Give Feedback
0 of 0
About this mod
Immersive Spell Learning makes studying spell tomes take time. It is light-weight, clean and fully compatible with any spell-adding mods. It works out of the box and is completely adjustable. No more eating spell tomes and immediately knowing them inside out!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
-
Translations
- Turkish
- Spanish
- Russian
- French
- Changelogs
Description
One of the major issues I have with Magic in Skyrim is learning new spells. Studying spell tomes should take time and concentration, but instead the player character just seems to magically (pun intended) soak up the spell while brutally ripping the tome apart.
Immersive Spell Learning makes studying spell tomes take time. It is light-weight, clean and fully compatible with any spell-adding mods. It works out of the box and is completely adjustable. No more eating spell tomes and immediately knowing them inside out!
How does it work?
Whenever you pick up a tome and you don't now the spell yet, the tome is being converted into Spell Notes. As soon as you know the spell or you already carry a corresponding set of notes, the tome will not be touched - allowing you to collect them as usual. Spell Notes can be found in your inventory under the Miscellaneous section and can be activated to study the spell itself. How long it will take to learn a spell depends on the spell's level as well as your skill level within the spell's school of magic. A master of destruction can learn an apprentice destruction spell in an hour or two, while it would take an apprentice months to learn a master spell.
Features
- Spell Learning takes time - and is affected by your knowledge in the corresponding school of magic and the spell's difficulty
- Fully compatible with any spell mod - no patches needed
- Fully animated - while studying, your character will helplessly browse a book or try to figure out a blank piece of paper. Studying in Skyrim never felt so real!
- Immersive Messages & Notifications
- Clean and easy to use MCM menu & fully customizable - nearly any aspect of the mod can be adjusted to your liking!
FAQ
Is this compatible with...
The answer is 'yes'.
I don't like the new spell notes. Couldn't you do it without them?
Nope. While in theory it would be possible to do it without adding a new type of item, i would have to edit the vanilla script that runs when you activate a spell tome. However, any mod that adds new spell tomes would still behave the vanilla way and would be in need of a compatibility patch (which would suck).
I can still eat spell tomes like in Vanilla. Is that a bug?
ISL does not prevent players from eating tomes, especially if they pick up a tome a second time while already carrying notes or choose to keep tomes after making notes (which is an MCM option). To prevent this, I'd have to edit the Vanilla spell tome script, which (again) would make ISL require compatibility patches for any spell mod. A second option would be to prevent players from picking up spell tomes they haven't read yet, but I find this to a) be unimmersive, b) restrict players that e.g. collect tomes for their personal library, c) harm follower mods that allow teaching spells via tomes and d) break quests and do other horrible things.
To convert a tome I've picked up earlier, I have to drop it and pick it up again. Is that a bug?
No. The conversion into notes (automatic or via popup) only triggers when a spell tome is added to the player's inventory. This is called event-based scripting, which is a very performance-friendly solution and prevents all the bad things that have lead to "scripts" having a dangerous ring to them in Skyrim modding.
I don't want SKSE. Couldn't you do it without it?
Nope. Seriously, measured against modern coding standards, Papyrus is a a plain joke of a framework. Without SKSE, I would have probably shot myself very early in development.
But there's already mods fixing that like Better Spell Learning or Spell Learning and Discovery!
Well, that's kind of true. This mod pretty does much exactly what Better Spell Learning does. However, Better Spell Learning shows unstable behavior,
Spell Learning and Discovery fixes especially the latter, but lacks the core feature of Better Spell Learning - studying tomes. Instead, it keeps track of the spells you're trying to learn and progresses your knowledge of that spell whenever you sleep.
Also, I tried to keep it simple. Stuff like your current location or your race does not have an effect on your ability to learn new spells, because this would also affect compatibility (with e.g. custom player homes). This mod REALLY only makes it so that learning new spells via spell tomes takes time. Nothing else.
Why doesn't my screen fade to black?
Similar to Nighteye, ENB messes with the way the game draws the Fade-To-Black effect. If this bothers you and you wish to see the screen fading, you can go to your enbeffect.fx file and change the parameter "Apply Game Color Correction" to true. However, this will probably heavily effect the way your ENB looks like. Alternatively, you can just disable the effect in the MCM.
Where does this go in my load oder?
Since ISL basically just adds some new scripts and a few objects without editing anything from Vanilla, load order has absolutely no effect. Put it where you want or let Vortex/MO/LOOT decide. It doesn't matter.
Can you add...
Probably not. I consider the mod to be feature complete. If you have ideas on how to make the mod more convenient or immersive, feel free to le me know!
Installation
Make sure you have SKSE and SkyUI installed - they are both a hard requirement. Other than that, it's plug and play. I strongly recommend using a Mod Manager like Vortex.
Uninstallation
Theoretically, this mod should be safe to uninstall after usin the "Stop Immersive Spell Learning" Button in the MCM and getting rid of any Spell Notes. However, I'm relatively new to Skyrim modding and don't know the creation engine's quirks that well. Generally, people will advise you not to uninstall mods mid-game, so I don't really support uninstalling Immersive Spell Learning.
Study Times & Calculation
I've actually put some thought into how to calculate the study time. Basically, the higher the spell's level and the lower the player's skill level in the respective school of magic, the longer it will take. In case you're interested, click the spoiler to see the exact formular and a sheet with study times at different levels.
Spoiler:
Show
h = (Spell Level)^(Spell Level / (Player Skill Level)^1.3) * sqrt(Spell Level) * Modifier
When Modifier = 1 (or 100 %), the default, this leads to the following behavior.
* Note that I consider 5 the smallest level for both spells and the player to achieve better results with novice spells.
** 'Player Level' refers to the player's skill level in each school of magic.
When Modifier = 1 (or 100 %), the default, this leads to the following behavior.
* Note that I consider 5 the smallest level for both spells and the player to achieve better results with novice spells.
** 'Player Level' refers to the player's skill level in each school of magic.
Recommended Mods
Dear Diary - Paper SkyUI Menu Replacer SE by uranreactor - For a much nicer and more immersive feel when navigating through menus
Obscure's College of Winterhold by SomethingObscure - Greatly improves the College of Winterhold while staying close to the vanilla look and feel.
Not so Fast - Mages Guild by cdcooley - That and Obscure's College of WInterhold actually drove me to make this mod. Gives you a lot of free time to roleplay that student life while doing the college questline!