Fidens9

while there are already plenty of spell learning mods out there i've yet to find one that appeals to me. my issues with spell learning in vanilla Skyrim is that it's too easy and pretty much makes scrolls and staves obsolete. the benefit of scrolls and staves is supposed to be that they don't cost magicka and allow the use of high level spells even by a novice mage. but they bring their own downsides to them, scrolls are 1 time use and staves have limited charges. also, given how simple magicka management is it's just more efficient to just learn spells. i've tried spell research but while i find the idea of it neat i hated how it was executed. it makes it such a hassle to learn spells, i found myself constantly sleeping to remove the magicka drain debuff and the constant trial and error makes it take way too long to learn even 1 spell. i've also seen mods that makes it so that reading a spell book doesn't teach the spell, instead you have to read it multiple times to learn the spell. i've never tried one of these but it just seems like all i'll have to do is rest a bit till i can read again and then i eventually learn the spell. it sounds like it's just the same as vanilla but it takes longer. so yeah. i found most spell learning mods to be either too much of a hassle or to be just a worst version of vanilla spell learning. so with that said here's my idea for a spell learning mod. if such a mod already exist please point me to it. my idea is as followed. first, spell books become equippable items. when equipped the player holds the open book in their left hand and can fire the spell out of their right hand, so it's essentially a 2 handed weapon. however the player actually uses a weaker version of the spell when like this and it costs more magicka to use it. fortunately as the player uses the spell they gain experience for said specific spell and once they've gained enough they fully learn the spell. once fully learned the spell works as it does in vanilla. now the rate at which players gain spell experience is based on their skill level and the spell difficulty level. also, because the player has to equip the spell book they can't wield 2 different unlearned spells at once nor can they dual cast. i strongly believe this will make scrolls and staves become a viable alternative to spells even for someone who is dedicated to learning spells for when in a pinch a weaker version of a spell that cost more magicka will likely be more of a hindrance than useful. to go along with this scrolls and staves should be made more readily available, as in shops should have more of them on hand. now this isn't the only idea i've got for this. along with this there should be other means of learning spells. what i've got in mind is some kind of magical artifact that when consumed either gives spell experience to a random spell or on rare occasion just straight up teaches the player new spells. these magical artifacts probably shouldn't be too common. finally i've got one more idea to go along with this, a new stat called arcane insight. this stat starts at 1 and increases each time the player reads a skill book that increases a magic skill. the idea here is that by reading these skill books the player learns how magic works in general and thus is able to learn new spells more efficiently. a higher arcane insight stat increases the rate that player's gain spell experience, the amount of spell experience gained when consuming a magical artifact and the chance of learning a new spell when consuming a magical artifact. so this is my idea. if a mod like this exist, even if it only has some of these elements please point me to it. if no such mod exist then i hope i've inspired someone to make one.

Skyrim's marriage system has very little appeal to me. looking up the benefits of marriage on UESP it's decent but nothing spectacular. also as far as i know none of the vanilla spouses offer much if anything unique should you marry them. they may make for interesting characters but as spouses, one potential spouse is hardly any better than another. while there are some interesting follower mods that probably make for good spouses there's 2 reasons i don't want to bother with them. first i already have 3 follower mods and adding more would just break the game's balance. having that many already kinda does so i had to take some steps to address that. second is that i don't know if their marriage system offers anything more than vanilla Skyrim. so anyway, here's an idea i had. a new character gets added which can't become a permanent follower. he/she would be a traveling merchant looking to settle down. being a traveling merchant they would be proficient in Alchemy, Smithing and Speech. so not a fighter in any way. now just because this new character is looking to settle down doesn't mean the player can marry them from the get go. rather the player would have to complete a questline where they learn about their future spouse's personal and business life. part of this questline would be about helping this character set up business deals to supply various businesses both throughout Skyrim as well as in other provinces. this character can be married once their questline is completed and the player owns a home. as a spouse this character offers everything vanilla spouses do and more. here's a few ideas of what they could do. they could have interesting interaction with adopted children and pets. if moved into one of the vanilla houses they could wander about and interact with neighbors. i've seen mods that splice already existing dialogue to create new conversations. new world encounters could be added where the player encounters their spouse, they are a traveling merchant after all. this spouse could offer radiant quests. here's a few ideas for such quests, gathering supplies, saving fellow merchants, delivering shipments, and maybe not all these radiant quests would be so honorable, disrupting the trade caravans of rival businesses... well that's all i could come up with for an evil quest. finally since this spouse doesn't travel with the player they don't know about the player's adventure. during conversations at home the player could talk to them about their adventures. players could tell the truth about their adventures or embellish their tale if they want to. the only other suggestion i've got is that the mod should have 20 separate files so that players could choose their spouse's gender and race. it would also be nice if these spouses looked good. at the very least this new spouse needs to be an interesting character. they don't have to be so well written that they blow my mind, my standards are not unreasonable, but they should be more interesting than vanilla NPCs.

