Permission for translations is automatic. Anyone wanting to do a translation to any language has my permission. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
I’d like to thank all you guys and girls for giving me such a wonderful thread here. You’ve posted a lot of really good ideas and your enthusiasm and positive feedback have been way more than I could have hoped for, so thank you all.
-------------------------------------------------------------- Skyrim Special Edition?
Good news bad news. Bad news first. Because of the size of the download for SSE I will not be doing anything for SSE. My internet is MobileData and downloading an extra 25 gig on top of what I already use would cost me a lot of money. So under present circumstances no SSE for me.
The good news - anyone who wants to port this mod to SSE has my permission. You can upload it anywhere you want, and if you want to make it available for consoles that would be awesome.
In your description you should credit me as the original author and say that you have my permission to upload. It might be a good idea to link back to this page so people can read comments for other users.
You can use anything you want from my description - text or pictures.
Unfortunately I can't give you any advice on how to port it, as I don't have SSE and have no idea what the difference between the two versions would be.
Although we are all different, but I really liked your mod, and I'm happy to use it, because I really don't want to waste the ingredients.Thank you so much for your hard work and good luck, Merry Christmas!
Feel free to post it if you think anyone would use it, but it needs polish. The extremely large number of new ingredients caused a few problems.
Most importantly, I seemed to hit some upper limit to the number of characters allowed in a book. Is there such a limit? Because the text was simply ending in the middle of a word, even though all of the text was in the plugin.
To fix that, I had to strip out all of the line-by-line formatting. Now all of the font sizes and colors are the same. I also stripped out the illustrations and page numbers, to save space, but also because of the hundreds of missing images.
Finally, I shrunk the font size by about 20% to fit 3 ingredients per page instead of 2, to help balance out the huge number of new pages.
Someone who knows what they're doing would probably finish off the illustrations, add back the old, better formatting, and split the book into multiple volumes to solve these problems.
I'll download it and take a look at what you've done, it might take a few days before I can get back to you on it.
A couple of thoughts just off the top of my head: did you remove all of the formatting or just some of it? I'm thinking specifically about the page breaks. If you are not using page breaks then that could be the cause of running out of space on the page.
Also, removing the formatting, then compiling your list of ingredients and effects, and then re-formatting everything would be like starting from scratch. Much more work than is necessary. The formatting really is the foundation of the mod.
When I made it I did it in a external text editor, Word or Wordpad, I don't remember which. I created the basic HTML table for a single page with place holders for names and effects, duplicated the page for as many as I would need, then edited the tables replacing the place holders from an alphabetical list of ingredients as displayed in the CK. That would also be the quickest way to add new ingredients.
If I were going to add new ingredients all I would need is a list of the new ingredients and their effects, then I would add new HTML formatting with placeholders where necessary to maintain the alphabetical nature of the book, then replace the placeholders with the new names.
On the other hand, if you are not using any of my formatting or images then it would no longer be my mod. I have no special rights to the idea of compiling a list of ingredients and effects in a book. If what you do is sufficiently different in it's layout from what I did and you are not using any of the images I created then it would be your mod and you could release it as such.
(I just modified the file I uploaded to fix a some negative effects I called positive.)
Regarding the formatting, I did keep your opening and closing pages, and I wanted to keep all of it. But instead I took the font you used for the effects and applied it to the full set of ingredients and effect, all with one color and size. That way I could open the font element at the beginning of the full list, and close it at the end, instead of having font elements for every ingredient and effect. That's how I worked around the length limit.
If I had the patience and skill, I'd much prefer the positive / negative coloring, and I love the illustrations, and I'd keep the page numbers. I'm afraid that might have to be several volumes and not a single book, though.
I did lightly automate it, so I'll share that too, in case it's useful.
I used mator's quickdisplay script:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49373/?
to export these to csv:
[code=auto:0] Record Header\FormID EDID FULL Effects\Effect[0]\EFID Effects\Effect[0]\EFIT\Magnitude Effects\Effect[0]\EFIT\Duration Effects\Effect[1]\EFID Effects\Effect[1]\EFIT\Magnitude Effects\Effect[1]\EFIT\Duration Effects\Effect[2]\EFID Effects\Effect[2]\EFIT\Magnitude Effects\Effect[2]\EFIT\Duration Effects\Effect[3]\EFID Effects\Effect[3]\EFIT\Magnitude Effects\Effect[3]\EFIT\Duration [/code]
Then did spreadsheet-y things to produce formatting that looked just like the pattern you had in your plugin.
Then I started cutting corners as described above.
