Skyrim Special Edition

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SimonMagus

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SimonMagus

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About this mod

Thaumaturgy is a complete overhaul of Skyrim’s enchanting system designed to balance existing enchantments and add powerful new weapon and armor enchantments to the game.

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Thaumaturgy - An Enchanting Overhaul 

Thaumaturgy is a complete overhaul of Skyrim’s enchanting system designed to balance existing enchantments and add powerful new weapon and armor enchantments to the game. By leveraging Skyrim’s slot restriction mechanic, Thaumaturgy is able to fix several of the problems with Vanilla enchanting (such as 100% cost reduction) while still ensuring that each individual enchantment feels meaningful. Thaumaturgy also removes some useless or bugged enchantments, eliminates the crafting loop, adds missing generic items to the loot lists, and ensures that generic items are equal in strength to player-created enchantments.

Thaumaturgy does not require my other mods, but it is designed to be consistent with them. For instance, Thaumaturgy adds weapon enchantments for several of Mysticism’s Alteration and Illusion archetypes, and some of the new armor enchantments mirror the potion effects added by Apothecary.

Weapon Enchantments 

The magnitudes in the following list reflect the strength of an enchantment created by a character with 100 Enchanting and all of the Vanilla perks. Generic enchantments have been reworked to be consistent with player-created enchantments at all levels.

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Notes

  • Damage values for Fire, Frost, and Shock damage are (mostly) equal to Vanilla. The incredible power creep that was possible in Vanilla did not come from enchanting itself, but from outside effects such as the crafting loop and Destruction perks.
  • Absorb Magicka and Stamina will no longer work on characters who have no Magicka or Stamina to absorb. 
  • Weakness to Fire, Frost, Shock, and Poison allow spellswords to buff the damage of their spells. Weakness to Poison is especially suited to alchemists, since it allows poisons to affect enemies such as Draugr and automatons.
  • Turn Undead, Banish, and Illusion enchantments now all have a 25% chance to trigger. Power Attacking increases this chance to 50%, and also doubles the target level of the enchantment.
  • Soulbrand is a reinterpretation of Fiery Soul Trap, and replaces that enchantment. The name of the Steel Battleaxe of Fiery Souls is edited as well.
  • Scrambled Bugs is recommended in order to ensure that Chaos Damage scales properly with Enchanting skill.

Armor Enchantments 

The magnitudes in the following list reflect the strength of an enchantment created by a character with 100 Enchanting and all of the Vanilla perks. Generic enchantments have been reworked to be consistent with player-created enchantments at all levels. The armor slots on which these enchantments can be placed are listed in parenthesis. No distinction is made between armor and robes, or between circlets, hoods, and helmets. 

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Notes 

  • Most skill enchantments can only be placed on two items, reducing the massive power creep offered by armor enchantments. This change also encourages players to pursue more diverse enchantments rather than stacking the same two enchantments over and over again.
  • Magnitude values for Fortify One-handed, Fortify Two-handed, and Fortify Marksman were extremely high in Vanilla and have been significantly reduced. 
  • Armor enchantments stack additively with their alchemical counterparts, reducing the power creep that occurred when combining both alchemy and enchanting on a single character.
  • Enchantments that fortify Health, Magicka, Stamina, Health Regeneration, Magicka Regeneration, and Stamina Regeneration are slightly weaker than in Vanilla. However, unlike in Vanilla, pre-enchanted items will not be two or three times more powerful than player enchanted items.
  • Scrambled Bugs is recommended in order to allow Reflect Damage to stack beyond 100%.

Mage Gear 

When standardizing the value of player-created and generic enchantments, one of the difficulties that we encountered was that mage gear, especially gear with Magicka Regeneration as an enchantment, was extremely common in Skyrim. Furthermore, the values on these enchantments were extremely high. Items with 50% Magicka Regeneration can be found just laying around, free for the taking, despite the fact that a Master Enchanter could only put 62% Magicka Regeneration on an item in Vanilla. Over time, I’ve started to suspect that someone at Bethesda knew that Skyrim’s magic balance was pretty poor, and one strategy that they employed to fix this problem was throwing overpowered mage gear at the players. (Think about the fact that you get a Novice Hood and Novice Robes in Helgen and then you are immediately given another Novice Hood and an even better robe as soon as you get to the College.) 

