AnArcticAnt

So here's an idea I've been pondering for some time now, that I'm hoping someone might be interested in tackling. The concept (if not the execution), is very simple: I'm sure we're all more or less aware of the timescale in Skyrim; for every real minute that passes playing the game, twenty minutes pass according to the in-game clock. This is generally fair and reasonable, with one exception that's started bothering me more and more recently, namely during dialogue. If in-game time passes twenty times as quickly, that means in-game dialogues take twenty times as long as they should, since characters (obviously) speak in real-time. This is pretty crazy when you think about it, how much time is wasted just talking to NPCs?? One minute really isn't a lot of words, and yet twenty minutes will have passed by the time you're done: for longer conversations (certain quests, or mods: Interesting NPCs comes to mind) have very long conversations and dialogues - don't know about anyone else, but for me it's not unusual to run into an NPC and just exhausting all dialogue options can take all (Skyrim's) night! This kind of wrecks immersion for me, and users of needs mods who need sleep can easily find themselves completely thrown off because a conversation that took less than ten minutes of real time kept going until sunrise! So, what I'm asking for is a mod that safely and reliably cuts timescale from 1:20 to 1:1 as you enter dialogue, and then back to the standard 1:20 as you exit it. Can it be done? Would anyone know how? Would anyone please, please, please be a darling and make something like this, if at all possible? You would be my hero(ine), and doubtless other peoples' hero(ine) as well! Thanks on beforehand. (PS. Yes, I realise that I probably could open the console and use "set timescale to <qty>" if I wanted it that badly, but how annoying wouldn't that be?!)

I read about them on UESP (on my phone, so I don't have to close the game) and if I'm intrigued by something, I go to see it in person...which, being that there are only 7 different planes (not counting quest-specific ones) means you find everything there is to find pretty quickly, so I can usually get on with it without feeling a sting of regret over missing out.

http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/914196-cant-seem-to-download-official-dlc/ Sorry to break it to you.

Why not simply do "setOwnership" through the console?

For just this plugin, Infamy doesn't do anything good, but if you have The Vile Lair DLC, your Infamy must exceed your Fame to use the Shrine to Sithis, and the higher your Infamy the better the blessing, though except for the one granted at 90+ Infamy it's really not all that useful, and its use is equal to Altars of the Nine in regards to restoration of attributes anyway. But nevermind that, I suppose... If we keep it to just vanilla and KotN, high Infamy can lower the disposition a lot of people have towards you - the higher their Responsibility (NPC-only attribute), the more your Infamy will decrease their disposition towards you. However, characters with a low enough Responsibility (mostly thieves/fences and the like) will generally like you more the higher your Infamy is (they don't like you less for being famous.) Their Disposition won't change by more than 20 by either Fame or Infamy though, so it's not really that important. But no, besides a minor Disposition modifier for some people where Disposition won't matter in the first place, the only reason to gain Infamy is really for roleplay purposes, and if those mattered here you wouldn't be doing the KotN storyline, so just go ahead and do the Pilgrimage.

As per my character, it's important to be nice to everyone when you're a pillar of the community and also secretly the most deadly assassin in Cyrodiil; of course, also important is to hit on people, as often as you can, as long as you have a good quip. "It's...it's you! The hero of Kvatch! This is truly an honour!" Me: "Always nice to meet a fan." "You have the eyes of a trained marksman." "And you have the eyes of a natural dreamboat..." "How about mixing up some potions? You look like quite the alchemist." "How about mixing up something with you and me, baby?" "You have my ear, citizen." "I'd rather have something else. *wink*" or "And such a pretty one, too! Want something of mine in return?" This is all of course very amusing to me. Perhaps because I'm a male Khajiit.

I know that Living Economy has an additional .esp to make this change...I don't use it myself, because I don't care about the merchants' yapping, but it's sitting right there in my mod list. Try that?

Oh, I fully realise you're not naive ;-) I can definitely see why not everyone would appreciate it, I think I just have a low threshold for quality because I've learned that if you have a choice, to some degree, liking it is easier, which is why my opinion on a lot of things is "it sucks because of so and so, but in the end I like it because I can". It's an attitude that makes you pretty tolerant...makes you easy to please, too. Then again, I did originally state that I'd prefer a proper Scot, so I guess I'm talking out of my rear end with a confused opinion that's neither here nor there, because I agree with pretty much everyone, smiling broadly as I realise what an idiot I sound like. :D

I made an Orc creatively named "Impslayer"...unfortunately, the computer I used it on was so terribly weak I was surprised it managed the install at all, and I couldn't manage an acceptable FPS unless I moved the viewing distance down to the minimum. I pretty much ran around in the fog blind as a bat, stumbled into some water, swam across, ran around until I found Roland Jenseric's cabin, and...I can't remember after that. Probably waited until I got a better computer.

