SO why do people come here to complain about a mod that makes Enchanting level faster? It SAYS enchanting levels faster when you clicked the link...so you obviously came here to whine. If you like crafting instead of actualy doing something in Skyrim, fine, but seriously, stop being such massive noobs.
To the maker of this mod: Thanks, I have nearly 1200 hours into Skyrim, and crafting is boring as watching paint dry. To be honest, I no longer enjoy it, since it isnt really all that dynamic. I appreciate the fact you made it a bit quicker for me. Its far less of a head ache now.
FWIW I agree with the author's philosophy on "grind" in games. It it isn't fun, fix it so that it is.
That said, buying alchemy reagents from vendors really isn't the intended way to level alchemy. You need to go out and pick flowers, plain and simple.
You can get over 100 Dragon's Tongue in one small area of the game (the area in the southeast with all the hot springs). There's a cave with about 70 Fly Ammonita in it. Every dead tree stump has Mora Tapinella on it.
Dragons' Tongue + Fly Ammonita + Mora Tapinella gives you a potion with multiple effects that sells for a lot of money - and therefore boosts your alchemy quite a bit when you craft it. I make these almost exclusively when leveling alchemy, and I always wind up with thousands of gold as a bonus. (Potion sells for around 300 gold even at low levels, closer to 3,000 gold with alchemy and speech maxed out.)
personally instead of something that levels enchanting faster i would like something that would make enchanting more streamlined. right now you have to do one item at a time and its tedious having to chose item, then enchant and then soul gem one at a time. if someone were to code a system where you use x amount of item, soulgems and enchantment (alot like the WoW system where you can use all or numbered items, mats ext) I would be a happy man. right now trying to level enchanting slowly 1 item at a time is very tedious >.<. levels fine just tedious.
@oSIXo: having trouble replicating the issue you described (this is fancy tech talk for me saying 'i think it's not my fault'). If it is my mod, changing stones should fix the issue -- please let me know if this is the case.
@thefreakish: Alchemy would prolly do 15 to 100 on like 100 giants toes and 100 wheat, unmodded. The issue I had was that unmodded, vendors only have enough ingredients for a few expensive potions and a few that barely increase your level. Worse, those pots then sell back to vendors for more than they cost to make -- the cycle is pure grind. Depending on your potion efficiency, it can take emptying the stocks of five or more vendors to get a single level in alchemy. I found this unacceptable -- it was a literal timesink. If alchemy had been more expensive to level, or had required some rare ingredient or w/e I likely would have appreciated the challenge.
There's a mod somewhere that just like quintuples the leveled list that alchemy merchants inventories are based off of. Had I used that mod, I likely would have not been as pressed to make this one. That said, I think that the ideal solution for a 'balanced' game (this is singleplayer and people have different ideas, hence the 'quotes') would be my mod at 1.5 and the increased reagent mod.
I've got a lot of ideas on how I can improve the game once the construction set comes out and I have easy access to stuff. In the meantime, I'm mostly working on band-aid fixes for things that jump out. Alchemy taking 4-5 times as long to level as enchanting or blacksmithing was something that jumped out. I don't think that making it take a similar number of trips to vendors is cheating. I think that's rebalancing, and I don't think that it hurts the game in any way, especially since it's an optional addon.
Fundamentally, I started 'cheating' long before I touched the conosle or modified any files, when I crunched every number I had access to and evaluated the most effective combat strategies, or when I leveled skills abusively, or when I pickpocketed for free training, or when I rode my horse up a cliff to skip those stupid steps. A balanced game wouldn't allow any of those things. I'm not really super interested in playing one of those games -- they're great, and I love them, but as soon as I lose total immersion I snap back into min-maxing mode and I play a different game, one where it's me against the developer and my goal is to trivialize the living s#*! out of every encounter on the hardest difficulty. I can cheat and use the console, sure, but that's like using power overwhelming in a multiplayer BW game (if it worked) -- it's not really sporting. The reason I find a mod like this sporting is because I can easily prove that I can level my alchemy, at will, with no risk to myself, it just takes hours of RL time and a dickton of unncessary mouse clicks. I've found the chink in the armor, if you will, so I can't lose, but I'm trying to carve out a mountain with one of those little gardening shovels that's like four inches long. The mod doesn't change the armor, nor does it change the nature of the task. It just gives me a bigger shovel so it doesn't take so fucking long.
The process of advancing through a game is fun -- far more fun if you don't use the console. The fun is diminished somewhat if it takes too long, or if it feels too effortless. It has to be mediumish in length and it should feel like a bit of an investment. To be quite honest, I think that most of the skills don't fall within this range very squarely. Alchemy was a huge outlier. It might not be perfect now, but it sits in with the rest of the bunch.
