The Forbidden Tome

[krzp]

11 hours ago, Mister X said:

I see. TBH, I don't really like to support outdated versions.

Oh, absolutely, we hardly need another LE type thing here with 1.5.*, the LL mods have been dragged down enough by trying to stick to the legacy versions.

*cough* zaz *cough*

 

11 hours ago, Mister X said:

IMHO there's no real reason anymore anyways to stick to the older one...

I was under the impression that SE was the version to stick to for max compatibility until maybe late last-early this year, after all the DAR shenanigans are finally in the rear view mirror, maybe it's finally time to upgrade. But ugh, I have like 50 different SKSE mods alone running, I'd need a whole vacation just to re-download, re-install and tweak them ?

 

11 hours ago, Mister X said:

I can make you an offer: if you find any container where the base object is empty and the No Respawn flag is set, I'll see what I can do  

Sadly, I'm not that well versed in modding to actually recommend anything about that, but if I'll be able to find something, I'll let you know ?

[Allen Harris]

23 hours ago, Yanme said:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

One of the bookcases that already exist in the library will turn into the forbidden bookcase. Wearing devious devices is not required (but might in fact block the quest - I don't know).

 

 

Sorry to be a bother, but...

Spoiler

I've gotten the key, no devices attached to me, and read the letter. None of the book cases look any different. And I opened every bookshelf in the Arcanarium and read almost every book. Is there some other requirement besides Devious Devices SE and Skyrim AE? Is the bookcase in the same room as Urag? Do I need to have the other mod isntalled as well?

 

Edit: Nevermind, it showed up. It was either that I hadn't talked to Urag yet, or because I saved, closed the game, then restarted.

Edited June 19, 2023 by Allen Harris

[Mister X]

10 hours ago, Yanme said:

 

Maybe "Evidence Chest" (Skyrim.esm ID 267e7)?. I believe it is empty and does not respawn.

 

 

I replaced the base object with an empty barrel (does respawn though) in SSEEdit and was able to play through the quest just fine, very fun!. It is always exciting to see when DD quest mods take the players responses/behaviour into account and react respectively. Thank you for sharing the mod.

 

I believe I did find two bugs at the end of the questline (spoilers end of quest):

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Urag will always give me the neutral result, not matter the value of UragMood. UragMood gets set correctly, but the dialog for the neutral option gets chosen anyways. No idea why, might be weirdness due to the property being flagged conditional, but the containing script being not flagged conditional.

 

 

When forcing the bad ending, Urag hides the key in a random container in the hall of elements. However, the hall of elements contains some unreachable vendor chests for college merchants below the floor. In my case, the key was "hidden" inside Tolfdir's(?) vendor chest. Even though the key was in the vendor chest, it was not up for sale at Tolfdir's, so without cheating, the poor player character would remain locked up forever. Which certainly is a punishment for bad behaviour, but probably not as harsh as Urag intended. ? The vendor chests should probably be excluded via conditions.

 

I can try that chest, yes  For the bugs:

Spoiler

The thing with the script is a problem I forget too often. I made the "mistake" to simply expand the quest stage fragments script, to have all Alias provided already. Disadvantage: those never get flagged as Conditional, so whenever I change any fragment in the CK, the script looses that flag again. In that case the mood always will be seen as zero=neutral. My bad ?

 

For the chest: I thought I've added a formlist that excludes all vendor chests. Need to doublecheck that. As it's not only Tolfdirs but also Enthirs vendor chest present in that cell.

 

7 hours ago, Allen Harris said:

 

Sorry to be a bother, but...

  Reveal hidden contents

I've gotten the key, no devices attached to me, and read the letter. None of the book cases look any different. And I opened every bookshelf in the Arcanarium and read almost every book. Is there some other requirement besides Devious Devices SE and Skyrim AE? Is the bookcase in the same room as Urag? Do I need to have the other mod isntalled as well?

 

Edit: Nevermind, it showed up. It was either that I hadn't talked to Urag yet, or because I saved, closed the game, then restarted.

