Thieves Arsenal
v1.0
created by Paul Connelly, aka scruggs.
Elemental Arrows and
Blackjack by Grumblepunk.
OBSE by
Stephen Abel and Ian Pattersen, with contributions from Timeslip and The J.
Voice acting by Joshua D.
Vine and animations by
XMarksTheSpot
Basso's
beard by madmole.
Water textures by texian.
Sofa by
Xiamara.
Havok
advice provided by Darknel and fourthgeek.
Game
setting info provided by sarkander and GhanBuriGhan.
Tested by
the Oblivion Beta Testers Guild.
Additional
testing by Countess Narina Carvain and the denizens of the Imperial City Market
District.
Thanks to
Contents
About the Plugin
Installation
Actor Behavior
Tools of the Trade
Getting the Most out of the
Arsenal
Compatibility
Known Issues
Contact Information
Future Plans
Frequently Asked Questions
and Troubleshooting
About the Plugin
Thieves Arsenal is designed
to introduce the stealth gameplay of the Thief series to Oblivion. In Oblivion,
stealth functions mainly as a prelude to combat, allowing your character to
sneak up on opponents and score extra damage. But avoiding combat is often
impossible, and once a fight has begun, stealth is of little use. The Thief
games, by contrast, emphasize avoidance of combat through the use of special
tools and clever strategy. Thieves Arsenal makes those tools available in
Oblivion, opening up an entirely new style of play.
Installation
To install Thieves Arsenal,
simply unzip the compressed archive into your Oblivion\Data folder. All files
including meshes, textures, sounds, and icons will be placed into the
appropriate subfolders. If asked to overwrite, click "Yes".
To uninstall, delete the
following files and folders:
-Thieves Arsenal.esp
-Sound\fx\Thieves Arsenal\
-Sound\Voice\Thieves Arsenal.esp\
-Textures\Menus\Icons\Thieves Arsenal\
-Textures\Thieves Arsenal\
-Meshes\Thieves Arsenal\
Note:
Thieves Arsenal requires Oblivion Script Extender v0009 or later. The
most recent version of OBSE can be downloaded at
http:\\www.obse.silverlock.org. Please install and run OBSE according to the
simple instructions provided with the download.
Actor Behavior
Thieves Arsenal adds new
behaviors to NPCs and creatures:
Unconscious
NPCs and creatures can be knocked
out with the blackjack, gas arrows, or when slipping in puddles of oil.
Unconscious actors are, for all intents and purposes, dead. They don't process
their AI and their bodies can be looted or dragged around. Unconscious NPCs
will wake up eventually, or immediately if attacked. When an unconscious actor
wakes up, they will be suspicious and search the area for you.
The number of actors you've
knocked out over the course of the game is tracked on your character's
miscellaneous stats page - the same page that shows your bounty. It replaces
the "Jokes Told" stat.
Suspicious
When an NPC or creature
observes suspicious behavior, they will become alerted and search the area for the
cause. Actors become suspicious when they see a light go out, find a noisemaker
arrow, notice an unconscious body, or wake up after being knocked out. While
searching, an NPC will draw his weapon and periodically utter phrases like
"Where are you?" He will also be more alert, giving him an increased
chance to detect you, so sneaking and hiding are essential.
An actor's behavior after
finding you depends on his attitude toward your character and the reason for
his suspicion. Hostile actors will attack. Non-hostile NPCs may call for the
guards, run for help, or even attack you. Guards will fine you based on the
crime committed and may arrest or attack you.
Corpse Detection
When an NPC or creature comes
across an unconscious body, he will assume the victim is dead and search for
you, as long as the victim is someone whom he doesn't hate. It's important to
either hide your victims' bodies, or to avoid detection after knocking them
out. Hiding bodies in dark places decreases the chance of detection, as does
hiding them in enclosed spaces or behind walls. "Corpse detection" is
a bit of a misnomer, since it only applies to unconscious bodies; victims killed with normal weapons will not be
noticed by other actors.
Running for Help
Some NPCs, including most townsfolk,
are naturally timid. If they detect you while in a suspicious state, they may
run for help. They will find a nearby guard and report your crime, at which
point the guard will begin to search for you. If you are caught by the guard,
you will be fined based on the crime committed.
Calling for Help
When you are caught
committing a minor offense such as dousing a light or shooting a noisemaker
arrow, NPCs may call for help. This will cause nearby guards to run to the
scene of the crime and search for you. If they catch you, you will be fined.
Tools of the Trade
The heart of Thieves Arsenal
is the set of tools which will assist you in playing a stealthy character.
These tools are meant to help you avoid combat and outwit your adversaries. A
decent Sneak skill and good strategy will make them more effective.
The tools can be purchased
from Basso the Boxman, an entrepeneur who operates a hidden shop within the
Note that if you draw an
arrow and then decide you don't want to fire it, you can cancel the shot by
pressing the "grab" key or button while holding down the
"attack" button. This feature works for all arrows in the game.
Finally, be aware that these
tools are not strictly legal, so using them in towns can get you into trouble.
Civilians who catch you in the act may call for the guards or even run to the
nearest guard to report your crime. Guards will actively search for you if they
become alerted. However, you will only be fined if a guard actually finds you - they will not automatically
know where you are like they normally do in Oblivion.
Water Arrows
The crystal tips of these
arrows are filled with water. When fired at a surface, the crystal shatters,
releasing its contents. Water arrows can be used to extinguish open light
sources like torches and fires. If an actor sees a light go out, he may become
suspicious and search for the cause, possibly casting a Light spell or lighting
a torch to aid his vision. Doused lights will be relit between one and two days
later.
Note:
When dousing a light, aim at the center of the flames. Lights in
dungeons and castles are extinguishable; those in homes and shops generally are
not.
Vine Arrows
Vine arrows contain the seeds of an incredibly fast-growing
species of jungle vine within their crystalline tips. When shot at a surface,
the seeds are implanted into the surface, where they will attempt to grow. If
there is sufficient room, a dangling vine will sprout which can then be
climbed. To climb a vine, stand underneath it and look directly up. You may
jump up to grab onto the vine if it is too high to reach when standing. To
climb down, look directly down. Should you try to attack or cast a spell while
climbing, you will lose your grip on the vine and fall. It is possible to jump
off the vine at any point by using the movement and jump keys, and even to jump
from one vine to another. Jumping at the top of the vine allows you to mantle
up onto a ledge or rooftop. Vines will disappear one to two days after they
began growing.
Note:
Since the vine grows downward, it is best to fire the vine arrow at the flat
underside of a ledge or rooftop. Keep in mind that the collision used by
Blackjack
The blackjack is a thief's
best friend. It does no damage, but is perfectly weighted to apply maximum
force to the back of a victim's head, rendering him unconscious. The blackjack
works on all NPCs, including dremora, and a handful of humanoid creatures as
well. These include Goblins, Clannfear, Scamps, Xivilai, Flame Atronachs, and
Spriggans. You cannot blackjack an NPC who has his weapon drawn or is engaged
in combat, nor anyone who is aware of your presence.
Noisemaker Arrow
Noisemaker arrows are filled
with a pyrotechnic mixture which explodes with a loud noise when striking a
surface. When NPCs and creatures hear this noise, they will run off to
investigate. Once they've discovered your trickery, they will search the area
for you. Noisemaker arrows are very useful for distracting opponents so you can
sneak past them.
Gas
Arrows
The crystal affixed to the
tip of a gas arrow contains a highly poisonous gas which renders air-breathing
actors unconscious. This gas can be injected into a single opponent with a
direct hit, or released in a smal cloud when fired at the ground. This can be
useful for knocking out several opponents standing close together. The duration
of the effect is determined by the victim's resistance to poison; highly
resistant actors, including all Argonians and the undead, will never be knocked
out, but may become suspicious if they notice the cloud of gas. Be careful not
to get too close to the cloud yourself, or your character will be knocked out
for a short time, rendering him vulnerable to attack.