I forgot to say earlier: Thanks for making this! It had a big effect on my game. I was (obviously) not looking forward to playing without it after adding CACO.
I know you've put a lot of work into this and I thank you for that. I believe there would be a lot of people who would like to have this so it is definitely worth uploading.
I can add the formatting and split it into volumes, that shouldn't be any problem for me. It wont be right away because I am working on another project right now, but I will do it.
Looking forward to this update! CACO is already becoming the gold standard for Skyrim's Alchemy, so a compatible compendium would be wonderful. I hope you'll consider uploading a hidden-volume version for the CACO update when you get time for it as well.
Something that would be extremely helpful, if you got really motivated, would be to have a couple different volume sets, each organized in different ways.
For example, the first multi-volume set, organized just like the original, with all CACO's ingredients laid out in alphabetical order, each followed by it's effects.
A second multi-volume set could be organized alphabetically by effect rather than ingredient, such that each page would have just one effect followed by a complete list of ingredients that provide that effect. (A multi-volume CACO set like this would have a lot of utility).
A possible third set could be broken up into broad categories, like the 'Book of Insects', or 'Book of Flowers' etc...
This third set would mostly be fluff to enrich the color and variety of the whole alchemy compendium concept, but I really feel like having separate sets organized in the first two ways would be extremely helpful. I believe the downloadable spreadsheet in CACO's file section would simplify sorting out all the data.
And for the record, I'm still a huge fan of making the player earn this information Morrowloot-style, by having to gather the volumes from as many dangerous and hidden places as possible. The utility granted by owning these volumes makes finding them a meaningful quest in its own right.
Scatter a few treasure-map style notes to some corpses and/or dungeons throughout the world, maybe with a little backstory, and you'd have a full fledged quest. Heck - you could even write some lore-based notes (e.g. spouse seeking missing spouse, alchemy master seeking lost apprentice, or whatever) and submit them to the author of the Notice Board, so they appear randomly for players to find.
Hey, all who were involved with this, did it ever get off the ground? I absolutely love both of these mods and would be so happy if I could use them together, but I see it's been a while since anyone's commented on this particular thread. I know people have lives, but just wondering!
I regret to say that no work on a CACO/Hunterborn version is being done at this time, for a number of reasons. I did look at the file supplied by craigsumner and started some preliminary work. It would have required a complete reformatting, which would have been a big job but was doable. The main impediment was my inability to download the original CACO file due to my own restricted DATA cap; it's a large file and I didn't want to use that much of my monthly plan, which is only 5 gigs and almost all of that gets used every month. I would have needed the mod to see what the visual representation of the ingredient was, and take screen shots of the ingredients for use in the book. I didn't want to do it if I couldn't do it right.
Another reason, after almost 5 years of playing and modding Skyrim I have lost interest in the game. I can't get motivated to spend any time on it.
Another reason, my graphics card, a Radeon 7870 recently had a melt down. It's the second card killed by Skyrim. Rather than replace it right now I reverted back to a still functioning 7 year old 3870 I bought for Oblivion. Using that card with Skyrim turns it into a slide show, however it does still work with fallout 3 and that is what I am playing and modding right now.
Alchemist Compendium is a resource for other modders, so anyone else who wants to do a CACO/Hunterborn version has my permission to do so, but I can't offer any help at this time.
Ok, I did a conversion from the openoffice version of the spreadsheet in caco 1.2, not caco 2.0 which is currently in beta because it requires to start a new game and I am not in mood for that now... But I reverted to the original format, which is nicer in my opinion (love the pictures and the colors !). Also the original book could be browsed very quickly and it was impossible with the other caco version at least on my system the 1st pages were very slow to show, it was getting better after that but it's not good when you want some info quickly.
So you get 3 books of 50 pages each (well not exactly since there are 142 pages). It was not that long to do, saved the spreadsheet in html, then wrote a perl script to convert the html to something which looked like the formating in the original mod, it seems to work quite nicely.
Since I did that with tes5edit only, I can't place the books in the world, so you'll have to use the console for that (help compendium in the console, then player.additem xxxx 1 for the 3 books). I'll just test that a little more after getting some sleep, and then I'll upload it. If someone is interested in the perl script I can put it inside too, I just edited the html produced by libreoffice to make the 2nd table to start at a beginning of a line, that's all. Later then...
For the pictures I used the pictures of the original mod where available, of course a lot of ingredients have no pictures since I don't know where to take them for caco or how to generate them, but even like that, it's quite nice and there are still lots of pictures !
