Spirits of Skyrim - Need Suggestions for Values, Conversions & a Critique

[SigynLaufeyson]

I told myself I would NOT mod this game until i finally finished it. I tell myself a lot of things....

 

I started out updating a few textures for booze bottles (ie Spirits) that no one had done. Previously I was using several different mods to do the same thing but a few beverages were never added by anyone and the appearances were rather varied. Then I redid the bottles from Unique Treasures since they're apart of another mod I use. It kind of snowballed from there and collided with an issue that annoys me: permanently vacant property. I have a running list of places that become vacant (or remain so) during quest lines. From an economic standpoint, vacant property is never a good thing. From a game standpoint, the world feels static, as though I move from set-piece to set-piece rather than moving through a vibrant, living world. To rectify both issues I decided to begin by turning the house formerly occupied by Silus and his Mythic Dawn museum into something else....The Spirits of Nirn beverage store. Not a tavern, just a place to buy rare and unusual drinks, along with the common. I realized that not everyone kills Silus' so I thought I should make one mod (the Spirits of Skyrim) for the booze and one mod that relies on it for the Spirits of Nirn shop.

 

Yes the names are a bit confusing / confused. I came up with the Spirits of Nirn before I thought to separate out the booze from the house.

 

The Spirits of Skryim currently alters all the alcohol beverages in the game, including all DLC (not exceptions on that). Each has a unique appearance. From there I decided to add in beverages from previous games as well as a selection of beverages from TES Online. I also added one beverage that's mentioned in game but doesn't appear anywhere: Old Gold 200 Mead. I could use some help converting potion effects, monetary values, etc.

 

Here are some pics to break up the massive wall of text :)

 

http://i.imgur.com/GaIQAqE.png

 

These are all the in-game beverages. The blue bottle is the Holy Water. Jessica's Wine is to the far right, I haven't done it yet. The back row are the generic wines. Rather than Alto Wine version 1 & 2 and "wine" version 1 & 2, they are now Alto Wine, Tenor Wine, Wine & Cheap Wine. :) The text on the Surilie Brothers wine is too light so I'll have to fix that.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/PbwcHbD.png

 

 

The beverages brewed in places in-game. I think the Black Briar Mead (yellow) need to have more contrast on the label and the Black Briar Reserve is a bit dark. The ash on the Ashfire Mead could also use a bit of gray or some darkening I think...maybe??

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/xQaZOT9.png

 

Beer! I did this for an existing mod initially but decided to add it to mine too.

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/zgNy5rN.png

 

 

Here are a bunch of meads. The back row features Four Eye Grog from TES Online (the normal map is messed up atm), Rosethorn Mead from Oblivion (messed up normal map), and Old Gold 200 mead (mentioned in the Winking Skeever).

I renamed "ale" to Son of a Horker Ale and "nord mead" to Nordic Mead. Not terribly imaginative but I never said I was very creative.

The Riften Specials are now mead bottles rather than generic flagons. I used a mod that made them into wine bottles but I thought they seemed a bit large. The textures on the mead bottles were originally created for those wine bottles though so if anyone wants them, just ask. They are no longer listed under potions because I thought that was weird.

 

 

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/X5iKuk3.png

 

Here is the first set of entirely new-to-Skyrim beverages: Ancient Dagoth Brandy, Vintage Brandy & Telvanni Bug Musk from Morrowind. Daedric Lava Whiskey is from one of the DLC for Oblivion. Clan Mother's Cordial is from TES Online.

 

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I'M TAKING ALL VALUES AND DATA FROM UESP.COM FOR PREVIOUS GAMES & AND A TES ONLINE BLOG FOR CURRENT VALUES FOR THOSE DRINKS. TES ONLINE DRINKS DO NOT HAVE SET SELL VALUES.

I don't think any 'historic' drinks should decrease in value but I'm not sure if using the "auto-calculate" price in the CK is always the best option either. I provide the auto value for comparison.

 

Ancient Dagoth Brandy

• Original Effects: Damage Intelligence 20 pts for 60 seconds & Damage Willpower 20 pts for 60 seconds.
• Sell price then & atm: $1,500 (auto: $522)
• NEW Effects: Damage Magicka 20 pts for 60 seconds & Damage Magicka Regen 20 pts for 60 seconds

 

Vintage Brandy

• Original Effects: Damage Agility 30pts for 360 seconds & Fortify Strength 30 pts for 360 seconds
• Sell price then & atm: $500 (auto: $6,078)
• NEW effects: Damage Stamina 30 pts for 360 seconds, Fortify 1-Hand & Fortify 2-Hand 30 pts for 360 seconds

 

Telvanni Bug Musk

• Original Effects: Fortify Personality 40pts for 60 seconds
• Sell price then & atm: $100 (auto: $207)
• NEW Effects: Fortify Personality / Speecraft 40 pts for 60 seconds.