I agree that "too Scottish" is a rather narrow-minded thing to say, but I think it was at least trying to go for something less bigoted and more factual; a lot of accents can be difficult to understand - something I'm sure you can agree with, Hickory. Ans here's the thing: Sheogorath is in all likelihood meant to be a humourous character, and the fake, pseudo-Scottish sounding voice is probably at least as good a fit for a joke as any true Scottish voice actor...I have no doubt that Bethesda were probably being cheap by reusing Wes Johnston, which doesn't necessarily justify anything but at least explains it. Not to mention, while it's quite possible that using a real Scottish person would have been better, I'd say it's pretty clear that a large part of the market wouldn't even realise the difference if you didn't tell them...or, Bethesda themselves didn't realise since no one told them. :P

By "senior members", Striker, all I meant was people with more experience than myself, who probably would have very good ideas for explaining just how wrong I was on whatever I said. :P "Brave guy, you are. Thanks for the link but the rest you can shove." well...I think we all see where this is going, if not already then certainly by now. Thinking that I was arguing for the sake of arguing, more so. I'm done! (This is the part where we have an on-going battle to have the last word even though we both claim to be done, and even though the topic is exhausted, right?)

If it happened the first time you tried to enter the cell(s) in question after installing a particular mod, and you remember which one, start off with deactivating that one and see if the issue persists. If not...you're simply gonna have to deactivate and reactivate mods one by one until you find the culprit. First you deactivate one that seems likely, see what happens. If that doesn't work, cross it off the list (literally, don't remove or uninstall it or anything, just get a list of all your mods and eliminate suspects one by one), rinse and repeat. Personally, I'd suggest starting with Open/Better Cities, which reasonably seem like logical culprits. You might have some work to do...

"Why the hell are you so upset, anyway?" Pots, kettles...anyway, perhaps more important than know-how if you're going to install mods, any mods, is patience and a good attitude (not saying anyone involved here lacks either), and the first thing to understand is that it's going to take a lot of reading to get what you want done. Even things that use automated .exe-installers will probably need you to read a lot, and if you really want BBB for a character you're probably mostly just going to see the backside of most of the time anyway, I suggest you take a deep breath before you do anything else. Then, you get the Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM), (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/2097, there, I even linked to it for you) and you make sure to actually read the entire "Description" page. For this one, you're lucky, it's a short one, doesn't matter, you read all of it anyway, no matter how long it is, at least until you feel like you know what's worth knowing and what isn't super-essential knowledge). There are other mod managers, but go with this one for now. When you're done reading that, you again read everything that seems like it might have even the tiniest relevance on the downloads tab. Ultimately, you'll figure out what you want, not because I'm a douchebag who assumes you know as much as the rest of us (which, in my case, isn't a lot) I'll give you another freebie: it's the "full installer" version (this is likely to be one of those things that feel incredibly obvious when you read it.) You read all the on-screen instructions, and soon you'll have a fully functional mod manager excellently suited to beginners, most of the functions of which you can actually ignore. Did that seem like a needlessly arduous process for something pointless, small and trivial? If not, keep doing it with at first simpler and then more and more advanced mods until it does. Congratulations, you may just have learned the first lesson of enjoying mods, perhaps at least as much an art as making them. If you expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter where you click a button or two and then enjoy a flawless game, then I honestly encourage you to leave, because modding isn't easy. It wasn't easy to any of us at first, and if it seems like it is, then it's because we have experience, something we've built up, not uncommonly on a pile of ruined savegames and crushed expectations. If you read a lot, and have a lot of patience, and the right attitude, you might eventually have enough know-how to find modding a relatively easy process. If not, there's nothing for you to gain here, I'm afraid. Skeletons and animations in particular are something I find involve a lot of trouble getting to work, which is one reason I don't really use them personally. They're also nothing a beginner should fiddle with, unless they're willing to read a lot and fail over and over to make it work. I realise that the community might seem unhelpful or condescending at first, but there's a very simple reason for that - we all know our basics, and those who didn't bother learning those basics ended up leaving like you might want to. The community does its best to help, but (and if the next part sounds callous, cynical, selfish and denigrating, that's a good indicator of whether your attitude is the one needed for mods or not) if you're not willing to learn, don't bother with mods. Now, all the more senior members may feel free to debase everything I just said on a philosophical, psychological, or technical plane. I just hope I managed to make a potential modder realise what modding requires from its participants.

