satsujinka

I agree with Lekill, dual wield shouldn't be so focused on daggers.l. How I personally would like the skills to work: Warrior Melee Throw Heavy Armor Block Command Versatility (Skill for making do with what you can find; e.g. change handedness of weapons, increase AR from mixed armor sets, remove/set traps, bandage wounds) Rogue Close Combat Archery Light Armor Sneak Alchemy Legerdemain Mage Conjuration Destruction Alteration Restoration Illusion Metamagic

Smithing in particular suffers from an inflexibility in what it allows for armor. For example, let's say I want to have separate dragon armors for each type of dragon. By the time I get smithing up to level 100 (no clue what level that is if you grind, but generally I get it there in my late 20s,) regular dragons are nearly extinct and it would make no sense for me to want to make armor from them anyways, since I have access to Blood and Frost dragons. So for smithing, what would be much better is instead of concentrating on particular armors, concentrate on materials. So the dragon smithing perk still does make improvements to dragon armors better, but it no longer controls making the armor in the first place. Perhaps, for balance, we could add the possibility of failure (when making or improving an item) and the perk simply gets rid of that chance to fail. Another, issue I have with smithing is that I really prefer some of the lesser armors (like Iron and Steel.) True using some tricks I could get those armors up to the armor cap, but exploiting the game's flaws isn't something that should be necessary. Also, why is it that my character, a single person, randomly uses so many different styles depending on what material I'm working with? Wouldn't a smith mostly make the same style of armor/weapon no matter what material, after all, that style is the style the blacksmith learned? So another improvement to smithing: you start out with a basic design style for weapons, light and heavy armor (which you can use for any material you can find, but beware you're likely to fail for more complex materials until you get the perk.) You then have to find someone to teach you more complex styles. A skill I would like to see returned is dodging. Though, people wearing heavy armor probably shouldn't be allowed do dodge, prior to getting the conditioning perk at least. Also it should probably be governed by a Stealth skill, since Light Armor has an Auto-Dodge perk already. In fact, I might go so far as to say that Light Armor should be restructured into an Athletics style skill that concentrates on increasing running/sprinting speed and duration. Not being a thief/assassin type, there might be another skill that could be absorbed into another and become Athletics. For example, Lockpicking and Pickpocket seem kind of redundant to me, couldn't they be combined into a single Theft skill? <- This is a real question for you sneak types, what do you think? Another ability I'd like to see is the ability to change weapon handedness, e.g. wield a 2-hander in 1 hand. How this might work: You have a toggle button. If you have a 2-handed weapon you do a skill check and if it's higher than the weight of the weapon you get a 1-handed copy of the weapon at 2/3 the damage amount. However, you lose power attacking ability and every swing costs stamina. On the other hand, if you are wielding just a 1-handed weapon, there should be a skill check and if it passes the weapon is temporarily converted into a 2-handed weapon with 1.5x the original damage (the inventory should probably only display the original weapon in either case.) Arguably, this ability could be in either the 1 or 2-handed trees, but considering how similar the 2 trees are maybe it would make more sense to merge them into a single Melee skill? I really don't know what the best approach would be. And how about throwable weapons? I would really like to be able to throw knives and eventually javelins at people. If we merge the 1 and 2-handed perks we make room for a Throwing skill (since archery doesn't really make sense as a location for this ability.) Are there any abilities you'd like to see? Where do you think they belong? How should we make room for them?

There will be once the creation kit comes out. It is ridiculous how many people have bows in game. I get that bows are a better weapon, but it just makes for very uninteresting, monotonous combat where every enemy tries to back up to fire arrows at you.

Well, I'm currently in the middle of a project to add additional armor/weapon sets that are merely retextures of existing stuff. We're still in the design phase so if you have suggestions feel free to leave them here. Though, we don't intend to release before the creation kit is released, so for the time being you're still sort of out of luck. There is the Weapons of the Third Era mod you could use, though it only adds weapons.

