Added a "Clear Weather" trigger up on the balcony because it's always so snowy and windy up there you can't see anything. Tried putting together a weather changing script but failed. So until I can learn how to script an activator to give a choice. you are stuck with this.

Savior's hide display didnt work properly. During testing after fixing this on a save after the last update, it gave volendrung as a message instead of savior's hide. This is because your save remembers the old script that was bad. If you use a save from before the Daedric Tower was added to Volkihar it will work normally.

Some objects werent tied to an xmarker for enable disable, fixed that.

The book had some bad grammar in it, fixed that a little, slayed, now says slew.

You are safe to store any items and receive updates. Once a storage object is working, I NEVER touch them again. Reason being, if I did you'ld lose the item. So, if you ever see mistakes on names for chests or something, and it never gets fixed, that is why.

Forgot to add facegen texture files. It's always some damn thing I swear.

Can't remember wtf I fixed, but it must have been worth it. lol.

If you are wondering where to start with this update, I recommend you read the "Perks" section on the description page

Releasing the coven quest upgraded. This quest was originally supposed to be what it finally is now. Back when I was making quests I had serious issues with a virus. Replay it to see it!

2 new small quests to introduce cells:
Many people don't know there are secret houses in Solitude and Windhelm for starting vampires.
You dont have to do anything for them to enable, they are enable ready from the time you install.
For those fledgling vampires just getting started. These secret lairs give you easy access to stalk prey as they lay asleep in bed just a few feet away.

3 new castle related quests:
Daedric South Tower is a display hall specifically for your Daedric Trophies. It also has a quest to reclaim it from the white wizard.

Throne Wing; I always wanted to have a short quest to explain how the thralls got in the Catacombs from "Releasing the Coven". Well, now there is.

Castle income: Bringing some money to my players through the shipyard has always been a priority and I actually had many more plans for a much larger quest, but my scripting is just getting started so that turned out to be more than I could do so far. Someday in the future however...

The castle now has a logo (a castle with a circle around it), you'll see it here and there, including on the horse I gave you.

Custom Banners, signs, crates, carpets . Tired of staring at the companions carpets all over the castle? Me too! Well I finally got off my butt and learned NifSkope :)

Balcony above Shipyard & Courtyard:

The new Daedric South Tower has two balconies jutting off from each side. The balcony over the shipyard is more of a tower and lookout.

The balcony in the Courtyard is just because there was a door there. See, that's just how I roll :)

New Daedric Tower (display): Scripted display altar's will magically float your Daedric weapons, armor and other Daedric items with an enchanted glow.

Although you already have the North Tower Vault for storing weapons, the South Tower is for your magical artifacts, and really is more of a museum of history for Skyrim rather than a loot vault.

Shipyard quest for monthly income: Since the day I designed this castle in my head I wanted an income but lacked the scripting ability. Well, that ability is still in short supply but it's getting better just like wine.

Playable Organs: Well, I'm talking about the kind you make music with. Anyway they finally play like I've always wanted them too. The one on the right plays "Phantom of the Opera" and the other one just plays some tunes that fit the castle mood.

Light on/off Switches: you'll find these Dwemer light switches tucked away in corners in most cells. With all the ENB mods out there I decided it was time to at least make some concessions in this area, well this is it folks..

If you start the castle over, you'll find many things have been upgraded to something they should have been all along, such as Nearly Headless Nick. He is now "awakened" by putthing his skull on. This only works for new play throughs as I couldn't pull him out midstride if he was already active.

Dragon Claw Display:

The North Tower Vault has always had Dragon Priest Mask displays in it, but now it's complete with special wall place holders for all your Dragon Claw's.

Bugs Fixed:

Annoying message "Your alchemy has returned to normal" etc.. have all been fixed. DIdnt know if an NPC used them it set off that message..

I'll add more to this later, ive been up all night getting this ready.

A many other tweaks and upgrades:

I perused every single square inch of the castle with scrutiny fixing things as I went so there is no way I could list everything I fixed.

No more gray faced NPC's from my mod. This release includes the facegen files.

Added dwemer light switches in each part of the castle (or each cell) so you can either dim the lights or have them bright (default). Now it's your choice.

Some textures and meshes didn't make it into the last BSA I made so this addresses that.

