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Okay, I had unwittingly managed to bork my (then-)current game of Oblivion by breaking the Thieves Guild questline: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=40711

And I had wanted to start a fresh game with all DLC content disabled (Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles, wizard's keep, torturer's den, pirate's hidden cove, etc.) and then, after completing the "original release" game, adding in the DLC in the order it was released. So I did just that-- disabled all DLC and started a fresh game.

Lovely! No rumors being told to me or letters being passed to me by unseen someones while trying to find my way through the starter dungeon! That always struck me as being totally goofy. What, were the rumors and letters being passed along by Mythic Dawn cultists, or maybe Goblins?

Anyway, I'm walking around the outer circumference of the Imperial City for mapping purposes, and when I get to the area near the stone tunnel that leads from the Temple District to the Waterfront District I decide to go visit the Garden of Dareloth to begin the Thieves Guild questline, since it just happened to be right at midnight. So I begin to make my way down from the outer wall of the Imperial City to the "roof" of the stone tunnel when all of a sudden a window pops up:

"I've just heard a rumor about a strange door opening up in the Niben Bay. I should go investigate." (or whatever the wording is)

WTF? The Shivering Isles DLC is disabled! I even saved, quit the game, and restarted it so I could double-check the Data Files screen to verify. Yep, still disabled. So I'm not sure why that rumor suddenly popped up when it did. I'm going to just ignore it until I'm ready to enable the Shivering Isles DLC, but still...

I wonder if the voice actor at Sheogorath's Shrine reverts to the original, or it retains Wes Johnson's version when you install yet disable the DLC. The "Strange Door" message could be an artifact of that overwrite.

You need to reinstall the game to remove Shivering Isles.

In case it makes a difference, I should probably add that I'm playing the Steam Oblivion GOTY Edition or whatever it's called, with all of the DLC included. I know that with the Steam Skyrim Special Edition they say you cannot disable the included DLC, but the Oblivion main menu still includes the "Data Files" option which pops up the window where you can check or uncheck each DLC.

Unchecking all of the DLC did stop the game from giving me all those out-of-place rumors and letters and whatnots that you get while you're still in the starter dungeon, so I was surprised when the "strange door" rumor popped up-- although at least it was not until I'd gotten out of the starter dungeon and was wandering around outside the Imperial City. So I can pretend that I was minding my own business when I overheard a couple of people chatting-- even though I couldn't see them because I was between the outer wall of the Imperial City and the stone tunnel that leads to the Temple District-- and one of them was telling the other about that "strange door." It's interesting that the journal entry doesn't have a large square (illuminated letter or picture) next to it the way all the other quests do.

As for the voice actors, I would have thought that there would be no "original" voice actor unless the original game included the little island in the Niben with the strange door on it, so that seems to imply that it was included in the original base game even though it presumably couldn't be traveled through until Shivering Isles was released. I haven't left the Imperial City region yet, but when I get down to the Bravil region I'll see if the island is there and if there's a character I can interact with. I'll even try to record my gameplay to get a recording of the character's voice.

I've done everything suggested to get that prompt and nothing. I've heard I'm not the only one having trouble with not getting the prompt. Any suggestions ?

I take it that you've installed and enabled the Shivering Isles add-on?

I assume it's automatically enabled when you install it, but it wouldn't hurt to check.

What happens if you just swim to the island and go up to the door?

If you installed Shivering Isles but un-checked it in "DATA" you will still get the notification. You can discover the island and door but you can not go through it. The leveled items are best at level 30.