Silgrad Tower from the Ashes

Official 'Black Marsh' Claim for Dungeon Claim: Maldava

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Maldava
AVAILABILITY: Open

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Screenshots pending.

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Description & Details

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Details on Maldava pending. It is a small Barsaebic ruin just West of Stormhold.

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At-a-glance Details

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Tileset: Mossy Caves
Exterior cell coordinates: (-5,22)
Cell Name: No interior cell as yet
Claim Difficulty: Easy-Medium.
Creatures: Lizards and Reptiles, Spiders & Ghosts / Undead. 4+ for medium levels.
Mission Connections: None as yet.
Amount of Loot: Easy-Medium (according to the above).
General Info: Check this space for a link to a thread detailing completed claims and future plans.

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Modding Directions

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You'll find the entrance for the ruin in the cell Maldava (-5,22) of the BlackMarshes worldspace. Use the latest esm (v2.50) or a higher version.

Don't forget to select snap to grid (32-64) and snap to angle, when creating the lay-out for your ruin.

You have to use the new Mossy Ruins tileset (Static>Blackmarsh>Architecture>ruins>).

If plans for this cave extends, then it's fine to add more than the two levels as suggested. Just give the new cell the same name, except for the last part which should receive a suffix such as lvl1, lvl2 etc.

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Recommended Objects

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Consider any use of water first as this may affect the overall layout. If wishing to add it, activate the water in the cell and, where possible, make use of the flowing water meshes, of which there are the vanilla waterfalls alongside our own fast streams. For any traps I recommend using the whipvines in the activators section under 'blackmarsh'. It may prove possible to propel the PC along some sections where the underwater current is strong and thereby force them into colliding with the whipvines. Some mossy cave pieces may work blended into the construction as long as they are positioned very, very carefully.....

Also, try checking the original Ayleid Ruins and matching up the tileset items. Just right-click on a trap and 'use info' to check the cell in question. Remember that Ayleid Ruins were excellent for traps so much fun can be had here. Don't forget though: if you affect anything in vanilla Oblivion, you will create a 'dirty' esp and totally screw up all your work, making it unmergeable so check this before modding and not during!

Please continue with the use of roots and gnarled trees as you see fit. Additionally, for the caves, consider using the oilplants (under Light>blackmarsh), the land Glow-shrooms (under Static>Flora), BMWallmushrooms (under Static>blackmarsh>clutters) and perhaps the BMHangMoss varieties (under Static>blackmarsh>Environment). You can also use the rockswampmoss varieties with the cave tileset (under Static>blackmarsh>rocks>SwampRocks).

For inspiration check people's favourite Ayleid Ruins such as Nenalata, Vindasel, Fanacasecul, Garlas Malatar and Miscarcand (used by the MQ) and, as the tileset names can be a little confusing and may need sorting, please report any problems to me.

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Cluttering your Dungeon

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You should use leveled lists for the loot but the ruin may be being used by some person or creature so you may wish to select accordingly. Ask around the forums for special loot if you wish to add some character to the ruin such as who once lived there and so on.

There could possibly be some gems, armor, weapons, gold, and other loot from travelling adventurers. If magic-users have attempted to examine the ruins, then you’d find ingredients, books, potions, and other mage-related items. Some special items for Marsh Elves might also be found - for example, we have a nice range of specialist staffs. It is also possible that one of Phitt's artifacts may reside here.

The preferred type of enemy for this ruin is listed at the top of this thread. You might be able to do something else though if you want - just check with the core first and we'll discuss this. At the time of writing, the creature levelled lists are yet to be tested so you may wish to do this yourself or stick to the vanilla levelled lists just to be on the safe side. These can later be replaced.

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Lighting up your Dungeon

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Please look in the object window for any of BM's own candles such as Glo-shrooms. However, vanilla lights are fine. Your tomb can be as dark or as light as you want it to be, probably depending on whether the separate areas were densely populated by Marsh Elves or not. For a good example of excellent use of light of the very, very dark variety which really improves the gameplay of a ruin or tomb, I would advise checking out the early sections of ‘Gates to Aesgaard’ by ThePriest909 which makes for a sensationally spooky and jumpy gaming experience.

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Making Enemies

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The function of this ruin is up to you but, so that we can adapt it in places where quests use this location, please stick to the levelled lists for now....unless you have cleared your plans for what to use with the core already by using the forums or a PM. Try to make it interesting for the player, of course. If you have any specific ideas then let the core know about it.