This BSA is a custom bsa, meaning I made it seperate from the CK > file > Archive. This time I ran it directly from the skyrim directory > archive.exe.

Using this option allowed me to compress the files so subsequently my bsa is now half the size it use to be. I'm not sure if there will be issues for some people out there because of this compression, but my test machine and my friends machine were able to use it fine.

Added another organ and music can now play on both of them. Be careful as the music does not stop and will replay each time you click the organ! Do it too many times and you could overload your sound card, memory and crash the game.

added some more packages to the thrall making blood in the torture chamber > top level of Valerica's tower.

Coming next release:

I found a heavy framerate drain in the North Tower vault. Turns out an "occlusion plane" in the wall was poking into a room bound of the adjacent room. I also moved a couple of objects (gold pots next to the weapon rack) away from each other incase they are causing the issue. Never the less, the framerates are now solid!

Created several new custom objects (textures). New banners that now have the Molag Bal mace/club on them instead of the companions two handed axe.

Also added a sign for the shipyard "Castle Volkihar Port of Call". I've had this mesh for quite some time as I was going to make a quest where you would earn money by manufacturing and shipping "True Blood" (as in the vampire series on HBO), only in my mod, it was "Real Blood", another cookie. But I had issues with the CK, then I had a virus and all my quests were destroyed when I reformatted losing a month of work. So, now I am adding this sign (which would have appeared when the quest was taken up). It would have been a monthly income.
Also to go along with this quest there were crates with "Volkihar Real Blood" and a logo. I lost the logo, so now I'm using the ship from the east empire shipping company. Maybe i'll update that. Not sure.

The Molag Bal robes now have a logo on the back of "Molag Bal". I've always wanted to cutomize the robes in this way, but didnt get to it until now.

Shipyard will no longer have a fast travel or map marker associated to it.

Added a blood bucket to the torture chamber in Valerica's Tower. Also added a new thrall there who works on making blood potions for the Blood tender slick in the tavern.

Made it so both Solitude Sewers and the Abandoned house in Windhelm are accessible as soon as this mod is downloaded. You no longer have to complete touching the sky to use them. Reason being is I want new vampires to get perks of a free home and a place to stay until sun down.

The organ in the Molag Bal church no longer plays, but that is because I am working on it. You should see that update soon.

I have been working on a new BSA for this mod, and finally figured out how to do it.

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How to create a custom BSA with facegen data using both the Creation kit's archive tool, a BSA extractor, and then the creation kit's archive tool only stand alone for the last step.
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Many tutorials on this tell you to rebuild a replica of the skyrim directory from scratch as your mod sits in it. But the fast easy way to do this is to unpack your BSA there using FOMM or Fallout Mod Manager (any BSA unpacking tool).

Then add the custom files that the cks's archive tool wouldn't include using the stand alone archive tool in skyrim folder. Viola, you didnt have to build a whole directory by hand and you didn't have to go picking every single file that is needed by your mod either!


Step by step instructions:

If you have never created a bsa to begin with, you need to do so. Open your mod in the CK, once it's loaded go to file > create archive. Now go find it,sometimes it is in your "Skyrim" folder instead of "Skyrim > data". Be sure you look at the date the bsa was modified and the date it was created, one of those should say today's date ;)

Now open FOMM (or whatever bsa unpacker you want to use) Download FOMM here: http://fallout3.nexusmods.com/mods/640/

Even though this is a youtube vid showing how to make custom armors, it's got the best description for how to unpack a bsa file using FOMM I could find, so just watch that part:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz8Ol_Ccyqw


1.) Extract the newest BSA from your mod onto your desktop using FOMM as shown in the video.

2.) Execute the stand alone Archive tool in your Skyrim Directory Steamapps > common > skyrim > "Archive.exe" double click it.

3.) Got to Edit > "Add Directory", browse to the BSA you just extracted onto your desktop using FOMM and add the "data" folder.

PS, you can NOT open your BSA directly with the Archive tool and
save it, you must use FOMM to unpack to your desktop first or it
will just crash the Archive tool when you try to save as.

4.) in the stand alone Archive tool go to "Edit > Add Files" (not add Directory this time) and browse to your facegen files directly in the Skyrim directory. It will remember the path on it's own! I was surprised by this, but it remembered the path and added it in from data all the way down.

facegen files are located in both Meshes and Textures, you need both.

