LE Advanced Rituals - Anything out there?

[Baaleos]

Rituals and complex spells in Skyrim tend to be very 'one off-ish' - you do a quest, see something awesome, then never see it again.

 

Examples that I speak of would be like when Serana uses her blood to open the Soul Cairn portal - very cinematic effect.

Mixing ingredients etc to make a spell like effect.

 

Is there any mods out there that do this in a repeatable fashion?

 

 

I was thinking of a mod where you had some items:

Ritual Chalk - draws a ritual circle on the ground (like how campfire makes tents?)

Candles - Applies candles to the ritual circle

Then you can drop the ingredients in the circle

Cast the trigger spell - the ingredients are consumed - and spell like effect takes place.

Spell Like effect could trigger animations on the player - such as the stabbing animation that the Arentino boy does - (you could perform the black sacrament )

They could also do things like change the weather, trigger dragon attacks, curse marked npc's etc

This would be particularly nice for RP'ing as a necromancer or conjurer.

 

 

My inspiration for much of these effects come from a mod that exists for Minecraft - called Witchery - where you could draw circles on the ground, and then add reagents to be used in the rituals.
If the Mod was designed in the right way, the spells/rituals could be modular and extendable via other Mods.

 

 

 

 

 

[Elias555]

I doubt there are many due to how tedious it would be to the vast majority of players. There's a basic one in one of my mods. You go to a hall of the dead and cast a spell while you have a black soul gem. For the next hour, some of your spells will be boosted.

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/83842

I was going to add a few but I couldn't see myself or anyone else really enjoying them.

 

The only way I know to draw a circle would be a scroll that creates a fake rune spell. Once the trap is triggered, I should be able to make the spell look for the correct ingredients within the circle and then create whatever effect I'm aiming for.

If I were to make one vampire mage themed, what should it do?

[Baaleos]

I am looking at:

http://skyrimsurvival.com/home/campfire/mod-developers/creating-campfire-mods/tutorial-1-my-first-chair/

 

and

http://skyrimsurvival.com/home/campfire/mod-developers/creating-campfire-mods/tutorial-2-my-chair-now-with-more-cowbell/

 

The campfire mod provides a system for placing any static / activator object dynamically via a carried item.

To use this system would require having campfire as a master- which I don't think is a problem, since they provide a public API specifically for that purpose anyway.

Eg: So if you have chalk, you could make the chalk spawn a circle.

If you have a candle, you can make a single candle spawn a single candle - activate the candle to light it.

 

This would allow you to create advanced objects, besides just spell runes.

 

I am imagining that the mage themed crafter could craft these ritual components.
Beehives -> Wax -> Candles

Stone -> Chalk

Charcoal (finally a use for Charcoal besides that one quest and the Atronach Forge)

 

Mods such as 'Heartbreaker' which lets you rip out npc hearts would be brilliant for a Ritual mod.

 

I would need to have a look to see what static models would be good for a ritual circle.

Its possible that a simple plane with as you say, a spell rune on it, could suffice.

 

Then the center of the circle will have either an activator or will have a marker to designate the center of the circle.

When the ritual triggers (onItemUse or onSpellCast or onActivate) - it would grab all objects within x radius.

It would then determine what spell to cast based on the items it finds present.
Eg:

If a Daedra heart is present + a living humanoid NPC is present in the circle - it could sacrifice the NPC and spawn in a Dremora servant.

If a Daedra heart is present + frost salts are present, spawn in a frost atronach

If dragon scale is present + Iron Dagger + Black Soul Gem, Enchant the dagger with +50% damage to dragons etc

 

It basically sounds like a mobile Atronach Forge but would scan for the ingredients in close range to the circle, maybe do some nice floaty animations to make them float up in the air and dissolve.

 

Im gonna have a go at implementing this.

 

I would need to look at the papyrus language and see if there is a way to route combinations of items found to the proper spell.

My thoughts are that the Spell Circle would have a reference to the player, so it knows who its master is.

Then the spell that is triggered is always triggered in reference to the circle, so it can if it needs to, add the summoned creatures, items as slaves to the master.

 

Looking at some papyrus - it looks like this could be done via:

//To loop through objects in the current cell.
objectReferencesList[iIndex] = kCell.GetNthRef(iIndex, formTypeToGet)
//30 for formTypeToGet would allow us to loop through all ingredient type items in the gameworld in the current cell.

if (circle.GetDistance(oIngredient) <= circleRadius) 
   //Item is inside the circle - count it as an ingredient

endif

Papyrus certainly has the methods, in combination with SKSE to detect whether loose items are within a circle radius.

[FireFlickerFlak]

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/60137

 

I worked on a really buggy alpha mod that does a little of what you are talking about back before I knew anything about coding. gives you a spell that is its own magic system (very messy one), makes objects float up and disappear or transform, "crafts" spells by transforming itself, performs "rituals" by casting at the dead, transforms objects in containers or turns containers into explosives, transforms plants, animates weapons into floating allies, and basically does anything I could think of doing with papyrus... but doesn't do any of them particularly well.

 

Your project sounds very interesting. I'm hoping to pick this old concept up again but in a much simpler version, would be cool to make it work well with what you end up putting together.

 

"If the Mod was designed in the right way, the spells/rituals could be modular and extendable via other Mods." <-- I like the sound of extendable :-). For me, it would be nice if my own magic effects could call your scripts when casting at the ritual set-ups

Edited April 13, 2018 by FireFlickerFlak