Oblivion mod review - Return of Shadows part I v1.05 - v1.07




Mod Review - Return of Shadows Part I
( http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29087 )

Overall: Needs a lot of debugging. Don't waste your time.

Why You Would Download This: You like a lot of running around, killing things, and getting poisoned excessively.

Warnings: It makes a pervasive change to the levelled lists for poisons that is incredibly stupid.

First, the warning: Once you install this mod, you may start to see poisons like the following on any creature that carries poisons. So, if you are a new character just emerged from the Tutorial sewers, in your first bandit or goblin encounter you may be hit by one or more of the following poisons.

  • Hemlock
    • Paralyze 1 second
    • Damage Fatigue 300 points for 4 seconds
      • In Oblivion, having a negative Fatigue is more or less like being Paralyzed; and Fatigue is recovered at a flat rate of 10 per second, not modified by any attributes
    • Drain Fatigue 20 points for 15 seconds
    • Frost Damage 2 points for 300 seconds
  • Hellebore
    • Drain Blade 30 points for 30 seconds
    • Damage Strength 3 points for 40 seconds
    • Weakness to Normal Weapons 30% for 30 seconds
    • Damage Endurance 10 points for 100 seconds
    • Drain Blunt 30 points for 30 seconds
    • Shock Damage 1 point for 400 seconds
  • Deadly Nightshade
    • Drain Acrobatics 100 points for 60 seconds
    • Damage Health 15 points for 60 seconds
      • It normally takes Master-level Alchemy and Shiverings Isles ingredients to make a three-damage-type poison that can do ~900 damage.
    • Weakness to Normal Weapons 20% for 20 seconds
    • Damage Luck 3 points for 60 seconds
    • Burden 40 points for 20 seconds
  • Daedra's Essence
    • Damage Magicka 45 points for 3 seconds
    • Damage Endurance 60 points for 1 second
      • Especially if you use a levelling mod that calculates your maximum Health on the fly and base it on Endurance, this can instant-kill your character.
    • Drain Health 40 points for 1 second
  • Burn Blood
    • Fire Damage 1 point for 20 seconds
    • Disintegrate Weapon 100 points for 2 seconds
      • This results in a bug where you have a Disintegrate Weapon effect permanently on your character, but which does nothing.
    • Burning Blood for 20 seconds
Not all the poisons are of the same immediacy and lethality, but all the new poisons are grossly more powerful than what is typical in Oblivion. Whether you feel the pre-defined poisons in Oblivion are underpowered or not, it still remains that the rest of the game world and probably all other mods are counting on those poisons to be at that level. The introduction of these poisons into the levelled lists can throw off intended results everywhere else.

For example, as the poisons can show on the commonly occurring goblins and bandits, it fundamentally changes very common encounters in a very skewed way, imposing a certain style of gameplay just to survive. If you're not an Argonian or regularly carry Resist Poison and Cure Poison potions (spellcasting is probably too slow for many of these special potions), then most encounters have the potential to be life-or-death, or sudden-death (since archers controlled by the AI more or less never miss as the AI can calculate and account for arching shots or moving targets).

Further factor in the possibility that you might be using a very popular mod such as Martigen's Monster Mod, which can double or triple (or more) monster spawns. Normally not a big deal, but with these over-the-top poisons, suddenly a lot of common encounters become irritating for over-equipped characters, and stupidly impossible for more moderate ones.

The mod authors stand by their decision to put in the poison based on the logic in this mod, but stubbornly refuse to recognize the wider impact it has on the world of Oblivion. It would have been a simple matter to not insert these poisons into the levelled lists, or possibly level them properly, but because they didn't, we recommend that this mod be deleted after play -- if you choose to put up with this change and play it in the first place.

An alternative is to open up the mod with the Construction Set (you need to open the Construction Set with OBSE injected) and edit the script that inserts them into the levelled lists. We tried this and it was enough to simply delete the lines that add it to NPCs.

This mod needs a lot more debugging
There are some mods that receive a lot of positive endorsements at Tesnexus that are wholly undeserved, such as Tears of the Fiend, where the author admits to making some entirely unfathomable and ludicrous choices, such as requiring you to click quickly through dialogue without reading it.