Meshes are located in; skyrim > data > meshes > Actors > Characters > facegendata > FaceGeom > yourmodname. highlight all these files and click "Open"

The facegen files path in textures is skyrim > data > textures > actors > Character > FaceGenData > FaceTint > yourmodname (inside this folder highlight all these files as well. Click "open".

5.) In the Archive window check off the boxes that relate to your mods files, textures, meshes, sounds, voice, misc (is scripts), (I just check them all it didnt hurt anything).

I also check "compress" and it cut my mod's BSA size in half! And after testing it on my vanilla machine, it does in fact work beautifully!!!! Damn, I wish I had known about this long before.

6.) Now copy the name of your mods bsa so it's on your clipboard. (in my case it's cleaner_volkihar3.bsa) unless you are sure you can type it exactly, then skip this.

7.) in the standalone archive tool go to edit > check all

8.) Go to: File > "save as" and ctrl - v to paste your mods name (cleaner_volkihar3.bsa in my case). Save it wherever you want, it will create the custom.bsl and a .bsa for you!

Viola you should now have a new archive with custom files half the size for half the time that works!

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making custom textures:
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If you don't flatten them once you are done they won't work. But, when you flatten them you take away the transparency. Just use the magic wand to grab the unwanted backround and cut it, make the cut lines disappear by clicking off the project and then save export the dds. Viola.

I am feeling really good about my progress this last couple of weeks. I figured out and fixed two major bugs that have been plaguing this mod for months. Cleaned up the mod by deleting a bunch of objects that I never used and added some stuff long overdue.

Just fixed the NPC pile up issue in the undercroft (near door to courtyard). I use to have a whole series of quests set up for this mod, but had some serious bugs with the ck and got frustrated and gave up. Anyway, long story longer I had a 2nd upgraded undercroft cell that a door use to go to, when I deleted that door the CK let my mod remember it somehow. Anyway I solved this issue by just disabling the vanilla doors to and from the courtyard/undercroft and added new ones that enable (when "touching the sky" quest gets completed). I would not have had to do this if I could just use the "ignrore" function in the CK details report, but I used TESEDit and it once again screwed me.

Also updated the BSA so it now includes the scripts for the dragon claw displays.

Some of the ships I added or even the helms were not enable on "touching the sky" which meant they would be hanging around before they should be seen. That is also fixed with this release.

There are five custom objects that were not showing up when compiled by the CK BSA archive and I finally figured that one out just after this release. They had asterisk's in their names (how the heck that happened is anyone's guess) and apparently the CK doesn't retain asterisks as part of the object name during the compile, viola, the textures and meshes were there, but the CK couldn't find them by name anymore. How the hell you learn this stuff by accident, is just damn annoying.

So to you modders out there, if you get custom objects from say, insanity or someone like that (god bless them and thank you), check to see if the meshes and textures have an asterisk in the name when you download them.

More to come.

What can I say, I'm a madman. Can't stop fixing little things that bother me.

Found a copy of Serana and Valerica from waaaaay long ago when I was going to disable the originals and bring these ones out with custom dialogue. Well, that didnt turn out so I shit canned it, but I never deleted those unused NPC's. This may have been the issue with customized mods that changed their appearance. It could be that I added packages to their quest, in which case nothing will fix this issue. But I am hopeful this addresses it. (UPDATE I tested this and load order the mod that changes them to the bottom or last and it works fine).

I added some spell tomes of teleport to Castle Volkihar right hand and left hand to the teleporter room. I had too many people asking where the books were as they were kind of hidden. Originally I wanted to scatter stuff like that so you had to really search. Seems now there actually might be a high rate of subscribers that never ever find these tomes and that would be mod nerfing, so now you can't miss them.

Added some grand soul gems to the teleport room.

Added "Dragon Claw" display's on the walls of the main hall of the North Tower Vault. You can find them right by the "Dragon Priest Masks" display.

Also deleted a whole bunch of unused objects I created but didnt use for one reason or the other during the creation of this huge project. If I hadn't done that I wouldnt have been able to add this new dragon claw display. Lol. Wish Steam Workshop would give more room for mods.