The Blades: Improving the Story

[p4ck3tl055]

In my playthrough, I play the son of Acilius Bolar, the only blade to escape the decimation of Cloud Ruler Temple.  When I enter Bloated Man's Grotto and find Bolar's Writ and Oathblade, I'm going to seek out vengeance on the empire (Dark Brotherhood) and the Thalmor (??).

 

To help that along, I've been looking at a way to enrich the blades story line - either by extending what they do as part of the main quest or by making the Thalmor more prevalent in Skyrim.

 

I've come across a few mods that seem to fill the niche, but before I run off and install them, I'd like to know if anyone else has used them and how they fare with STEP (in my case 2.2.7).

 

The Blades:

-- "Recruit More Blades - SkyHavenTempleEnchanced"  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/11750/?

 

The Thalmor:

-- "Adal Matar, the lost Stronghold" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=75662068

-- "The Frontier to Cyrodiil" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=87242447

-- "The Aldmeri Domain - Fight Against the Thalmor III"  https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/33261/?

-- "The Hawk's Nest" https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=108427245

 

Concern: The mods held on the Steam Workshop bother me as I use MO to handle my game and I'm not sure how to handle mods like this when it comes to load order and things.  (any help on that front would be helpful)

 

Any opinions, reviews, and recommendations as it pertains to my story would be welcomed. Does anyone know if they all of these mods are compatible with each other...meaning can I install them all?

Thanks in advance...

Edited March 4, 2014 by p4ck3tl055

[torminater]

Any of them is (or at least was) also on the nexus (never heard of hawk's nest though).

Gopher is running some of them in his current playthrough, and he did run into a couple of bugs.

[p4ck3tl055]

Gopher is running some of them in his current playthrough, and he did run into a couple of bugs.

Can you tell me which chapter/part of Richard's story your talking about?  I've only watched Chapter 1 so far,  I'll skip ahead to see what he ran into. (I'm going to skip all of chapter two because I've not played through Dragonborn yet.)

[CJ2311]

Gopher covered two of the blades' quests in the chapter after Falskaar.

 

Here's what I have to say about the SHT mod though:

 

- The quests of this mod are very badly implemented. In fact they're so badly implemented that one of them requires you to have Helgen Reborn installed, and another one requires the Cyrodiil frontier mod, when those 2 mods are incompatible with one another...

- It has dialogue options without conditions, which will break the quests if you click on them without having completed certain objectives.

- The lighting inside SHT near Alduin's wall is glitchy.

- The new area (quarters) of the temple are not navmeshed at all.

 

I'd recommend this Sky Haven Temple mod instead (Lite version)

 

As for MadFrenchie's mods, they're good, but with a couple of deleted navmeshes that you'll have to fix yourself. Neovalen also said he noticed some bugs in them when watching Gopher's playthrough, but I can't say I know what he's referring too.

They're available on the nexus, too if you don't want to deal with Steam. In fact I'm pretty sure the nexus versions are more recent.

Edited March 4, 2014 by CJ2311

[phazer11]

Some of the issues Neo is referring to include but are not limited to the NPC's setting up a bar and farm in the middle of the bandit/forsworn controlled portion of Karthspire (right after you get in the part leading to the temple step area) while there are still bandits/forsworn living there. It's Gopher's Let's Play Skyrim Again Chapter 4 like episode 2-6 I can't remember which.

[CJ2311]

That particular bug was Gopher's doing though, the NPCs actually only appear after the quest is done and the temple is cleared, but Gopher actually installed the mod too late for the script to fire up...

 

Also, the SHT mod is by another person than MadFrenchie... (And I just noticed that it isn't compatible with any of the paarthunax mods, either)

[p4ck3tl055]

Thanks everyone.  I found "MadFrenchie" on the Nexus.  I'll probably use those mods at some point.

 

As far as the SHT, I only mentioned the mod I did because of the additional Blades recruiting.  Not sure I want to turn SHT into a mini town.  Not sure it should be, the Blades are supposed to be a covert order after all.

 

If anyone has a recommendation for improving the Blades experience (more covert operations, Dragon Killing, etc.) please let me know.  I'll be continuing my search.

Edited March 4, 2014 by p4ck3tl055

[CJ2311]

Recruit More Blades - SkyHavenTempleEnchanced just had a long overdue update, which actually means I'll be reinstalling it and that my previous post about it isn't valid any more.

 

I guess I'll also try to make a patch for Helgen reborn + fight the thalmor as well to get a full experience, so let me know if you want the patch too (:

 

Otherwise, you can just this mod ( https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/41704/? ) if what you want is just to have more blades.

Edited March 6, 2014 by CJ2311

[rootsrat]

A side note - Recruit More Blades does not work correctly with Extensible Followers Framework mod - you can only recruit 3 blades, as per vanilla. I tried to fix this by messing with load order and using a patch (different combinations of merged scripts and records from both mods), but to no success. I ended up letting BOSS sort the mods and not having any patch... I spend half a day on this, so if anyone knows how to fix the problem it would be much appreciated.

CJ, a patch would be much appreciated!

[CJ2311]

Here you go, all 4 FaTT esps cleaned, plus a patch for Helgen Reborn: https://www.dropbox.com/s/w5xlsb6zch3wx7w/Fight%20Against%20the%20Thalmor%20Cleaned%20%2B%20Patch.rar

I've not had time to test the patch since I just made it, but there's no reason whatsoever for it not to work, since it's basically the same process as what I've been doing the last weeks with REGS :p

 

Ignore the BOSS warning about deleted navmeshes.

 

EDIT: Don't know if anyone downloaded this prior to this edit, but if so, you'd better download it again.

Edited March 6, 2014 by CJ2311

[rootsrat]

Nice one, cheers mate. At work now, but I'll get it as soon as I'm back home.

[p4ck3tl055]

One of these days, I'm really going to have to learn to use TES5Edit and figure out what all this "patch" business is about.  :)

[CJ2311]

One of these days, I'm really going to have to learn to use TES5Edit and figure out what all this "patch" business is about.  :)

Just for the record, this particular kind of patching can't be done in TES5Edit, unless you're some kind of maths genius. It is however fairly easy to do in the CK :)

[rootsrat]

Just for the record, this particular kind of patching can't be done in TES5Edit, unless you're some kind of maths genius. It is however fairly easy to do in the CK :)

Hence I wanted you to upload it, as I haven't got much experience in CK :)Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[CJ2311]

Hence I wanted you to upload it, as I haven't got much experience in CK :)Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

You should give it a try... not

Every single right click you make on an object in the CK can cause a dirty edit. Every single right click you make with the snap to angle option will cause a wild edit that can't be fixed automatically by TES5Edit. I guess that's why a lot of mods are full of dirty edits...