I'd love to change the way skills level -- to make the game feel more challenging and organic, and at the same time decrease both the power and the availabilty of perks in order to make it feel like you were making useful choices without limiting your character. (I could write another essay on this -- I feel like there are two kinds of perks: perks you literally need to use the skill at all and perks that basically do nothing. I think all perks should ideally fall in between these. The sneak pressure plate perk is a really good example, I think, of what a perk should do -- it's powerful and changes how you play, but it's not necessary to use sneak). I can't make these kinds of changes yet (and likely TES6 will be out before the construction set so I'll never have the motivation to). Little 'cheats' like this will have to suffice.
why not just use a console command if you want to cheat?
Otherwise, Alchemy levels awfully fast - just realize your skill progress is based on the _worth_ of the final potion. So get your +Alchemy gear und mix something else than Stamina Restoration.. Damage Magicka Poison with additional effect(s) is pretty broken.
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i had to create tons of sneak rings for 100.
To the maker of this mod: Thanks, I have nearly 1200 hours into Skyrim, and crafting is boring as watching paint dry. To be honest, I no longer enjoy it, since it isnt really all that dynamic. I appreciate the fact you made it a bit quicker for me. Its far less of a head ache now.
That said, buying alchemy reagents from vendors really isn't the intended way to level alchemy. You need to go out and pick flowers, plain and simple.
You can get over 100 Dragon's Tongue in one small area of the game (the area in the southeast with all the hot springs). There's a cave with about 70 Fly Ammonita in it. Every dead tree stump has Mora Tapinella on it.
Dragons' Tongue + Fly Ammonita + Mora Tapinella gives you a potion with multiple effects that sells for a lot of money - and therefore boosts your alchemy quite a bit when you craft it. I make these almost exclusively when leveling alchemy, and I always wind up with thousands of gold as a bonus. (Potion sells for around 300 gold even at low levels, closer to 3,000 gold with alchemy and speech maxed out.)
There's a mod somewhere that just like quintuples the leveled list that alchemy merchants inventories are based off of. Had I used that mod, I likely would have not been as pressed to make this one. That said, I think that the ideal solution for a 'balanced' game (this is singleplayer and people have different ideas, hence the 'quotes') would be my mod at 1.5 and the increased reagent mod.
I've got a lot of ideas on how I can improve the game once the construction set comes out and I have easy access to stuff. In the meantime, I'm mostly working on band-aid fixes for things that jump out. Alchemy taking 4-5 times as long to level as enchanting or blacksmithing was something that jumped out. I don't think that making it take a similar number of trips to vendors is cheating. I think that's rebalancing, and I don't think that it hurts the game in any way, especially since it's an optional addon.
Fundamentally, I started 'cheating' long before I touched the conosle or modified any files, when I crunched every number I had access to and evaluated the most effective combat strategies, or when I leveled skills abusively, or when I pickpocketed for free training, or when I rode my horse up a cliff to skip those stupid steps. A balanced game wouldn't allow any of those things. I'm not really super interested in playing one of those games -- they're great, and I love them, but as soon as I lose total immersion I snap back into min-maxing mode and I play a different game, one where it's me against the developer and my goal is to trivialize the living s#*! out of every encounter on the hardest difficulty. I can cheat and use the console, sure, but that's like using power overwhelming in a multiplayer BW game (if it worked) -- it's not really sporting. The reason I find a mod like this sporting is because I can easily prove that I can level my alchemy, at will, with no risk to myself, it just takes hours of RL time and a dickton of unncessary mouse clicks. I've found the chink in the armor, if you will, so I can't lose, but I'm trying to carve out a mountain with one of those little gardening shovels that's like four inches long. The mod doesn't change the armor, nor does it change the nature of the task. It just gives me a bigger shovel so it doesn't take so fucking long.
The process of advancing through a game is fun -- far more fun if you don't use the console. The fun is diminished somewhat if it takes too long, or if it feels too effortless. It has to be mediumish in length and it should feel like a bit of an investment. To be quite honest, I think that most of the skills don't fall within this range very squarely. Alchemy was a huge outlier. It might not be perfect now, but it sits in with the rest of the bunch.
I'd love to change the way skills level -- to make the game feel more challenging and organic, and at the same time decrease both the power and the availabilty of perks in order to make it feel like you were making useful choices without limiting your character. (I could write another essay on this -- I feel like there are two kinds of perks: perks you literally need to use the skill at all and perks that basically do nothing. I think all perks should ideally fall in between these. The sneak pressure plate perk is a really good example, I think, of what a perk should do -- it's powerful and changes how you play, but it's not necessary to use sneak). I can't make these kinds of changes yet (and likely TES6 will be out before the construction set so I'll never have the motivation to). Little 'cheats' like this will have to suffice.
why not just use a console command if you want to cheat?
Otherwise, Alchemy levels awfully fast - just realize your skill progress is based on the _worth_ of the final potion. So get your +Alchemy gear und mix something else than Stamina Restoration.. Damage Magicka Poison with additional effect(s) is pretty broken.