vvk78

My character Maya is a master forest ranger collaborating with the Fighter's Guild, who was falsely accused of poaching and thrown into the local prison. She managed to escape and joined the Dark Brotherhood to avenge her influential enemies - the hidden necromancers in the Mages Guild who need the exotic animal items to create devilish artifacts of black-magic. With forest rangers out of the way in certain provinces, acquiring the animal ingredients became easier for these influential sorcerers. The Dark Brotherhood wanted to forge a powerful treaty with the Mythic Dawn cult, and found Maya to be a gullible pawn and an expert warrior/archer. Ultimately she landed up in the Imperial Prison because she was caught while trying to steal the Emperor's Amulet as per the orders from the Dark Brotherhood. Now that the Emperor has himself handed over the precious Amulet to her to take to Jauffre, she is working with the Blades as a double agent. The same guards who threw her into prison are now her firm friends (while pretending outwardly to be trying to arrest her for absconding from jail), and the same brotherhood who pretended to be her saviors are now her sworn enemies (though she is pretending to be still under their sway). She has handed over a fake replica of the Emperor's Amulet to the Brotherhood to belay their suspicions at her unexpected escape from the Imperial jail, and has started spying on their secrets unobtrusively. Using the Dark Brotherhood's political machinations, she intends to infiltrate the Mythic Dawn cult and cause their secretive leaders to be exposed, arrested or assassinated. She suspects some of the Mythic Dawn to have informants and moles within the Akaviri Blades themselves! Thus she has to be very cautious in her clandestine communications and tread carefullly with the counter-espionage, in order to ferret out the DB moles and slowly destroy their evil bosses. It is a deadly game of cat and mouse, and only time will tell whether the future of Tamriel can be rewritten by one woman's vindictive path towards vindication

The biggest problem with in-game changing of a character's race, is that EVERYTHING (including the skills, attributes, class, etc) will get RESET!! If you are fiddling around with the console to change race, then do the exact steps explained here. If you are okay with that resetting, you can try the Plastic Surgery mods. I think there was one more mod which claimed to allow to change face/class/birthsign/race without resetting the skills+stats, but I don't recall its name now.

I just recalled our dear LHammond's interesting mod called Riddick's Saber Claws. Sure it is fancy, but it is real fun!

Since you are new to the game, I would suggest you to learn the basic controls and learning how to be getting around. And yeah, do not go stealing horses or breaking into houses :ninja: immediately; it is a surefire way to either die or land in jail - you just cannot beat many guards when you are a newbie with weak vanilla equipment. :ohmy: Press TAB or F4 and see what are your current quests. Completing them is a good way to level up, and improve your fame and gain special rewards. If you just got out of the starting prison sewers, then the first sight of Imperial City can be a mind-blowing experience! I am telling you just the bare essentials to get off to a good start. Ignore the above info for now, if you don't want even simple spoilers and want to discover all the things on your own (that is fun too, and that's how I finished the game on the first playthrough without any mods). All the best.

In adding to the fine mods mentioned above (most of which I like and use), I would also recommend Seph's True Acrobatics, Seph's Hand to Hand Animation Replacer, Sky Dive Jump, Get Up Animation Replacer and Spell Singer. Instead of installing many individual anim replacer mods, you might want to try a collection such as DMC Stylish+MAO, or Aluku Animation Replacer Collection, and then add any other special anims that you need.

There is a Clothing Enforcer mod here on TESNexus. Cover Yourself does exactly what you ask. It assigns some penalties if you roam unclothed around NPCs, and different types (and genders) of NPCs will have varying.. *cough*.. reactions. :whistling:

Remember this: pure-warriors can use some minor spells or bow-arrows in a tight situation and still escape, but a pure-mage or pure-archer will fail to leverage weapons and shields against tough enemies due to their inexperience. In fact, I would say it is difficult to play pure-mage or pure-archer roles throughout the game. In some dungeons, it is too dark with very narrow corridors, and in close combat, your spells or arrows may hit your companions rather than the enemies. If you are bored with swordplay, and really want an interesting dimension to a warrior archetype, then take a look at some new *type* of weapons. Like Jounks Polearms and Spartan Spears. Such mods give you long ranged weapons: spears, bardiches, war scythes, etc. which can radically change your combat experience, even without Deadly Reflex and with your vanilla (unboosted) stats. I recommend DMC Stylish as its anims suit these longer weapons accurately. While Deadly Reflex is probably the ultimate in combat mods, it also tends to break many new mods (from my personal experience). There are also other combat replacers, such as Unnecessary Violence which enables true dual wielding with any weapon from vanilla or any mod, throwing objects (literally any object) and throwing people (judo style). Then there are the bigger mods such as OOO/MMM/FCOM, which add more and tougher creatures to lend some pizazz to your fight club. They are worth their weight in gold and can be considered as unofficial DLCs! If you feel proud of your battlemage character, try having a go at the boss beasts from Ramy's Monster, Glenvar Castle or even Hentai Mania (not what it sounds!). Rather than focusing on brute-force combat, I would suggest to try intelligent gameplay enhancers such as Skill Specialization and Choices and Consequences, which make you think carefully which skills to upgrade and leverage over a period of time. Mounted Combat is another unique experience. There is nothing finer than charging a bandit in the distance while mounted on your horse with your trusty spear held out at your side - you almost feel as if you are really in medieval times and entered a jousting match! Warrior combat definitely adds to the overall fun of the gaming! Give it a try!

