Frustrating Problem with DLC mod

[myrmaad]

I'm not sure if anyone will be able to help me. By the way, I'm new around here, so I'm sorry to start off with a problem.

 

Backstory:

I've been happily playing Oblivion on my mid-range Vista desktop. I just loaded the latest drivers for my 7350LE Nvidea card, and the game and my pc have had a fairly great relationship. Interestingly, all of the patches, both official and unofficial crash the game, so I'm playing the engine out of the box, but I've been carefully adding mods of all sorts and scrupulously making complete backups of the entire Oblivion folder when it's running well, so when I test new patches etc, if they cause it to crash, I can just delete the whole thing and replace with the working version.

 

About a week ago I purchased the downloadable content, but Vista's installer conflicted with the Oblivion dlc installer, and it didn't work.

 

So I had been using the Construction kit to play around with making my own little experimental mods, for example, I did a little "squatter's rights" mods so that Agarmir's and Glarthir's Apartments could be used as in town sleeping apartments. I don't really use them, but I did a nice job of it according to OBMM and I was proud. I have bought all the in-game houses and upgraded them with different mods and I've downloaded some really great player homes, which I've been slowly rating and commenting on, out in the download area. Modding is such a wonderful feature of this game and the hard work of the modders deserves kudos and congrats, so I've been trying to do my part.

 

When I first installed the construction kit on Vista, it wouldn't run, but I had installed Oblivion on my 2 year old lower end laptop, (bare minimal requirements, and it just won't run there.)

So I tried the Construction kit on the XP laptop, and that did run. Meantime I was able to get the Construction kit to go on the Vista.

 

So to the problem at hand:

Since the DLC wouldn't send my registration from the Vista, I opened it on the laptop, and carefully copied the files on to my Vista. Everything runs perfectly except the Horse Armor.

 

Now, before you write me off, let me just say that the horses are a major source of frustration for me, since I like to explore the countryside. Why? Well for example day before yesterday I was playing and I was riding from one town to the next (Chorrol to Skingrad) and I passed a bandit on the road. She followed me I'd say a good two miles, I had already "parked my horse" behind the skingrad stable up on the hill and had walked back nearly to the main gate. The "witch" comes running down the road after me, goes through TWO GATES and runs past me to start beating my horse to death!! (and killed it). I was so bleepin mad, I killed her resurrected her and killed her again!

 

What is it with attacking the horses?

 

I've gotten to the point where I'll park my horse a mile or so away from any target area I have to go to, and walk the rest of the way.

 

The ingame vanilla horses are not very fast or strong....

 

Anyway, so I really would like to use the horse armor.

 

After I had installed the DLC HA on the vista I went to the Imperial City stables but the vendor wouldn't recognize my horse (she kept saying I had to bring a legally purchased horse) I assumed the game assumed that I was pirating the horse armor pack, and I explained this when I spoke with BS Tech Support:

I spoke to Bethsoft Support and they were very nice, and suggested I by the downloadable content CD, which I had already ordered hoping that would fix the problem.

 

2 days ago the CD arrived and I loaded it, and of course got a few more of the dlc packs, and all of them are working great EXCEPT:

 

When I go back to the Imperial Stables she just keeps telling me over and over I have to purchase a legally purchased horse, no matter what freshly legally bought horse I ride in on, it's like she's stuck or the Quest is marked "completed".

 

Here's the thing:

I went back into my save games and found a game at "Game Day 124", bought a new horse, and went to see Shrum whatever her face is, and she outfitted my horse in the armor I chose.

 

But I'm on Game Day 199, now, and it's not that I care about completing those quests again, since I've already been through them and will probably conquer them more easily than before, but my real heartburn is that I bought two houses since then that I decorated in game myself with purchases from Imperial Furniture, and one of the houses was completely EMPTY. I invested about 2 REAL LIFE days to decorating those houses and they were perfect. And my game has been true to my vision, in the time since Game Day 124, I have cleaned up a bunch of niggling little side quests closed about 10 Bliv gates, purchased several pieces of custom clothes that I invested about 6 hours enchanting myself, got every town to send aid to Bruma, and got Martin all the items he required to come up with his "Plan".

 

So here are what I think are my options:

Forget the horse armor for this game and go on from Day 199.

In that case can someone suggest a horse mod that will get me a good strong horse that will not wander off, (because it's not really "mine" as recognized by the game).

 

Or go on from Day 124, do all the quests again, and hope it turns out as well as my current game.. this would be an option if I could somehow dig out the house mods I made inside the game from the Day 199 save game.

 

Or: possibly dig into the Day 199 save game, delete the horse armor quest from inside it, so I can start fresh?

 

Is any of this a possibility or is this just farting in the wind on my part? I really would appreciate every comment, suggestion, or even bad news, from your collective wealth of experience.

 

Thanks to all who take the time to read this, I realize it took a lot of your time!

[dogeese]

My head hurts from reading all that lol

The horse that u get at the of the end of the Dark brotherhood missions is the best horse in game, fast and cannot be killed. he'll only go unconscience, Plus as a bonus when he is down u can use him as storage box, put stuff in his body, kill again later to retreive.

