(Immersive Jewelry is more than a jewelry pack, but a true immersion mod with many goals, including deepening the Skyrim ECONOMY, deepening the lore and gameplay aspects of the ENCHANTING system, diversifying the world and its many eras and CULTURES, and making the materials used in jewelry CRAFTING more realistic. It's also possible for other mods to make use of Immersive Jewelry's hidden enchantment perk for COMPATIBILITY.)

MANUAL TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Crafting
A. Ingots
B. Gems
C. Where to Begin
D. The Crafting Guide Book
II. Enchanting
A. Alchemy and Astrology Guide Books
B. Factors that Vary Enchantments
1. Metal Setting
2. Gem Type
3. Value (CCOR only)
III. Cultures
A. Full Leveled Lists Including Enchanted Lists
1. Nordic
2. Dwemer
3. Forsworn
B. Secondary Racial Lists
1. Imperial
2. Redguard
3. Vampire
4. Modern Noble
IV. Balancing the Economy
A. Profitability
B. Gold Sink Mods
1. Raising Investment Values
2. Increasing Daily Expenses
V. Compatibility
A. CCOR
B. Wintermyst
C. How to Make Armor, Weapon, and other Jewelry Mods Compatible with IJ.




I. CRAFTING

A. Ingots

The biggest change to crafting in Immersive Jewelry is that the large mesh brick sized ingots from the vanilla game are no longer used for jewelry crafting. Instead, these large ingots must be broken into "bars". Each vanilla ingot breaks into ten bars.

Some large jewelry pieces can be made with bars. Most circlets take at least one bar, vanilla circlets and torcs take three, and two vanilla necklaces can be made with one bar.

For smaller jewelry like rings and earrings, however, each "bar" of metal can be further broken into 4 "ring shanks". Ring shanks serve as bendable metal shapes that can be worked into jewelry designs. Many ring crafting projects simply begin with a ring shank that is shaped, engraved, and mounted with a faceted gem. Some finished rings are very slender, so they will require that the ring shank be broken again into a "slim ring shank". Slim ring shanks are the smallest store of officially determined value, but because you can't get smaller than 1 septim, not every metal will have a slim ring shank.

Ingots, Bars, and Ring shanks are weighted according to standards set by the Imperial Goldsmith's Guild. Ring shanks are of a shape useful for a jeweller to get at with his pliers to begin a crafting project. A "tab" is an amount of metal in a cube shape that is exactly equal to the amount in a ring shank of the same metal. Iron and Steel don't have ring shanks, but only tabs. That's because Skyforge Steel rings are traditionally beaten and folded, not poured into a mold. (And because the steel bar is already worth 2 septims and I couldn't have a .5 septim value. :-P ) No one ever makes copper or dwemer slim ring shanks either, and they don't appear in recipes.

In other words, the metal crafting breakdown runs thus:

ONE INGOT = 10 BARS = 40 RING SHANKS = 40 TABS = 80 SLIM RING SHANKS;
1 BAR = 4 RING SHANKS = 4 TABS = 8 SLIM RING SHANKS
1 RING SHANK = 1 TAB = 2 SLIM RING SHANKS

Gold and silver ingots are not just crafting materials. They're considered legal tender and stores of value by both the Imperials and the Stormcloaks. Because of that, they're referred to as "bullion" instead of ingots. Their value and their name is the only difference between them and regular metal ingots. Because moonstone is the least metallic, its full ingot is called a "feldspar brick". If you have the mod "Exchange Currency", you'll be able to cash in your legal tender ingots and bars at any merchant, or the East Empire Company.

B. Gems
Because of the breadth of jewelry featuring gems of various sizes that Immersive Jewelry adds, the vanilla regular gems and flawless gems have been renamed to "ten carat" and "thirty carat", respectively. This is to suggest that there is a consistency between a size of gem used for a large centerpiece stone for a circlet or necklace versus one that might appear on a ring. For the same reason, there are also "one carat" and "hundred carat" gems that it is possible to find. Carat is a measurement of weight, not clarity or luster, so measuring by carat weight, the gems truly do have a proportional weight assignment.

