danshive Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 Once the CK comes out, I am considering making a mod that makes Soul Gems reusable and increases the cost of empty soul gems to 75% the cost of the full ones. The reason for this is that I like Enchanting, but I find it much more tedious to develop than Alchemy and Smithing. In spite of the rewards, I find it less fun simply due to the fact that I have to keep replacing soul gems. It adds a tedium to something I otherwise enjoy. At the same time, I don't want the game to just hand over souls or even the soul gems. It's not a game without some effort put into the rewards. As such, I feel making the individual gems more expensive to buy makes it so more effort is involved in hording a significant amount of them while adding more of a sense of reward to finding them, AND making it so you still have to go out and bloody your weapons to get souls short of spending a lot of gold. I am aware that this would effectively negate the benefit of a certain quest reward, but I think it would make enchanting more fun overall. I've already tried out playing with a dozen copies of that quest item in my inventory (yay console commands), thus negating the need for soul gems entirely while still needing to earn souls. I've found it more fun than the default arrangement, but it also feels a bit less satisfying. I think the mod I have in mind would be a nice middle ground. Opinions / suggestions on this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MisterBiggs Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 That seems reasonable. I never really ventured much of a thought as to why soul gems were not reusable. However as I think about it, why the heck aren't they? They shouldnt just magically "de-nature" after only one use! Although I would suggest instead of making them infinitely reusable, simply put a cap on how many times one can re-use a soul gem. It seems like a nice middle ground between Vanilla and your mod. B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
agburanar Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 That seems reasonable. I never really ventured much of a thought as to why soul gems were not reusable. However as I think about it, why the heck aren't they? They shouldnt just magically "de-nature" after only one use! Although I would suggest instead of making them infinitely reusable, simply put a cap on how many times one can re-use a soul gem. It seems like a nice middle ground between Vanilla and your mod. B Rather than a hard cap - make a soul gem degrade when used. So using a full grand gets you a greater, and so on. That way the quest reward is still unique. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danshive Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 Rather than a hard cap - make a soul gem degrade when used. So using a full grand gets you a greater, and so on. That way the quest reward is still unique.Ooh... I like this idea for several reasons, one of which being that it would be the easiest way to program in a limited use for an item like this while keeping the mod easy to turn on and off (i.e. it doesn't add custom items, it only modifies existing ones). This should be easy to pull off simply by adding a line of code to each one that adds an empty degraded version to your inventory once it's used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darksun45230 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 This also ties in to an idea I had about re-vamping Conjuration: players alternatively (or exclusively) use Soul Gems to summon Daedra (or Undead) rather than spending Mana.I'm sorry if this doesn't fit with what you have in mind, I don't mean to hijack your topic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danshive Posted December 13, 2011 Author Share Posted December 13, 2011 (edited) The more I consider it, the less I think I would personally enjoy the soul gem degradation approach. I still think it's a good idea, however, and it would be easy to make both that and an everlasting version, so I would just have two different versions available. With that in mind, should there be a price fix on the "degradable" version? The everlasting version should definitely have a pricing adjustment, but I don't know if it'd be all that necessary in the degradable one. This also ties in to an idea I had about re-vamping Conjuration: players alternatively (or exclusively) use Soul Gems to summon Daedra (or Undead) rather than spending Mana.I'm sorry if this doesn't fit with what you have in mind, I don't mean to hijack your topic.That's not how you re-vamp Conjuration! You re-vamp it by making vampire summons! ...What? In all seriousness, I think it's an interesting idea, particularly since conjuration is the spell set best prepared for soul trapping (if I remember correctly, Soul Trap itself is a conjuration spell). I also think that would benefit heavily from being merged with at least some version of the mod we're discussing, as I think it would be too much of a handicap otherwise. I imagine a character designed around conjuration in a jam without souls or even soul gems would be in quite a bit of trouble. Edited December 13, 2011 by danshive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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