[WIP] Wells in Morroblivion for Realism Mods Such as Primary Needs

Thanks for this new thread iceburg333 :)

BPN also is aware of beer and ale kegs in Better Cities and other mods. I saw a few ale kegs in Morroblivion as well. I requested that their filenames also be added to BPN's patch.

You really should try and get into realistic gaming, iceburg ;)

To add to this, there are ale kegs in Morroblivion as well. I can supply the mesh filenames for those as well, and they could be added to the BPN patch too!

0FurnUComUKegstand - ale
0furnUcomUrmUwinerack - wine
0MiscUComUBottleU04 - ale
0MiscUComUBottleU05 - ale
0MiscUComUBottleU06 - beer
0MiscUComUBottleU07 - beer
0MiscUComUBottleU08 - beer
0MiscUComUBottleU09 - mead
0MiscUComUBottleU10 - mead
0MiscUComUBottleU14 - mead
0MiscUComUBottleU15 - wine

I've posted this to Maskar, so heopfully he can add these to his mod, so that player can fill ale/mead/beer/wine accordingly too.

Well, I'm no salesman, but am really into this realistic gaming where the game never gets easy. Here's how I game:

I am always running short on money (Enhanced Economy's realistic tweaks ini), have to pay taxes on any house that I buy (Enhanced Economy house taxes), never have fully repaired equipment when out on the road (Useful Houses mod), but I can get them repaired using vanilla smiths or traveling merchants (Tamriel Travelers mod). I am never too strong for the baddies I meet (FCOM), and if I see a mob, I run. In the other direction (with my tail tucked between my legs). Even the constant enchantment effects on armor are scaled if the item condition is not 100% (e.g., an armor with shield 5% will now be shield 4% if armor condition is at 80%) - this is due to the mod called BEAR (BFGs Enhanced Armor Realism).

Furthermore, I am hungry, sleepy, and thirsty. These affect my stats. I need to spend money at inns, and as money is always draining due to this, I am never rich, and thus never bored of finding treasure. I camp in the wilderness and rough it on bedrolls. Sometimes I catch a disease, and I need to go visit the temples to heal myself. The temples now chage money to heal me (Oblivifall Losing My Religion mod). With Enhanced Economy's ini tweak, I don't always find treasure when I am supposed to (it removes magical items from chests etc. based on a percentage probability). So that ring I find in chests is indeed a rare treasure. Loot is scarce, and epic items are indeed treasured now. In addition, that amazing sword I find is not going to last forever - with BEAR, there is a chance that the item is damaged beyond repair and broken completely. Thus, you never have only 1 uber weapon/armor throughout the game. You can cycle through all the goodies you find and  actually use them rather than storing them in some crate/showcase at your home.

I level organically (nGCD mod), but not too fast (Progress mod) so that I can never power-level and make this a statistical challenge instead of a game I enjoy. I never fast-travel, I see all the sights, find hidden nooks and crannies (there are tons) and easter eggs. I improve my sneak, athletics, and acrobatics natuarally. My game is unending. It is a dangerous world out there, and I am not the center of it. Makes me feel alive when I get by and come out alive at the end of a day. And the best part, I relish this, as the game is never too old. Also, I have never finished the main quest (always get distracted), and I own the game since 2006. Imagine that! I don't regret it one bit ;)

What do you think about this?

Regarding the wells, I have never played Morrowind, so don't even know all the settlements. My guess is every village/town (size of Seyda Neen) should have 1 well (location could be central if it does not obstruct pathgrids etc.), larger towns (are there any?) should have 2 wells (one on each end), and larger cities like Vivec and Balmora should have more. I guess Vivec is really large, so it should have a well in every canton (I have never seen Vivec, but that's what I've heard that there are separate districts/cantons). Imperial Forts and Ashlander camps (unless really minor, dunno as never been to one) should also have a well, and so should any other settlement else I missed. Here is the list of all cities/towns/forts/camps in Morrowind: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Places

Some inns already have kegs. If they don't, you chould add one-two in a corner.

I believe the only concern should be not conflicting with pathgrids, and placing kegs in corners so that they are accessible.

If someone else has played Morrowind and has input on these, please feel free to chime in :)

Well, it doesn't hurt to try.

I guess I should dl the CS and possibly Construction Set Extender? Let me do that first...

What's going on with this? I just got Morrowblivion up and running and the first thing I noticed was that my character didn't have any place to get water. ;) I also noticed that none of the merchants appear to offer the bottled water that can be found in merchant inventories in Cyrodil.

