Skyrim

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Jayne

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jayne2132

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About this mod

Lore-friendly Immersion/Gameplay mod for shrines. Choose among four prayer animations. Customize strength and duration of blessings.

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Changelogs


Lore-friendly Immersion/Gameplay mod for shrines. Choose among four prayer animations. Customize strength and duration of blessings.




v2.0: Big new features! (and a few bug fixes)
See Installation - Upgrade below for upgrade instructions

An MCM menu allows you to customize shrine animations and blessings. Choose among four prayer animations (or none). Select your preferred blessing strength, a duration up to 30 days and whether or not to cure diseases at shrines. An experimental option, Leveled Blessings, allows blessing strength to level with your character, making them balanced and relevant at both low and high levels.







If you don't have SKSE/SkyUI, the default settings are: the "Prayer" animation, lore-friendly blessing text and custom FX for each shrine. All blessings retain their vanilla strength and durations and still cure diseases. This is all similar to v1.0, so the main reasons to upgrade are bug fixes and DLC shrines. See the changelog below for details.

Please comment with any problems or suggestions!



Big thanks to Nozi87, who featured Pray at Shrines v1.0 on Another Skyrim Mod Feature! (Note: many of the bugs mentioned have been fixed in v2.0)



Contents
I Install
II Uninstall
III Performance
IV Conflicts and Compatibility
V Changelog
VI Bugs and Limitations
VII Future Plans
VIII MCM Options
IX Note to Modders
X Credits



I Install

SkyUI and SKSE are highly recommended but not required.

New Game: Extract archive to Skyrim/Data folder, or install with your favorite mod manager.

Save Game: Save your game in a room with no shrines, install, and reload. (If you don't do this, the shrine(s) in the room will retain their vanilla blessings and FX as well as the new ones)

Upgrade: Overwrite the old files with the new version.



II Uninstall

Save in a room with no shrines. Remove the mod and reload game.
Do not recommend reinstallation. Strange things happen.

Note: In testing, I encountered no problems with uninstallation. However, removing any scripted mod during a save game is never entirely without risk. To avoid this, I recommend testing Pray at Shrines to see if it's right for you first. From the main Skyrim menu, open the console (~) and type 'coc aaShrineTestingCell'. That will give you a character "Prisoner" with whom you can test all the shrines in one room, tweak MCM settings and test the changes. I'll let you figure out what the dead skeever does.



III Performance

Minimal performance impact. Scripts run when selecting new options in MCM and when activating a shrine. Otherwise, there is no overhead.

(Some modders may have chosen to maximize compatibility by using running quests to achieve the same effects. I chose to maximize performance by editing the base objects, but at some cost of compatibility.)



IV Conflicts and Compatibility

Not compatible with mods that modify the shrine activator base objects or blessings. Should be compatible with everything else, including mods that add or remove shrines from the world.

Known Conflicts:
  • Requiem: has shrine quests; see Posts tab for discussion. Whether overwriting Requiem with Pray at Shrines will work, or cause problems with Requiem, is undetermined at this point.)
  • Altars and Shrines Don't Cure Diseases: I recommend this as a basic alternative if this is the only feature you need
  • Any mod that changes shrine blessing duration or strength (One Week Blessings, Real Permanent Blessings, Cumulable Blessings, The Grace of Divine, Advanced Shrine Blessings etc)
  • Any mod that changes the shrine activation text or blessing notification (Informative Shrine Notifications, Informative Shrines, BLESSINGS - Altar Descriptions etc)



Limited Compatibility:
  • Realistic Needs and DiseasesWorks only if you choose an animation in the Pray at Shrines MCM. If you select "None", shrines have unpredictable (usually no) blessing effects. RND "shrines cure disease" toggle is irrelevant if Pray at Shrines is installed (but PAS has the same feature, so use that). Any load order.
  • Dovahkiin Prayersin the Pray at Shrines MCM, select "none" for animation and make sure "disable cure diseases" is unchecked, and the Dovahkiin Prayers kneeling animation should play, but you can still alter blessing strength/duration. Any load order.


Compatible Shrine Mods:
  • Mods that retexture shrines (Divine Shrines, Psychosteve's Golden God's Shrines, The Divine Shrines Retexture, God Shrines Retextures, etc)
  • Mods that add map markers for shrines (Unmarked Places - Shrines, Map Markers Shrines and Temples, etc)
  • DLC Shrines for Hearthfire Homes (no conflict, but haven't verified that Pray at Shrines will apply effects to these Hearthfire shrines)
  • A Conspiracy of Faith-Little Shrines to Talos
  • Blessings of the Hunt
  • City Shrines
  • Shrines and Worshippers



V Changelog

v2.0 (Increased entire version number to reflect increased scope of the mod)
- Added MCM menu with ability to select animations, messages and blessing effects, including changing strength and duration and whether to cure diseases (Optional; requires SKSE/SkyUI)
- Added Leveled Blessings, an experimental option to adjust shrine effects based on character level (Requires SKSE/SkyUI)
- Added separate download for Dawnguard/Dragonborn
- Lore Friendly messages now show in the middle of the screen (they were quite small in the upper left corner)
- Increased blessing sounds to maximum volume
- Changed Zenithar animation/sound (too subtle in previous version)
- When activating a shrine, characters now sheathe weapons/shields (SKSE required; animations won't play if weapons are unsheathed) and POV is switched to third person (first person animations are problematic)
- Safer uninstall. Animations no longer persist after removing mod.
- Archives now include source scripts (.psc)

v1.0
- First release



VI Bugs and Limitations

- Talos shrine blessing "Fortify Shouts" does not include a percent value in the description. This is an intentional change, as the description says 20% no matter how you change the strength in MCM. Instead, go to Shouts tab and you can see the changes reflected in the shout timers.


- If you select Base Game Animations and disable Cure Disease, there will be no visual/audio FX when the blessings are applied. Base game shrine spells get their FX from Cure Disease.
- If you level up multiple times during one trip to the skills screen, Leveled Blessings will only register the first level increase. So, if you increase your level from 1 to 5 in one go, Leveled Blessings will adjust spells for level 2. (When you level up to 6, Leveled Blessings will get back on track and correctly adjust spells for level 6).
- Lore Friendly blessing text appears in center of the screen. This is improved, in my opinion, from the upper left corner where it is small and difficult to read. However, it is somewhat intrusive.
- Automatically unsheathing weapons to pray requires SKSE. Without SKSE, if you have your weapon drawn and activate a shrine, you'll get the blessing but no animation.



VII Future Plans

- add seated/kneeling/meditating pray animations
- rebalance Leveled Blessings based on feedback



VIII MCM Options

Animation
Choose between four different prayer animations (all repurposed from the base game), or choose to use the base game settings (no animation, same visual FX for every shrine).


Force Third Person
Animations do not play correctly in first person point of view, so this option is enabled by default. It simply shifts your camera into third person point of view when you activate a shrine.


Notifications
You can choose to receive lore-friendly notifications. These appear in the center of the screen. Or you can stick with the base game notifications ("Blessing of Arkay added") in the upper-left corner.


Disable Cure Disease
You can remove the cure disease effect from all shrines. Some (including myself) consider the effect rather overpowered, considering the alternatives are the cost of Cure Disease potions or inconvenience of traveling to Dawnstar for fish soup.


Blessing Strength
You can change the strength (magnitude) of the blessing spells from a factor of 0 to 4. At 0, blessing spells confer no benefits. Higher magnitudes may be overpowered, especially at low levels.

Example: In vanilla Skyrim, Blessing of Arkay increases health by 25 points. If you change the magnitude to 0.5, it will increase health by 12 points. If you change it to 3.0, it will increase health by 75 points.

Another example: In vanilla Skyrim, Blessing of Zenithar decreases prices by 10%. If you change the magnitude to 0.5, it will decrease prices by 5%. If you change it to 3.0, it will decrease prices by 30%.


Leveled Blessings (Experimental)


Blessings are problematic. Some may have some noticeable impact at low levels, but at higher levels they're almost irrelevant. But using the strength slider (see above) to change the magnitude of effect can create the opposite problem, where they're relevant at high levels but overpowered at low levels (want +100 health at level 2?). In an attempt to fix this, I've come up with a Leveled Blessings option.

The goal is to make blessings worth seeking out at both low and high levels. At the same time, maintaining game balance is a priority, as blessings are free and easy to acquire, so they should not be comparable to enchanted weapons or armor that you would raid a tomb full of draugr to obtain.

Comparing the blessings' vanilla magnitudes versus equipment enchantments for various levels I came to the following. Some of the blessings start with effects slightly lower than their vanilla versions, but all but two end up having greater effects as character level increases.

The exceptions are the Blessing of Zenithar and the Blessing of Mephala, both which decrease prices by 10%. The 10% remains the same as you level, as I thought that increasing it would be overpowered.

The algorithm:
Blessings that increase base stats (health, magicka, stamina) start at +20 (at a theoretical level 0) and increase by +2 every level.
Blessings that increase stat regeneration or other percentiles start at +15% and increase by +0.5% every level.
Blessings that increase skills start at +5 and increase by +0.33 every level.

Example: In vanilla Skyrim, Blessing of Arkay increases health by 25 points. With Leveled Blessings enabled, it increases health by 24 points at level 2, 40 points at level 10, 140 points at level 60.

Another example: In vanilla Skyrim, Blessing of Mara increases amount of health restored by healing spells by 10%. With Leveled Blessings enabled, it increases health restored by 16% at level 2, 20% at level 10, 45% at level 60.

I'd appreciate any feedback on this algorithm and gameplay balance!


Blessing Duration
You can increase the time that blessings are active on your character up to 30 days (in the base game, most blessings last 8 hours). If you think visiting the temple every week is sufficient, increase the number to 7. If you think once a month is plenty, change it to 30.



IX Note to Modders
Archives include source scripts (.psc). Feel free to reuse my code. I don't require credit.



X Credits
Thanks to everyone who posted feedback! Most of the changes are a direct result of your ideas.
Thanks to the creators of SKSE and SkyUI.
Fonts in the screenshots are from Elder Scrolls Font Pack.