After talking with tek, here's sort of a summary of what was discussed. Heavy Armor: Copper ArmorIron ArmorBanded Iron ArmorNordic Bronze, Steel, Silver, and Ebony Armors (Retextures of Steel Armor)Dwarven ArmorOrcish and Orcish Steel, Silver, and Ebony ArmorsBronze, Steel, Silver, and Ebony Plate ArmorsTemplar Bronze, Steel, Silver, and Ebony Armors (Retextures of Ebony Armor)Dragon Plate and Dragon Heart Plate ArmorsDaedric ArmorLevels that these will occur as rare loot and random boss gear. Level 1: Copper and Iron ArmorLevel 2: Banded Iron ArmorLevel 3: Nordic Bronze Armor Level 5: Nordic Steel Armor Level 7: Orcish Armor Level 10: Dwarven ArmorLevel 13: Nordic Silver Armor Level 16: Orcish Steel ArmorLevel 19: Bronze Plate Armor Level 23: Nordic Ebony Armor Level 27: Orcish Silver ArmorLevel 31: Steel Plate ArmorLevel 35: Bronze Templar Armor Level 39: Orcish Ebony ArmorLevel 44: Silver Plate ArmorLevel 49: Steel Templar ArmorLevel 54: Ebony Plate ArmorLevel 59: Silver Templar ArmorLevel 64: Ebony Templar ArmorLevel 69: Dragon Plate ArmorLevel 75: Daedric ArmorLevel 81: Dragon Heart Plate ArmorSuggestions for additional heavy armors are welcome, and the numbers above will be modified to fit any additional sets.

morthal as home to a vampire quest should be a bit more hospitable to such. Also it's on a swamp, it should be sinking. What I'm imagining is layers of houses sunken into the ground with platforms and new houses built on top. The vampires and maybe other monsters live in the abandoned sunken buildings and there's a tunnel between them and the cave that the quest for morthal takes you to. For suggestions read the Dresden files' description of undertown.

EDIT: Never mind then...

@tek Gilded Glass would actually be the vanilla mesh. Though a retexture would be great, especially considering how poor a fit the steel mesh would be (since all the "middle" tier armor uses the steel mesh in my simple example.) It might be worthwhile to create a light weight (in appearance) mesh for the middle tier of light armor(elven, glass, and dragon.) Also for heavy armor we can add copper and bronze retextures of iron, steel, and steel plate (copper only the first two.) Banded iron can then become the highest form of iron and copper (since that's sort of what I think the banded stuff is supposed to be.) @Nycidian I had used Light */*/Gilded * as the format because Elven is already in that format. However, Heavy armor should have a different prefix group, so there's plenty of room there. I guess leather already does follow the naming patterned you outlined, but I'm not overly fond of the studded pattern. To me, banded hide/fur/leather seems like it would be the better choice protection wise. Scaled armor is it's own thing, though I suppose it's mesh is very similar to the hide/studded mesh so I guess that fits the theme. So as an example with leather, how about: Thin Leather (or partial if you prefer a different mesh) Leather Studded Leather Banded Leather or Scaled Leather (both exist just a choice of hard plates embedded or on the exterior of the armor respectively) On a different note, when I made my first post about styles I actually had something like the following in mind (it's overly complicated which is why I didn't follow through with it.) For metals and ceramics (furs/hides/leather have a different set.) Breastplate Style - light Armor - Current Iron Mesh Nordic Style - Heavy armor - current Steel mesh Dwemer - Heavy - dwarven mesh Elven - light - elven mesh orcish - heavy - orcish mesh templar - heavy - ebony mesh ceramic - heavy - glass mesh etc. Etc. Then you can combine any material with a style. So you could have an ebony breastplate. In order to disallow you from making ebony stuff out of the gate, smithing would be in charge of materials, and you'd have to learn styles. Even without completely overhauling smithing, this mod is going to get big (we're talking a dozen or more sets or armor and weapons after all) and the balancing issues are going to be bad enough without worrying if an ebony breastplate should be stronger than an orichalcum templar armor (as an example.) Eventually, we can get around to that, but lets get the easy stuff done first (also if the goal is merely adding new stuff to find/make it might be a bit overkill to completely remodel the structure of the armor sets in the game.) @Faize I think I addressed your concern in the paragraph above, but let me know if I haven't'.

actually, what would be better is an athletics skill that gives you dodge abilities if you aren't wearing armor (amongst other things.) though you'd have to ax one of the other skills to do so. If there's a way of merging lockpicking and pickpocket I'd add it there, otherwise merging light amd heavy armor into just armor would be the best way to do it.

in my experience, the leveling the silverhand has is screwed up. They're really easy early in the game, but around the 20-30s they get really tough. At least until you get better weapons and armor.