I agree on the lines made for SI, I guess they had more fun doing those (or maybe it just suited them better?) ;-) They should have got a real Scottish voice actor for Sheogorath instead of telling the Imperial guy to just imitate one, I think, because it feels like the accent wavers at times...he's not bad at it, it just feels like he forgets to stay in character at times. Haskill though...man, Haskill, just incredible performance there, you should summon him as often as possible just so you can get to hear every single line he says, because they're all wonderful.

Just to make sure we're clear...the options you're looking at are either the way you fall if you have no fatigue and get attacked by hand-to-hand attacks, or the "flying backwards" from being struck by an Expert level backwards power attack, right? If so, the first option would be the better looking animation. While it'd look a little funny if you're not attacked from behind, I just wouldn't buy it if a wolf could make me fly like that. Maybe a bear, but not a wolf, no matter how many of them are attacking, so that'd be the better animation/effect. As for encumbrance, I'd prefer if higher encumbrance meant greater chance to fall...after all, it's meant to be a penalty, and it's harder to keep your balance if you're carrying a bunch of junk around. On the other hand, you could argue that extra weight makes you too heavy for the wolf to move you...Maybe, if you're ambitious enough (if it's even possible) high encumbrance would be make it harder for the wolf to successfully take you down if it's only one or two of them, whereas higher encumbrance would become a penalty if it's a pack? I don't know the first thing about scripts, so I have no idea how feasible that is, but it could be a neat idea. Finally, this sounds like a pretty cool mod, I'd love to try it out when available.

First of all, you'll want BOSS, the Better Oblivion Sorting Software, (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/20516) as well as the Unofficial Oblivion patches (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/5296), which both serve to give you a lot less headaches. For prettier looking people, I strongly suggest getting both Natural Faces (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/1965) and Enayla's facial textures (http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/9534), combined they make most everybody look like actual people, rather than vanilla's monkey people. For adding to the environment, I strongly recommend the Unique Landscapes mods (there's a whole bunch of them, but there's a very convenient OMOD compilation here - http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/19370, as well as Better Cities, http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/16513, both of which do wonders to revitalise and add onto Cyrodiil. There's also All Natural http://oblivion.nexusmods.com/mods/18305 which does a great job in bringing the world to life in slightly subtler ways. The thread Striker posted, even though I've never seen it before, seems like a very good thing to look through as well, upon a quick glance.

I used to find them pretty lame, but I've grown rather fond of them recently...they're far from perfect, and have a lot of flaws, but I find most of them believable enough. I think the problem is the limit in actors used, and the static way they're applied to races, something that Skyrim avoided quite well. If they'd used the variation we saw in Skyrim, I think the actors they used would've worked out great, it's just a bit...peculiar...when half the conversations sound like someone's talking to themselves. The actors - and for the most part, the acting - are pretty underrated though. I'm especially fond of the Imperial male one, who sounds to me like an actual pro. My least favourite? Probably the Redguard male, who sounds like he never quite grasped the concept of punctuation. Or intonation. Or subtlety...the Imperial/Breton female is a bit grating, but fine all in all, very classy and suitable. The male Breton is lovely too, so soothing, and sort of mentor like. It's got this wise air about it, and works for so many different characters (shrewd businessmen and wise mages all the way to dumb drunks, I love the work on Reynard Jemane) The elven male has a bit too much "crazy" going on, he can get grating too at times, but he does give a lot of characters, well, character! I found Glarthir to be just superbly done. The Redguard female sounds a bit bored and like she doesn't care enough to me, that's a shame, she's got a very appropriate and fitting voice. The elven female is...tricky. She's not outright bad, and I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with her, but for some reason she fits some of her characters very well and some not at all. I can't think of any issues with the Nord/Orc ones right now, but I'm sure it'll come to me once I hear enough of them again...but all in all, they're definitely good enough. Khajiiti/Argonians...ergh. I mean for Argonians, the female is mostly fine, but I don't think she quite suits Khajiiti characters. The guy, on the other hand...yikes. Listening to male Argonians is really grating, and takes a lot of patience for me, for some reason, and the lines they made him say for Khajiiti, combined with that voice...am I the only one feeling like that one's some sort of awful racist joke? Some of them are fine, and fitting enough, sure, but a lot of them really rub me the wrong way. That's got to be my main complaint about the voice acting in the game, Khajiiti kinda got shafted as far as suitable acting goes. I like their voices better in Skyrim, where you can at least smile at the fact that they come off as some poorly done Arabic stereotype because their voices are kinda cute, but in Oblivion...gah, a lot of Khajiiti and (male) Argonians just sadden and annoy me, even when I don't feel the douche chills coming on. Just so that makes sense, I like the male Redguard the least in terms of actual voice acting, the issues I have with the beast races' voices are less about the acting per se, they're fairly well done as far as reading goes. Beast races = bad characters, Redguards = bad actor, I suppose. ...that got a bit longer than I anticipated, heh.