Holy Water Fountains
In the chapels of the Nine
Divines, fountains of water blessed by the priests are used for healing and
rituals. By dipping your water arrows in these fountains, you can imbue them
with special properties. Holy water arrows have power over the undead. Direct
contact with an undead creature will cause that creature to flee from you in
terror. Firing a holy water arrow at the gronud releases a puddle of holy
water. When an undead creature comes too close to the puddle, the dark magic
which animates it will be dispelled for a short period of time, rendering the
creature immobile. Puddles of holy water are very useful for blocking off
passages or taking out a group of undead creatures.
Grease
Arrows
Banded to the tip of a grease
arrow is a small, oil-filled sack. When the arrow is fired at the ground, the
arrow head pierces this sack, releasing a slippery puddle of oil. Actors who
walk through the puddle will slip and fall. If they fall far enough, they may
be rendered unconscious and even take damage. If the actor is running, he will
slide much further. Grease arrows are particularly effective when fired at the
top of a flight of stairs, or in the path of an actor who is chasing you.
A direct hit with a grease
arrow will soak your opponent in oil, which is highly flammable. Any Fire
Damage spell which is cast upon the oil-drenched victim will then deal extra
damage.
Getting the Most out of the Arsenal
Strategy
A mix of strategy and stealth
will help you maximize the potential of your new tools. A few examples of
strategies:
- Fire a grease arrow at the ground, then lure
a group of opponents into the puddle by engaging them in combat or by firing a noisemaker.
- Use a noisemaker to bring opponents running
to a location, then gas them all with a well-placed gas arrow.
- Use a vine arrow to climb to inaccessible
ledges in dungeons or onto rooftops, then snipe your opponents from above.
- Drag the bodies of your unconscious victims
into water to drown them, or throw them off of ledges to cause extra damage.
INI Tweaks
If you want to be able to
grab and drag unconscious actors, you will need to change a line in your
Oblivion.ini file, which is located by default in your My Documents\My
Games\Oblivion folder.
Find the line that reads:
bAllowHavokGrabTheLiving=0
and change the 0 to a 1, then save the file.
Additionally, if you run the
game under Windows 2000, you may need to find the following line:
bBackgroundKeyboard=0
and change the 0 to a 1 in order for OBSE to detect keyboard input.
Recommended Mods
There are many excellent
stealth mods available for Oblivion, and many of them complement Thieves
Arsenal wonderfully.
The most important by far is Realistic Ragdolls and Force. This mod
makes dragging corpses much, much easier, which is essential if you wish to
avoid other actors noticing your unconscious victims.
Others include:
- JOG's
Stealth Overhaul or Attack and Hide:
Both of these mods make it easier to hide during combat, but JOG's mod includes
some additional improvements to the stealth system.
- Vaults
of Cyrodiil: This mod adds well-guarded treasure vaults to the castles of
Cyrodiil. The vaults are nearly impossible to plunder without engaging in
combat; with the new tools provided by Thieves Arsenal, they are merely very
challenging.
-
Window Entrances: Allows you to sneak into houses through the windows.
Currently only Anvil is implemented, but with a few vine arrows in your possession,
this is a highly useful mod.
- Lockpicks:
Grumblepunk's mod allows you to craft new lockpicks from useless metal
clutter like tongs, shears, and forks. Never run out of lockpicks again!
These mods can be downloaded
at http:\\www.TESSource.net or http:\\www.planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com.
Compatibility
Thieves Arsenal was designed
with two goals in regard to compatibility with other mods:
- Avoid altering existing NPCs, objects, game settings,
etc in order to prevent conflicts with other mods that alter the same things;
- Ensure that the changes made by Thieves
Arsenal are applicable to new creatures and objects added by other mods.
There are very few
situtations in which significant conflicts can arise between Thieves Arsenal
and another mod. The most important conflict to be aware of is with Lights.
Mods which add scripts to existing lights will
conflicts with Thieves Arsenal. On the other hand, non-scripted lights added by
other mods will generally be extinguishable with the water arrows included in
Thieves Arsenal.
