cdcooley

Sometimes Pick Up Books (by Mardoxx and CDCooley) With version 4.0, I'm finally reasonably happy with how this mod works. Now it almost feels like part of the original game. You can grab books without reading them even if that would be stealing (with the appropriate chance of getting caught) and the activation prompt will change so you know what to expect instead of it always saying Read. It even displays the Take and Read prompts in grey instead of white for books that have already been read. You can choose either Read or Take/Steal as the default action and holding Shift will switch to the opposite action. It works with gamepad controllers but the modifier key needs to be mapped to a new control in the MCM (and I have no idea which would be a good default so I didn't set one). To avoid conflicts and honor choices by other mods (and the game) books with scripts that block normal activation (and others marked untakable) won't be able to be taken or stolen. The new dynamic prompt feature can be disabled in the MCM because it has a chance of conflicting with other mods and because some people might not like the slight delay that it takes for the prompt to appear (while the book is being classified) or that it is a little more script intensive than the previous version. The MCM is always in English (since I am not qualified to translate into any other language) but the Read, Take, or Steal prompt is shown in the appropriate language for your game.

People keep asking but no one who's tried it ever replies. I've looked at both and can't find any scripts or forms that they both edit so there's no reason to believe there's any incompatibility. The only possibility would be that whatever changes CWO makes to Season Unending are somehow dependent on you doing it if you are in the middle of the civil war quest line when it's time to trap your dragon. My guess would be that it doesn't matter, but since Apollo Down didn't include the source scripts it's too much work for me to determine what was changed in the MQ302Script to be certain.

Those options are just modifying the Thalmor random encounter. I'm pretty sure the guards during Missing in Action are always stupid even without TIE. And I'm absolutely sure that if you do that quest any time before level 8 you would see that same behavior. So it's really more of a core game bug. Although now that you point it out maybe completing that quest should also be enough to trigger their hostility. Although when I do that quest there certainly isn't anyone left alive who would report what happened back to Thalmor headquarters. :)

Mages are also expected to make use of staves and scrolls to round out their abilities or when their magicka pool gets too low.

In Nord culture magic is associated with elves, making it evil and unworthy for a true Nord. I guess the developers were a little too focused on the Nord mindset this time around. The one spell you absolutely must cast is "Lesser Ward" during Tolfdir's little lesson. Technically whatever entry spell you use for Faralda can be used in Saarthal (but I had forgotten about getting through that wall). You also need fire and frost magic to adjust the focusing crystal and to open two doors in Labyrinthian. The spells are all low level and the spell tomes needed to learn them are right there in the dungeons. In fact the highest level spell you need is the one you use to impress Faralda. The default game assumes you'll make heavy use of conjuration. And if you want to use destruction you'll need enchanting. That stun-lock effect you get from simply dual-casting a firebolt makes it your most powerful attack. Personally I use a slightly customized version of Balanced Magic to make playing a mage reasonable and this mod to make joining the college tolerable.

It supports the one standard game follower. Those are just the multi-follower mods that are also supported.

The mage quest line isn't long enough to be convoluted. 1. Cast a novice or apprentice level spell for Faralda. 2. Get a "tour" from Mirabelle (optional) and learn "Lesser Wards" from Tolfdir. 3. Explore Saarthal then report back to the Archmage. 4. Recover some books from Fellglow Keep for Urag. 5. Talk to lots of people and a former person who is now a glowing light. 6. Explore Mzulft and meet a paranoid idiot then head home. 7. Find Ancano behaving badly and destroy a few annoying magic anomalies. 8. Retrieve an artifact from Labyrinthian supposedly crafted by the god of magic himself. 9. Wield the nearly worthless "artifact" a few times and be appointed archmage. Even if your character sleeps like a real person you can complete the whole thing in one game week. The magicka draining effect in Labyrinthian poses absolutely no problem to anyone except a "pure" page. Anyone who wields a weapon (including a staff) will find it one of the easiest dungeons in the game. And the worst part is that you don't have to use more than six spells total (each cast one time) to become archmage. And if you have the right set of staves or scrolls you could get away only learning that one spell from Tolfdir.

Bethesda has never supported uninstalling mods for any of their games. The problems resulting from uninstalling mods with Papyrus scripts have gotten more attention than other forms of save game corruption but all sorts of mod changes can get carried into save game files and cause problems later.

No. The authors of those other mods do not give permission to include their textures and meshes in other mods, you need to download the original mods to get those resources. (In theory STEP could ask for special permission, but I doubt it would be given.)

I wish you had mentioned the tag just before I uploaded it. :) Is there an actual functional patcher that uses it at this point or are you thinking of the future? I really hate doing multiple releases. The only record I can see that would be affected is the note from Delphine and frankly if my changes to the contents of the note get overwritten then I really don't see a point in keeping the name change either. That would just be a minor mod conflict and it's going to be confusing/annoying no matter what.

Sorry, I understand the appeal of FISS (I was even the one who added rudimentary support for file I/O for MWSE), but this particular mod only has 4 things that can be configured so it's really not worth it to me. And my other mods are all similar with just a few settings each. If the SKSE team itself had added some form of file I/O early in the development cycle I might have considered using it, but introducing features which only work for people who also have a particular SKSE plugin (and there are now multiple plugins that support file I/O) isn't something that interests me. I have chosen a different strategy. Users can configure my mods with console commands and not even need SKSE or the MCM. That also means they can create and run a single BAT file to set any global configurations they might want to make across characters for my various mods. And the appropriate settings are documented in the ReadMe for each mod.

The "Potions for Mages" is the default now, but if I get lots of complaints I might switch it to "Always Armor" like the original game. Potentially the racial bonuses for Altmer, Bretons, and Redguards could end up giving potions to someone who intends to use armor but hasn't had enough time to develop that skill. Of course since the entire point of this mod is to slow down the pace, they should have had time to raise a few ranks in the armor skills and even if they don't the potions are still useful for anyone.

I don't use any overhauls myself but gooselee asked to upload a compatibility patch for Requiem and I realized that I could build in the support directly. And after seeing that the reward is just 4 reasonably high-end potions from the original game (but altered by Requiem itself to be really high-end potions) I decided that I could fix another little thing that's bugged me. Balgruuf always ends up giving me two items of heavy armor and I have no use for those. After some testing I decided to give potions to characters who have higher Alteration skill than either of the two armor skills by default. And there's an MCM setting allowing the player to choose to give every character the potions (like Requiem) or to always give armor (like the original game). Balgruuf still gives an item of armor for the first reward after you tell him about Helgen, but then gives the potions just before sending you off the the watchtower. Now I can roleplay that someone in his court tactfully explained that giving heavy armor to a mage was really not an appropriate gift. :)

I'm going to update this to support the Requiem reward of 4 potions from Balgruuf. Since I think that would be much more appropriate for unarmored mage characters does anyone have any thoughts about the best way to decide if a character is a "pure" mage who would prefer the potions to a piece of armor? Or should I include an MCM option for deciding which reward the player gets?

Bombs made an appearance in the Tribunal expansion for Morrowind. They were only used to open a blocked passage, but they were there. Alchemy in the base game provides an invisibility potion and you're worried that frost and shock bombs are a stretch? Alchemy works because all plants and animals on Nirn are infused with Magicka, so from a lore perspective if you have the right kind of ingredients you should be able to duplicate just about any magic effect.