PAIRED MOD
Growth Weapon - Dusfergon


FEATURES
Growth - Take damage to take less damage
Viva la Resistance - Take elemental damage to take less elemental damage
Mysticism - it grows an enchantment with your input!
Conservation of Mass - Switch between Light and Heavy at any time
Mighty Morphin' - 177 torso, 57 leg, 33 hand, 54 foot, 156 head, 64 shield inbuilt meshes you can choose from, plus...
The Table Laughed - Mimic any* apparel in your inventory! *cannot be a ring, amulet or tail item
Rick-Click, Save As... - Save up to 8 custom outfits you can load at any time
Fashion Scrolls IV: Oblivion - 101 preset outfits included
Gacha - Bored or indecisive? Randomize your appearance
Reduce Reuse Recycle - Loot still has use: offer other armor to Zefiros for XP!
Forbidden Knowledge - All the code is transcribed as .txt files under Data/Docs/Zefiros/Scripts/


DESCRIPTION

Every now and again you'll come across an item in a RPG with a description that says it'll grow stronger if you do X.  So you do X a lot, and now that item is the de facto best item in the game.  Those are usually weapons.  This is armor.

Zefiros is an artifact made for the long haul.  It starts out as iron armor poofed into your inventory and will grow over the course of your adventures, ultimately out stripping everything in raw stats alone.  Highly customizable, it won't stay as iron armor if you so wish it; with the ability to change appearance, grow custom enchantments and a comprehensive .ini file to rebalance everything, you will make Zefiros your own!

The .ini file's defaults are set to be balanced by vanilla standards, becoming as strong as daedric roughly when you begin to find daedric.

The .ini lets you:
Change the names of each individual piece, toggle prefixes and suffixes per item too
Make the level cap lock step with your own level
Or with your armor skills
Or your fame
Or have it be static
Adjust XP requirements and most XP gains
Armor base stats
Armor stat gains per level up
Stat multiplier between Light and Heavy armor
Level the items become enchanted
Enchantment effect base stats
Enchantment effect stat gains per level
Keybinds
Controller binds


DEFAULT CONTROLS

Highlight Zefiros apparel in your inventory:
RMB - Options menu
RMB+SHFT - Upper left message with current form's name
RMB+CTRL - Popup with all enchantment effects
(Oblivion UI only shows up to 8 effects)

Highlight not Zefiros apparel in your inventory:
RMB - Offer to Zefiros
RMB+SHFT - Mimic appearance


INSTALLATION
Recommended to use a mod manager like Vortex or Wrye Bash.
Extract the archive's contents into your Oblivion/Data/ folder.
Enable the .esp.

UNINSTALLATION
Disable the .esp.
Delete Data/Docs/Zefiros/, Data/ini/Zefiros.ini, Data/Meshes/Zefiros/, Data/Textures/Zefiros/, Data/Textures/menus/icons/Zefiros/, Data/Textures/underworld/, Data/Textures/Dragonknight/, Data/Textures/armor/MilanPlateArmor/,
Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/F/cuirass_g.dds, Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/M/cuirass_g.dds, Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/M/helmet_g.dds, Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/M/Skyrimhelmet.dds, Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/M/Skyrimhelmet_g.dds, and Data/Textures/armor/Daedric/M/Skyrimhelmet_n.dds.
Or use the mod manager you installed this with!


KNOWN ISSUES

Without the recommended mods, some modded armors may look odd.
Leveling up leaves you naked for 1 frame.
Environmental damage and self harm are the same thing.
When offering armor, the highest durability instance will be consumed.
Very rarely, enchantment effects become permanent upon loading a save.

See F.A.Q. for "why."


REQUIREMENTS
OBSE - literally nothing works without this
Universal Skeleton - some modded armors require this


RECOMMENDED
HG EyeCandy Body
Robert Male Body


CONFLICTS

If you receive a popup asking to overwrite files, it's textures and it's safe to do so.
Some .nif files crash NifSkope so their textures couldn't be relocated into /Textures/Zefiros/.


F.A.Q.

Q: Next update?
A: This mod is feature complete, so the only updates will be bugfixes.  On that note:
Report EVERY bug you find. That is all.

Q: Why are the Known Issues?
A: OK, so...

So, like Oblivion, Skyrim armor mods with different body types have those body shapes baked into 
them.  This means you don't technically need the relevant mod to use that armor.  However, 
most of these body replacers have multiple options and you have chosen DEATH.  So it defaults.

Fun fact: Oblivion doesn't register changes to stats or enchantments until their associated
item is re-equipped!  Even funner fact: re-equipping items quickly during gameplay fails!
Basically, if I call UnequipItem EquipItem on the same frame, EquipItem fails and you are
left naked, alone, with ought to do but manually equip it yourself.  So I put a one frame
delay in there, to avoid the bug.  Funnest fact: it just works for everything else!

Neato thing here: you could exploit my systems by self-harming with spells and rack up XP!
To prevent this, I run a check on the attacker everytime you get hurt.  Fun thing is, if you
cut yourself, the game treats that as having no attacker, which coincidentally is how it
also treats damage from traps and stuff!  So you gotta ask someone else to punch your
punchable face if you want to farm XP. :(

For variables, inventories don't exist.  They are a myth perpetrated by the Bethesdian 
government to sow false complacency with the system, distracting you from the real issues: 
Khajiits being turned into furries.  As such, I do not and cannot actually know what item
precisely you are looking at in your inventory.  I know the base item, I can get that.
I know it's an iron longsword.  But you've got like 7, right?  So I hire OBSE, private eye,
to snoop around the real code for some hard proof those 7 exist.  When it returns a dossier
of untraceable references to those 7 iron longswords I still don't know which one exactly
you were looking at, so I kill the first suspect.  That's usually the highest durability one.  
Until OBSE infiltrates Bethesda and exposes v22 to the world, this conspiracy will exist.

