I've finally got some free time back to dedicate to working on this mod again. I took some time the past couple of weeks to respond to some of your comments and bug reports. I've done a fair amount of preliminary testing both with the mod installed on a vanilla AE Skyrim and with the mods that I have made compatibility patches for and have determined that things are working the way I expect them to. Unfortunately, I can't account for all of the potential bugs that pop up from the thousands of other mods available for Skyrim. I put an early focus on compatibility with the most popular follower mods, since the core feature of expanding the Blades is pretty much moot if you can't have more than one in your party. Again, while I can't address every bug, I encourage you to post here in the comments or write a bug report and I will respond to them when I can. Sometimes other generous modders will take it upon themselves to resolve and post a patch, so it can only help to bring up issues as you find them.
As for what's next on the To-Do list:
I've just finished implementing a new MCM debug option to allow those of you that already started/completed the vanilla Blades recruitment to migrate your Blades over to the Blades Overhaul slots. I need to run a couple more tests but the new feature is looking solid and will finally remove the requirement/recommendation to use a save game before starting the vanilla Blades recruitment quest.
My plan before my break from modding was to continue implementing the radiant quests. I may or may not hold to this as there are still some lingering clean-up tasks out there that I may focus on instead.
Speaking of the clean-up tasks, these include:
-Refining the Knight Brothers' daily schedules. -Adding an MCM option to bypass the Blades oath. -Completely resolving the bug where spies lose their assignments (the MCM debug option seems to fix it permanently after experiencing the bug and running the debug once, but it would be nice to never experience the issue). -Thalmor patrol logic is a little wonky when they enter combat. I want them to have more freedom to swarm and attack you in close quarters, instead of religiously holding formation.
I'll keep you posted as I make more progress on the new release. In the meantime, please let me know your thoughts on where you guys think I should focus my efforts. Bug fixing and refinement, or the new quest features (at some point this will include Act 1 of the Blades Overhaul main questline). As always, thanks for your patience and support. The mod just broke 10k unique downloads and 100k views, which is mind blowing because I originally posted this mod simply to motivate myself to learn modding to build a better Blades faction for my own Skyrim playthroughs. I'm truly humbled that you all have decided to download and play the mod.
Nope not abandoned, I've just been swamped with my day job lol. I'm hoping to have more time in the coming months and next year.
As for your issue, the Spies dialogue is locked behind asking more about the Blades history. There's some weirdness with the dialogue options sometimes, it seems like the more options you have, the less reliable it is to see everything. Not sure yet if I'm doing something wrong or if that's just the wonkiness of the Creation Kit. Either way, start with recruiting a few Blades and then look for an option to ask Delphine about the history of the Blades, get your history lesson, and then another option should pop up about asking what you can do to increase the Blades presence in Skyrim. I don't have my Creation Kit set up at the moment, so I can't tell you what the exact dialogue is, but that's the general progression.
well i forced it through setstage freeformskyhaventemplespies 10 and setstage freeformskyhaventemplespies 10... but they don't actually do anything. they don't go to the location so i don't know.
the thalmor radiant quest works. till you have to speak to delphine and again, the dialog doesnt show up
and as for this mod and to the mod author, well ive done all i can and just cannot get the spy nor thalmor missions to work.
at all. ive uninstalled mods ive thought were affecting it, i used olivepeels patch, ive done everything and she just WILL NOT give me the dialog. ive never even seen it once.
i think you need to consider creating an entirely new character, maybe a former blade returned, to do spy missions because delphine is clearly just... defective. will not work
yeah its just not working, i even went as far to the extreme as to remove all conditions in the creation kit that hide the dialog behind so it should just show up in her dialog no matter what, as one last hail mary and it just WILL NOT show up. i never once get a new dialog option, nor does the quest ever start
Dang. Sorry for the continued frustrations. What version are you using? I getting the classic software development situation of "it works fine for me" every time I test this feature on a brand new install.
