I mentioned this already in the Uvirith's Legacy thread, but that one's getting close to the post limit and I'd rather focus on this one question: I have a list of scrolls I'm planning on adding to replace the old inscription scrolls in UL and want some input from the community. The old inscription system was hard to level, incredibly expensive, and created scrolls that were 99% worthless. I'm not sure how many people even bothered after finishing the quest that allowed you to make them. I plan on ditching the comprehensive list of spell effects that let you create useless crap like lock scrolls and replacing it with a messier, but more worthwhile list. It will focus on multi-effect scrolls, pairing effects that compliment each other, rather than things like "lame fire spell level 1-5 etc." and levels will be determined by effect and complexity rather than solely on magnitude and duration.

From gathering opinions on what vanilla scrolls players actually use, in an earlier thread in the hints forum, I've come to realize players don't really bother with scrolls unless they're OP, because otherwise they can make enchanted items that do the job 100x better. OP scrolls are therefore desirable, and they're already balanced by being on-time-use and costly to make. However, players don't really remember to use scrolls in the heat of battle, so ones with specific non-combat utility like Windwalker or Icarian Flight are far more worthwhile.

I've made a spreadsheet for my scroll list here if anyone cares to have a look: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/52707277/UL_Inscription_Scrolls.odsComment here or in Dropbox are equally good.

Plans for scripted scrolls are on the Ideas page. One concept I haven't delved into yet is making some contingency scrolls that fire automatically in battle when the player is hit by various weapons/spell effects, which would help with the "I forgot I had a scroll for this" problem.

The problems I have with scrolls are just what you mention - forgetting that I have them and that it is much easier to make potions and/or enchant items for the effects I want instead of a scroll. Therefore, I almost always sell off every scroll I find because, for me, they just feel like clutter taking up my inventory and/or storage space; I'd rather have the cash. Also, the few scrolls I think would be nice to have (e.g., soul trap), at least at the very beginning, never seem to be available in sufficient quantity to be useful as an alternative to just learning the spell and then enchanting an item (not scroll).

However, I have to say that my chars are obsessive/compulsive wrt selling off the scrolls. They always try to sell restoration and/or mysticism scrolls to priest-type NPCs. Otherwise, my chars sell any type of scroll to magic vendor NPCs.

Well, inscription will address the quantity issue when it comes to actually useful scrolls like soul trap. As for the crappy scrolls found all over, I'm introducing an http://i.imgur.com/YE7RbKi.jpg who also eats scrolls. If you feed him enough scrolls, he'll find enough gemstone dust in his ashes to reconstitute them into inks you can use to make the scrolls you want.

It's a bit hard to find a niche for scrolls that isn't already covered by enchants/spells/potions. The "Scroll of Icarian Flight" is a pretty cool example - the player is very unlikely to be able to replicate it in any other way.


Just a thought, but a good way to do this for more mundane magic effects might be via extremely long durations. For example, a character tasked with clearing a blight-infestation might first gather ingredients and prepare a powerful scroll of blight resistance that lasts several hours or even days. This could even work fine with more generic buffs like feather, fortify health, etc. So long as the magnitudes are balanced according to how difficult it is to craft the scroll, I don't see it as being too gamebreaking. Having such long durations (or magnitudes in cases similar to the Icarian Flight) would nicely differentiates the scroll mechanics from MW's other magic systems.


Another random idea - there could be a very difficult to create "Scroll of Triumph" that fortifies luck by some obscene number for a very short duration, thereby allowing the player to automatically succeed at one task of their choosing.

Actually, I found some scrolls to be useful especially those scrolls that fortified maximum magicka and with a few other scrolls that wasn't OP. So I did bother making those scrolls, but like you said I too also forgot the scrolls.

I downloaded the spreadsheet and will look at it later perhaps tomorrow.

Yeah, I did end up adding a couple fortify max magicka scrolls.

I was considering making some of those long duration scrolls, such as feather, even longer duration if that would make them worth it. Another thing Jasons077 mentioned was area effect scrolls, since making AE enchantments and spells can be prohibitively costly. For example, I was trying to give a healer the ability to cure companions with an AE effect (for an unrelated thing), and it calculated the spell cost to be around 1800 for a 20 range AE cure common disease and blight. That's the kind of utility where a scroll would shine. Also, I love that fortify luck idea.

I classified scrolls by what advantage they might have over spells/enchantments/potions. So besides scripted scrolls, some might have an extreme burst of magnitude, a lower effect with an extra-long duration, a normally costly area effect, pairing effects that compliment each other (but would be too costly to enchant/make a spell for), or use an underutilized spell effect like fortify max magicka.