I'm not well versed, but I've played around a little with CSE to tweak a few mods to my own taste, have a few months left where I'll have a lot of free time, and would be glad to help get this up and running if someone would be willing to walk me through.

I prefer Real Thirst COBL, so could we also add COBL support to the wells?

It looks like quite a few new wells will need to be placed. If that's something time consuming or that no one wants to do, I'd be glad to start with that, since I have a lot of free time right now.

Hopefully I am not too generalising but, nearly all of the contributers to this project have lists of things to do. So if anybody will have a free time it will be at the end of the very-long and important things :D , I am not trying to be sarcastic, just realistic, so it would be very good if you tired it on your own.

Gotcha Dark South. No problem. :) I only mentioned it because iceburg had mentioned the idea of 'mentoring' anithinks to get more people involved in modding for Morroblivion and I'm interested in helping with this as well.

Upon rereading I see that this is actually steering more toward a patch for BPN.

It seems like we could accomplish both goals (having COBL and BPN compatible wells) by making the patch for Morrowblivion instead of exclusively for BPN. It also looks like all we'd have to do in addition is add the COBL scripts to the wells once everything for BPN was complete.

What do you guys think?

Well, this is fair game as far as I am concerned Aries144 - unfortunately,  I don't really have the time I wish I had (super busy with the job+family). So you can definitely have a go at this.

I spoke to Maskar about adding BPN support, and he added BPN to be Morroblivion compatible (BPN recognizes wells, kegs, and bottles? in Morroblivion now) - I have yet to try that out (haven't played the game for 2 weeks now).

Maskar did indicate that the wells were scarce, mostly in Solstheim (Skaal village), Ebonheart, and some areas tagged wilderness. iceburg333 had also noticed this earlier. Maskar also indicated that one of the wells in CS is never used.

So it would be good to add wells all over the settlements in Vvardenfell where they make sense. And kegs to the inns if they have space, and are missing kegs.

PS: Aries144, you should try BPN - it is really sophisticated and customizable. I moved from real hunger+real sleep to BPN, and I am glad I did.

Awesome! Let's get started. Maybe if anithinks comes back we can work together to make sure everything is compatible for BPN as well. I think he only needs the .nif names for the wells we end up using, right?

Ok, in my head this seems to be the plan:

1. I have an addon for Open Cities that adds COBLed wells to the cities, so the first thing I'm going to do is go dig around in the CS and find that COBL well script.

2. Next, I need some guidance:

-learning how to make an esp that mods another mod

-a little walkthrough for how to add the wells to the Morroblivion game world to allow for compatibility with BPN and then work out any conflicts or bugs.

Aries144: It seems you missed my post above. BPN is already compatible with wells in Morroblivion if they use the same refid. I guess you can add more of these wells in the Morrowind world space, and add a COBL script to them if Real Thirst needs it.

Whoops, I had the previous post all typed up, but forgot to post it until now, so I missed reading your most-recent post, antithinks.

I understand completely about the time! I've got too much time at odd hours of the day/night right now and wouldn't mind filling it.

Okay, I understand that BPN uses the file names of the wells' and kegs' meshes to identify them- so since I'm going to be adding more wells to the Morrowind worldspace, does that mean that I can pretty much just place clones of the existing wells (that make use of the existing models) and BPN will recognize them? If so, then all I need to do is place them with that in mind and add the COBL scripts.

EDIT: Did it again! I just read your post, haha. Ok, looks like I'll be ready to get this underway as soon as I find those COBL scripts. Then I'll just need to attach them to the wells and get them placed. Sounds pretty simple.

I actually had a look at BPN right after I saw this post. I really like the way it lets you drink from any water source by just referencing meshes instead of requiring an activator to be attached to each and every object you want to use.

Maybe I need to take a closer look, but does BPN also increase your food and water needs based on exersion? At first glance, it seemed like RPN only worked based on the passage of time.