Normally, the case already should appear when taking the key. But I'm glad it still did work for you.

[Mister X]

New version v0.3.0

• ADDED optional xVASynth voiceover as extra download, needs main file
• CHANGED some dialogue
• CHANGED a chest so it now should work with older Skyrim versions, too
• FIXED quest now properly cleans up when it shuts down
• FIXED some typos and grammatical errors
• FIXED the quest ignoring conditional properties
• FIXED the search for a key hideout

Do not update while the quest is running! Best would be to update only if you've never started the quest before!

Edited June 20, 2023 by Mister X

[kurotatsu]

Did a run of 0.3.0 on LE - everything worked perfectly fine, including voiceover!

 

Very neat little quest mod, quite enjoyable to play through.

[donttouchmethere]

10 minutes ago, kurotatsu said:

Did a run of 0.3.0 on LE

That must have been risky. Are you okay?

Thanks for testing! =D

[manafalls]

On 6/19/2023 at 1:45 AM, Mister X said:

 

I see. TBH, I don't really like to support outdated versions. Additionally, it's not done with deleting the current barrel and placing another container, I'll have to re-link everything, too.

So maybe you just should bite the bullet and switch to the current version. IMHO there's no real reason anymore anyways to stick to the older one...

 

I can make you an offer: if you find any container where the base object is empty and the No Respawn flag is set, I'll see what I can do  

 

 

I have no idea what Silas's Chest is, but it's in the base game, has no contents, no respawn flag set, and no references to it in Xedit

DA07SilusChest "Silus's Chest" [CONT:000252A6]

 

I'd like to try this out, but not so badly I'm willing to risk messing up my old-AE-incompatable-content-heavy game by upgrading (which is my choice and of course you don't need to accomodate). Thanks either way for bringing this back and sharing it with us.

 

[Mister X]

2 minutes ago, manafalls said:

 

 

I have no idea what Silas's Chest is, but it's in the base game, has no contents, no respawn flag set, and no references to it in Xedit

DA07SilusChest "Silus's Chest" [CONT:000252A6]

 

I'd like to try this out, but not so badly I'm willing to risk messing up my old-AE-incompatable-content-heavy game by upgrading (which is my choice and of course you don't need to accomodate). Thanks either way for bringing this back and sharing it with us.

 

 

Try v0.3, I adapted the chest, should be compatible with pre-AE game versions.

[Xenoramos]

Very nice mod, I have played through it without literally a single issue on LE, it went very smoothly and I loved the possibility to re-experience that quest, especially improved over original, as there weren't any rape scene (which I remember, happened several times in DD's original quest). Maybe that's because I was "nice"\"obedient", don't know.

Thanks for the mod (=^__^=)

[krzp]

16 hours ago, Mister X said:

CHANGED a chest so it now should work with older Skyrim versions, too

That, and a voicepack to go along with it?

That's amazing, thank you very much!

 

Update to AE postponed ?

[Allen Harris]

Okay, so I just version 0.3 and after retrieving the gyro, Zalarius (or however you spell it) isn't at any of the locations. The notification on all of them is "Zalarius is nowhere to see"

[Xenoramos]

11 hours ago, Allen Harris said:

Okay, so I just version 0.3 and after retrieving the gyro, Zalarius (or however you spell it) isn't at any of the locations. The notification on all of them is "Zalarius is nowhere to see"

Just to make sure - did you check on Solstheim? There are also some Dwemer ruins where he can probably be, I believe.

[Allen Harris]

4 minutes ago, Xenoramos said:

Just to make sure - did you check on Solstheim? There are also some Dwemer ruins where he can probably be, I believe.

I checked all the marked locations. There were none in Solstheim.

Edited June 21, 2023 by Allen Harris

[Mister X]

On 6/21/2023 at 6:03 AM, Allen Harris said:

Okay, so I just version 0.3 and after retrieving the gyro, Zalarius (or however you spell it) isn't at any of the locations. The notification on all of them is "Zalarius is nowhere to see"

That's weird. He should leave only after the third item, not the gyro. I know that for some ruins you have to enter them first, but I assume you did that as you got the message.

