Oblivion:The Nirnroute

Overview

There are 306 Nirnroot to collect for 100% Completion. The breakdown of Nirnroot locations are as follows:

• 43 Nirnroot that are indoors.
• 9 Nirnroot that are outdoors inside of a city.
• 254 Nirnroot that are outdoors in the overworld.

The focus of the Nirnroute is to optimize the process of acquiring the 254 outdoor Nirnroot in the overworld.

The current theory is that these outdoor Nirnroot are best gathered all at once in a large, linear path. This is largely due to how tedious it is to find each one and to avoid mistakes. Having to reference the guide materials non-linearly within other route logic would disrupt the flow of other sections, and prevent the ability to have an efficient flow when obtaining this objective.

The vast majority of Nirnroute improvements focus on the actual presentation of the guide materials, as this section of the run has historically been extremely problematic due to poor Route Communication.

Nirnroot Cataloging

A major aspect of improving the Nirnroute is effectively communicating where each plant is located and what it looks like. There is an ongoing project to improve the in-game screenshots used to show each plant's location, as well as the text descriptions for further info.

If you would like to read more about this project or help in its development, read the full article ==Nirnroot Photos==

Update: The requirements are the following:

• fw 38eee — This forces the weather to be clear.
• set gamehour to 11 — Makes the weather as bright as it will get.
• set timescale to 11 — Slows time down. Optionally, the previous command may be entered just before a photo is taken.

All that remains is to flag any individual problematic photos in the future.

Below are the proposed requirements from initial brainstorming:

Photos from the original Pocket Handbook lacked any standards, but generally followed the idea of showing one photo of the plant from a distance (the view you would see if following the route), and one photo up close. The photos are riddled with inconsistencies in lighting, angle, distance, etc. and need to be updated to more clearly communicate where each plant is visually.

The standards are currently being developed, with the following criteria being used as a rough outline:

• Photos must not contain subtitle text of any kind.
• Photos must not contain additional NPCs or creatures.
• Photos must have the Grass Distance setting at the lowest (slider to the left) since the player will have the same setting enabled for Nirnroot visibility.
• Photos must have the HUD visible, including the compass, which must not have the blue/red/green map markers visible.
• Photos must be in first-person perspective, with the player's fists/weapon lowered. The player should not be visible in any way.
• Photos must be taken during the day time without any weather conditions, including Oblivion weather. The Swamp is an exception since it forces a darker lighting.
• Ideally, notable landmarks should be visible in the photo is applicable.
• The far away and up close image system seems to work well. Perhaps the far away images can be based on the lowest render distance at which the plant appears?
• The compass and custom blue map markers could potentially be used to illustrate where the plant is located in a far away shot.
• Indoors, use the tlb command (toggleLiteBright) to brighten the area before taking a screenshot, as indoors are very dark.

Ideas to test

• Aerial photos to get a view of the surroundings?
  • direction of aerial photos - from previous nirnroot to this one, or always facing north?
• Photo from direction of previous nirnroot? or angle for best background landmark? (eg, show imperial city in distance)
• Does nirnroot need to be in the center of the frame? or only centered horizontally? or none at all?
• how far away is far photo? as soon as visual range?
• Can we get a consistent distance for the close photos?

Nirnroot Text Descriptions

Corn Tips

Photos often cannot fully describe the route the player must take to locate a plant. Descriptions (called "Corn Tips") in the original Handbook were often too vague, or not present at all. Ideally, each Nirnroot will have a text description that fully illustrates how the player can most easily find the plant.

The standards are currently being developed, with the following criteria being used as a rough outline:

• If a Nirnroot is most efficiently obtained by first fast traveling to a location, the description should start with instructing the player to do so.

Corn Jokes

Nirnroots that do not have a Corn Tip were previously filled in with a placeholder joke. To avoid confusion, these placeholders will be visually separate from the actual helpful information in future revisions. Ideally, every plant will have a Corn Joke of some kind that can be read for the sake of entertaining the audience during the Nirnroute..