I haven't looked into what changes were actually done for the paarthurnax mod patch, so that might be causing the wonkiness. Though I have noticed some issues in general with the creation kit dialog system where sometimes it just filters out dialog options for no apparent reason. I've never been stuck in that situation though, usually I can get the missing dialog to show up by just cycling through the available dialog and then re-approaching Delphine. I'll keep an eye on this, but since I haven't seen it as a recurring issue with a fresh skyrim install and a new game save, it's going to be hard for me to debug so just be patient and maybe follow up with the guy who made the paarthurnax patch since he's responsible for those changes/fixes.
I do agree with your suggestion about more debug options in the MCM so I'll make that a todo item for the next release.
Does this mod change the moment you can ask Delphine "there's only 2 of you?" and start the option to recruit blades? In vanilla it is right after you finish Alduin's wall that you get that dialogue option, but with this mod it does not appear. Will it appear later or is it a bug?
Hey guys, it does not change when the rebuild the blades dialog should appear. After you get the rundown on the wall, you should see the same "there's only 2 of you line". If you have other mods in your load order, there could be a conflict. If you're working off of a game save where you already recruited Blades via the vanilla quest, you're going to run into bugs. My suggestion for the latest version of Blades Overhaul is to only use the mod with a game save that has not started the vanilla Blades recruitment.
I have a question about the load order. I'm using vortex and the mod description says load paarthurnax expansion 'last'. does that mean it gets loaded "after" blades overhaul? still trying to get this after/before load order in vortex right. as of now vortex has paarthurnax expansion at 101, blades overhaul at 103, and blades overhaul-paarthurnax patch at 104 (in the plugin load order). is that right?
You'll want to contact the mod author of the patch to be 100% sure on the correct load order, but let's start out with sorting out the terminology first.
"Load Order" refers to the 'order' in which the plugins get 'loaded' into your game (i.e. Skyrim.esm will always load first followed by Dawnguard.esm, Dragonborn.esm, etc.). Plugins loaded in higher index spots (the 101 or 103 positions you mentioned are plugin indices), will take precedence over previously loaded plugins, which is why Hearthfire can put the new houses on existing Skyrim land. That being said, when a mod author suggests you load their mod last in your load order, that's them trying to ensure that no other mods that you have will overwrite the changes in their mod which could potentially break it. TL;DR Biggest number = last in your load order.
Alright, with that out of the way, my suggestion is that you start with loading the main Blades Overhaul first, followed by the paarthurnax expansion mod, then lastly the paarthurnax patch. So for demonstrational purposes let's say the load order indices are 101, 102, and 103 respectively. If that doesn't work, try switching Blades Overhaul and Paarthurnax Expansion (100 and 101), but keep the patch last (103).
Last thing to consider is that others are reporting issues that are potentially related to the Paarthurnax Expansion mod and its patch, so it may just not work anyway. If that's that case, I'd suggest hitting up the mod author of the patch JamyJames2424. I've got todo tasks to look at compatibility with the major Paarthurnax mods, but I'm still working out what I want to work on for the next release which is likely going to be focused on refining existing features.
Any chance you might add an area in Sky Haven Temple where you can collect and secure powerful items such as daedric artifacts, similar to Legacy of the Dragonborn?
Hmm that's strange. I saw your bug report. It's also strange that your radiant quest isn't starting.
What's the current state of your Blades recruitment? Have you started the recruitment quest? Have you recruited any Blades?
The MCM should show a separate page option for Debug. It should also have the new splash screen as seen in the "Images" tab on the mod page.
If all of that is just completely messed up, my suggestion is to try the following: 1. Uninstall the mod 2. Load your save 3. Make a new save 4. Reinstall the mod 5. Wait for SkyUI to load the MCM and check if you get the new updates (splash screen and Debug page)
If that doesn't work, let me know. Also if anyone else is having similar issues, please reply to this post. If it's not unique to Berekona then it's likely that I didn't post all of the files/scripts in the mod release.
