It's true I don't have time to support any Oblivion mods anymore. It's unfortunate that what was once a vibrant community has been largely eroded to a market of mere creators and users, instead of a group of people interacting on a regular basis through forums and chats to make our games more fun and varied. Along with that community a lot of basic knowledge has been lost too. What I can say is if you don't have the patience to follow good modding practices for each individual game, which for Oblivion would include things like keeping frequent saves, clean saving, being willing to revert to previous saves and lose dozens of hours of progress etc, then you are best skipping mods altogether, particularly ones which rely on Bethesda's buggy scripting engine. Feel free to comb through old comments for guidance; although there is a notable shift in tone over the last few years. At any rate I have always been generous in my permissions and if anyone feels like taking any of my mods and improving on them, that route has always been available. Finally, I have always viewed my mods as communal creations and have never asked for or accepted donations of any kind. But if somehow I have added anything of enjoyment to your Oblivion experience and you wish to give back, please consider donating to cancer-related causes and send positive thoughts and prayers towards my family. Thank you.
Having played and modded Oblivion over the years since it was released - I recall when this mod came out - and was very happy that finally the hectic MQ pace could be slowed a bit. I had already been using Alternate Start and DLC Delayer mods - but this mod addressed the biggest issue I had with Oblivion: I wanted some breathing space without "feeling" like my character was fiddling while Rome was burning...
I used this mod extensively and it worked well with no issues on my usual heaviliy modded game - ALWAYS starting with a NEW GAME - that should go without saying -but some people don't quite follow common sense modding practice it seems.
Now returning to Oblivion once again - I stumbled upon this mod like an old (nearly forgotten!) acquaintance and will gladly install it again. The negative stuff in the more recent comments appears to be from those who want conflicting mods to work together automagically or choose to install game changing mods mid save game, etc. I personally don't use any mods that change the MQ and that seems to be a major source of problems.
I don't wish to be unkind to the mod creator, but I advise against this mod. And as the creator has predominantly stopped supporting the mod or working on the Nexus, I'd rather focus on those who still are active. I wish I had checked this page before downloading it, and saved myself trouble and worry.
I've played through to Blood of the Daedra with the mod so far. I haven't encountered anything game breaking like some of the other commenters on the mod, but here are my problems:
1. I was never asked to join the Blades, and I don't have any other mods which effect the Main Quest, so that bug likely stems from this mod. It's a small enough thing, but take that with the next issues. Also, it actually removed content, and considering that one of the few things that unites Elder Scrolls games is that you are almost always a member of the Blades, that small thing is actually not so small. 2. Despite the advertisement of additional dialogue from Sean Bean, realistically every time you must wait for the next part of the Main Quest, you get zero prompting about it. Mostly Martin cuts off whatever he would have told you, and you're left with zero direction. If you've never played the Main Quest before, or it's been a long time, this mod is a terrible idea, because you will legitimately wonder if the game is bugged. There are no voice lines or messages of any kind saying "come back in a week." You do not get any kind of message saying "Maybe I should check back in with Martin." And considering point 3, you'll legitimately wonder if the mod has broken the quest line and if you need to go looking to fix it. It does not increase immersion when I have to constantly wonder if I need to do something to prompt the next dialogue, or do the math on whether it's been 7 game days yet, or whether one of the best Oblivion quest lines has just been broken for your 30 hour playthrough. Any Oblivion mod that might require you to open the console has offered negative amounts of immersion. 3. There are multiple reports in this thread about the quest just... stopping. People have run into game breaking problems, and only some of the fixes are written out in this thread. A few other people have found some workarounds. But considering the goal of this mod was to increase immersion and has resulted in you needing to worry about whether the code has broken down, it has done more harm than good. Plus, as the creator is no longer active, and the game is getting older, if you run into a problem it's not very likely you'll find someone who can save you.
Honestly, even if the mod didn't break anything, I think it resulted in making me much less immersed in the story, not more immersed. Even if the mod 100% worked, I wouldn't use it again.