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Final Tasks

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Add a pathgrid to the ruins/caves. Playtest the entire layout and make any necessary corrections before submitting it for review.

NB: - Thanks to the 'Silgrad Tower' team for pioneering the claims system and for being such excellent all-round good eggs around these forums.

I managed to completely adapt the first level of this one.

This is now completely adapted. However, I just found out that Deeza had already created a dungeon interior for this location. Therefore, I have a spare interior ready for a new mossy ruin... hrug:

I'll wait till I have a home for it before I mark this as complete.

Ah yes, sorry about that. I should have mentioned, but I had forgotten what I'd called it and so didn't recognise it's name when it came up here! Maldava is really more of a surface entrance to the real dungeon underneath Stormhold than a dungeon in its own right.

As for the spare ruin, perhaps you could attach it to Wrothwyll or Norgramyr?

Yes, good suggestion. It had crossed my mind to do that but it's not ideally suited. Nevertheless, I probably will attach it to one of those two in the end although I'd figured this dungeon might need a little adapting for those two. I quite liked the idea of Norgramyre being a haven of Daedra and Wrothwyll as an exceptionally wet location. This one is probably best adapted for Norgramyre...it would take less adaptation....but I'll have a look in the CS now.

Btw, the cell with your dungeon in it is named '2BMDZStormholdruin03' and leads on to '2BMDZStormholdruin04' and beyond. These cells need renaming to something like 'BMDunMal03' and 'BMDunMal04'. I could do this for you, if you wish, and go through the whole network. In the meantime, I just noticed that '2BMDZStormholdruin06' consists of vanilla Ayleid pieces. They may need to be replaced. I could probably return to do this too. It's a simple case of selecting all the like tileset pieces and then performing a 'search-and-replace'. It's simpler to do this now as all the pieces are there and the pieces are all named the same as the vanilla ones but with BM on the end. This makes them easier to do the 'search' part.

The dungeon itself, of course, will need cluttering, path-gridding and so on...

I made this one open for the reasons discussed above.

OK, I can do the re-naming. There is a reason that 06 is vanilla, and that's because it's going to be the tomb of the last King of Ayleid Stormhold, and has been magically sealed ever since (hence the decay of the rest of the ruins has not penetrated here). It will be a quest location.

Okay...makes sense... :yes:

Is this claim open? Or did you finally adopt something for it? Any open dungeons?

This rootworm claim is open: EGRD0102 "Bereft Rootworm" (Open) . There's also a few Hist Shrines that can now be worked on although this is a really tricky task and you'll need a little bit of coaching for it as it uses Koniption's first tileset. You need practice with it or it can become a real headache. Anyway, Asashpan (in the Throttlemesh Myre) and Ossasoit (in the Vudai Marshes) are available with Ixtuthapan (Naga-Cradle Jungle) as a sample first level.

As for the Barsaebic ruins, there is also EGRD0101 "Xarphyrial Marsh Elf Capital" (Marked for Adaptation) to be done. However, this was intended to be a VAST dungeon that many could work on and make it an absolutely epic one. Therefore, I was going to recommend that, along with the extra work that needs doing here, we could use some interior dungeons that are as yet unconnected to any exterior entrance.

This doesn't mean that you can't customise it, however. You would simply need to decide how you're going to go about it. For a start, there are a few claims in the Jungle regions for Barsaebic ruins like this one and Alten Corimont that will need doing. Either of which are jungle ruins and need to be very 'root'-based with 'jungle'-specified enemies.

Alternatively, you may wish to create your level of Xarphyrial. Bear in mind that Xarphyrial will be huge but consider which level it's likely to be e.g. lvl 1, lvl 2 etc. We will then build around it. Needless to say, I intend to do something pretty special with it and make use of some specialist items whilst taking inspiration from the likes of 'Adense's Epic Dungeon' mod.

For any of the above, just create your own interior cell with a name like 'BMJBXarphyrialTrial01' or 'BMJBMaldavaTrial01' and the cell can be renamed later once we get the organisation sorted out properly.

I had never anticipated having more dungeon interiors than dungeon exteriors so that's why I adapted some of Edolsian's caves to make sure we could get a solid beta release out there....but having more gives us a much better mod, especially as it's customised for us particularly. It's a good job we use these naming conventions. Otherwise, we'd lose track of people's contributions. :yes: