Cyrodiil Upgrade Overhaul

Cyrodiil Upgrade Overhaul V6

Created by Cyrodiil Upgrade Team

Requires = Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion 1.2
Requires = Shivering Isles 1.2
Requires = Cyrodiil Upgrade Resource Pack 1.4.8 or newer

FileFront CURP Link
http://hosted.filefront.com/giskarduk/2330218

Nexus CURP Link
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19254

Credits for Resources Used.
See Credits.html in CURP

About the Cyrodiil Upgrade Overhaul

My intention here is to make the whole game feel more realistic but at the same time keep it challenging. One of the ways to ensure the player will always be put under pressure is to randomize the appearance of bad guys that are very capable of kicking the players ass. This randomness works in my favour because a hero type can appear at any time so the player naturally becomes more careful and prepares better.

I am sure you have all drawn your sword and charged in to ruins thinking "I am invincible, ARGH!!!", well if you try it here it might work a few times but sooner or later you will meet a character or creature that disagrees with you and the ARGH part will be your death.

Whilst testing this mod, one of the big differences between what used to happen as I leveled up in the default game or with various overhauls and what happens now is the leveling seens bonus points for most, if not all the in game stats where before, many times, I would simply have a bonus or a few selective stats. So sneaking, blade, blunt, archery, merchant and all the other skills are getting used alot more by using this overhaul. At least they do in my game.

Potions become useful again, scrolls become useful, poisons start to be needed. Entire areas of the game that are usually forgotten become a way to achieve your objectives when you find your self faced with an opponent your own weapon cannot kill. You need to be inventive and use your brain, suddenly combat is fun again, you feel a sense of achievement. Finding an enchanted sword means something and instead of leaving it behind because of its low value and weight, you take it with you knowing that when your enchantments run out on your current sword, this one will come in handy.

Often you will find enchantments give you the edge they should always have given you and also the disadvantages too when your weapon will not harm a creature that has a natural resistance to the enchantment.

Finding a good sword at level 1 is cool but how do you keep it charged? You cannot earn enough to charge it...well you have a few options here thanks to these changes. First there is always a chance of finding something better so you can sell your old swords as you find new ones. Secondly, you may find something worth enough to allow you to keep your sword charged. Or you can go to an undead ruin and take the bound soul gems off the dead just as you used to do in Morrowind.

NPCs around you are not all the same level as you, some are higher, some are lower, some are real honest to god heros of the Empire already, others are peasants.

And those factions you see in caves and ruins, what of them? They exist in name only and its been my intention for a long long time to make them feel more real and more organized. Well, these overhaul files are doing that right now. No more slapping Mr Blobby in a necromancer robe and suddenly he is a Necromancer or taking that robe off him and putting Mr Blobby in a suit of armour to make him a bandit, that is just so old and boring. It is not what I want.

My Necromancers have necromancer robes (friendlies use different robes from bad guys so you can tell them appart), necromancer staffs, necromancer lich spells, necromancer lifes and necromancer ways to fight. They carry necromancer loot and soon even their caves will be revamped with new optional addons as part of this overhaul to ensure the chests contain necromancer loot too. The support for that is already in the resource pack. All I need to do is make an esp for it. New dialog for these name only factions you fight often will start appearing too and that will finally turn them in to real factions in their own right.

The same is true for Daedra, Conjurers, bandits of all kinds. They have all been configured to be exactly what they are supposed to be and not some random mishmash of parts as others have made them so far.

Creatures in the wilderness should not all want you dead and who ever heard of a pack of bears? Where is the immersion today? Stepping off the road in some mods resulted in me laughing so hard I could not fight as packs of flying bears flew over my head in formations of 12 only to fall to their deaths like some Red Arrow display team running out of fuel... and if one survived, I had no chance. The tears rolling down my face over what I had just seen effectively paralized me through laughter.

Whilst funny, its just not right, that should not be happening, nor should everything you see attack you. Franco had the right idea here, add some harmless life to the wilderness make sure your only attacked some of the time, if animal is supposed to roam in packs, make it a real pack animal and add more to spawn with it, if its a loner as bears are, make it a strong loner.

Only I unleveled the lot so you can see a level 30 monster in the wilderness or a rabbit at any time and if could come back and fight that creature later, it would still be a level 30 monster or rabbit, it never changes even if you do.

