Randomly, dynamically creates enchantments for loot in the game world, based on the settings defined by your particular load order. Literally millions of potential enchantment combinations, randomly applied to any item you might come across.
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Author notes
Anything is possible — but ONLY if you ask. Absolutely no permissions are granted in general. See the readme for more details, and contact information.
File credits
- Bethesda Softworks I am modding their game.
- Blizzard Entertainment For inspiration.
- Oblivion Script Extender Team, ianpatt, behippo, and Scruggsywuggsy the Ferret Only their hard work makes this possible. Without the massive improvement of the scripting system by the OBSE team, I would have quit modding Oblivion a long time ago.
- JRoush For the Common Oblivion Engine Framework, on which this mod depends. More importantly, for answering thousands of questions, many of them quite dumb, having never-ending patience, for implementing new features into COEF to make this possible, and at times coming to my rescue with emergency debugging when I'd dug myself into a hole I could not understand.
- shadeMe and kyoma Countless acts of help and friendship in the creation of this utility.
- tejon For never giving up on this project, and poking it when it needed poking. Also, because TABOO is the coolest idea ever and I really hope it happens.
- SkyRanger-1 Helped me determine the exact formula for spell cost, which is related to balancing the enchantments.
- The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki Editorial Team, Qazaaq and Haama Massive help over the years in maintaining and improving the Wiki, which is very important to me, and also credited with drawing me back into modding after a long hiatus.
- Wrye Wrye Bash programming was once a major part of this mod. He had also been incredibly patient, helping me out with Python and Bash. Also, for simply being a great modder and pillar of the community.
- Jaga Telesin Though this project is unrelated to Split Infinity, I salute the monumental amount of time and effort Jaga invested pursuing the same dream as I
- Everyone who has followed my thread My humblest apologies for the extreme delay and sincerest gratitude for your continued patience.
Donation Points system
This mod is not opted-in to receive Donation Points
This is a BETA version. Testing has shown it to be robust and balanced, but one person can only test so much, hence the beta. Please report any bugs, errors, or imbalances (see readme).
The Automatic Random Enchantment System does exactly what it says: it provides a system where items found in the gameworld can be randomly enchanted. ARES gives modders a very powerful set of tools to control exactly how, when, and why a particular item is enchanted the way it is. ARES also comes with a rather large mod implementing these features, adding millions of potential balanced enchantment combinations to any game.
ARES then takes this information, describing possible enchantments, and randomly applies them to items sitting in containers or worn by NPCs throughout Oblivion. Each enchantment is created dynamically based on the parameters set by the modder.
Names are associated with these enchantments through an "affix" system, similar to the one used in games such as the Diablo series. For example, a modder might decide that a "Flaming" weapon has a moderate amount of fire damage — associating it with a Common soul. ARES may then choose the "Flaming" affix, and apply it to an item, giving it a Fire Damage enchantment comparable to what one could make with a Lesser Soul Gem. He may also associate a weapon "of Frost" with some Frost Damage, and ARES could combine the two into a "Flaming Sword of Frost" that does both Fire Damage and Frost Damage.
All of the values for the enchantments, such as magnitude or duration, are normalized to match values found in any particular game, based on the mods installed. For example, if a mod decides to make the Chameleon effect more expensive, ARES will generate smaller amounts of that effect as a result. If a mod makes Grand Soulgems very rare and only appearing late in the game, then similarly-powerful enchantments will only be found in high-level areas and worn by high-level enemies.
ARES is also distributed with my own mod created using the tool, which is simply DW_ARES.esp. DW_ARES.esp implements hundreds of affixes for literally millions of possible combinations. However, it also does not use all of the features that ARES makes possible; it is a large but simplistic implementation of an ARES plugin.