themohawkninja Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 Hello, I have a character that uses the Ebony Blade, and I noticed that the USP makes the weapon upgradeable at a grindstone. While I understand why someone might feel that not being able to upgrade the Ebony Blade was a small bug/oversight on the part of the developers, the book Admonition Against Ebony clearly states that "Not even the hottest fires of the Skyforge could melt it; indeed the coals themselves seemed to cool when it was placed within. We cannot destroy it...". Therefore, I would like to hear an explanation as to why the developers of the USP decided that the Ebony Blade was meant to be upgradable. I'd like to upgrade the blade if it makes canonical sense, but the explanation on the Wiki as to why you can't seems to have a pretty solid argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urbeatle Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 I'm not a USP developer, but you can mine ebony ore, smelt it into ingots, and craft ebony armor and weapons without any mods. Further, Solstheim had an important role in the ebony trade. So the book Admonition Against Ebony is specifically saying that the Ebony Blade cannot be melted or destroyed. It doesn't warn that the blade can't be tempered, however. Dawnbreaker can be tempered with an ebony ingot in vanilla Skyrim, if you have the Arcane Smithing perk. It doesn't seem too far fetched to apply that rule to another daedric artifact. If that doesn't suit you personally, perhaps someone can make a patch that disables tempering for the Ebony Blade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
themohawkninja Posted August 5, 2015 Author Share Posted August 5, 2015 I'm not a USP developer, but you can mine ebony ore, smelt it into ingots, and craft ebony armor and weapons without any mods. Further, Solstheim had an important role in the ebony trade. So the book Admonition Against Ebony is specifically saying that the Ebony Blade cannot be melted or destroyed. It doesn't warn that the blade can't be tempered, however. Dawnbreaker can be tempered with an ebony ingot in vanilla Skyrim, if you have the Arcane Smithing perk. It doesn't seem too far fetched to apply that rule to another daedric artifact. If that doesn't suit you personally, perhaps someone can make a patch that disables tempering for the Ebony Blade. Tempering doesn't require extra material, tempering is the act of heating metal in a way that cools it slow enough so that it doesn't become brittle. To upgrade a weapon such that you need smithing skills and additional material would imply that you are in-fact adding to the weapon, which would require welding (and therefore hot coals), which is something that can't be done to the Ebony Blade. Dawnbreaker doesn't really count, because to the best of my knowledge, there isn't any text that states that it is immune to a forge's heat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daiyus Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 I don't want to cause any offence here, but I really don't see this as a problem, and that's coming from somebody who generally likes to see the lore reflected as accurately as possible. In this instance it really is a gameplay over lore thing (and Bethesda have done much worse in the past for the same reason). If some artifacts can be tempered and others not then it becomes very inconsistent. Tempering is a key component to keeping levelled items relevant at higher levels. If something cannot be tempered it puts it at a huge disadvantage. To adhere to the lore you'd have to de-level every artifact, balance that against which can be tempered or not, and then hope that other mods fall in line, otherwise the inconsistency becomes even more apparent when other authors use the Vanilla standard. While you're at it you could make it so that Daedric isn't forge-able except under a full moon. In my opinion that would be a really good mod, but the USKP team don't work to lore, they work to the game; if the game breaks the lore so will they. I may not like it, but the USKP team have done the best they can with a bad hand on this one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
urbeatle Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 I'm not a USP developer, but you can mine ebony ore, smelt it into ingots, and craft ebony armor and weapons without any mods. Further, Solstheim had an important role in the ebony trade. So the book Admonition Against Ebony is specifically saying that the Ebony Blade cannot be melted or destroyed. It doesn't warn that the blade can't be tempered, however. Dawnbreaker can be tempered with an ebony ingot in vanilla Skyrim, if you have the Arcane Smithing perk. It doesn't seem too far fetched to apply that rule to another daedric artifact. If that doesn't suit you personally, perhaps someone can make a patch that disables tempering for the Ebony Blade. Tempering doesn't require extra material, tempering is the act of heating metal in a way that cools it slow enough so that it doesn't become brittle. To upgrade a weapon such that you need smithing skills and additional material would imply that you are in-fact adding to the weapon, which would require welding (and therefore hot coals), which is something that can't be done to the Ebony Blade. Dawnbreaker doesn't really count, because to the best of my knowledge, there isn't any text that states that it is immune to a forge's heat. You're mixing up the real world and Skyrim. "Tempering" in the game means using a grindstone plus some raw material, usually an ingot, to improve the weapon. No hot coals are involved. That's what the USP adds to the Ebony Blade. That's not lore-breaking. If the USP were to add the ability to create or alter the Ebony Blade at a forge, or break it down into ebony ingots at the smelter, that would go against the lore you quote. Again, if you don't like having the Ebony Blade being improvable, that could probably be fixed with a patch. Why not make one? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts