Overview

With this mod, you should no longer see vanilla merchants selling spell tomes, including all of the merchants at the College of Winterhold.  This mod primarily edits merchant containers themselves, rather than leveled lists, so it should be compatible out-of-the-box with any spell mods that add their spells to leveled lists.

There are a few reasons you could still be seeing spell tomes in a merchant's inventory.  Spell tomes that were placed directly in a merchant's inventory (including the starter spells sold by Lucan in Riverwood, the Dawnguard spells sold by Ronthil and Florentius, and the Dragonborn spells sold by Talvas) have been left in place intentionally.  Additionally, some spell mods add their tomes in a way that isn't affected by this mod; see the compatibility section for details.

This mod was created with alternative methods of spell discovery (such as Spell Research, Spellforge, and my own Dino's Spell Discovery) in mind.  If you don't have another way to get spell tomes outside of loot and quest rewards, it may be helpful for choosing modules to know that in vanilla, Novice and Apprentice spell tomes can be found as loot regularly from certain types of enemies and chests; Adept and Expert spell tomes less frequently; and Master spells never (outside of the reward for the master spell quests).

Please let me know if I missed a merchant somewhere or if you see any other issues!

Compatibility & Technical Details

Please note that 'incompatible' here generally means that you will still see tomes from that mod from certain vanilla vendors, or that the mod adds new vendors who will sell mod and/or vanilla spell tomes.

If you have other mods that edit the same merchant containers and leveled lists, you must generate a bashed patch or merge those edits another way.  You will see only one mod's changes if you do not; in the case of this mod being overwritten, you would see spell tomes as normal at one or more vendors.

This mod will work together with any spell mods that add their tomes to existing leveled lists, whether that is done directly by an edit to the LVLI record or via script.  Most spell mods, to my knowledge, fall in this category.  The following mods, among others, should be compatible:

• Vanilla spells
• Apocalypse
• Arcanum
• Mysticism
• Odin
  

This mod will not affect any tomes added directly to a vendor's container, as well as any spell vendors added by mods.  Expected incompatibilities, generally due to adding new vendors, include:

• Triumvirate
• Phenderix Magic World
  

I don't have the time to make and support patches for this mod at present.  However, it's not too complex to patch it yourself if you're familiar with xEdit or the CK.  This mod works by editing vendor containers to remove LVLI records that add spell tomes.  To extend it to cover new vendors added by a mod, you would need to add that vendor's chest to the ESP as an override, and then edit it to remove any instances of leveled spell tome lists, just as this mod does for vanilla vendors.  (If you create a new plugin, you would also need to tag the mod with {{BASH:Invent}} if you use a bashed patch; if you're editing an existing ESP from this mod, don't worry about this.)

Alternatively, there are a few existing mods that remove spell tomes by editing the leveled lists themselves.  These do remove spell tomes from loot as well, but if you're having an incompatibility perhaps one of them will work better for your situation.

• No Spell Tomes as Loot or from Vendors
• xEdit Patcher
  

Installation

This mod has four versions available in the downloads; you need only one.  These versions are (1) either merged, which will remove all spell tomes regardless of level, or modular, which has five separate plugins for each spell level; and (2) either dependent only on the base game and DLCs, or require USSEP and forward its changes.  Install your chosen version as you normally would and, if using a modular version, delete the modules you do not intend to use.

With the modular version, you must generate a bashed patch (or another type of patch that will merge edits to leveled lists and containers) for the modules to work correctly with each other and the rest of your load order.  These plugins have bash tags already added and should merge into your bashed patch.

If you install the merged version, a bashed patch is not required, although I still recommend it.  Be aware that the edits made by this mod will be overwritten by any later-loading mods that edit the same merchant containers (and will overwrite any changes made by earlier-loading mods to those containers as well) unless you generate a bashed patch or handle it some other way.  If you see a merchant selling spell tomes as normal, this is a possible reason.

After installing or uninstalling this mod on an existing save, you will need to wait for the merchant chests to reset (normally two days) before changes will take effect.  To my understanding container contents aren't baked into saves, so you should be able to add or remove this mod without causing issues.  However I have not tested this, so please do keep a save from before you install.