mod, but
not required is required.

CUSTOM MUSIC:

This mod offers custom music for some interior spaces. The separate file
Rathunas01-MUSIC.txt provides detailed installation instructions for the music
feature. In summary, though, you should install the OBSE plugin "Enhanced Music
and Controls 2" (also called "EMC2") for best results.

INSTALLATION:

This mod is very simple to install: Just put the .ESP file, the single .BSA
file, and the Music folder and its contents into the Data folder in your Oblivion
environment. This mod must load *after* all of the other prerequisite mods.

As with many quest mods, it is strongly suggested that Rathunas should be late
in your load order.

Wrye Bash is known to correctly install and uninstall Rathunas, and that is the
recommended tool. OBMM, NMM, or manual installation should also work, however.

UPGRADING FROM A PRIOR VERSION:

See the file docs/Rathunas-UPGRADES.txt for instructions. In general, uninstall
the old version fully, then install the new version at the same position in your
load order.

STARTING THE RATHUNAS QUESTS:

Rathunas can be visited as a lovely village with shops and taverns at any time.

The Rathunas quests are dormant until your character becomes eligible for them,
based on any of the following three possible options:

1. You complete (or have completed) Stage 70 of quest MQ06, "Dagon Shrine".
This stage is your journal reads: "I have escaped with the Mysterium Xarxes.
Now to deliver it to Martin at Cloud Ruler Temple." You do not have to
actually speak to Jauffre; completing the dungeon is sufficient.

*OR*

2. You reach a fame of 30 or greater, regardless of the main quest status.

*OR*

3. You speak with Prioress Rowena at Aelwyd Priory, across the lake from
the Rathunas town square, and tell her you want to start the quest. (The
dialog choice for this should be pretty obvious.)

Option 1 is the "standard" plan, while options 2 and 3 are for players
who are not doing the Oblivion main quest with their current character, or
who wish to do the main quest at a later time.

It is recommended that you play the Rathunas quest line with a character
of at least 10th level, but that is not enforced by quest logic
because character power is so dependent on your game difficulty setting and
what mods you have loaded. Completing Lake Arrius Caverns during "Dagon Shrine"
is approximately the same difficulty as the first part of Rathunas. Attaining
30 fame points also would typically have your character ready for Rathunas.

Once your character is eligible for the Rathunas quests, then after a time, in
any outdoor space in Imperial City, Chorrol, or Skingrad, or near the Chorrol
Stables map marker, you should receive a pop-up message that you were handed a
note by a courier (you won't actually see any courier). Check your inventory
for a note from Countess Arianna of Chorrol to find out what to do next.

VANILLA QUEST INTERACTIONS:

* Rathunas has a lore-friendly tie-in to several "vanilla" quests from Oblivion,
but this mod does not *modify* any vanilla quest, in any way.
* The Rathunas quest line is sensitive to certain phases of vanilla quests. You
will experience a slightly different story line in Rathunas depending on how far
you have progressed in certain vanilla quests.

IMMERSIVE QUEST MARKERS:

Some players like to have quest markers to guide their exploration. Others prefer
to solve everything on their own, or perhaps to have some hints but not too many.
Rathunas offers three different levels of quest target visibility, and you can
adjust this *in game* at any time. Visit Aelwyd Priory, located northeast of the
town commons of Rathunas, and locate Prioress Rowena.

Speak with Prioress Rowena, and choose "Will Kynareth guide my footsteps?" from
her dialog menu. Three different levels are available; the default ("I welcome
Kynareth's guidance") is that all available quest markers are enabled. Telling
Rowena that Kynareth expects you to do your part removes markers for some quest
stages. Telling Rowena that the quest is your burden alone removes all except a
very few quest markers. Certain markers, which exist for important game mechanics
and not during actual puzzles, remain active regardless of this setting. You can
change your mind at any time by speaking with Rowena and choosing this dialog again.

GWELDAFON MANOR CUSTOMIZATIONS:

The estate, Gweldafon Manor, which you earn as a quest reward can be customized
in many ways. Look for open books lying on desks and tables, and activate them
to open in-game menus for setting your preferences for the house.

Among its other features, Gweldafon offers immersive interior daylight that
brightens its rooms between (approximately) sunrise and sunset. This option does
impact frame rate, and so it is disabled by default. Use the Lighting Options
activator (an open book) on the large desk on the second floor to set this option,
if you have a fairly fast graphics card.

DECLINING OWNERSHIP OF GWELDAFON:

If you complete the Rathunas quests but do not wish to take ownership of Gweldafon,
you may decline this reward by choosing the dialog option, "I'm sorry, no. (Final decision)"
with either Girard or Gabrielle during the time when they are awaiting your decision.
CAUTION: When the dialog says "final", it really means it -- this will end the quest.

After choosing this option, your quest journal will upate indicating your decision.
The quest will complete itself and move to the "completed" section of you journal,
but this will take a few days of in-game time as some Rathunas NPCs complete necessary
travel.

