UPDATE 2.3 Available now! A quick follow-up to the previous update. I was testing out the new build and decided to do a little redecorating in there, added some details to places that looked boring, made the creepy ground fog more consistent throughout, and removed some odd light fixtures like huge braziers to replace with torches and lanterns. I was just asking myself why and how certain stuff ended up in this prison. Added more cool stuff to Madanach's room, and various other things. I also rooted out the cause of some ore nodes that couldn't be mined and fixed that.
Previous update a week ago was bug fixes only pretty much, but a lot of much-needed ones. I did not test the SSE conversion super extensively and just ran around the mine a little to make sure it seemed OK. Everybody report back if you run into any issues!
Finally an official release of version 2 for SSE!
Sorry for the long wait! It's been a wild couple of years!
For anyone familiar with the previous version, version 2 is a huge, huge step up in terms of the depth and technical complexity of this mod. Users have been messing with this big upgrade in old Skyrim for a while now, and provided a lot of valuable feedback. It's now in a finished enough state that launching it for SSE seems appropriate to me.
Here's a basic rundown of what's new:
There are no longer separate "basic" or "deluxe" versions, what used to be the deluxe version is now a stand-alone mod with no outside requirements. Apachii has granted permission to include the hair assets, and I've replaced all the Dawnguard dependencies with custom stuff.
I'm have greatly expanded the NPCs' personalities. There is some unique follower dialogue, random idle chatter lines, a lot of edits to the old "I'm busting out of here" responses, and a short "what are you in for" conversation for each of the new NPC's.
I added a couple dialogue scenes between NPC's old and new.
It's now possible to spare Grisvar if you side with Madanach! I added a whole in-depth dialogue branch, new AI, some relevant interactions with his friend Odvan.
Now that I'm fairly competent with scripting, I've made some technical improvements over the old mod, plus I've dug into the original Cidhna Mine quest's innards to change how it works. I have fully removed the Cidhna Mine quest from the standard "get arrested" mechanic so it doesn't work like a regular jail sentence. This means I was able to add places to sleep, and let you mine all the ore you can carry without the "serve your sentence" pop-up breaking the quest.
Another main goal with this was to actually allow the player to escape from the mine without doing the quest at all. I made it so the player can simply pick a lock or two and sneak out, same as any jail, but I wanted this to be a serious challenge. It will be very difficult to get out alive, and if you do escape with the quest unfinished, you will remain the #1 most wanted criminal in the Reach; you'll never be able to get near Markarth without them trying to throw you back in there. Guards will accost you near Markarth. In other parts of Skyrim, bounty hunters will track you down.
If you escape the mine and get caught and thrown back in, up to 6 followers can get thrown in with you!
Per a user suggestion, I added a unique Forsworn follower who will join you in Druadach Redoubt if you side with Madanach. As of version 2.1 there is also a unique Nord follower who you can recruit in the Silver-Blood Inn if you side against the Forsworn.
I think this user was just trying to ensure my mod didn't somehow interfere with the option, which it doesn't. Except that Madanach has more backup and becomes a little harder to take out.
On my previous playthrough, this mod worked great, but on my new playthrough, when I get sent to the mine, everyone is aggressively attacking my character, and while my character can run around, I’m for some reason locked out of attacking back, I can’t draw weapons or cast spells or shout. All I can do is run around and die. I don’t have that Skyrim reputation mod, but I did download skooma wh*%# before I started this playthrough, which can affect reputations. It’s odd I can’t attack though, I can attack when I’m not in the mine, but not while I’m in it.
The sleep thing is due to the vanilla arrest system. It's a hardcoded thing, and I had to remove the Cidhna quest from that system entirely to make mining ore possible during it. If you get thrown in there for any other crimes, it's back to business as usual.
Not trying to post any spoilers but after I report back to the king in rags for killing who he asks me to everyone turns hostile towards me after I report he’s dead it’s just after he says something about his speech to the rest of the prisoners. Everything works perfectly up to that point so I don’t know what’s triggering the hostility update: it’s not this mod it’s happening without it installed
Just to offer a little bit more info: Navmesh is made of hundreds of little triangles. The real bad problem that has happened in the past is when people decide to redo the navmesh in a cell, so they delete the whole existing navmesh and start over. That can have catastrophic results. Deleting a couple of individual triangles, according to much more knowledgeable people than me, is NOT a problem, and it's also pretty hard to avoid when you are redesigning a cell. I left the original navmesh almost untouched and mostly just worked around it. I did everything I could to avoid deleting any vanilla-game triangles at all, just out of an abundance of caution, but in a couple spots it couldn't be avoided. This will throw errors in xEdit just as if I wiped out a whole cell, but I didn't do that.