Dangerous and harmless now have the same chance of appearing. This means you can be lulled in to believing everything is fine as you walk through the woods during a summer day. The view for miles shows no bears in the grass, you feel safe but the wilderness looks empty.

Then you get attacked by an unseen enemy that has crept towards you on its 8 legs unseen because it is smaller than the grass that hides it and now you are to be its lunch as it poisons you and you start to wish you had carried those health potions around with you when your magicka runs out and your health is still dropping.

The Wilderness is a dangerous place, but its also not about constant action either, this overhaul ensures you get the right mix of danger and sunday strolling so warrior or alchemist can enjoy a trip in the wilderness without needing to be heavily armed and full invisibility to keep the wildlife away.

Loot and venders also allow you to buy anything you can afford, so its possible to get a high leveled weapon from a shop if you can find one. Or you can fight hard to get it from a bandit and then use it to close an oblivion gate and claim some daedric armour as loot for your troubles. But you cannot carry it all, your only a level 5, dam your inexperience. If only you had taken that strength bonus during your last level up instead of the willpower one that let your magicka regenerate faster and by doing so, let you defeat that bad guy that had that armour.

Life can be complicated, some times things all go your way, sometimes entire oblivion gates seem filled with meat heads that will stomp you to death and force you to be stealthy for a change.

Which is a lot more realistic I think.

High end armour is usually not available in the shops, nobody leaves it laying around, they protect it, keep it safe, use it for their own quests. If you want it you must take it from them. Or make it via other mods of mine. Either way, you need to earn it. Bosses usually have the Daedric, Ebony Glass stuff, lower ranks have cheaper armour which gets better at higher ranks. But Bosses are now the source of all the heavily armed goodness you can desire and just wearing a suit means, you beat one of them.

Its a status symbol, your iron sword and iron armour defeated a boss and now your the hero, and he is dead.

And talking about Heros.

One of the more exciting ideas is HEROS.

Heros are always between level 40 and 50 and always carry something totally unique and provide a real challenge for you. But every hero belongs to a faction and every heros abilities are abilities that faction should have. Every spell, weapon or item of equipement matches the profile of the faction he belongs to. For example a Conjurer Hero will always be one of the best summoners of Daedra in the game. You should expect to fight some seriously hard deadra when facing him. A Bandit Hero is more of a fighter and comes with cool stuff that is fighter related. Necromancer heros are entirely configured to be the best necromancers in the game.

But all share the weaknesses of the faction they belong to.

New Dialog has been added to factions that previously never had any original dialog and this has become the icing on the cake for bad guy factions that you meet in caves and ruins.

The old Fighters Guild Contracts now gets added to CUO and revamped along CUO lines to include new equipement from the Cyrodiil Upgrade Resource Pack, new Heros to fight with and against you. A total off 35 new contacts that can be done over and over again away your attention, thus making the fighters guild feel like it was always supposed to feel like. A living breathing mercs outfit.

Included Files

These files will overhaul your game in much the same way my other mods have overhauled various factions and cities in the game. Doing to the same generally what Kvatch aftermath and Origin of the mages guild did. The included esps are all optional, you can use all of them or none of them or anything in between. But together they offer the complete Cyrodiil Upgrade experience.

SAFE esps.

A Safe esp is an ESP that edits nothing in the game at all and should be safe to use with most mods.

CUO_MerchantUpdate_SAFE.esp
This file adds a lot of the Resource packs new content to the shops so you can buy them. It is totally safe to use with anything because it adds new merchant chests to the vendors it uses rather than attempt to edit any vendor directly. Use this to add some of the cool (Common) new content to your game if you do not want the rest of the overhaul. Also you can still run this along side the CUO_UnLeveledVendors.esp if you wish to. Its perfectly save. The Cyrodiil Upgrade is about choice, by letting you have the cool new stuff without the overhaul it self, I am giving you more choice.

CUO_NewFactionDialog_SAFE.esp
Adds over 500 lines of new Dialog to factions that previously had no unique lines of their own. Making them more real and your game more immersive. This addon is the icing on the cake, the final layer of detail needed to make those randomly spawning bad guys feel like a real faction. If you do not want the new dialog, do not enable this esp.