The "Real Thirst" and other "real" mods increase your food and water intake needs whenever your fatigue bar isn't full. When combined with Real Fatigue (there's a backpack mod very useful for this, so you can drop all of your non-equipped, non hotkeyed inventory with the press of a key, which drops it all as a backpack container, if you get into combat on the road), this means carrying a lot of extra gear not only slows you down and makes you tire faster, it makes you consume more water and food! Combine this with Duke Patrick's Hypothermia mod (which also covers getting too hot), which has a way of roughly sensing what the temperature of each cell is (as well as taking into account whether you're soaking wet or wearing clothes, or the addition of a warm cloak) and running around in Elsewer really becomes interesting because you're having to deal with the lack of available water sources (carry extra water skins!) along with the increased water needs due to the higher heat draining your stats, which makes your fatigue run lower than normal, which further increases your water and food needs! You can help alleviate the situation by going shirtless (not the most realistic, because you'd have more problems from sun exposure in reality, but it's mainly an effect meant to make you have to wear clothes in cold weather. The fact that it works in hot whether is just an interesting side effect) and taking a swim any time you come across a pool of water deep enough to swim in to cool off.

The mountains are also interesting because you dare not get caught in them in a storm or even at night. Better make your way back to town or find a cave and use a mod like Crafty Bits to build a fire, or you might get sick or freeze to death. ;)

Yes, BPN takes into account exertion by player to determine hunger/thirst/sleep needs. If you run, If you fight, you feel tired/hungry/thirsty etc. Also, ini customizable, and well supported by Maskar.

Maskar also wrote this which might help you:

"I checked the CS and there seem to be 6 wells available in Morroblivion and are all of the same type (0exUnordUwellU01). Locations you can find them are:

SkaalSVillage07
WolverineSHall02
Pelagriad00
Ebonheart05
DagonSFel00
Wilderness (could be anywhere)

You can use ''coc SkaalSVillage07'' in the console to easily find them in-game. Not sure why the other well type doesn't seem to be used though."

Also,

"btw the method I use to check for drink sources means there's no need to use files as master files. So, BPN won't need morroblivion as master file and morroblivion doesn't need BPN as master file."

No harm done ;) I don't think I would be able to dedicate the time to this, however inclined I may be to it. It's just an idea anyway, and ideas are dime a dozen - it's the implementation that counts :)

I really appreciate your help guys. I certainly didn't mean to step on any toes, I just want to see this get done and would love to finally be able to give something back to the community. :)

Iceburg, I've found the script in the COBL mod- is there a particular way that scripts like this should be exported to a new .esp, or do you just copy/paste it and name it using the same script name in the new .esp?

EDIT: Actually, maybe it would be better to just ask you where I should start, that way I start off doing things the right way. :)

Just wanted to let you know that I've been working on this. Worked a bit yesterday and am working this evening. I'm mainly getting a "feel"  for things and getting an idea for how everything works.

So, what I'm gathering is that I'm going to load up morrowind_OB.esm and COBLMain.esp and NOT select anything as an active file (that should create a new .esp file with my changes).

All the scripts from COBL will be available, since I've loaded the COBLMain.esm file.

What are "statics" exactly? I see them when I load COBLMain in tes4edit and I see that they have a file path to a mesh. I'm gathering they are non-animated, non moving objects like houses, wall sections, boulders, etc. is that right?

As far as checking with anithinks about BPN, I believe when he stated this above on this thread: "BPN is already compatible with wells in Morroblivion if they use the same refid. I guess you can add more of these wells in the Morrowind world space, and add a COBL script to them if Real Thirst needs it." he meant that's all been taken care of?

After this is sorted out and it's time to start placing the wells, did you guys want more kegs placed in the game or any scripts attached to kegs? I assume the kegs give alcoholic-type drinks when activated with BPN? If BPN recognizes those by mesh, I don't think we'll have to do anything else with them because I don't think Real Thirst does anything with those. Thus, no additional scripts are needed.

Let me know if I've got this right.

Rock and roll man! So now I get to use my creativity in selecting locations for the wells huh?

I wouldn't mind any input on this, specifically having to do with differences in water availability for Morrowind/Vvardenfel. It kinda looks a like a dryer place than Cyrodil.

Should that be reflected by having fewer wells? Not every town has a well? Maybe in some towns, you have to buy bottled water from the merchants because it's shipped in from places with wells?

If we go this route, I may need to work more with anithinks or someone else to make sure BPN can support the bottled water as well- I need to look and see if the bottled water is COBL related or Real Thirst specific.

I might need to make two versions, one for Real Thirst with the "bottled water", one with something like the canteens that anithinks mentioned- can you buy any sort of pre-filled water item from merchants with BPN?

I'm not the most lore-savy person, so is there anything in the lore that might be referenced to influence the number of wells or that might suggest where their placement should be? i.e. In the center of town, just outside of town, one for the rich area, one for the poor area, maybe a well meant for use by travelers in the outskirts and one meant for natives inside the city since the people in Vvardenfel seem to really dislike outlanders, etc.