How are you installing unofficial patches/mods on your PS3? If you are on PC, then it *just might* be a memory issue though I consider that highly unlikely. It is an LOD issue that is definitely solvable with some bit of trial and error. Did you try TES4LODGen with just the primary ESM's and official patches enabled in your load order? It usually fixes such LOD issues. Open up the Construction Set and see if you can spot the LOD layer issue with the Oblivion.esm data file, and repeat the process for each additional ESM/ESP enabled. If disabling LOD video options is removing the bug, and you have cleanly done all that was suggested here, then you might consider backing up your game saves/settings and reinstalling the game completely. Or just forget about the bug; it is not a game breaker. Use a CS to build a new house there, and place your own new mod at the end of the load order. :happy:

Aha! A collector. Shouldn't you be busy hunting around for rare collectibles in dusty auctions rather than hunting for prized stuff in a virtual game world? :biggrin: Just kidding! :teehee: Well, I am an amateur collector too. So, let me up the ante and see if you can raise my bid. I think I can tempt you with Skin-toned Mannequins, Muffins Refurnished Display Rooms and Natural History Museum. :blink: Though if you are a collector like that rich guy in the Jurassic Park movies, you can take a look at Imperial Zoo. But if Glarthir or Adoring Fan are annoying you, you may want to toss them into your own Prison and even profit from it. :devil: If you don't have such a bent of mind, there was another mod called Your Personal Dungeon (unavailable right now), where you can keep few interesting NPCs that you find, make them fight each other and even summon them into battle to aid you. After few battles they earn their freedom and are released from your clutches forever!:laugh:

Nah, you don't need to fiddle around the console for taking simple screenies. Try the Flying Camera Mod, which allows you to toggle the menus and HUD, and provides a flying camera for screenshots. The console is needed if you want to change the weather, toggle the sky, disable/kill some objects or do other similar hacks to set up the screenshot scenes.

Maybe you should try becoming a Servant of the Dawn.

If you don't see the new replacement textures, then you need this.

I don't use reversed daggers, so I cannot say for sure. If the screenshots show reversed dagger in 3rd person, it would most likely be the same in 1st person. I almost always play in 3rd person, as 1st person gives me headache if I play in it for longer time. The problem with reversed daggers is the sheath (holster). KORs Reverse Daggers have reversed sheaths. But they might lose their reversed look if they are altered in-game (e.g., if enchanted). If you learn modding, you can make your own reversed daggers by modifying the meshes for the vanilla daggers. Modding is never easy, but it can sure be fun. Try it and help others. :thumbsup:

You should search on Google and TESNexus forums first. It is easy to find Dagger mods. However, I know many newbies want some good daggers for assassin/thief characters, so I will try to help to list some good mods. My personal favorites are Coolman's Dagger Collection, MBJWeapons Daggers. Good retexed daggers are the Retextured Witsplinter, Robblazes Elven Daggers, Dagger of the Wicked. If you want some nice futuristic daggers, try Gloria and Trish Armor. Glowing and very good stats. Reverse daggers, such as the Salient Daggers and KORs Reverse Daggers, are fun too, if you like playing as an assassin. Or maybe some fancy stuff like the Dragon Dagger, Serpent Dagger, Lórien dagger (Andúril set), Sotha Dagger and Dagger of the Aedra, which can feel really cool if combined with some fancy armor and combat-anim-replacer mods (like Deadly Reflex or DMC Stylish). I recall that the Hashashin Armor mods and Assassin's Creed mods have daggers and/or short-swords, or at least the faux blade joined to the gauntlet (wrist). Some weapon sets have offhand daggers too - you cannot used them to strike, but they act like shields, and you can use them as a shield-bash if you have Deadly Reflex. You might also want to take a look at Throwing Knives or maybe use any vanilla daggers as Throwable Weapons. Daggers might be short range, but their fast speed makes them useful in close-quarter combat, and I usually keep some poison pots to give my favorite blades the deadly edge.

