Not only is the tool itself incredibly useful, but unlike so many developers who release tools, this one has a thorough and coherent explanation about how to use it. If you're using CACO this tool will improve your game immensely. Huge thank you to the author for one of the best apps I've come across.
Really love what you've made here, but one question. I noticed that some ingredients that are in my game, aswell as listed in certain CACO spreadsheets, aren't in this site. Are those only CC ingredients?
I actually made this tool back before they released Anniversary Edition - so any ingredients added by Creation Club mods like Rare Curios or Saints and Seducers aren't included, as you suspect.
I have no idea how to make a website, but is there a possibility I could modify this website / get the code to make my own and add the CC ingredients? The only problem I really see for me is being unable to determine the strength of the CC ingredients. Where did you find the potency of each ingredient?
The JSON document with all of the ingredient data is hosted on my GitHub Pages site as a matter of convenience - no need for me to actually set up a proper website - and you can download it here (I've linked to the human-readable version, but once you're done with your changes you should run it through an online JSON minifier). You can edit your copy in a program like Notepad++ to include the Creation Club's ingredients.
You should then look for a persistent file-hosting service, much like how Imgur is often used for image hosting as well as just social media. Then go into the "js" folder of your copy of the mod, open the "main.js" file, find the "ingredientDataPath" variable, and change it the the URL of your version of the file (be sure that it's still wrapped in quotation marks, as this denotes a string value). I would've preferred to include the JSON data with the mod itself, but for security reasons Javascript can't actually access the local file system unless the user explicitly uploads something.
Now, to find the effects and their magnitudes, you'll want to load up the relevant Creation Club plugins in xEdit along with whatever CACO patch you have for them. You can then look through the Ingredients section in the left pane to find the lot - at the bottom of each record will be its four effects for potion crafting, with a number indicating its magnitude. These are the values you'll be plugging into the JSON file you're editing.
Thanks for this, the JSON doc is surprisingly readable to me and it shouldn't be too tedious for me to add in the CC stuff. Will get going on this during my weekend and share it here incase anybody in the future wants to use it.
When I select Abecean Longfin and then Yellow Mountain Flower, it produces a Fortify Restoration potion in the 100th percentile. But when I select Yellow Mountain flower and then Abecean Longfin, it creates a potion in the 57th percentile.
Does this reflect what would happen in-game as well?
I noticed this with other ingredients as well. The percentile is different depending on the order you select the ingredients. Doesn't seem right, unless that's how CACO works? I couldn't find the answer.
This is a known bug I've never gotten around to figuring out fully, as I've been distracted with other modding projects. In the above example, Fortify Restoration in the 100th percentile is the correct result - the 57th percentile result is presumably coming from the lower magnitude of the Abecean Longfin's matching effect.
Would it be possible to add a free text input for searching ingredients by effect?
Reason is, as a new CACO player I'm more interested in making use of the stock of ingredients I have to discover new properties from them, rather than making the best possible potions/poisons with them.
Having a free type entry would help in making that process a bit streamlined... the combo box are awkward to work with :/ I suppose if you could convert them into Combo Edits, that would work too... as long as the text you type is what is used for matching!
Also, a second thing that would help a lot would be if you could search by ingredient name first and then, use the other box to filter by effect so it only shows the ingredients that match by effect, but I feel that would be too much to ask
Thank you for making this! It's amazingly helpful <3
For your first point, were you suggesting that the effect filters work like the name search? So I'd type "fortify" and it would show a data list with all the effects containing the substring "fortify," like Fortify Carry Weight and Fortify Sneak. I can see some use in that, though I'm not sure how that helps with exploring the traits of the subset of ingredients you have ingame. Maybe you can restate this better for me, though.
As for navigating the dropdown menus, it's worth noting that pressing a letter on your keyboard jumps you to the first entry starting with that character (this is a feature all browsers implement for accessibility, e.g. if you're blind and can't use a mouse). Also, press Tab to go to the next item in any form, and Shift+Tab to go to the previous.
As for your second request, you can actually do that already. If, for example, I search through the Vanilla+CACO ingredients with "ar", I'll get a list of 52 ingredients from Argonian Scales and Arrowroot through Water Hyacinth Nectar and Werebear Claws. Then I can select the Speed effect from any of the four dropdowns and this'll narrow the list down to six ingredients, Arrowroot through Orange Dartwing. It doesn't matter which dropdown you use relative to the order in which the effects appear on each ingredient - there are only four of them in case you want to find something with a combination of four specific effects.
For your first point, were you suggesting that the effect filters work like the name search?
Yeah, exactly that! at least for one of them (I mean one of the combos!) It would help in the fact that once I identified that certain ingredient that I have has, for example, Magicka Restoration, I can quickly type that in the search and get a list of other matching ingredients.