Here's a possible structure for light armor, using both my ideas (numbers are just an idea not absolute): Metal/Ceramic Styles: Light = vanilla iron style No modifier = vanilla steel style (remove Nordic designs for Elven) Gilded = vanilla default style Light Armors: Hide - lvl 1 Fox fur(vanilla) - lvl 2 Studded - lvl 3 Leather - lvl 5 Wolf fur - lvl 5 Saber cat fur - lvl 10 Bear fur - lvl 15 Elven Light - lvl 15 Elven (ie full) -lvl 20 Gilded Elven - lvl 25 Scaled - lvl 25 Glass Light -lvl 30 Glass - lvl 35 Gilded Glass -lvl 40 Dragonscale Light - lvl 40 Dragonscale -lvl 45 Gilded Dragonscale -lvl 50 Corundum Light - 50 Corundum - 55 Gilded Corundum - 60 Dragon heart scale light - 60 Dragon heart scale - 65 Gilded Dragon heart scale - 70

Sharpness seems like a synonym for damage to me. However, a hardness variable for weapons and armor would be nice. With harder armors breaking softer weapons and vice versa. Pierce damage might also be captured here. another variable set that might be nice is attack type. As in pierce, slash, hack, bash, stab, cut, etc. You could then make certain armors better than others (for example fur/hide/leather would heavily resist bash attacks, being that they are essentially patting)

So here's an idea. Corundum is the material that rubies and sapphires are made of. It has a hardness of 9 on the mohs scale (diamond is 10, the hardest.) This means that only diamond and corundum can cut corundum (well, there's other materials that are hard enough but still.) Further you can synthesize corundum fairly easily, meaning that it isn't uneconomical to make an armor set out of. So a higher level glass set could be made out of corundum (total effort: recolor glass and add to level lists.) Diamond is also possible to make stuff out of as yet another level higher (obsidian can be used for the highest tier of cutting weapons as obsidian cleaves to the molecular level, meaning it can be made really sharp.) And another idea. Add in additional styles of armor. So for example the style iron armor is in could be the lowest tier of any material. People probably have different tastes but the steel style could be a middle for any material, then the unique style of the material (steel's is the steel plate armor, dwarven would be the current style, etc.) This would significantly pad out the existing material types. Implementation wise, it should probably be done by teaching styles (training does this) for materials you already know. You'd get the first form with the perk, and if you have the style for what is now steel learned, you'd get that too. The highest level you'd have to hunt down.

One thing I've been thinking about in regards to balance is to remove shops from selling anything higher than orcish. Instead, give blacksmiths the ability to take orders for higher grade things (then you pay them either a large amount of money, or bring them materials and just pay for the labor.) This would give the opening dialog when you enter Whiterun between the blacksmith and the Battle-born some context. Plus it would explain why iron and steel are common and even the Legion just uses steel based stuff, despite how apparently easy it would be to create ebony gear (because in later levels you can make dozens of the stuff without any trouble.) Also on the topic of blacksmiths, while not a rebalance, I think each blacksmith should have their own style of weapon. That is, sure they all have steel swords but they might look slightly different and have different stats. Arguably, forges would also produce different results as both the fuel and the coolant used would change the composition of the metal. In real life, blacksmiths closely guarded the composition of the liquid they used to cool blades, they also stamped their blades with a mark identifying them, and there was always regional differences in the styles of sword made on top of that.

It wouldn't really work in the greater context of Skyrim, but I think being able to play as Alduin would be awesome... but that would require completely restructuring the game. It also might not be too compelling, since for a great deal of the game you'll be flying around resurrecting allies.

