Spell Rituals adds a system for preparing spells ahead of time by sacrificing alchemical components in a ritual.  A prepared spell costs less and casts faster (amount configurable by MCM).  The ingredients and magicka required to prepare a spell depend on that spell's general type (for example, an armor Alteration spell) and its base cost.

The goal with this mod is to give mage characters the option to plan ahead and spend some effort to prepare particular spells that are normally too expensive or slow to use in most situations (or just make a spell cheaper if you expect to use it a lot in the next dungeon!).  I wanted to add a way to prepare for challenging encounters that was more interesting than just stocking up on potions.

Let me know if you see any issues!


Features & Configuration

By default, only master-level spells can be prepared with a ritual.  The minimum spell level can be changed in the MCM, as can various other settings.  If the mod is configured so that lower-level spells can be prepared as well, spells of lower levels can be set to consume different numbers of components.


As of version 1.1, there is no longer a limit on how many spells your character can cast regularly with this mod.  There is however a maximum of 256 spells that you can have prepared at one time.  This limit ("Max prepared spells") can also be reduced if you'd like to play a character with a limited number of "spell slots" that they can fill with cheap and quick spells.


Walkthrough

To get started, craft a 'Ritual Spell Components' satchel at the tanning rack.


Select this item in your inventory to enable the mod.  Depending on what you have set in the MCM, spells that are unprepared may cost more with the mod active.  You should also learn a spell (Crystallize Magicka).  Cast Crystallize Magicka for some time (by default, 3 seconds) with another spell in your right hand to obtain a Magicka Crystal for that spell's school.


Now equip a spell above the minimum level in the MCM, then use the magicka crystal to begin preparing it as a ritual spell.  You should then see what components can be used to prepare this spell.


You can add components at any point by using the 'Ritual Spell Components' item from your inventory; you don't need to add them all at once.  As you add or remove components, a message will let you know whether you have enough.  Some components are especially powerful and worth several normal components; these aren't labeled, but are generally those that are more valuable or expensive.  You can also add extra components.  If you have four times as many components as necessary, you'll prepare four uses of the spell with one cast of the ritual.


If you have enough magicka, you can also complete the spell ritual even if you don't have enough components!  The multiplier for how much extra magicka this costs is configurable in the MCM.  Once you're ready, equip and cast the ritual spell.


The master spell will now be cheaper and faster to cast (depending on your settings).  Each cast uses up a preparation slot; once you've used them all, the spell will once again be unprepared and the cost will go back up.  For concentration spells, only one slot is used regardless of how long you cast it.  You can also choose to disable ritual spellcasting for all concentration spells from the MCM.


If you'd like to discard all of your prepared casts for any specific spell, you can do so by casting Crystallize Magicka with an empty right hand, then using the empty magicka crystal with the prepared spell equipped.  This will refund one magicka crystal of the appropriate school.

Spell categories and usable ritual components are listed here for reference.  These should be straightforward to modify in xEdit if you'd like.



Compatibility

This mod works with spells added by other mods, no patch needed.  Let me know if you see any strange behavior and I can take a look at the spell.

There shouldn't be any conflict with mods that change how you learn spells.

If you have a mod that allows you to remove spells, any spell you forget will still take up a slot in this mod if you forget it while it is prepared.  To avoid this, please un-prepare any spell you plan to remove before doing so!  This can be done by either using up all prepared casts or using an empty magicka crystal while the spell is equipped.  You can also un-prepare all spells by deactivating and re-activating the mod with the Ritual Spell Components item.

To uninstall the mod most safely, select the Ritual Spell Components item in your inventory and disable the mod in the dialogue popup.  As when uninstalling any plugin, it's possible you may still see side effects; if so, you can also simply keep the plugin installed, disable the mod, discard the Ritual Spell Components item, and hide the recipe from the MCM menu.


Known Limitations

Cast times are modified by changing the magic effects with SetCastTime().  This means that it's possible to see some strange behavior.

• If a spell does not use auto-calculate, its cast time won't be changed when prepared.
• If two spells use the same magic effect with a nonzero cast time, and both of them use auto-calculate, preparing one could make the other cast faster.
• As of version 1.1, if you prepare a spell, then load a save from when that spell wasn't prepared, it will still appear to be prepared in the UI and will cast faster.  This issue can be resolved by quitting to desktop and starting Skyrim again.  This is an unfortunate side effect of internal changes that allow the mod to be more efficient and the spell limit to be less restrictive.
  

Magicka cost is handled by a perk and FormList and thus shouldn't be affected by any of these issues.

Some spells won't be classified as you might expect due to scripting limitations.  For example, Guardian Circle logically fits as a turn undead spell, but this mod doesn't recognize it as such because the main spell effect isn't tagged as such, so it's treated as a general Restoration spell instead.  To classify this spell correctly the script would need to look at the hazard effect.  To my knowledge SKSE doesn't currently have functions available to do so.  Blizzard has a similar issue.

A maximum of 256 master spells can be prepared at a time.  Increasing this limit would require adding another set of arrays and recompiling the script.  If you have more than 256 spells you routinely cast and want to prepare with this mod, I guess let me know in the comments?  My assumption is that this limit will be high enough for most people.

Spell Rituals needs to listen for OnSpellCast events in order to function.  It's possible this could add minor script lag, though I did my best to minimize it.  There is also a maintenance script function that runs each time a game is loaded.  This is needed to update spell names and cast times; it's essential to the function of the mod.  Disabling this mod with the Ritual Spell Components item will prevent it from doing either of these things if needed.  It will also reset all spells.


Tweaking and Troubleshooting

If you're familiar with the Creation Kit or xEdit, it's fairly straightforward to modify the ingredients used for different types of spells (up to a maximum of eight each, at which point you'd need to add additional dummy ingredients and add them to the script properties).  These ingredients are defined in FormLists; the editor IDs start with __SpellRitualsFList.  You can also set spells to be specifically ignored by the mod (__SpellRitualsFList00Exclude) or ingredients to be worth more than normal ingredients (__SpellRitualsFList00IngrPowerful).

You can also patch the file to use different effects for each category.  I have an example patch available (in optional files) that will switch to pointing to the super cool effects from Visual Master Spells for rituals; you need to have the meshes and textures from the mod installed, but don't need to enable the plugin unless you want to use those effects when casting the master spells as well.