scrutio

Whilst I absolutely love most of the mods I've tried and find it amazing the talent that a lot of modders have I'm having issues with a lot of weapon mods. I love having lots of different weapons in the game as I think it adds a lot of flavour compared to seeing the same old iron sword everywhere. But lots of weapon mods have all items craftable which results in massive lists of items to scroll through. I'd like to have less craftable and more unique items to plunder/find. I think I'm right in saying I can just remove the crafting recipe to make an item uncraftable. My issue is with making it unique and assigning it to someone (or placing it in a random levelled chest). Say for example I want to make a silver sword unique but it says there are currently 2 users. How do I find out who those two users are so I can remove one to make it unique. Or how do I place it in a certain location (for an already existing item rather than new). I don't see a way to do it through weapons in creation kit but I'm sure there must be an easy solution. Any help would be hugely appreciated. I'm sure it is really easy I just can't figure it out and would love some help.

Whilst I absolutely love most of the mods I've tried and find it amazing the talent that a lot of modders have I'm having issues with a lot of weapon mods. I love having lots of different weapons in the game as I think it adds a lot of flavour compared to seeing the same old iron sword everywhere. But lots of weapon mods have all items craftable which results in massive lists of items to scroll through. I'd like to have less craftable and more unique items to plunder/find. I think I'm right in saying I can just remove the crafting recipe to make an item uncraftable. My issue is with making it unique and assigning it to someone (or placing it in a random levelled chest). Say for example I want to make a silver sword unique but it says there are currently 2 users. How do I find out who those two users are so I can remove one to make it unique. Or how do I place it in a certain location (for an already existing item rather than new). I don't see a way to do it through weapons in creation kit but I'm sure there must be an easy solution. Any help would be hugely appreciated.

The idea has really evolved now since I last posted in here. I've dropped the idea that it'd be possible to make completely custom items through some sort of console like the face creator. Now my slightly ambitious plan is to have eleven Smiths located around Skyrim who each make items with different looks and characteristics for example Rustleif in Dawnstar will make items that are suited for the cold of Skyrim, his armors are more furred (for example) and his weapons have jagged edges and spikes on them to rip through flesh of creatures and animals (which will give a boost to his items v. creatures and animals). In order to do that I've create material 'keywords' in the editor for unique materials for each of the Smiths i.e. RustleifWeapIron, RustleifArmorSteel so that items made by Rustleif are made with that material rather than the standard iron (even if the recipe is identical). Then I have created a material perk for each keyword material. So RestleifWeapIronPerk would give +10 value versus Creatures and Animals (using the same format as silver weapons do damage against Vampires etc.) but -5 versus heavy armor (since the jagged edges are good for ripping flesh but are easily damaged versus heavy armor). So almost every item that will be added to the mod won't simply be 'overall strength' but will have unique characteristics which will be useful against certain things you'll face in the world of Skyrim. This should make it more interesting than just always using the most powerful base item all the time and will make using and carrying certain items more tactical. In addition to creating quests and dialogue in order to learn these 'unique material' sets, I'm also planning to set many of the characters to use the items rather than the standard items, so the guards in Solitude will use weapons and armor made Beirand, rather than just the standard iron armor. Again this will make combat more interesting as you could find yourself up against foes who have items that have benefits against what you are using. It also means that you are likely to run into people who have an item which you have never seen in the game because you haven't done the quests to unlock that unique material smithing (obviously this is only likely to occur with iron and steel as bandits won't be walking around in craftable Daedric items). I've been playing a lot with the editor and have duplicated/edited over 1000 entries so far in order to get all the materials/perks/items/craftable/smithable/learnable system in place and i'm probably not close to half way through. What would really bring the whole mod to a new level would be the graphic side of it. Imagine walking into a different region of Skyrim and seeing people carrying different items and wearing different armor (which will have been crafted by their local smith). As it stands I have over 500 unique item entries which I'd love to have unique graphics for but whilst i've got to grips with the creation kit, I think that it's just going to be too much to do and i'll never finish the mod but I'm going to at least give it a go with the weapons and maybe further down the line I'll try out some armour. I'd really love to find some friendly artists who'd help me out with some textures for some items for me but I don't even know where to start in finding people who would be willing to spend the time to create so many pieces. Here is my first attempt at modelling a steel greatsword for Oengul (obviously it is just a model which I'd need to import into 3ds as an iges, and then do all of the artwork, nif files etc. but the modelling is reasonably straight forward):

Do you have a link for the crafting complete mod?

