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.

This mod is working well on my personal setup, but there are many spell and gameplay mods I haven't tested with! Let me know if you see any issues.


Walkthrough

To get started, craft a 'Ritual Spell Components' satchel at the tanning rack. Select this item in your inventory to enable the mod. Internally, this adds a perk to the player that will handle most of the mod functions. 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 master-level spell of that school, then use the magicka crystal, to set it up as a ritual spell. At this point the spell is unprepared, and by default will cost more magicka than before; you can configure this as you'd like in the MCM. You should now 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.

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

Alteration:
Armor (MagicArmorSpell): Nirnroot, Crimson Nirnroot, Slaughterfish Scales, Mudcrab Chitin, Bear Claws, Nordic Barnacle
Paralysis (MagicParalysis): Briar Heart, Nirnroot, Crimson Nirnroot, Imp Stool, Nordic Barnacle, Canis Root
Default: Nirnroot, Crimson Nirnroot, Chicken's Egg, Torchbug Thorax, Nordic Barnacle, Canis Root


Conjuration:
Fire (MagicSummonFire): Daedra Heart, Fire Salts, Dragon's Tongue, Dwarven Oil, Lavender
Frost (MagicSummonFrost): Daedra Heart, Frost Salts, Thistle Branch, Frost Mirriam, Lavender
Shock (MagicSummonShock): Daedra Heart, Void Salts, Glowing Mushroom, Purple Mountain Flower, Lavender
Undead (MagicSummonUndead): Vampire Dust, Human Heart, Ectoplasm, Bone Meal, Deathbell, Lavender
Default: Hagraven Claw, Wisp Wrappings, Lavender, Blue Butterfly Wing, Deathbell


Destruction:
Fire (MagicDamageFire): Fire Salts, Dragon's Tongue, Dwarven Oil, Red Mountain Flower, Snowberries
Frost (MagicDamageFrost): Frost Salts, Ice Wraith Teeth, Thistle Branch, Frost Mirriam, Red Mountain Flower, Snowberries
Shock (MagicDamageShock): Void Salts, Glow Dust, Glowing Mushroom, Purple Mountain Flower, Red Mountain Flower, Snowberries
Default: Glow Dust, Nightshade, Red Mountain Flower, Deathbell, Hanging Moss


Illusion:
Charm (MagicInfluenceCharm): Nirnroot, Crimson Nirnroot, Mora Tapinella, Honeycomb, Creep Cluster
Fear (MagicInfluenceFear): Eye of Sabre Cat, Bear Claws, Namira's Rot, Chaurus Eggs, Creep Cluster
Frenzy (MagicInfluenceFrenzy): Hagraven Feather, Fly Amanita, Falmer Ear, Chaurus Eggs, Creep Cluster
Default: Ice Wraith Teeth, Chaurus Eggs, Luna Moth Wing, Creep Cluster, Honeycomb


Restoration:
Heal (MagicRestoreHealth): Troll Fat, Butterfly Wing, Blue Mountain Flower, Hawk Feathers, Tundra Cotton
Turn (MagicTurnUndead): Vampire Dust, Salt Pile, Garlic, Blue Mountain Flower, Tundra Cotton
Default: Troll Fat, Taproot, Tundra Cotton, Blue Mountain Flower, Salt Pile

Powerful ingredients: Nirnroot, Crimson Nirnroot, Briar Heart, Fire Salts, Frost Salts, Void Salts, Hagraven Claw, Glow Dust, Hagraven Feathers, Eye of Sabre Cat, Ice Wraith Teeth, Vampire Dust, Troll Fat, Taproot, Daedra Heart, Human Heart, Wisp Wrappings


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. If a spell internally uses the Cast function to create some of its spell effects, it's possible this could erroneously be picked up by the mod if you have the "Register on cast" option on; if you see this happening, the easiest workaround is just to disable that option.

There shouldn't be any conflict with mods that change how you learn spells. Some of the MCM options may act a little differently; for example, if you're using the "Register on read" option, ritual spellcasting will be set up automatically for spells you learn from spell tomes, but not spells you learn through a system like Spell Research. You can always set up a spell by using a magicka crystal while it's equipped.

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

If a spell does not use auto-calculate, its cast time won't be reduced when prepared. Cost should still be reduced as normal.

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; 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 128 master spells can be set up for ritual casting with the mod. Increasing this limit would require adding another array and modifying the script to handle that. I haven't done that largely because I assume few people actually learn and cast more than 128 master spells in their games. If you hit this limit, the mod can either ignore spells after that or replace the first ones added (MCM setting). You could also disable and re-enable the mod via the Ritual Spell components item, which would reset all spells so you can choose which 128 to ritual cast. Be aware this will also unprepare all spells.

Spell Rituals needs to listen for OnSpellCast events in order to function. It's possible this could add minor script lag (or major script lag, if another mod fires a large number of spells by script from the player). 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 use the super-cool effects from Visual Master Spells for rituals; you need to download the meshes and textures from that mod, but don't need to enable the plugin unless you want to use those effects when casting the master spells as well.