i think this is what you want. https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/20035 this follower has a mechanic where you can train him and teach him spells.

in the Railroad HQ there are 2 chalkboards. 1 for the railsigns and 1 for statuses on agents and safehouses. someone please make them as settlement decorations. i wanna put them up in my Mercer safehouse as well as the house i build for Deacon.

it goes without saying that Fallout 4 is not a very balanced game. nor is it a very challenging one. one of the biggest problem i have with the game is how ammo and stimpaks are so plentiful that they may as well be raining from the sky. to fix this issue i got a mod that reduces the drop rate of a lot of stuff by 90%. while the added challenge this brought about made the game more fun for me it also opened my eyes to another problem, food healing. food is also plentiful and while it doesn't heal as much as stimpaks it still heals plenty. the item scarcity mod i'm using focuses on items in containers. most food items are not found in containers. with the sudden scarcity of stimpaks i like having food items as a means of healing, but to make up for the overabundance of food items in the game i would like it if food healing was less effective. like say 80% less effective. so yeah, that's what i'd like.

in the vanilla game there aren't too many jobs you can assign settlers to. i know there are mods to add more jobs but i'd like to throw out an idea i have for one. maintenance work. my idea is that certain objects would wear out over time and settlers would need to be assigned to maintain them. for example say you build a bunch of generators inside a building, making that building into a power station, i think it'd be interesting if the generators needed regular maintenance to keep running thus giving settlers a job at the power station. water purifiers and turrets could also serve as objects that require maintenance. that's all i could think of.

when settlements are raided the raiders come from preset spawn points. if you know where they are then you only need to set up defenses in those areas. if you've ever set up some turret along the bridge entrance to Sanctuary Hill you've wasted your time cause raider's don't spawn there. having a fortified front gate for Sanctuary Hill might be aesthetically pleasing but it's functionally pointless. also, some spawn points are inside settlements so building walls is pointless for settlement defense. i've checked out as many raid mods i could find and none of them seems to provide anything close to the solution i've got in mind. what i've got in mind is that first we'd remove the spawn points inside settlements. second, increase the amount of spawn points surrounding the settlement. third (assuming this isn't already in the vanilla game), have raiders occasionally (not always) spawn in from multiple spawn points at once. and finally, have raiders attack in greater numbers but this should only happen on rare occasion, if would get annoying if it happened too often. i believe these ideas would make settlement defense a more challenging but also fun and rewarding experience.

i bought Fallout 4 a week ago and i've played a little of it. i'm sure the vanilla radio stations are good but to keep things from getting stale i'm planning to add more. what i'd like from my radio stations are the following. songs from previous Fallout games. the songs that were used in the intro for previous fallout games would be really good to have. not that i only want those familiar tunes. a few new ones would be nice to have as well. most of all what i would like is some post-apocalyptic radio drama. my favorite part of GNR was always "The Adventures of Herbert "Daring" Dashwood". my biggest disappointment with Fallout 3 was that it was the only radio drama in the whole game. finally it'd be nice to have a lore friendly host who comments on the events of the game like Three Dogs and Mr New Vegas did. i don't need a single mod that gives me all of this in one. i can get multiple mods and just regularly switch them out as i feel like. i can do without the host but i really want the nostalgic tunes and some entertaining radio drama. also, don't bother recommending OLD WORLD RADIO - BOSTON. while 30 stations in 1 mod sounds nice i probably won't bother with most of them. not to mention it's got a file size of 6GB. my PC's good but not state of the art, i'd rather not risk compromising game performance for something i'd probably only use 20% of.