The oceans of Nirn (that's the name of the planet in which this story takes place, right?) are salty like our oceans, and therefore aren't supposed to be drinkable, right?

Also, what do you know about placing objects into the world? The most I've ever done is modify the inventory of a barrel container to add some items, and I used a cell map to locate the cell coordinates for that. I know about being careful not to save if I accidentally move around a 3d object- i.e. I know you can't just move it back, you have to reload and be more careful.

Ok, I've been studying morrowind lore and running around in morrowind as well as morroblivion to get a feel for what the water availability situation should be.

Since Vvardenfell is a volcanic island and both looks and is referred to in the lore as being "barren," together with the fact that the resettlement of the island has only been going on for about 10 years at the time TES3 is taking place, along with articles I've been reading about real-life water availability on volcanic islands, I've decided that water wells are going to be pretty rare. Only the very oldest cities on Vvardenfell should have them, since it would likely require significant effort, and in the context of our game, magical (or Dwemer?) construction and operational assistance of some sort, to make working wells deep enough to reach the little bit of underground freshwater that would be available.

So only the big, very old cities that preexisted the most recent resettlement are going to have wells. Those living in settlements and cities without wells would have to have developed individual rain storage techniques, as well as making personal or cummunity trips to obtain water from the rivers on the island or from a community or government organized supplemental water program for use during droughts, etc.

Places like Balmora have rivers passing through them that should be relatively clean, as any place with such limited supplies of drinking water would surely have measures in place to prevent disease-causing waste from getting into such a critical source of fresh water- at least upstream of thier own city. ;)

So, water availablity for the player (who is an "Outlander," and thus not someone who would likely benefit from any local water program or ration- much less from anyone's personal water storage) at locations other than the afore-mentioned old cities is going to have to be bottled water, or the BPN equivalent, for sale at a considerable price from certain merchants, or what can be taken by the player himself from rivers or other sources of fresh water. Bottled water should be added to the inventories of innkeepers and any merchant that carries general goods (the shop owner at Seyda Neen).

My idea is snowballing alittle, but I'd like to see an addon for BPN that introduces a risk of sickness everytime you drink water taken from an outdoor source, or any source other than bought water or a well. ;)

I'd also like to see something done, if at all possible, that would dilleniate between drinkable fresh water and non-drinkable salt or brackish water, like that found by the coast at Seyda Neen.

So, current plans are to finish familiarizing myself with the island and pin down exactly what spots should have wells. Then I'm going to see about adding owned water storage barrels at personal residences and shops that are illegal to take water from (-make them a little difficult to acces without being seen for those like myself who like to play thief characters) Then, I'm going to get a copy of BPN and dig into it and Real Thirst to see what I have to do to make a single mod that will add wells to certain cities/locations (dwemer ruins maybe?) and bottled water to the item lists of certain merchants. Finally, I'm going to contact the BPN mod author and see if there is any way to get the mod to add the sickness chance to river water/cave pools and not allow drinking water from the sea. :D

On a personal note, development may be delayed a few days as I live within the area that will be effected by this latest tropical storm in the Gulf. Shouldn't be a big deal, but I may be out of touch for a few days if we lose power.

Not sure what you mean by "an addon for BPN that introduces a risk of sickness everytime you drink water taken from an outdoor source, or any source other than bought water or a well.", but BPN already has a feature where you catch disease by drinking water from exterior sources (and also from wells, very low chance, customizable through ini).

For sleep, it also adds chance to contract disease while sleeping outside, or in dungeons. Higher qality beds are the best.

Ok, finally- back to work.

Thanks for the input and suggestions! If this turns out to be too far over my head, just putting wells into the towns could be an easy problem solver, but I really like the idea of having water be a little more rare- I think it adds another neat bit of uniquness to playing in Morrowind as opposed to Cyrodill.

I may need just a bit of hand-holding with the CS. I'm going to dig into it first though and come back with any questions.

Thanks for your enthusiasm and support! :)

There's actually already some items that are, in fact, even called "rain barrels." I'm not sure if they came with COBL or Real Thirst yet, but I've got them in my game. They work with Real Thirst by having a limited amount of water in them. You can drink from them or use them to fill your water skin. This depletes them util they are empty. They have a timer on them I think, which eventually resets them so they have water again.

All I'd need to do is make a version that is marked (owned I think?) so that taking water from it would be a crime.

EDIT: I actually have my first question: is there a gridded cell map available for morroblivion? That would help me find things and relate them to the game world much more easily.

