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Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library


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Well that sucks, at least it's still under warranty...

 

For book prices, there are 5 categories of book in the game afaik:

- Cheap books: (Only includes the Biography of Barenziah, the Brief History of the Empire and a couple of very short books) cost 2-3 septims.

- Common books: (Religion and basic lore) vary between 5 and 8 septims, their text is relatively short (2-4 pages).

- Valuable books: 10-14 septims. Longer books with interesting stories.

- Rare books: They are rare indeed, and a lot of them seem to be just hand placed. I've not even found most of them in my previous playthroughs. Cost 20,25 or 30 depending on the size.

- Skill books: Usually have a base cost of around 60.

 

There's also a few random books that Bethesda didn't categorize like Immortal Blood or Mysteries of Talara.

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I don't know yet, but since it is one of their Enterprise drives they are sending a courier today to uplift. I suspect they will be interested in the point of failure but I am not expecting to get the same drive back. None of the data is critical anyway and can be reconstructed with a little effort from my Master files.

 

Once I get my Skyrim install set up again I will be imaging it to HDD in case it happens again because it is a real bind. I had only just got it set up right after moving the drives from my Mac Pro to this new PC.

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The annoying thing was that I had just transferred the drives over to this new PC and had not got my backup strategy in place yet. I got over-confident in the fact that the Samsung 840PRO is an Enterprise drive. It is only my gaming drive and is the first failure I have had in a decade.

 

I have spent the past two full days getting Skyrim and SRLE set up again and have discovered a few things that I have lost on the dead drive but I can reconstruct them with a little effort. I have all my Book Covers source files and of course the Nexus has the completed mod but I have lost some of my history and prior versions. I also lost my Blender source for the Book Covers models but I can reconstruct that in minutes from any completed mesh.

 

Apart from Blender and NIFskope, I am back up and running again. Once I have sorted out an eBay auction for my 2010 Mac Pro, I will be back to doing the Lost Licrary covers and contents.

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Another little teaser for our Morrowind lovers...

 

Remember the ABCs for Barbarians? I know there have been "Oblivion" editions of the book but here is the original, straight from the Balmora Press offices with all new illustrations. Just the original A, B and C because we are talking about Barbarians of course. Adding other letters would only confuse them.

 

Posted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImagePosted ImagePosted Image

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I'm sure the draugr will love to have some books to pass the time in there :P

 

A suggestion would be to put the # of each sermon on the front of the cover as well, to make them look different in the inventory view (unless there's already a number but hidden by "Alchemical Recipes".

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The 36 Lessons match their Morrowind covers very closely. The number is on the spine as you can see and is also on the first title page inside but the front cover only has Vivec himself. Each set of 12 has a different colour spine and each individual book has different dirt/scratches. Remember that in the inventory you have the tooltips and the item description panel. Look at post #4 in this thread for a better shot of Sermon 18.

 

Once I have got a decent proportion of the books done, I will start asking for sanity checks on some of my placement ideas. I have great plans but have no idea how to execute them safely. Despite my earlier intentions, I will need to tie the Lost Library to the Book Covers Skyrim mod since I want to reuse some Notes and Journals and don't want to duplicate textures. I will be using Notes and Journals to set up mini-quests to reward readers with a small cache of books after a scavenger hunt or risk taken.

 

Now I have got over my hurdle of learning new tools to generate normal maps, I am firmly in book creation mode. I just have to make sure I don't put in ESO books by mistake as The Imperial Library now includes them. I almost did the cover for "The Lusty Argonian Maid - An Oral Tradition" today before I found it was an ESO book.

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While  some books on what I would consider the Common list will be on General merchant levelled lists and a few on specialists, I intend most to be hand-placed or with short hunts to uncover caches. Some Common books will be in NPC houses or shops while others will be in bandit camps. Rare books will be in dungeons with named NPCs or Leaders. Esoteric books will be in remote or deep locations or on bosses. Skill books will be hand-placed of course.

 

As an example, I am planning to use the Treasure Map mechanic to reveal caches when the Note is discovered. Imagine a dead Thalmor Justiciar with a note reporting heretical books at a particular location. The concealed cache will then be revealed once the note is found. Imagine a Journal found under a table in a tavern bemoaning a lost horse carrying books and supplies which went over a cliff or was swept away in a raging river. A promise to deliver something in an icy waste which was never fulfilled. Discarded books at the site of a Bandit raid. Rumours of a complete set of rare historical texts in a Dwemer ruin.

 

Yup - you will be adding another ESP when all this is over!

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My concern was compatibility (inns come to mind - Realistic Room Rental) about the hand placed notes :/ I'm sure that if not you then someone will take care of that but it is still another plugin o.0

 

Great work so far! Well, time to start some more merges...

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I have to admit that I never played Morrowind, and I didn't imagine that it would actually have different book covers when Skyrim has generic ones, so I didn't know you were basing the sermons of Vivec on the original ones...

 

Oh and concerning the treasure hunt, that's great, but please don't make the maps as silly as those by Bethesda... You know what I mean ::P:

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