Again, I don't wish to be unkind to the creator, but I wish to save others from running into troubles. This mod doesn't appear to add any significant dialogue, it leaves you directionless any time it takes effect, and it may even break your Main Quest. Absolutely avoid this mod, it adds nothing, actually hurts immersion, and breaks your game. I very much regret that I found it.
1- Odd, I was asked to join the Blades in my playthroughs with this mod. Sounds like it could be a mod conflict or loading order issue. This needs to load close to last in the order. 2- There is no prompting, however Martin does state he hasn't made any progress, or needs more time. I agree it should need some prompting, but on the other hand, if you're setting up the ini delays, you'll know when to return. Funny enough, I just set it as a 1-day delay, since it doesn't really matter how long it takes - the pause exists for the player to choose to do other things naturally, and return when ready. Talking to Martin or Jaufre still gives the new dialog, and after the time passes, the quest will resume. However, extra journal entries would add very much to the immersion, especially when the quest is ready to proceed. 3- A lot of that is the nature of modding, and end users aren't a reliable indicator of whether a mod is broken. It's heavily dependent on load order, merge/bash patching, and other considerations of modding.
1. You're asked to join the Blades even in an unmodded game. I don't see this as an issue. 2. It could had been made more clear, but seeing it cut off told me clearly that yeah, this is the point where delay comes from. Honestly this would sound like an issue you must not be aware of if you didn't happen to install mod that causes delay. 3. People have varied mod lists. For me, the mod has worked as intended, propably helps that I don't have any other mods that touches main quest line.
Ultimately though, this mod works and seems to be intended for people who has already played the game. I wouldn't see why you would want to play first time heavily modded game and then start labeling stuff broken, buggy and as such, because you don't know what works and what doesn't.
The problem with joining the Blades that you described is actually Jauffre's vanilla behaviour. His disposition with you was too low. Some players also claim having a high infamy rating will bar you from being a part of this faction
I said in my comment "...or it's been a long time [since you played]." In my case it had been a few years since I'd played the main quest. I've played Elder Scrolls games for decades, just because I haven't played the main quest in a few years doesn't mean you should try to gatekeep me modding the game. That's ridiculous.
But then again you seem to think my point #1 was saying there's something wrong with being asked the join the blades. So you're a gatekeeper who doesn't read very well I guess.
I finished Blood of the Divines around 3 in-game weeks ago and no dialogue has opened up with either Martin or Jauffre at all. I also realized after a while that the Bruma Gate quest never started after Blood of the Daedra. Does this mod rearrange the order of quests in the MQ? I also tried fixing this by starting the quest Bruma Gate through the console, but once Allies for Bruma started, none of the Oblivion Gates appeared. I assume this is because the order of quests might have been changed and the scripting for the gates just never started. Is this the case?
The mod was working quite well before this. Hope someone can help me fix it. Thanks!
Hmm, okay - did some poking around in the CS and I've worked out how to progress my game.
The script for starting the Bruma quest doesn't seem to fire, which is odd because it's the exact same script as all the other delays. I'm not a great coder, but I think what's happening is that the mod uses the same variable to track the delays for both the artifact quests and the Bruma quests, and one overwrites the other so the Bruma quest never properly starts.
To start the Bruma Gate quest, open the console and type: setstage aad1MoreTime 50 Then go speak to Jauffre. (You can also speak to Martin, who will tell you to speak to Jauffre.)
Closing the Bruma gate and speaking to Jauffre again will start Allies for Bruma, but the city gates won't spawn and the related quests, such as the one with the Cheydinhal count's son, won't initialise. To turn on the Oblivion gates: prid 0018ae1b enable
To initialise the quests: startquest MS13 startquest MS94 To open the remaining random Oblivion gates: set MQ00.maxOpenGates to 50 set MQ00.randomGateChance to 50
And that's it. I'm hoping the game will progress normally after this point and the Miscarcand quest will start correctly - I'll post here again if it doesn't.