Hello, so I have recruited blades prior to 0.70 release and did not release them before updating to 0.70. I have reinstalled the mod before your suggestions and that did not have any effect on my game. I have also made a new save and that also did not change anything either.
I did a fresh install of Skyrim, SkyUI, and the mod and everything was working as expected. I'm not quite sure how to help you if uninstalling your previous Blades Overhaul version, making a new save, and then installing 0.7.0 didn't sort everything out. You can try stopping and starting the quests and see if that force resets everything. I can try that myself and report back if that does anything.
Worst case is you'll just have to start a new playthrough.
Yeah what is weird is that I have the new splash screen just not the debug menu, what would be the command to stop and restart the mod to see if that does anything?
So I re-followed your steps and this time it worked, I now have a debug menu, now the mod considers it a fresh install so I lost all my blade recruits and the ones who were stuck on spy assignment still wear the spy clothing but don't have any dialogue like they were recruited which I think is a good thing, now just to go back and recruit everyone again if I am able to.
Sorry for the late follow-up. Work and life have been busy lately. Glad you were able to find a solution. I'm going to close your bug, please feel free to make a new one if you run into any more issues.
Good mod overall, but one criticism I have is the oath being given each time you bring someone to Delphine. While I get that it is for immersion purposes, it gets kind of old hearing the oath being done in front of you each time, especially if you bring more than one NPC at a time with NFF and the other follower mods. Maybe an MCM option to disable the oath for NPCs after the initial 3?
Not compatible with JK's Skyrim. Those playing Blade to be Lore Friendly not Compatible with the Thalmor since Blades are Loyal to the Emperor and the Empire is Loyal to the Thalmor. Kill a Thalmor the Empire hate you, not Lore Friendly at all.
Well I suppose the Main Quest isn't lore friendly then, seeing as you infiltrate a Thalmor Embassy, steal Thalmor intelligence, and most likely kill Thalmor soldiers in a vanilla play through. I'm sure the Empire wouldn't approve because the Blades are no longer an Empire sanctioned organization, their disbandment was a stipulation of the White Gold Concordat. With all due respect, if you bothered to read the lore or at least play the main quest, then you would understand these details.
With regards to compatibility with other mods, I'm developing the mod with vanilla Skyrim as a baseline. I have and will always play Skyrim with a full load order, so I am developing with compatibility in mind. That being said, if the point of this mod is to completely overhaul the Blades as a faction and Sky Haven Temple, then of course it won't be compatible with your favorite Sky Haven Temple mod, in your case it sounds like you're referring to JK's Sky Haven Forge.
Except the Empire isn't loyal to the Thalmor at all? The whole thing with the Civil War is that by breaking the Empire apart, they're weakening Tamriel's ability to stand against a second Thalmor invasion.
JK's Skyrim includes JK's Sky Haven Forge whether you're wanting to affect Sky Haven Temple deliberately or not. A simple patch disabling all of JK's Skyrim's changes to the exterior should cover compatibility once you get around to overhauling that bit.
Good suggestion foggywizard, I'll definitely keep that in mind when I get around to the Temple additions. I might see about just making my additions toggleable so the user and I don't have to worry about patches.
The Blades stopped being an official Imperial agency after the Septim dynasty ended in TES4 Oblivion, the Penitus Oculatus replaced them as the Emperor's guards even as early as the first Titus Mede during the Umbriel Crisis in 4E 48. The Empire also isn't "loyal" to the Thalmor, they're separate entities with a signed Neutrality Pact to avoid continuing the Great War.
Uhm the blades have never had allegiance to the empire. They hold allegiance to the Dragonborn. Alot of emperors just so happened to be dragonborn or decendants of them, but that's who they where sworn to, and that's who they are sworn to in Skyrim, the dragonborn, NOT the empire.