Here are examples of how different carat weight/size factor into crafting recipes:

ONE CARAT (.01 feather): for gems on vanilla rings or small bead gems on a chain.
TEN CARAT (.1 feather): the secondary gems on vanilla circlets, or gems which occupy the full width of a ring shank. Cut in half (2 x .05), they can be used as the center stones of vanilla necklaces.
THIRTY CARAT: (.3 feather): the centerpiece gems on vanilla circlets.
HUNDRED CARAT: (1.0 feather): large centerpiece gems on circlets or necklaces, example - the centerpiece on "HD Armored Circlets"

There are also FLAWED gems. These are usually considered to be around ten carats in weight, but have poor transparency or inclusions making them best suited for "cabochon" (rounded) and not faceted gem cuts. Flawed gems also are the best candidates to cut into one carat gems, with the least sacrifice in value for doing so.


C. Where to begin crafting

The simplest way to begin any crafting project is at the smelter. If you have a large ingot, you must break it into bars to craft jewelry. The "JEWELRY" tab on the smelter contains only metal exchange recipes, so everything is easy to find. For your convenience, there are recipes there also to convert ingots directly into 40 ring shanks, but you may not have a use for so many ring shanks and decide it's more sensible to start with bars.

You can smelt, split or combine any metal material into any size without knowing the perk, but to make ring shanks you'll need the appropriate crafting material perk.

D. Guide book

There is a book that can be found called "Imperial Goldsmith's Guild Pricing and Labor Guide", which is dated to the year that the Dragonborn will be questing in Skyrim. It reflects current guidelines that goldsmiths follow and outlines the fluctuations in the value of gems and metals against the septim because of the ongoing war.

II. Enchanting

A. Astrology and Alchemy Guidebooks

In Immersive Jewelry, to be a skilled enchanter is not merely about your power and focus in channeling magicka to imprint talismans with a magical effect. It's also important to have an understanding of the innate nature of metal and gem types and how they are attuned with the planets of Mundus and the five elements of Nature. According to Elder Scrolls lore, each of the planets corresponds with one of the Aedra, and thus with their affinities and dominions.

It is possible to find a manual written in the second era that explains the correspondences between the et'Aeda and the various functions of enchantment called "The Archidoxes of Talismata". Another book called "The Five Humours of Y'ffre" explains the nature of the gems and stones and their uses in enchantment. (In full release) Finally, it is also possible to purchase charms from alchemy and magic shops that outline some of the best gem and metal setting combinations to enhance certain effects, or which to avoid.

B. Factors that Vary Enchantment Power

Other than your perks which already affect enchantment skill, there are now three other factors that must be considered when your evaluate whether a piece of jewelry is fit to bear a certain enchantment. These are metal setting, gem type, and (with CCOR), value.

1. Metal Setting

The metals all correspond with the 8 Aedric planets and also with the moons Secunda and Masser. The traditional rulerships that the Divines have over various affairs of mortal life are the best clue as to which may be appropriate for certain enchantments. The metals are understood as representations of the "Earth Bones" that the Ehlnofey became when they elected to sacrifice their natures to constitute the mortal world, and still resonate with the moving Aedric planets in the night sky. In Immersive Jewelry, all the enchantment effects were researched for equivalent purposes in the magic of real world European occultism from the middle ages and Renaissance. The Aedric planets were equated archetypally with the Olympian planetary gods and their metals used in alchemy, astrology and those systems of magic.

2. Gem Type

According to some myths, the Aedra that sacrificed the most when Mundus was created was Y'ffre. In line with ancient theories of medicine, the different types of gem in the world are the crystallizations of the "four humours" of Y'ffre's body. They correspond with the elements Earth, Air, Fire, Water, and Spirit, and affect enchantments with purposes aligned with the traditional natures of those elements as seen in astrology.

3. Value

If you're using CCOR, then the value of a completed piece of jewelry will affect enchantment power as well. The first boost of 10% power occurs if a piece is worth more than 300 septims in its base value. A second boost of a further 10% comes if a piece is worth more than 900, or if a ring is worth more than 700. A final boost of 10% comes if a piece is worth more than 2500 septims.


III. Cultures

In Immersive Jewelry, different jewelry styles will be found in the treasure hordes of different cultures.

A. Full Unique Jewelry Levelled Lists

There are three levelled lists which were fully duplicated from vanilla for every entry, both in standard levelled lists and in enchanted levelled lists. These are Nordic, Dwemer, and Forsworn.

1. Nordic

Nordic jewelry contains rings with a classic swirling knotwork pattern seen since ancient times, kept alive right down to the present day by smithing families like the Graymanes. It also contains rings, necklaces, and circlets featuring animal patterns or shapes, particularly dragons, which were produced by the dragon cult.

Nordic craftsmanship tended to favor gold, silver, quicksilver, skyforge steel, ebony, and sometimes the Nordic smiths fashioned pieces out of found dwemer metal. It's also possible to find, in lower percentage, loot jewelry taken from their battles with the elves, but only in the most ancient of elven styles.

2. Dwemer

Dwemer jewelry is quite unique and can usually only be found in the ruins of ancient dwemer cities. Dwemer jewelry represents a wide swath of history - the things the dwemer wore include heirlooms that range all the way back in history to when they were culturally more akin to the Altmer, to jewelry representing the more articulate and precise minded style that arose when the dwemer became infatuated with logic. Curiously, what one is most likely to find are pieces that were in vogue at the time right before the dwemer disappeared, when they had been enjoying a trade relationship with Morrowind during the "First Council". Dwemer pieces can be found in gold, silver, quicksilver, steel, ebony, and the dwarves' own unique metal.

3. Forsworn

Although the forsworn are ranging out in the hills as if they were the same wild, tribal people as their ancestors, the reality is that other than the hagravens, most forsworn are city slickers from Markarth who have taken to the hills in rebellion. Their manner and style of dress is based on a fanciful idealization of "primitivism" and not all that accurate. Even in the vanilla game, the historical Red Eagle's actual sword was made of steel and not...antlers, as many of the forsworn choose to arm themselves.

Immersive Jewelry implements some logistical fixes too. Throughout forsworn camps are seen working forges. If forsworn weaponry is only antler and wood based, though, then what are the furnaces for? Melting glue? Immersive Jewelry adds the possibility of forsworn wielding weapons made of copper - something that inexperienced smiths can create without having the steel perk. It's also fitting because of how many of them would have been workers of the Silverblood mines.

Finally, forsworn are of course Bretons. Many of the pieces that can be found among forsworn are engraved with flowing Celtic knotwork, and could be treasured Breton heirlooms from High Rock. Breton jewelry can be found only in copper, silver, quicksilver, and gold.

B. Secondary Racial Lists

Although the following do not appear as full levelled lists with enchanted variants and all, they still comprise sets of jewelry that can be found in appropriate situations, and which adhere to the styles of their respective races.

1. Imperial

Medallions engraved with laurel leaves and necklaces of steel depicting the Empire diamond can be found in appropriate places like Imperial camps and the East Empire Trade Company, along with rings in a variety of gem cuts engraved with laurel and fluted patterns.

2. Redguard

Redguard jewelry can be found on Alik'r as well as at Kerah's jewelry stall in Markarth.
Most of Endon's work for sale at Kerah's stand in Markarth reflects the wide availability of silver in the region, but Redguard jewelry tends to also appear in orichalcum, which is one of their sacred metals, and rose gold, which is a combination of gold and copper.

3. Vampire

Some vampires have been (not) alive for a long time, so it's possible to find ancient jewelries from many cultures in vampire hordes. Vampires tend to keep pieces that would have been used by nobility in history (and maybe were taken from them). Vampires are also hedonists and obsessed with carnal desires, so it's also possible to find ostentatious pieces featuring extravagant gems presented in a debauched way.

4. Modern Noble

Modern nobility of Skyrim may possess fine jewelry passed down in their families as heirlooms, but have always considered both Altmer and Cyrodiilic items as the most desirable. Pieces reflecting current fashions of haute couture, such as lace chokers or jewelled chatelaines may also be found in their strongboxes.

IV Balancing the Economy

The economy of vanilla Skyrim is already imbalanced, with the player's personal end game gold being so high that there is nothing he can do with it. With a surplus of gold in inventory, taking the trouble to loot kills and chests and then haul things back to town to sell becomes less and less important, until usually the player stops bothering at all.

