Alternative Beginnings

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37382
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/785-alternative-beginnings/

Tossed in jail for waylaying a royal caravan on the highway, your trial was mere days away. Something is wrong though, the days have turned to weeks, and the weeks to months. You no longer have any idea how long you've been down here. The guards stopped checking your cell almost a week ago, and now the last of your food is running out. Your cellmate died months ago and they never removed the body. It won't be long before your bones decorate the cell as well. The Gods have forsaken you! Or have they....

Alternative Beginnings puts you in the position of the poor forgotten prisoner lamenting life's choices. You will be able to choose from several different options on how to begin the game, all from the discomfort of your dank prison cell. Your choices influence the circumstances by which the game begins, and hopefully the Gods won't forsake you this time around!

System Requirements

Official Patch version 1.2.0416.
http://obse.silverlock.org/ or higher.

Installation

Copy the ESP to your Data folder and activate it.

Make sure to load the mod after TIE or any other mod which directly edits the tutorials and the "Deliver the Amulet" quest (Charactergen, MQ01 and MQ02) otherwise things will not go well.

Uninstallation

Simply remove the ESP from your Data folder.

If you find you are short slots later in the game, it is entirely safe to remove the ESP after you have finished your character generation. If you intend to remove the mod during play, wait until you have taken the amulet to Jauffre at Weynon Priory so that there is no disruption to the main quest.

Known Issues

If you are starting with a lot of mods that have message spam, it's best to wait for all of those to settle before doing anything.

Weather mods like All Natural will not initialize their first weather pick until after you've been outside for the first time. This will usually result in weather not being correct while indoors, or a jarring transition from default weather to something the script chooses. There is no workaround for this and it only happens once.

Options Available

There are several options for how you can start your life in Oblivion. Many of these have been done before in other mods, and probably won't seem terribly original. Each option is intended to provide some variety in starting locations and equipment.

All start options remove the initial prisoner clothing as well as the wrist irons. You will also start with 5 apples for food, which should hold you over long enough to get your own if you are using survival mods.

Immigrated to Cyrodiil

You arrived in Cyrodiil by ship, looking to make a fresh start after leaving your homeland.

You arrive wearing middle class clothing, carrying a weapon suited to your chosen skills, and a small amount of gold to get started with.

Available ports are: Imperial City, Anvil, Bravil, and Leyawiin.

Arrival in Bravil will require that Open Cities Reborn is installed. Arrival in Leyawiin requires either Open Cities Reborn or Better Cities.

Own a house in a city

You will begin the game owning the player house in the chosen city. Anvil will not be available as a start option due to the involved quest.
You will begin with upper class clothing and a variable amount of gold. Each house choice will have a starting selection of fine steel weaponry.

Due to necessity, the house quest in the city you choose to live in will signal its completion as though you just bought the last furniture voucher from the merchant who sells them. This will allow for other mods that check the stage on the house quests for configuring their options, such as map markers in OOO or OCR.

By the power of OBSE, you can also choose to start in the player house in Bartholm.

New member of a guild

You can join the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, or Dark Brotherhood as a new member.

Joining the Fighters Guild will provide you with a complete set of either steel or chainmail armor depending on your major skill selections.
Joining the Mages Guild will provide you with basic mages robes, two randomly chosen magic rings, as well as a basic supply of mana and health potions.

Fighters and Mages both start in Chorrol.

Joining the Thieves Guild will start you off with a set of leather armor, a dagger for a weapon, and 10 lockpicks.
You will be ranked as though you had just finished the first quest in the storyline.
Thieves start off in the Imperial City Waterfront, near the Garden of Dareloth, at 2am so Armand Christophe will be available immediately to talk to.

Joining the Dark Brotherhood will supply you with a set of DB armor and begin as though you had just arrived at the Cheydinhal sanctuary after killing Rufio.
You will have just spoken to Ocheeva and have been instructed to see Vicente for your first contract.

Patron in a local inn

Patrons of local inns will start off with basic middle class clothing, a weapon, and a modest amount of random gold. You will be credited with having paid rent for the available room in the inn, so if you want to sleep, you've got the room for the usual time period.

The inns you can choose from are: Faregyl Inn, Roxey Inn, Gottshaw Inn, Brina Cross Inn, Olav's Tap & Tack, Drunken Dragon Inn, Five Claws Lodge, Wawnet Inn, and King and Queen Tavern.