I would like to politely ask the author and the comments section for advice regarding this mod:
It is saved with header version 1.71. I am still using the older 1.5.97 version of Skyrim, so this may cause problems for me. The author has stated that this mod should be Skyrim version agnostic, so:
Is it sufficient to set the file header version to 1.70 in SSEedit to maintain compatibility with Skyrim 1.5.97?
Thank you for offering your advice. I'll admit to having run into SKSE issues as soon as the first 1.6 update hit, and figuring the safest bet was to revert.
If I may ask an unrelated question, since you have the most updated version of the game, how did you go about making sure that your SKSE-dependent mods would work? Is it just a matter of getting the new SKSE each time, and then everything works as normal, or do the SKSE-dependent mods themselves have to be updated? I have never been clear on this matter, hence I have stuck with 1.5.97.
You have to update SKSE every time and then MOST mods will work, but if any of them need updating you get a popup saying update this mod and this mod. I just did this today and it was only two mods. If you use tons of SKSE mods you might spend a little more time updating after each patch. To me this seems easier than having to edit your header version for every mod you install, but you do you.
That doesn't sound so bad to manage. Thank you making it succinct for me.
While I know it's going to become more challenging to maintain a 1.5.97 load order, yours is actually the first I have encountered with the 1.71 file header. I didn't find a conclusive answer via google, so I thought I would ask here. Again, thank you.
To conclude the saga: changing the file header fixes the compatibility issue allowing installation on 1.5.97 without warnings. I finished the mod earlier with no issues whatsoever. A fantastic expansion.
I'm also a 1.5.9.7 load orderer. So I updated a few mods (including this one), and was faced with crashes on startup yesterday when I was about to test a different mod. It took me today to realise the possibility of a 1.71 header mod, as while I was aware of 1130 ESL range update and downloaded the Backported Extended ESL Support SKSE plugin, I haven't really tested the plugin until realising the crashes might be a 1.71 header mod issue. Haven't really tested it beyond a saveload to test that different mod (Windhelm exterior altered) so I won't know how what'll happen with CME, though a quick check in xEdit doesn't look amiss as there wasn't any records reordering done.
If it helps, I received a warning from WryeBash about an unrecognized header version. From there, it was a matter of reading online to figure out what that meant for me. My understanding is that any mod saved in the most updated version of the game/CC gets the header updated to 1.71, but for the most part, that change doesn't mean much. As long as the mod satisfies the older ESL limit (as you noted) one can simply revert the file header number to 1.70 in XEdit, and everything will work. This may not be practical long-term; it adds another step to the list of checks one must make when installing mods, but it seems to work.
The Backported Extended ESL Support SKSE plugin does log esps/esls that load using its support, of which in my case only CME did, so one could check it that way if one was interested (I did initially check the version headers in the mods I updated in xEdit, until I remembered the plugin log feature).
Can I ask you guys: Is there any disadvantage to changing the file header to 1.70 on my end for all users? Does that simply make mods more widely compatible, or could it cause problems for users with an updated game?
I'm not 100% sure, but from what I have read, the update that changed the header to 1.71 is only needed if your mod has a greater number of records than was historically allowed in ESL plugins. That is the change the update made. If a mod doesn't exceed that number of records (and yours does not, presumably, because I played through with no issues whatsoever) then changing the header back to 1.70 will increase compatibility to more versions of the game.
Like I said, for me, this was as simple as opening the mod in SSEEdit, decrementing the header version, and saving it.
I don't believe there is any requirement that the updated game requires all mods to have headers saved to version 1.71, but perhaps someone else can weight in. Alternatively, if you yourself have the most up-to-date game, then you can check some of your own mods to see what header versions they use. Particularly if you have any in your load order that haven't been updated in a while. Let me check a random mod. Scoped Bows SE, for example, was last updated in 2017.
