Tes4Mod:Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul/Item Changes

A major feature of Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul is risk vs. reward. Not only do NPCs and creatures carry items appropriate to their level range; containers around the world also have items appropriate to the status or difficulty of their locations. Now you can be rewarded as you deserve for defeating a powerful enemy and looting their chests, or by stealing the wealthy coffers of a local noble. Previously, in the original version of Oblivion as well as in some instances of the first releases of OOO, you would not get this kind of satisfaction often, because even if you managed to defeat a powerful foe, its loot tables, and its guarded treasures' loot tables, were adjusted according to the level of the player, thus rewarding less than what the challenge was worth. Now many NPCs carry items suitable to the challenge that they pose. Not every single enemy, or container, always carries items proper to their level or status, however, because that is also rather predictable. The goal was to keep the sense of expectation and uncertainty pretty high, so that surprises can keep you entertained and intrigued. Also, keep your eyes peeled for stashes of long forgotten very powerful goodies while you explore wilderness, dungeons, caverns and any other remote location.

(General note: You can change/enable/disable many of these features (Geomancy, house pricing, lock bashing, harvest containers, and drop lit torches) through an in-game options menu. Open the console and type 

startquest OOOOptions

then close the console. A menu will appear; navigate through it to the section you want, and apply the settings you choose, then close it. 


Vendor Items
Vendors, as in previous versions of OOO, may have mid-end items in their stores' stock at any given point. They will have many more items of basic and low quality, but often they will have acquired much nicer items that adventurers may purchase whenever they can afford them.


New Player Armors and Weapons
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul includes fantastic new types of armor that can be found both on NPCs and in merchant's stores. The current additions are listed in the section Merged Content. There are, literally, thousands of new weapons, armors, ingredients, pelts, house-wares, scrolls and books.


Item Placement
These items are not only placed in loot lists for NPCs and containers, but are also placed as part of the world. Hundreds of world cells have been edited individually and have had items placed in them, several thousand items by hand total. This was done for several reasons. The most important of them is that it helps to create a more static and believable world. Another important reason is that it would make thievery and adventuring a lot more interesting because it is always guaranteed that you will find appropriate rewards to the difficulty of the challenge and magnitude of deed. The last very special reason for this change is that it renders locales more uniquely – it makes them less generic. This is ideal for building backstories that rely on context; a context that is impossible to convey by the default appearance of the world cells that has been modified.


Container Additions to the World
More than 2,200 hand-placed containers have been added to the world. These are found in dungeons and dwellings, both of enemies and friends. These containers have items that are designed for the difficulty and status of the locations where they are found. Their contents are not utterly static, though they are not leveled – they are chanced. This means that you could be a very fledgling thief, sneak into a lord's manor, and steal very valuable items, should you make it out without alerting the guard. It also means that you could be a very powerful warrior who happens to find a container in the depths of an easy dungeon and its contents will not suddenly become godlike just because you are level 40.

These containers have a special characteristic: they never respawn their contents once you have opened them and stolen whatever was inside them. This feature should be self-explanatory; some of the containers that are added have chances of granting very powerful items – if they respawned their contents then they would become an endless well of wealth and exploits. You have one single chance with them, and then it is time to move on.


Jewelry Boxes
There are now many special jewelry boxes hidden in homes. Many of these can only be opened by unique keys that are found somewhere in the homes or in possession of the container's owners. These boxes are of course highly sought after by skilled thieves.


Weapon Rebalance
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul has its own weapon rebalance. The values and general feel of the rebalance are very close to what is specified by MOBS. OOO uses similar values to MOBS in many instances, but it also departs from it in several other ways (note: the Oscuro version of MOBS is sometimes referred to as OMOBS). Generally, the shorter range and slower speed of weapons is conserved as it was in MOBS, although there are some changes. Claymores are made faster, but less damaging, whereas battle axes are made slower and more damaging – there are other important differences, especially in regards the new items. A few other differences are found in the speed of weapons that border 1.0 in MOBS – some of those were changed to 1.0 in order for the faster swing sound to be used by the engine. Notably, Dwemer weapons are now as damaging as Elven weapons, but much heavier and cumbersome to use. Finally, the relative brittleness of glass weapons was increased even more – they wear faster down, because they represented a rather large upgrade from Elven and Dwemer weapons in MOBS.

Overall, you can expect the weapons to handle very similarly to MOBS' excellently developed values. OOO does not include parts of MOBS, however, having to do with modified backwards speeds when using weapons. MOBS can be acquired as a standalone mod, and it is perfectly compatible with OOO, but its effects may be very drastic considering the much higher challenge that OOO presents compared to default Oblivion and most other gameplay mods. 


Prices
As is customary of Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, prices are now very different than in default Oblivion. Generally, their values are higher, especially for certain item types (like fine clothes, fine house-wares, jewels, armors, and so forth – these items are not cheap to make with a medieval material production's system, you know). The increase in prices of items you sell will be balanced with the money reductions introduced by enchanting costs, repair costs and training costs. Houses are also more expensive – much more expensive. Whereas the prices in default Oblivion ranged from 2,000 to 25,000, they now range from 4,000 to 125,000(!).


Books
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul adds more than 180 new texts to the game. Some of these are as small as a few lines or a couple of paragraphs, while others are many pages long. All of them are tied to previous TES lore or are made with that lore in mind, plus whatever additions to the lore contributors, or Oscuro, have added by their inclusion in OOO's world. Several authors have contributed to the new texts. 