Here is the link for the mod itself : https://mega.nz/#!uVc2XIJJ and here is the archive for the tools (in perl) to rebuild the txt files needed for the books : https://mega.nz/#!mdFixSRZ
I had to get rid of the page numbers because some ingredient names are very long and require 2 lines or to use a smaller font. Since I like my big font to be able to browse the book very fast, and page numbers are not so useful after all, I got rid of them.
I am not sure the separation of the ingredients is ideal for now, maybe I should have created 1 more book to separate them at the start of a letter instead of after 50 pages. Well I'll try to use that for a while and I'll see, the book is very fast to browse so it seems convenient enough.
Also I worked from the spreadsheet from caco, but of course I had to sort it first, it was not in alphabetical order for the ingredients !
I have a v2 ready with 2 more books which are a reverse index based on the effects and giving for each effects the list of ingredients which have it, sorted by strength of effect. Plus 1 missing ingredient which was not in the spreadsheet but was in version 1.2 of caco (only in the main index). + Reduced the weights of the books because it's more convenient to carry them all the time and there are quite a few now, and changed their title to better tell about their contents. I'll upload this later, we are clearly not in a hurry... !
Ok, I found a 2nd missing ingredient in the v1.0 data, so I remade the scripts with v2 data, which seems to be correct for a v1.2 game, there might be a few more ingredients, and maybe some names changed slightly, but it's probably better to use this one even with a v1.2 game. There are 6 books in total, but including 1 which is optional for hunterborn ! So 3 books for the ingredients of the base game, + 2 books for the effects, giving the list of ingredients sorted by strength for each effect, + finally 1 last book for hunterborn.
I don't think I'll have to update this anymore after this ! Here is the link for the esp (of course it needs the bsa of this mod) : https://mega.nz/#!GYlHjSbS and the link for the tools to build it, I kept the tools for v1.0 caco if someone is interested : https://mega.nz/#!7NFGFQiA
Don't know if RGMage2 is still around to see this, but I want to thank you very much for making this tedious-to-create mod. I always play characters who incorporate alchemy heavily into their "lifestyle", so I was especially happy to find this.
I have an "Alchemist's Compendium" for Morrowind (MW) and love it...it is so helpful, and the MW tome by Sgaileach was beautifully done (though that one described effects and their needed ingredients, while this one describes each ingredients' effects - still, it's all good).
I don't play Skyrim nearly as much as MW, but I look forward to having this lovely book as a reference when I do play. It is as helpful as its MW counterpart (imo). So thank you very much for this. I appreciate the drudgery that went into making it, as I do the articulate nature of this mod's Description page. Nicely done.
Is there any chance that this mod can have the book splot into multiple volumes rather than one big book that you have you sift through? It can be split into 3 books and it would be the perfect length.
Thank you so much for this mod. It's a great piece of work. That's just what I needed. And thank you for the permission to use it freely. I will intergrate it into Tasheni Followers. That's a must have :)
Thank you for this mod! I always thought it was weird that every alchemist apparently has to learn the craft completely on their own. You would think that, after thousands of years, SOMEone would have put together a book on ingredients and their effects.
Some other magical things to ponder:
You can't create your own spells. Is this due to a birth defect? After all, Jzargo can invent his own scrolls and Brelyna can invent her own spells, and they are just students. Nelacar does research in the Frozen Hearth, and all I can do is read a book to learn a spell?
Enchantments can only be learned through disenchanting an item, so where did the first enchanted item come from? Whoever performed the first-ever recorded case of reverse-engineering must be stupid-rich. Just look at all those enchanting stations he has sold. Or maybe he just licensed the technology from the Divines?
Give Feedback
325 comments
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I’d like to thank all you guys and girls for giving me such a wonderful thread here. You’ve posted a lot of really good ideas and your enthusiasm and positive feedback have been way more than I could have hoped for, so thank you all.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Skyrim Special Edition?
Good news bad news. Bad news first. Because of the size of the download for SSE I will not be doing anything for SSE. My internet is MobileData and downloading an extra 25 gig on top of what I already use would cost me a lot of money. So under present circumstances no SSE for me.
The good news - anyone who wants to port this mod to SSE has my permission. You can upload it anywhere you want, and if you want to make it available for consoles that would be awesome.
In your description you should credit me as the original author and say that you have my permission to upload. It might be a good idea to link back to this page so people can read comments for other users.
You can use anything you want from my description - text or pictures.
Unfortunately I can't give you any advice on how to port it, as I don't have SSE and have no idea what the difference between the two versions would be.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1129304/ModIssue/51077/RGMsAlchemistsCompendium_CACO_Hunterborn.esp
Feel free to post it if you think anyone would use it, but it needs polish. The extremely large number of new ingredients caused a few problems.
