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About this mod
Learn to cast spell and shout versions of dragon breath attacks by killing dragons. Optional add-ons available for Alduin's meteor shout and Diverse Dragons Collection.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
This mod was inspired by concentrative shout mods (like this one) as well as the Dragon Fury / Hatred spells from the excellent Aetherial Tomes. Those abilities felt awesome to use, and I wanted more of that in my game, so I took the idea and ran with it.
The basic idea is that for each breath attack that dragons can use against you, this mod adds (1) a shout visually similar to that breath attack and (2) a similar spell that starts out castable by a novice, but will scale up in cost and strength as your character gains more magicka. Shouts and spells can be toggled in the MCM if you only want one or the other; by default, you have a chance to learn either a related shout word or spell anytime you kill a dragon with the corresponding breath attack.
Important side note
Due to a combination of how dragon breath attack meshes and Skyrim's projectile settings are set up, the best way I found to create these effects as spells is to re-launch the projectile several times a second. This is fine from a performance standpoint, but results in a noticeable flicker while some of the spells are being cast, especially in first person. If you're sensitive to flashing lights, please exercise caution.
What this mod does
Full list of spells & other details
Vanilla breath attacks:
Spells:
Spells:
Spells:
I did my best to balance spells and shouts roughly in line with vanilla cost/cooldown to damage ratios. I made some more costly because they inflict lingering damage or debuffs, and some cheaper because they are situational and will only do full damage to certain types of enemies. Do let me know your thoughts on strength, I'm not very experienced with this sort of thing and I expect to have to rebalance some!
Two enchanted weapons that increase the chance of learning an ability from this mod when killing a dragon are also placed in the world. Locations under spoiler:
Additionally, if you want one or more of the spells or shouts right away, you can place a cheat chest with the console:
The code to use with placeatme will vary depending on your load order; change it to match what the help command prints out.
Compatibility and Add-Ons
Installation
This mod can be installed as you normally would. The only hard requirement is the base game. If you have SKSE and SkyUI, you will have access to the MCM, but this isn't required to use the mod.
Spell Perk Item Distributor is a soft requirement; if present, it is used to add the monitor ability to dragons that allows you to learn spells upon their demise. If you don't have SPID, you can still use this mod, but to learn the spells you will need to pick up one of the two enchanted weapons and use them. Additionally, if you want to use the meteor add-on, you cannot learn the spell and shout from killing Alduin without SPID; instead, you'll need to get them from the cheat chest.
Recommended Mod Pairings
Performance & Technical
The basic idea is that for each breath attack that dragons can use against you, this mod adds (1) a shout visually similar to that breath attack and (2) a similar spell that starts out castable by a novice, but will scale up in cost and strength as your character gains more magicka. Shouts and spells can be toggled in the MCM if you only want one or the other; by default, you have a chance to learn either a related shout word or spell anytime you kill a dragon with the corresponding breath attack.
Important side note
Due to a combination of how dragon breath attack meshes and Skyrim's projectile settings are set up, the best way I found to create these effects as spells is to re-launch the projectile several times a second. This is fine from a performance standpoint, but results in a noticeable flicker while some of the spells are being cast, especially in first person. If you're sensitive to flashing lights, please exercise caution.
What this mod does
- When you kill a dragon that knows a breath attack, you have a chance to learn to cast a spell or shout based on that type of breath attack
- If you only want the spells or only want the shouts, the MCM has a setting to control what the mod will teach you!
- Vanilla fire and frost attacks are supported
- Optional add-ons are available to support (1) Alduin's meteor shout and (2) attacks from Diverse Dragons Collection
- Damage of spells increases with the number of dragon souls you currently have (+1% damage per dragon soul, toggleable in MCM)
- Dragon souls scaling can also be turned on for this mod's shouts only or all shouts
- Cost and damage of spells both increase along with your current available magicka (scaled by 1 + magicka/100)
- Spells will appear in the menu as master-level spells, and should benefit from appropriate perks for the most part
- The idea is for these abilities to be usable throughout the playthrough, but to get stronger as you get stronger and stay competitive with other options you have
Full list of spells & other details
Vanilla breath attacks:
Spells:
Spoiler:
Shouts:Show
- Draconic Flame: Unleash dragonfire to burn enemies for <mag>/s damage.
- Draconic Ice: Release an icy blast to freeze enemies for <mag>/s damage to health and half that to stamina.
Spoiler:
Meteor Add-On:Show
- Inferno (Fire Inferno Sun): Your Voice kindles a continuous plume of flame.
- Sleetstorm (Frost Cold Freeze): Exhale your Thu'um as a lingering icy blast.
Spells:
Spoiler:
Shouts:Show
- Draconic Skyfall: Call down a swarm of meteors upon foes in a <area> ft radius, lasting <dur> seconds.
