v0.2.0 is released! This is just a compilation of minor balance adjustments, mostly making some of the harsher stones a bit more flexible in that you can work around more of the curses as opposed to just losing certain options entirely.
Please post below any thoughts, questions or concerns. I try to maintain an active (and friendly) presence in the comments :-)
Thanks for your downloads, comments and endorsements.
I'll think about it, but I don't think it would result in great gameplay as many of the blessings are too complex for NPC AI to handle. There's also the issue of "sameyness". From the mod page:
Please bear in mind that because the game uses record templating, all generated NPCs of a given type (e.g. "novice pyromancer" or "bandit thug") share the same perks. Because blessings are applied as perks this means all enemies of the same type will also have the same blessing and so the variety of blessings you encounter might not be as high as you would otherwise expect.
If you want something like this mod that affects NPCs too, I suggest my race mod Legacy. This was designed with both the player and NPCs in mind and affects all NPCs.
Whilst I am not looking to use this for my upcoming run, I am interested. I rate my Standing Stone/Birthsign mods based on how cool the Serpent is, as it is my favorite stone from a lore perspective. This Serpent is rough but I vibe. Bet it goes incredibly crazy with a alchemy overhaul.
The Lady rewards those who are kind and tolerant, boosting your regenerative abilities and supporting your allies, but at a personal cost.
Blessing: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed. In combat, stand still with your hands lowered to radiate an aura that restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250).
Curse: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised. The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
this is too much for my brain. Do all these effects apply only while in combat? Would you consider simplifying how this effect works?
I have had difficulty explaining this clearly, but I've also played with a lady build and had a good time, so I think the issue is more with the explanation that the effect itself. Maybe it helps to split it in two:
Blessing 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed (this is true whether you are in combat or not). Curse 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised.
The Aura: Standing still with hands lowered in combat radiates an aura Blessing 2: The aura restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250). Curse 2: The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
Does this help? Basically, you want to periodically lower your hands to boost regeneration (it is a big boost). The aura is powerful, but also optional, and mostly useful if you are playing with followers, but it can work for a solo character if you are tanky enough too.
The Atronach Stone works well with quick characters too, not justy tanky ones. You don't need to be hit, just need to be within a certain distance when an enemy attack.
It seems this mod would require some major rework if I already play with health and magicka regen disabled for the player (actually, I lower it to something insignificant, like 0.01% to not outright break some mods and to still regenerate after a night's sleep). As a Requiem player on pause, I really like the approach of tough choices and debuffs, and I might end up using most of your mods for my next playthrough.
Is it possible to swap out the bonuses that have to do with health and magicka regeneration simply in SSEEdit? I might do that, though I don't know how.
Yes. You need to open the mod then find the relevant magic effect by going from perk to ability to magic effect. Within the magic effect (assuming it is unique to this mod) find the actor value it edits (e.g. MagickaRate is for magicka regen) and then change it to what you want. You can also change the magnitude of the ability in the ability record (not the magic effect record). It's a little tricky, but if you fiddle around enough you can work it out.
Hi, just piggybacking to mention: from what I can tell, the dude who made the xbox port originally (substill) hasn't been active on discord in several months. It's not clear whether he's still active al all or be returning to modding.
Also, Bethesda changed their policy about uploading xbox ports to their site. Basically, we have to have permission from the original mod author in a "publicly available" format (e.g., like a reply from an MA in the nexus forum). They no longer accept a screenshot of private correspondence between a porter and mod author as evidence of permission.
It would be awesome if you could grant permission in a reply post here, so that an updated port can be made. I'd love to be able to try out your mod!
Hi, sure, yes, I grant permission to port this mod to bethesda's mod page. My profile contains a full (public) write up of my permissions, including that porting to bethesda's site is OK, so that should be handy in future.
Edit: just noticed that the permissions bit for this mod page didn't actually point to my profile, so I've updated it.
It would be cool if there was an in-game lore friendly feature to reveal the stones locations on your map, like a book or someone telling you where they are in exchange for something. As far as im aware there is a guide book in the vanilla game that marks some standing stones but only a few.
This gives me an idea for a map mod when you have to buy maps for dungeons, towns, and other points of interest to mark them on your map, and maybe even resources by adding map markers for locations commonly known to have them. The price and rarity of the map could determine its tier and thus more markers. Just a thought and I acknowledge this could be too ambitious to easily implement but it would be sick because muh immersion players usually hate using third party sources to find ingame info but it's also just not a good time to have to scour the entire map looking for 1 thing
I totally agree. I like the idea of building a scholar character around visiting all the stones, but there's just no means to do that in game without wandering around aimlessly. And yeah, looking stuff up online isn't really fun. I've actually been thinking about how a quest could do this, so funny you would mention it, but I don't think I'll have the time to actually implement it. Still, hopefully someone might.