Gladiator in the Arena

Arena starts will begin with basic middle class clothing along with credit for having joined the arena faction and completion of your first match. So it will be basically like getting a free rank. You will also start off with a reasonable amount of gold to reflect winnings.

You will start off with a 2-handed weapon based on your choice of weapon skills. If no weapons skills have been selected as majors, it will default to a 2-handed claymore. The weapon will be chosen from the random lists of enchanted weapons. You will be equipped with the appropriate battle raiment for your chosen armor skills.

An outlaw in the wilds

You will begin with basic leather armor and either a waraxe or shortsword depending on weapon skills. You will have a randomly chosen amount of gold reflecting the fact that you've been somewhat successful at waylaying people on the road, along with some randomly chosen treasure items.

This start begins the game with you manning your camp at Fort Ash, along the road between the IC and Chorrol. You will *NOT* be made a member of the bandit faction due to complications this causes. Be aware that this also starts you off with 5 infamy and a criminal bounty of 500 gold. So try not to get too close to guards until you're ready to deal with it.

Shipwrecked off the coast

Disaster struck! You were part of the crew of a merchant vessel on the way to Anvil. A storm rose up and wrecked your ship. Everyone aboard is dead except for you. You're trapped in an air pocket, the ship is going to sink, and you need to get out! You'll have the bare minimum - lower class clothing and a cheap dagger. If you explore the wreck before leaving, you may find some better equipment, but be warned, you could die as you'll need to go underwater to get to anything useful. You'll also need to go underwater long enough to reach the hull breach in the ship to escape and swim to the surface.

You'll notice right away that getting to shore is no easy task. You're going to have to swim for it.

A secluded Necromancer

You will begin as a necromancer in Fort Cuptor, far from civilization. You will initially be placed in the necromancer faction so that denizens of Fort Cuptor won't attack you. This will not protect you from other non-aligned factions. You will start with 5 infamy, but no criminal bounty. You will start with basic equipment reflecting your status as a necromancer. Soul gems, appropriate ingredients, and a staff for a weapon. If you have chosen conjuration as a primary skill, you will be given two undead related summoning spells.

If you leave the starting area you will be removed automatically from the Necromancer faction to avoid issues with being in an enemy faction later. As a result, the necromancers inside will turn hostile toward you when you return. Make sure you take what you want before leaving or you'll have to fight for it.

A secluded Vampire

Probably the most difficult way to start the game. You will be a vampire afflicted with the full strength version of vampirism. The game's clock will be adjusted to just after sunset, so you won't be stuck waiting in your cave all day before you can leave. You'll begin with basic middle class clothing, on the second level of Fort Hastrel. The vampires living there will leave you alone, until you leave the fort. After this point they will become hostile toward you if you return. Before leaving, check the coffin you start next to for equipment.

Starting the Main Quest

As you might gather, Alternative Beginnings does not trigger the main quest at all when you're done generating your character. Only those portions which must be blocked have been advanced to prevent bugs related to improper chargen termination.

In order to actually begin the main quest, you will need to travel the road from the IC to Chorrol. At Fort Ash, there will be a dead adventurer's corpse near the road which has a letter from Baurus along with the Amulet of Kings. Picking up the letter begins the MQ with you assuming the role of the dead adventurer. Read the letter to understand the situation, which will allow for you to slip seamlessly into the role.

You will not be able to enter the sewer system normally attached to the standard tutorial, and there is no method for starting the game through the normal prison sequence.

This looks great - any chance of taking requests for more options? I used to have a mod in my Morrowind setup that let you start off shore in a shipwreck underwater, drowning, all that jazz. I've wanted to play that beginning in Oblivion forever.

Instant download though, thanks for your tireless work on all of your mods and projects.

Wow, this looks really good

Will have to remember it if I ever do another playthrough

You know... I always love these alternate-start mods... but there's just something about the inability to join the bad guys that makes me cry, every time I see one.

Why must I be always be a lonesome brigand? Why can't I become a feared Marauder Warlord? If I were to choose that way of life... then would I not accept the fact that there are complications with that which ultimately limit the game's experience for me? I know full-well that if I choose to become a necromancer, it means that everyone is going to hate me. After all, we're bad dudes! Most of our lot will kill you and steal your corpse, just as soon as look at you.