 

Rosethorn Mead

• Original Effects: Drain Intelligence & Drainwillpower 5pts for 60 seconds and Fortify Strength & Fortify Endurance 5 pts for 60 seconds
• NEW effects: Damage Magicka & Lingering Damage Magicka 5 pts for 60 seconds and Fortify Stamina & Fortify Carryweight 5 pts for 60 seconds
• Sell Price then $5, atm $20, auto $531 - In my mind I assume Rosethorn mead is still being produced even if there was just one bottle in Oblivion

 

Daedric Lava Whiskey

• Original Effects: Fire Damage 1 pt for 10 seconds on Self. Paralyze 10 seconds on self. Restore Health 20 pts for 20 seconds on self. Summon Dremora Lord for 60 seconds.
• NEW effects: Fire Storm 1pt for 10 seconds. Paralyze 10 seconds on self. Regenerate Health 20pts for 20 seconds. Summon Dremora Merchant for 60 seconds. (the merchant seemed like a reasonable compromise unless I missed a "summon dremora" spell in the CK)
• Sell price: then $1. atm $660 (random), auto $605

 

 

Four Eye Grog

• Original Effects (as of current patch): restores 46 points of health for 35 minutes
• NEW effects: Fortify Health 46 points for 210 seconds (=3.5 minutes rather than 35 minutes) & Damage Stamina 30 points for 210 seconds (because it is booze)
• It doesn't have a price online as it's made if you have the provisioning recipe for it. You can sell it in guild banks & such I guess. I set the Skyrim price at $15 but it auto prices at $531

 

Clan Mother's Cordial

• Original Effects: Restore Magicka 169 points for 35 minutes
• NEW effects: Restore Magicka 169 points for 210 seconds (=3.5 minutes instead of 35 minutes)
• It doesn't have a price online as it's made if you have the provisioning recipe for it. You can sell it in guild banks & such I guess. I have it set to auto-calculate which is $2,411!

 

 

Suggestions are appreciated on all that data. :)

 

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SPIRITS TO ADD LIST

The following list may or may not make it into the mod. I'm not very good at designing labels so it's time consuming work. Converting the TESO beverages to Skyrim values is a pain too especially w/o any kind sell price. The duration for the effects is very long which would seem unbalancing in single-player Skryim. Also TESO beverages don't seem to have ANY negative side effects which has been rather standard for alcoholic beverages in all the other games.

 

 

From TES Online:

• Falkreath Rosy Mead
• Ysgramor's Harbinger Lager (I'll probably shorten the name, that's awkward to say)
• Colovian Amber Ale
• Cheydinnhal Sherry
• Riften Rye
• Bravil Mead
• Skingrad Muscat
• Surilie Brothers White Merlot
• Surilie Brothers v399
• Surilie Brothers v415
• Psijic Ambrosia (no idea what to convert the 50% exp boost to)
• Imperial Stout

 

 

Since the stand alone beverage mod will be released independently from the Spirits of Nirn beverage store, I will be adding drinks to various vendors. The Telvanni Bug Musk, for example, will be sold only by the apothecary in Tel Mithryn.

 

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OK, I'm stopping now since I'm beginning to lose track of my own train of thought. Any suggestions, tips, critiques are appreciated. If I skipped a drink from a previous single=player title, let me know.

 

 

I'm hoping to release this (not the store, just the booze) late next week depending on feedback and the number of drinks I end up adding.

 

[Mattiewagg]

You should post on r/skyrimmods *(reddit) about this, you'll get a whole lot of feedback there as well as here. Just paste in your OP.

 

Personally, I agree with all the assessments/thoughts/concerns about the textures you had while you were showing them off, such as the Blackbriar reserve being too dark and Honningbrew Mead being too light a label. I think the bottle should be darker for that too, unless it's not see through.

[SigynLaufeyson]

Thanks for the suggestion! I posted it on r/skyrimmods earlier today. :)

 

The bottles aren't transparent. Getting transparency right on bottles that contain a liquid is tough to do without altering the mesh. I'm glad I'm still good at spotting errors in my work :) I'm usually my own worst critic. Honestly I could be a lot harsher on myself but my skill level isn't high enough to compete with the standards in my head LOL.

[Tlaffoon]

I think i'd give the blackbriar mead a black label with silver letters and thorns as trimming and a burgundy colored bottle besides that I think your doing well thus far. :wink:

[crazytexan]

Create a version that doesn't give those weird stat boosts.

Edited August 1, 2015 by crazytexan

[SigynLaufeyson]

Create a version that doesn't give those weird stat boosts.

 

That's part of why I was posting this, I need suggestions on what to convert those stat boosts to that would seem more normal in Skyrim. Right now I've just done some conversions from the previous games to this one but each iteration of the game kind of gets, well, continually dumbed down so they do seem a tad weird and in some cases OP. Keep in mind that some of the beverages from the previous games were novelty items or quest items, not meant for regular consumption. I don't intend to flood Skyrim with drinks like the Daedric Lava Whiskey, for example. There was only one bottle of that in Oblivion and only if you bought one of the DLC houses. It was novelty and my intention is to keep it and the other novelties rare and / or very expensive. :)

 

 

 

I think i'd give the blackbriar mead a black label with silver letters and thorns as trimming and a burgundy colored bottle besides that I think your doing well thus far. :wink:

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I was trying to stay away from metallic looking inks though. One of the mods that created unique appearances for the Riften Specials turned the flagons into wine bottles with lovely, fancy gold and silver labels. They were a bit out of place along side some of the other texture mods I use so I wanted to create something a bit less fancy. I am having a hard time with the Black Briar ones because I have a replacer that has really nice labels....but kind of bland bottles. The original bottles were yellow and dark blue, I think maybe Bethesda was going for the yellow & black of a bee but decided against a totally black bottle. Personally I'm not loving the blue but I feel like I have a lot of maroon in use. I think I'll give it a shot though since that's an easy change :)

 

 

I did forget to mention that all the textures are 1k. The screenshots are taken in the creation kit in a testing cell I built. I made a bunch of changes and corrections today. I'm reloading the CK now to see how they turned out since it doesn't update