While part of the problem is that money is simply too abundant, the other part of the problem is that things which should cost significant amounts of money do not. The Breezehome in Whiterun, which although a bit run down, is still prime real estate in a walled town with a market and well nearby, is only 5000 septims. 5000 septims isn't all that much, especially when compared with the prices of other things in the game's economy, such as horses at 1000, or full meals at 200-300. Proudspire Manor, a home on the same block as one of the richest women in Skyrim, Vittoria Vici, only sells for 25,000.

So, when using Immersive Jewelry, which adds the possibility of finding pieces of jewelry and treasure that are worth 10-20x more than the most expensive piece of vanilla jewelry, a real problem can result. While part of Immersive Jewelry's purpose was to redesign the economy in terms of disparity between what is truly valuable and what is not, if there isn't the opportunity to spend lavish wealth in lavish ways, this will simply compound the vanilla problem of wealth being so ubiquitous as to be meaningless. Therefore, to truly enjoy the Immersive Jewelry experience of finding ancient, varied, and unique jewelry and yet still having a purpose to put it to, it's going to be necessary to use other mods that redress loot pawning as well as yet other mods which add gold sinks.

A. Adjusting Profitability

The most direct way to limit your end game gold is by limiting how much you get for pawned goods, and conversely how much it costs to buy things from shops. This is controlled by the game's "fbartermin" and "fbartermax" settings. What these minimum and maximum settings control is how much you get for a sold item at the lowest as well as how much you get at the highest speechcraft skill. Using fbartermin/max, you can either limit the effectiveness of the speechcraft skill by giving it a lower spread between numbers, or simply make the traders of Skyrim generally more stingy by setting both numbers relatively high.

Currently, "Trade and Barter" by Kryptopyr is the best additional mod that can help adjust fbartermin/max as well as apply a number of other limitations to your ability to sell and profit, such as whether you are wearing a helmet, whether your weapon is out, if you're a race that the shopkeeper detests, etc.


B. Gold Sink Mods

One of the best reasons to acquire wealth is the things that you can buy with it. Without the ability to exchange wealth for things of legitimate value or utility, wealth becomes worthless. One of the problems with the vanilla game is that once a certain amount of gold is reached, there is nothing else to buy with it, and it becomes a useless surplus. It becomes difficult to enjoy looting and selling from dungeons at that point because there is no longer any purpose in continuing to accumulate money you will never be able to spend.

There are two approaches to fixing this problem, which are both encouraged to fully enjoy the experience Immersive Jewelry adds. They are raising the value of vanilla investments on the one hand, and increasing daily expenses on the other.

1. Raising the Value of Investments

One of the best ways to both invest as well as display wealth is in real estate, especially in the quasi-medieval period that Skyrim is set in. The ownership of land and fine houses is truly what separates the noble and well-to-do from the peasantry. Taking an immersive approach, the two greatest expenditures that ostentatiously display wealth are real estate and hired help. To live the life of the rich requires lavish property and an expensive entourage. Fix your game by adding into it the ability to gain these in a realistic way.

Recommended Mods:

"Investment Price Config", by Vinifera7 - This lets you set the asking price of vanilla homes to a much more believable rate that is consistent with the Skyrim economy's attribution of values. This will fix the vanilla gold surplus as well as make the finding of a rare string of gems meaningful. "I could buy a palace with this..." The same mod will also allow you to change the price of horses and the initial signing bonus for followers.

2. Increasing Daily Expenses

The life of a mercenary should be difficult and require a prudent maintenance of a budget. In addition to being able to raise the initial signing bonus of a new hired follower with "Investment Price Config" above, you should also pay them an ongoing salary to keep them around, and maybe even allow them to keep and sell loot that they find on their own. Likewise, the municipal governments of Skyrim should exact their cut for the protection and services that they provide, and not only real estate, but really all lodging should be a bit more expensive.

