Why do DLC quests start in the sewers?

[Rainman]

So I had this game on CD and I mightI remember to Start the DLC quests by
- listening to convos
- getting a letter from a courier
- find notes of NPC's
- or find strange artifacts (not sure there..).

But now I play the tutorial and besides the standard tutorial quests, it starts quests like:
- "I got this letter from..."
- "It seems there is a strange door..."
- "Apparently (dude at the mages college) lost stuff, I could get it back..."

WHY??

I crawl through the sewers like: "wow... this mages college sure is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! Also these 'mages' all look like ugly Goblins.."


To get to the point:
Is there a fix for the DLC quests not starting as soon as you enter the game?

It used to be not like that, It's not even supposed to be like that..
Help would be appreciated.

[Lobo de hielo]

Sounds like you used to use the same mod I use Alternative Beginnings.
Unfortunately no idea where you may find it now, as the author Arthmoor removed all his mods from Nexus and other sites.
Just took a quick look around and could not see it.
Maybe there are similar mods?

[Lobo de hielo]

Just remembered this one. I have not used it, but it is still up on Nexus:
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11495?tab=description
Alternative Start Arrive by Ship

It is an oldish mod but almost 400,000 downloads, I guess is a good indicator.

[theo]

By default it does work like that. Couriers is a Skyrim feature

[Rainman]

Originally posted by theo:

By default it does work like that. Couriers is a Skyrim feature

Yeah could be.. I think in Oblivion you just find letters and notes.

[Rainman]

Originally posted by slayor3000:

Just remembered this one. I have not used it, but it is still up on Nexus:
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11495?tab=description
Alternative Start Arrive by Ship

It is an oldish mod but almost 400,000 downloads, I guess is a good indicator.

no, sorry, but I never modded oblivion.
At best I used the inofficial patch (could be calld a mod too, but let's not discuss this ^^)

[Lobo de hielo]

Originally posted by Rainman:

Originally posted by slayor3000:

Just remembered this one. I have not used it, but it is still up on Nexus:
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11495?tab=description
Alternative Start Arrive by Ship

It is an oldish mod but almost 400,000 downloads, I guess is a good indicator.

no, sorry, but I never modded oblivion.
At best I used the inofficial patch (could be calld a mod too, but let's not discuss this ^^)

Just reread, should spend more time checking out real question and as @Theo "By default it does work like that. Couriers is a Skyrim feature".

Even with alternate starts etc you get "lumped" with every single DLC quest from the start.
I have just learnt to ignore them. Do not bother even looking at the quest log for the first few hours.

[Rainman]

Yep. I also think I should live with it..
It's annoying, since the quest text reads things like "I overheard...", "I found a note..." or even "I recieved a letter..." (wich brought me to assume there was a courier)..

Maybe I could fix it by myself, since it seems to be a simple script is missing. ^^

But well.. I appreciate you investing time :)

[Lobo de hielo]

Well it is a mod rhk DLC Delayed https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/48225 , check it out for the next time you start a playthrough. Might be 1 or 2 more out there somewhere.
First time I checked the one I knew of had been removed.

[theo]

Originally posted by Rainman:

Yep. I also think I should live with it..
It's annoying, since the quest text reads things like "I overheard...", "I found a note..." or even "I recieved a letter..." (wich brought me to assume there was a courier)..

Maybe I could fix it by myself, since it seems to be a simple script is missing. ^^

But well.. I appreciate you investing time :)

It's just a flavor text to explain and roleplay out the fact that you have these quests out of nowhere.

[Rainman]

Originally posted by theo:

Originally posted by Rainman:

Yep. I also think I should live with it..
It's annoying, since the quest text reads things like "I overheard...", "I found a note..." or even "I recieved a letter..." (wich brought me to assume there was a courier)..

Maybe I could fix it by myself, since it seems to be a simple script is missing. ^^

But well.. I appreciate you investing time :)

It's just a flavor text to explain and roleplay out the fact that you have these quests out of nowhere.

Not at all, I installed Version 1.2.0416 from CD and It scripts the DLC quests correctly.
There is even a courier giving me a letter.

So it's not a Problem with the game itself...
Steam ♥♥♥♥♥♥ something up and just nobody cares

But also, there are mods kind of fixing this!
Thanks at this point to @slayor3000, who led me to this.
It seems like you have to search for:
DLC delay
wich gives a small list of mods.

Hope this helps.

[theo]

I had different versions of Oblivion and DLC quests always started out of nowhere.
Same in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, too, so it's clearly the way DLCs were done at the time.
And, if it was any different, why this mod exists since 2007, when Oblivion wasn't even on Steam https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11474/?

[Rainman]

Originally posted by theo:

I had different versions of Oblivion and DLC quests always started out of nowhere.
Same in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, too, so it's clearly the way DLCs were done at the time.
And, if it was any different, why this mod exists since 2007, when Oblivion wasn't even on Steam https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/11474/?

sooo... what now? Am I under an illusionary spell wich lets me halluziate the game of the year edition from oblivion wich came out at last, is scripted correctly?
What are you trying to say?
Am I lying?

See, the thing is, nothing you said was of any help.. It was just some "live with it" bs..
so you could just have said nothing and I would be as far as I am now.
What are you trying to achieve with this?

[theo]

If correctly means as intended in vanilla game, then the version you've installed from CD must be incorrect, or already modded.
If this wasn't helpful for you, it might be for someone else reading this thread and wondering if official DLCs were ever supposed to work differently.

[Rainman]

Originally posted by theo:

If correctly means as intended in vanilla game, then the version you've installed from CD must be incorrect, or already modded.
If this wasn't helpful for you, it might be for someone else reading this thread and wondering if official DLCs were ever supposed to work differently.

Uhm.. wait a sec, I'm gonna review what you said, just for record:
-"By default it does work like that." (despite of being no help it's also wrong)
-"Couriers is a Skyrim feature" (true, they are, but there also is one in an Oblivion DLC)
-"It's just a flavor text to explain and roleplay out the fact that you have these quests out of nowhere." (Wrong, there are versions out there wich work like it's supposed to)

To the longer text about Fallout 3 and New Vegas:
Well again I had versions wich had the same problem, but I recently bought Fallout 3 on a different platform and It starts most relevant dlc quests at a certain level! Out of nowhere, still, but only those like levelcap and stuff at the beginning.

So overall nothing helpfull, mostly wrong...

Oh and the CD I have is the official Vanilla GOTY Edition, where they obviously worked on this issue..
I remember older versions (the first I played) were having this problem too, but they seem to have worked on this.

[theo]

So you've got a mysterious CD that for some reason contains different versions of DLCs nobody else ever heard of, with quest structure unusual for Bethesda (since the 'problem' persists to this day with Skyrim creation club content). And no proof of it. Alright.