Spoiler

You can try the following:

 

open up the game console and type in sqv tftForbiddenTomeQuest. Search for an alias called ThirdPosMarker and copy its FormID to the following function:

player.moveto [FormID]

This should port you to the position where he should be after you've found a gyro.

 

14 hours ago, Xenoramos said:

Just to make sure - did you check on Solstheim? There are also some Dwemer ruins where he can probably be, I believe.

You won't ever get ruins on Solstheim, Zenidius likes Skyrim more ^^

[DecadentApparition]

Hey there, Mr Mister X!

I did a bit of end-to-end testing and realised that the mod currently has a lot of bugs which made it impossible for me to complete its main quest. The ones that I still remember:

1. Sometimes when I get the 'search for Zenidius' objective, he's 'nowhere to be found' on each quest marker until there's none left. I've read from the aforewritten messages in this thread that he might've been in Solstheim. I personally doubt that, as this way I still should've got a quest marker there and I haven't.

b. When I approach Zenidius while already having that what he's going to request, I do get the option to give it to him right away (I never pick this option though as it's just too tame and boring for me). But I've also got the third option where the player charactress says something nasty and irritating and gets locked in some devious devices (that one's obviously my pick). Then, I get the objective to find the item I already have, and after I drop the item and pick it up again, Zenidius disintegrates into thin air right in front of me and I've got to go look for him again (often implementing the scenario from the 1st item of my little list). Don't really like that.

4. What if I don't drop and pick up the item, but instead, after having devices equipped, immediately talk to Zenidius and give him the item he needs? Then the objective 'Find the item X' doesn't get complete (as I've not picked it up technically) and I receive the next objective to 'Find the item X+1'. And thus, I was once able to get four mutually exclusive objectives active at the same time (Get the oil, gyro, core and go back to college, if I'm not mistaken).

V. In each testing run I had I could not complete the main quest encountering the same issue again and again. I got sent back to the Orc librarian to fetch a dynamo core for him, but upon my return, he kept going like 'Do you need more motivation? Go find Zenidius!', and then it got stuck. In my earlier attempts I thought that was because of some past objectives not being marked as completed (as I described in the previous item), but in my last attempt I did manage to complete them all in order before getting the one to return to college. But that blasted Orc still refused to talk to me!

6. This one's not really a bug, but I feel like the English dialogues require some rewriting to be clearer and more natural.

[Mister X]

8 minutes ago, SpectreOfDecay said:

Hey there, Mr Mister X!

I did a bit of end-to-end testing and realised that the mod currently has a lot of bugs which made it impossible for me to complete its main quest. The ones that I still remember:

1. Sometimes when I get the 'search for Zenidius' objective, he's 'nowhere to be found' on each quest marker until there's none left. I've read from the aforewritten messages in this thread that he might've been in Solstheim. I personally doubt that, as this way I still should've got a quest marker there and I haven't.

b. When I approach Zenidius while already having that what he's going to request, I do get the option to give it to him right away (I never pick this option though as it's just too tame and boring for me). But I've also got the third option where the player charactress says something nasty and irritating and gets locked in some devious devices (that one's obviously my pick). Then, I get the objective to find the item I already have, and after I drop the item and pick it up again, Zenidius disintegrates into thin air right in front of me and I've got to go look for him again (often implementing the scenario from the 1st item of my little list). Don't really like that.

4. What if I don't drop and pick up the item, but instead, after having devices equipped, immediately talk to Zenidius and give him the item he needs? Then the objective 'Find the item X' doesn't get complete (as I've not picked it up technically) and I receive the next objective to 'Find the item X+1'. And thus, I was once able to get four mutually exclusive objectives active at the same time (Get the oil, gyro, core and go back to college, if I'm not mistaken).

