Hi folks, welcome back. As I mentioned in the last entry, modding MQ104 ("Dragon Rising") and some of the chapters that follow require a game that's active on the main quest in order to test changes correctly. Also, I'm overdue for a "real" shakedown run where I'm not using tdetect, god mode, or teleportation to speed up the process. Let's roll up a new character and take them through the main quest. We'll look for any glitches or areas for improvement, and at the same time we'll create a "hot start" point for working with MQ104 and forward.

 

 

I rolled up a generic Nord male and equipped him with the gear from the starting room. For a starting scenario, I choose to make this character a patron at the inn in Falkreath. This will give the game to finish all its setup activities while I walk to Helgen from Falkreath.

 

 

Dead Man's Drink hasn't been customized yet, but it still looks pretty good "out of the box" just from texture and mesh improvements. At this stage I saved, reloaded, and then did the bare minimum of MCM setup. I started Sexlab, registered the ZAZ, M2M, and SLAL animations, and... then I got forcegreeted by some rando?

 

 

This is a character from Mihail's Slenderman mod. This is functioning as intended, since normally the player character wouldn't be in Falkreath until they've been in the game for a while and so a forcegreet is fine on its own. Since AP might start the character here immediately, my knee-jerk reaction is to put some conditions to delay the mod from starting, but that's something I should ponder a little bit first. I don't see any notes on the mod page suggesting that it requires a minimum level to play, so maybe this could serve as a good starting quest for a new character if they happened to land there. I'll just put this on my punchlist to investigate without committing to a change.

 

 

Falkreath looks nice, though we'll eventually want to customize it. No rush there however, as I don't believe the main quest ever takes you here unless some pair of objectives just happen to pass through the town. 

 

 

While I tried to pick off the bandits at the gorge, some Thalmor Justiciars showed up. I believe these guys are from Hydragorgon based on the fact that the prisoner is naked instead of tied up or in rags. There are several wandering groups with captives from that mod that I do eventually need to overhaul, but because of that mod's scope I've been taking it a little bit at a time. I should note that in the final cut, they won't mostly be "slavers" - instead they'll be Justiciars, bounty hunters, Penitus Oculatus, and so forth. Maybe still some slavers on the routes near Riften to support future SS++ integration.

 

 

The Thalmor attacked the bandits... and then more slavers showed up. I thought these guys were supposed to have unique routes, so I'll need to investigate that a bit. It might just be a case where they start out spawning at the same location initially and then path to their patrol routes, which is fine.

 

 

I reached Pinewatch OK. When my "official" travels take me this way, I'll have to decide if I want to install the Pinewatch Village mod. I used it in my last build and it was a nice concept, but it does add more low-value NPCs, which I've been trying to avoid. I'll need to learn more about the mod contents and decide if it adds enough content to make it worthwhile.

 

 

We've reached Helgen. Let's stop in for a little nap... surely nothing will happen in the meanwhile, right??

 

 

I don't feel like that dialogue is quite right. I wonder if I should make it more explicit ("start main quest") or if I should remove that warning entirely and make that just happen if you rest there without warning you up front. The second option is more immersive, but the first one gives the player a choice before starting. I can the arguments for either approach. 

 

 

I watched the full conversation before I went out. Let's see if between starting the game away from Helgen and also letting these guys talk is enough to manage the engine load that makes the carts flip.

 

 

Nope, both carts flipped. As an aside, I need to remember to go back and customize the Thalmor consular guards. I located their baseform ID after some fiddling, so now I can fine-tune them. Most players won't see them in this scene, but I'll reuse the costume later for the Embassy party.

 

 

Opening the console and waiting 20 seconds prevented the carriages from flipping, consistent with previous testing.

 

 

The prisoners are processed and Lokir makes a run for it.

 

 

The executions begin, and then Alduin appears, and the opening credits roll.

 

 

Ulfric orchestrates his escape and the local kid applies for a Darwin Award.

 

 

In the Alternate Perspective version, siding with the Stormcloaks is a less obvious choice since you aren't a prisoner on the cart when the game starts. Our character takes the Imperial path.

 

 

The friendly local torturer is skeptical of our claims about a dragon attack.

 

 

Escaping through the caverns... we are not alone.

 

 

Hadvar tries to recruit me.

 

 

LOL I wasn't expecting that turn in the conversation. 

 

 

This was a little unexpected - Hadvar took the back way to Riverwood, which meant he didn't deliver the tutorial dialogue about the Guardian Stones and Bleak Falls Barrow. I wonder if that was intentional or if it means that I have some broken navmesh edge links somewhere on the route, making the back way the best path? He made a few odd zig-zag moves that suggest this is the case. 

 

 

The dragon attack happened a bit before noon, and its night when we arrived in Riverwood, so timing feels about right. Even with our alternate route, it doesn't feel like the customizations dragged down the pace of the story.

