Mod: Vampire Hunting - Order of the Virtuous Blood, Version 3.2 Game: TES IV: Oblivion Requires: Shivering Isles Authors: David Brasher, Daniel da Rosa, Nomadimp, Cleitanious Release Date: 7/14/17 ************************************************************************ CONTENTS ************************************************************************ 1. Information on the Mod 2. Installation 3. Version History 4. Conflicts, Known Issues, and Troubleshooting 5. Copy Status and Credits ************************************************************************ 1. INFORMATION ON THE MOD ************************************************************************ This mod expands the Order of the Virtuous Blood by adding 28 additional quests which become available after you have beaten the vanilla Order of the Virtuous Blood side-quest. This mod is the result of merging "Vampire Hunting - Order of the Virtuous Blood", "Kendrel - The Vampire Huntress", "OVBE - Order of the Virtuous Blood Expanded," and "Caldera Update." Three mods about the Order of the Virtuous Blood and a Morrowind mod where some of the action is going to take place after mod construction is finished. It has been revised to make it compatible with "Bloodlines." khamuy made a patch to make it compatible with "StarX Vanilla Vampires Revised." There are new NPCs, playable Ordinator armor, wooden stake weapons, additional dialog, a system to sell vampire dust in large quantities more rapidly, more books, and lots more vampires in the world. Cyrodiil is suffering from a plague of vampirism. With the Oblivion crisis, the attentions of the authorities have been focused elsewhere, and things are starting to get badly out of hand. You may encounter vampires at night on isolated country roads, and even walking the streets of the cities. There are customized boss-level vampires the quests will lead you to seek out and destroy. Vampire hunting is not without its risks. It really isn't safe to get infected with porphyric hemophilia over and over. You must have a pure heart and a steadfast resolve if you are to avoid turning into one of the things you are fighting so hard against. If the work does not destroy your body, it still might destroy your mind and your soul. But if nobody is willing to take the risks and make the sacrifices, things may become very bad for Cyrodiil indeed. This mod provides an amazing amount of play-time. The last full play-test logged 45 hours of in-game time on a brand new character who fast traveled a lot and sometimes ran past enemies rather than fighting in order to quickly reach the quest targets. To start the vanilla quest "Order of the Virtuous Blood," which you must complete before playing the mod, you must achieve a fame rating of five (5), go to the Imperial City Temple District, and talk to Ralsa Norvalo. The new quests in this mod are what come after the vanilla quest. After the vanilla Oblivion side quest, talk to Roland Jenseric to find out about the new quests. If you have already completed the "Order of the Virtuous Blood" quest at the point when you activate the mod, you just need to go to the headquarters of the Order of the Virtuous Blood in Seridur's Basement and talk to Roland Jenseric. Roland keeps a schedule, and is only there during certain hours. So if you don't see him, you might have to wait for him. To start the quest with Kendrel the Vampire Huntress you must not be a vampire, must be level 10 or higher, must have completed the 'Order of Virtuous Blood' quest, and must have joined the Order at its end. The quest will kick in after about 10 days have passed. In this quest, the player receives a letter from the Order of Virtuous Blood written by Gilen Norvalo, in which he asks for help again. He says that a famous vampire hunter came from Morrowind and contacted them by way of his daughter, telling them that he discovered that a cult of vampires, related to the Quarra Bloodline, is reuniting with its leader, a powerful and cruel vampire which once threatened the existence of the entire Imperial City. The vampire hunter's daughter said that the pack of vampires he was tracking brought him to Cyrodiil, but not knowing the land, he eventually lost their trail and needed help. Since Gilen, Grey-throat, and Jenseric are too weak to fight vampires themselves, Gilen decided to send the player a letter, asking for him to deal with this situation. The vampire hunter's daughter is waiting for the player at the Tiber Septim Hotel. This quest is a humble but honest homage to Joss Whedon's iconic TV series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." It is an effort to create a lore-friendly story and pay tribute to the TV show. The intent was to create an atmosphere that could be related to the series