Why would I expect to be able to march into town, and complete the Mage's Guild quests or something, then?

It's frustrating...


But, I'm still gonna give this a shot! It looks pretty sharp!

Ooo. A shipwreck start, now why didn't I think of that

I don't know if it would be a good idea to start underwater because you can drown awfully fast at level 1 but I could certainly see starting in such a way that you'd have to go underwater to get out of the wreck. It's something you should at least have the chance to prepare for.



Heh. Fearsome marauder warlords don't tend to be low level grunts, and properly assigning someone to such a powerful position would be difficult at best. So the closest you'll get here is being able to start as a wanted criminal. Plus, there really are an awful lot of complications to being a member of an evil faction. You'd get attacked at the slightest chance encounter with non-evil people.

I'm not sure what would be involved in it at all (being as I'm so intimidated by the Construction Set :P) but the Morrowind one had you above water. I think that is probably best for load times/loading screens/etc. Start game => dead is not the best alternative start...

About the ship wreck, just make the ship interior upside down, and put the water so that there's just enough room to breathe .

And depending on whether you can be bothered, you could ask class and stuff and leave the belongings in a chest just under-water. And when you exit the ship just have it move to the bottom of the ocean once the player is sufficiently far away??

There is a mod here that allows you to join the "bad guys". Pick one of the alternate starts on Arthmoor's mod and use this to go farther.
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=17978

Or, alternatively, just have the player "wake up" on a beach. Although this is bordering on adding more objects and terrain than just a simple alternate start mod (although if Arthmoor's UL mods are any indication, this would turn out pretty sweet.)

Cool - taking a whack at the alt start mod scene.

My question is why do alt starts have a tendency to close off the entire end of the sewers after tutorial. Why is going in there blocked?

Again I'm thinking of TIE and the key/note left in there.

I may indeed try this out on next playthrough.

Because allowing access to that dungeon when you've short circuited the entire tutorial and initial chargen routines can lead to problems that aren't easily sorted out. It's much simpler to just cut off access to it, which would happen even in vanilla once you've delivered the amulet to Jauffre anyway.

I'll have the note moved out of there in the next TIE update, but I didn't see a key anywhere near it. I'll have to scour the mod again to see where it might be hidden.

My memory may be a bit fuzzy - home sick right now.

There may not be a key - only the note and a book. Whatever is in the clam.

And I'm not talking about the whole dungeon - but the part back to the area right after you leave Baurus. Doesn't matter I guess except for TIE.

For starting in a shipwreck, I have an idea.

Basically you should be in a cabin on the ship, which is on the verge of flooding (you of course start in the corner that isn't flooded, with some basic clothes and items a sailor would have). To exit the room you're in, you're going to have to swim through half a sunken ship, until you find a breach in the ship that'll let you leave. Corpses of the crew as well as random clutter and containers could be added. Hell even the captain's cabin, or ship's hold for goods (lets say it was a merchant ship). The biggest problem would be the exterior cell it edits, in terms of compatibility.

Also I'm considering trying out this mod, I've been using Robert Evrae's Alternate Start Arrive by Ship for ages, and it has served well, but I do want to get some new options as well .

I used that shipwreck option often in Morrowind. The ship was tilted so that the deck had some air pockets available here and there. There wasn't much underwater swimming involved, unless the player chose to go down to one of the lower decks, which was optional.

I've been looking for an alternate start mod with an Arena option, so I'm overjoyed to see this. This particular character will be using a two-handed sword so this beginning is practically tailor-made for me. I'm curious though: what was the thinking behind starting the player off with one match already won? Was there a technical reason this needed to be done? It's not a major issue for me, I'm mainly just curious.

Anyway, thank you very much for this mod. I know I'll be putting this to good use.

Arthmoor, you are awesome. Every mod you make seems to be exactly what I want. I have desperately been wanting a new alternate start mod that actually worked other than arrive by ship. Thanks again.

Dude. AWESOME.

So... I've played with it... and it's fairly solid!

Everything works just like you'd expect, and there's really nothing to complain about as far as the selection goes. Unless you're me, or someone like me, who wants a game-breakingly difficult option (I totally wanna be a marauder... even if that means I have to create Marauder-faction merchants and such just to live)... there's MORE than enough to keep you busy trying new characters.

