Alternative soulgem system

[szupercso]

Hey.

 

I've always wanted to make soulgems easier to obtain, charge and use. I just came up with a few ideas, and am hoping that someone would make a mod out of it.

 

The ideas:

 

Combinable soulgems: 2 smaller gems combine into a bigger one (might be done with a spell)

 

Additive charges: Each soul the player captures would add up into a soul gem, starting at petty, ending at whatever big the gem can hold.

 

Example: The player has a common soul gem. He kills any enemy and traps its soul (ANY enemy) and the gem would be charged up to petty level. He traps another enemy's soul and the gem with petty soul level would upgrade to lesser soul level, and so on.

 

This is so the players wont have to find special foes (like dremora) to charge their gems up, they would just need to get more souls, giving easier access to better soul levels.

 

Conjuration: soul gems. Depending on the conjuration skills, a player could conjure his/her own soulgems, which might require an ingredient. (and a great load of mana, too)

(could be limited somehow like, a maximum of 5 soulgems a day, or perhaps dependent on skill (novice - 1 apprentice - 2 journeyman - 3.. etc)

Reducing soulshards' price could be an alternative solution as a limitation.

 

Suggestions are welcome but especially bored coders :thumbsup:

[Pronam]

Wow, did you just post something that's doable?

 

For any that wonders.. the simplest way would be not to use the standard soulgem-system.->explained: Not using the soultrap spels anymore, but just fake it with others spells while still using the same shaders.

(Perhaps with another color?)

[grmblf]

This mod lets you combine two soul gems into a more powerful one. The other are nice ideas, I like this one about squeezing a bunch of souls into a gem to make a bigger soul, like you squeeze so strong that they just end up being one :P

[Pronam]

Yeah, I know that one. But this growing soulgem sounds fun XD.

 

As this ignores the standard system anyway. (To avoid any problems).

This one could be turned to change the looks/colors by using new soulgems or modifying a spell if the OP wants to..:)

 

szupercso, so is it just 'That' easy? Or would it be progressive..(These are suggestions, trow them from the table if you don't like them. Progressive meaning you'll have 1 soulstep for the first, two for the next level etc...When your mysticism skill increases you'll be able to skip the first soulstep, so you'll start on a lesser soulgem. To explain additional possibilities, you could still let a dremora weigh more like letting them be two soulsteps instead of one like a rat. I think it should at least pose a form of leveling as it would ruin some part of progressing otherwise...Go as wild as you want, I'll tell when things get unrealistic/impossible.

 

(Offline until at least 7 hours from the time of the post. I'll probably not start on this mod before 15 hours from now. )

[szupercso]

It seems to be a good idea for tougher enemies to give more than one "soulsteps".

 

I'm not sure about the values of the gems in shops or the limitations, conjuring gems does kind of affect the "economy" of the game, I didn't give it much thought yet.

 

Maybe bigger gems should need more than two smaller ones to create, example:

 

2 petty = 1 lesser

3 lesser = 1 common

4 common = 1 greater

5 greater = 1 grand

 

That could make bigger gems worth more and harder to get.

I have imagined the perks like this: (on conjuration)

 

Novice(0): 1 gem per day, petty max

Apprentice(25): 2 gems per day, petty max

Journeyman(50): 2 gems per day, lesser max

Expert(75): 3 gems per day, lesser max

Master(100): 3 gems per day, common max

 

That means a master conjurer would take about a week to make a grand gem just by conjuring, to compensate for the effort, soul gems should be more powerful on enchanting items/restoring charge. If it all goes well, people won't need a cheat mod to give unlimited charges for their weapons, etc.

 

I haven't thought about black soulgems yet.. any ideas? They could be made more powerful, also progressively charged perhaps?

[Pronam]

So the conjured soulgems do or don't contain as soul already..If they are they just empty..that'll be cool as capturing souls is basically too easy...there aren't much things that don't involve killing around oblivion :)...

 

by the way, as I'm intending to use spells to improve compatibility.. how about including a messsage with a counter at the top when you've cast a (my-kind) soultrap spell when 10 seconds are left? I got pretty often annoyed that you would still not capture as soul as the effect just wore off a few seconds ago.

[szupercso]

So the conjured soulgems do or don't contain as soul already..If they are they just empty..that'll be cool as capturing souls is basically too easy...there aren't much things that don't involve killing around oblivion :)...

 

by the way, as I'm intending to use spells to improve compatibility.. how about including a messsage with a counter at the top when you've cast a (my-kind) soultrap spell when 10 seconds are left? I got pretty often annoyed that you would still not capture as soul as the effect just wore off a few seconds ago.

The conjured gems should be empty when created.

