Download Dibella's Watch 1.0

DIBELLA'S WATCH
Gods and Mortals

By Antiscamp, Version 1.0


Note that there is also a patch for V1.0 available at http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=37120



It was said that the Goddess of Beauty and Love herself created the Island. She created it for all the enemy races and fighting factions of Tamriel; as a haven in peace and tranquility, where all petty grievances would be forgotten, and there would be no cries of war and no clash of arms. She painted Her island like a piece of art. She made it with lush forests, streaming rivers and fertile farmlands; She raised mountains in the north and in the west, made beautiful islands and painted endless plains. She made the land for a beautiful people who She drew from all the races of Tamriel.

The People of the Goddess worked the land and erected great buildings and monuments; they explored, they learned and they grew in numbers. Their achievements were many and their society grew strong, although the road ahead was sometimes rocky and rough. The Island of the Goddess became the Paradise in Tamriel that the Goddess had planned for. Indeed as close as could be with mortals and not gods running it.

But in the far west, the snake in paradise raised its head. The dark Deadtree Clan formed its black legions and stormed down from its prison in the mountains; to conquer, to pillage and destroy the peace She had installed. Angered and spurred by their devilish gods, they broke through, grew their numbers, raised their barbarian banners and set the march east to destroy civilization and beauty once and for all. Dibella's beautiful island was about to be torn by war and fire.



REQUIREMENTS

REQUIRED: Oblivion and the Shivering Isles expansion as well as the latest official patches. Dibella's Watch also requires OBSE to be run (http://obse.silverlock.org/). OBMM is required to set the load order of the files (http://www.tesnexus....ile.php?id=2097). Referr to the documentation of those utilities for issues regarding them.

Tips: OBSE ELYS (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=16622) is required for the silent voice, but comes with only an eight second file for silent voices. Since this mod involves a lot of written dialogue, you might want to use the longer silent voice file which is also supplied with this mod in the "DWOptional" folder. Copy the file to your Oblivion/Data/OBSE/Plugins folder. This will replace the eight second file with a twenty second. Backup the original file in the folder by renaming it.

RECOMMENDED: HGEC Body format for female characters (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=15802), Robert's Male Body for male characters (http://modsreloaded....rts-male-body-5) and Coronerra's Skeleton (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=27945) are all highly recommended, though not strictly required. Some clothing and armour items will work best with these mods installed.



INSTALLATION

1. Unzip all the contents of the downloaded .zip-archive to your Oblivion/Data folder.

2. Use OBMM to activate ALL the .esm and .esp files that come with the mod. There are three of them. DibellasWatch.esm, DWAnvilTransport.esp and DWInGameMap.esp. Use that load order. All of them are required to play the mod.

3. The Load Order is important. DibellasWatch.esm NEEDS to be loaded as the first file right after Oblivion.esm. Use OBMM to arrange this.



STARTING OUT

There is boat transport to Dibella's Watch from Cyrodiil. Go to Anvil and speak to the Orc at the docks, and he'll take you by sea transport to the island and you'll land at the docks at Port Zerrva. You can also talk to the female orc near the Floating Bloat at Imperial City Waterfront for transport to Port Constanze in Dibella's Watch. There are captains at the docks in those towns in Dibella's Watch who can transport you back to Cyrodiil too when you wish to leave Dibella's Watch.

To start the main storyline quest, travel to Shardville which is already marked on your map when you arrive in Dibella's Watch. you will either be approached by a Deadtree warrior who will start conversation with you, or you can search by the Governor's body to find a note that starts the main questline.

The continent is large and there is a lot to see and do; so you might want to start out with some exploring before you tackle the main quest, but it's your choice. The eastern parts of the continent are quite safe, with few enemies, but the further west you get, the more dangerous the land becomes. Dibella's Watch will require a well-established and experienced character to tackle the beasts of the west and the main storyline.

For more quests outside the main storyline, there's a list of all the quest-givers in Dibella's Watch below.



QUESTGIVERS AND GAME NOTES

During the the game, and during the main quest in particular, characters will be moving around the continent over quite large distances. Sometimes it will seem like they've disappeared off into Oblivion, or something, and you think people who are needed for the main quest have gone lost. This is most often not so, neither is it a bug. It takes time for unwatched people to move about in the land. Just sit yourself down, wait a couple of hours by pressing T, or spend some time at the local pub, and the people you're looking for will be right back where they're supposed to be. If you watch some of the characters move about between locations, they will take some strange paths sometimes. Again, not a bug, but a Path Grid thing.

Following is a list of the Quest Givers, so you can seek them out and do their quests.