A very well-done job, Arthmoor... and I look forward to seeing if you add any more options.

(Also... I will totally name my first born child after you ((rather than naming it Dovahkiin, anyways...)) if you create options that totally break everything and let me be the bad dude! I tried that other fellow's suggestion... but it just didn't quite work right. I don't like the idea of having to shift between bad-guy factions because of bounty. I want to be able to pick one, and say: "I'm a marauder... terror of Cyrodiil" or "For the Worm King!!!" or... or... um... FIGHT FOR YELLOW TEAM!?!? Er... forget the last one, but still!)


Anyhow. I'll give you my endorsemant over there once I'm able... and anyone reading this who is interested but hasn't committed... go give it a shot!

You won't be disappointed.


... and if you are, I'll stab you in the face for lying.

Sounds good already. I will certainly try this one.

I've tried just about every alternative (that I'm aware of), but none of them has been perfect. Who knows - this might be the one.

It just seemed like a neat twist, but after thinking about it a bit, you do get gipped out of the combat experience for those 3 matches (it's not just one to advance) so I'll probably scale that back after checking to be sure nothing gets broken by that. Besides, starting off in the Arena at level 1 with TIE got me killed several times, so it probably needs scaling back anyway

@Colonel Tannanbaum: I'll see what I can do, but adding the shipwreck option will leave only one menu slot available. You'd also be at a severe disadvantage being at level 1 as a marauder boss in an evil faction everyone wants to kill you for being a member of. There's nothing I could do to reduce that.



Heh. What exactly would make for a "perfect" alt-start mod? Mainly curious because as everyone knows, nothing is perfect

An alternate start that had kvatch and the emperor alive and no mention of the main quest :hubbahubba: :bolt:

That would be something.

I still haven't tried http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=19949 yet.

Heh, you don't ask much do you

That seems like an awful lot to try and process correctly and in order to have a Kvatch still in one piece at the start of the game one would necessarily need to have either a Kvatch mod installed or build the entire city and have that version supplant the vanilla one and then go away once the MQ is started. No matter how it's sliced, that's a huge amount of work and is best done in a dedicated mod meant for that purpose.

It's not really something I'm up to the task of doing, because I'd want it done in such a way that the mod wouldn't have to be uninstalled in order to play the main quest. That's a really delicate thing to pull off.

Yiikes! And to think of the problems I had trying to move a few sticks of furniture...

I like the shipwreck start. Just washed up on a beach with all your stuff washed up on shore or in the shallow water. Possibly with the shipwreck still in the water offshore so the PC could swim out and get a few more goodies.

If you have only the one slot left after the shipwreck... then couldn't you use that slot to say 'More Options' and cue to another menu?

Or... is there a limit on that which I'm not familiar with? Being that I've done very, very little modding for Oblivion... I'm pretty much in the dark as to how much work and what intricacies go into dealing with the newer CS, but I'm assuming it could be done in a similar way to how Morrowind menus could be written. And then you could just keep on adding whatever new beginnings you wanted... all at your leisure, and without concern.


Of course, there's still the matter of being level 1 and in a faction which everyone wants to kill you for being in... but I used to play as a RAIDER in Fallout 3... so I don't imagine Marauders being too much more difficult!

In my opinion, there are enough mods that alter or change the way Kvatch and the Main Quest work. None of them elegant or immersive enough, in my opinion.

Before Arthmoor's mod, I have been using http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25591, which has a ton of different starting options. Arthmoor's is a much better implementation, I think.

You do love to shoot my ideas down. I notice that.

1. I didn't expect for him to take me that serious.
2. He did ask.

Seriously though you may be right none may be elegant. The one I linked to above requires Kvatch Rebuilt.esm as a master and then when kicking off the main quest you take the alt start out and put the regular KR in.

I guess I see it that any kvatch city replacer (meaning not destroyed) would have to be tied to main quest alteration and therefore alternate starts. They all kind of all necessitate each other. You can't have no main quest then have a city destroyed. You can't have the city not destroyed and a main quest that requires it destroyed. You could have an alt start (there are many) that allows you to not start the main quest - until you get to kvatch.

I guess I'm more interested in alternate endings than beginnings and as things go the end is already there in the beginning.