This mod is yet another on Tesnexus which convinces me that the endorsement system is really utterly rubbish and unreliable.

From as far back as v1.05, this mod has had mod-stopping bugs, and yet continues to get good reviews. Some people chance on workarounds and manage to continue, but why certain things weren't reported and fixed until 1.05 makes the whole endorsement system highly suspicious.

For example, the very first thing that happens is Da'Cryon Mesho runs up to you, engages you in meaningless dialogue, then tries to kill you. This starts the mod. The author off-hand dismisses comments and reports by asking players to install OBSE, which is all the more arrogant and irritating because the player already has that installed.
In v1.05, which is quite late as patches and updates go especially for an event that starts a mod, Da'Cryon can show up in the Tutorial sewer and help you kill goblins before trying to kill you -- or he can simply not show up at all. He can appear when you wake up from sleeping and try to kill you without dialogue -- only he can't be killed to further activate the mod, because he is still set to Essential and therefore not-killable. Or, he can be sidetracked into attacking guards in the Imperial City, who can't kill him because he is still Essential, and you can't talk to him because as soon as he wakes up, he either charges a guard or a guard charges him. Or, he can suddenly disengage and go chat with locals.

Finally it appeared these problems were fixed in 1.06, but then the very next quest continued to be bugged.
You are tasked to kill Strongwolf. How it is "supposed" to work is that your attacks cause Strongwolf to cast a spell on you that sends you to a private arena. You start very high up and are dropped (safely) down into the arena. Cinematic and interesting, except once you got teleported, you didn't drop down. Very few people noticed this and reported it (myself included), even though it broke the mod and forced you to reload your game unless you were inclined to use the Console to move yourself down into the arena.
Yet somehow, even prior to 1.06, the mod had gotten a lot of endorsements. How? Why?
The workaround was to kill him before he could complete the spell, and that still works up to v1.07.

Silly delays like this meant we didn't progress past Strongwolf until 1.07, and very serious bugs or oversights continued.

One minor quest available is to find the "Cave of Wonders" for Ethin. Very quickly you realize it is a wild goose chase, but the quest can't be closed. I've had my character go all the way to and beyond the north-western border and return to report, but he keeps saying the same thing. I notice he isn't set to Essential, so I kill him (since I'm surrounded by psychotic idiots anyway). Still no quest update. Typically killing the quest-giver closes the quest, but not so here.
Further, everyone talks about how there should be no killing in the base lest your life is forfeit. Well, no one batted an eye when I killed him in sight of witnesses.

The next main quest after Strongwolf is to find Creal. Once you get the lead to go to Skingrad (after interminable running around trying to find everyone in the convoluted base, or trying to find a squire to help you find them), you end up in a room and can pick up a note for the next stage.
Here, the script is incredibly buggy and I had to reload about 5 times before I could get unstuck.

Once you pick up the note, your character is frozen and a winged person named Ryuk blathers what sounds like nonsense to you. Some dancing lights with about 9000 Health (yes, 9000 Health) also appear, and trigger combat with you. Ryuk runs off to cast spells at them while they wander around generally being punching bags.
Meanwhile, you are still frozen. And a Dragon Knight (a new type of guardsman introduced by this mod to all the cities) appears and starts attacking you. You can access your inventory to change gear, drink potions, etcetera, but you are otherwise frozen and cannot block, cast spells, attack, or even turn around (but you can switch between first and third person views).
If you don't have Damage Reflection and healing potions, you're dead -- and the probability of you having enough Damage Reflection and healing potions to outlast a guard attack is unlikely unless you normally carry around an excess of gear. If you do survive and the Dragon Knight kills herself, there's still a good chance you will need to reload because you are not unfrozen.

After several reloads, my character is unfrozen after the Dragon Knight kills herself from my Damage Reflection. Ryuk is still floating about trying to kill the dancing lights so I help him (with a perfectly legit weapon that has a combination of magic damage and Weakness to Magic; otherwise, this would take forever).

When they are all dead puddles on the ground, Ryuk talks to me and mentions Mirage and wanting apples.
I pull out some apples and talk to him. No, he doesn't take them.