in its sense of humor, flavor, and style. To start the OVBE quests, you must complete the vanilla "Order of the Virtuous Blood" quest, sell ten units of vampire dust to Roland, wait one day, and then go visit both Roland and Gilen in the headquarters of the Order. To start the six newest Vampire Hunting - Order of the Virtuous Blood quests, talk to Roland after you have recruited four people in the "Happy Hunting" quests. He will tell you who you need to talk to in order to receive the first of the quests in this new series. If you update to this new version from an old one, you can go do these quests anytime after you have recruited four people in the "Happy Hunting" quests, even if you have beaten all the quests in the old version of the mod. This mod uses vanilla voiced dialog as well as custom silent lip-synced dialog. This mod uses a lot of minimally modded vanilla locations across Cyrodiil. The adventures will take you many places all over the map. There are also two Morrowind worldspaces included. Instructions on where to look for the vampires can be rather vague. After all, the vampires avoid being seen and don't want to be found. So you may have to visit several dungeons before you find the right one. The mod was designed this way on purpose. There will not always be a quest marker on your compass bar leading you around like a puppy on a leash. If you really can't find the right dungeon or are in a big hurry, you can refer to the spoiler document which is included with the download. The mod adds a player-owned non-respawning chest to the headquarters of the Order of the Virtuous blood. You will be visiting the headquarters at the beginning and end of each quest, so it is handy to have a place to stow your stuff. The containers in Vando Manor do not respawn and are safe to store your belongings in. This mod is compatible with Bloodlines http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14601 You will need the patch available at the download point of this mod. The vampires have been set to be compatible with OOO. Attempts have been made to make the Cheydinhal Mage Guild compatible with OOO. ************************************************************************ 2. Installation ************************************************************************ Extract (decompress) the .esp file and textures and sounds to your Oblivion directory, the default is: C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\ Mark the box next to the "Order of the Virtuous Blood" plugin in your mod manager. Alternately, extract someplace else. Then move the esp. to Oblivion\Data\, and the Meshes, Textures, and Sound folders there also. Merge the new folder with the old. Often you can simply drop the "Data" file into the "Oblivion" folder Make sure the files go into the proper directories they were in when you downloaded the mod. ************************************************************************ 3. Version History ************************************************************************ V 3.2 7/14/17 Fix to make sure conversation with the Night Lord works, text polishing, fixed pathing in one of the cells added by the mod. V 3.1 6/24/17 CarlosS4444's revision. Optimization work with "No Low Level Processing" flags on NPCs. Fix for "Ugly Junkies" quest not advancing. V 3.0 11/3/11 Attempted bugfix with Dark Brotherhood and Chorrol Chapel Undercroft door. V 2.9 9/9/11 Redid Bloodlines compatibility work. Patch now required for Bloodlines users. V 2.8 9/1/11 Fixed bug with disappearing non-respawning player-owned barrel in Cheydinhal House. V 2.7 8/26/11 Moved some vampires from an unplayable location. Made it so game will autosave right before a crash point of indeterminate cause that perhaps 1 in 200 computers have. Text polishing. Fixed a bug in one branch of the chapterhouse quests that makes it so the final quest won't show as completed. V 2.6 3/13/11 Fixed guards that are in your party at Wenyandawik so they won't arrest you for accidental friendly blows. V 2.5 3/5/11 Fixed vampires in Underpall Cave that were appearing prematurely. Adjusted vampire hunters at Wenyandawik so they won't arrive too early. Adjusted quest completion requirement on three new quests to fail soft and accept 70% completion if some of the vampires fail to appear. Text polishing. Pitched battle AI fine-tuning. V 2.4 3/5/11 Scripting to prevent Raecius from going missing for better compatibility with other mods. Deadwood removed from any script that contained it. V 2.3 3/4/11 Attempt at editing Raecius' AI for better compatibility with other mods so that he won't go missing. Text polishing. V 2.2 2/27/11 Fixes to Vando Manor exterior. Fixed bug with Kendrel not disabling after her part is played. V 2.1 2/2/11 More modcleaning