Mercer's Ingredient Effect Overhaul.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27610
Requires SI + Cobl.
Version 8.


- This mod changes nearly all ingredient effects of nearly all the ingredients from Oblivion, Shivering Isles and Cobl.

The main purpose of this is to re-balance the effects compared to rarity and to bring back the feeling of
satisfaction of making a potion you actually need.


- Most Novice effects are now very weak (examples: Drain Magicka, Burden, Resist Poison). This is to prevent my self from always using Alchemy even when playing some barbarian character who would never pick flowers and fiddle with alchemy equipment.

- The Restore Attribute effects is now only found as 4th effect since I feel it needs nerfing.

- Restore Health and Damage Health is much less common now.

- There is now a great number of Fortify Skill effects in use.

- The Cure Disease effect is now rare.

- If for nothing else (if you like me love the Alchemy part of Oblivion) you can use this mod to try out a completely
different way of combining ingredients if you feel you know the vanilla effects by heart and want to see something new.



Installation:

Select which changes you wish by selecting the proper esp (choose only 1 esp):


MEIO.esp: Only the ingredient changes.

MIEO-ae.esp : Ingredient changes + re-balancing of the alchemy equipment (which makes your home brewed potion/poisons about 30 % weaker).

Take your pick and load it after your Cobl esp's.
Remember this mod requires you to have Shivering Isles and Cobl installed.



Reasons for this mod :

This mod began about 2? years ago after I had stumbled upon the mod Pestilent Afflictions, which makes diseases worse.
I quickly realized that the mod was practically irrelevant since all I had to do to avoid even the worst diseases was
to eat a mandrake root.
To fix this I removed the Cure Disease effect from mandrake root and from a few more ingredients. It did the trick and I was happy for a while getting riddled with diseases I could not simply cure in an instant.

After a while I returned to the CS to edit a few more things that I felt was an exploit or for another reason needed changing.
For instance, I always it was too easy to create poisons by using Sacred Lotus Seeds which is abundant several places. It was also too easy to create Restore Health potions since Fly Amanita Cap has this effect and the Imperial City is full of them.
Since it was so easy to create a lot of potions it began feeling like a chore to do it and I decided to change this
around so I would instead be happy or at least satisfied whenever I created a potion I really needed.

I began nerfing the effects that I felt was too abundant and also began testing effects that are normally only used in spells but not in ingredients. After much testing and many revisions (hence the "version 5" at the top of the page) where I've been scribbling down changes and had my table filled with papers to keep track of all the changes made (since the CS is not a good tool for this), I've now arrived at this mod. It is still undergoing development whenever I find something that is not right so don't be afraid to give feedback.
Lastly, this mod was made for me and my taste so it is probably not for anyone. After talking about this mod over at Delte's Immersion thread other peeps asked for me to release it and I so decided to do so.
Enjoy!



Documentation of occurrence of effects:

Drain Skill (Blade, Blunt, Marksman, Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Block)
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 5 (meaning that for instance the 'Drain Blade' effect is present in 5 different ingredients.

Weakness to Fire, Frost, Shock, Magic, Poison & Normal Weapons.
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 4

Fire Damage, Frost Damage & Shock Damage.
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 6

Damage Health.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of this effect: 15

Restore Attributes.
Present only as the 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 4

Resist Frost, Resist Fire, Resist Shock.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 9

Frost Shield, Fire Shield & Shock Shield.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 8

Fortify Skill (All Skills, except Armorer & Alchemy since they have no effect).
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 6




Compatibility:
Incompatible with mods that changes ingredients, but this can be sorted with load order.
MEIO-lvl.esp changes a few cobl leveled list that I know of no other mods that change.
MIEO-lvl-ae.esp also changes alchemy equipment but I know of only 1 mod which edits alchemy equipment (I got the idea from that mod. It's called Less Effective Alchemy Equipment.)



Version history:

Version 5 (earlier versions not released): Finally done enough to release it.
Version 6: Fixed two minor mistakes and made the effects overall a little more high-end (less nerfed).
Version 7: Fixed several minor inconsistencies and balance issues and posted documentation of my changes (to the OP).
Version 8: - Made sure all ingredients tagged as 'food' has fairly weak effects since those of us who uses realism mods, that require the PC to eat, won't waste good/strong ingredients on eating.
- More minor fixes.
- More Fortify Skill effects, less Resist Fire/Frost/Shock and less elemental Shield effects.
- Changed a few ingredients to reflect the next changes there will be made to COBL (as suggested by haama, migck, Vacuity and CorePC).
http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1037455&view=findpost&p=15207205
I will continue to have my mod follow what team COBL decides about rarity of the ingredients so there's consistency. For that reason version 8 won't have have a version which changes COBL-leveled lists. I suggest to everyone to upgrade to the newest proposal/test version which I linked to above.

Im defenetly gonna try it out.
TNX mate

Please don't quote the entire first post in a one-line second post.

@Mercer,
Mod looks great. Downloading now. Thanks,

gothemasticator

It looks... interesting! Actually a pretty good idea, methinks, and this coming from someone who loves alchemy. I presume you have higher-end effects on higher-end ingredients (vampire dust, minotaur horns and the ilk) even at the earlier alchemy levels as these ingredients are harder to come by in every sense?

Vac

Thanks guys!


That's right, Vacuity. The very rare ingredients have high-end effects and cost a lot. I've also sometimes skipped the nerfing of the 1st effect for the rare ingredients so even untrained alchemists "gain" more when getting hold of these ingredients.

