LE College of Winterhold Questline Edit

[IronDusk33]

I'm sure that everyone knows that the College of Winterhold questline is incredibly short, so I think its appropriate to edit it slightly to make it so you have to get to a certain level before advancing.

 

I do know of some mods that add the requirement of being level 25 in one school of magic before joining the college, so that bit is taken care of.

 

Two other points seem easy enough to edit for someone with more Creation Kit quest experience than me to do properly.

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Firstly simply editing the last stage of MG01 (the ward class quest) and the WardPostScene so that MG02 isn't initiated and Tolfdir's dialogue of it doesn't play, ie you aren't sent directly to Saarthal straight away. The dialogue voice files actually line up nicely, so that Tolfdir can say his line:

 

"I'd like you all to continue practicing with wards, please."

 

and cut it right there, with no odd stops. The other dialogue can be used later. In the meantime you have to level up your magic skills until one reaches level 50, or until you get an adept level perk, and possibly help out the other members of the college. After you reach the quest count requirement and/or skill level requirement, either the player can talk to Tolfdir, or a scene can be used to make Tolfdir talk with the player to start MG02.

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Another point is the point between returning the books to Ugor, and talking with Quaranir, the psijic in quest MG04. Again the dialogue files line up nicely to be cut at a specific point. After Tolfdir says:

 

"Arch-Mage Aren is already hard at work, and hopefully we'll have more information soon."

 

Stop the scene and cut out Ancano interrupting. Since this is in the middle of a quest, an additional stage could be made, where the player has to reach Expert level with one of their magic abilities and possibly do more college quests. After the requirement is met, the quest can advance via scripts, and an additional scene can be created with Ancano using the dialogue that is already in MG04. The quest will resume like in vanilla Skyrim, and the rest of the College Quest line advances at its normal place.

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I know that many mod authors should be able to do this, I think I'm almost capable of doing it, but I have no experience with CK quests. So I'm asking the mod community to attempt this to make my personal favorite quest line better and longer.

[cdcooley]

Those are great ideas. I've already tried that first part, but there are some other odd side-effects. The other students don't initiate their mini-quests until you start the Saarthal quest but then hound you about helping them while walking into Saarthal! So a few other tweaks seem to be needed, but it's a start.

[IronDusk33]

Alright then, please tell me when you make progress.

[cdcooley]

An initial version is ready as Not So Fast - Mage Guild. Like my other mod, it uses time-based delays, but you can choose a delay of -1 to put the quest on hold indefinitely. Then change it to 0 or higher later to continue. (Personally I like that because I get to decide exactly when I feel it's time to advance the story.)

[IronDusk33]

Awesome! I already completed the mage guild quest in my current play-through, but next time around I will definitely use it!