Also another great horse is slofs black unicorn and its free, but cannot put armor on that either, but it too cant die, or walk off

link is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17398

 

Also if u using the cs set , in the objects window select your horse and click the tab to make it essential, little experience is needed(even though it is easy), i mean if u change certain horse by default all horses of that type will be the same, so create own horse, choose type horse you want, right click to edit, change ID save as new form, and place into game

[myrmaad]

My head hurts from reading all that lol

The horse that u get at the of the Dark brotherhood is the best horse in game, fast and cannot be killed. he'll only go unconscience, Plus as a bonus when he is down u can use him as storage box, put stuff in his body, kill again later to retreive.

Also another great horse is slofs black unicorn and its free, but cannot put armor on that either, but it too cant die

link is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17398

 

Also if u using the cs set , in the objects window select your horse and click the tab to make it essential, little experience is needed(even though it is easy), i mean if u change certain horse by default all horses of that type will be the same, so create own horse, choose type horse you want, right click to edit, change ID save as new form, and place into game

 

 

:D Well Thanks for Wading through It All! :)

 

I'll try the CS route!

 

My character in this game has been scrupulously avoiding murder (which has been a right CHALLENGE) so I'm not in the dark brotherhood, even though the game seems to attempt to force you to murder. It doesn't suit this character, but next time I create a character I will want to go a new route. I've really invested a lot of thought into this.

 

By the way this is the very first Bethesda game I've ever played, picked it up on the insistence of friend, and I love it. I've heard other people say they didn't like the game, but I suspect they didn't invest much time or thought in choosing the persona of their character. I didn't know much at all about the game before I stuck it in on a whim. (I'd actually had it laying around for more than 6 months!) It sucked me in! I'm really pleased with my character, very emotionally invested in her.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

 

Still I'm exceedingly curious about these save games and whether you can loot them, whether you can delete a quest particularly.

[dogeese]

Dont think its possible to loot old saves, just have to grit teeth and bear it. The amount of times i've had to restart old save is arrrrrr. Just make backups of saves u defo know works well.

If u want to keep your stats, there is a way with wyre bash to update a save with another saves stats

 

Also if u use Knights of the nine, u can happily kill through Dark brotherhood missions, then go on the pilgrimage of the nine to wipe clean your infame completey

 

Dont know much about horse armor, It fine on my vista, just have it high up load order !!!

[myrmaad]

hmm, now that is interesting!

 

I'll have to think about that.

 

On the one hand, I could update "day 199" with the stats of day 124, and continue on still owning all my property, and just having to re-finish the quests? I think I would be happy with that.

 

Oh no, you're saying, I could update my "day 199" completed missions into the "Day 124" stats, but I wouldn't have my properties and items, and then I may have no way to get them, right? Because if those missions are completed, then there would be no way to get them.. And that would still make the Horse armor quest completed again which is the trouble.

[dogeese]

Sorry gone on tangent trying to think of solutions to your problem. With wyre bash -

What i meant was if u want to keep stats of character (199) to make doing missions easier again(124) there is a way, but updating new save(199) with old only changes stats and keeps missions and items intact,but thats not helpful for you.

 

Have u tried a clean save ?? in OBMM or wyre bash or even oblivion launcher dectivate horse armor and play game save to new slot. then reactivate horse armor and load

[myrmaad]

Thanks for brainstorming, I really do appreciate it.

 

I did try that, but that pesky Quest Complete flag is there no matter if I deactivate the mod, uninstall it completely and save. I actually moved all my old save games to another folder in another drive and had only two renamed ones in there, the Day 124 save, and the Day 199 save, and still no glory.

 

:wallbash:

 

Whenever I go back to Shrum-what's-her-face, she only gives me one replay option, "i want armor and a horse too", "sorry you need to have a legally owned horse" blah blah blah. No matter how many ingame vanilla horses I show up with she acts like I don't have a horse. I wanna kill her. :D

[dogeese]

The mission flag should NOT still be there if u fresh save cos there is no mission if mod removed. should get the message on startup of content removed, continue etc

Sorry i newbie here too so seems i cant help u much after all, i do suggest the "Black unicorn" though.

[myrmaad]

The mission flag should NOT still be there if u fresh save cos there is no mission if mod removed. should get the message on startup of content removed, continue etc

Sorry i newbie here too so seems i cant help u much after all, i do suggest the "Black unicorn" though.

 

 

Well I'm glad you bring this up.

 

 

When I started on the fresh save, I got the new mission flag, but I went to the stable and she again said the same old runaround, blah blah "legally owned horse" and wouldn't even look at the freshly bought legally owned horse I rode in on. That's what really bites.

 

 

Anyway you have given me some great workaround suggestions! :hug:

 

 

 

 

 

I just went and beat the living poop out of Snak. She's apparently an essential character, so was able to wail away on her with umbra and she'd just keep getting back up and saying stuff like, "I feel I can truly share with you", is that right, *witch? haha.

 

She still wouldn't outfit my horse. :D

 

 

UPDATE:

 

I just installed Slof's Horses. So great, I don't care if the armor ever works or not! Problem solved as far as I'm concerned. Thanks dogeese!