OK, so I've spent some time running around in-game and have found that Vivec and Ebonheart already have water sources:

In Vivec, all of the buildings feature little water fountains coming out of the walls inside the waistworks and canalworks levels. The only placement question is whether or not to put a well of some sort up on the upper "rich" levels or to just assume that they send servants down tot the lower levels for water. It seems to me though, that with all the trouble the builders went to to provide separate incoming water for each floor, they would have included the top floors as well. Maybe each one of the dwellings up there needs to have a wall fountain added. Or maybe a container similar to the rain barrels I plan to add to Balmora.

Ebonheart has a well, but it's just a static. In looking at the wells in the cities in Cyrodil in Oblivion (at least with the COBL and Realthirst master and esp loaded), all the wells are activators, not statics.

So, the next area I need help in (that will greatly speed me on my way) is to know how to replace the well and fountain "statics" with "activators" that look exactly the same and generally how to place items in the 3d world period. I wasn't able to easily deduce this by looking at the wells in Cyrodil in CSE.

Got to:

> Edit > Search & Replace >

Select:

- Search for ………

- Replace with ……..

- Current world Only

Then hit OK.

Thank you!

EDIT: Thank you very much! You have no idea how much time you just saved me!!

Ok, I typed up a post a couple days ago, lost it, and didn't have time to re-type it, so I'll retype it now.

All standard wells now function. The static well objects were all replaced with custom-made activator objects that use the same mesh (so there shouldn't be any conflict with BPN) and have the COBL well script attached. This took about 5 minutes thanks to Sjors Boomschors. Thanks again!

The fountains in the cantons in Vivec already worked with Real Thirst since they use the same waterfall activator as is used in Cyrodil. Just take your waterskin out of inventory, hold it in the stream of water, and press space to put it back in inventory and it will be filled. I assume that BPN will recognize it. If it doesn't, I'll email the owner of BPN and ask him to add it to the list of recognized meshes.

1. All that remains in Vivec is to determine whether or not anything should be added to the richer top levels of the various cantons, as I noticed they didn't have any water sources. This could go two ways: we could assume servants are sent below on occasion to fetch water, or I could add water sources on the top levels and try and make their locations reflect the assumed greater convenience of living on that more exclusive level (fountains in the manors? Just outside them?).

2. Next I've decided rain barrels should be placed on top of roofs. Typically, in real life, they'd be placed on roof tops or upper decks (partially to control access, hehe) and would have a pipe or some such with a stopper valve on it so that water could be accessed below inside the dwelling or outside. I use Thieve's Arsenal, which has rope arrows, and have a climbing mod (P-froggy's climbing mod) so rooftop access isn't impossible, just inconvenient. Since it's illegal to take water from them anyway, I think this fits the theme.

The main issues with water barrels are placing them and getting them marked so that taking water from them is stealing. I'm currently scouting and marking down all of the dwellings that I think should have water barrels. Once I have them placed, I'll begin searching out how to make it illegal to take water from them (activate them).

Final items are getting one-time-use bottles of water added to shopkeepers lists of items for sale and then making sure BPN and Real Thirst can both recognize and use them.

Awesome Aries144 - keep up the good work :)

Thanks man. :)

Anithinks, could you do a little testing for me since you've already got BPN installed and running? Would you mind running to Vivec and seeing if the little waterfalls in the walls inside the Waistworks section of one of the cantons is recognized by BPN as a drinkable water source? This would save me some time playing around getting BPN running with my complicated setup. ;) If not, I'll just get to it when I'm done with everything else.

If you provide download links then we can all test it.

You don't even need this mod to see if BPN works with the fountains in Vivec- BPN either recognizes the fountains as a water source or it doesn't. ;)

If BPN recognizes the waterfalls around cyrodil as drinkable, then it should work with the fountains at Vivec as well since Vivec uses the same activators/meshes.

I don't want to release yet, since All I've basically done is make the wells usable. That all the change I've made. The rest of the time has been spent rooting around looking things up, finding out that fountains in Vivec already work with Real Thirst, running around in-game planning things out and getting a feel for the environment, and experimenting with/reading about the CS. ;)

I'll eventually get around to installing and playing with BPN, I just thought anithinks might appreciate it if BPN compatibility were included at an earlier stage so that when I start uploading early versions he'd be able to get started using it in his game.