CUO_FightersGuildContracts_SAFE.esp
Adds 35 repeatable contracts to the Fighters Guild, these contracts are fully intrigated with the Fighters guild quest line. The contracts appear on specific days of the week and vanish the next day but if you accept a mission, you can complete it any time and even accept other missions without completing the first. Some quests like the Leyawiin and Bruma Quests are linked to you competing specific Fighters Guild Plot quests before they appear. The regular hunt missions for Leyawiin for example appear after you do the Drunk and Disorderly quest and get the job of collecting Ogre Teeth and Minotaur horns for the other members. Once that quest is done and the fighters have jobs, you too can do those Jobs. I made them available from the local Clerk. Later, other quests will appear as you progress through the Fighters Guild Plot but these are only delayed to keep this mod consistant with the Official Fighters Guild plot, no other reason. This version of the Fighters Guild Contracts also supports CUO_NewFactionDialog_SAFE.esp above.

Normal esps

These mods edit beths leveled lists and not the game world cells, as such they are far more compatible with other mods than most overhauls are. For example, if you make a house mod, you will not find a monster from this mod in your garden unless you forgot to move a monster maker beth placed which these mods use. Because of the way beths original leveled lists are used, these will work very well with most mods and most overhauls with 1 condition. Because other overhauls edit the same items these edit, you must run these after the other overhauls because running them before another overhaul would effectively turn them off.

CUO_UnLeveledLoot.esp
This file unlevels all the loot so anything can appear at any level. Well, the loot that needs unleveling anyway. This was achieved by cloning the loot, adding it to my own leveled list and adding my leveled list to beths leveled list that you find on bodies or in chests. This makes this esp is extremely compatible with other mods and overhauls but should be run after other overhauls if you want it to work.

CUO_UnLeveledNPCs&Creatures.esp
This file unlevels the randomly Spawning NPCs and Creatures so they can appear at any level. This was achieved by cloning the NPCs and Creatures, adding them to my own leveled list and adding my leveled list to beths leveled list so no spawn markers or cells needed editing to upgrade the whole of cyrodiil. It also introduces the new lore based creatures to the game that were added in the resource pack. This makes this esp extremely compatible with other mods and overhauls but should be run after other overhauls if you want it to work. Also unlike other overhauls, because thus mod does not add new spawn markerts, if you edit one for your own mods, eg move one away from a new farm you are making, this mod will respect that change and not spawn a new creature in your farm yard. Compatibility is part of the design...perhaps you heard

CUO_UnLeveledPotions.esp
This file unlevels the potions and adds Jannix positon bottles to the game (they are in the resource pack but unused) along side beth's potions for maximum compatibility and greater variety. This was achieved by cloning the potions, adding them to my own leveled list and adding my leveled list to beth's leveled list so my potions appear along side beth's for maximum compatibility. This makes this esp extremely compatible with other mods and overhauls but should be run after other overhauls if you want it to work.

CUO_UnLeveledVendors.esp
This mod unlevels the vendors in the game so they will sell anything at any time. This was done by cloning the exisitng vender leveled lists, editing the cloned versions and then adding the cloned lists to the vendor lists so only the actual lists the vendors chests use needed to be edited. In english that means I did not need to edit the vendor or their chests to do this. Compatibility is part of the design...perhaps you heard...oh I said that before didn't I.

CUO_Dwemer
This mod enables the Dwemer features in CURP 1.4.8. CURP had all the dwemer stuff except for the new dialog built in to it so all this mod does is add doors to link to CURPs Dwemer levels. This means Landscape mods can ignore this esp and simple link to the same levels with their own esp, by passing the need for this esp completely. I guess you want to know what your linking too, well your getting 6 Dwemer mines between Bruma and the Temple of the Ancestor Moths. Each has Dwemer warriors, Dwemer Spider Centurions, Some other Centurions, Dwemer Armour, Dwemer Weapons, Dwemer staffs, some dwemer potions etc, Dwemer plates, forts, knifes, Dwemer beds, Dwemer Ashes, you getting the idea yet, its all Dwemer. The Dwemer have been created in CURP so they can be used by any mod and have been created in line with my other CUO mods. Like the rest, this can be used on its own.

