Reilly2040's Blog

Kind of a follow up post this. Since I’d ranted about the grief I had installing the Oblivion mod, it seemed only fair to mention how it played.

The mod in qestion was the Fighter’s Stronghold mod available from Oblivion Downloads. Filling in an obvious gap in their player housing mods, this one introduces Castle Battlehorn, a player-owned castle aimed at (you guessed it) Fighter-based characters.

I’m not a big fan of the huge houses. While they look impressive, personally I tend to find them a bit impractical. I prefer somewhere I can duck into, rest and stash my equipment, without having to wander through 5 different rooms first. Small wonder then that my houses of choice tend to be the Imperial City shack and the Bruma house.

The castle itself is impressive. There’s loads of rooms, with player quarters and a grand dining hall. However, my only complaint was the ease at which the castle is aquired. Once you have the quest, its a simple matter of defeating four enemies (with help from the guards) and its yours. There is apparently another quest that can be unlocked, but I’ve not played that one yet, and I was a bit dissappointed by the lack of a proper quest to own the house.

If your very own castle floats your boat, then I’m more inclined to recommend the Castle Ravenpride mod. Available freely, you are presented with an incredibly satisfying quest before you are given lordship of the castle. The mod is probably the best player-created quest I’ve played, with several hours playtime needed, full voice acting, and some nice scripted bits (the bridge to the castle is visually stunning when you first see it, and provides a great backdrop to one of your fights).

Check out the trailer for the mod:

Ok, so I’m a bit of a hoarder in real life, and that transfers to my RPGs.

Anything that I got in Oblivion, either by defeating enemies, or completing quests that was interesting, or had a good story behind it, got stored in my trusty locker in the Bruma house.

I was also trying to collect full sets of the various suits of armour, but realised the problem was that I was continually having to dig through the cupboard in Bruma to see what I did and didn’t have. And with the Mannequins mod installed it made more sense to display the different suits, and then it would be more obvious which parts I was missing.

Of course, as those who’ve played the game will know, the Bruma house is quite cozy, and not really setup to have loads of mannequins on display. So I started scouting out the other houses in the game, when I had a better idea.

I love the RP aspects of these games, and will usually (in my head at least) have my character fairly figured out. I suddenly remembered about the Bravil Sea Domes mod I had installed. Perfect I thought: my character has his main Bruma house where he stores his main equipment he uses all the time, but keeps an armory secured underwater where no one can get at it.

So, here’s the result. I added 8 mannequins into the main room of the Sea Domes, and equiped them with some of the armour and weapons I had collected. Some of the weapons that I had collected could also be stored in the display cabinets as a bonus.

As mentioned below, I setup the mannequins mod in Oblivion the other night. Its really nice to have a good way of storing those nice suits of armour I just can’t bring myself to flog.

This mannequin sports the Imperial Dragon Armour you get for completing the main quest

While this one sports the trusty Kvatch curiass, chain mail armour, Northwind sword and Turtle Shield that got me through most of the main quest.

Well, as predicted, I ended up playing with those Oblivion mods last night.

The mannequins mod (Reznod Mannequins) is a really nice bit of kit. As someone who collected various complete sets of armour in the game, and didn’t like throwing various nice outfits away, its great to have something to display them on. My only problem now is that I tend to prefer using the Bruma house, which isn’t filled with a huge amount of room. However so far I’ve got two set up. One in my Imperial Dragon Armour, while the other is wearing my trusty chainmail and Kvatch Curiass, complete with the Northwind sword and shield that saw me through most of the main quest. I’ll need to get some screengrabs of them sorted out.

The Bravil Undersea Domes mod is a great bit of eye-candy. As I say, I tend to use the Bruma house as my main base of operations (I grew to love that town during the main quest), but this provides a really nice house (and I’ve not even done it up with the upgrades yet). The ability to swim down and see the domes from the outside is a really nice touch as well.

Here’s a second video. This time the interior of the domes.

Although I’ve been playing Morrowind a bit recently, I ended up browsing the Oblivion mods listed under the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages today, and found a couple that look really neat.

One adds the ability to buy mannequins for your houses to display your armour on, while the other is an undersea house, just outside of Bravil. I guess that sorts what I’ll be doing tonight