V. In each testing run I had I could not complete the main quest encountering the same issue again and again. I got sent back to the Orc librarian to fetch a dynamo core for him, but upon my return, he kept going like 'Do you need more motivation? Go find Zenidius!', and then it got stuck. In my earlier attempts I thought that was because of some past objectives not being marked as completed (as I described in the previous item), but in my last attempt I did manage to complete them all in order before getting the one to return to college. But that blasted Orc still refused to talk to me!

6. This one's not really a bug, but I feel like the English dialogues require some rewriting to be clearer and more natural.

 

Thanks for that!

 

1) I still don't know why it happens, when the quest starts he gets a list of places where he might spawn and all those places then get a marker. I can try and see what might happen there.

 

2) I honestly didn't cover that scenario of dropping the item and picking it back up. Will see how I can adapt to that.

 

3) Ok, Next scenario branch I didn't cover. TBH it's new for me to design quests, so I couldn't think of every single possible branch beforehand. Hence the BETA ^^

 

4) You shouldn't ver get sent back to the college to fetch the core, but after giving the core to Zenidius, he should tell you to get back to the college. At this stage Urag would speak to again. Probably is related to the "never dropping the item" thing

 

5) I'm not a native English speaker, for some parts I translated the things myself, for other I used Deepl. If a native speaker is willing to fix those, I'll gladly offer a transcript ^^

 

As this version is my very rough first approach, I already thought about scrapping it and redo from ground up with the things I've learned in the meanwhile. Maybe then I can adapt better to such occasions as of "never dropping the item but don't tell beforehand" ^^

[Xenoramos]

8 hours ago, Mister X said:

You won't ever get ruins on Solstheim, Zenidius likes Skyrim more ^^

Ah, that is cool decision, much more convenient (and also lack-of-attention-proof).

By the way, played through the mod again, on different path (naughty, but safe enough to avoid rape scene on the beginning in Arcanaeum) - had an issue with Zenidius' marker not moving once, when I entered my home, which is essentially a black book so different cell (I have "Black Books work in Skyrim too" mod), took the can of oil and returned to him, and Zenidius himself was gone, but his marker remained on the same space, even though I was like ~1 meter away from it. After that I tried to do the same, but before taking required items from home I changed my area by vanilla way (meaning I entered the dungeon), and it worked nicely that way, so I assume it might be unexpected location change got the script confused like "O_o what the heck is happening?"

Spoiler

And looking for Urag's key in Hall of Attainment (or whichever it's called) took me some time, as I didn't want to get caught, while key is considered stolen when placed in non-owned containers, not sure if it's intended or if there's any way to spawn a player-owned item into "steal from" container, I would assume it's pretty hard and actually unneeded effort to such a small thing.

Just a thought, that would be nice to have some option to get the key again incase player get caught and surrender into a jail (especially if the player doesn't abuse save-load to avoid it) before taking off quest restraints, as this will remove the key (key is still considered stolen, even if no such note\icon shows in inventory).

 

p.s. I guess nevermind, it's my mistake most likely, tested it again - key doesn't seem to disappear, so ignore previous part

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Xenoramos

[Allen Harris]

11 hours ago, Mister X said:

That's weird. He should leave only after the third item, not the gyro. I know that for some ruins you have to enter them first, but I assume you did that as you got the message.

  Hide contents

You can try the following:

 

open up the game console and type in sqv tftForbiddenTomeQuest. Search for an alias called ThirdPosMarker and copy its FormID to the following function:

player.moveto [FormID]

This should port you to the position where he should be after you've found a gyro.

 

You won't ever get ruins on Solstheim, Zenidius likes Skyrim more ^^

That worked, and I finished the quest. It was good work -> Some grammar errors and that weird bug on Zalarius's location not showing up, but good work. It was a lot of fun having some new devious device quests!

Edit: I really like how there's branching dialog, instead of the plot being linear. I imagine that's more challenging to make. If you'd ever like someone to go through and fix the grammar on one of your releases, please feel free to ask me. If it's not too complicated, I'm happy to help.

Sure hope we can see more ?