I sneak out of Skingrad to avoid guards (I somehow got a 1000 bounty even though the Dragon Knight attacked me unprovoked), pay off my bounty with Armand Christophe, and go back to Mirage to ask her about Ryuk.
There is no dialogue about him. Instead, there is a chain of dialogue that starts with her being upset that I am talking to her without having completed my task, but concludes with her happy that I have completed my task.
Huh?
I check my journal -- No quest update.

Was something bugged somewhere during the sequence where I had to reload a half dozen times? I don't know, and I don't care anymore.
Honestly, I have given this mod way more chances than any other mod seeing as it had (as of September 21/2010) 160 endorsements, but enough is enough. A mod this buggy is utter rubbish and needs a lot more work before anyone can properly enjoy whatever story there is -- assuming the story is actually worthwhile playing through, which is hard to tell at this point.

As for Tesnexus, take all endorsement counts with a large dose of salt, since they are likely to be rubbish as well. Read the comments and ignore anything that does not have a specific reason for endorsement or criticism.

Side Note: If you are getting sudden blackscreens from seeing Mirage, try removing her Greaves via console (find the ID using RefScope and then use the removeitem command) or just editing it out in the Construction Set.

Comments

  1. Uh huh.... You are a glorified troll and that is why you will waste time deconstructing the work of others. *nods* or better worded in your BANNED FROM TESNEXUS POST:

    Just to add a bit more as to why this user deserves a ban:

    ~~~~~
    The user in question has been making a blog where he basically rants about each and every little issue with a mod he finds, most of them ignoring the point of the mod. Many of his blog posts compare mods made by less seasoned users with higher profile mods made by those who have worked extensively with the CS. While there is nothing wrong with this in itself, the user has manually linked to his blog in just about every post he has made... In itself, this is spam. Combined with the trollish nature of his reviews, this becomes a serious violation. People who are, themselves not particularly skilled at modding, should not try to destructively pick apart another users work since their understanding of the mod process is usually lacking.

    This community does not want users like you. Go away and do not come back.
    ~~~~~


    Be glad that life doesn't have mods. Or I would make a troll killer who would go after useless scum like yourself. And you would do exactly what you do in oblivion, bitch about the works of others.

    Your opinion is void.

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  2. For the record, I back every one of my mod observations and critique with reasons. Nevertheless, Tesnexus has decided to ban me because of this one bad review of a supposedly popular mod.
    Probably because one crybaby working on this mod can't stomach critique. Humph.

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  3. LOL! Now I know for sure this reviewer is dead on in their reviews -- If some crybaby modder has to anonymously post hate comments because their mod got dissed -- and the reviewer is only pointing out bugs in the mod!

    I bet it's the same loser who made Scarlet Castle or whatever the name is that this reviewer talked about and also got hate mail.

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  4. Well the comments about the poisons are certainly on the money anyway, regardless of whether a person likes or dislikes the actual mod. These poisons are absolutely ridiculous even against high level characters.

    My level 45 character has 404 fatigue...that means I last precisely 1 second vs. the Hemlock poison before being paralyzed.

    Imagine a low level character? Dumb poisons.

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  5. There are absolutely no problems with this mod as of the current version. Here's a question...Have you even tried the current version of this mod lately??? Your too quick to judge and bitch, dude.

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  6. @james - There is a reason why I put down the VERSION NUMBER to qualify the review.
    And considering that the modders and supporters didn't acknowledge all sorts of play-breaking issues in previous versions, my review is more than justified.

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  7. Sorry no flaming check the comments above if you want that. Your review in a few words is a Half-truth, I've only played through the beginning of the mod and I feel like my time is being wasted in every sense of the word, but still I play on. Why? I want to send back a questionare, I want to give some input to some new modders and not just bash them like with what you're doing here. The real reason you got banned from TESNexus is that your review method is not insightful it's incite-full. By not even going through more then the beginning of the mod you prove my point. I'll post another comment soon and write down everything, good and bad about this mod, maybe you can read into it and learn a different way of reviewing these mods. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. -Albert Einstein

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  8. @Anonymous -
    Is the mod buggy? - Yes. Truth.
    Did I get stuck several times without the possibility of continuing? - Yes. TRUTH.
    Did I waste a lot of my time? - Yes. TRUTH.