Come to think of it, would it be possible to have gems add their charges together when combining into the finished gem? (up to the gem's holding capacity of course) Or would it be better to have the combined gem simply empty?

 

A timer sounds awesome. :)

[Peppez]

It seems to be a good idea for tougher enemies to give more than one "soulsteps".

 

I'm not sure about the values of the gems in shops or the limitations, conjuring gems does kind of affect the "economy" of the game, I didn't give it much thought yet.

 

Maybe bigger gems should need more than two smaller ones to create, example:

 

2 petty = 1 lesser

3 lesser = 1 common

4 common = 1 greater

5 greater = 1 grand

 

That could make bigger gems worth more and harder to get.

I have imagined the perks like this: (on conjuration)

 

Novice(0): 1 gem per day, petty max

Apprentice(25): 2 gems per day, petty max

Journeyman(50): 2 gems per day, lesser max

Expert(75): 3 gems per day, lesser max

Master(100): 3 gems per day, common max

 

That means a master conjurer would take about a week to make a grand gem just by conjuring, to compensate for the effort, soul gems should be more powerful on enchanting items/restoring charge. If it all goes well, people won't need a cheat mod to give unlimited charges for their weapons, etc.

 

I haven't thought about black soulgems yet.. any ideas? They could be made more powerful, also progressively charged perhaps?

 

I like the conjuring soulgems thing, I could actually do that :D, maybe you could use something like "soul shards" that drop off of daedra or conjurers or something, and maybe for black soulgems you could have corrupted soul shards dropped from undead?

 

I could do this :D, I've got time.

[Pronam]

Hehe, had to be sure they are empty..pfiew..good they are :)..

 

Yeah, I'd really like that timer too..it's so easy.. :)...

 

I think there is no problem when combining soulgems their charges... The question would be what how they'll be merged...

As you might have some multiple sorts of soulgems in your inventory. The easy solution would be to put them in a container when casting the spell. But would the spell do all that or will the player use a visible container?

 

- Using the spell could go in a few ways, which do you prefer?

--One spell. One cast, the player will get a remote container in which to place the gems in. They'll never see it.

--One spell. Two casts. One to summon a real container, you'll put it in and cast the same spell again to merge them.

--One spell. One cast. Going to an object putting them in and cast a spell upon the container.

--Two spells. Two casts One to summon the container, and the next to cast upon the container to merge them. (Like with black soulgems)

 

The container could be any object....so an altar could be used like the one from the black soulgems. (But we could retexture it to get the necromancer sign of), but using an altar like the spellmaking/enchanting thing could do..but again.. basically every object.

 

Another question is the waisting of soullevels..if the player has two petty gems but captures a lesser soul will just one be filled? The same for different values...it's all possible, just the question what we'll do. The other thing would be what soulgems will be filled first And what will be the influence of Soulsteps/shards? Will the old values be hold, or will they be different? So would grand soulgem immediately be filled with with a grand soul as now or not?

[szupercso]

I think there is no problem when combining soulgems their charges... The question would be what how they'll be merged...

As you might have some multiple sorts of soulgems in your inventory. The easy solution would be to put them in a container when casting the spell. But would the spell do all that or will the player use a visible container?

 

Another question is the waisting of soullevels..if the player has two petty gems but captures a lesser soul will just one be filled? The same for different values...it's all possible, just the question what we'll do. The other thing would be what soulgems will be filled first And what will be the influence of Soulsteps/shards? Will the old values be hold, or will they be different? So would grand soulgem immediately be filled with with a grand soul as now or not?

Do whichever method feels better. However my general idea of the mod would be to make using soulgems more comfortable, so i think it would be nice if the player could do these things wherever he wants to (roleplayers would move to an altar or something anyways..)

 

Well I'm no good at coding as i have mentioned in the first post, I'd say if it's possible to avoid wasting soul levels (by code, so perhaps the soul gets "split" into two different gems?) it should be like that but if it's too much work, it could be simply left wasted.

 

On what gems to fill first, I'd say bigger ones. Since players would use the bigger gems sooner than smaller ones.

 

The influence of soul levels of enemies would be better determined by the monster's actual level (hey a lvl 20 rat is still more challenging than a lvl 1 one) and since the player's going to need faster filling on higher levels, I see it fit.

 

If there's going to be an ingredient, it should be something common and easy to get. (that does not necessarily mean cheap in shops) I don't have any good ideas on what item it would be, I'd say with the current limitations (that i wrote) and perks it should play well without an ingredient, expert/master skill levels are hard to get anyways. (or take long)

 

Any ideas on what changes should black soulgems get? Should they be more easily obtained (in vanilla oblivion it is quite a pain, and they're pretty useless anyways except for stealing human souls but it's just like a grand soulgem), should they be more powerful than normal ones?