i bought Fallout 4 a week ago and i've played a little of it. i'm sure the vanilla radio stations are good but to keep things from getting stale i'm planning to add more. what i'd like from my radio stations are the following. songs from previous Fallout games as well as new songs. the songs that were used in the intro for previous fallout games would be really good to have. a lore friendly host who comments on the events of the game like Three Dogs and Mr New Vegas did. most of all what i would like is some post-apocalyptic radio drama. my favorite part of GNR was always "The Adventures of Herbert "Daring" Dashwood". my biggest disappointment with Fallout 3 was that it was the only radio drama in the whole game. it doesn't have to be a single radio station mod. i'll gladly get as many as 10 if necessary. but i don't want to clutter my pip boy radio menu with too many stations so i don't intend to get more than 10. as you can probably tell from this, don't waste your time recommending OLD WORLD RADIO - BOSTON.

take the link for each of those mods, copy/paste them into an email and send that email to yourself.

i finally beat the main quest while playing with my self imposed rules of limiting my looting. and i have to say it was a rather enriching experience. i figured i may as well elaborate on that. in a normal playthrough of Skyrim it's so easy to get everything. mainly through looting but in other ways it also pretty much just hands you everything. makes it hard to feel like you actually earned anything in this game. my rule that limits my looting doesn't fully fix the problem but certainly helps. most of what i get feels like i earned it. 1 time i was suddenly struck with San... um, vampire disease and i panicked. i use a mod that makes it so that shrines don't cure diseases and i had very little gold on hand. i rushed to an alchemist hoping they had a cure disease potion and hoping that i had enough gold to afford it. so much effort only to end up flat broke afterwards, but that's part of the experience. this rush of emotions isn't the kind of thing you'd get from a normal playthrough, you're as likely to get it as much as you'd ever need a cure disease potion. even a simple quest to deliver a note that only earned me 10 gold felt somewhat meaningful since i wasn't exactly making bank. now that isn't to say my work never saw a profit. part of that was because my mods slightly increased my rewards as my level increased, but most of it was the fruits of my labor. i played on expert difficulty, and i used quite a few mods to make the game a bit more challenging (not too many though, i've went overboard in the past so i know how much of a mistake that is). since i couldn't just loot better gear, battles we're not that easy at first. and the paltry sum of gold i was slowly making didn't make it any easier to get better gear, spells, potions, etc. and when i could afford that stuff i had to be selective and make sure i got what would be useful. i had to be more tactical in how i approached battles. when i had to kill bandit leaders i didn't blindly charge in. my main tactic was to fury my target, they'd either die at the hands of their own minions or be weakened enough that i could take them, but even then i still conjured up some help. if my targets were killed by their minions i'd often just leave those minions be and go get my reward. my playstyle made it so that at the beginning i was weaker than even common bandits. but overtime i was able to get better equipment and better spells. becoming strong enough to be considered the hero of Skyrim wasn't just something that came to me naturally, i earned that. the game still had moments when it just handed me rewards so casually but when i earned something i felt it and it made the game a rather enriching experience.

i finally beat the main quest while playing with my self imposed rules of limiting my looting. and i have to say it was a rather enriching experience. i figured i may as well elaborate on that. in a normal playthrough of Skyrim it's so easy to get everything. mainly through looting but in other ways it also pretty much just hands you everything. makes it hard to feel like you actually earned anything in this game. my rule that limits my looting doesn't fully fix the problem but certainly helps. most of what i get feels like i earned it. 1 time i was suddenly struck with San... um, vampire disease and i panicked. i use a mod that makes it so that shrines don't cure diseases and i had very little gold on hand. i rushed to an alchemist hoping they had a cure disease potion and hoping that i had enough gold to afford it. so much effort only to end up flat broke afterwards, but that's part of the experience. this rush of emotions isn't the kind of thing you'd get from a normal playthrough, you're as likely to get it as much as you'd ever need a cure disease potion. even a simple quest to deliver a note that only earned me 10 gold felt somewhat meaningful since i wasn't exactly making bank. now that isn't to say my work never saw a profit. part of that was because my mods slightly increased my rewards as my level increased, but most of it was the fruits of my labor. i played on expert difficulty, and i used quite a few mods to make the game a bit more challenging (not too many though, i've went overboard in the past so i know how much of a mistake that is). since i couldn't just loot better gear, battles we're not that easy at first. and the paltry sum of gold i was slowly making didn't make it any easier to get better gear, spells, potions, etc. and when i could afford that stuff i had to be selective and make sure i got what would be useful. i had to be more tactical in how i approached battles. when i had to kill bandit leaders i didn't blindly charge in. my main tactic was to fury my target, they'd either die at the hands of their own minions or be weakened enough that i could take them, but even then i still conjured up some help. if my targets were killed by their minions i'd often just leave those minions be and go get my reward. my playstyle made it so that at the beginning i was weaker than even common bandits. but overtime i was able to get better equipment and better spells. becoming strong enough to be considered the hero of Skyrim wasn't just something that came to me naturally, i earned that. the game still had moments when it just handed me rewards so casually but when i earned something i felt it and it made the game a rather enriching experience.

