City Vaults

[slainia]

Remember sneaking into the great house vaults in Vivec? How they had a lot of money & items to be had, but more than that they were fun and semi-hard to steal from?

 

Thats what I'm aiming to do in Skyrim, at least currently for Markarth.

 

As of version 0.0.1, all I've done is the basic layout, the first pass at lighting, some of the easier clutter, and navmesh.

Npcs won't wander here by themselves, but if you trespass they will follow you & try to arrest you.

 

What it adds:

 

A small extension to Understone Keep in an area that's heavily garded. (Moreso than the Jarl's room.)

Items that make sense to be found in Markarth, without being overpowering in terms of wealth (relatively) or rarity.

 

In other words, there will be no glass or ebony armor or weapons, no spell or skill books and so on.

 

There will, however, be the following:

 

- Ingots (silver, dwarven)

- Weapons - again, silver & dwarven

- Silver items you could expect to function as exports

- Small but valuable items

- Armor

 

Coming in version 0.0.2

 

More clutter

Working traps

Patrol paths

A few chests etc

 

Future Plans

***Possibly an extra guard or two?

 

Ideas

Ambient dialogue showing npc reaction to the vault being broken into? I wish, but beyond me...

 

Anyway, I'm open to any thoughts on this - tell me if you think theres too much or too little in the way of clutter or value, or if an item just doesn't fit, or anything else you can come up with.

 

Also - thanks for taking the time to look at it. i'm not an experienced modder in the least, so I really do appreciate it.

 

~Slainia

[KingsGambit]

Sounds interesting, I did enjoy getting into those in Morrowind, because of the combination of challenge and because it many of the very rare daedric armour parts were hidden in them.

 

Isn't Markarth the only city that actually already *has* a vault (the Silver-Blood one)?

[slainia]

Yes it is. I chose to add a 2nd for a couple reasons

 

- the original is very focused on the silverblood family; l wanted something that would be based around the Jarl and the (theoretical) keeps previous residents - ie the previous jarl & so on. I kind of cluttered it with the background idea that some of the stuff was found by adventurers doing favors for the jarls over the years and bringing stuff back for one reason or another.

 

Ie - the armor there l was imagining might be used for the guards to understand how better to defeat the - enemies, to not give spoilers. Lol.

 

Plus, the original vault has really poor security & layout - i wanted somethingg that felt like it was part of the keep and had been re purposed over the years to server the current needs. With how Bethesda set up the guard patrols for the area, it seems to fit in well - you have to get past the vanilla guards to even get in, then once l get it finished you have to deal with the extra patrols.

 

 

However - if people think it would be better to use the vanilla vault, l could. It would be a hellofa lot more complicated, but l could, maybe.

Will have to see what people think.

 

I did some work on it last night, updated the navmesh and finalized it, adjusted some lighting and so on. need to work on the patrols today. Tried, but couldn't target the idle markers and was too tired to figure out why last night.

[KingsGambit]

Nah I didn't mean to suggest any such move. I just thought it mildly amusing that a mod to bring back these vaults is made in the only city in Skyrim that has one already :-) It's a great idea, I think it has a lot of great potential.

 

My only suggestion is to make something (or somethings) unique in there. Make something we can't get anywhere else. Like in one vault put boots, one has a cuirass, another one helmet, etc. for a whole, unique set (maybe collaborate with an armour designer, or contact a mod author to let you incorporate something in). Getting in should be hard. The dwemer rolling guardians remind me of those robots in Thief II...imagine some hardcore versions of them as automated dwemer defences.

[slainia]

Yeha, l know what you mean.

I've thought about adding unique items, but at the same time l don't want this to be something where the player gets in & suddenly their character is much more powerful. Also, l'm - trying - to stick to stuff that would be natural to have in Markarths' vault - things that're local to the region, including enemies.

Ie they're a dwarven-based city, so it makes complete sense for dwarven artifacts to be found, especially with them being on top of a mostly un-plundered series of ruins.

Same with the other stuff l added, the jarl currently asks you to go against the very enemies whos' armor l've placed. I'll have to think about it, though - l want this to be fun, but balanced. Lol.

 

Edit - just did the patrol idles, going to have to test them out ingame for a day or two. l've made considerable progress on it, though. Gonna have to test out how the columns work for providing line of sight obstacles for stealth, too.

Edited November 20, 2012 by slainia