I mean, I can already do that, of course... but even typing in the combos only matches the initial word of the content and it's often quicker just to free type to reduce the matches and then grab the one you want from the list (exactly to how the name matching works) than to type the letter to go to the first and then scroll past a bunch to get to the one you want... at least for me! One thing that bothers me with the combos, and this might be just me, is that the mouse focus often locks the selection to a fixed position and if you type say, 'R' to go to Restore ones, if you even move your mouse slightly (if it's over the combo) the position will scroll back to where it was and you have to do it all again... again, it might be just me! And I'm totally conscious that I"m just splitting hairs here, as the page you provided is already totally usable and works... it's just a minor thing.
As for your second request, you can actually do that already.
Nice! I could have sworn that when I did that I'd get no matches, but I might have done something wrong on my end! But now that you've said that, I tried it and yeah, I can confirm it works!
You know what else would be useful? I just realized, an quick reset back to the initial condition... i.e. a button, or something, that clears all the selections, so you can just start with a new search!
Again, thank you for sharing this! This is a god send for someone that never played with CACO before :)
The one from the Creation Club? I don't have it, myself, so I don't have the plugin available to extract the ingredient data from. Though I suppose the data I'd actually need is all in the patch I see floating about the Nexus. No promises about timeframes, though.
Thanks for considering it. Like you say, probably what you need is in this patch here: "Rare Curios (CC) __ CACO" https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19518?tab=files
To clarify, if you download the file from the Nexus on your phone, you can extract the archive and it'll work as-is - it isn't an app on the Google Play or Apple app stores. This is pretty straightforward on Android, though the locked-down nature of iPhones will make this unnecessarily difficult on Tim and Steve's "premium" platform.
25 comments
You should then look for a persistent file-hosting service, much like how Imgur is often used for image hosting as well as just social media. Then go into the "js" folder of your copy of the mod, open the "main.js" file, find the "ingredientDataPath" variable, and change it the the URL of your version of the file (be sure that it's still wrapped in quotation marks, as this denotes a string value). I would've preferred to include the JSON data with the mod itself, but for security reasons Javascript can't actually access the local file system unless the user explicitly uploads something.
Now, to find the effects and their magnitudes, you'll want to load up the relevant Creation Club plugins in xEdit along with whatever CACO patch you have for them. You can then look through the Ingredients section in the left pane to find the lot - at the bottom of each record will be its four effects for potion crafting, with a number indicating its magnitude. These are the values you'll be plugging into the JSON file you're editing.
Does this reflect what would happen in-game as well?
Reason is, as a new CACO player I'm more interested in making use of the stock of ingredients I have to discover new properties from them, rather than making the best possible potions/poisons with them.
Having a free type entry would help in making that process a bit streamlined... the combo box are awkward to work with :/ I suppose if you could convert them into Combo Edits, that would work too... as long as the text you type is what is used for matching!
Also, a second thing that would help a lot would be if you could search by ingredient name first and then, use the other box to filter by effect so it only shows the ingredients that match by effect, but I feel that would be too much to ask
Thank you for making this! It's amazingly helpful <3
As for navigating the dropdown menus, it's worth noting that pressing a letter on your keyboard jumps you to the first entry starting with that character (this is a feature all browsers implement for accessibility, e.g. if you're blind and can't use a mouse). Also, press Tab to go to the next item in any form, and Shift+Tab to go to the previous.
As for your second request, you can actually do that already. If, for example, I search through the Vanilla+CACO ingredients with "ar", I'll get a list of 52 ingredients from Argonian Scales and Arrowroot through Water Hyacinth Nectar and Werebear Claws. Then I can select the Speed effect from any of the four dropdowns and this'll narrow the list down to six ingredients, Arrowroot through Orange Dartwing. It doesn't matter which dropdown you use relative to the order in which the effects appear on each ingredient - there are only four of them in case you want to find something with a combination of four specific effects.
Yeah, exactly that! at least for one of them (I mean one of the combos!)
It would help in the fact that once I identified that certain ingredient that I have has, for example, Magicka Restoration, I can quickly type that in the search and get a list of other matching ingredients.
I mean, I can already do that, of course... but even typing in the combos only matches the initial word of the content and it's often quicker just to free type to reduce the matches and then grab the one you want from the list (exactly to how the name matching works) than to type the letter to go to the first and then scroll past a bunch to get to the one you want... at least for me!
One thing that bothers me with the combos, and this might be just me, is that the mouse focus often locks the selection to a fixed position and if you type say, 'R' to go to Restore ones, if you even move your mouse slightly (if it's over the combo) the position will scroll back to where it was and you have to do it all again... again, it might be just me! And I'm totally conscious that I"m just splitting hairs here, as the page you provided is already totally usable and works... it's just a minor thing.
Nice! I could have sworn that when I did that I'd get no matches, but I might have done something wrong on my end! But now that you've said that, I tried it and yeah, I can confirm it works!
You know what else would be useful? I just realized, an quick reset back to the initial condition... i.e. a button, or something, that clears all the selections, so you can just start with a new search!
Again, thank you for sharing this! This is a god send for someone that never played with CACO before :)
"Rare Curios (CC) __ CACO"
https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/19518?tab=files