SSE Septim Fueled Gameplay

[ModsCanFixSomeParts]

Here's another "I'm a useless idea guy with no skills to make a mod" entry. After extensively adding mods to my Skyrim and tweaking it into my ideal version of the game, I have come to the conclusion that there are some things that mods have been unable to properly fix in the game so far. One of them is the gold economy. The sheer amount of loot and wealth that you gain while playing Skyrim is abhorrent, and there is barely anything to spend it on.

 

Problems:

• Player homes can be a nice hit to your wallet but they are a one time thing, and are very driven by preference. Some players simply don't care about the homes that much, and many more would probably have no interest in pointlessly buying every house just to get rid of worthless piles of septims
• Mods that just take away your gold (like taxes) feel too forced and artificial. It's a band-aid that adds nothing to the game and only admits that there is a problem without giving you something to solve it, only mitigating the symptoms somewhat.
• Mods that reduce the amount of loot in the game are fine, and I encourage using them. Skyrim vanilla has a huge problem with too many high value items laying around in unrealistic proportions. But this is not a fix for the gold economy because the game is simply so large that it will always eventually add up to massive amounts of money that you can't spend enough. And there are flaws with these mods in that new lands mods like Beyond Reach will have their own containers and basically be untouched and back to vanilla levels of excessive free loot. And if you reduce the loot too much, then you start to go into another problem where now players will have no reason to want to explore if dungeons and chests are nigh-empty of anything.
• Reducing sell value and increasing buy value is another band-aid that doesn't fix the problem. You can only go so far before seeing iron costing over 1000 septims or selling every precious gem in your inventory for 5 gold each breaks the suspension of disbelief. Skyrim is a large game with large scope so there are realistic prices that items should settle around, and you will naturally become overloaded with money just because of how many dungeons and enemies you will find to pick gear off to sell.
• Overall, the focus on mod attempts to fix the economy focus on subtractive solutions more than additive solutions. There aren't enough things with real inherent value worth buying that the player organically comes to want, that keeps up with the rate of discovered loot and sell value that give the player more money to spend. And in a way that doesn't add tedium and grind to the game.
• This proposed mod would NOT be intended to allow you to gain more gold in the game, rather to make use of the vast amounts of it that exist.

 

Concept: It's time to just accept that the economy is irreversibly broken in Skyrim. Instead of trying to manipulate it, we should take advantage of its presence as a fairly dependable and constantly replenishing player resource. That is, turning wealth into a fully integrated game mechanic that you can gain qualitative gameplay benefits from over the entire span of your playthrough, constantly giving you a WANT to spend money and making you actually care about looking for more ways to get gold. Think of it like stamina/magicka/arrows as fuel for you to use.

 