Oh I see. That's...that's dumb. Well, thanks for the help.

I've considered getting all the official DLC not already included in my GOTY edition of Oblivion, but I can't seem to find where to do so. I've looked around on bethsoft.com, as well as elderscrolls.com, but the links in the Oblivion DLC section (http://www.elderscrolls.com/oblivion/dlc/) of elderscrolls.com only seem to offer downloads for Xbox, which obviously makes no sense, so...am I missing something obvious here? Does anyone know where to download the official Oblivion DLC for PC? Thanks.

As far as carrying goes (Encumbrance) I find you're better off focusing on Feather effects, it's easier to get higher magnitude of, although since Strength also contributes to melee combat effectiveness, it's better for a wider range of situations. But if you really only care about Encumbrance in a given situation, Feather does more. One idea could be to enchant a ring or necklace with Feather, and only put that on once it's time to haul your loot, and add Strength enchantments on greaves/cuirasses for combat and a little extra Encumbrance.

Damn right I still play Oblivion. I did really love Skyrim when it was released, even though my computer could barely handle it, and after staying out of TES circles for the better part of a year, I've recently got back into Oblivion, mostly sticking to smaller/subtler/immersion style mods, avoiding graphical "improvements", overhauls and the like...for now. And I'm loving it. I remember Oblivion getting a lot of complaints for all sorts of things (like Skyrim, funnily enough!) but it really is an incredible game, with so much depth and so much immersion that I easily get lost in it and find myself playing all night...right now I'm playing a stealth-based Khajiit that can still hold his own in combat and isn't afraid to use non-combat magic, but I'm sure I'll expand to other characters sooner or later. I'm even considering making a redguard fighter, a race I've never really been interested in playing before. I'm also sure I'll abandon my minimalistic mod attitude soon enough, because there is such a wealth of them available that I can't just ignore them all. But yeah, I almost feel bad in a way for forgetting about this amazing game, and I'm glad to see I'm not the only one playing it still. Oh, and...I'm avoiding fast travel. ;-) good way to raise your athletics, and if you're on a horse, it's an incredible way to take in the sights. You haven't quite experienced the wilderness feeling until you've travelled that unmarked road leading from Chorrol to Bruma through the high Jeralls. You know, the one Hermaeus Mora's shrine is on. You should. It's beautiful.

A random guardsman asked me if I'd ever looked into guard duty, after seeing my knee injury.

It all comes down to perspective, really. Ulfric, if we ignore the possibly biased (if sensible) idea that he only hungers for power as the High King, supposedly has his heart in the right place, looking to liberate the Nords (only the Nords however, it can't be argued that he cares little for other races living in the land) and letting them live in freedom in the sacred land of Skyrim. The Empire, if we try to be rational and not look at them as the voluntary bootlickers of the Thalmor, are simply looking to unite all the nations and races, since together they would be strong and could live in peace like during the Third Era. Both sides have their rights and wrongs. With that said... (only read below if you've finished the "Diplomatic Immunity" quest).

"And of course, the elf has two swords!" Have you considered dual-wielding? http://forums.nexusmods.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/thumbsup.gif

It's like, how much more badass could this be? And the answer is none. None more badass. Kudos to you, good sir, incredible work!