Oh, I have a blog? I forgot.
Well here's an update, then, before the end of the year. I've been playing a few games, including some less-moddable ones, for a change. MMOs and mobile games- just the worst!
But of course, in the end, I always come back to Oblivion. After bungling a Thieve's Guild job, my clumsy cat burglar was forced to flee Cyrodiil 'til the heat died down a bit. This gave me a great opportunity to explore the province mod(s) of Elsweyr. I use the plural because there have actually been several mods that add on to the original work of Iliana. I think it's a sign of a truly great mod that creates its own mini-ecosystem of submods like this. After spending some time in the province, I understand why.
The amount of work that's on display here is incredible. The desert land of Anequina has been realized to a remarkable degree; everything from the cities to the landscape itself feels very unique and distinct from the vanilla game, with tons of custom meshes used. Even within the province there's distinct cultures; the rough-and-tumble Orcrest is very different from the shining domes of Dune. The new breeds of Khajiit are very cool, and helped sell that this was an alien culture.
I almost had a Morrowind-y feeling exploring the province; Elsweyr is a much less safe and civilized place than ol' Cyrodiil. In fact, because of this mod, some of the biggest baddies from WAC were wandering the deserts looking to chomp my poor kitty's butt. She really isn't a terribly effective fighter, and I ended up turning the difficulty slider down (way, way down).
I almost had a Morrowind-y feeling exploring the province; Elsweyr is a much less safe and civilized place than ol' Cyrodiil. In fact, because of this mod, some of the biggest baddies from WAC were wandering the deserts looking to chomp my poor kitty's butt. She really isn't a terribly effective fighter, and I ended up turning the difficulty slider down (way, way down).
I've been to most of the major cities of Anequina at this point, and am now wandering about looking for adventures. Most of the quests available here are short but sweet; my favorite adventure so far has been thwarting a fiendish saboteur from Valenwood in his attempt unleash a plague upon the cat-people.
The mod has been relatively stable- I've encountered a few bugs here and there, but I can't be certain that they're the fault of the original authors since I'm actually using an unholy merged ESP of several Elsweyr mods (no longer available on Nexus), and who knows what trouble that's caused. A little bit of Construction Set knowledge goes a long way to deal with such things, though.
The mod has been relatively stable- I've encountered a few bugs here and there, but I can't be certain that they're the fault of the original authors since I'm actually using an unholy merged ESP of several Elsweyr mods (no longer available on Nexus), and who knows what trouble that's caused. A little bit of Construction Set knowledge goes a long way to deal with such things, though.