Merged Modifications
Gems and Geomancy
The mods Tamriel's Glittering Geology and Geomancy & Gem Dust have been merged into a unique blend that greatly expands the use of gems. These excellent mods, previously incompatible, are now enhanced into a single package that also partakes of other changes specific to Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, such as the updated price-ranges. TGG adds several new kinds of precious stones and metals, as well as transforming their icons and models into what real gems of valued beauty and rarity deserve. G&GD scripts every default Oblivion gem to give them arcane forces that the player may unlock. OOO expands on their concept, after rebalancing its effects in view of the mod's gameplay as a whole, to include all the additions made by TGG.

In order to gain geomantic powers, you must find and acquire a copy of a study on Ayleid Geomancy. It is advised that you search in the whereabouts of magic user's homes or associations in order to find one its copies. 


Trapped Containers, Bashing & Picking Locks
Containers now can be bashed if locked. Of course, this applies only to certain containers. Bags, for example, cannot be bashed open (if there even is such thing as a locked bag...).

Containers may also be trapped. Whether they are trapped or not is not random – it is specified which containers are trapped and which ones are not. Very few respawnable containers will be trapped, so you can usually be sure that once a trap is disarmed, or fired, then it will not be active again.

This new functionality is based off Scruggsywuggsy the Ferret's great LockBash 1.1 mod and Lap's excellent Security Rebalance mod. Here is how it works:


Bashing
You can bash any lock, provided that you meet certain criteria. You must first, with a weapon drawn, activate the container, as you normally would to open or lockpick them. This cannot be done in sneak mode, as this would activate the standard lock-picking procedure. The drawn weapon may be any kind of melee weapon, i.e. not bows. You can bash with your fists too, although it will not be as effective as bashing with e.g. a two-handed hammer. When you activate a locked container with a weapon drawn, then the container will begin to glow. This tells you that it is targeted for bashing.

Then, you need to use special attacks (power attacks) on the container until the lock breaks. The formula responsible for the damage calculations takes your Strength, skill, weapon type and lock difficulty into account. Every time you hit the container, a loud noise will be made, which could potentially alert guards or enemies of your nearby presence and mischief. In addition, every time you hit a container your weapons will suffer slight wear. Once you hit the lock enough times, it will break and the container will open for you. If you are attacked while bashing a lock, the targeted container will reset to normal and you will not be able to continue until the threat is gone. The same is true of picking; you will not be able to pick a container if you are engaged in combat at the same time. Note that you can change this feature in the options menu. 

The container will also get un-targeted should you lose it from sight or move too far away from it while it is targeted for bashing. If you want to lockpick a container with a weapon drawn, get in sneak mode and that will let you switch straight into lockpick mode, rather than bashing mode.


Traps
These are pretty self-explanatory. Containers can have traps. These traps can be detected by the use of Detect Traps spells, which you may find in the form of scrolls or as spells that you may learn. When using any of the spells of the Detect Traps line, trapped containers will glow red, letting you know that they hold a trap.

You may also have a chance to detect traps when activating a container. This may happen if your skill in Security is high enough, although of course there is an element of randomness. If you fail to detect the trap based on your Security skill, then you still have some chance of detecting it based on your Luck.

If you detect a trap, you will be given the option to open the container (risking setting off the trap) or leaving it alone. If you decide to open the trapped container, then you will have a chance to disarm the trap based on your Security skill and Luck. In addition, you may even be able to extract a poison from the trap itself and add it to your inventory. Finally, if you fail to disarm the trap, then you may be blasted by it, or you may dodge its spell (that is, only if a check against your Luck and Agility is successful).


Picking Locks
Security now plays a role in determining whether or not you actually are able at all to pick a lock. If you have low Security skill and try to pick a hard lock, then you will only get a message saying that you are not skilled enough to pick it. This can be disabled in the options menu.


Guild Item Ownership
Tandem's very popular mod changes the objects inside guilds to belong to different ranks in the faction. This means that certain items of the guild will be available to you only if you are sufficiently high in the guild's hierarchy. Otherwise taking possession of such items will be considered a crime. Tandem's features have been kept intact, but are expanded to include all the new items included in the existing guilds.


Inebriation
Lap's mod turns alcoholic beverages into drinks that will get you drunk. This was not possible in default Oblivion. It also allows the player to craft alcoholic beverages. There are instructions on how to use the new brewing barrels in the form of books on the subject. (Perhaps a certain manual can be found somewhere in those fertile vineyards of Skingrad...)

You can drink as many alcoholic beverages as you want without worrying about the hard-coded limit of potion consumption, though you will still have to exit and re-enter the inventory screen after drinking 3 to 5 bottles of booze (depending on your Alchemy skill). It is recommended that you use alcohol before any of the regular potions that are tied to the variable of consumption limit, because if you for example have three possible potion "slots", and you drink two long-lasting potions, you can only drink a single alcoholic beverage before having to exit and re-enter the inventory.

Your Endurance has a clear effect on how much alcohol you can consume before getting drunk. If you have a low Endurance, then you may get drunk very easily. If you have a high Endurance, then you may not be able to get drunk without consuming very large quantities of alcohol. In addition, drinks give different effects and they do not count all the same in your level of drunkenness (for example, a beer is much less potent than a brandy).


Harvest [Containers]
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul has fully built-in Harvest [Containers] functionality alongside OOO's container scripts (chests animate, just as in H[C], but they also can be bashed and have traps). The included versions of H[C]'s container models are the fixed versions that do not have problems with animations in games patched with the official 1.2 patch. However, a certain feature of H[C] code – the unlocking of chests in a cell owned by a faction to which the player belongs – has been taken out for balance reasons given OOO's container loot's risk vs. reward structure.


Drop Lit Torches
Drop Lit Torches is a mod that allows you to drop lit torches on the ground as you adventure in dungeons. In addition, a "hotkey torch" is added to your inventory. If you map a hotkey to this instead of a standard torch, then you will not have to reassign the hotkey every time you drop your torch.