OBLIVION XP:

Rathunas has been tested with Oblivion XP versions 4.1.9 and 4.3.2. Rathunas will
automatically detect if Oblivion XP is installed, and will award you approximately
the same experience points for each of the major Rathunas quests, as you would get
for closing an Oblivion gate. There is one minor dialog-only quest that does not
award experience points.

Rathunas supports Oblivion XP but does *not* require it.

TROUBLESHOOTING:

General Issues:

Rathunas emphatically requires OBSE. If you do not have that installed, you can
still run the Rathunas mod, but a *lot* of things will Just Not Work. Really.

Oblivion XP:

There is a known issue (not really a bug) with Oblivion XP that causes it to
complain that OBSE is not installed, even if you have the latest version. If
you get this error, and you know you have the latest OBSE installed, it is not
caused by Rathunas. The workaround for the issue is to place Oblivion XP after
all other mods in your load order.

Crashes:

If your game crashes immediately upon startup, you are probably missing one of
the Rathunas prerequisite mods. Make sure those are all ahead of Rathunas in your
load order.

Rathunas, being a town mod, heavily edits the game area in which the town and
nearby dungeon exist. That means that a few characters may experience a crash to
desktop (CTD) upon entering the Rathunas vicinity, if the character had visited
those game cells before Rathunas was installed. Unfortunately, this is an Oblivion
game engine issue, and the only workaround may be to start a new character. To
see if this will help, start a new character from the Oblivion main menu, and
as soon as you have chosen your race in the starting prison cell, immediately
open the console and type "coc RathunasPrioryChapel". This should take you to
an exterior cell. Walk northwest from there, just a short distance, toward the
Shrine of Stendarr. If you can discover that map marker without a crash, then
a new character should work fine for you.

If your game crashes on exit, the most likely cause is that some mod loaded
before Rathunas in your load order has deleted an object which Rathunas later
edits (but does not delete). Rathunas does not delete any vanilla objects, but
only disables and/or relocates them. If you have this error, the solution is
to use TES4Edit to clean the *other* mod (use the "undelete and disable"
cleaning function).

Music:

If the Rathunas custom music doesn't play, enter one of the Rathunas buildings
and look for a lute or lyre object that identifies itself as a music controller.
Activate this object in sneak mode, and this will force the Rathunas music
system to reset itself.

Also, be sure that you copied the "Music" folder from the Rathunas archive to
your Data directory, if you installed manually. You should see a folder called
Data\Music\Rathunas under your Oblivion game directory.

REMOVAL:

Rathunas does not scatter loose files in your game directory, except for the
optional music files (see Rathunas-MUSIC.txt for details). To uninstall, just
make sure your character is in some cell that is not edited by this mod, save your
game, and exit. Uninstall Rathunas by deleting its .ESP and .BSA files (and the
documentation files, if you installed those). Your next game load will probably
warn you that some content no longer exists, as would happen on removal of many
other mods.

One vanilla persistent object, the door to Infested Mine, is disabled by a script
in Rathunas. This was necessary to avoid some compatibility issues with other mods.
Unfortunately, it also means you need to use the console to re-enable the door AFTER
you remove Rathunas. Uninstall the ESP and BSA files as described above, then start
the game and run the following two console commands, in order:

prid 17545
enable

Then exit the console and save your game.

The first command selects the door by its hexadecimal reference ID number. The second
command re-enables the door that was hidden by Rathunas. You must be sure to run these
commands AFTER, not before, you remove Rathunas from your load order.

You do NOT need to do the console step when you remove an old Rathuas version prior to
an upgrade. This step is only for permanently deinstalling Rathunas from your game.

KNOWN INCOMPATIBILITIES:

Specific known conflicts are listed in the Rathunas-CONFLICTS.txt file. In general terms,
Rathunas may conflict with other mods as follows:

* Any mod that edits Infested Mine or the area around it, except Unique Landscapes,
will conflict with Rathunas.
* Any mod that relies on Infested Mine *not* being modified. Rathunas modifies it,
quite a lot.
* Certain areas of the dungeon may be incompatible with followers, due to animated
features.
* Any mod that edits the basement of the Mage Quarters at Arcane University may
conflict with Rathunas.

CREDITS:

See the file Rathunas-CREDITS.txt for a full list of resources and contributors.

LICENSE AND USAGE:

TESA (http://www.tesalliance.org/) and TES Nexus (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com) are
the ONLY authorized download sites for this mod. Please do not upload this mod to other
sites without permission.

For reuse of published modders' resources that you find in Rathunas, see the CREDITS
file and seek out the original creator of the resource to learn their usage policy.

For reuse of resources from Rathunas itself, please contact Syscrusher to ask
permission. Usually it will be granted, within reason, but please ask first.

All the original content from Rathunas (excluding assets from Bethesda or from
published resources) is Copyright (C) 2015, 2016 by Scott and Katherine Courtney. All
Rights Reserved. Permission is specifically granted to download this mod for personal,
non-commercial use.