Ayleid or Dwemer ruins.

[alsoran]

I liked Ayleid Ruins

[Relativelybest]

Dude.

 

Go back and play through Lost Spires. Its the best mod adventure for Oblivion.

 

I'm sure it is, but that doesn't really answer my question: Did Lost Spires really have a gigantic cave with ruins, glowing rocks and giant mushrooms?

 

Relativelybest mentioned that neither seemed like people actually lived there. I have to agree with respect to Ayleid ruins. However, Dwemer ruins have berthing areas, dining areas, all sorts of furniture, and it's obvious that at least some of them housed people.

 

Eh. Just because the place has furniture doesn't mean it was designed for people to live in. The actual rooms tend to resemble either storage rooms or assembly halls, or nodes that just kinda tie the corridors/utility tunnels together; tables and dressers and treasure chests will usually be randomly placed where anyone could access them, and there is no real sense of privacy to speak of.

 

At no point did I get the feeling I was rummaging through some dwarf's old appartment, is what I'm saying.

 

I mean, it's not like they couldn't make Dwemer cities. They made Markarth. Imagine Markarth except there are no people and everything is in ruins and overrun with Falmer and robots. That's exactly what a Dwemer city should look like. Who wouldn't want to explore a place like that?

Edited August 17, 2012 by Relativelybest

[modder3434]

I like both, but in terms of enemies encountered in these types of ruins i prefer the dwarven automatons to the constant undead and daedra in the Aylied ruins

[Moraevik]

I think, Realtivelybest, that perhaps you haven't seen all the Dwemer ruins in the game. I think I've explored every single one of them at least once, each. Have you ever seen a Dwemer bed room? They're in many of the ruins. They have beds, tables, dressers -- everything you'd expect in a living quarters. Most of the bed rooms are obviously designed as "berthing compartments", and contain multiple beds. What if they don't offer privacy? I don't think it's all that far-fetched to believe that the Dwemer didn't even believe in privacy.

 

Other rooms are quite obviously dining areas. They have long tables with benches and are completely set with Dwemer eating utensils, cups, plates, and bowls. There are several very obvious Dwemer dwellings in Blackreach. The only thing that distinguishes them from houses on the surface of Skyrim is that everything is Dwemer and not human-made.

 

You do make a good point, though. Most of any Dwemer ruin is just eye-candy for the player. It looks cool, but has no apparent functionality. There's that one ruin with the vertical moving pistons, right out of Portal and Borderlands -- possibly a tongue-in-cheek tribute to those games. Those pistons serve no discernible purpose, except two of them are a jumping puzzle, again right out of the two aforementioned games.

 

The Dwemer cities don't seem like cities to me, except for Markarth, of course, which had to look like a city to be the capitol of a hold. They are, mostly, only generic loot dungeons that use Dwemer architecture with a few things thrown in to just make the player think "What in Oblivon is that and what does it actually DO?"