In this particular case a quick way to implement a less ambitious alternative could be an npc similar to Explore Skyrim that could reveal markers on your map for a price (this LE mod only reveals random locations). Don't need to add an extra npc either, you could make traveling merchants, hunters, innkeepers and traders reveal some nearby locations of things for a price. For example general goods traders could reveal local dungeons and crypts while alchemists could reveal locations in the surround area related to magic/standing stones. If I only wanted it for stones I would make a College of Winterhold librarian or book tell you where the stones are.
Blacksmiths revealing nearby ore locations would be so good for my game actually. I have to forge a lot of things in my game without save scumming and the amount of ore that can be found or available in merchants is very low without mining. And finding ore deposits for specific kind you need is a nightmare without looking them up. I always wanted a fix to this and now I realized this would be awesome. It would require creating custom markers on the map though. It wouldn't have to accurately mark each deposit's object in the world but a general "commonly found here" spot would be good enough. Quest markers could also work but I don't like the idea of having active quests just for marking locations in general. I'm just brainstorming in case a lurker is reading this ready to save the day and create this much needed mod 🙏
These are good ideas. I'm wary of just revealing location markers, mostly because I still want there to be some exploration involved. If done too directly its basically becomes the in-game equivalent of looking it up online. But something like a guide book with detailed directions might be a cool addition. You could have them for:
Standing stones (book sold by mages)
Mines and ores (perhaps by hold, sold by blacksmiths)
Particularly dense alchemical ingredient locations (sold by apothecaries)
Nordic ruins (useful for tracking down the masks)
Shrines and temples to the divines (sold by priests)
Daedric shrines (maybe hard to justify a guide book given then are often hidden, not sure who would sell it).
Dwarven ruins (sold by mages)
General landmarks (mountains etc., sold in stores)
I guess I tried to do something like this for alchemy with my mod pick your poison, but its pretty basic.
I wouldn't say it's the equivalent, since you have to interact with the world and balance your gameplay around it in order to get the information, in a way that makes sense.
I might be in the minority but I actually do not think that markers hinder exploration. Especially since you can turn them off. If you do not want to make letter items or go through the trouble of generating AI voice lines for NPCs to deliver the hand crafted set of custom directions and play the game like Morrowind, I can respect that. Or you could just skip all that and have the markers on your map work as the general "whereabouts" of something and then turn off your compass and HUD when you're traveling towards its general direction.
In MGSV, the game surprises you by making you revisit a previous map (a stage in a previous chapter) that you assumed to have seen all the large POIs in and moved on. It's a mission in the middle of the story set in a corner of the map involving a massive fort overlooking the sea that could house an entire army. Being larger than every other outpost on the map it generally surprises many players who got to that mission with the fact that such a huge location was tucked away the entire time they were exploring the map, and they never stumbled across it. If that mission wasn't there, most players would have never seen it, and despite doing all the hundreds of side missions and collecting every collectible in the game for a 100% run myself, I never saw the fort until I got to that mission later in the game. My point is, the average consumer should have access to everything in a game he/she paid for in a way that doesn't feel like it's a chore to discover. This is why the HUD can be disabled in these games. There are things that add to immersion and fun while happening to increase the difficulty while there are things that increase the difficulty in artificial ways that do nothing but add buffer with no content and make that extra time spent feel like a waste. Having to spend 25 minutes circling an area because you can't spot the misplaced ore texture is one of them. Sorry for the rambling essay on my opinions on game design but after playing games for so long I think that valuing the player's time comes first and foremost and smart ease of life features (like less menus) can be implemented in a way that doesn't streamline video games. We are just used to companies taking shortcuts and implementing them with no innovative workarounds and gameplay features to pander to a wider audience without the hassle that comes with the scope and budget requirements.
The lover stone displays the Health regeneration twice (on the stone effect and also as enhanced health regeneration). Since the other stones don't have the same behavior, I think it wasn't intended. It seems to be just the displayed active effects, not the buff, that is doubled.
Thanks, yes, I need to hide the "enhanced health regeneration". Because the stones have such complex effects I bundle them into a single description to avoid cluttering the menu.
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Please post below any thoughts, questions or concerns. I try to maintain an active (and friendly) presence in the comments :-)
Thanks for your downloads, comments and endorsements.
Please bear in mind that because the game uses record templating, all generated NPCs of a given type (e.g. "novice pyromancer" or "bandit thug") share the same perks. Because blessings are applied as perks this means all enemies of the same type will also have the same blessing and so the variety of blessings you encounter might not be as high as you would otherwise expect.
If you want something like this mod that affects NPCs too, I suggest my race mod Legacy. This was designed with both the player and NPCs in mind and affects all NPCs.
Would you consider simplifying how this effect works?
