Ma_Sys.ma Athena’s Aberwiin Manor

Questions and Answers

What?

A large house based on Aberwiin Manor. Refer to “Credits” for information about the original author.

Where?

North West near the Imperial City. Marked as “Aberwiin Manor” just like the original.

How to install a mod?

Merge the contents of the Data folder and your Oblivion Data folder and activate the mod in the menu before playing the game.

Conflicts?

This mod conflicts with the original “Aberwiin Manor” because it uses the same place.

Requirements?

This version needs at least version 1.1.511 of Oblivion (like the original mod) and the Shivering Isles expansion.

Nothing works?

Refer to section “Getting started”

Credits

This mod is a changed copy of Colin M’s “Aberwiin Manor” version 2.07. Thus, most of the work has been done by him. The original mod can be found at Nexusmods. Colin M has permitted me to copy and change his mod and release the result under GPL – many thanks again!

The readme-file for the original mod is provided in the res folder.

Background Information

When I created my first house mod, the “Ma_Sys.ma Ayleid Ruin”, the intention was to provide a nice and uncommon but highly practical house mod which should contain everything you expect by some means quickly accessible.

When I played the game for the third time (third character), I still used the “Ma_Sys.ma Ayleid Ruin” at the beginnging. After a while I thought it might be nice to check out the state of art house mods again and find some alternatives so that each of my characters could get their own residence. Thus, I decided to go with my own mod for the first character and looked for house mods for my other two characters.

Aberwiin Manor turned out to be one of the best house mods available, because it was large (which wanted this time) but still small enough to reach all parts in sensible time. Compared to my own mod, there were some minor issues, which I wanted to correct, before I would start to use it: I wanted to optimize the lighting, remove some parts I would not use and add a trader to sell superflous items at good prices. Finally, I also wanted to cluster some storage at a single place in order not to scatter my items all over the place.

The result is “Athena’s Aberwiin Manor” – a customized (and from my point of view: improved) version of the original mod.

Files

Data/

Mod files.

MaAthenasAberwiinManorReadme.txt

This file. It might be advisable to keep this for reference.

LICENSE.txt

A copy of the GNU General Public License Version 3, see “Redistribution”.

screenshots/MaAthenasAberwiinManor*.png

Some screenshots to give you an overview over the place.

Makefile

Used to generate archives ready for upload. You do not need this.

res/aberwiin_readme.txt

README-File for the mod this is based on.

res/static_alchemy_readme.txt

README-File for a mod incorporated into the original “Aberwiin Manor” and thus also part of this mod.

Screenshots

Changelog

0.9.0.2 Sun May 17 21:09:39 CEST 2015

First version to be mentioned.

0.9.0.3 Wed May 20 22:36:55 CEST 2015

Tweaks for the release at Nexusmods.

0.9.0.4 Sat May 23 17:21:08 CEST 2015

Failed to fix crash at using ring multiple times. It seems this is a problem which is likely to occur only at my installation.

0.9.0.5 Mon Oct 26 21:00:14 CET 2015

A first attempt to create a full grid for all cells provided by this mod.

Getting started

The following is a summary of steps you have to perform to be able to get into all areas of the house. For information on additional features such as the “Mark Victim” and “Take Victim” spells, please refer to the orignal readme attached in res/aberwiin_readme.txt. You may of course also try them out without further reading as their names are pretty self-explainatory.

How to get in

1. Go to the map marker
2. Break into the front door
3. Turn left or right and go to the basement
4. Go down to the large free space
5. You will see a row of candles lighting the wall
6. Check the column of the candle which is exactly right of the middle
7. You should see “Pressure Plate” displayed on the screen It is normal that you do not see any plate, just blindly move your cursor till you find the spot. It should be below the candle of the right column from the middle
8. Activate the “Pressure Plate”
9. The floor should slide back.
10. Now break into the door at the end of the stairs.
11. You enter a dungeon-like area
12. Follow the way till you see lava in front of you
13. Turn right and go up till you can view the stone dragon
14. There should be a small table with alchemistic appartus
15. On the table there are a key and a ring. Take both
16. You can now use the teleport field before the table to go to the top floor and back.
17. You now “own” the house.