Most importantly, I seemed to hit some upper limit to the number of characters allowed in a book. Is there such a limit? Because the text was simply ending in the middle of a word, even though all of the text was in the plugin.
To fix that, I had to strip out all of the line-by-line formatting. Now all of the font sizes and colors are the same. I also stripped out the illustrations and page numbers, to save space, but also because of the hundreds of missing images.
Finally, I shrunk the font size by about 20% to fit 3 ingredients per page instead of 2, to help balance out the huge number of new pages.
Someone who knows what they're doing would probably finish off the illustrations, add back the old, better formatting, and split the book into multiple volumes to solve these problems.
A couple of thoughts just off the top of my head: did you remove all of the formatting or just some of it? I'm thinking specifically about the page breaks. If you are not using page breaks then that could be the cause of running out of space on the page.
Also, removing the formatting, then compiling your list of ingredients and effects, and then re-formatting everything would be like starting from scratch. Much more work than is necessary. The formatting really is the foundation of the mod.
When I made it I did it in a external text editor, Word or Wordpad, I don't remember which. I created the basic HTML table for a single page with place holders for names and effects, duplicated the page for as many as I would need, then edited the tables replacing the place holders from an alphabetical list of ingredients as displayed in the CK. That would also be the quickest way to add new ingredients.
If I were going to add new ingredients all I would need is a list of the new ingredients and their effects, then I would add new HTML formatting with placeholders where necessary to maintain the alphabetical nature of the book, then replace the placeholders with the new names.
On the other hand, if you are not using any of my formatting or images then it would no longer be my mod. I have no special rights to the idea of compiling a list of ingredients and effects in a book. If what you do is sufficiently different in it's layout from what I did and you are not using any of the images I created then it would be your mod and you could release it as such.
Regarding the formatting, I did keep your opening and closing pages, and I wanted to keep all of it. But instead I took the font you used for the effects and applied it to the full set of ingredients and effect, all with one color and size. That way I could open the font element at the beginning of the full list, and close it at the end, instead of having font elements for every ingredient and effect. That's how I worked around the length limit.
If I had the patience and skill, I'd much prefer the positive / negative coloring, and I love the illustrations, and I'd keep the page numbers. I'm afraid that might have to be several volumes and not a single book, though.
I did lightly automate it, so I'll share that too, in case it's useful.
I used mator's quickdisplay script:
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/49373/?
to export these to csv:
[code=auto:0]
Record Header\FormID
EDID
FULL
Effects\Effect[0]\EFID
Effects\Effect[0]\EFIT\Magnitude
Effects\Effect[0]\EFIT\Duration
Effects\Effect[1]\EFID
Effects\Effect[1]\EFIT\Magnitude
Effects\Effect[1]\EFIT\Duration
Effects\Effect[2]\EFID
Effects\Effect[2]\EFIT\Magnitude
Effects\Effect[2]\EFIT\Duration
Effects\Effect[3]\EFID
Effects\Effect[3]\EFIT\Magnitude
Effects\Effect[3]\EFIT\Duration
[/code]
Then imported them into a google spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1m2FUv513sdSBsqaODdr7aD7yxymQWpHwQu5pLGk_QpM/edit?usp=sharing
Then did spreadsheet-y things to produce formatting that looked just like the pattern you had in your plugin.
Then I started cutting corners as described above.
I forgot to say earlier: Thanks for making this! It had a big effect on my game. I was (obviously) not looking forward to playing without it after adding CACO.
I can add the formatting and split it into volumes, that shouldn't be any problem for me. It wont be right away because I am working on another project right now, but I will do it.
and of course I will give you prominent credit.
Something that would be extremely helpful, if you got really motivated, would be to have a couple different volume sets, each organized in different ways.
For example, the first multi-volume set, organized just like the original, with all CACO's ingredients laid out in alphabetical order, each followed by it's effects.
A second multi-volume set could be organized alphabetically by effect rather than ingredient, such that each page would have just one effect followed by a complete list of ingredients that provide that effect. (A multi-volume CACO set like this would have a lot of utility).
A possible third set could be broken up into broad categories, like the 'Book of Insects', or 'Book of Flowers' etc...
This third set would mostly be fluff to enrich the color and variety of the whole alchemy compendium concept, but I really feel like having separate sets organized in the first two ways would be extremely helpful. I believe the downloadable spreadsheet in CACO's file section would simplify sorting out all the data.
