Melt Down Everything V1.6
Contents:

1. Description
2. Playing the Mod
3. Installation
4. Customization
5. Compatibility
6. Version History
7. Credits & Permissions


1. Description

The Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) and SkyUI (version 3.0 or higher) are required.

This mod allows you to melt down any metallic equipment (armor, weapons and ammo) at a smelter to gain ingots or ores. It also works with any mod-added equipment without any need for compatibility patches. It comes with a variety of options for customization, which can all be accessed through a user-friendly ingame-menu. Optional plugins (ingame toggleable) provide a similar breakdown mechanism for non-metallic equipment and a completely customizable smelting overhaul including clutter recycling.

2. Playing the Mod

After installing the mod, a pop-up message will be displayed each time you activate a smelter (or anything that has the same functionality). You then have to choose if you want to configure this mod, prepare melting down items or just use the normal smelter. If you choose "Prepare Item Meltdown", your inventory is checked for suitable items by the following criteria (if you dislike any of them, see customization below, they're all changeable):

-enchanted items are not meltable (you don't want your smelter to turn into a volcano, do you?)
-items you have currently equipped are not meltable
-you must have the smithing perk related to the item's material
-Bows with a wooden appearance in vanilla Skyrim are not meltable (Iron, Steel, Imperial)

Once the player inventory has been checked, you'll get a notification that the furnace (your smelter in its new operation mode) is ready to use. Activate the smelter again and choose "Begin Item Meltdown" to bring up an alternative smelter menu. Here you'll find a list of crafting recipes which turn your equipment and some coal into a number of ores(or ingots, if you prefer). How many pieces of coal you need and how many ores you'll get depends on the item type, as listed below (these can be changed as well, see customization below):

-1 coal/ore: dagger, 30 arrows/bolts
-2 coals/ores: boots, gauntlets, helmet, bow
-3 coals/ores: sword, waraxe, mace
-4 coals/ores: shield
-5 coals/ores: greatsword, battleaxe, warhammer
-6 coals/ores: cuirass

Which type of coal you need, depends on the item's material. The available coals are charcoal, dwemer coal, fire coal and void coal. Charcoal can be made at the smelter from firewood, for all other coals you'll need a calcinator, which can be crafted at the forge. The special coals are crafted by infusing charcoal pieces with alchemical ingedrients. How many coal pieces you can infuse with one ingredient depends on your alchemy skill, the range is between 4 and 4+Alchemy-Skill/10. Within this interval the distribution of the results is random and calculated after crafting the coal. Having the Alchemist and Experimenter perks will increase your average yields. Crafting Coals at the calcinator will boost your alchemy skill.

-N Charcoal + Dwemer Oil ---> 4-N Dwemer Coal
-N Charcoal + Fire Salt ---> 4-N Fire Coal
-N Charcoal + Void Salt ---> 4-N Void Coal

Furthermore, if you have the experimenter perks, you can also synthesize coals from alternative coals. However, synthesis isn't easy and therefore yields less on average than using the usual components.

-N Charcoal + Troll Fat + Amethyst ---> 4-N Dwemer Coal
-N Charcoal + Salt + Ruby ---> 4-N Fire Coal
-N Charcoal + Salt + Diamond ---> 4-N Void Coal

After you have produced the coal, you can finally melt down your items. The coal types can be used for the following materials:

-Charcoal: (Banded) Iron, Steel (Plate), Silver, Imperial
-Dwemer Coal: Dwemer, (Gilded) Elven
-Fire Coal: Orcish, Glass
-Void Coal: Ebony, Daedric

Once you are done with your crafting session, remember to activate the smelter once again and choose "Finish Item Meltdown" to tell the script that you're done. There will be no harm, if you forget it (a clean-up on worldspace change is included), but you might miss an upgrade at first, because the upgrade function only works while the furnace is inactive.

The leather breakdown plugin works in a very similar way. Activate the tanning rack and wait until your inventory is checked, afterwards activate it again to break down the items. You can break down the following materials:

-Clothes ---> Linen Wrap
-Fur/Hide ---> Wolf Pelts
-Leather ---> Leather Strips (can be recombined into leather at an adjustable ratio)
-Falmer ---> Chaurus Chitin

For the breakdown of Falmer stuff you need Chitin Breakdown Tools, for everything else Leather Breakdown Tools are sufficient. Both can be crafted at the forge.

-Iron Ingot ---> 5 Leather Breakdown Tools
-Corundum Ingot + Steel Ingot ---> 5 Chitin Breakdown Tools

In addition, an optional smelting overhaul can be enabled. It adds a new option "Melt Down clutter" to the smelter, which allows you to melt down all your iron/silver/gold/dwemer crap you collected on your journey into ingots. In difference to weapon recycling it does not work with crafting recipes, but with a container. You put all stuff you want to melt into the container and the amount of ingots you recieve depends on the total weight. By default every 4 weight units of iron/dwemer crap will yield one ingot, and each 2 weight units of silver/gold will yield one ingot.
This plugin allows you to customize the following aspects of smelting:

-weight of ores
-weight of ingots
-ores required per ingot (including special options for iron and steel)
-add perk restrictions to ingot smelting, disabling the recipe if you don't have the associated perk
-add perk restrictions to ingot smelting, increasing the amount of required ore if you don't have the associated perk
-add coal requirements to ingot smelting
-conversion ratios for clutter smelting



3. Installation

For an upgrade from a version prior to 1.4e I advise you to make a clean save.