I have absolutely no ability to mod at all, although I guess I will have to learn. But what I have done so far is to set up a big matrix of all the Smiths in Skyrim, with allegiances, tendencies etc. and ranked them at different levels. Master Smiths are capable of making and training more different types of armor than expert and expert more than adept. Each Smith makes unique items with different appearance, attributes and level and you need to be trained by each Smith to learn how to make their items (some Smiths items are not unique in cases where the Smiths have a certain link). I've put all of these into a big table so I can see how many items need to be made by the wonderful people on this site (or if I learn how to do it, me and I have ideas about how I'd like a number of things to look based on the character of some of the Smiths). Then I've started writing some framework for questlines that you need to do in order for the Smiths to train you to make their items. This involves quests, being high enough level, paying the Smith a lot of money etc. and quite a few of the framework stories intertwine. I've tried to take things from the game and expand them to make these storylines. As an example here is part of the line needed to learn from Oengul (who has been ranked as a Master Smith): This is initiated by you asking Oengul if he can train you in Smithing. 1. I'm working hard making weapons and armor for Jarl Ulfric and the Stormcloaks. If you are a true brother of Skyrim and are willing to help the cause I can be of assistance. But whilst I can make the best blades in Skyrim for the Stormcloak soldiers I need to offer something more superior to Jarl Ulfric. If you bring back Queen Freyda's Sword to me I can teach you some basics. (If not complete Queen Freyda's Sword quest) 2. Thankyou for bringing back the sword, it will look fantastic in the hand of the true King of Skyrim. I owe you and there is nobody better to learn the skills of Smithing from in all of Skyrim than me (learn Oengul Iron) 3. The Stormcloaks are in need of more iron. Make 10 blades and 10 sets of armor as I showed you and prove you are a true brother of Skyrim. 4. You want to learn how to craft steel as Oengul. Huh, I hear murmors that the people believe that if the Imperials gain weapons from Eorlund Grey-Mane in Whiterun then even the Stormcloaks using my blades and armor will have no chance. I will prove them wrong and you will help me. Our ancient ancesters were great crafters of blades. They will have documented their techniques and I am sure that those documents can still be found. My assistant Hermir came across this old map documenting the location of a text about an ancient technique for making the sharpest blades. If you can decipher this map and find the texts I will aid you in learning about steel. (Complete to learn Oengul Steel + All Oengul blades will receive automatic 10% bonus v. armor on top of any improvements) 5. Everyone is still saying that Eorlund Grey-Mane is the best Smith in Skyrim and yet you come to me for help, maybe you are smarter than most. People need to see that Eorlund Grey-Mane is not infallable. I want you to tamper with his 'Sky-Forge' and prove that this is that the Forge is the real reason for his greatness not his skill as a Smith. If you do this I can teach you about Elven or Dwarven techniques I learnt many years ago. (Must have level 50. Complete to learn Oengul Dwarven or Elven. Will result in broken Sky-Forge. If caught by Eorlund he will refuse to train you but you can all other actions with him will continue) 6. Ah my prodigy returns to learn more huh? Well I've had an idea. When I was a young apprentice I heard about a legendary tale of a warrior dressed in blue that was undefeatable in battle. The story was that he was so confident about his undefeatability that he entered a notriously haunted cave alone searching for rumoured treasures. What he didn't realise was that whilst he might have been undefeatable against mortals his armor had little benefit against the mysteries occupants of the cave. He never returned from the cave and nobody knows exactly what killed him. It is believed that his blue armor was in fact a set of glass armor that had somehow been augmented. If you could get into the cave and return alive with the armor then maybe I could study it to understand the secret behind the blue glass. 7. You made it. Still all in one piece too. And the armor, you have it? (The player can use the armor but once given to Oengul it is no longer possible to get back) Amazing. I need time to study what can have turned the glass blue. When I have the answer I will send Hermir to find you. 8. (After receiving note from Hermir to return to Oengul) I have found the secret, and it is to do with how the glass is forged augmenting the crystalline structure of the glass. Not only does it change the color refracted from the glass to blue but it also makes the material far tougher. This is why the legend states that the warrior was undefeatable. Of course this myth is an exageration but for sure this glass is far stronger than normal. I can show you how to make this glass using my forge but this secret will not leave my forge, understood? (Learn Oengul glass. All Oengul glass items will be crafted blue instead of green with a 40% bonus against swords/axes/hammers. Oengul glass can only be made blue in Windhelm otherwise the appearance is green without the bonus. This is unless you choose to give the secret to Eorlund which will result in the Eorlund glass being blue glass also but this will mean that Oengul will no longer agree to train you and will refer to you as traitor) I am developing these for all of the Smiths, some are not so questy because the Smith is more interested in money for example and will simply want you to pay them a lot for their training. Hopefully this will satisfy a few things. It will make learning Smithing far more interesting than simply crafting a load of iron daggers, it should add a lot of variation to the types of weapons in Skyrim and it will expand a lot the interaction with the Smiths in Skyrim. Still a lot of development and planning I can do, but at the moment I am really needing a skilled modder or group of modders to take on this pretty huge task.