See, users were having issues with another mod of mine and I think it was for the same reason, so I tried rolling back the header in that mod to 1.70, tested it out myself on a fully updated game and there were no issues. From the info I could find online, it appears the 1.71 header is only necessary if you're trying to push the number of records in a plugin past the old limit, or ESL-flag a mod with too many records, and it does not need to be applied to every mod. And in fact, it seems to create problems for users if it's applied all willy-nilly. I will probably put out an update for this one with the header rolled back to 1.70 for wider compatibility, but I do want to test it first and just make sure there's no issues.
Hmm do you still have issues when you're using the Backported Extended ESL Support on 1.5.97? Also did you guys have issues while updating the mod on an existing save?
New version hopefully shouldn't have version compatibility issues. When updating it is still best to use a save where you haven't been in the mine before.
To be clear: I could not install the 1.71 version on Skyrim 1.5.97; Wrye Bash threw a warning during setup, and I removed it without ever loading a save. Once I had changed the header version, then I installed it, and it gave me no issues whatsoever.
For the ESL record thing: previous version did not allow records to be under 0x800. (That's 2048 in decimal.) So records 0x0 to 0x7FF were all forbidden. The novelty of format version 1.71 is that now records can start at 0x0 instead of 0x800.
So if you don't exceed the limit, you can indeed just hex-edit the version number away, but make sure that you don't have records under 0x800. For a brand new plugin (created with the updated editor), it's basically guaranteed they'll start at 0x0, because why wouldn't they? For older plugins that are updated now, watch out for new records, those might be below 0x800 and if so you probably need to use SSEedit to renumber them, I think. Keeping in mind what this implies for exported facegen data and dialogue lines if the record is for an NPC.
I appreciate the extra info. At this point my workflow is to create mods 100% in old Skyrim and then port them over, so weirdness with the form ID's is not expected, and it seems safe to revert the SSE version to 1.70 in every case where I do this. I've made a habit of editing the header version before sharing. If at some point I begin creating mods directly in SSE's CK I will keep the above advice in mind!
Another advice/info for all 1.5.97 users as I assume not every mod author is willing to change the header back to 1.70: You should use BEES (Backported Extended ESL Support) - a SKSE plugin which allows you to have plugins with the 1.71 version in your loadorder.
Thank you! Works! This is a very useful mod if you want to play as the Forsworn. Additional +150 atmosphere points. The mine has become simply huge. I am in shock.
359 comments
A quick follow-up to the previous update. I was testing out the new build and decided to do a little redecorating in there, added some details to places that looked boring, made the creepy ground fog more consistent throughout, and removed some odd light fixtures like huge braziers to replace with torches and lanterns. I was just asking myself why and how certain stuff ended up in this prison. Added more cool stuff to Madanach's room, and various other things.
I also rooted out the cause of some ore nodes that couldn't be mined and fixed that.
Previous update a week ago was bug fixes only pretty much, but a lot of much-needed ones.
I did not test the SSE conversion super extensively and just ran around the mine a little to make sure it seemed OK. Everybody report back if you run into any issues!
Finally an official release of version 2 for SSE!
Sorry for the long wait! It's been a wild couple of years!
For anyone familiar with the previous version, version 2 is a huge, huge step up in terms of the depth and technical complexity of this mod. Users have been messing with this big upgrade in old Skyrim for a while now, and provided a lot of valuable feedback. It's now in a finished enough state that launching it for SSE seems appropriate to me.
Here's a basic rundown of what's new:
There are no longer separate "basic" or "deluxe" versions, what used to be the deluxe version is now a stand-alone mod with no outside requirements. Apachii has granted permission to include the hair assets, and I've replaced all the Dawnguard dependencies with custom stuff.
I'm have greatly expanded the NPCs' personalities. There is some unique follower dialogue, random idle chatter lines, a lot of edits to the old "I'm busting out of here" responses, and a short "what are you in for" conversation for each of the new NPC's.
I added a couple dialogue scenes between NPC's old and new.
It's now possible to spare Grisvar if you side with Madanach! I added a whole in-depth dialogue branch, new AI, some relevant interactions with his friend Odvan.
Now that I'm fairly competent with scripting, I've made some technical improvements over the old mod, plus I've dug into the original Cidhna Mine quest's innards to change how it works. I have fully removed the Cidhna Mine quest from the standard "get arrested" mechanic so it doesn't work like a regular jail sentence. This means I was able to add places to sleep, and let you mine all the ore you can carry without the "serve your sentence" pop-up breaking the quest.