Recommended Mods:

"Follower Live Package", by Oldcyder - This is a very extensive overhaul of follower AI. In addition to a host of numerous functions that followers will be able to do for themselves, including harvesting and crafting for themselves from raw materials, the main concern for support of IJ is that they will automatically loot from slain foes as well as from treasure chests. If you allow them to keep these things, this will limit the wealth that you personally are able to accumulate. Then, when your party returns to town, this mod enables them to leave on their own and independently interact with shopkeepers to sell their loot and purchase supplies that they need, including food and restocks of ammunition, potions, etc.

"Realistic Room Rental" by Perseid9 - In vanilla, rooms cost around ten septims, which actually costs less than the food items the innkeeper sells. Realistic Room Rental allows you to set the prices the inns will charge, the number of days you'll stay, and even the price for lodging per follower. This makes campaigning and travel incur a more significant cost.

"Loot and Degradation", by Isoku - This mod helps economic balance in two ways. On the one hand, you can set it so that if your weapons or armors are not maintained, they will eventually wear down through quality levels and then break. At the very least, this creates an expense for you in which you'll have to continually purchase ingots and repair kits to keep your armaments in top condition. At the most, you'll have charges to pay to blacksmiths for the service. The condition of equipment would be of paramount importance to someone in the Dragonborn's line of work, and you can imagine that a steady supply of high quality loot would be needed to justify the high expenses of maintenance. The other way this mod helps maintain balance is that all NPCs will loot their slain opponents, which means you'll be finding naked corpses more often than not, and this obviously limits the free loot you will find.

"Simple Taxes", by Matthiaswagg - This adds a tax collector who will visit you at intervals that you program to take a fixed sum from you according to the number of houses and/or horses you own. You can think of this as either rent, or if you own the house outright, a municipal property tax. For the horses, you can think of it as a community surcharge for stabling and upkeep. Given that you can leave your horse anywhere, the city would want to charge a fee for ...the cleanup.

"INeed", by Isoku, or "Realistic Needs and Diseases" by Perseid9 - Although these mods are technically needs/survival mods, the simple addition of the need for food and sleep adds another expense to account for. Food will need to be bought if it is not acquired in other ways, and lodging will have to be purchased without camping equipment.

You'll want to limit carry weight by some means so that you are required to be more selective in the loot you take. There are numerous mods that do this which are as good as any other. I recommend "Skytweak" however because of everything else that can be tweaked with it. For example, I set health regen to a very small amount like .01, which makes getting into combat a very strategic decision because of the recovery time involved (or the expense in potions). Of course, here's yet another reason to have hired help.

If you've limited your carry weight, having a means to add bags, such as "Bandolier" can be an immersive way to recover carry weight. This comes shipped in CCOR by Kryptopyr. I also would recommend "Functional Bags" which uses Bandolier assets but reduces carry weight in a different way.

Finally, a combat difficulty mod like "Deadly Combat", "Duel: Combat Overhaul", or "Ultimate Combat" is recommended so that you have a reason to hire followers.

V. Compatibility

Immersive Jewelry mainly deals with items, recipes, and leveled lists, so there's very little chance of incompatibility with any mod. Where there is a chance of incompatibility is with any mod that alters vanilla enchantments or their effects. This is because Immersive Jewelry adds missing keywords to some vanilla enchantments that it then uses to modify them with a perk. You can create compatibility with any mod that makes changes to enchantments by loading the optional universal patch after them. You can even merge this patch into any such mod to save space in your load order, as long as you DO NOT RENUMBER FORMIDs so that Immersive Jewelry considers them to be the same keywords as in its main esp.

Immersive Jewelry also has an easy method to make any mod which adds jeweled weapons compatible with its enchanting materials system through the use of injected update.esm masterless keywords which will be explained below.

A. CCOR

Immersive Jewelry contains globals for crafting menu functionality with Kryptopyr's Complete Crafting Overhaul remade so that the very significant menu length for Immersive Jewelry Crafting recipes can be reduced to show only circlets, amulets, or rings. In addition, CCOR is expected to detect the presence of Immersive Jewelry in the load order and alter its mining toggles so that the Immersive Jewelry "flawed" and "exquisite" (100 ct) gems have chances of showing up, to correct the imbalance of only vanilla flawless (30 ct) and quality (10 ct) gems appearing (which have very high value in IJ).