- The Main Storyline is started by going to Shardville. One of the Orcs will approach you for dialogue, or you can take the note which the Governor of the village has dropped.
- The maroon on Lightspring Island starts "The Maroon".
- The Guard Zoma in Fort Azur starts "The Pirate's Treasure".
- The Argonian Can't-Stop-Drinking starts the Alcoholics' Guild Quest.
- Lord Wordham in Wordham Castle starts "The Missing Daughter".
- The Female Slave in Al Raj starts "Freeing Al Raj".
- Lord Eastwatch starts "The Retiree".
- The publican at The Forest's Edge starts "The Best Tavern Ever".
- Hornwald wandering The City streets starts "The Lost Student".
- Visit the Crusader Lord at Castle Saint Graecius to do "The Test".



DESIGNER'S NOTES

Dibella's Watch started out as just a small thing. I wanted to create an own little island where I could build villages and towns, since I was tired of having all my villages for Tamriel rejected since there was no space left to build on in Tamriel! Nowadays there's absolutely no free space over there. All corners of the land is taken by one conflicting mod or another. My solution to that, was to simply create my own worldspace. I started with The City, but the island grew from there. I drafted a design document at that relatively early stage, a document which I have probably scrapped in its entirety by now.

I made a few mistakes. I should have created the island in the Heightmap Editor before I started to populate it with villages, but I had no thought about it getting this large. It still looks strikingly good. There were good things to come out of that initial mistake though. I decided to only add land as I needed it for quests or a certain point of interest, which meant that the island never grew to large to be populated and never too large for me to lose interest. I see many modders starting out, creating large islands and cities with a hundred houses. But when it comes to filling all that, the energy is gone and their mods die of natural causes. I did not make that mistake. I made everything in Dibella's Watch count. Every house, every NPC, even every tree and stone has its meaning. All is hand-crafted, as well, there are no mass generated trees here. All trees, bushes and stones are placed by hand, by me, personally.

Dibella's Watch Version 1.0 has taken me eight months to complete; it has taken most of my free time and it has taken a lot of energy and effort. I liked some things about modding it, like creating landscapes, villages and NPC's. I also got into writing quests and liked that process a lot. what I wasn't good at though, was working with file formats, outside utilities and things in general outside the Construction Set. That is why Dibella's Watch is still Load Order sensitive, there are no BSA-files and the in-game map is still in a separate .esp, among other things. Trying to deal with all those three issues, rendered problems with the game and caused errors and the game not behaving properly. It seemed I had to sacrifice the gaming experience just to make the bleeding file structure proper. Therefore you have to excuse me and just live with the shortcomings. I'd rather have a perfectly functioning, fun game, where I've put my most energy on creating a beautiful, exciting new land, than having a perfectly packed, streamlined and neat file structure with a heavily glitching game underneath all that tidyness.

Hundreds and hundreds of hours have been spent by myself playtesting the mod. Hundreds. This doesn't mean that it's prefect, since my gaming style doesnt' necessarily mean that I see things that you see when playing the game in your style. Therefore, it is still important that you give me your feedback about what you like and what you don't. Even the slightest things. There will be patches in the future and maybe even substantial expansions with new quests and other cool things. For now, though, I need to rest from Dibella's Watch, but knowing myself, I will probably be back to it in a couple of weeks to patch and expand...

Dibella's Watch is a one-man-project. As such, a project of this magnitude, detail, completion and playability has rarely been put together before by one single creator (I know only a few other examples), alone, for Oblivion. It is unique. I dare you to do the same as I have done with Dibella's Watch! I am very proud of Dibella's Watch; it is my personal gift to the Elder Scrolls Universe as well as a tribute to the game series as a whole.



CREDITS AND THANKS

Thanks go to Bethesda for producing this classic game series. I've been playing since Daggerfall, and will be there to play, love and mod Skyrim too!

I owe a lot of thanks to the creators mentioned in the Credits below, as well as my Beta testers and supporters. I want to specially thank Tamira, who I met on the TesAlliance forums. Tamira has been invaluable in her effective beta testing and support of this mod. Thanks also go to Apa1994 and Wverdin. Overall, my innermost thanks go to the excellent, friendly Elder Scrolls community, specifically at the TesAlliance forums. I also want to thank the crew and people at ModDB. ModDB makes it fun and rewarding to publish beta files and they have a tendency to notice not only big and famous mods around there, but also unknown newcomers, like Dibella's Watch at the first Beta versions.

Thanks also to the folks working on the Construction Set Wiki. Reading the Wiki and learning from it was imperative in the creation of this mod.

Thanks go to my my lovely girlfriend, Sandra, who has let me nerd on with this mod, showed interest and listened to my rants about it. She has let me keep on, although it has sometimes felt like she's been a widow of the Deadtree War.

The resources below were used in the creation of Dibella's Watch. I only used resources of very high quality that I deemed would enrich the mod. Having a mention in this credits list, is a compliment, because I am picky and have high standards and tastes. I tried to contact all creators, but I failed on occasion. All resources used have "use it, but give me credits" status. I therefore, of course, include full credits with a link back to the specific resource used. I could not have pulled this project off without the resources and the excellent Oblivion community.