Sounds like the way I'd do it! :tops: (that's intended as a compliment, btw...) Should I ever get around to playing this game again I will most likely try this mod out.

Vac

"Apart from the ingredient changes this esp also changes a few cobl leveled lists so shops instead of always
having 30 pieces of each ingredient they will have much lower quantity to reflect the rarity of the ingredients."

This in particular is a wonderful change!

I would be interested in seeing the list of alchemical effects changes... Do you have a spreadsheet you could upload?

gothemasticator

Great mod! I'm wondering whether it needs any Bash tags to make the changes to the leveled lists and inventories be imported into the Bashed patch. Would that be needed?

Doomguy

Just dug up Jrush mod Alchemy advanced and pointed out that most ingredients have the same power in the affecting area. Does this mod change the power of ingredients as well as how long they are affective?

Cheers!

gothemasticator,
I don't have a spreadsheet to upload because from the very beginning of this mod it has been easier for me to use pen & paper. I could post some of the changes though. Was it something in particular you were looking for?


Doomguy,
I couldn't find a tag to use but Wrye Bash colored it green automatically when I opened it up, so the mod is merged in my load order.


Locksley,
I'm not sure what you mean. The numbers you type in the CS for each ingredient has no effect on duration and strength of the effects. This is governed entirely by Alchemy skill, Luck attribute and the quality of the alchemy equipment.

yeah - but we got "duration" atleast.

EDIT
Or are you saying that that tab does nothing? I am not knowledgeable in the C.S. capabilities.

Right now the alchemy does not take into effect the magnitude nor the duration of the ingredient itself.

Using wortcraft with unique/expensive ingredient could work very well if the duration was increased.

And that was why I wrote in Jrush thread since he is modding alchemy to do something different - he might think it worthwhile having ingredients affect the power and duration of the potion.

Yes, that tab does nothing (at least as far as numbers go). In the CS under each ingredient you can only change the price, which effects you want and wether it's considered a food item or not.

If you want to have the wortcraft effect to last longer you can give your self a Weakness to Poison ability. This will buy you a few seconds and it's what I use my self. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=6556 to give my self such an ability along with many other abilities.

Hopefully Jrush might find it worthwhile to implement. The data is there atleast, even if it is not used. Funny thing, mutton got longer duration than most other restore fatigue in game when using wortcraft, wonder why that has a special place in the Oblivion heart.

Cheers!

Ok, thanks!

Another question though: did you also change the various recipe scrolls and books to reflect the new ingredient effects?

Doomguy

I've made no changes to any recipes and nor am I going to. I'm still editing this mod so that would be too muck work and besides I've never used recipes.
As far as the sorters go though, there's no problem. The sorters handles any ingredient - vanilla or modded.

Don't go to too much trouble. I can always look stuff up with editors. I'm not looking for anything specific as much as I am curious to see your methods and decisions regarding balance, etc.

gothemasticator

NEW VERSION UP!

Since there was nearly 50 downloads of this mod after 1 day I decided to go through it again to check for inconsistencies. I found and corrected 2 mistakes and also realized that perhaps I had nerfed the effects overall too much. I've added more of the middle and high-end effects and I'm working on posting some data on the changes I've made since this is not easily viewed in the CS.

Download http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27610

This time there is only 2 esp's to choose from. Do anyone who downloaded version 5 use the version with the alchemy equipment changes? (The one called MEIO-lvl-ae.esp)


From the new readme:

Yep, Im using MEIO-lvl-ae.esp

Whooohooo, good one, will surely try it whenever I get back to playing Oblivion (from Morrowind and Mount&Blade...)!

Cheers mate! :foodndrink:
PKR.

Thanks for replying. I was just checking if many people were using it because or not. I guess not. :shrug:



:D Thanks PKR.

NEW VERSION UP! (Same link as before)

I've been tweaking & re-balancing ingredients the last couple of days and I also got around to documenting my changes for the 7th version. Don't expect any updates soon since I've tested and tweaked the mod to pretty much where I want it (at least for now ).

There's 3 version of this mod again now. Read the first post, which I just updated.



Documentation of occurrence of effects:

Drain Skill (Blade, Blunt, Marksman, Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Block)
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 5 (meaning that for instance the 'Drain Blade' effect is present in 5 different ingredients.

Weakness to Fire, Frost, Shock, Magic, Poison & Normal Weapons.
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 4

Fire Damage, Frost Damage & Shock Damage.
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 6

Damage Health.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of this effect: 15

Restore Attributes.
Present only as the 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 4

Resist Frost, Resist Fire, Resist Shock.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 9

Frost Shield, Fire Shield & Shock Shield.
Present from 1st - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 8

Fortify Skill (All Skills, except Armorer & Alchemy since they have no effect).
Present from 2nd - 4th effect.
Number of each effect: 6

This is a must have, but first I must know if it's compatible with FCOM as I'd like to use both. You should add a compatibility section on your first post.
I'll check it out. Thanks for sharing and keep up the good work.


Cheers,
Pushkatu!

Hey Pushkatu,
If you use the esp called MIEO.esp you'll only get the ingredient changes which I'm sure is compatible with all mods (since I'm sure you're only going to be using 1 ingredient changing mod). Load it after your other cobl esp's.

Thank you, I'll keep that in mind.

Sure!


I just uploaded a few images at TesNexus.

(And corrected a mistake in the documentation.)