I love the idea of this mod, and I really wanted to use it because of my fondness for Morrowind and Oblivion versions of the faction. For that reason, I really do hope this mod is still actively being developed.
However, I've tried absolutely everything I can think of but it does not seem like this mod works with version 1.5.97 of Skyrim. I'm using the back-ported mod thats supposed to give it support, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference. No matter what I do, Delphine simply won't start the blades recruitment. I've even tried on a completely clean game save, but no dice.
In fact, the ONLY way I can seem to get "So this is all the Blades is? Two people?" To show up in Delphines dialogue options is to disable the mod. The mcm does show up; the console shows the mod *is* loaded; I just can't get it to actually fire off. And using console commands doesn't seem to make a difference either. With the mod installed I lose the ability to recruit at all; if I use the console to force it, it simply triggers the vanilla recruitment where Delphine only gives the first recruit the Blades oath, and then completely breaks the dragon hunting part of the quest when it's supposed to start.
I think the idea of the mod is fantastic; but it may be more consistently executed if you simply make "Rebuilding the Blades" an official quest rather than a misc and disable the original. Also, there's a mod called "Reborn of the Blades" that seems to have similar goals as your mod. Might be worth checking in with it's author to potentially merge projects as both seem to be surprisingly unknown, and the Blades in Skyrim are long overdue for a faction overhaul mod.
-edit- I had made the assumption that this mod not working for me had to do with game version and a 2000+ mod setup; however this mod seems to not work on the most current version of the game with no other mods installed either. I've installed Skyrim AE on a completely separate computer, downloaded MO2, Skse, SkyUI, and Blades Overhaul. I downloaded a vanilla game save, and used a savegame set for immediately after completing Alduins Bane, with Paarthurnax (the quest) not yet started. I killed Paarthurnax, and returned to the blades and had no option to begin "Rebuilding the Blades" when speaking to Delphine. I removed the mod, and "So this is the blades? 2 people?" Showed up immediately in Delphines dialogue.
It's possible this mod works if it's present in the load order when you hit "New Game" but that's about the only thing I haven't tested. Currently however, it seems like something is broken in the mod preventing it from actually begining. The mod is successful in blocking the vanilla quest, but the mods version seems to refuse to begin. I would highly encourage a video walkthrough of how the mod is supposed to work in case I'm missing something. Otherwise, I would recommend checking the mods quest conditions are set up correctly still. I would love to use this mod and commend your effort thus far.
330 comments
I've finally got some free time back to dedicate to working on this mod again. I took some time the past couple of weeks to respond to some of your comments and bug reports. I've done a fair amount of preliminary testing both with the mod installed on a vanilla AE Skyrim and with the mods that I have made compatibility patches for and have determined that things are working the way I expect them to. Unfortunately, I can't account for all of the potential bugs that pop up from the thousands of other mods available for Skyrim. I put an early focus on compatibility with the most popular follower mods, since the core feature of expanding the Blades is pretty much moot if you can't have more than one in your party. Again, while I can't address every bug, I encourage you to post here in the comments or write a bug report and I will respond to them when I can. Sometimes other generous modders will take it upon themselves to resolve and post a patch, so it can only help to bring up issues as you find them.
As for what's next on the To-Do list:
- I've just finished implementing a new MCM debug option to allow those of you that already started/completed the vanilla Blades recruitment to migrate your Blades over to the Blades Overhaul slots. I need to run a couple more tests but the new feature is looking solid and will finally remove the requirement/recommendation to use a save game before starting the vanilla Blades recruitment quest.
- My plan before my break from modding was to continue implementing the radiant quests. I may or may not hold to this as there are still some lingering clean-up tasks out there that I may focus on instead.
- Speaking of the clean-up tasks, these include:
-Refining the Knight Brothers' daily schedules.-Adding an MCM option to bypass the Blades oath.
-Completely resolving the bug where spies lose their assignments (the MCM debug option seems to fix it permanently after
experiencing the bug and running the debug once, but it would be nice to never experience the issue).
