Mod overview: The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal - Omni-guides/Tuxborn GitHub Wiki
It's a new lands mod that takes you to the Alik'r Desert in Hammerfell, and lets you have a path to finding the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal.
Players familiar with the Anniversary Edition/CC content may recall that the Gray Cowl appears in the AE. In Tuxborn's load order, this mod overrides the AE completely. So if you want the Gray Cowl, you will need to run the mod content.
There are two initial requirements you'll need to fulfill:
- You must be at least level 10
- You need to play through the main quest to the point of concluding The Way of the Voice (so yes, you do need to be the Dragonborn)
Once you are past these two checkpoints, then you will need to steal or pickpocket any item. Doing so will trigger a vision you'll need to investigate, and which should lead you to the home of an NPC who will explain your vision and send you to where you can officially begin the mod.
Level 10 is the bare minimum. The mod's page suggests that 15 would be a better lower end to shoot for, and that the 30-35 range would be ideal. Plan accordingly!
Yes, but you will need to come up with a reason to steal or pickpocket something, whatever is most appropriate for your character. Some suggestions you can consider include:
- Auryen in the LOTD museum is known periodically to send the player off to find random relics that cannot be acquired without stealing
- If you run Wyrmstooth and do the side quests for the mercenary NPCs, you'll need to commit theft for the Bosmer Daenlit
- Anna's personal favorite: run Project AHO and rob everybody in that town blind! 😁
The mod does not overtly require you to be a stealth-type character (thief or assassin), but by its very nature, stealth characters will probably get more out of it.
The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal expects you to run its plot alone. In fact, the first NPC you meet as part of the plot will tell you this explicitly.
Some custom followers who have the capability to port to catch up with you may wind up following you into the plot, regardless. So for RP purposes, you will need to decide whether to explicitly tell any followers to wait for you somewhere, or else assume that followers do in fact have some in-character means to catch up with you.
So far, we can confirm that Auri, Remiel, and Xelzaz all appear to respect Gray Cowl of Nocturnal's no followers constraint, at least up until you finish running the Halls of the West. Once you reach the fortress in Ben Erai, however, all three of those followers will port to catch up with you. Other custom followers are likely to exhibit the same behavior, as long as their functionality includes catching up with you automatically when possible.
Similarly, once you read the final bit of Gray Cowl's main plot, you may find that any followers a
Players familiar with Xelzaz may recall that Xelzaz's personal quest does, in fact, involve him wanting to go to Hammerfell. You would therefore be reasonable in concluding that your going there as part of Gray Cowl's plot would be of interest to him! However, Xelzaz is not known to have any compatibility with The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal. So you therefore may wish to specifically avoid bringing him down there with you, or summoning him to you after the fact, depending on your personal tolerances for narrative cohesion.
Whether or not you're playing an explicitly stealth-oriented character, you might want to put some effort into leveling your Sneak as well as your Security tree (to cover the potential need to pickpocket while in the mod). A lot of the mod will be oriented around stealth and puzzles.
The TES Mods wiki has a walkthrough page for Gray Cowl's main quest, which includes recommended skills. However, their list is assuming the vanilla skills tree. For Tuxborn's purposes, since we are running Adamant to overhaul our skill trees, here are the recommended equivalents:
Table of recommended skills...