And for the record, I'm still a huge fan of making the player earn this information Morrowloot-style, by having to gather the volumes from as many dangerous and hidden places as possible. The utility granted by owning these volumes makes finding them a meaningful quest in its own right.
Scatter a few treasure-map style notes to some corpses and/or dungeons throughout the world, maybe with a little backstory, and you'd have a full fledged quest. Heck - you could even write some lore-based notes (e.g. spouse seeking missing spouse, alchemy master seeking lost apprentice, or whatever) and submit them to the author of the Notice Board, so they appear randomly for players to find.
Another reason, after almost 5 years of playing and modding Skyrim I have lost interest in the game. I can't get motivated to spend any time on it.
Another reason, my graphics card, a Radeon 7870 recently had a melt down. It's the second card killed by Skyrim. Rather than replace it right now I reverted back to a still functioning 7 year old 3870 I bought for Oblivion. Using that card with Skyrim turns it into a slide show, however it does still work with fallout 3 and that is what I am playing and modding right now.
Alchemist Compendium is a resource for other modders, so anyone else who wants to do a CACO/Hunterborn version has my permission to do so, but I can't offer any help at this time.
But I reverted to the original format, which is nicer in my opinion (love the pictures and the colors !). Also the original book could be browsed very quickly and it was impossible with the other caco version at least on my system the 1st pages were very slow to show, it was getting better after that but it's not good when you want some info quickly.
So you get 3 books of 50 pages each (well not exactly since there are 142 pages).
It was not that long to do, saved the spreadsheet in html, then wrote a perl script to convert the html to something which looked like the formating in the original mod, it seems to work quite nicely.
Since I did that with tes5edit only, I can't place the books in the world, so you'll have to use the console for that (help compendium in the console, then player.additem xxxx 1 for the 3 books).
I'll just test that a little more after getting some sleep, and then I'll upload it. If someone is interested in the perl script I can put it inside too, I just edited the html produced by libreoffice to make the 2nd table to start at a beginning of a line, that's all.
Later then...
For the pictures I used the pictures of the original mod where available, of course a lot of ingredients have no pictures since I don't know where to take them for caco or how to generate them, but even like that, it's quite nice and there are still lots of pictures !
and here is the archive for the tools (in perl) to rebuild the txt files needed for the books : https://mega.nz/#!mdFixSRZ
I had to get rid of the page numbers because some ingredient names are very long and require 2 lines or to use a smaller font. Since I like my big font to be able to browse the book very fast, and page numbers are not so useful after all, I got rid of them.
I am not sure the separation of the ingredients is ideal for now, maybe I should have created 1 more book to separate them at the start of a letter instead of after 50 pages. Well I'll try to use that for a while and I'll see, the book is very fast to browse so it seems convenient enough.
Also I worked from the spreadsheet from caco, but of course I had to sort it first, it was not in alphabetical order for the ingredients !
+ Reduced the weights of the books because it's more convenient to carry them all the time and there are quite a few now, and changed their title to better tell about their contents.
I'll upload this later, we are clearly not in a hurry... !
There are 6 books in total, but including 1 which is optional for hunterborn !
So 3 books for the ingredients of the base game, + 2 books for the effects, giving the list of ingredients sorted by strength for each effect, + finally 1 last book for hunterborn.
I don't think I'll have to update this anymore after this !
Here is the link for the esp (of course it needs the bsa of this mod) : https://mega.nz/#!GYlHjSbS
and the link for the tools to build it, I kept the tools for v1.0 caco if someone is interested : https://mega.nz/#!7NFGFQiA
I have an "Alchemist's Compendium" for Morrowind (MW) and love it...it is so helpful, and the MW tome by Sgaileach was beautifully done (though that one described effects and their needed ingredients, while this one describes each ingredients' effects - still, it's all good).
I don't play Skyrim nearly as much as MW, but I look forward to having this lovely book as a reference when I do play. It is as helpful as its MW counterpart (imo). So thank you very much for this. I appreciate the drudgery that went into making it, as I do the articulate nature of this mod's Description page. Nicely done.
i see in game for every potion i need what materials
but unfortunately i can not find such this mod
Some other magical things to ponder:
You can't create your own spells. Is this due to a birth defect? After all, Jzargo can invent his own scrolls and Brelyna can invent her own spells, and they are just students. Nelacar does research in the Frozen Hearth, and all I can do is read a book to learn a spell?
Enchantments can only be learned through disenchanting an item, so where did the first enchanted item come from? Whoever performed the first-ever recorded case of reverse-engineering must be stupid-rich. Just look at all those enchanting stations he has sold. Or maybe he just licensed the technology from the Divines?