Features

Short summary of features

• A large house including garden and an own merchant.
• Means of always getting back to the house (“Ring of Aberwiin”)
• Spellmaker and enchanter like in the Mages Guild.
• Underground complex “Dark Temple” with lava and dungeon facilities.
• Scripted spells to allow the player to make use of the dungeon.
• Static Alchemy set
• Fast travel from all house cells
• Many plants you can harvest for alchemy

Note

This mod is heavily utilizing resources and can thus cause lag (similar to the original, probably even worse because I have added some lights). It lags on my system as well. If it annoys you, you can either go with a more lightweight housemod, reduce details very much or go with a newer graphics card (sometimes a driver upgrade is enough ☺)

Changes to the original Version

Short summary of changes

• All containers found in the house and basement are now safe for storage
• Added Ayleid Crystals in the first floor
• Added some containers (and removed some!)
• Added a Zombie-Trader with some nice goods and enough money
• Removed all ambient light (makes the light look more realistic)
• Removed just about all showcases
• Removed a lot of unncessary references (my version is smaller)

WARNING

As part of a design decision, this mod is not compatible with the original version. You can neither run both at a time, nor upgrade from a normal “Aberwiin Manor” to this mod without losing items. If this is not satisfactory to you, check section “How to transition (NOT RECOMMENDED)”. Using both mods with the same savegame at the same time is not possible without editing the mod files to place the house at another location!

Redistribution

I have decided to release this mod under GPL. Although it is designed to be used for programs, it may also be used for other work – quoting from the GPL: ““The Program” refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License.”

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

How to transition (NOT RECOMMENDED)

WARNING

You are highly discouraged to do this! It is not safe!

This mod is basically a changed copy of “Aberwiin Manor”. Thus, it can be seen as a “new version” of the original mod and thus there are means of switching between the one and the other.

Generally, it is not an issue to disable the one and enable the other (whichever direction) and thus reset all house contents to the clean state supplied by the mod.

However, if you want to switch between the two versions and keep, e.g. your stored items, it becomes a lot more difficult. First: If you want to attempt doing this, you need to make sure, the game thinks of the change as being a version change only. Thus, you will need to rename the MaAthenasAberwiinManor.esp (and MaAthenasAberwiinManor.bsa) to Aberwiin Manor.esp (and Aberwiin Manor.bsa) before installing the new version. Or if you want to switch from this mod to the original version, you will have to rename the original version to MaAthenasAberwiinManor.esp (also before installing it). Having renamed the files in the way described here, you need to overwrite the previously used “version” with the version you want to use (which you have renamed to the same filename). Make sure that you do not start the game while doing the transition and that you do not change anything in the mod settings in the game menu! No message should appear when loading a savegame after such a transition. If it tells you something has changed regarding mods, it is likely you did something wrong.

Performing a transition as described in the previous paragraph is problematic in various ways: You need to make sure, that the change does not destroy any items you have stored in containers only available in one of the versions and you need to make sure, you (and items you have placed) are not standing anywhere where the new version fills the space differently (Consider your character standing in a corner where my mod has added a barrel – this could lead to serious issues!).

As already mentioned, this mod was not designed to stay backwards-compatible to the original mod and it introduces new containers which are not available in the original version.

To help you transition (if needed, and only if needed!), this is a list of containers which should work using either of the versions:

• The long row of chests in the dark temple area
• The chests on the first floor (2x4 on both sides to be exact)
• The jewlery box in the teleporter room

The following containers are definitely not safe for such a transition

• All containers in the bedroom
• All containers in the basement (not the dark temple area)
• Most containers in the teleporter room

The general plan for transitioning is to move all items to containers listed as being available in both versions. Also, if you attempt such a transition, it is wise to save outside the manor before you transition so as to avoid finding your character stuck in a structure only available in the version you want to transition to.

Known Issues

• Teleporting from Shivering Isles cells is currently not supported. TODO Set variables just like the exit door would do.