Okay, so the water barrels aren't going onto roofs. The roof is used as the catchment system and the barrel needs to be below it to catch the collected water. So, the barrels will end up being placed on upper decks where possible and beside the entrances to houses where not possible.

EDIT:  I have changed my mind again and decided: Why not just have them in the houses? The water barrels are going to be in basements, obvious existing storage rooms, or ground floor rooms.

This better matches the research I've done on real water caching systems. Besides, who would really want to put their rainbarrel outside in a city crawling with thieves and in a land where assasination is commonplace?

Aries144:

Just saw your comment here. I checked in Vivec, and realized that the water fountains do not act as thirst quenchers.

BPN has this feature that any open water source (lake/river) can be used to drink from, but there is a chance of catching a disease. I tried drinking directly from the fountains, and it didn't work.

For the wells in Morroblivion, I asked BPN's creator to add them to BPN so that they could be recognized as water sources. Maybe I should do the same and ask for BPN compatibility with Vivec's water fountains? Turning wells into activators did not make them compatible with BPN, there were special instructions per that mod's creator.

Gah! for the third time, I find I had a post typed up and forgot to click "send" so it was all lost and I didn't notice until today. :\

Sorry for the delay.

Regarding Vivec:

There are three objects that make up each fountain: the waterfall activator itself (the actual water seen), the "bowl" static the water is flowing into on the bottom, and the upper portion on the wall, which is also a static. I don't know if it will be different for BPN, but when I tried to add the COBL well script to the water activator, it wouldn't work. I had to create an "activator" that used the same mesh as the lower "bowl" portion of the fountain, use the nifty replace command shown to me in this thread, add the COBL script to that, and make that the part you click on.

I think I just need to contact the maker of BPN directly and request that he add the fountains to the list of items BPN recognizes.

I think it's getting to the point that I need to download BPN, because I need to figure out a way to get buyable water bottles to work with both mods that doesn't require separate items for each mod.

Is there currently a usable (removed from inventory when used, like a potion) item in BPN that quenches thirst when used? Or can you buy pre-filled water containers? I need something like that in BPN.

Thanks for your help. :)

I've already requested Maskar (creator of BPN) to add Vivec's fountains as water sources.

BPN currently uses water canteens to store water. These are empty, and you can fill them off of kegs, wells, and fountains. I don't think there are any water sources added by BPN that get consumed (Oblivion's beer/mead/ale works just fine for that). It does not have pre-filled water containers that I 've seen yet.

well in nesscities of morrowind (very similer to promary needs) they used the static well along with placing additional wells and fountains along the way.

seriously people PLAY MORROWIND, you likely have it since it is a requirement of the mod, and at least get a feel for how everything worked in it

I've spent a good amount of time playing morrowind, reading the lore, and studying reports that cover the challenges of maintaining a supply of potable drinking water on a volcanic island to come to the conclusions I've come to.

What are you suggesting?

I'm not going to recreate the mod that you just mentioned because I don't like the way it makes water seem so conveniently available. That doesn't fit the lore description of the island, neither accounting for its barren description nor the general apathy of the locals towards "outlanders," and doesn't match up with real-life issues of maintaining drinking water for a population on a volcanic island.

Thanks anithinks!

I've hit some delays for personal reasons, but am still making progress.

One thing I've done is play around with placing kegs, the ones with the "X" legs, most of the way into the wall, so that only the front of the keg and the spigot project from the wall, over a COBL rain barrel. This is an attempt to simulate a pipe running from the roof catchment through the wall and down to the water storage area. This requires a lot of hand placement (most every house in the world) and the removal of the odd hanging tapestry.

Sinking a mesh mostly into the wall seems a little cheap/cheezy, but I really don't want to set up the modeling software again (did it once a while ago on a computer that has since died- I remember setting it up the first time to be a little tricky) to modify the model or make my own from scratch. I'm not that good at it anyway. :D

Is it too cheezy? Would it be better to just add rainbarrels, even though that doesn't explain how the water got there?

I wasent suggesting to recreate it, truth be told it was rather  frustrating, I was just thinking of how they had implemented the water....

but then that was morrowind this is morrowind using oblivions engine so the implementation of primary needs would be diffrent, and hopefully less cumbersome NOM could get very naggy about your needs

Won't some barrels fill up without pipes (although it would take a lot more rain). The pipe concept increases the catchment area, but if you are running short on time and enthusiasm, we can make do with a suspension of disbelief in determining how the rain barrles get filled nwwithout pipes...  so in summary, whatever makes you comfortbale and not jaded, I am fine with that :)