| Vanilla skill | Tuxborn skill | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Sneak/Stealth | Sneak/Agent | You are 25/50% harder to detect while sneaking. (Upper tier of this skill is recommended.) |
| Sneak/Muffled Movement | Use enchantment or spell | Muffled Movement was removed from the Sneak tree by Adamant. |
| Sneak/Light Foot | Sneak/Trespasser | You no longer trigger traps, and you can execute a silent roll while sneaking. |
| Sneak/Silence | Use Muffle enchantment or spell | Silence was removed from the Sneak tree by Adamant. |
| Sneak/Shadow Warrior | Sneak/Living Shadow | Once every 10 seconds, sneaking in combat causes enemies to stop searching for you. |
| Lockpicking/Master Locks | Security/Collector | You are 25/50% better at lockpicking and pickpocketing. (Upper tier of this skill is recommended.) |
| Pickpocket/Keymaster | Security/Misdirection | No equivalent perk on the Security tree, so we suggest Misdirection to bump up your pickpocketing chances in general. |
| Illusion/Quiet Casting | Sneak/Silent Casting | Adamant moves this perk over to the Sneak tree so sneak casters don't have to invest points in Illusion if they don't want to. |
| Illusion/Expert Illusion | Illusion/Illusionist | Illusion spells cost 25/50% less Magicka. (Recommended higher tier of this for casting Invisibility as well as Muffle.) |
The Clairvoyance spell is critical. See the spoiler about the Chamber of Fire below.
Other recommended spells to consider include Invisibility, Muffle, and maybe also Shadow Path and Telekinesis.
If you are not planning on heavily investing perks on your Security, Sneak, and Illusion trees in your playthrough, and/or not putting skills into magic at all, then you should put serious thought into gear with relevant enchantments and/or potions with relevant abilities.
The Gray Cowl itself should be displayable in the Daedric Exhibit Hall.
Once you finish Gray Cowl's main quest, a display will activate for it in Dragonborn Hall. Thirteen items can be displayed there. Have a look at the LOTD wiki's page for the display for a full list.
The displayable items do not appear to have replica recipes, so you may need to put some thought into which items you'll want to display vs. which ones you'll want to use.
The following books are also displayable:
Most of the items on the link given in the previous section are weapons and enchanted garb. See that link for further details.
In addition to the displayable items, you should be able to find the following as you run the mod:
The Umbra in this list is intended by the mod to be the Umbra. However, in our load order, a Legacy of the Dragonborn patch renames the weapon to 'False Umbra'. Tuxborn's canonical Umbra should be acquired by running There Is No Umbra.
False Umbra is not displayable, but it is a very strong weapon, with stats that are likely to be competitive with any other sword you're carrying even before you temper it at a grindstone. And it can be tempered, with steel ingots.
LOTD's wiki says this about the weapon's enchantment:
- If target dies within 20 seconds, fills a soul gem.
- Critical Strikes damage is doubled compared to vanilla.
So between the weapon's powerful enchantment and high damage, it's well worth considering keeping in your inventory for active use.
Yes, there are two.
Moonlight Home is the small player home in Ben Arai, which you can purchase from Telrav Baenius in the Last Sentinel Emporium for 3000 septims. This home is very basic, with a single furnished room, and a small garden on the roof. It does however also contain two chests for storage if you need them.
Shanta Filibb is the larger player home. You will need to run a quest to claim it, which will require you to kill all the bandits you find there. Once you do this, there are upgrades you can purchase for it at the emporium in Ben Arai, including an armory, smithing stations, and an enchanting station. The basement includes several mannequins and weapons racks. Buying all the upgrades will be comparable in cost to upgrading any of the vanilla Skyrim homes.
Design-wise, it has a mostly outdoor focus, though this can be problematic when sandstorms come in!
If you manage to make it to Ben Arai without even enough gold to purchase Moonlight Home, there is an open-air shack-like structure just outside the town walls, which contains unowned bedrolls. So if you're really needing a place to sleep, you can use that space. (This is however not terribly vital, if you happen to also be carrying Rains' Shelter around with you.)
Whichever player home you might be interested in, their being located in Hammerfell argues against either being used as a primary home base. Moonlight Home could certainly serve as a home base for as long as you're questing around Ben Arai. And you could upgrade to Shanta Filibb in the course of your play, for as long as you decide to stay in Hammerfell.
TBD.
There is a new spell called Ancient Vision, which is meant to be used as part of the mod's puzzles. It is also required to operate the portal to return to Skyrim (see below).
There are a few that come with the main mod, and quite a few more included in our load order courtesy of Betalille's Hammerfell Quest Bundle. So you should have quite a bit to do while you're down in Hammerfell.