Download the latest version from the website either manually or with the Nexus Mod Manager. Installation with NMM is straightforward and requires no further choices, all options can be adjusted at any time ingame. If you install it manually, just copy the files into the data folder of your Skyrim installation. To enable the mod ingame, go to main menu, choose "Mod Configuration" and click on "MDE" in the appearing menu to finalize the installation. (Before you do this, nothing will change ingame.)
If you upgrade from a previous version, visit the Mod Configuration Menu and choose whether to keep your personal settings or load the latest default values.
Uninstallation also requires no special actions, disabling the mod should be fine.

4. Customization

Many aspects of this mod are configurable in the Mod Configuration Menu provided by SkyUI's 3.0 release. This opens a menu, which allows you to enable additional features, disable default restrictions and to change the amount of required coal/gained ingots for any item type individually. Furthermore, you can even change the type of ore/ingot any material will yield.
The following global settings are available:
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-Disable Smithing Perk Restrictions: allows you to melt down any valid item, regardless of the material's perk restriction
-Disable Bow Restrictions: ignore restrictions on iron/imperial/steel bows
-Allow Enchanted Items: allows you to melt down enchanted equipment (at the same costs/results as their common counterparts)
-Allow Equipped Items: allows you to melt down items you have currently equipped
-Produce Ingots instead of Ores: all results will be the corresponding ingots instead of ores
-Charcoal Yield: Determine the conversion ratio for Firewood --> Charcoal

Furthermore, there are currently two optional plugins available:

-Leather Breakdown: Gives you the ability to breakdown leather and other non-metallic stuff, extra options can be adjusted in the "Leather Breakdown" Tab
-Smelting Overhaul: Adjust the smelting process to your personal likings and gain the ability to melt down clutter into ingots

Any option can be reset to its default value by using the "default" option provided by SkyUI.

5. Compatibility

Dawnguard Items are supported implicitly by this mod. This means feasible items can be molten/broken down without an extra esp, but no dependency on the Dawnguard.esm is established.
This mod should be fully compatible with any other mod, because it does not alter any vanilla forms and relies only on keywords to identify smelters and equipment. Therefore, equipment from any other mod can be used with this one. If not it means that the keywords are set wrong (or not at all), which means that many vanilla perks won't work with them as well.
Unfortunately, the clutter meltdown does currently not support mod-added items, because Bethesda didn't give them distinctive keywords in the first place. However, I have plans for a future expansion, which will add support for mod-added clutter.

6. Version History

1.0
-initial release
1.1
-added animation support
-equipped item filter
1.2
-made required coal/gained ingots per item adjustable
-ingame configuration menu, no more need for console commands!
-added option for ores instead of ingots
-added support for silvered steel weapons in Crafting 300 - Armoury of Tamriel

1.2.1
-mod will start now when the inventory is opened (prevents failed init when a new game is started)
-fixed minor bug in the settings configuration
-off-hand weapons are now detected correctly as equipped items

1.3e - experimental release based on Beta Skyrim 1.8 with SKSE 1.6.2+ and SkyUI 3.0 Alpha 2
-replaced Config-Dialogboxes with MCM (SkyUI 3.0)
-made material --> ore/ingot mappings user-defineable
-readjusted coal consumption and crafting recipes
-increased the number of simultaneously available melt down recipes from 20 to 50

1.4e - experimental release based on Beta Skyrim 1.8 with SKSE 1.6.5 and SkyUI 3.0 Alpha 4
-added implicit Dawnguard-support
-added optional plugin for leather breakdown
-revised coal-crafting to a more flexible systems suited also for non-alchemists

1.5e - experimental release based on SkyUI 3.0 Alpha 5
-added optional plugin for smelting overhaul
-changed the previously used quest-related charcoal against another vanilla charcoal (which was rarely used)

1.5.1e - experimental release based on SkyUI 3.0 Alpha 6
-recompiled for SkyUI 3.0 Alpha 6
-fixed the clipping at tanning rack + other minor display issues
-added a new option to diversify ore/ingot weights to the Smelting Overhaul Plugin

1.6
-recompiled for SkyUI 3.1 release version
-fixed a few typos
-fixed a bug with the wooden bow restrictions

7. Credits & Permissions

If you want to include this mod in your own work, please ask me first.

I would like to thank Bethesda for their fantastic games, the SKSE-team for their incredible work and the nexus community for all the mods, that made me enjoy Oblivion and Skyrim even more.