Dirty ESPs

All Overhauls edit the game data directly but I try not to because it causes problems with other mods. However, sometimes I must so I branded these DIRTY so you can see these are the risky esps to use if you have any concerns at all about compatibility. In most cases running these after other overhauls but before other mods will fix any problems you may hit. The load order is important because other overhauls edit the same items these mods edit so running these before overhauls would effectively turn them off.

CUO_BadGuy_Specific_Loot_DIRTY.esp
This esp customizes the loot found in chests at specific locations, so it matches the type of bad guy that uses that location. EG Necromancer loot in necromancer caves is a good example. This is part of my plan to make various locations feel more like the home of those that inhabit them. The edits were made to the EditorIDs not the FormIDs found in various cells so all references will be updated automatically.

CUO_UnleveledGuards&Legioneers_DIRTY.esp
This unlevels all the guards and legioneers to make them all average fighters. For this overhaul, average is considered to be level 20. These changes are needed because at low levels the guards and legioneers are unable to cope with unleveled creatures they meet on the roads. The edits were made to the EditorIDs not the FormIDs found in various cells so all references will be updated automatically.

More upgrades are planned.

Old file Deletions.

Please delete the following files if you used older betas.

CUO_UnleveledList.Esp
CUO_Demo.Esp (obselete)
FightersGuildContracts.esp (is now CUO_FightersGuildContracts_SAFE.esp and fully Cyrodiil Upgradified)

Installation (IMPORTANT)

Just extract the zip into your Oblivion Folder (NOT THE OBLIVION DATA FOLDER). If you can see the Oblivion.exe file, then thats the right place to extract this to. Then enable these in the game. That is it. Nice and simple.

Remember though, you must have the Cyrodiil Upgrade Resource Pack installed for this to work.

http://www.novazone.karoo.net/cuoCyrodiilUpgradeResourcePack.htm

Change Log

Most of the updates to this mod are actually made in the Cyrodiil Upgrade Resource Pack so please read the change log for that mod to find out which changes effect this mod. Below is a list of changes made directly to this mod.

V4 Release
Added the New Dialog Esp to the pack.

V5 Release
Revamped the Fighters guild contracts mod to CUO so it uses the resource pack material and works like a CUO addon. Added support for several other CUO features to the Fighters guild contracts. The intregation of the 2 mods should improve both dramatically.

Disclaimer

The disclaimer for all our mods can be found at the link below.

http://www.novazone.karoo.net/CuoDisclaimer.htm

General stuff.

I make these mods for free and I share them with you for free. So I do not expect to regret MY decision to share these mods with you for any reason what so ever and expect all players to use my work in a legal manner. This decision to share mods with you includes permission edit them as you see fit.

Should you make me regret sharing my mods with you, then I will take the appropriate action to deal with you and/or any mods you made that are based on my mods. Including asking a hosts to remove your versions of my mods and/or removing all my own mods from public download and/or uploading my mods for free download to private forum areas where only invited guests can get access to them in the future at no charge.

Credit where it is due.

I do not ask for credit for my work, fame comes at a price and its a price I am not prepared to pay. So I personally would rather be a nobody than have my name credited everywhere. But others who made modders resources that I have used have asked to be credited and I have done so in my mods. Anybody editing my mods in any way should cut and past the credits or link to my credits in their mods so those who need to be credited are credited.

Here is a link to my Resource Pack Credits.

http://www.novazone.karoo.net/cuoCyrodiilUpgradeResourcePackCredits.htm

Nobody ever complains if you credit too many modders, but you will get complaints if you miss one. So do not even attempt to guess who did want. Just cut and paste the whole list unless you know who made the parts your using.

Voice Actor Credits.

alienshavlanded for Nord Female
Giskard for Nord Male
Nowena for Imperial Female
Euther for Imperial Male
Giskard for Imperial Male
Euther for redguard male
Nowena for Redguard female
NPM78 for Breton Male
Nowena for Breton female
Purple Gandalf for Female Elfs
Giskard for Elf Male
Lalwende for Argonian/khajiit female
giskard for Argonian/khajiit Male

Fighters Guild Contracts Voice Actor Credits.

Skingrad Clerk = James Egger
Leyawiin Clerk = TOAD
Bruma Clerk = Green Warden
Anvil Clerk = Vaul
Chorrol = Lalwende
Cheydinhal = Giskard
Bravil = Giskard

Good Luck.

Cyrodiil Upgrade Team