Huge 'Battle for Castle Kvatch' quest bug.

[rladngus]

Before mod (100% vanilla Oblivion): Everything works OK. I did this quest probably 4 times altogether and it always worked fine.

 

After mod (lots of overhauls and FCOM): Supposedly, when I first meet the captain of the Kvatch guards (whose name I forgot) he tells me to go into Oblivion and find a way to close the gate, and immediately after that (or somewhat) he and his 3 companions rush to the Oblivion gate to kill any remaining monsters and walk back behind the makeshift barriers made of logs. In this case, he won't even budge until I come back from closing the gate and talking to him. Then we did the usual rush into the Kvatch entrance and clear out any remaining monsters. Everything is OK until the captain is before the castle gates. No matter what I do, after all monsters near the castle gates are dead, he just stops half-way to the gate. If I talk to him, he tells me to charge or something like it. So I go on without him (in vanilla, he always came with me until 1 room away from the Count's). I reach the dead count and first thing I notice when examining his body is that the ring needed to complete the quest is missing. In its place is a "Brass Ring" with no magic enhancements and no special notes....just a plain ordinary ring (not sure if this ring was found also in vanilla). First time this happened, I thought this was it, so I looted it and went al the way outside the castle where the captain stood frozen. If I talk to him he asks me if I have the ring, and I want to answer yes I do, but I only have the "No, I do not have it yet" option, so I'm forced to say no. Then he goes on to tell me that I need to find the ring and bring it to him, but no matter how hard I look I cannot find it. So I'm stuck in this rather awkward situation. Any tips?

 

Addition notes:

1. I have never started a "clean start" after installing the mods - I used cheats to give myself uber strong magically enhanced items and maxed out my attributes and skills right at the start in the cell. This was just to test the mods.

 

2. I have started new games and re-done the quest a total of 3 times now, all started out with cheats. I'm about to consider starting "clean" like a normal game (and a bit serious this time too).

 

3. I'm not sure if it's because of my high level or OOO/MMM, but monsters at Kvatch are uber strong (even for me) and many in number (too many compared to vanilla).

 

4. These are the following "overhaul" (or otherwise, "big") mods that I have currently installed (and somewhat affect gameplay): OOO, MMM, Francesco's, WarCry, Bob's Armory (these mods make up FCOM, which I have installed as well), Arthur Natural Environments, Divine Paladin, Living Economy, and Frostmourne. All the other ones are rather small compared to these and do not affect (or hardly affect) gameplay at all, like BTmod, Elven map redux, colored enemy health, themed loading screen replacer, etc.

 

5. This one's off-topic, but I hope you can help: In the planes of Oblivion, there's this particularly (and ridiculously) strong monster called Xivilai. Most of the time these are easy kills (3-5 power moves with 2-Handed Umbra (from mod)). But some times, I do not see their health bar appear even after hitting a few times, althought it does heal itself regardless of this. If I hit it enough times, I finally see the health bar, full and green. And no matter how hard I hit it, the health bar barely goes down. Sometimes, it goes up instead if I hit it and it doesn't even heal. I try all weapons - blunt, blade, bow, staff, but nothing changes. I try spells... sure, spells are a LITTLE bit more effective but that's because they do more damage than my Umbra or any other weapon for that matter. Most of the time, when I come across this, I simply use the console command "kill" to get rid of these guys because it just takes forever to take one down. I have tried once and it literally took 15 mins full of whack-fest to bring it down (not to mention it keeps summoning that annoying clannfear). Is this a bug? If so, is the cause one of the major mods like OOO or MMM or Fran's?

 

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[rladngus]

Sorry. I suddenly realized the ring I'm looking for is infact in the loot. It's just that it's highlated so I thought it must have been his shoes or something. The ring bug was never real, so to speak, but the captain does still freeze half-way to the Castle gate. I can finish the quest, at least.

 

However, any help on the captain freezing is still appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[dezdimona]

General Load-Order Guidelines

Here are the guidelines that I adhere to, personally.

 

~ Unofficial Oblivon Patch should always be first on the list. The fixes are great, but most aren't essential, so if a mod overwrites them its not a big deal, and the fixes have the potential for screwing up other mods if loaded later.

 

~ Offical Content (DLC's) should be loaded last, until you complete all quests associated with them (that includes buying all furniture for the houses and whatnot). Once they're complete, they can be safely moved up in the list. This is especially important for Knights of the Nine, which will have some fairly major problems unless loaded last (unless you get the UOP for KotN)

 

~ Major overhaul mods (OOO, Frans, MMM) should be loaded near the end. That gives you the most complete experience with any of those particular mods. It also lets you carefully choose which other mods to load afterwards... only move mods that you know will conflict and that you want the changes from. For example, I have Improved Soul Gems below OOO because I know that OOO changes the icons of some of the SG's, and ISG needs to be below to show through.

 

Some people will recommend putting larger mods first, but personally I disagree. There are a number of mods out there that make minor tweaks, and loading after a large mod will end up completely overwriting a chunk from one of the bigger mods because of the way conflicts work in Oblivion (even one minor change will take precedence over the entire record... for example, simply tweaking the speed of a weapon can cause every stat of that weapon to be retained to vanilla levels if loaded later).

 

So basically, it stacks up like this...

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Minor Mods / DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mod/Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

 

 

 

Expanded Load-Order Guidelines

by dev_akm

 

I would extend this to include:

 

Oblivion.esm

Unofficial Oblivion Patch

<Weather/Environment/Sound Mods>

<Minor Mods/New Items/Houses/DLC's (Post-Completion)>

<Major Overhaul Mods>

<Mods that specifically conflict with overhauls and need to take precedence>

<DLC's (Pre-Completion)>

<Quests>

<Compatibility Patches/UOMP/Merged Leveled Lists>

 

And a special-case warning for Knights.esp (Knights of the Nine) -- you may not be able to move it earlier than some other mods (some people have had problems after moving it before OOO, for example).

 

That's basically the structure I use and I have 140+ mods working well together.

 

Another way of describing this (posted by DMan77):

....

Oblivion

unoffical patch

Deeper realism mods that add sights and sounds

added content like weapons/items

gameplay changes, like 'must eat and sleep'

The OOO type

the 'new begining' type mod..

 

 

MMM will add many more enemy's thats one reason I like it. OOO does too but also alters the game. " using console commands to boost character stats is a sure way to mess it up. follow the guide lines I've given you and see what happens. Also try disabeling mods one at a time to find which one is causing problems,but my guess is its the console boosts!

[rladngus]

Thank you for your help, dezdimona. However, I am afraid your effort is quite a bit wasted, for I may not know the load order but I do have and use BOSS :). Besides, my problem is fixed - there never really was any problem to being with :P. Sorry, this is just a lame thread.