Honestly, I would just advocate for people to *not* download this mod. More trouble than it's worth and it completely ruined my save. Of course, perhaps if I followed AdmiralAlbia's guide, I could've salvaged it, but one shouldn't have to do that.
This mod does indeed reorder the quests, as with it the Blood of the Divines starts after you have brought a daedric artifact to Martin, and the Bruma Gate quest starts after you've turned in the armour. It actually follows the order of the quests' internal IDs: Blood of the Daedra is MQ08, Blood of the Divines is MQ09, Bruma Gate is MQ10, Allies for Bruma is MQ11, and Miscarcand is MQ12.
I recommend this if you like to have some natural pausing during the main quest. I finished the main quest with no issues multiple times. However, that said, there are some compatibility issues depending on what mods affect the main quest, and how the end user maintains their load order & merged/bashed patch.
I did experience a conflict with the Oblivion Content Restoration Project, as the changes to the Spies quest conflicted with this resulting in the quest not progressing at all. This required some tinkering to work right with Bash and TES4Edit. Once fixed (needed to inject the OCRP script into the Quest handled by Time Enough), it worked as expected.
The only suggestion I have is that this needs some journal updates when the quest pauses, like one that says to return later, and another that prompts when the delay is over (like something that says "I should give Martin some time to progress on his work", and "I should check in with Martin on his progress" when the global delay is done).
Great, this mod completely bugged the Main Quest for me, thanks... seriously, Martin pretty much never have the right dialogues, it's SO annoying, i have to constantly use the command to advance in quests
Right now i have the armor of (you know who) to give to him but impossible to do it, he still has only the thre same dialogue options, it has been like that for a while, sill studying his freaking book...
I had similar issues to SoulOfMischief and I had it in my load order from the beginning. Several times in areas through the MQ, I had to use the console. I'm not entirely blaming the mod but it is suspicious.
Were you ever able to salvage your playthrough, or did you have to restart? I've been having pretty much the exact same problems plus no Oblivion Gates spawning during the Allies for Bruma quest.
A quick question, does this mod make any serious changes to the script that triggers the fixed gates (the ones critical for the Allies for Bruma and Wayward Knight quests)? I recently ran into a glitch where none of those gates spawned (yes, I checked, this mod is the only one that has anything to do with said script)
No. They are supposed to spawn once the Allies for Bruma quest is started. That's completely untouched. The only change that's made is the delay in starting the actual Allies for Bruma quest.
I had this same issue. City gates were not spawning, the Sutch gate didn't spawn, and town NPCs were talking as if the gates were there but they weren't.
So I uninstalled this mod during my playthrough because I'm an idiot who didn't read the finer print and now my saves are ruined with 80 hours down the drain. :)
I think I may have hit some sort of bug. I got the books back from dagon's shrine and martin has been studying them. yet its been several in game weeks and the next step of the main quest still has yet to happen even with talking to martin again. He still says he is studying them.
Been a while since I've done anything with this but I'll try to help you. Assuming you didn't change the ini file values to something large, basically it sounds like something didn't fire when it should have (happens with Bethesda games unfortunately). You can try either:
1. Load a previous save, preferably from before you give him the book, and see if things carry on normally.
2. Make a full save (not quick or auto) to revert in case anything goes wrong, and then try the following console commands (all 3 just to be safe) setstage aad1moretime 20 set aad1moretime.stageinit to 0 set aad1moretime.running to 0 That should push to the next stage and allow you to continue without problems.
I tried option two and nothing seemed to change after punching in the console commands. I rather not do option 1 if I can help it as i would have to redo a lot of quests. Is there another way to fix this issue? Or will I need to go all the way back to kvatch and disable the mod?
I did tinker with the Ini to see if it would help fix it too. Nothing seemed to change there either. If you want we could take this to pm's and show you the screenshot of it if you think that might help.