Cheers Sacreficium, I might work on making a big collection of weapons/armor for each Smith in Skyrim and maybe even develop some dialogue/quest plots. Any input would be appreciated as I'm pretty busy with a baby on the way (although that does mean that I have to stay in in the evenings so I've got time to even sketch up some artwork).

I don't see any reason why that couldn't be incorporated into it. I think that the amount of work needed to be done is going to put off anyone making this mod though which is a shame. Maybe it'd need several people working on different parts of it and then bringing it all together but seems little interest. Maybe I'll try to learn how to Mod effectively myself although I think this will be well beyond my skills.

I like it. I like that there could be items that are completely uncraftable and this seems a really interesting way of doing it.

Epic work. Some great looking hammers there. Wish I was that skilled then I'd be able to do the Mod idea I made but it's great to think that there are people skilled enough to do it.

Absolutely I think that NPC's should be teaching you about Smithing methods. It doesn't make sense to me that by making a whole load of iron daggers I can suddenly be the best smith in Skyrim it just isn't very RPGish and doesn't give me any sense of achievement or mystique. I know people can say 'then don't craft iron daggers' but if it is in the game then it is going to happen. I've been thinking about it quite a bit and I think this is how I see the mod going: 1. Balance the smithing by reducing the effect of the improvements so that weapons can't be improved to one-hit wonders so quickly 2. Balance the improvement in smithing by making smaller items have less influence on your smithing skill and larger more complicated (rarer) items having more influence on your smithing skill. Maybe even after you have created 10 of an item it no longer increases your smithing skill (obviously the number has to be correct to make sure that the player can still advance) 3. Change the base 'rating' of items when crafted by different smiths. A Master smith should have a little higher base rating and a Novice a little lower. That way 'standard' items aren't all identical but rely on the skill of the Smith. Therefore if a certain Smith prides himself in his smithing with Steel items and is making swords for the Stormcloaks then that may be seen in reality by the stormcloaks carrying a little higher than average 'standard' items. 4. Add many different items for each material, so that rather than only seeing a normal steel sword there are many variations of it. This will add more flavour to the game while still being Lore-friendly. It doesn't make sense that every Smith in Skyrim makes the exact same item from the same material. Would a Smith in Windhelm make the exact same sword as Smith he has never met in Falkreath? 5. The player can only make items that they have 'learnt'. These items can be learnt in multiple different ways: a. Learning from a Smith. If the Smith makes items that the player hasn't learnt they can ask the Smith to teach them. In order for it to not be a case of simply going up to every Smith you meet and learning new items the player would have to prove their ability or earn the trust of the Smith. Some may involve quests a little like the quest that were done in Oblivion to earn the trust in the mages guild so it could be going to find a rare Ore, or crafting an item to take to a client, or finding fire salts to keep the furnace working etc. Other times it may be that the Smith deems your level insufficient and you are unworthy to learn certain items from them. In order to learn that item the player will have to increase their Smithing skill. (of course this could also work in reverse and the player could teach a Smith certain items, for example you want to teach an Imperial Smith a certain type of axe for them to be able to make better axes for the war against the stormcloaks) b. Learning from random NPC's. There may be certain NPC's you find in Skyrim that have knowledge of items that are not so common in the world of Skyrim, such as Orcish, Dwarven and Elvish items. These NPC's may be willing to teach you about items from their heritage or that they have discovered, you may have to do