Edited June 22, 2023 by Allen Harris

[DayTri]

On 6/21/2023 at 1:33 AM, Allen Harris said:

Okay, so I just version 0.3 and after retrieving the gyro, Zalarius (or however you spell it) isn't at any of the locations. The notification on all of them is "Zalarius is nowhere to see"

 

18 hours ago, SpectreOfDecay said:

1. Sometimes when I get the 'search for Zenidius' objective, he's 'nowhere to be found' on each quest marker until there's none left. I've read from the aforewritten messages in this thread that he might've been in Solstheim. I personally doubt that, as this way I still should've got a quest marker there and I haven't.
 

 

It was on the previous version, but I had this "nowhere to be found" message come up even though he WAS there. Make sure to actually look directly where the arrow is pointing to rule this out

[KappaLima]

got the key and open the bookcase

but the ai package cant seem to work

pathing just make my character walk aimlessly

cant progress

playing SE version

 

*nevermind. worked properly after doing the first time talking with the orc librarian

Edited June 25, 2023 by KappaLima

[Lilzt3hcat]

Tried this out on LE, seemed to work fine after using cathedral for conversion. Seemed a lot better than the original version.

[jet41]

Just finished 0.3 "good girl" run on latest AE version.

Like somebody above, 3rd Zad's location said "not here" or something on all five locations, got stuck, had to use moveto command to find him.

It was the only OUTSIDE location of them 3 (Raldbthar).

Edit: Tried it with another char. Same thing, BUT "detection" fails only when approached on foot (from north). Fast-traveling directly to Raldbthar actually detect Zenidius correctly.

Also, Zenidius's belt and both plugs remained in my inventory and equiped, but removable and reusable. Didn't take centurion core either. Bug/feature?

Still nice job, Great blast from the past. Thank you.

 

Any chance for...continuation/expansion of quest? *wink*

Edited July 27, 2023 by jet41

[Mister X]

Heyho, small dev update:

 

I never really did much with the CK itself until this mod. So as a result, quite a few things I've done are... not really wrong, but "wonky". It somehow works, if you don't try too much to leave the story path that was created. Hence the beta state.

 

So, instead of keeping to meddle with the current style, I've decided to throw this first approach overboard and start from scratch with things I've learned while creating it. TBH, as it's not really a big quest mod, the decision wasn't even that hard to make.

What I hope to achieve with this:

- A more elegant approach to certain aspects and handling of situations, so the quest itself runs more fluent

- A more robust framework, so it can't break that easily anymore

 

What will be the result? The main difference will be, that you can't take any object anymore but you have to search for special variants. This is due to the fact, that it's way simpler to track fix references as quest items than trying to keep track if any of those objects is the one you wanted. In other words: you'll have to find that one specific Special Dwemer Oil instead of any random one.

To counter this, I plan to build in an optional easy mod that shows the locations of those objects, if enabled.
Question to you guys:

For now I only plan to cover the item search. Should it ease the search for Zenidius as well?

 

Another thing will be, that hopefully the search for Zenidius will be less error prone (speaking of the message), though I'm not totally sure how I will tackle it.

 

Maybe, for the future, a better scalability. So maybe, eventually, there might be a sequel if I really have the will and time to create one ^^

[blahity]

I remember the search not being fun in the original version. However, since you're starting from scratch anyway separating the easy mode into two options "Easy Mode: Items" and "Easy Mode: Zenidius" could be done in the MCM menu. Also an easy mode for Zenidius would ensure he doesn't spawn in a higher level Dragonborn DLC area.

 

[Mister X]

12 hours ago, blahity said:

I remember the search not being fun in the original version. However, since you're starting from scratch anyway separating the easy mode into two options "Easy Mode: Items" and "Easy Mode: Zenidius" could be done in the MCM menu. Also an easy mode for Zenidius would ensure he doesn't spawn in a higher level Dragonborn DLC area.

 

 

There won't be a MCM, just GlobalVariable toggles. A MCM would be overkill ^^ And Zenidius never were to be found on Solstheim in my variant, even if the current version.

 

The idea with two separate toggles is good, I think I'll do it like that