Aw man it's been working so well so far, but now I'm having a problem. I completed the spies quest and after waiting the necessary amount of days Martin says that he needs a daedric artifact, and that I should look for one while he continues to read. However the quest itself to do this doesn't start. I don't have any saves prior to this point, is there a way for me to proceed the quest via console commands?
Not sure I understand the point of this. There are already breaks in the main quest (and in all other quests) that are as long as you want them to be: You simply go do something else. E.g., I've been playing this game for over two months and am less than half way through the MQ, and have only closed two Oblivion Gates, because I prefer to wander around and do side quests, and install gear and companion mods and build a palace full of well-appointed CM Partners, then pick a few to go fight stuff with. If I complete a quest, half the time it's by accident. I haven't even gotten into Arcane University yet, because I want to see what-all gear I can scrounge from the gameworld (and figure out strengths and weaknesses) before making custom stuff.
The one "you must act now" interruptive exception I can think of is that Baurus will appear and demand that you follow him into the sewers to go deal with the Mythic Dawn meeting, if you leave Imperial City and go back to it 1+ days after learning about the meeting place. But even that just takes a few minutes.
That said, this mod might be a good basis, providing "hook" points, for doing an MQ expansion mod. From what I can tell, it's possible to complete the entire MQ by around level 10 if you focus on it and know what you're doing. I'd rather not complete it until I'm max level and have done everything else of interest. (To this day, I have not completed the MQs of Morrowind or Tribunal, only Bloodmoon, because I'm not done with all the side quests in MW or TB, after 1.5 years of playing that game and add-on with a single char!). But this leaves the problem that the MQ - the Daedric invasion from Oblivion, coupled with an Imperial interregnum - is supposed to be an urgent matter.
While there are mods that make it more urgent by sending Daedric marauding parties into cities, which can get NPCs killed if you don't intervene, if you stretch out your MQ play it still feels weird, plot-wise. That could be rectified by inserting additional chapters, written to explain delays (e.g., so-and-so wizard found a way to temporarily block Oblivion Gates from one side, so Daedra aren't coming through for now, though some are still lurking around the gates. In the mean time, we desperately need you to go deal with a Mythic Dawn stronghold our agents have uncovered outside of Leyawiin ...).
I like the idea of your MQ expansion mod. I would use it if someone made it. For my self, I felt rushed by the MQ and didn't feel I could take brakes without a guilty conscience (but I did it anyway ;P)
I started to feel that way at first, until I realized that only Kvatch will burn, and that these ObliviGates opening all over the place have no consequences for anything but neighboring deer, maybe, unless you install a mod that generates some consequences. I've downloaded and will try out two of those in my second play-through. In that one I want to do the MQ quickly, because I'll also be installing the largest of the new landmass mods and want to go check them out. From what I can tell, the developed game world of Oblivion is actually markedly smaller than that of Morrowind. I can get from one end of Cyrodiil to the other much more quickly, and am running out of new places to see, though I've only done about 5-10% of the available quests. Walking all the way across Vvardenfell takes a really long time (through more interesting terrain).
Pretty sure this mod was thought out from a roleplay point of view. Of course you could just go somewhere else. But if you're roleplaying, it's really weird to have your character running around doing random stuff while you were called to save the world.
Definitely a good thing. It's weird to me that they had some famous actors do a few key roles (like Michael Hogan as Gen. Tullius in Skyrim) but you hardly get to hear them say anything. I guess it would have been too expensive to have them do 1000+ lines of random dialogue for the more common character voices. [sigh]
72 comments
I used this mod extensively and it worked well with no issues on my usual heaviliy modded game - ALWAYS starting with a NEW GAME - that should go without saying -but some people don't quite follow common sense modding practice it seems.
Now returning to Oblivion once again - I stumbled upon this mod like an old (nearly forgotten!) acquaintance and will gladly install it again. The negative stuff in the more recent comments appears to be from those who want conflicting mods to work together automagically or choose to install game changing mods mid save game, etc. I personally don't use any mods that change the MQ and that seems to be a major source of problems.