Once you make it to the Alik'r Desert as part of running Gray Cowl's main plot, you will get access to a Portal Room which will let you port back to Skyrim. This will land you at a location tagged "Teleport to Ben Arai", in Falkreath, a short ways southwest of Lakeview Manor.
You'll be advised that in order to use this portal, you will need to cast the Ancient Vision spell. This spell will allow you to use the portal in both directions.
No. You must know the Ancient Vision spell in order to utilize the portal. So you'll need to launch the Gray Cowl plot. Once you have the spell, you should be able to use the portal freely.
If you have trouble figuring out how to run the mod's main quest, the TES Mods wiki has a walkthrough you can follow.
And re: bringing followers into Gray Cowl's worldspace: even if you are running custom followers that provide you a means to summon them if you get separated, we recommend you avoid doing that at least as long as you're running the mod's main plot. There are multiple traps and portals you'll have to navigate through, and one trap in particular where you should assume followers will not be able to do what you're doing. (See below spoiler re: the Chamber of Fire.)
Once you're through the mod's main plot and you make it down to Ben Arai, you will be in a better position to bring your followers to you if they don't port in on their own to catch up with you.
I found a book called Legacy of the Dragonguard, and I wasn't running Gray Cowl, what do I do with this book?
This book is known to come out of Betalille's Hammerfell Quest Bundle, mentioned above. The quests included as part of that mod mention the Hammerfell Blades--and the Dragonguard. So while this is as of yet unconfirmed, it is likely that you'll need to take that book into that quest and find out what to do with it at that point. We will share more info on the relevant quest when Anna's able to confirm.
The book is also known to rarely spawn in the world outside of Hammerfell, and it is a Speech skill book. So be aware that if you read the book to get the skill point, it is a quest item and you won't be able to remove it from your inventory. You will either need to launch Gray Cowl so you can eventually play out the relevant quest, or else consider taking console-level steps to destroy the item if you have no intention of playing Gray Cowl.
How to get through the Chamber of Fire...
The very aptly named Chamber of Fire, in the Hall of the Initiation, will require you to get across an open space to the quest marker on the other side. Below you is active fire, which will kill you if you fall into it. This will also bypass Shades of Mortality completely, so we cannot stress this strongly enough:
There will be a Bust of the Gray Fox nearby that you can activate to give you a clue as to how to cross the chamber. As per that clue, you will need to use the Clairvoyance spell. If you didn't already know it before running the mod, you should have found a copy of the spellbook on your way to this chamber. So be sure to read and learn the spell.
Casting Clairvoyance will show you the usual smoky blue line, and you will need to walk out on top of where that line leads. As soon as you reach the end of the current visible line, cast the spell again. Do it quickly, or else you will fall into the fire.
It'll take about four rounds of this before you'll finally make it to the other side of the chamber.
Alternate means of crossing the chamber may or may not work. The Shadow Path spell won't reach far enough from where you came in, but it might work if you're already partway out into the room and you do it very quickly. You may need to wield Clairvoyance on one hand and Shadow Path on the other for this to work properly.
Likewise, you might be able to make it across the chamber with all three words of Whirlwind Sprint.
We'll update this page appropriately if these alternate means are confirmed.
What are the Altars of Shame for in the Hall of the Initiation and the Halls of the West...?
They provide a way for you to port back to Skyrim early if you need to (such as if you run out of supplies). They will present you with a snarky prompt about it, though! So we encourage using them only as a last resort.
What do I do in the House of Tempted Centurions?
You need to find three magical stones while you're in this ruin. As you might guess from the name, there are centurions, but it is absolutely not necessary to fight them. In keeping with the stealth theme of Gray Cowl's plot, you can sneak right past the patrolling centurions to get to the stones you need to acquire.
The gates that protect each of these stones will in fact automatically open when you're close enough. Which will make it very easy for you to nab the stones. You will have a clear line of sight to sneak right to them. Better still, if you have the Telekinesis spell, use it to bring the stones to you so you don't even have to risk crossing into the centurions' line of sight.