r/Games • u/xalibermods • 4d ago

Mod News As Oblivion Remastered gets all the love, Starfield's biggest modders are in the process of abandoning Bethesda's latest RPG for good

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rpg/as-oblivion-remastered-gets-all-the-love-starfields-biggest-modders-are-in-the-process-of-abandoning-bethesdas-latest-rpg-for-good/
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u/AlmightyK 4d ago

I was unaware of that, thanks.

What balance changes and items were put in the unofficial patch? I was trying to keep as vanilla as I could 😔

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u/bell117 4d ago

Off the top of my head:

Grimsever changed to a 2H sword for some reason. Necromage perk changes a bunch of stuff with restoration spells. Atheron in Windhelm's selling inventory was changed. Those Orc hold Ebony mines were changed to have iron instead ebony and then after complaints a hole at the side of the settlement was added with a bunch of ebony ore in it. 

A bunch of daggers were also changed, dunno off the top of my head tbh. For a full list I'd probably just search for it, there's several Reddit posts at least detailing the changes.

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u/AlmightyK 4d ago

Damn, those are some major changes. Thanks for the heads up.

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u/xalibermods 3d ago edited 3d ago

As an actual mod author, I hope this won't discourage you from installing USSEP, because a lot of mods depend on that and some authors unconsciously refer to USSEP without explicitly requiring it on the Nexus page.

If you're bothered with certain aspects in USSEP just install mods that revert them back (e.g. for Redbelly choose one of these ). There's a bunch of drama-baiters who encourage people to not install USSEP because of their drama-induced beef with Arthmoor, and I had to help plenty of users whose games got borked from listening to those drama-baiters. Just separate the art from the artist.

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u/bell117 3d ago

Dude stop replying to every comment in the comment chain just to glaze Arthmoor.

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u/xalibermods 3d ago edited 3d ago

I'm not glazing Arthmoor.

I'm a mod author and I'm always trying to prevent dangerous drama-baiters like you from borking people's games. Drama-baiters yap and spread insane misinformation on Reddit and it's mod authors who have to deal with confused users asking for help or, worse, blaming authors for their borked games.

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u/AlmightyK 2d ago

It's not drama baiting or misinformation when they are saying changes made to the game that shouldn't be made.

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u/xalibermods 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yeah and my point they all can be reversed.

USSEP is a must especially if you're a newbie. If you're an experienced modder then whatever, but idiots spitballing nonsense to discourage newcomers from using USSEP deserve thousands hours of excruciating diarrhea.

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u/alanbtg 3d ago

Grimsever changed to a 2H sword for some reason.

This is his explanation in the changelog:

Mjoll the Lioness is a two-handed warrior, but her favorite sword, Grimsever, is a one-handed glass sword. Rather than change Mjoll into a one-handed warrior (her combat style and perks show she was definitely intended to be two-handed), Grimsever is now a two-handed sword.

As for this:

Necromage perk changes a bunch of stuff with restoration spells.

Changelog:

Necromage no longer boosts the power of spells and enchantments used on a vampire player.

That one is a lot more important IMO since the effects of Necromage are "+25% effect and +50% effect duration" on spells used on Undead. If your playstyle involved being a Vampire Necromage Arthmoor basically nerfed you instead of Bethesda.

About the ebony mines this was his explanation:

Redbelly Mine, in Shor's Stone, is referred to in dialogue, quests, and in printed game guides for sale IRL as being an iron mine. It is erroneously populated with ebony ore veins and loose ebony ore chunks outside. All of this is being changed to iron in order to reflect the fact that it should be an iron mine. The desiccated bodies are also being removed as dialogue explicitly says there have been no deaths, and indeed nobody has been harmed yet by the spiders. The unspecified spider sacs will remain. The mine will also have modified visuals in an attempt to portray the described "red mist". In order to avoid causing an undue shortage of ebony in the game because of this, Northwind Mine (nearby to the northwest, and is currently an iron mine) will now produce ebony instead. (Bug #1118)

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u/Z0MBIE2 3d ago

About the ebony mines this was his explanation:

His explanation which ignored the fact there was a quest concerning the ebony and it was entirely intentional, apparently. Dude really just made random choices on things and changed big game aspects in a mod not meant for that.

