This is a pretty extensive overhaul that should fix a number of issues. I still haven't tackled the deleted navmeshes, but this should still make things significantly more stable.
Completely reworked Pyandonea in a number of ways: >Replaced all Harpooner beetles with an entirely new model (using Skinwalker 21's "Shalks") so they use frostbit spider animation. >Changed the serpents back to the old Horker-rigged version. The dragon version was causing huge issues. I also love the way the serpents waddle around on land but then swim realistically in water. I did remove their flippers, so they at least sort of look serpentine. >Removed all of the old palm trees that came from Moonpath to Elswehr. These models were extrememly un-optimized, and very large, meaning they ate up a huge amount of memory. I switched to a more conventional palm tree that is much more system-friendly. >Went through and removed a TON of NPCs. There was just way too much going on in the worldspace. >Removed all of Mihail's wasps except for the one nest on Dagaan's Road. They were way too intensive. >I also had a huge amount of dragonfly and salmon spawners around the village, pretty sure those were causing big issues. >Removed the "snow" shader effect on Orgnum's Palace (which was made using the Sovngarde assets.) Not sure how much that helped, but it should at least look better. >I reworked all of the Maormer assets to make them less saturated; they were a little too brightly colored. >I also reworked all the Maormer items to require new materials, Salt Steel and Sea Glass. Salt Steel is just a special form of ingot created using (you guessed it!) salt. Sea Glass can be found in deposits along the coast underwater. >Added three different crossbow ammo types for the Maormer: regular salt steel arrows, the original electrified arrows, and Harpooner Beetle barbs that can be looted from dead beetles. >Added two additional rooms in Orgnum's Palace. One is just a bedroom for King Orgnum, and the other is a forge/workshop area. >Reworked and cleaned up the navmeshes so things should be a little smoother.
Reworked the Final Battle in Rlyeh: >Removed all of the "Apocrypha Tentacle" spawners on the boats. Apparently those trigger boxes firing every time an NPC walked through them was killing my memory. >Removed a ton of NPCs. There was just way to much happening out there. >Removed a bunch of unusable spells from Cthulhu and other monsters. I think at least one reason for the CTDs is when an NPC tries to use a spell it physically can't. >Reworked the Navmeshes around the whole battle. >Reworked a lot of Navmeshes in the city of Rlyeh. >Changing the Serpents and Harpooners helps this area as well.
Other fixes: >Moved the Yellow King. Now it is further out of the harbor, so it will not overlap with any of the popular "dock" mods. >Reduced The Hunter's idle chatter frequency, so he won't comment so much. >Reworked monster scaling so their hitboxes should be a little friendlier. >Added a mini-boss Moon Beast creature called Mormo on the Black Galleys. >Added a few workarounds when you go talk to Delmus, in case he gets lost or killed (but he shouldn't because he's protected.) Worst case scenario you can just kill the Ruddy Man on your own, or just go straight to Marsh's warehouse and skip that section completely. >Added various letters and notes to add some more clues. >Completely reworked Skar to bring him more in line with the Emperor Crab added by the Creation Club. This version is much more impressive. Also added a living Emperor Crab that is prowling around in the ocean around Solstheim. >Fixed the Necronomicon so that you can actually pick it up in Innsmouth. >Added an option to "wear" the Necronomicon, either on your belt or hold in your hand (as a ring.) This will grant some major magic buffs. The wearable versions get added when you pick up the book. (Technically you can wear both options at the same time, which doesn't really make sense but I wasn't going to waste time to try to stop that.) >Added some little creepy mini versions of shoggoths. >Tweaked the Leng portion so that you can return through the Vale of Pnoth into the cemetery, and then travel back to the Arcanaeum, and it will still work. >Tweaked the quest scripting so things should go a little more smoothly.
I'm sure there are a number of other little tweaks and edits that I'm not remembering. All in all I think I have made some massive improvements. I was able to play through the entire quest start to finish without any major issues, and my rig isn't exactly top of the line. I do still occasionally get a crash in the final battle if I let things drag on too long, but I think that's just vanilla Skyrim issues. I hope this makes things work better for everyone. As always, let me know if you run into issues! As far as updating mid-game goes, this DOES tweak a number of scripts, including quest fragments, so it is probably best if you do a clean install.
This is just a quick hotfix to remove the duplicate scripts from Here There Be Monsters. This does NOT fix all the issues in Pyandonea; I am still working on that. This will keep this mod from messing up the scripting in the first mod.