Spoiler:
Diverse Dragons Collection Add-On:Show
- Skyfall (Storm Sand Eternity): Your Voice calls fiery stones from the heavens, bombarding enemies nearby. The first two words of this shout may be used indoors; possible it could look strange if the ceiling is very low!
Spells:
Spoiler:
Shouts:Show
- Draconic Hunger: Consume <mag>/s health from all enemies in front of you.
- Draconic Enervation: Consume <mag>/s health, <mag>/s magicka, and <mag>/s stamina from all enemies in front of you.
- Draconic Filament: Release a beam of pure solar energy to scorch enemies for <mag>/s damage, quadrupled for undead.
- Draconic Geyser: Cast out a wide plume of lingering steam, scalding enemies for <mag>/s damage.
- Draconic Tephra: Launch a plume of ash and embers to inflict <mag>/s damage to health and stamina and lingering physical exhaustion.
- Draconic Balefire: Release a gout of arcane fire to inflict <mag>/s damage to health and magicka and lingering mental exhaustion.
- Draconic Blight: Release a caustic spray that deals <mag>/s damage, doubled for living enemies.
- Draconic Nightfire: Unleash a stream of lunar fire for <mag>/s damage at night, <mag>/s otherwise.
- Draconic Wildfire: Spray oily dragonfire that burns for <mag>/s damage and lingers on hit enemies and surfaces.
- Draconic Stormbreath: Discharge static energy for <mag>/s damage to health and half that to magicka.
- Draconic Contagion: Infect enemies with a lingering sickness, directly dealing <mag>/s and sapping enemies' available magicka and stamina.
- Draconic Withering: Release a flood of negative energy, damaging non-undead enemies for <mag>/s and briefly reanimating any killed.
- Draconic Sandstorm: Hurl a cascade of stony fragments, staggering and bludgeoning enemies for <mag>/s damage.
Spoiler:
Thanks to opusGlass and the other authors whose work is part of Diverse Dragons Collection! It's their meshes that are doing the heavy lifting for these spell and shout visuals.Show
- Hunger (Life Leech Suffer): Form your Voice into a dark cloud that devours health from any that touch it.
- Enervation (Essence Leech Suffer): Siphon health, magicka, and stamina from all enemies in front of you.
- Filament (Life Inferno Sun): Release a beam of pure solar energy inimical to the undead.
- Geyser (Wind Fury Tempest): Cast out a plume of lingering superheated steam.
- Tephra (Earth Flesh Statue): Exhale a choking cloud of ash and embers that exhausts your foes.
- Balefire (Fire Magicka Health): Release a gout of arcane fire that depletes your enemies' reserves of magical power.
- Blight (Life Finite Temporary): Exhale a caustic spray that corrodes flesh, bone, and metal. Living enemies are most affected.
- Nightfire (Time Inferno Sun): Unleash a stream of lunar fire that is drastically more effective at night.
- Wildfire (Fire Never Dying): Manifest your Thu'um as a spray of oily dragonfire, lingering on surfaces and enemies.
- Stormbreath (Air Wrath Lightning): Channel your Thu'um into a powerful long-range static discharge.
- Contagion (Strength Finite Temporary): Infect enemies with a lingering sickness that saps their energy and mental acuity.
- Withering (Curse Tear Zombie): Release a flood of necromantic energy that sickens non-undead enemies and briefly reanimates any killed.
- Sandstorm (Whirlwind Sand Eternity): Your Voice calls up a cascade of stony fragments, bludgeoning and knocking down your enemies.
I did my best to balance spells and shouts roughly in line with vanilla cost/cooldown to damage ratios. I made some more costly because they inflict lingering damage or debuffs, and some cheaper because they are situational and will only do full damage to certain types of enemies. Do let me know your thoughts on strength, I'm not very experienced with this sort of thing and I expect to have to rebalance some!
Two enchanted weapons that increase the chance of learning an ability from this mod when killing a dragon are also placed in the world. Locations under spoiler:
Spoiler:
If you'd prefer not to have these spawn or if you have any compatibility issues, you can safely remove them by deleting everything under CELL in xEdit.Show
- Skakmat's Talon - placed on the table behind Rahgot in the final area of Forelhost
- Dragonguard Blade - appears on the table in the Sky Haven Temple armory
Additionally, if you want one or more of the spells or shouts right away, you can place a cheat chest with the console:
help "draconic magic cheat chest"
CONT: (FE08683A) 'Draconic Magic Cheat Chest'
player.placeatme FE08683A
The code to use with placeatme will vary depending on your load order; change it to match what the help command prints out.
Compatibility and Add-Ons
Spoiler:
Show
Fully compatible, no patch needed:
Optional patches are also available to integrate this mod's spells with my mod Dino's Spell Discovery, available as part of the Extra Patches download from that page. These spells are flagged as not discoverable via normal research, but staves can be crafted or reverse-engineered with the patch. Tomes, although not added to leveled lists or otherwise normally obtainable, are implemented in the plugin-- so I believe mods like Arcane Studies should also work with this mod. Let me know if this isn't the case, I didn't test it.