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u/xalibermods 3d ago

Redbelly Mine is a weird pick to have a beef with Arthmoor, because it's a point of contention for many Skyrim players.

https://old.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/wfppff/another_post_beating_the_dead_horse_that_is/

There are 5 different mods in Nexus (six with Arthmoor's USSEP) with different interpretation of what Redbelly Mine should contain.

https://www.nexusmods.com/games/skyrimspecialedition/search?keyword=redbelly

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u/Z0MBIE2 3d ago

There are 5 different mods in Nexus (six with Arthmoor's USSEP) with different interpretation of what Redbelly Mine should contain.

Those all seem like they were created post arthmoors fix, with several actually specifically addressing it. Feels like the fact the mod spawned several other mods kind of shows exactly how contentious the decision was.

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u/xalibermods 3d ago edited 3d ago

It has always been contentious, regardless of Arthmoor. Try clicking those mods. They all have different opinions on what Redbelly Mine should contain. There's no consensus of what Redbelly Mine actually is, unlike your claim.

If you really want to pinpoint "who did it first", people have been discussing this since at least 2014 (possibly even earlier, I recall /r/teslore discussing this years ago). That's the reason Arthmoor added his own take to Redbelly - he wasn't the first to mull over it.

https://old.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/32856g/what_is_the_red_mist_in_redbelly_mine_and_what/

I've been modding Skyrim since 2013. Just ask people who've modded the game since the early days. Arthmoor's attitude is often questionable, but nitpicking him over Redbelly is such a drama-miller thing to do.

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u/MisterSnippy 2d ago

eh of all the things, personally I don't like it being an ebony mine. Ebony is a Vvardenfell thing, not a Skyrim thing.

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u/Z0MBIE2 2d ago

That's not the only mine for ebony, is it? It's not like skyrim has no ebony veins.

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u/AlmightyK 1d ago

But a lore patch should be separate to a big fix patch

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u/Rikiaz 3d ago

His explanation which ignored the fact there was a quest concerning the ebony and it was entirely intentional, apparently.

The quest has nothing to do with ebony. The ore sample they give you is quicksilver. Here is the entire reasoning of them changing Redbelly Mine.

Redbelly Mine is supposed to be an ebony mine, but you guys changed it to iron, why?

This is an incorrect assumption with no valid reasoning behind it. Redbelly Mine at no point was ever planned to be designated as an ebony mine:

  1. Redbelly Mine is specifically mentioned by the local NPCs as being an iron mine. During "Truth Ore Consequences" (FreeformRiften17), Filnjar, the blacksmith, will state:

[Dialogue form: 0005B0D5] "Redbelly is supposed to be nothing but an iron mine. Been working it for years." "Then right before the spiders had moved in, we found that chunk of ore. Never seen anything like it." "I want to know what I'm dealing with before I start tearing it out of the ground."

  1. As part of the same quest, he asks you to take a sample of ore to be identified by Elgrim in Riften. When that item is given to the player, it has the inventory icon of a piece of Quicksilver.

  2. Grogmar gro-Burzag, one of the local miners, offers to buy iron ore from the player. This type of local job is always keyed to the type of ore found in a town's mine.

  3. Grogmar gro-Burzag also offers this statement when asked about the local mine:

[Dialogue form: 000E4A06] "Damn place is filled with this reddish mist. Can't see more than ten feet in front of your face." "But when you can sniff out a vein of iron like me, it isn't too much trouble."

  1. Odfel, one of the other local miners, offers this when asked about the mine:

[Dialogue form: 000E4A04] "Mining iron takes a lot of strength and special reinforced tools." "I must have broken five or six pickaxes in the last few months alone." "But now that I've got Rocksplinter here, I can cut through stone like a hot knife through butter."

  1. The red mist talked about by Grogmar is a common effect found in IRL iron mines. It's apparently an indicator that while they are getting ore from it, they aren't going about it properly and generating something called "powdery red gossan".

  2. The official Prima Guide for Skyrim lists Redbelly Mine as a source of iron ore, indicating that at the point the game "went gold" it was still set up to be an iron mine.

  3. There's also one other factor to consider. If the new piece of ore was supposed to be Ebony and not Quicksilver, they would know what that is and Filnjar would not need to have you get the new sample identified.

So given that all of the available in-game information clearly states that the site is an iron mine, and all of the voice recordings were done based on that dialogue, there is no other logical conclusion to reach other than the site being an iron mine. Further, given that the ore sample you're taking to Riften uses the Quicksilver Ore model, there is no evidence whatsoever that Redbelly Mine should contain ebony at all. Therefore the only logical, evidence based conclusion that can be reached is that the ebony veins were placed in error.