Did a few more tweaks to try and reduce crashes in Pyandonea. I noticed that I had made a custom "bow" and ammo for the Harpooner Beetles. I changed that back to the default version; they are now functionally just retextured Dwemer Ballistae. That may have been causing issues. I also re-produced all of the Navmeshes in the Pyandonea worldspace. I also had issues with the Sea Serpents spawning a hundred feet in the air; that may have been causing crashes. I think I fixed them so they spawn a little below the ground instead. I also fixed some tears and sharp edges in the landscape; that might help. I was able to walk from the palace all the way to Baga without crashing, so it seems to have done something! I also removed some of the effects on Cthulhu's attacks to see if that reduces crashing while fighting him. Let me know if you still have issues.
So it seems like a lot of people have been having issues in areas where the Sea Elves are involved. I thought one possible cause could be the Harpooner Beetles, but really they are just retextured Ballistas so I can't imagine that was the issue. They DID have an alpha map to remove some of the mechanical parts, so I removed that to see if it would help. The other issue is that the Weresharks were wigging out like crazy, which I'm sure caused some issues. I apparently had "allow ragdoll collision" checked in the Race profile, which was causing the crazy physics. That has been fixed. Not sure if this will alleviate all of the issues, but it should help at least. Let me know if it helps.
Confused new-to-modded-skyrim-on-computer person here. Hope you can clarify things for me On the description page it says let this mod overwrite the original Here There Be Monsters mod, but in another instance on the description page it says DON'T let it overwerite. Which is it then? I came up with a pen and paper character for modern Cthulu around last christmas and she developed to something more and unique to me and I plan to play as her in a big modded Skyrim adventure, so this mod with it's Cthulu theme seems like the perfect cherry on top of that whole experience and I don't want to miss it from my LO.
The only overlap should be a few generic scripts (and maybe a few models or something) so yes, install Here There Be Monsters first; then install Call of Cthulhu and if it asks to overwrite, click yes.
There were some issues with extra scripts but I believe I fixed all of that.
I'm glad to see this thing is still being worked on, love HP Lovecraft and the Cthulhu mythos. Only thing is, the deleted navmesh issue makes it incompatible with Dyndolod. I'm not well versed in SSEedit enough to attempt to fix it myself, but a solution I've seen on the web is re-adding the deleted meshes and using a script to setting them to the floor of the Z-axis so they don't get in the way of anything. Would an alternate version with that be feasible? Again, inexperienced with modding, I'm just throwing an idea out here.
I really Appreciate you still working on this. You said not to update the mod, but if I hadn't installed it in the first place is it safe to add? Or do I need to start a new game?
You should be good to install on a current save; that shouldn't mess anything up. Just make sure you back up your save before installing, because you never know!
I'm ok with recieving spoilers for this, but what's up with Nyarlethotep? Just some random eldritch Redguard on a merchant float, who'll be my follower from the get-go, and even before I even met him in-game, he turned up to my wedding.
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This is a pretty extensive overhaul that should fix a number of issues. I still haven't tackled the deleted navmeshes, but this should still make things significantly more stable.
Completely reworked Pyandonea in a number of ways:
>Replaced all Harpooner beetles with an entirely new model (using Skinwalker 21's "Shalks") so they use frostbit spider animation.
>Changed the serpents back to the old Horker-rigged version. The dragon version was causing huge issues. I also love the way the serpents waddle around on land but then swim realistically in water. I did remove their flippers, so they at least sort of look serpentine.
>Removed all of the old palm trees that came from Moonpath to Elswehr. These models were extrememly un-optimized, and very large, meaning they ate up a huge amount of memory. I switched to a more conventional palm tree that is much more system-friendly.
>Went through and removed a TON of NPCs. There was just way too much going on in the worldspace.
>Removed all of Mihail's wasps except for the one nest on Dagaan's Road. They were way too intensive.
>I also had a huge amount of dragonfly and salmon spawners around the village, pretty sure those were causing big issues.
>Removed the "snow" shader effect on Orgnum's Palace (which was made using the Sovngarde assets.) Not sure how much that helped, but it should at least look better.
>I reworked all of the Maormer assets to make them less saturated; they were a little too brightly colored.
>I also reworked all the Maormer items to require new materials, Salt Steel and Sea Glass. Salt Steel is just a special form of ingot created using (you guessed it!) salt. Sea Glass can be found in deposits along the coast underwater.
>Added three different crossbow ammo types for the Maormer: regular salt steel arrows, the original electrified arrows, and Harpooner Beetle barbs that can be looted from dead beetles.
>Added two additional rooms in Orgnum's Palace. One is just a bedroom for King Orgnum, and the other is a forge/workshop area.
>Reworked and cleaned up the navmeshes so things should be a little smoother.
Reworked the Final Battle in Rlyeh:
>Removed all of the "Apocrypha Tentacle" spawners on the boats. Apparently those trigger boxes firing every time an NPC walked through them was killing my memory.
>Removed a ton of NPCs. There was just way to much happening out there.
>Removed a bunch of unusable spells from Cthulhu and other monsters. I think at least one reason for the CTDs is when an NPC tries to use a spell it physically can't.