Known Compatible Mods
These mods have been tested
for compatibility and passed:
- JOG's Stealth
Overhaul
- Attack and
Hide
- Oscuro's
Oblivion Overhaul
- Francesco's
Leveled Creatures-Items
- Martigen's
Monster Mod
Known Incompatibilities
These mods are not currently
compatible with Thieves Arsenal:
- Ren's
Guard Overhaul: Do not run Ren's
Guard Overhaul alongside Thieves Arsenal. I am working with Ren to come up with
a solution to the conflicts between our mods, but for now they are not
compatible.
-
Adrenaline-fueled Combat: Because AC uses the Thieves Arsenal approach to
arrow scripting, the two are not compatible.
- Expanded
Hotkeys: Expanded Hotkeys is compatible
with Thieves Arsenal. However, the new tools cannot be assigned to the extra
hotkeys. If you use the two mods together, you'll need to assign the new tools
to the default hotkeys and use the expanded hotkeys for other items.
The vast majority of untested
mods should be compatible with Thieves Arsenal. Minor conflicts may occur when
certain creatures added by other mods don't react appropriately to the new
tools. On the other hand, Thieves Arsenal is designed to work with mod-added
creatures; for instance, the new undead creatures introduced by Oscuro's
Oblivion Overhaul are affected by holy water. However, no modder can guarantee
or test for compatibility with every other mod, so your results may vary.
Known Issues
Much of the time I've spent
creating Thieves Arsenal has been devoted to reducing bugs and testing the
scripts in unusual situations. Feedback from my beta testers has helped
eliminate even more potential issues. However, as with all mods of any
complexity, there are bound to be glitches. A few of these cannot currently be
fixed. If you encounter something not mentioned here, please let me know so it
can be addressed.
Bugs in Oblivion
There are two issues in
Oblivion itself which can cause trouble with Thieves Arsenal:
- When an actor is disabled, whether by
paralysis, unconsciousness, or loss of fatigue, Oblivion does not remove that
actor from the list of actors who can detect the player. The upshot of this is
that, if you knock someone unconscious while they can detect you, the game will
continue to think they detect you until they awaken or you leave the cell. I
have scripted around most of the implications of this bug. However, your
"sneak eye" crosshair may remain bright after knocking someone out
even when you are well-hidden. There is currently no known way of fixing this issue short of patching Oblivion - and
trust me, I spent a great deal of time looking for a solution. My personal
preference is to disable the sneak eye entirely - it forces me to pay attention
to my surroundings in order to determine if someone can detect me.
- Oblivion does not purge cells when reloading
a savegame. What this means is that, if you load a savegame which was saved
within the same cell you are currently in, Oblivion will not bother to reload
that cell. This can causes issues even when no mods are installed - for
instance, NPCs may not update their AI when the game is loaded, or quest
variables and inventories may not be reset appropriately. When playing Thieves
Arsenal or other mods, the game may crash when reloading a game saved within
the current cell. This generally occurs when the game was saved while NPCs were
searching for you. Your savegame is NOT corrupted. The general rule is: if the game you wish to load was saved
within the same cell you are currently in, exit to the main menu before loading
that savegame. You should be doing this even when running the game with no
mods. Again, there is no fix for this unless
Other Issues
- Thieves Arsenal is not designed for use with
companion mods, because companions tend to attract the attention of opponents
while you're trying to be stealthy.
- If you are unable to run Oblivion at a
framerate of at least 15 fps, Thieves Arsenal may not function properly.
If you encounter any other
issues with the mod, please let me know so they can be addressed.
Contact Information
The most current version of
this document is available at
http:\\www.comcast.net\~scruggsyW\Thieves_Arsenal.htm.
If you have a question about
this plugin, please contact me by sending a personal message on the Official
Elder Scrolls Forums at http:\\www.elderscrolls.com\forums. My handle there is scruggsywuggsy the ferret.
Please do not alter and
distribute this plugin without first requesting permission.
If you wish to use art assets
from this plugin, please request permission from the authors credited at the
top of this page.
Future Plans
While Thieves Arsenal
accomplishes what it was designed to do, some features didn't make it into this
release, and others could use improvement. I have plenty of plans for the mod;
hopefully real life will cooperate more fully in the future so that those plans
can be realized.
- Basso the Boxman lacks the personality I
envisioned for him. Fleshing out his character will require voice acting.
- Quests designed specifically for stealthy
characters.