After extensive playtesting, I believe that Simonrim (and other mod suites) addresses the core problems of magic balance, and that overcompensating from gear is no longer a desirable strategy. Because of that, I’ve made some changes to low level mage gear. 

  • Basic mage robes (especially the blue and black robes you see everywhere) are no longer enchanted. 
  • Other types of clothing and robes that used to have a 50% Magicka Regeneration enchantment now have a 25% Magicka Regeneration enchantment.
  • College robes with school-based enchantments have reduced Magicka Regeneration. To compensate for this nerf, they have a unique enchantment that gives 25% cost reduction to level-appropriate spells from their specific school. For instance, Apprentice Robes of Illusion reduce the cost of all Novice and Apprentice Illusion spells by 25%.
  • College robes without a school based enchantment are no longer enchanted. These robes were always worse than robes with school-based enchantments, so I don’t believe this is a very big loss. Also, you can use these robes to make your own enchanted versions of the College robes. This is a quality of life tweak I’ve always wanted as a player, so I hope you like it too. 

Thaumaturgy - Jump Boots Addon

This plugin changes the Slowfall Enchantment into a Fortify Acrobatics Enchantment, which doubles your jump height and reduces your fall damage by 50%. This is a non-scaling enchantment that can only be placed on boots. Additionally, this plugin also turns the Predator's Grace boots into a special artifact. These boots increase your jump height by five times and reduce your fall damage by 50%. Finally, if you have the Mysticism - Jump Spell Addon, casting the spell Leap or Slowfall while wearing boots will cause the effects to stack together multiplicatively. 

I added these spells and enchantments because it's fun to jump over houses, but it is possible to use them to get into some trouble. You can probably jump over the walls of a city and, without Open Cities or a similar mod installed, find yourself in a strange alternate version of the town, or you might skip a trigger box or otherwise sequence break a quest mod. There's very little risk of permanent harm, but please enjoy these spells responsibly. 

Thaumaturgy - Weapon Enchantment XP Tweak

Disenchanting weapons gives you very little XP, and fixing this problem through an ESP is both very difficult and quite incompatible. Therefore, Thaumaturgy now comes with an optional DLL to increase the XP you gain from disenchanting weapons by 15 times. This causes weapons to give XP that is more similar to the XP granted from disenchanting armors, and it also does wonders for leveling your enchanting higher without annoying, repetitive grinding. This DLL requires Address Library, and comes in a FOMOD with 1.5.97 and 1.6+ versions available. In addition, there's no dependency on Thaumaturgy for this DLL, so you can use it along with Summermyst to solve the same issue.

Compatibility

Thaumaturgy is not compatible with other enchanting overhauls, including Summermyst, and no patches will be provided. Some mods that need to adjust armor stats, templates, or leveled lists may step on Thaumaturgy's toes. Usually these conflicts should be relatively minor. We have provided a patch for WACCF and may provide other patches upon request. 

Thaumaturgy should be roughly compatible with any mod that adds armor or weapons. New enchantments will not be generated on new armors and weapons, but existing enchantments should function as expected. Due to the near-infinite number of these types of mods, it is unlikely I will provide patches.

Thaumaturgy should be compatible with any perk overhaul. If you encounter any specific problems, bring them to my attention and I will investigate whether a patch is required. 

The Simonrim Team 

Simon Magus (Nexus / Patreon) 
DeltaRider (Nexus / Patreon)
Oreo (Nexus / Patreon)
Colinswrath (Nexus / Patreon)

The Simonrim Suite

Aetherius - A Race Overhaul
Mundus - A Standing Stone Overhaul
Mysticism - A Magic Overhaul
Adamant - A Perk Overhaul
Hand to Hand - An Adamant Addon
Blade and Blunt - A Combat Overhaul
Arena - An Encounter Zone Overhaul
Scion - A Vampire Overhaul
Manbeast - A Werewolf Overhaul
Stormcrown - A Shout Overhaul
Pilgrim - A Religion Overhaul
Thaumaturgy - An Enchanting Overhaul
Sorcerer - A Staff and Scroll Overhaul
Apothecary - An Alchemy Overhaul
Gourmet - A Cooking Overhaul
Journeyman - A Fast Travel Overhaul