- Dragon mods that add new dragons or change existing dragons
- Mods that change what voices your character uses for shouts or re-use vanilla shout dialogue (like Thunderchild) don't need a patch to work together with this mod. I found a nice trick that let me avoid editing the base VoicePowers quest dialogue thanks to a Nexus forums thread I've since unfortunately lost track of. If you'd like to make a mod that re-uses vanilla dialogue without needing to manually make a copy of the sound file, the method I used is described in this article.
- Dragon mods that add new breath attacks need a patch if you want to be able to learn abilities for those attacks. A patch is available to add breath attacks from Diverse Dragons Collection. Although I can't promise I'll have the time or motivation to put together other patches, you're welcome to let me know if there's another dragon mod you'd like put on the list.
- If another mod changes the Dragonborn Flame / Frost abilities from Dragonborn, a compatibility patch would be needed to allow the new version of those abilities to work correctly with this mod's Draconic Fire & Frost Breath shouts. A patch is available for Forceful Tongue.
- If another mod changes the script used by the Storm Call shout, a compatibility patch might be needed for the meteor shout add-on, as it re-uses the same script for its effects.
- If another mod removes vanilla breath attacks from dragons entirely and adds its own versions, this mod may not recognize the dragon type correctly and won't teach you anything. This is a possible cause if you aren't learning spells or shouts after killing dragons even if you set the learn chance to 100% in the MCM and either (1) have SPID installed or (2) are using this mod's enchanted weapons to kill dragons. Let me know if you think this is happening and I can look at making a patch.
Optional patches are also available to integrate this mod's spells with my mod Dino's Spell Discovery, available as part of the Extra Patches download from that page. These spells are flagged as not discoverable via normal research, but staves can be crafted or reverse-engineered with the patch. Tomes, although not added to leveled lists or otherwise normally obtainable, are implemented in the plugin-- so I believe mods like Arcane Studies should also work with this mod. Let me know if this isn't the case, I didn't test it.
Installation
This mod can be installed as you normally would. The only hard requirement is the base game. If you have SKSE and SkyUI, you will have access to the MCM, but this isn't required to use the mod.
Spell Perk Item Distributor is a soft requirement; if present, it is used to add the monitor ability to dragons that allows you to learn spells upon their demise. If you don't have SPID, you can still use this mod, but to learn the spells you will need to pick up one of the two enchanted weapons and use them. Additionally, if you want to use the meteor add-on, you cannot learn the spell and shout from killing Alduin without SPID; instead, you'll need to get them from the cheat chest.
Recommended Mod Pairings
- Sil Gahrot gives you a chance to learn a shout word from the vanilla game anytime you kill a dragon
- Souls do Things 2 allows you to enable a few different bonuses for your character depending on how many dragon souls you have, plus a few other things to do with your excess dragon souls
- Because this mod adds many new shouts with long cooldowns, you may want a mod like Individual Shout Cooldowns, its remake, or my own Shout Cooldowns Parallelized to make it easier to use a variety of shouts in combat
Performance & Technical
Spoiler:
Show
This mod uses a helper spell on dragons (added by SPID if you have it; otherwise, the weapon enchantment does it). When a dragon dies, this ability checks whether the player was the killer, and if so, has a chance to try to teach the player an appropriate spell or shout. If the random roll succeeds, a script function is called that checks whether the killed dragon knew a type of shout known to the mod. If it did, the player will be taught a corresponding ability, unless they already knew it. For example, if the player kills any dragon that knows a fire breath shout, they can learn Draconic Flame.
Performance-wise, this means that there is a bit of script activity when you kill a dragon. I've tried to optimize the script to reduce the amount of work done and I don't see any noticeable performance impact on my setup. However if you do notice problematic lag in the seconds after killing a dragon, one possible workaround would be to set the base learning chance to 0% and only use the enchanted weapons to kill dragons when you're sure you can take the performance hit.
I chose this implementation because I thought it was the most efficient way to set up the spell/shout learning while ensuring that you'd learn thematically-appropriate abilities by the type of dragon killed (and retaining compatibility with mods that add new dragon actors). I'd be happy to hear any ideas for how to improve it further.
Performance-wise, this means that there is a bit of script activity when you kill a dragon. I've tried to optimize the script to reduce the amount of work done and I don't see any noticeable performance impact on my setup. However if you do notice problematic lag in the seconds after killing a dragon, one possible workaround would be to set the base learning chance to 0% and only use the enchanted weapons to kill dragons when you're sure you can take the performance hit.
I chose this implementation because I thought it was the most efficient way to set up the spell/shout learning while ensuring that you'd learn thematically-appropriate abilities by the type of dragon killed (and retaining compatibility with mods that add new dragon actors). I'd be happy to hear any ideas for how to improve it further.