Lisp was actually a pretty good suggestion. At least if you use/create a Scheme dialect, the structure is dead simple: (function var1 var2 .. varX) Speaking of which, I have some experience writing a Scheme interpreter (in Haskell, but it wouldn't be too hard to do in another language.) Otherwise, I'd be plenty happy to help once you've gotten the file access code in working condition (I really dislike working with file formats...) I have no true language restriction, but C-like is a plus.

The core of this idea is to make it so that light armor specialists have no reason to apply perks to heavy armor smithing. By which I mean, by default daedric weapons are all around the best, which is not only unreasonable (without some set back so that people don't always choose daedric stuff) and it breaks role playing (as already mentioned, light armor specialists end up buying heavy armor smithing perks even though it makes no sense for them to want to.) Over all changes, three converging trees which can be summarized as follows: Left Path: Light Armor + Best Cutting weapons (daggers, 1h swords, axes) Center Path: Generalist - Provides the shortest route to dragon armors (to be the best armor set) Right Path: Heavy Armor + Best Smashing Weapons (Maces, Warhammers, War Axes) Like before you start with Steel Smithing, then you diverge to one of the trees: Light Armor Path: Elven -> Mithril -> Glass -> Pressure Generalist Path: Advanced -> Arcane -> Bone Heavy Armor Path: Dwarven -> Orcish -> Ebony -> Daedric Converging on Dragon Smithing. As for the three new perks: Mithril should be fairly straight forward. Shiny silver looking weapons and armor. Should also have silver's undead bonuses. Pressure Smithing is the art of fusing gems into weapons. Garnets, Opals (create them,) and Amethysts give elemental bonuses Rubies absorb/fortify Health Emeralds absorb/fortify Stamina Sapphires absorb/fortify Magicka Diamonds gives the best Swords + Axes Obsidian gives the best Daggers Bone Smithing is the art of turning animal bones and skeletons into weapons and armor. Create Falmer weapons/armor Create Ivory weapons/armor from tusks Possibly others? As I mentioned before Dragon Armor is going to be the best armor for each type (light or heavy.) However, this is because Dragon Armor is going to be divided into what Dragon produced the scale/bone. So there's Dragonscale/plate Armor, Blood Dragonscale/plate Armor, etc. New content required: Either recolored Glass stuff for the Gem based stuff. Or a new design (personally, I feel the weapons should be steel with gems embedded at the edges of blades or as the actual head of a warhammer.) Opals and Obsidian stones Recolors of Dragon Armor. An Ivory weapon set. Possibly armor, but I'm not sure about that. Mithril weapons and armor Additional Ideas: Add copper, bronze heavy armors Add Chainmail light armor (covered by Steel Smithing) Change Banded Iron to have Bronze bands Change the way ingots are constructed to fit changing Corundum to copper and Quicksilver to Mithril (suggest Steel Ingots require Iron Ore and Wood? <- steel is iron and carbon after all.)

There are plenty of romance/companion mods. However, I think that only covers part of what you're looking for. Similarly I've always been annoyed by the lack of depth to any of the characters in game (not including mods.) It's also very bizarre that there's no one that even tries to make friends with you (despite the general awesomeness of a character following the main storyline.) Unfortunately, it's rather unrealistic for the main character to stay in touch with characters all across the world, as there's no way for the npcs to contact you (just because you can script them to find you doesn't mean they would normally be able to.) So the first thing such a mod would have to introduce is some type of telepathic cell phone spell that everyone is taught as children (that way npcs could file requests and leave messages about what they're doing, since you aren't going to be around enough to see them do it to ascribe their actions to their personality.) The log book could work as a means of doing this, however, it would have to be a function that someone ascribes to it in game (otherwise you'd just think it's a book of your journeys rather than a general location for information about the world and characters that you know.) Since we now have a way of letting npcs contact you, it's possible to assign people jobs and personalities and have them send you requests or tell you about their day via logbook. Which would allow them to be fleshed out a bit as characters. If you combine that with semi-random quests the npcs could be a source of entertainment for awhile (given a large number of types of quests.)