-Thalmor patrol logic is a little wonky when they enter combat. I want them to have more freedom to swarm and attack you in close
quarters, instead of religiously holding formation.
I'll keep you posted as I make more progress on the new release. In the meantime, please let me know your thoughts on where you guys think I should focus my efforts. Bug fixing and refinement, or the new quest features (at some point this will include Act 1 of the Blades Overhaul main questline). As always, thanks for your patience and support. The mod just broke 10k unique downloads and 100k views, which is mind blowing because I originally posted this mod simply to motivate myself to learn modding to build a better Blades faction for my own Skyrim playthroughs. I'm truly humbled that you all have decided to download and play the mod.
i can't get it and when i try your setstage command it says
"Stage 100 not found"
As for your issue, the Spies dialogue is locked behind asking more about the Blades history. There's some weirdness with the dialogue options sometimes, it seems like the more options you have, the less reliable it is to see everything. Not sure yet if I'm doing something wrong or if that's just the wonkiness of the Creation Kit. Either way, start with recruiting a few Blades and then look for an option to ask Delphine about the history of the Blades, get your history lesson, and then another option should pop up about asking what you can do to increase the Blades presence in Skyrim. I don't have my Creation Kit set up at the moment, so I can't tell you what the exact dialogue is, but that's the general progression.
Let me know if you're still having trouble.
is there a command i can do to skip the dialog? set stage you put isnt working
you should really add in an mcm button that just forces it to whatever stage it needs to go to to bypass it
and setstage freeformskyhaventemplespies 10...
but they don't actually do anything. they don't go to the location so i don't know.
the thalmor radiant quest works. till you have to speak to delphine and again, the dialog doesnt show up
and as for this mod and to the mod author, well ive done all i can and just cannot get the spy nor thalmor missions to work.
at all. ive uninstalled mods ive thought were affecting it, i used olivepeels patch, ive done everything and she just WILL NOT give me the dialog. ive never even seen it once.
i think you need to consider creating an entirely new character, maybe a former blade returned, to do spy missions because delphine is clearly just... defective. will not work
I haven't looked into what changes were actually done for the paarthurnax mod patch, so that might be causing the wonkiness. Though I have noticed some issues in general with the creation kit dialog system where sometimes it just filters out dialog options for no apparent reason. I've never been stuck in that situation though, usually I can get the missing dialog to show up by just cycling through the available dialog and then re-approaching Delphine. I'll keep an eye on this, but since I haven't seen it as a recurring issue with a fresh skyrim install and a new game save, it's going to be hard for me to debug so just be patient and maybe follow up with the guy who made the paarthurnax patch since he's responsible for those changes/fixes.
I do agree with your suggestion about more debug options in the MCM so I'll make that a todo item for the next release.
"Load Order" refers to the 'order' in which the plugins get 'loaded' into your game (i.e. Skyrim.esm will always load first followed by Dawnguard.esm, Dragonborn.esm, etc.). Plugins loaded in higher index spots (the 101 or 103 positions you mentioned are plugin indices), will take precedence over previously loaded plugins, which is why Hearthfire can put the new houses on existing Skyrim land. That being said, when a mod author suggests you load their mod last in your load order, that's them trying to ensure that no other mods that you have will overwrite the changes in their mod which could potentially break it. TL;DR Biggest number = last in your load order.
Alright, with that out of the way, my suggestion is that you start with loading the main Blades Overhaul first, followed by the paarthurnax expansion mod, then lastly the paarthurnax patch. So for demonstrational purposes let's say the load order indices are 101, 102, and 103 respectively. If that doesn't work, try switching Blades Overhaul and Paarthurnax Expansion (100 and 101), but keep the patch last (103).