>Reworked the Navmeshes around the whole battle.
>Reworked a lot of Navmeshes in the city of Rlyeh.
>Changing the Serpents and Harpooners helps this area as well.
Other fixes:
>Moved the Yellow King. Now it is further out of the harbor, so it will not overlap with any of the popular "dock" mods.
>Reduced The Hunter's idle chatter frequency, so he won't comment so much.
>Reworked monster scaling so their hitboxes should be a little friendlier.
>Added a mini-boss Moon Beast creature called Mormo on the Black Galleys.
>Added a few workarounds when you go talk to Delmus, in case he gets lost or killed (but he shouldn't because he's protected.) Worst case scenario you can just kill the Ruddy Man on your own, or just go straight to Marsh's warehouse and skip that section completely.
>Added various letters and notes to add some more clues.
>Completely reworked Skar to bring him more in line with the Emperor Crab added by the Creation Club. This version is much more impressive. Also added a living Emperor Crab that is prowling around in the ocean around Solstheim.
>Fixed the Necronomicon so that you can actually pick it up in Innsmouth.
>Added an option to "wear" the Necronomicon, either on your belt or hold in your hand (as a ring.) This will grant some major magic buffs. The wearable versions get added when you pick up the book. (Technically you can wear both options at the same time, which doesn't really make sense but I wasn't going to waste time to try to stop that.)
>Added some little creepy mini versions of shoggoths.
>Tweaked the Leng portion so that you can return through the Vale of Pnoth into the cemetery, and then travel back to the Arcanaeum, and it will still work.
>Tweaked the quest scripting so things should go a little more smoothly.
I'm sure there are a number of other little tweaks and edits that I'm not remembering. All in all I think I have made some massive improvements. I was able to play through the entire quest start to finish without any major issues, and my rig isn't exactly top of the line. I do still occasionally get a crash in the final battle if I let things drag on too long, but I think that's just vanilla Skyrim issues. I hope this makes things work better for everyone. As always, let me know if you run into issues!
As far as updating mid-game goes, this DOES tweak a number of scripts, including quest fragments, so it is probably best if you do a clean install.
This is just a quick hotfix to remove the duplicate scripts from Here There Be Monsters. This does NOT fix all the issues in Pyandonea; I am still working on that. This will keep this mod from messing up the scripting in the first mod.
Did a few more tweaks to try and reduce crashes in Pyandonea. I noticed that I had made a custom "bow" and ammo for the Harpooner Beetles. I changed that back to the default version; they are now functionally just retextured Dwemer Ballistae. That may have been causing issues. I also re-produced all of the Navmeshes in the Pyandonea worldspace. I also had issues with the Sea Serpents spawning a hundred feet in the air; that may have been causing crashes. I think I fixed them so they spawn a little below the ground instead. I also fixed some tears and sharp edges in the landscape; that might help. I was able to walk from the palace all the way to Baga without crashing, so it seems to have done something! I also removed some of the effects on Cthulhu's attacks to see if that reduces crashing while fighting him. Let me know if you still have issues.
So it seems like a lot of people have been having issues in areas where the Sea Elves are involved. I thought one possible cause could be the Harpooner Beetles, but really they are just retextured Ballistas so I can't imagine that was the issue. They DID have an alpha map to remove some of the mechanical parts, so I removed that to see if it would help. The other issue is that the Weresharks were wigging out like crazy, which I'm sure caused some issues. I apparently had "allow ragdoll collision" checked in the Race profile, which was causing the crazy physics. That has been fixed. Not sure if this will alleviate all of the issues, but it should help at least. Let me know if it helps.
Alright, a few more important updates. Took me a minute to get it figured out:
>Makes Sea Serpents "protected" so that they will not sky spawn and die.
>Figured out why Leng was crashing; turns out SE really didn't like rendering entire crates of rubies at one time.
>Fixed FaceGen data so that the Hunter will no longer have Dark Face.
On the description page it says let this mod overwrite the original Here There Be Monsters mod, but in another instance on the description page it says DON'T let it overwerite. Which is it then?
I came up with a pen and paper character for modern Cthulu around last christmas and she developed to something more and unique to me and I plan to play as her in a big modded Skyrim adventure, so this mod with it's Cthulu theme seems like the perfect cherry on top of that whole experience and I don't want to miss it from my LO.
Thanks in advance!
There were some issues with extra scripts but I believe I fixed all of that.
Thanks for clarification! Can't wait to start my Cthulu adventure!
heads up!
I'm not well versed in SSEedit enough to attempt to fix it myself, but a solution I've seen on the web is re-adding the deleted meshes and using a script to setting them to the floor of the Z-axis so they don't get in the way of anything. Would an alternate version with that be feasible? Again, inexperienced with modding, I'm just throwing an idea out here.