a favour to earn it off them, you may even threaten to kill them if they don't give up their secrets etc. c. Books can also have documented items with some being very rare and potentially powerful items from a lost age. Obviously they would need to be Lore friendly but there are plenty of stories about great warriors, queens with special swords etc. These could be scattered around Skyrim, buried in crypts with their authors, found in chests or bought from shops etc. Obviously the rarer the item, the rarer the book. 6. Different improvements can be added to the items to make them more customisable to the way the player plays the game. Again it seems a little strange to me that improving a steel sword would be exactly the same every time. There could be different improvements for weapons such as sharpening (giving a general increase in performance), adding a jagged edge (giving an increase and a bonus against beasts), adding a second material for example making the leading edge of the a steel sword with glass so that the sword in general is a steel sword so mostly uses iron ore (giving an increase and bonus against armor). For armor it could be having a special heat treatment to make them tougher against animals, or coating to give a bonus against arrows etc. 7. These improvements also need to be learnt and the effectiveness of them is obviously boosted in the normal way via the perks. With the balancing in point 1 the overall improvement may not be as big but the bonus should see different weapons perform differently against different opponents which would lead to the need to carry different weapons and armor rather than only because of enchantments. (would also make selecting enchantments far more meaningful to match with the items performance improvement) 8. Adding a module in the item creation when forging the item to modify slightly the aesthetics of the item. This module could be almost identical to the face creation module where you can pull the cursor in different directions in the box to manipulate different parts of the face, but instead to be able to modify different parts of the produced item: a. changing the length of the item b. changing the width of the item c. changing the thickness of the item (the combination of a, b and c also leads to determing the weight of the item possibly) d. determining the color of certain things like leather on armor e. changing handle dimensions and hilt dimension f. adding curvatures Obviously the item would start with the base look that was 'standard' but using the modification module the items can become completely unique. Obviously there would need to be some serious work done on this part of the mod so that the items are still usable and fit with the meshing but I hope that it would be possible to use the face creation as a base. 9. Using jewels and other aesthetical improvements. There are so many jewels and stones that are picked up throughout Skyrim which can obviously be used to make jewelry but it would be great if they could be added to the unique item. In the module it would be like adding war paint, scars or tattoos to the face in face creation, but instead it offers different ways to split and position a stone that is in your inventory (obviously this consumes the item). The placement of the stones could be stretched located using a similar tool in the creation module. Also it would be cool to learn some particular Nord, Elvish, Dwarven design elements (such as Elvish script) which could be 'options' in the module. Part 4 obviously needs a lot of item designs made (although it may be possible to combine with other items/mods with their agreement as a way to implement those items effectively into the game). Parts 5, 6 and 7 will obviously need some quest creation, dialogue, bartering systems added maybe even some NPC creation as well as books and placements. Parts 8 and 9 might need a lot of work and I don't know if it is possible to use the face creation module in this way, but would be such a cool way to add masses of variety to the items and crafting. I know it is a huge undertaking and might need a group of people to do it and it seems like there is a little interest in the mod but not so much interest in the actual modding. If any skilled modder likes the idea it would be awesome.