Last thing to consider is that others are reporting issues that are potentially related to the Paarthurnax Expansion mod and its patch, so it may just not work anyway. If that's that case, I'd suggest hitting up the mod author of the patch JamyJames2424. I've got todo tasks to look at compatibility with the major Paarthurnax mods, but I'm still working out what I want to work on for the next release which is likely going to be focused on refining existing features.
What's the current state of your Blades recruitment? Have you started the recruitment quest? Have you recruited any Blades?
The MCM should show a separate page option for Debug. It should also have the new splash screen as seen in the "Images" tab on the mod page.
If all of that is just completely messed up, my suggestion is to try the following:
1. Uninstall the mod
2. Load your save
3. Make a new save
4. Reinstall the mod
5. Wait for SkyUI to load the MCM and check if you get the new updates (splash screen and Debug page)
If that doesn't work, let me know. Also if anyone else is having similar issues, please reply to this post. If it's not unique to Berekona then it's likely that I didn't post all of the files/scripts in the mod release.
Worst case is you'll just have to start a new playthrough.
Maybe an MCM option to disable the oath for NPCs after the initial 3?
With regards to compatibility with other mods, I'm developing the mod with vanilla Skyrim as a baseline. I have and will always play Skyrim with a full load order, so I am developing with compatibility in mind. That being said, if the point of this mod is to completely overhaul the Blades as a faction and Sky Haven Temple, then of course it won't be compatible with your favorite Sky Haven Temple mod, in your case it sounds like you're referring to JK's Sky Haven Forge.
They hold allegiance to the Dragonborn.
Alot of emperors just so happened to be dragonborn or decendants of them, but that's who they where sworn to, and that's who they are sworn to in Skyrim, the dragonborn, NOT the empire.
Just saying.
However, I've tried absolutely everything I can think of but it does not seem like this mod works with version 1.5.97 of Skyrim. I'm using the back-ported mod thats supposed to give it support, but it doesn't seem to be making a difference. No matter what I do, Delphine simply won't start the blades recruitment. I've even tried on a completely clean game save, but no dice.
In fact, the ONLY way I can seem to get "So this is all the Blades is? Two people?" To show up in Delphines dialogue options is to disable the mod. The mcm does show up; the console shows the mod *is* loaded; I just can't get it to actually fire off. And using console commands doesn't seem to make a difference either. With the mod installed I lose the ability to recruit at all; if I use the console to force it, it simply triggers the vanilla recruitment where Delphine only gives the first recruit the Blades oath, and then completely breaks the dragon hunting part of the quest when it's supposed to start.
I think the idea of the mod is fantastic; but it may be more consistently executed if you simply make "Rebuilding the Blades" an official quest rather than a misc and disable the original. Also, there's a mod called "Reborn of the Blades" that seems to have similar goals as your mod. Might be worth checking in with it's author to potentially merge projects as both seem to be surprisingly unknown, and the Blades in Skyrim are long overdue for a faction overhaul mod.
I had made the assumption that this mod not working for me had to do with game version and a 2000+ mod setup; however this mod seems to not work on the most current version of the game with no other mods installed either. I've installed Skyrim AE on a completely separate computer, downloaded MO2, Skse, SkyUI, and Blades Overhaul. I downloaded a vanilla game save, and used a savegame set for immediately after completing Alduins Bane, with Paarthurnax (the quest) not yet started. I killed Paarthurnax, and returned to the blades and had no option to begin "Rebuilding the Blades" when speaking to Delphine. I removed the mod, and "So this is the blades? 2 people?" Showed up immediately in Delphines dialogue.
It's possible this mod works if it's present in the load order when you hit "New Game" but that's about the only thing I haven't tested. Currently however, it seems like something is broken in the mod preventing it from actually begining. The mod is successful in blocking the vanilla quest, but the mods version seems to refuse to begin. I would highly encourage a video walkthrough of how the mod is supposed to work in case I'm missing something. Otherwise, I would recommend checking the mods quest conditions are set up correctly still. I would love to use this mod and commend your effort thus far.