- Town Guard Uniforms Imperial Guard Armour by David Brasher (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=31139).
- Countess' Banner Armours and Redguard Bronze is Plate Armour by nao4288 (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=36527).
- The Orcish Armour was made by Pale Rider and called Berserker Armour (http://tesnexus.com/...le.php?id=15637).
- The Deadtree Orcish Forts were put together using Cello978's Dungeon Maker (http://planeteldersc...d=84934&id=2543).
- The Viking Armour was supplied by Apachii in her Heroes Store, a much recommended mod (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=22962).
- The Viking weapons and shields came from Vason's modders resource Nordic Weaponry (http://www.tesnexus....ile.php?id=6837).
- The Viking Smith's Armour comes from DMRA Skimpy Armour (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=28912). Also used on some female Deadlander Bandits.
- The Palm Tree was found in Disturbed's Tree Resource Pack (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=25826).
- The Static Armour and the Luxury Bed was made by MrSiika and found in Castle Seaview, and so was the Cow (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=25574).
- The Dancer outfit comes from Lingerie Set for HGEC by Kurese (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=23589).
- The Dance Animation comes from Umpa's Dance Animations (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=14574).
- The Woodelf Queen's white Dress was made by Terry_Malick (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=24382).
- The Techtarra Giant Spider was created by Malo and Elveon (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=18709).
- Rocks and stone formations from Lordrahl's Cliff Resources have been implemented (http://oblivionsreal.../Misc/misc.html).
- The Seldora Monastery Church was made by Phaerus (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=28306).
- The Barracks Weapon Rack was made by Omegacron (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=27150).
- The new cart was created by Momo (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=37221).
- Market stands were created by Stroti (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=36158).
- The new parts of the Deadlanders' armours were created by Pale Rider (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=26543).
- The new capes and cloaks are supplied by Someone1074 (http://www.tesnexus....ile.php?id=4539).
- The Crusader Sword was created by LHammonds (http://planeteldersc...l&id=6607#Files).
- The Tiger was created by Ogramirad (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=20144).
- Wheelbarrow and Palisade comes from Meo's Settlement Resources (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=20641).
- The Woodlander armour comes from Archer's Armor by Demoncleaner5000 from 2007 (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=10425). i tried to get in contact with the author, but to no result. If he later objects to its use in Dibella's Watch, I will remove it. I am sure he appreciates me using it though.
- The desert houses in Al Raj come from the DUNE III-package (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=13995) by Darkness Eternal.
- Books, paper sheets and scrolls created by Lady Nerevar (http://tesalliance.o...ns-paper-goods/).
- MEO's City map Resource was used to create the wall- and table maps of Dibella's Watch (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=29432).
- Dibella's Wrath (Seraphim Sword) was created by Hentai (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=38336).
- The filled bookshelves were created by JDFan (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=26175).
- The Scarley Guard armour and variations are from Wikinger's Medieval Armour Resource (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=20877).
- The Windmill comes from Mr Siika's Highrock Resource (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=38734).
- The common weapons were made by Walx in his Realswords project (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=13370).
- Robes for priests and monks were created by Moshadawg in the Elaborate Robes mod (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=39035).
- The Deadtree Battle Leader swords were created by Isilmeriel (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=39047 and http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=28714).
- Some new paintings by Aisis (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=26915).
- The "End-Level-Baddy" armour was created by Jojo. Dread Knight Armour (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=24850).



DISCLAIMER & CONTACT

Please do not upload Dibella's Watch without my permission to any other website or service than the ones I've provided (TesNexus and ModDB). Please referr to the Credits and Thanks part of this ReadMe if you want to use any of the resources. Contact the appropriate author in that case. You MAY freely edit, change and add to Dibella's Watch however much you want. This also includes translations into other languages. Go right ahead. Credit me, and shoot me a message if you do so.

This software is provided as is without warranty of any kind. You use this Oblivion mod on your own risk and on your own responsibility, and installing it on your computer means you understand that. I as author cannot be held responsible for any damage it does to your computer, saved games or game or otherwise.

Contact me on my E-Mail, gfrilund777@gmail.com or on TesAlliance (http://tesalliance.o...dibellas-watch/), TesNexus (http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=37120) or ModDB (http://www.moddb.com.../dibellas-watch) as Antiscamp. This mod will be patched and work on it is ever continuing, so please give comments, suggestions votes and other feedback to let me know what you think is good and what's not.



MORE STUFF

If you liked Dibella's Watch, also check out these additions for it:

Dibella's Watch Alternative Start: http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=40143
Dibella's Watch CM Partners: http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=39971

Also, check out the official German translation of Dibella's Watch by Tamira: http://www.tesnexus....le.php?id=40171 There are also Japanese and Russian translations of this mod being worked on.



Göran Frilund, aka Antiscamp, Jan-Aug 2011