This one's a stumper.  Upon loading a save, Zefiros's enchantments double on your Active
Effects sheet.  Except they aren't doubled, Zefiros is still normal, but now you have a permanent
duplicate of Zefiros's enchantments in your Active Effects.  I cannot reproduce this bug,
so I can't see how it breaks.  And if I can't see how it breaks, I can't fix the part that breaks. 
The two reports I have of this bug are detailed enough I can and have guessed,
and all of my guesses have been wrong.
The current work around is to just unequip Zefiros before saving.
At this point this rare issue is not something I can fix within my own code.
This is either a bug with Oblivion, a bug with OBSE (which is not bug free, I can guarantee that),
a super obscure mod conflict or a hardware problem.  The only one I have a slight
hope of resolving is a mod conflict, so I need load orders in reports.

Q: Zefiros is just humble leather armor when I boot up?
A: Oblivion doesn't run scripts right away, and the scripts are responsible for things like 
stat changes, texture changes, mesh changes, damage tracking, enchantment tracking, you get the 
picture.  Now, as soon as the engine does run my scripts, I SLAP IT ACROSS THE FACE "HOW COULD 
YOU DO THIS TO ME!?!" and sumo slap it into keeping the script latency low for the rest of the session.

Q: Some armor look same on boy and girl?
A: Not every armor, especially vanilla ones, have both male and female meshes.  In that case
it defaults to what it does have for both sexes.  Except for modded armor that have both.  In
that case, if I think they look unisex enough, I bisect them out into separate entries.
You're welcome.

Q: Item on ground not look like item on person?
A: Ground meshes are completely different from meshes.  Ever tried setting the ground mesh to
the mesh?  You get a person shaped, person sized, T-posing object spawned in front of you.
Ever tried not having a ground mesh?  You can't pick that shit back up.  EVER.  So if it ain't 
got a ground mesh, I either dropped it from the mod or used an approximate vanilla ground mesh.
Shields are the exception, because of course they are: they're half armor, half weapon so they
actually require you set their ground mesh to their mesh or else they CTD.  You read that right.
If you set a perfectly valid ground mesh to a shield and drop it: CTD.  It has to be the shield mesh.
Or else.

Q: it too stronk
A: Data/ini/Zefiros.ini

Q: it too week
A: Data/ini/Zefiros.ini

Q: it too balance
A: what?

Q: it grow too fast
A: Data/ini/Zefiros.ini

Q: it grow too slow
A: Seriously, do you read?

Q: When does it stop growing!?
A: Data/ini/Zefiros.ini

Q: Needs more effects.
A: Balance. I don't want you quickly stacking Reflect Everything.
You can edit the code yourself.

Q: Where's Knights of the Nine stuff?
A: Bethesda botched that code so bad merely uttering their EditorIDs in hushed whispers crashes scripts.
Mimic 'em.

Q: What's next for the Growth series?
A: I rewrite Dusfergon using what I've learned writing Zefiros, combine them into one single
.esp, add in growth jewelery, release that.  Then work on a quest to get them all immersively.
Then maybe write this all again for Skyrim, since Skyrim's scripting language and engine are
probably better than Oblivion's.  But this is all now on the back  burner, since this series 
has consumed 5 months of my life and I would like to start job hunting.  My permissions 
still allow for you to make your own stuff with my work, so you don't have to wait on me to 
continue this whole shebang.


CREDITS

Park9 - Witcher 2 Plate Armor
IKirostI - Daedricious Armor Replacer
Movomo - Movomo's Armor Replacer - The Very Daedric Armor
McMuffin - Daedric Lord Armor
Phitt & Ghogiel - Knightly Armory
ElderScrollsFan001 - Witcher 2 Shields and Helmets Packs for Oblivion, Elderscrollsfan001s Resources
zertual - Underworld Armor
ken1945 - Draonknight Armor
alphaprime_01 - Medieval Shields
navinavi - Knight Plate Armor
Krassus222 - Shield 2Womens and Cat
VanillaBeans - Plate of the Shadow
Renzeekin - Concealing Hoods
Stavroguin - Imperial Dragon Armor Reforged
tbsk - Local Guards Features
Mixxa77 - LGF Kvatch Addon, LGF Thorn Addon


DONATIONS

SUPPORT ME ON KO-FI


PERMISSIONS

If it's free, use it with appropriate credit given.
If it's paid, cut me a share of the profits.
Regardless, notify me so I can check out the final product!


CONGRATULATIONS!
You read things! Or at least skimmed them.  Here's some console commands you can use to set Zefiros's level:
Levelling up:
Set aaZefirosLevel to [X - 2]
Set aaZefirosXPReq to 0
Set aaZefirosXP to aaZefirosXPReq
Levelling down:
Set aaZefirosXP to 0
Set aaZefirosLevel to [X - 2]
Set aaZefirosXPReq to 0
Set aaZefirosXP to aaZefirosXPReq
And if you don't care about the XP and XPReq being updated:
Set aaZefirosLevel to [X]