- More tools, including flashbombs and
wall-climbing gloves.
- Physics on the hanging iron lamps
occassionally goes wonky after the light is extinguished.
Frequently Asked Questions
Before you ask, check to see if
your question has already been answered.
Oblivion Script Extender
Commonly asked questions
about Oblivion Script Extender.
How do I install OBSE?
Download the latest version of OBSE from
obse.silverlock.org. Then copy OBSE_loader.exe and OBSE_Loader.dll to your
Oblivion folder (not the Data
subfolder).
How do I run OBSE?
If you wish to use mods that require OBSE (like
Thieves Arsenal), you must launch the game with OBSE_Loader.exe instead of the
Oblivion Launcher. Just double-click the .exe. in your Oblivion folder.
Alternatively, use one of the many OBSE-aware launchers like Oblivion Mod
Manager, OBSE Launcher, or OBSE-Compatible Oblivion Launcher.
OBSE doesn't work for me!
OBSE supports several language versions of Oblivion.
However, it does not work with the Direct2Drive version of the game. It also
requires the official patch v1.15, available from Bethesda Softworks at
www.elderscrolls.com. If you run Oblivion using Oldblivion, you will need to
launch OBSE with the -old argument.
See OBSE documentation for more information.
Is OBSE compatible with Shivering Isles or the new
patch for Oblivion?
The official expansion pack Shivering Isles and a new
Oblivion patch are scheduled to be released a few weeks after the time of this writing.
It is likely that OBSE will need to be updated before it is compatible with the
patch and/or the expansion. The authors of OBSE plan to begin working on an
update immediately. Keep an eye out for version 0011 at
http://obse.silverlock.org.
Gameplay
Where can I purchase the new tools?
The tools are available to a select few customers at a
hidden shop within the
Where is Basso's shop?
Basso gave you a clue in his letter. The keywords are
Still
stumped? Read each word in the following sentence backwards:
Kool rof na ecnartne ot eht srewes ni eht
CI tekram tcirtsid.
When does Basso restock his inventory?
Basso restocks when you've used the tools
you've already purchased. For each tool, there is a maximum you can possess at
one time. For instance, you may only purchase 30 noisemaker arrows at a time.
If you purchase all 30 noisemakers and then use 5 of them, Basso will have 5
more in his inventory the next time you visit him. So use them strategically
when you really need them.
Why can't I douse certain lights?
As a general rule, open light sources and
open flames found within castles, dungeons, and quest areas (such as the
But why
can't I douse lights in homes and shops?
Because replacing the existing lights with
extinguishable lights requires an immense amount of time and effort. A sizable
portion of the time spent developing Thieves Arsenal involved tediously
replacing all the lights in castles and dungeons. Hand-editing over four
hundred cells was enough for me. I am simply not interested in doing that work
for shops and homes as well, where the gameplay effect would be minimal given
the small size of the interiors and the general lack of anything worth
stealing.
Where can I purchase holy water arrows?
Holy water arrows cannot be purchased. Instead you
must use one of the holy water fountains which are located at each of the town
chapels of Cyrodiil. To use the fountain, activate it and place as many
ordinary water arrows as you wish inside it. They will immediately be converted
to holy water arrows, which you can then take.
Troubleshooting
Why doesn't the mod work for me?
- Download the latest version of OBSE from
http://obse.silverlock.org and install it according to the simple instructions
included.
- Read the section of this FAQ dealing with
OBSE-related questions.
- If you are running Windows 2000, follow the
suggestions in the INI Tweaks section of this readme.
- Send me detailed information about the problem so I can help you.
Why did the game crash when I tried to Quickload?
Because there is a bug in Oblivion. Avoid using the
in-game menu to load a savegame that was saved in the same cell you are
currently in.
Why is my sneaking crosshair bright when no one can
detect me?
Because there's another bug in Oblivion. See the Known
Issues section for more info.
Is this mod compatible with <insert your favorite
mod here>?
I have no idea. I don't use many mods, and don't keep
up with the ones which are released. If you think you've found a conflict, let
me know the name of the mod and what it's supposed to do, and I will consider
fixing it.