for the sake of gamers who use TES4Edit and Wrye Bash. A few roaming vampires are now present after mod is beaten. Added three new quests. V 2.0 1/24/11 Fixed bug with Gilen's note. Courier scripts revised. More mod-cleaning. Various small bugfixes. Changed Kendrel quest timing. More wood stakes. Various small bugfixes. Added three new quests. V 1.9.5 8/28/10 Fixed bug with Kendrel teleporting. More dialog. Removed dead code related to OVBE Alpha merge. Various small bugfixes. Activated, debugged, and enhanced OVBE Alpha Cheydinhal and Leyawiin chapterhouse quests. V 1.9.4 8/22/10 Fixed broken OVBE Raecius Quest. Various bugfixes and improvements, mainly to OBVE section of the mod. V 1.9.3 8/21/10 Fix for final Roland quest which was broken. Dialog and proofreading fixes. More vendors. Reworking and polishing of a couple of OVBE quests. V 1.9.2 8/18/10 Distant LOD added to Caldera worldspace. Various bugfixes. Attempt to solve another OOO conflict. Problems related to the merge with "Vampire Hunting - More Vampires! Add-On" addressed. V 1.9.1 8/10/10 Second Kendrel quest added, Roland's quests revised, more debugging, more roaming vampires. More silent dialog. V 1.9 7/11/10 "OVBE - Order of the Virtuous Blood Expanded" and "Caldera Update" merged in. V 1.8.1 6/26/10 Fixed landscape tear conflict with Kvatch Rebuilt. V 1.8 5/12/10 Fixed dialog bug with Roland and Vampire Dust. V 1.7 4/20/10 Fixed a defect you could possibly exploit to get too much treasure from vampire corpses. The third and perhaps successful attempt at compatibility with "Bloodlines." V 1.6 4/17/10 Another and harder try at complete compatibility with "Bloodlines." V 1.5 4/9/10 Borders automatically removed, more modcleaning, made compatible with "Bloodlines." V 1.4 4/6/10 Fixed bug where looting the corpse of a vampire horse could possibly freeze the game. V 1.3 3/30/10 "Kendrel the Vampire Huntress" debugged and merged into this mod. Made dialog for "Between the Hammer and Anvil" quest explain what to do better. Tightened sloppiness in all quest dialog. V 1.2 3/22/10 Fixed bug where one vampire was appearing too early. V 1.1 3/21/10 Bug fixes for "Between the Hammer and Anvil" quest. V 1.0 3/19/10 Initial Release. ************************************************************************ 4. Conflicts, Known Issues, and Troubleshooting ************************************************************************ There are certain computers or mod combinations which have crashes when playing the quest "Celebrity of Madness" a quest involving recruiting new members to the Order of the Virtuous Blood. These crashes have never once been experienced in play-testing. No gamer has ever been able to diagnose why their computer has this problem while 99.5% of other computers do not. There are multiple reports of this problem, but the reports are very few compared to the download count on this mod. Almost no people ever have this problem, but when they do it is very unpleasant. So since the problem cannot be duplicated on two different playtesting computers and no one else who has the problem can diagnose it, it cannot be fixed at this time. An autosave point has been added to the game before the crash point, and the Stage result scripts have been altered to make console codes to fix glitched games work better. If your game crashes when an arena fan gets killed and the other run away, then use this console code instead of talking to the fans: SetStage OVBE03 73 If this quest glitches at some other point, use this console code to complete it and go on to the next quest: SetStage OVBE03 200 This mod requires Shivering Isles. Oblivion may not work if you do not have Shivering Isles installed. One of my most recent play-tests took 45 labor hours, but typographical text errors are still being found and more polishing is still being done. Part of the issues stem from merging what amounts to five mods and trying to be compatible with several others. This mod is still being polished. Needs more play-testing, proofreading, and tuning. Some parts of the mod are very old and highly-polished, but things have been revised and new content has been created. New content means new bugs. There is always one more bug hiding somewhere. Complete portions of the mod: Vampire Hunting - 14 quests Kendrel The Vampire Huntress - Walking in the Shoes quest Kendrel The Vampire Huntress - Letters from the Huntress quest OVBE Beta - 4 quests OVBE Alpha - Leyawiin and Cheydinhal Chapter quests Caldera Update - 3 quests, 8 dungeons Vampire Hunting, New Quests - 6 quests Incomplete portions of the mod: One new Kendrel quest (Work suspended at this time.) Caldera Update - 2 new locations to be added. (Work suspended at this time.) Deleted portions of the mod not to be completed: OVBE Alpha - Skingrad and Chorrol Chapter quests (They were nowhere near complete.) Compatibility: This mod conflicts with "StarX Vanilla Vampires Revised" http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16417 http://www.invision.tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/download/533-starx-vanilla-vampires-revised/ But a patch was made by khamuy to resolve the conflict: StarX Vanilla Vampires Revised meets Vampire hunting OVB http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=32892 This mod conflicts with "Lera and Pizz Vampire Hunter" - armor and sword mod @ http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15533 which puts a chest in the same location this mod puts a chest. Changing load order could determine whether you have a chest with vampire hunter armor and sword from that mod or whether you have a player-owned non-respawning storage chest from this mod. "Better Cities" conflicted with the Raecius recruitment quest, but that issue is hopefully fixed in version 2_4 or higher of this mod. Old versions of "Duke Patricks Nosferatu Class Vampires" conflict and cause CTDs, but the problem is said to be fixed in the latest version of that mod. There has been a report that there is a mod conflict which makes it so the parchment, inkwells, and quills can not be made to work in the Kendrel quest "Letters from the Huntress." The cause of this problem and possible solutions for this mod conflict are being studied. This mod conflicts with Hentaimania. That other mod locks some of the Ayleid ruins containing vampires and adds Hentaimania characters to them. Then the vampires and Hentaimania characters fight each other. This mod may conflict with Hentaimania 2. It may break the Celebrity of Madness quest by preventing the Arena gate from opening. This mod has a minor conflict with ArenaAlive24Hr. The portion of the Celebrity of Madness quest where you talk to Owen will not work right if you do not talk to him during the regular business hours (9:00 AM to 9:00 PM.) Some people won't like what this mod does. They can disable it and uninstall it. Game balance and the Kendrel the Vampire Huntress quest: The custom vampire NPCs have modified stats and abilities, but the vampirism script has not been changed. If you use vampirism mods, your experience may change. The Kendrel portion of the mod was tested with vanilla Oblivion, and with Scorn's and LG's vampiric mods. The first time it was balanced, LAME and Race Re-balancer Project (or something, from the same creator of LAME and Integration) were used. The battles were awesome, but when vanilla Oblivion was used, it was impossible. Now, hopefully it is balanced right. The wearable Ordinator Armor does not have unique ground models and is using Dwarven armor ground models. In the Morrowind portions of the mod, efforts were made to copy lots of details from Morrowind. As would be expected, many things did not end up looking quite like the original. There are some minor lore discrepancies and chronological anomalies. Oblivion is not Morrowind, and the models, scripts, and hardcoding are different. So things will look and work differently. If you don't like it, you can go play Morrowind. Amount of time spent play-testing has thus far not been adequate. IF ANYONE DETECTS A MAJOR BUG WHICH MAKES THE MOD UNPLAYABLE, PLEASE SEND DAVID BRASHER A PERSONAL MESSAGE ON TES NEXUS RIGHT AWAY. HOPEFULLY HE WILL BE ABLE TO FIX IT AND RELEASE AN IMPROVED VERSION OF THIS MOD. ************************************************************************ 5. Copy Status and Credits ************************************************************************ Credits: Bethesda for making the game in an open format anyone can mod. Daniel da Rosa for "Kendrel the Vampire Huntress, Pilot Episode -Walking in The Shoes." David Brasher for "Vampire Hunting - Order of the Virtuous Blood." Nomadimp for "OVBE - Order of the Virtuous Blood Expanded." Cleitanious for "Caldera" Duke Patrick for wooden stakes. The makers of Visual Pack XT for the daedric textures used. Gizmodian for the Sotha Dagger model & Texture. Treaka for play-testing. Hel_Borne for the Chitin Dagger Sangre for the Silver Akaviri Sword Sarac for the BW Armor CarlosS4444 for bugfix revision 3_1 Copy Status: The portion of the mod made by David Brasher is public domain and may be used if his name is included in your credits and he is notified via TES Nexus as a courtesy. For the other parts, permission from Daniel da Rosa, Nomadimp, or Cleitaneous must be obtained. If you have questions on who did what part, feel free to contact David Brasher on TES Nexus. ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************ ************************************************************************