I've played through to Blood of the Daedra with the mod so far. I haven't encountered anything game breaking like some of the other commenters on the mod, but here are my problems:
1. I was never asked to join the Blades, and I don't have any other mods which effect the Main Quest, so that bug likely stems from this mod. It's a small enough thing, but take that with the next issues. Also, it actually removed content, and considering that one of the few things that unites Elder Scrolls games is that you are almost always a member of the Blades, that small thing is actually not so small.
2. Despite the advertisement of additional dialogue from Sean Bean, realistically every time you must wait for the next part of the Main Quest, you get zero prompting about it. Mostly Martin cuts off whatever he would have told you, and you're left with zero direction. If you've never played the Main Quest before, or it's been a long time, this mod is a terrible idea, because you will legitimately wonder if the game is bugged. There are no voice lines or messages of any kind saying "come back in a week." You do not get any kind of message saying "Maybe I should check back in with Martin." And considering point 3, you'll legitimately wonder if the mod has broken the quest line and if you need to go looking to fix it. It does not increase immersion when I have to constantly wonder if I need to do something to prompt the next dialogue, or do the math on whether it's been 7 game days yet, or whether one of the best Oblivion quest lines has just been broken for your 30 hour playthrough. Any Oblivion mod that might require you to open the console has offered negative amounts of immersion.
3. There are multiple reports in this thread about the quest just... stopping. People have run into game breaking problems, and only some of the fixes are written out in this thread. A few other people have found some workarounds. But considering the goal of this mod was to increase immersion and has resulted in you needing to worry about whether the code has broken down, it has done more harm than good. Plus, as the creator is no longer active, and the game is getting older, if you run into a problem it's not very likely you'll find someone who can save you.
Honestly, even if the mod didn't break anything, I think it resulted in making me much less immersed in the story, not more immersed. Even if the mod 100% worked, I wouldn't use it again.
Again, I don't wish to be unkind to the creator, but I wish to save others from running into troubles. This mod doesn't appear to add any significant dialogue, it leaves you directionless any time it takes effect, and it may even break your Main Quest. Absolutely avoid this mod, it adds nothing, actually hurts immersion, and breaks your game. I very much regret that I found it.
2- There is no prompting, however Martin does state he hasn't made any progress, or needs more time. I agree it should need some prompting, but on the other hand, if you're setting up the ini delays, you'll know when to return. Funny enough, I just set it as a 1-day delay, since it doesn't really matter how long it takes - the pause exists for the player to choose to do other things naturally, and return when ready. Talking to Martin or Jaufre still gives the new dialog, and after the time passes, the quest will resume. However, extra journal entries would add very much to the immersion, especially when the quest is ready to proceed.
3- A lot of that is the nature of modding, and end users aren't a reliable indicator of whether a mod is broken. It's heavily dependent on load order, merge/bash patching, and other considerations of modding.
2. It could had been made more clear, but seeing it cut off told me clearly that yeah, this is the point where delay comes from. Honestly this would sound like an issue you must not be aware of if you didn't happen to install mod that causes delay.
3. People have varied mod lists. For me, the mod has worked as intended, propably helps that I don't have any other mods that touches main quest line.
Ultimately though, this mod works and seems to be intended for people who has already played the game. I wouldn't see why you would want to play first time heavily modded game and then start labeling stuff broken, buggy and as such, because you don't know what works and what doesn't.
But then again you seem to think my point #1 was saying there's something wrong with being asked the join the blades. So you're a gatekeeper who doesn't read very well I guess.
I finished Blood of the Divines around 3 in-game weeks ago and no dialogue has opened up with either Martin or Jauffre at all. I also realized after a while that the Bruma Gate quest never started after Blood of the Daedra. Does this mod rearrange the order of quests in the MQ? I also tried fixing this by starting the quest Bruma Gate through the console, but once Allies for Bruma started, none of the Oblivion Gates appeared. I assume this is because the order of quests might have been changed and the scripting for the gates just never started. Is this the case?