 

 

Alvor feeds me and then neatly derails my plans to join the legion with my new boyfriend 😛 Hadvar suggests (sadly not captured on a screen shot) I take a carriage to Solitude after visiting Whiterun to warn the Jarl. This kind of makes me want to revisit the whole "delayed Bleak Falls Barrow" mod since it'll give a more natural path for players who committed to a faction during this first stage to go do the civil war without feeling pressured to stay on the main quest track. 

 

 

In the morning I set out for Whiterun and met Camilla on the road. She starts the "wrapper" part of her Amorous Adventures quest but doesn't directly trigger The Golden Claw (which depends on you being inside her brother's store). This again is pretty good game design - she does mention Sven and Faendal but doesn't put any pressure on the player to take further action which might derail you from the main quest.

 

 

5th level wolves blocking the patch! This is a tough encounter. They're vanilla refs so this is probably just a challenging random encounter, but if they'd been mod added I would have had to check out the conditions to make sure something like this would in fact be a rare occurrence. My character, still first level, can't handle this and he'll have to seek an alternate path. There is a mountain path to the west that ends up in the foothills around Whiterun so we'll go that way to bypass these guys (I could also have just dove into the river, which is what I'd do if the fight was already joined), but since I spotted them early I'll just bypass.

 

 

Half way there I remembered that the path is actually pretty close to Bleak Falls Barrow, so I'd have to fight the bandits at the watchtower to get there. Fortunately, the bandits are going to mostly be 1st level, which I can handle.

 

 

I killed the bandits patrolling outside the watchtower (I didn't go in and fight the boss), snuck past the bandit camp outside Bleak Falls Barrow, and then descended the mountain path to come out near the western watchtower. Currently the western watchtower is being served up by Whiterun Watchtower Doesn't Start Broken, but there's a mod by Ryn that offers a slightly more polished experience. I may not be able to do that customization on this build because almost certainly WWDSB involves a bunch of persistent records and stuff that changing mid-game will cause visual glitches. But I'll put it on the punchlist.

 

 

On further examination and thought, WWDSB actually looks pretty good, and I like some of the small details it comes with, so we'll keep this one as our customization for that locale.

 

 

I experienced some frame rate drops as I approached Whiterun. Nothing crippling but enough that it was just barely starting to become noticeable (hitting 30 at times). This might be an optimization issue - I haven't rebuild occlusion since I made all the edits around Whiterun - but its the sort of thing that I need to keep an eye on. 30 is really my "warning level" and if I see drops below that in normal gameplay I need to try and do something about it. I'll also want to check the P Log after the session to look for signs of script overload.

 

 

I did my good deed of the day helping fight the giant.

 

 

I'm pretty confident now that the impaled criminals are indeed suffering from the nif defect where they don't show shadows properly. It's especially clear on the one on the left. I'll need to do some research on this best way to fix this and then repair the nifs.

 

 

Of course Sexlab Solutions has a path to get in. Though I feel like maybe I need to go through Sexlab Solutions and change the (Sex) tags to (Seduce) for more consistency with Persuade and Intimidate. 

 

After this scene I ran out of memory and crashed to desktop. This may have been related to the frame drops earlier (heavy engine load == more stuff flying around in active memory) but I'm sure if also was related to playing while having a ton of Chrome windows open, alt-tabbing back and forth constantly, and generally not playing the game as intended. I didn't get a crash log, so while that doesn't guarantee it wasn't caused by a defect, it makes me lean towards just a straight up out of memory scenario. Some time soon I need to install those new memory modules I bought a few months ago...

 

On reload, frame rate was better (about 10 FPS higher) and I did see some pop-in on the Whiterun battlements which goes to my theory that the occlusion is badly out of date. I'm sure that's not helping one bit, especially with Fortified Whiterun adding a lot of geometry around the WR entrance. 

 

 

This time I got in fine and proceeded to Dragonsreach. 

 

 

I make my report to the Jarl, who leads me to Farengar's study.

 

 

Farengar sends me off to Bleak Falls, and as I leave I can hear Nazeem spreading rumors at court.

 

 

As I leave town, Irileth is dispatching guards to Riverwood. I'll take the mountain path directly to Bleak Falls since I've already gone that way once before.

 

 

I defeated the bandits outside the Barrow and then proceeded inside. 

 

 

As expected "The Golden Claw" starts in response to the bandits' conversation around their campfire.

 

 

I tried some of the alternate paths through the dungeon that my overhaul mod added. Even with my embryonic skill level, stealth-archer proved effective at clearing the way. However, it became clear to me that I hadn't adequately prepared for this adventure - I needed torches. To avoid a long backtrack, I consoled some into my inventory.

 

 

The spider was a tough fight at 1st level, but with the help of a bunch of healing potions I took it down. I freed Arvel and let him run off ahead - in my experience he seldom survives his dash for freedom. Not far down the hall, I find his corpse and claim the claw.

 

We'll continue the shakedown run a little later, but I think it's time for me to take a break for now. See you all soon!