Thats it. I've had it with Bethesda and their crappy "official" mods. I'm never getting another one again. Even though it was almost nothing, it was still not worth it at all. This mod is so bad, so unpolished, it doesn't even deserve to be called official. The damn thing was over before it even started, too.
The mod debuts in the same way that the last one did. You, for some reason, find a piece of paper lying on the ground, that explains what the quest is about. I was in a realm of Oblivion when I found this piece of paper. Wow, how realistic. I guess that someone from the Mages Guild went to this realm and accidently droped their note before they were about to take a Sigil stone out of its socket, to close the gate. Oookay... whatever. Maybe someone purposely left the note for me, there in front of the Sigil stone, in the realm, knowing that I would go there and pick it up. Talk about immersion!
There is no actual piece of paper that you find, either. It's just a message in the middle of the screen telling you about this stupid quest. I thought to myself, maybe it is a "Mission Impossible" type thing, you know, the ones that self-destruct after 10 seconds? Meh... it didn't really matter THAT much to me. Why the hell didn't the quest giver just give me the paper the next time he saw me? Why did he have to look into his crystal ball, find out where I was going to be, then strategically place the note in a place I would find it immediately? So, as soon as I click "OK", the quest starts right there on the spot. I didn't even agree to do the quest. WTF? What if I don't want to help this nerd repair his stupid "Orrery"? These are all questions I would ask myself during this lame quest. Now apparantly, some bandits stole parts off of his machine, ran to the other side of the world, and are just hanging out with each other. Why exactly would anyone do this? What makes these parts, which have a value of 5 gold each, so desirable to some bandits in the forest? I don't think anyone knows.
The quest conviently places 5 markers on your map, so you know exactly where the bandits are. If the quest guy knew this, he should have just gone out to get the damn parts himself! So much for being a powerful wizard who can harness the power of the moon. So I just fast travel to the three bandit camps kill the bandits to get their machine parts, and glass armor with crappy bonuses to sell. Finished 90% of the quest in 5 minutes. So now it says I have all of the parts. It now puts a map marker on my map to go to the Arcane University. Apparantly, that is where this note came from. My guy must be a lucky guesser of where to go, because it didn't say anything about the Arcane University in my note.
I fast travel to the Arcane University, I walk in, and then my compass marker tells me to talk to a wood elf sitting on a bench. Another lucky guess! Good thing I put those extra points into luck... it really paid off. The Wood elf says "Thanks, you got me everything I needed. Here is your reward." Strange. I remember hearing this exact same line somewhere. OH! That's right! A Fighters Guild quest NPC said the exact same thing when I gave her 5 ectoplasms. Hey, wait a minute, where the hell is my reward? GET BACK HERE, STUPID CUNT! She walks into a locked door in the University, completely forgetting to give me my reward. WTF? By this time, I am royally pissed. The compass marker says to go through the locked door, but I can't get in! I try talking to some of the other mages in the guild, but they don't say a thing about it. Then I remember about my journal. It says that I have to wait a day for her to fix her machine. WOW, THANKS FOR LETTING ME KNOW ABOUT THAT IN ADVANCE! I wait for 24 hours, and then a message comes up on my screen saying that the Orrery is fixed, and that I can get a new power based on the phase of the moon, as often as I like. Ohhhh! So that's what it does? Another lucky guess, I suppose? So THAT is my reward! Oh well, maybe this whole thing won't be so bad if my reward was cool. So anyway... I walk into the Orrery door. There's this huge machine in the middle of the room. Cool... maybe they *forgot* to add this into the vanilla version of the game? I walk up a set of metal stairs, and talk to the quest giver who's standing next to some sort of console. I talk to the woman again, and she has no chat option about the quest. Maybe she forgot about it? Or maybe Bethesda didn't want to pay another voice actor to give her a unique line. Nice one. So I activate the console, and the machine starts spining around. Nice! A cutscene. It spins around for about 5 minutes, and I am wondering, wow, what a boring cutscene this is! It actually wasn't a cutscene. I can move around. LOL. I activate the console again, and it says at the top of the screen that I earned a new power. I zxcitedly open my spell menu to check it out right away! But to my disappointment, the power was crap. Once a day, I can increase my Personality (the most useless stat in the game) by 10 points for 60 seconds, but at the same decrease my luck by 20 for 60 seconds. Wow, this does absolutely NOTHING for me, but it only hurts me by a lot! I could have made a stupid "Fortify Personality by 10" spell for about 50 gold, costing about 20 magicka. How disappointing.
A message said that my quest is now over, called me a chump, and thanked me for support of the Bethesda Corporation. Okay, just kidding, that never happened, but that was the way I felt after completing this "mod". Basically, my advice to you is NOT to pay for this shit. Just spend your $2 on chocolate bars. There is a special for any five chocolate bars for $2 at my local 7-11. I feel utterly disappointed right now, since I would be much happier with those chocolate bars right now, than with my horrible, poor quality, no-effort, 10 minute quest.