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function. Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side. Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it. Having played a lot more of the game now (although nowhere near as much as others on here because I'm a little too busy) it is obvious that the smithing is a useful function in order to get really strong weapons and armor but it to me the smithing still seems fundementally broken in most part because it is a 'useful function'. It gets to the point where I can create a glass sword that is so strong that it because ridiculously easy to kill people or daedric armor that i have made that i can stand toe to toe with anyone or anything with little fear of dying. Yet the weapons and armor look exactly the same as another item and have no mystique to them. I think that is what is missing about the weapons and armor throughout Skyrim and from those created by Smithing is that they are all so generic and the only thing that matters is the strength value. Yes it is well worth it if you simply want to smash through everything but for me a huge part of the fun of an RPG is finding something unique and interesting in a cave that is completely different from something you would craft yourself and different again from something someone on the other side of Skyrim that has never left their city would craft. I want to be able to meet a Smith in a town and learn something new and interesting from him. Maybe at first they don't want to teach me their skills because I haven't proved a worthy enough Smith to learn from them (so they give me some tasks to do to build a relationship with them) or they don't trust/like me enough so I have to talk more with them and charm them. But I want to be able to develop my skills from the different Smiths around Skyrim, learn new things from books I find with ancient crafting instructions, have unique looking items and unique functioning items. I'm told Eorlund Grey-mane is the best Smith in Whiterun, but other than him being a 'Master' trainer I see little other evidence that he is the best Smith other than him using skyforged steel. His blades still look the same, still function the same and still feel the same in the game. I'd rather take a lot of the huge upgrading out so that it is impossible to make a normal steel sword that can kill everything and instead add uniqueness from the places you go and the people you meet. Then it wouldn't matter so much if you have crafted 1000 iron daggers to get your Smithing rating high (and it might help the balance if those simple things gave less towards your Smithing rating) and more about how you have developed your relationship with the Smiths, completed tasks for them, found books and ancient texts detailing how to create different items, selecting the types of upgrade to your weapon to make them more tailored to how you want your weapon or armor. I'm never going to have the time or the skill to make a mod like this but I would really be indebted to anyone who would be willing to take on such a task. I'll happily detail every small thing I would like out of the mod but it would really change the game for me.

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function. Its well worth the perk points. A standard elven bow (me being a sneak hunter) is i think, at my current char lvl (33/35) is 32 Damage. Now, that alone isnt great, it takes so many arrows to take down one foe. With my elven smithing, and my smithing being about, idk, i think its 52 now, with a nice set of +%smithing enchants, i can put that normal elven bow from standard 32, to a (Legendary) 68 damage. Over double damage. Now, that, is well worth having, more than doubling your damage, is well worth it. Plus, if you only need the LIGHT side of armor, just go up the elven tree side, and not the dwarven heavy armor side. Smithing is an invaluable tool, and i'll level it at least to 60 on all characters because it helps immensely, i would say you just havent played around with it enough to get enough gain from it, in the beginning, added 1 damage to daggers etc, yes, was crap. At 50 on the other hand with some smithing enchants, it is WELL worth it. It's good to know that smithing at higher levels is valuable, but there is still a certain routineness to it which makes it seem like it could be so much more. I'm sure improving weapons at higher levels gives good bonuses, but if you made your own weapon it would still be identical to if you found one in the world of Skyrim. The advantage of smithing would seem to be on the improvement of weapons but there is only one way to improve the actual weapon before enchantments. My point about the mod would be to add some more variety to the weapons and armor that are created. Skyrim is big and the cities and regions are quite distinct, yet every Smith crafts the exact same weapon from the same material. Does that seem reasonable? The inventory is not that big especially when you have heavy material items, but wouldn't you like to be able to improve weapons in ways that would give them different bonuses so that you could customise your weapons for a variety of different foes? It's not that I think Smithing isn't valuable, I was happy that it was going to be in the game, I just think there is scope to improve the system currently in place and to tie it in with the lore of Elder scrolls. It's not only about the Damage value, at least it isn't to me.

OK, I don't know because I haven't got that far into it yet. I'm sure you are right but is it worth investing all of those perks on something which for a long time is not worth doing. Even then I guess they would still look the same, so you still have the issue that every Smith in the whole of Skyrim uses the same materials to make the same items. Seems a little odd to me. Again, if I had the talent, I'd want to create something unique, even if it didn't have double the function.

Yes it is seperate from enchanting (although no reason why you can't enchant a smithed item). I only mean that improving the item could offer some small bonus in particular situations, like a sword with a harder material for the leading edge would have a small bonus against armor. Obviously making an interesting as well as functional item is the intention, rather than simply making the same iron sword from the same iron ore every time. Even the different smiths in the different areas of Skyrim make identical weapons.

Not being Scandinavian I wouldn't have noticed, so I don't know quite how masculine the names are, I guess some masculine names are a little more gender neutral or at least have become that way in recent years. As I said we have plenty of English male names which are now used by females and I'd imagine that trend is only going to continue. Gary maybe would be pushing it, but if she was particularly blessed in the facial hair department I don't think it would be totally out of place, although I guess they would spell it with an i, like Gari even though the origin is the same. Plenty of women called Toni for example. As for Skyrim, for me it doesn't take anything away from it, even knowing now that the genders are wrong on some of the characters. Again, it could just be a quirk that they have intentionally added to signal the masculinity of the Nord women.