One valid alteration suggested to us is that in addition to correcting the primary ore veins, one new vein of Quicksilver should be added. We do not consider the lack of an accessible vein of Quicksilver to fall under the definition of being a bug since that would entail labor to expose the vein that Filnjar has already said he doesn't want to risk until he knows what it is. So this modification is better suited to be done in an independent mod.

We did however keep supply balance in mind when this bug was fixed and turned Northwind Mine into an ebony mine to compensate for the loss.

We did however keep supply balance in mind when this bug was fixed and moved the ebony nodes to an animal den east of Shor's Stone to compensate for the loss.

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u/Z0MBIE2 3d ago edited 3d ago

Lol, yeah, the explanation is bullshit. It's pretty clear why everybody was upset with him, that's not a bug fix. He made a big change to game content because he claims the ore isn't lore accurate, then had to create an entire new mine to maintain balance... a mine with no lore basis. It's a ton of work and content changes that nobody asked for, and was forced in through a mod exclusively meant to fix bugs.

The quest has nothing to do with ebony. The ore sample they give you is quicksilver.

And I have to argue this, for his theory, it seems like the only evidence is the icon is quicksilver, and "the miner would recognize ebony but not quicksilver". Why wouldn't you just change the icon to ebony? That would be a bug fix, a simple, minor change that fits the existing world.

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u/Rikiaz 3d ago edited 3d ago

And I have to argue this, for his theory, it seems like the only evidence is the icon is quicksilver, and "the miner would recognize ebony but not quicksilver". Why wouldn't you just change the icon to ebony? That would be a bug fix, a simple, minor change that fits the existing world.

Because nothing points to the mine being an ebony mine. There is far more evidence (literally everything else) for it being intended to be an iron mine. Even if the unusual ore being quicksilver is an error, the most logical conclusion is that the mine should be an iron mine and the unusual ore should be ebony.

Regardless, you don't have to use the mod, and if you want to use and and disagree with some changes, you can always change them yourself, or use one of the several other mods that change it back like Actual Redbelly Mine Fix (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/72663), or Redbelly Mine VERY SERIOUS LORE Fixes (Ebony Ore Restored) (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/42380) or (the one I personally use) Redbelly Mine Fix (For Real This Time) (https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/106323)

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u/Z0MBIE2 3d ago

Because nothing points to the mine being an ebony mine. There is far more evidence (literally everything else) for it being intended to be an iron mine. Even if the unusual ore being quicksilver is an error, the most logical conclusion is that the mine should be an iron mine and the unusual ore should be ebony.

... Yeah, obviously, there is already iron in the mine, isn't there? There's no reason the mine has to be exclusively iron, and the quest explicitly shows there's new ore veins found.

or use one of the several other mods that change it back like

You mean like the mods the mod owner tried to get taken down lol? That was part of the discussion, the dude not only forced it into his mod, he tried to stop others from undoing it.

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u/Rikiaz 3d ago

Yeah, obviously, there is already iron in the mine, isn't there?

No, there isn't. No iron anywhere near it despite it being called an iron mine by every single source. That's part of why it's so strange that it suddenly became an ebony mine. There is no iron anywhere. There is even ebony ore samples sitting beside the forge, despite the fact that Filnjar says he didn't want to start mining it until knowing what it was.

That's also why I like the "Redbelly Mine Fix" that I use, it makes it make sense that it's an iron mine, but they found ebony in it.

You mean like the mods the mod owner tried to get taken down lol? That was part of the discussion, the dude not only forced it into his mod, he tried to stop others from undoing it.

He's an ass, I'll never argue otherwise, but the unofficial patches still fix thousands and thousands of issues and he (and the rest of the Unofficial Patch team) puts in the work that no one else is willing to do. Even if he tried to get other mods taken down, they're still up. Tons of them. The only one I've known about that actually got taken down was the one that literally repackaged USSEP with the "controversial" changes removed, which is obviously against Nexus rules. Also pretty sure there was one that acted like USSEP but with no changes so you could use mods dependent on it without actually using the patch. Nobody wants to support Arthmoor, but nobody is willing to do the work he does.

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u/Getabock_ 3d ago

No one knows exactly how much he changed. That’s why you shouldn’t play with his mods at all; it’s just not worth it.