B. Wintermyst

Wintermyst adds more than one hundred interesting new enchantments to Skyrim, so having the opportunity to have such enchantments appear on the interesting and varied leveled list jewelry in Immersive Jewelry through the Wintermyst patcher is a highly desirable game experience. For the most part, Wintermyst enchantments use the same system as Immersive Jewelry, so for all of the included Wintermyst enchantments that are related to vanilla enchantment effects, the metals and gems in IJ will alter their power levels appropriately.

Some Wintermyst enchantments, however, are completely new and unrelated to vanilla enchantments, so Immersive Jewelry has no special commands to vary them according to material or gem type. The optional Wintermyst patch adds keywords to these new Wintermyst enchantments so that Immersive Jewelry's enchantment system can recognize their elemental and planetary qualities. Make sure that you do not have Immersive Jewelry active when you generate your Wintermyst proccer patch if you use it to proc your load order. The Wintermyst Patch for IJ goes after the generated proccer patch, if you make one.

C. How to Make Immersive Jewelry Compatible with any other Jewelry, Armor, or Jewelled Weapon Mod

Immersive Jewelry also contains perk entry points to alter the effects of enchantments that can be cast on weapons and not only on the armor enchantments that jewelry uses. Immersive Jewelry contains copper swords that can be found on forsworn leaders as a proof of concept for this (spoiler: copper really helps lightning enchantments), but it also contains the instructions to bend enchantments for gem type as well as metal type. This was designed for functionality with any weapon mod that has a jeweled weapon, as for example the silver breton sword from Crafting300 (sapphire hilt), or the regular vanilla dragonbone sword from Better Shaped Weapons (options for ruby or sapphire).

To implement the compatibility, all you have to do is use TES5Edit to copy the keyword from the option Immersive Jewelry universal patch to the keywords section of the .esp of the mod that has the jewelled weapon in it. Then simply assign the appropriate keywords to the weapon of your choice. The form IDs for the shared keywords all start with 01DE. The 01 is Update.esm, so if you copy them exactly and attach them they will inject into update.esm as if that was the master. Then IJ won't need to be a master to the weapon mod.

To assign the proper keyword, you should first attach one word like this depending on the material of the piece (all words start with "EarthBones") :

Gold: JewelrySolar 01DE3AAF
Silver: JewelryLunar 01DE3AAE
Quicksilver: JewelryMercurial 01DE3B13
Steel or Iron: JewelryMartial 01DE379A
Copper: JewelryVenutian 01DE3B63
Dwemer Metal: JewelryJovial 01DE3799
Orichalcum: JewelrySaturnian 01DE38F9
Ebony: JewelryMartialGreater 01DE3798
Glass: JewerlyVenutianGreater 01DE379B
Bone or Ivory: JewelrySpirit 01DE38F6
Dragonbone: GemSpirit (same as diamond) 01DE3AA6
Elven: Both JewelryVenutian 01DE3b63 and GemLunar (moonstone) 01DE3B6D
Gilded Elven: Both Jewelry Venutian 01DE3B63 and JewelryMercurial (quicksilver) 01DE3B13
Electrum (gold and silver combo) : JewelrySyzygy 01DE379D

note -if a weapon or armor already has a vanilla material keyword like ArmorMaterialEbony, then the above aren't necessary. Only pieces made of things like copper, or pieces like Imperial things which are made with steel but don't have the ArmorMaterialSteel keyword, for example, would need them.

And then attach one more word like this depending on the gem if there is one, none if there isn't:
Ruby: GemFire 01DE3AAA
Sapphire: GemWater 01DE3AAB
Emerald: GemEarth 01DE3AA7
Amethyst: GemAir 01DE3AA4
Diamond: GemSpirit 01DE3AA6
Aquamarine: GemWaterLesser 01DE3AAC
Garnet: GemFireLesser 01DE3AA9
Topaz: GemSolar 01DE3AA5
Onyx: GemMartial 01DE3AA8
Glass as a Gem: GemVenutianGreater 01DE379B
Pearl: Both JewelrySpirit 01DE38F6 and GemWaterLesser 01DE3AAC

You should only put keywords for two gems at maximum. If there's more than two gems on a piece, their powers should cancel each other and get no bonus and therefore no keywords, for balance.