    If you want to go ahead and waste literally days or weeks of your time slogging through poorly tested mods. That's your choice. Do you buy broken down cars and dilapidated houses to fix up? Maybe you do.
    I don't.

    I don't want to waste my time with bad mods anymore.

    ReplyDelete
  9. *WARNING THIS IS A PARTIAL REVIEW, MY GAME HAS YET TO BE COMPLETED AND SO I WILL POST WHAT I KNOW AND ONLY WHAT I KNOW, THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE REVIEW OF THE SELECTED MOD* I've tried the latest version of this game, I'm gonna assume when Nimbrinia dies, thats it, game over, chapter 1 finished, mostly because I can't seem to get a quest update about what I do next, but also because, I didn't want to continue. RETURN OF SHADOWS: CHAPTER 1 I'm gonna sympathize with Simon and say he's right, the mod is bad, it's not Satanic, It won't give you cancer, but it is not worth your time assuming you're only in this for the mod itself, but, for the well being of it's creators, I would recommend against Simon's decision and tell you to download the mod, partly out of spite, but so you can experience the entire mod for yourself, which will in turn help the creators. Before I explain how you would be helping the creators in any way let me give those of you who stumbled upon this a little insight. Mod takes into affect almost immediately as you notice a quest telling you to commit to a labor of love. KILL 100 ENEMIES. So to start all you have to do is wander around and do what you do best (or hopefully do best). As soon as you finish pillaging a couple nearby towns and burning a couple orphanages you will be approached by a man Wearing steel armour. His name isn't important mostly because you end up killing him about five seconds later. Shortly (very shortly) afterwards you are approached by "Mirage" who asks you whether or not you will walk "her path." If you haven't played this mod whatever you do don't say no, or you'll meet a quick end (assuming you aren't wearing any godly armor or are just in god mode). this is where the first issue rears its ugly head, THIS MOD IS EASILY BROKEN, whether it's the scripts or mod itself, this mod can be cut short very, very easily. Once you have (regrettably) accept her offer, you will be directed towards Namira's shrine, which actually hides "Mirages" little headquarters for all her devious operations. almost immediately the second issue surfaces, THE HQ IS A MAZE. Not in the most literal sense but it is very hard to navigate unless you explore the base often enough and create little landmarks. I simply looked at each of the doors so if I was looking for my bed I would look for the door marked "Sleeping Quarters" and climb down the staircase and take the room to my immediate left. Now while the creators may not have originally intended for this mod to have these problems, they are present throughout the game, and the characters you have to speak to, while they do have some unique personality traits, they rarely express them. After you have spoken to them once, you've pretty much heard it all. Overall I think the only reason I will actually continue this mod, is to fill out the questionare included in the folder, in order to actual provide some constructive criticism for the team behind this mod. While the mod is broken it does offer some good to those who play it. For one it offers multiple new Items and great new abilities to those who can complete the mod, AND to modders it conjures up some good ideas for other mods (like the fight for the initiation ritual, I don't think anyone could top that.) While this mod is a dissapointment to me so far, I am looking forward to a sequel because according to the the team behind the the original mod, they are offering open positions for any modders that want to contribute to the creaton of the secind chapter. Overall while this mod is broken and to some, it may be considered a waste of time, if you have a heart for the modder community and this team, play the game for their sake. (p.s. No this mod did not take me days or weeks you big crybaby, it took me maybe a couple of hours and it's worth it if I can help someone by playing this.)

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Anonymous -
    (1) Your review is of dubious worth because you haven't included the version number. The mod has changed so substantially in some ways, especially how it starts, that it really should have been given a version number of 2.x long ago.

    (2) It took me days because I had to constantly restart due to severe bugs, and I had to wait for new versions and do clean installs -- notice the review spans versions 1.05 to 1.07. I even played earlier versions of the mod.

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  11. You guys all suck. Just play the game, dammit!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I think they are fully aware of their own community. But there is no magic wand to make it all get better. This happens in ANY online gaming community, be it HoN, LoL, WoW or Warhammer. Many people reveal a rather sordid character once they know they cannot fear reprecussions since they are completely anonymous. http://ukonlinegaming.weebly.com/

    ReplyDelete

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