The mod was working quite well before this. Hope someone can help me fix it. Thanks!
The script for starting the Bruma quest doesn't seem to fire, which is odd because it's the exact same script as all the other delays. I'm not a great coder, but I think what's happening is that the mod uses the same variable to track the delays for both the artifact quests and the Bruma quests, and one overwrites the other so the Bruma quest never properly starts.
To start the Bruma Gate quest, open the console and type:
setstage aad1MoreTime 50Then go speak to Jauffre. (You can also speak to Martin, who will tell you to speak to Jauffre.)
Closing the Bruma gate and speaking to Jauffre again will start Allies for Bruma, but the city gates won't spawn and the related quests, such as the one with the Cheydinhal count's son, won't initialise. To turn on the Oblivion gates:
prid 0018ae1b
enable
To initialise the quests:
startquest MS13startquest MS94
To open the remaining random Oblivion gates:
set MQ00.maxOpenGates to 50
set MQ00.randomGateChance to 50
And that's it. I'm hoping the game will progress normally after this point and the Miscarcand quest will start correctly - I'll post here again if it doesn't.
I did experience a conflict with the Oblivion Content Restoration Project, as the changes to the Spies quest conflicted with this resulting in the quest not progressing at all. This required some tinkering to work right with Bash and TES4Edit. Once fixed (needed to inject the OCRP script into the Quest handled by Time Enough), it worked as expected.
The only suggestion I have is that this needs some journal updates when the quest pauses, like one that says to return later, and another that prompts when the delay is over (like something that says "I should give Martin some time to progress on his work", and "I should check in with Martin on his progress" when the global delay is done).
Right now i have the armor of (you know who) to give to him but impossible to do it, he still has only the thre same dialogue options, it has been like that for a while, sill studying his freaking book...
I definitely don't recommand this mod.
I will be going without it next time.
So I uninstalled this mod during my playthrough because I'm an idiot who didn't read the finer print and now my saves are ruined with 80 hours down the drain. :)
1. Load a previous save, preferably from before you give him the book, and see if things carry on normally.
2. Make a full save (not quick or auto) to revert in case anything goes wrong, and then try the following console commands (all 3 just to be safe)
setstage aad1moretime 20
set aad1moretime.stageinit to 0
set aad1moretime.running to 0
That should push to the next stage and allow you to continue without problems.
I did tinker with the Ini to see if it would help fix it too. Nothing seemed to change there either. If you want we could take this to pm's and show you the screenshot of it if you think that might help.
The one "you must act now" interruptive exception I can think of is that Baurus will appear and demand that you follow him into the sewers to go deal with the Mythic Dawn meeting, if you leave Imperial City and go back to it 1+ days after learning about the meeting place. But even that just takes a few minutes.
That said, this mod might be a good basis, providing "hook" points, for doing an MQ expansion mod. From what I can tell, it's possible to complete the entire MQ by around level 10 if you focus on it and know what you're doing. I'd rather not complete it until I'm max level and have done everything else of interest. (To this day, I have not completed the MQs of Morrowind or Tribunal, only Bloodmoon, because I'm not done with all the side quests in MW or TB, after 1.5 years of playing that game and add-on with a single char!). But this leaves the problem that the MQ - the Daedric invasion from Oblivion, coupled with an Imperial interregnum - is supposed to be an urgent matter.
While there are mods that make it more urgent by sending Daedric marauding parties into cities, which can get NPCs killed if you don't intervene, if you stretch out your MQ play it still feels weird, plot-wise. That could be rectified by inserting additional chapters, written to explain delays (e.g., so-and-so wizard found a way to temporarily block Oblivion Gates from one side, so Daedra aren't coming through for now, though some are still lurking around the gates. In the mean time, we desperately need you to go deal with a Mythic Dawn stronghold our agents have uncovered outside of Leyawiin ...).
For my self, I felt rushed by the MQ and didn't feel I could take brakes without a guilty conscience (but I did it anyway ;P)