Go to TESNexus, and browse the files. Search for files in the Weapons category. Sort by Downloads or Endorsements DESC.

The memory patcher is not needed for Qarl's textures, though you may see some benefit. It is really needed only if you have large amounts of RAM sitting idle (Oblivion uses only upto 2GB by default). Have you tried Streamline and OSR first? For optimized HQ textures, you can use QTP3 Reduced Redimized. It is a texture pack containing QTP3 textures that are half the size of the originals to reduce video memory usage (which manifests itself as stuttering and poor performance in Oblivion). You will get good visuals even with a midrange graphics card. Also, note that this 4GB patcher will ideally work with any 32-bit executable, but any patching may cause problems if you are using Steam. Other memory patchers have issues with OBSE. So backup the Oblivion.exe and Oblivion.ini (in My Docs~ folder) before running the patch. More info is here: http://preventcrashe...EXE-Patcher.htm http://www.bethsoft....owtopic=1071593

Yes, it may probably be fixed. There should not be any obvious LOD issues in vanilla Oblivion. Make sure you have installed/reinstalled the Official Patches v1.2.0416 for Oblivion and Shivering Isles, and the corresponding Unofficial Patches as well (which fix a *lot* of bugs). Disable all mods and DLCs before reinstalling any patches. I would recommend you to then install and run TES4LODGen, which is a is a DistantLOD Generator. You MUST have HDR enabled or you may get some flashing-to-black distant objects. BOSS, Wrye Bash, RefScope and TES4Edit can also help with the sorting out mod conflicts. Make sure you have OBSE, OBGE, Pluggy as this might be required by some mods. If you manage to resolve the LOD issue, enable the mods one by one, play the game, till you find the mod that supposedly introduces the LOD issue, and inform the mod author by PM, so he/she can respond whether your diagnosis is correct and provide any fixes if needed.

Jim, this is a fantastic beginner introduction to PD! Hope you can add further info to this thread later. I've given you kudos for taking this effort and initiative.

I haven't used Cyberlink PowerDirector (PD), so I cannot say authoritatively whether you intend is directly possible within PD. Also, please note that PD9 seems to support titles in the video track, so it looks like you are using an older version 8. You can probably try some of these workarounds: 1. Try the screenshooting-the-title method as explained in the Cyberlink Community Forum. 2. Create the light title, dark title and TV interference transition as 3 separate videos using PD. Then use VirtualDub or Windows Movie Maker to merge these 3 videos together and adjust the timelines as per your needs. 3. For creating a basic show-and-tell video, you can use the freeware Microsoft Photo Story 3, which has more than 40 types of transitions.

Hyperionics v2 is free now: http://www.hyperionics.com/

Some people are reporting issues with Taksi giving black screen or audio problems with recorded video. The audio issue might be sorted out by installing the free AC3 audio decoder and processor filter. It is also recommended to run Taksi first and then the game you want to record. ___________________________________________________________________________ Tips from the Taksi User Manual (author has not yet updated it to correspond to the latest version): Usage: 1. Run taksi.exe 2. Run a game that uses one of the supported APIs (DX8, DX9 or OpenGL) (The order of these two steps is not important for taksi. It should be able to hook on the game in either case.) 3. Look at left top corner of the screen. If you see a green rectangle in there, then Taksi was able to sucessfully hook on the game. Default keys F5: Turn visual indicator ON/OFF. F6: Toggle system-wide hook mode. When ON (indicator turns blue), allows for mapping into multiple applications, but may have a strong negative effect on the overall performance of the system. Recommended state: OFF. (The hot-key is disabled, when Taksi uses DirectInput for keyboard handling.) F7: Small screenshot (WIDTH/2 x HEIGHT/2). F8: Regular screenshot (WIDTH x HEIGHT). ScrollLock: Video capture ON/OFF (Writes an uncompressed AVI-file). (Dimensions of the video are WIDTH/2 x HEIGHT/2.)

Found some useful links on Taksi. Please review. MenaSoft: Author of Taksi PixelProspector: Record a Gameplay Video PCMech: Screen Capture Games Using Taksi

Can the following tutorials be considered good (and safe) enough to be added to this thread? GameCam and Virtual Dub Guide Resolve GameCam Audio Record Problems Make A WoW (World of Warcraft) Video using GameCam or FRAPS Update: GameCam v2 is released with more features. The hotkeys seem to be same as the initial version.

Tabaxi and Nonyxian races are great feline races. Haven't tried the Kawa-Khajiits, though I have heard good stuff about it.