Questions Regarding Merchant Inventories and World Containers

[GanzelPuckney]

As a rookie wandering daft and wide-eyed into the world of modding, I am currently working a mod which will add a series of custom books to the game. At present, I am only able to add individual copies of my existing books to specific locations via the Creation Kit, but it is my aim to add the books to the lists of general vendors so that they will occasionally appear for sale in the same fashion as vanilla books, as well as have them appear as random loot in containers throughout Skyrim.

 

I seek advice as to ways of accomplishing this without causing incompatibilities with other mods or impacting the game too heavily. On the forum and elsewhere on the internet I have read that doing this cleanly and efficiently entails some difficulty; and as someone with limited experience in the realm of modding, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[JobVanDam]

For what you want to do you would have to add your books to the existing leveled lists in the game: LItemBook0All [LVLI:0003FFFB], LItemBook1All [LVLI:0003FFFC] etc.

 

To avoid incompatibilities though you would have to use scripts, but chances are if you don't know leveled lists you probably don't know scripting. Using leveled lists is no big deal though, everyone uses them and everyone knows to use bashed patches to avoid those incompatibilities.

 

Thing is though is their a book seller in the game?

The only vendors that sell books are the mage vendors. The only way for your books to be distributed throughout the world is to use the leveled lists and have them randomly spawn for free when a user picks up a random book.

[GanzelPuckney]

I was aware of the method of adding the books to vendors and the world via levelled lists; I just thought I'd seek an alternative in case there was a way I could conceivably minimise the work required from the end user. In any case, working with levelled lists is vastly preferable than doing anything pertaining to scripts. Perhaps I'll conduct some tests with Tes5Edit to see if something suitable can be devised.

 

And it appears you are correct about the scarcity of book vendors in Skyrim. In my game, random books are added to the inventories of all general merchants by Adolon's mod 'Books Books Books'; I've simply had it installed for so long that I had forgotten about it. I would probably have to make a bashed patch with that mod and mine, anyway.

 

Failing this, there always remains the option of distributing my books in a different fashion, such as placing individual copies in specific locations throughout the world and leaving notes in conspicuous places providing clues as to where to find them. Assuming a user has no mods which make dramatic changes to the locations I choose, that should mitigate any compatibility issues, and prove more interesting than simply buying them from a merchant.

 

Thank you for your insight and expedient response.