Blessing 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 100% faster when your hands are lowed (this is true whether you are in combat or not).
Curse 1: You regenerate Magicka and Stamina 50% slower when your hands are raised.
The Aura: Standing still with hands lowered in combat radiates an aura
Blessing 2: The aura restores your allies magicka and stamina (5/sec) while damaging enemies' health (3/sec), magic resistance (-100%) and armor rating (-250).
Curse 2: The aura drains your own Health, Magicka and Stamina (5/sec).
Does this help? Basically, you want to periodically lower your hands to boost regeneration (it is a big boost). The aura is powerful, but also optional, and mostly useful if you are playing with followers, but it can work for a solo character if you are tanky enough too.
Though I dont like having things on my mind, so I will try to Xedit out the "no moving" condition, if I can.
You don't need to be hit, just need to be within a certain distance when an enemy attack.
Also, Bethesda changed their policy about uploading xbox ports to their site. Basically, we have to have permission from the original mod author in a "publicly available" format (e.g., like a reply from an MA in the nexus forum). They no longer accept a screenshot of private correspondence between a porter and mod author as evidence of permission.
It would be awesome if you could grant permission in a reply post here, so that an updated port can be made. I'd love to be able to try out your mod!
Edit: just noticed that the permissions bit for this mod page didn't actually point to my profile, so I've updated it.
This gives me an idea for a map mod when you have to buy maps for dungeons, towns, and other points of interest to mark them on your map, and maybe even resources by adding map markers for locations commonly known to have them. The price and rarity of the map could determine its tier and thus more markers. Just a thought and I acknowledge this could be too ambitious to easily implement but it would be sick because muh immersion players usually hate using third party sources to find ingame info but it's also just not a good time to have to scour the entire map looking for 1 thing
Blacksmiths revealing nearby ore locations would be so good for my game actually. I have to forge a lot of things in my game without save scumming and the amount of ore that can be found or available in merchants is very low without mining. And finding ore deposits for specific kind you need is a nightmare without looking them up. I always wanted a fix to this and now I realized this would be awesome. It would require creating custom markers on the map though. It wouldn't have to accurately mark each deposit's object in the world but a general "commonly found here" spot would be good enough. Quest markers could also work but I don't like the idea of having active quests just for marking locations in general. I'm just brainstorming in case a lurker is reading this ready to save the day and create this much needed mod 🙏
- Standing stones (book sold by mages)
- Mines and ores (perhaps by hold, sold by blacksmiths)
- Particularly dense alchemical ingredient locations (sold by apothecaries)
- Nordic ruins (useful for tracking down the masks)
- Shrines and temples to the divines (sold by priests)
- Daedric shrines (maybe hard to justify a guide book given then are often hidden, not sure who would sell it).
- Dwarven ruins (sold by mages)
- General landmarks (mountains etc., sold in stores)
I guess I tried to do something like this for alchemy with my mod pick your poison, but its pretty basic.I might be in the minority but I actually do not think that markers hinder exploration. Especially since you can turn them off. If you do not want to make letter items or go through the trouble of generating AI voice lines for NPCs to deliver the hand crafted set of custom directions and play the game like Morrowind, I can respect that. Or you could just skip all that and have the markers on your map work as the general "whereabouts" of something and then turn off your compass and HUD when you're traveling towards its general direction.
In MGSV, the game surprises you by making you revisit a previous map (a stage in a previous chapter) that you assumed to have seen all the large POIs in and moved on. It's a mission in the middle of the story set in a corner of the map involving a massive fort overlooking the sea that could house an entire army. Being larger than every other outpost on the map it generally surprises many players who got to that mission with the fact that such a huge location was tucked away the entire time they were exploring the map, and they never stumbled across it. If that mission wasn't there, most players would have never seen it, and despite doing all the hundreds of side missions and collecting every collectible in the game for a 100% run myself, I never saw the fort until I got to that mission later in the game.
My point is, the average consumer should have access to everything in a game he/she paid for in a way that doesn't feel like it's a chore to discover. This is why the HUD can be disabled in these games. There are things that add to immersion and fun while happening to increase the difficulty while there are things that increase the difficulty in artificial ways that do nothing but add buffer with no content and make that extra time spent feel like a waste. Having to spend 25 minutes circling an area because you can't spot the misplaced ore texture is one of them.
Sorry for the rambling essay on my opinions on game design but after playing games for so long I think that valuing the player's time comes first and foremost and smart ease of life features (like less menus) can be implemented in a way that doesn't streamline video games. We are just used to companies taking shortcuts and implementing them with no innovative workarounds and gameplay features to pander to a wider audience without the hassle that comes with the scope and budget requirements.
Since the other stones don't have the same behavior, I think it wasn't intended.
It seems to be just the displayed active effects, not the buff, that is doubled.