i'm playing skyrim with some rather interesting rules to spice up the game. this made me think that maybe others out there might be interested in spicing up their gameplay in the same way. and i'm also interested in hearing how others spice up their gameplay. so this topic is to discuss these things. my self imposed rules is about limiting what i loot from enemies. i decided to play by this rule when i noticed how easy it was to get everything i could ever need without having to buy them. if you have an iron sword and you want to upgrade to a steel sword you're not gonna buy one. you'll either craft one or you'll loot it off the corpse of some bandit (and let's not forget how easy it is to find decent equipment from chest). looting everything also makes it easy to have lots of money. for example, if you take on a radiant quest to eliminate some bandit camp you'll make way more money from looting and selling everything you can carry back from it than the quest actually offers. now there's a decent amount of things to buy. like spells and crafting material (and maybe healing potions). so money isn't completely worthless. but it's so easy to have more than you actually need when looting is your main source of income. by making questing my main source of income, not only do i feel like i earned every bit of gold i make, but it also makes quest feel more meaningful. even something as simple as arrows become more valuable when you can't just loot them off enemies to have an infinite supply. now this isn't to say that i completely abstain from looting. rather i just limit it. i still loot crafting material, but to avoid becoming rich by simply sell what i craft i use a mod that reduces how much items sell for. and of course i also loot quest items (and notes). animals are also fair game. finally i do loot treasure chests but i use a mod that reduces the amount of items and gold i can find in them. well that's pretty much what my self imposed challenge amounts to. now for you people, what do you think of my self imposed challenge? and what are yours?

i'm playing skyrim with some rather interesting rules to spice up the game. this made me think that maybe others out there might be interested in spicing up their gameplay in the same way. and i'm also interested in hearing how others spice up their gameplay. so this topic is to discuss these things. my self imposed rules is about limiting what i loot from enemies. i decided to play by this rule when i noticed how easy it was to get everything i could ever need without having to buy them. if you have an iron sword and you want to upgrade to a steel sword you're not gonna buy one. you'll either craft one or you'll loot it off the corpse of some bandit (and let's not forget how easy it is to find decent equipment from chest). looting everything also makes it easy to have lots of money. for example, if you take on a radiant quest to eliminate some bandit camp you'll make way more money from looting and selling everything you can carry back from it than the quest actually offers. now there's a decent amount of things to buy. like spells and crafting material (and maybe healing potions). so money isn't completely worthless. but it's so easy to have more than you actually need when looting is your main source of income. by making questing my main source of income, not only do i feel like i earned every bit of gold i make, but it also makes quest feel more meaningful. even something as simple as arrows become more valuable when you can't just loot them off enemies to have an infinite supply. now this isn't to say that i completely abstain from looting. rather i just limit it. i still loot crafting material, but i don't sell what i craft, that would make it too easy to be loaded with gold. and of course i also loot quest items (and notes). animals are also fair game. finally i do loot treasure chests but i also use a mod that reduces the amount of items and gold i can find in them. well that's pretty much what my self imposed challenge amounts to. now for you people, what do you think of my self imposed challenge? and what are yours?

actually, the guy who made the "Perky Reborn" mod wrote the following on the mod description page. "SERIOUSLY though if a more talented modder comes along and wants to pick this up I'll be happy to hand Jjinx's amazing work with my edits over to the modder it deserves" so he's kinda already given permission. as for the guy behind the original "Perky" mod he wrote this on the mod description page. "Q) Can I translate this mod into my language? A) I don't care, do whatever you want with this mod, I consider it entirely open source, if you modify it and rerelease it just give me credit." so he's also kinda already given permission.