• Pickpocket, speech, and lockpicking skills have very little reason for people to spend perk points on in vanilla, and a few extra reasons with perk overhauls like vokrii. However, the bulk of primary value given from this mod will make these skills become organically and truly desirable to build a character around.
• Three categories of wealth based resource that fuel the different gameplay features introduced in this mod. They are intended to be interchangable as fuel for any of the abilities introduced, but some abilities may be restricted to a higher tier resource only.
  • Septims - The standard gold coins that you have part of your inventory UI telling you about in vanilla skyrim. These are the lowest tier of fuel; coins are not often made purely out of an element, and are often composites of extremely cheap metals with only a very small portion of a more valuable metal in them. Septims are the most plentiful resource in game, obviously.
  • Aqua Regia - A new miscellaneous category object introduced by this mod. This is an acidic liquid that contains a dissolved, concentrated form of gold. It comes in two forms, Aqua Regia (Inert) and Aqua Regia (Activated).
    • Aqua Regia (Inert) can be created at an alchemy station by combining a few specific alchemy ingredients that are acidic in nature. TBD on what these ingredients would be. This would create 0.01 L of Aqua Regia (Inert). Your inventory would keep track of these liquid amounts.
    • Aqua Regia (Activated) can be created at a smelter by combining 0.01 L of Aqua Regia (Inert) with 100 septims. This would create 0.01 L of Aqua Regia (Activated). Your inventory would keep track of these liquid amounts.
    • Due to the dangerous reactive properties of Aqua Regia, your character has a maximum volume of the activated version liquid that may be carried without risk to harming your character or his carried equipment. E.G. the base character might start with the ability to carry 0.1 L
    • Specialized storage devices to safely carry larger amounts of Aqua Regia (Activated) may be obtained to further upgrade your character's usage of this fuel. Obviously you will only be able to obtain these by spending more septims to purchase them from specific vendors.
    • Aqua Regia (Activated) is the usable resource for gameplay features introduced. The idea is that you can't use the inert form but you can carry limitless amounts around with you (well, they might have weight like very light potions) and refill your activated amounts whenever you find a smelter (or forge maybe). This is not a resource as convenient as septims, but the second "tier" of wealth based resource that gives more strength to any the features introduced.
  • Precious minerals - Gold/silver ingots and all of the different gems that exist in the game. These are the highest purity of resource and as such the third tier, giving you the most strength for features introduced.
• Graphical user interface meter indicating different information for your currently available wealth fuel
  • A bar similar to health/stamina/magicka
  • Outline color changes between four different colors to indicate range of septims you are currently carrying in the following ranges: [0-99], [100-999], [1000-9999], [10000+]. (first tier resource)
  • Bar fill amount changes to indicate volume of carried Aqua Regia (Activated) vs your maximum capacity for Aqua Regia. (second tier resource)
  • Small icon adjacent on screen with a number, similar to the UI showing you a little arrow and the number of arrows you have. This would be a sum of the current number of precious minerals in your inventory (third tier resource).
• New powers/spells/shouts/features based around using the three categories of resources as fuel. Defeat your enemies by figuratively throwing money at them! Defeat your enemies by literally throwing money at them! There should be something for every kind of character, be it magical, warrior, or stealthy. Just some ideas:
  • Concentration beam spell (like flames/sparks) that drains your wealth to pelt your enemy with coins
  • Magical exploding gems/ingots!
  • Wealth sense. Use it to become aware of valuable objects above a certain threshold within some range of your character. (Like detect enemy abilities that highlight them on screen through walls)
  • A special mining pickaxe that instantly mines a vein at the cost of gold! (Unique enchantment that can't be learned?)
  • Gold pirate doubloons with the extraordinary ability that lets you walk on water as long as you can pay the cost! Works well with Frostfall so your character can explore areas with lots of cold water.
  • Throw a bundle of septims on the ground to distract an enemy momentarily. Only affects humanoid enemies. Based on their level, the amount of wealth that you need to spend to get them to care will increase. With much larger amounts, you could do things like cause nearby enemies to stop fighting you for a few seconds. You could cause them to go investigate the money if you are trying to sneak past. Maybe even with very large amounts of money, you could cause enemies to fight each other over the money!
  • Dragons like gold! Do you have dragon mods installed increasing their difficulty or encounter rate and/or want to buy some convenience when all you really want is to take a carriage ride but a dragon keeps spawning near cities and never despawns unless you kill it? Now you can pay them $100 to **** off! In a lore friendly manner, of course. For a large sum of your wealth resource, the dragon has his attention captured by shiny objects and takes it and then flies away (then despawns). Maybe there's a chance that it doesn't go away permanently based on level or if you don't have enough gold, and you can only keep it distracted for a bit if you want something to give you the advantage in combat. This might make sense as a shout for three different possible effects. (But costs would still scale based on level of the dragon as well as the effect)
  • Different buffing abilities that cost varying amounts of the resource for upkeep to give you different things like some more temporary health/stamina/magicka/speed/etc. The sky is the limit.
  • Gilded enchantment. When you strike an enemy with this weapon, if you can afford it, some of your resources are consumed in order to create a burst of coins on impact to the enemy. This may have some different effects depending on what can be thought of.
  • Midas touch, turn an enemy into solid gold, the higher level, the more it would cost! They would definitely not be alive anymore.
  • Enhance your own items or debuff/damage your enemies based on the gold value of items being carried/equipped.
  • Corruption! Pay guards to act at your behest and commit specific crimes. I'm not sure how you could make use of this in a playthrough but it would certainly be entertaining to pay a guard to rob someone, get caught and killed by the other guards, and then you can just pick off his body what you wanted, avoiding all suspicion. Maybe you can pay a guard to kill Nazeem!
  • Follower salaries! Globally, every single follower (mod or vanilla) now has a salary that you must pay on a recurring basis. If you fail to pay, the follower will leave your service. If you can not pay them, they will not join you to begin with until you can pay. Followers always felt quite OP, giving you such an immense amount of combat support and acting as a pack mule, all for no cost, which genuinely feels unfair. Now you have actual decision making and cost/benefit analysis to make when hiring followers. Maybe they increase the required salary the more fights they get in, or how many times they get downed in combat. At least, this way you can now feel like you are actually earning those easy fights when your follower distracts all the enemies while you stand back shooting arrows or magic without any risk or difficulty to your character.
  • New mechanics and/or new enemies in the game. Their very attacks would drain your wealth if you get hit! Maybe this is as simple as bandits cutting your purse when they strike you, or a more mystical enemy that absorbs gold when it hits you. Maybe there are new encounters that occur if you have a certain threshold of amassed wealth carried on your person that features enemies trying to steal from you.
  • Give a use to dragon souls outside of the few shouts in the game (which eventually you don't need to spend anymore) and perk reallocation (which you probably won't need to spend on frequently). Dragon souls could be used for creating inert Aqua Regia.
  • How will you get the new items/powers/spells? Why, a humble merchant of course! A new mysterious merchant would be added to the game, and he would be very exclusive with who he allows to be his clientele. As you progress through parts of the game, different achieved goals will unlock new things for him to sell to you. For example, once you meet the Greybeards, he would be able to sell you the new shout "Dragon's Hoard".

I don't know if this would fix my everlasting gripe with Skyrim's economy, but I believe it could come very close if not. It is certainly an ambitious idea that would require many different skills to put together into the vision I have, so I'm not confident it will ever exist, but if there is someone out there with the skill and without an idea, I encourage you to steal my idea.

Edited May 6, 2021 by ModsCanFixSomeParts

[kodaxmax]

I made a mod that lets you buy skill xp with gold: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/49140 though it's a bit WIP the features work.

 

My next mod will allow players to buy attributes with gems. Red gems buy HP, blue magick, green stamina. purple can buy any and white upgrades all 3. As well as awarding buff for otherwise unused misc items and vendor chaff, like granting extra weapon damage for carrying troll skulls or crafting souls from dragon remains etc.. Which serves to both discourage the player from selling so much and give them stuff to indirectly spend gold on (buying gems for the express purpose of buffing attributes).

 

I might end up implementing some of your suggestions too.

 

I having alot of trouble with my current mod, so it might be nice to switch over to this idea for a couple weeks to avoid burnout.

[ModsCanFixSomeParts]

Should have thought of it sooner, I just added another point, it's only natural that obtaining all these new additions would be through a new special merchant added to the game. A very unique shop where you would first have to buy these new powers or items.

[kodaxmax]

Should have thought of it sooner, I just added another point, it's only natural that obtaining all these new additions would be through a new special merchant added to the game. A very unique shop where you would first have to buy these new powers or items.

Something Clavicus Vile themed for the merchant/ shop could be fun. Could even make it the statue itself after his quest is complete.