Another main goal with this was to actually allow the player to escape from the mine without doing the quest at all. I made it so the player can simply pick a lock or two and sneak out, same as any jail, but I wanted this to be a serious challenge. It will be very difficult to get out alive, and if you do escape with the quest unfinished, you will remain the #1 most wanted criminal in the Reach; you'll never be able to get near Markarth without them trying to throw you back in there. Guards will accost you near Markarth. In other parts of Skyrim, bounty hunters will track you down.
If you escape the mine and get caught and thrown back in, up to 6 followers can get thrown in with you!
Per a user suggestion, I added a unique Forsworn follower who will join you in Druadach Redoubt if you side with Madanach. As of version 2.1 there is also a unique Nord follower who you can recruit in the Silver-Blood Inn if you side against the Forsworn.
I did notice that the mining animation would not play at some of the silver ore veins. I couldn't tell you which ones. There are too many.
You can still mine them manually though. Just be careful around the other inmates if you want to join the Forsworn.
hehe I was lucky that I was a maxed-out werewolf for that craziness.
If you return to Cidhna Mine after your escape, you can no longer mine any of the silver ore veins. Clicking on them brings up the sleep menu.
update: it’s not this mod it’s happening without it installed
?Skipping: [NAVM:0002DF8D] (in GRUP Cell Temporary Children of CidhnaMine01 "Cidhna Mine" [CELL:00016203])
[Undeleting and Disabling References done] Processed Records: 3893, Undeleted Records: 0, Elapsed Time: 00:00
<Warning: Plugin contains 1 deleted NavMeshes which can not be undeleted>
[Removing "Identical to Master" records done] Processed Records: 3893, Removed Records: 0, Elapsed Time: 00:00
LOOT Masterlist Entries
- name: 'Cidhna Mine Expanded.esp'
dirty:
- <<: *reqManualFix
crc: 0xBBDA79A5
util: '[SSEEdit v4.0.4](https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/164)'
nav: 1
I know a lot of times this isn't a big deal. Just wondering if I should worry about this?
It is saved with header version 1.71. I am still using the older 1.5.97 version of Skyrim, so this may cause problems for me. The author has stated that this mod should be Skyrim version agnostic, so:
If anyone has more input, chime in!
If I may ask an unrelated question, since you have the most updated version of the game, how did you go about making sure that your SKSE-dependent mods would work? Is it just a matter of getting the new SKSE each time, and then everything works as normal, or do the SKSE-dependent mods themselves have to be updated? I have never been clear on this matter, hence I have stuck with 1.5.97.
While I know it's going to become more challenging to maintain a 1.5.97 load order, yours is actually the first I have encountered with the 1.71 file header. I didn't find a conclusive answer via google, so I thought I would ask here. Again, thank you.
So I updated a few mods (including this one), and was faced with crashes on startup yesterday when I was about to test a different mod.
It took me today to realise the possibility of a 1.71 header mod, as while I was aware of 1130 ESL range update and downloaded the Backported Extended ESL Support SKSE plugin, I haven't really tested the plugin until realising the crashes might be a 1.71 header mod issue. Haven't really tested it beyond a saveload to test that different mod (Windhelm exterior altered) so I won't know how what'll happen with CME, though a quick check in xEdit doesn't look amiss as there wasn't any records reordering done.
Like I said, for me, this was as simple as opening the mod in SSEEdit, decrementing the header version, and saving it.
I don't believe there is any requirement that the updated game requires all mods to have headers saved to version 1.71, but perhaps someone else can weight in. Alternatively, if you yourself have the most up-to-date game, then you can check some of your own mods to see what header versions they use. Particularly if you have any in your load order that haven't been updated in a while. Let me check a random mod. Scoped Bows SE, for example, was last updated in 2017.
Also did you guys have issues while updating the mod on an existing save?
So if you don't exceed the limit, you can indeed just hex-edit the version number away, but make sure that you don't have records under 0x800. For a brand new plugin (created with the updated editor), it's basically guaranteed they'll start at 0x0, because why wouldn't they? For older plugins that are updated now, watch out for new records, those might be below 0x800 and if so you probably need to use SSEedit to renumber them, I think. Keeping in mind what this implies for exported facegen data and dialogue lines if the record is for an NPC.
You should use BEES (Backported Extended ESL Support) - a SKSE plugin which allows you to have plugins with the 1.71 version in your loadorder.
it taught me to care for and actually enjoy this quest