Where are you getting the 7000 from? Grand soul gems are 200 gold. I guess summoning Golden Saints is expensive if you can't find any in the wild and are relying on scrolls. If you only need to carry around six grand soul gems filled with Saint souls to refill your amulet, I think that's pretty reasonable. How long does it take to capture that many souls? A high level player can do it in a couple of minutes tops provided they are adept at conjuration. For such a small amount of work, you receive something like five minutes of 80pts chameleon.

I think a better "fix" would be to eliminate the Amulet of Shadows!

I could be mistaken, but I think 7,000 gold is what a grand gem with a Golden Saint is worth under the new MCP system... Since we're talking about something that would be done under MCP, that makes sense to me. Also, it doesn't matter if I did summon and capture the Saint myself, if I chose to sell it I could get 7.000 for it since my mercantile is very high. That's a net loss of 7,000 gold, not counting the amount paid for the grand gem. However... I can't summon a Golden Saint, even at level 30 without a scroll.

So, what about a high level character like my orc who has a 0% chance of success at summoning a Golden Saint? Hell, I can't even summon a Storm Atronach without potions or scrolls, my magicka is too low. I've also had mages who were too weak to kill a Golden saint even at high levels, and with MCP, the first thing the Saint does is dispel a soul trap and then reflect spells cast at her. That generally results in a dead mage if he's casting high level destruction spells. True, it's not impossible, but it is more difficult than you are making it out to be.

Then, at 5 pounds each, I generally don't carry more than one or two grand soul gem in any case. I also perhaps carry on Greater gem, and a couple of petty, though I more often don't even bother to pick up petty soul gems.

As to the Amulet of Shadows, it's just an example, you could do away with all of the artifact level enchanted items, get rid of all Daedric weapons, and get rid of the enchant function entirely, thereby making the game properly difficult, eh? Perhaps you;d like to get rid of Wraithguard too? That would make the end game interesting.

Let me point out one thing for you, in case you've forgotten. The game is meant for the enjoyment of the player.... You don't have to use any endhanted items if you don't want to. The way MCP works, the changes offered are generally optional, so you wouldn't have to use that recharge function if you found it offensive. I can think of a lot of things that a player might want to add to the game and his abilities therein for his enjoyment in-game, but I cannot think of one single reason why anyone would want to reduce the pleasure of another player by eliminating a component that they don't have to use. So what's up with that? I don't mean to be offensive, I just don't understand.

Well, summoning the Saint can be annoying, but generally I don't think it's too hard to track them down in the wild and I think at level 30 it shouldn't be especially difficult to bring one down even if you have to snipe it with arrows. Soul trapping a creature that casts Dispel is annoying, but it just means you have to time things well. All in all, my experience has been that they're easy to farm, but I tend to take advantage of every trick out there so a player who might not be using the same tools could have an entirely different experience.

About the Amulet of Shadows, that was just my tongue-in-cheek way of saying I think it's very much overpowered. To be sure, there are items like Daedric War Axes that are extremely potent but I don't see them unbalancing in the same way as the Amulet of Shadows. With that amulet, it must be difficult to ever die in the vanilla game. Modded, obviously different story. It's not the only item I find overpowered, of course. The Boots of Blinding Speed are just silly.

As to your final point, as I've stated in an earlier post, I'm in favour of the player having as much freedom as possible to mold the game to suit his or her style of play. My one recurring objection here is to the idea that the amount of points restored on recharge is greatly out of balance. I think that the game should not punish players for advancing beyond level 65 in Enchant and perhaps instead of reducing the maximum amount of possible enchantment points restore, it should increase the minimum return up to, say, 25% so that you will, on average, get 62.5% of the gem's soul points back on recharge. Since that change would only affect players past level 65, it may be insufficient to address your concerns but it is the only real aspect that I personally believe requires "fixing". Possibly I can be convinced that, at low levels, there should be less complete failures to recharge but only at the cost of lower maximum point returns so it remains balanced as it is. Given THAT change, though, you will have to contend with the Enchant skill leveling up even faster than it does already.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348

• Updated readme and history file again.
  
• Includes item recharge rebalance, see description.

Hope the modding information and FAQ are correct now. I need test reports on all the features added since beta 13 too.

I'm still having instances with the detect life patch where indicators for NPCs will remain on the map after the effect has worn off, and even after changing cells. This is the only bug I've encountered so far.

Also, I'm quite pleased with your item recharge rebalance so far. It's much less painful to recharge items in the absence of automatic recharging now.

Could you post the updated formula?

Item recharge function with 2.0beta16 rebalance option:

luckTerm = 0.1 * luckif luckTerm < 1: luckTerm = 1     [changed]intelligenceTerm = 0.2 * intelligenceif intelligenceTerm > 20: intelligenceTerm = 20if intelligenceTerm < 1: intelligenceTerm = 1x = (enchantSkill + intelligenceTerm + luckTerm) * fatigueTermroll 100, success if roll < 2*x     [changed]on success:     [changed]y = max(x, roll 100)y = min(100, y)restore charge = soulgem charge * (y / 100)

ref. http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1097214-gameplay-mechanics-anolysis/ for original.

I first tested the enchant rechargewith my level 29, intel 80, enchant skill 22, luck 40 character. There were no failures at recharging (though perhaps I was just lucky 6 times in a row), and the average recharge from a common soul gem with a scamp was about 60 points of charge. I presume with a lower level character, the results would be less in both areas.

To test that, I started a fresh character to test with. I haven't yet tried everything. and I expect to try the recharge as soon as I get to where I can purchase filled gems.

I'd just add them to inventory for test purposes, but I don't know the IDs, and it's more fun to just play it.

There are a couple of things I've tried though... with interesting results.

The change of default to grabbing the entire stack instead of getting a single item number menu for one. Hey, it's great most of the time, but I had one problem with it. When running down the path, I ran short of fatigue, and having a good alchemy I grabbed a saltrice for it's restore fatigue. Actually, I grabbed 43 saltrice and ate them all at once. It didn't matter, of course since 42 were returned to my inventory, but after playing so long with the other default, I constantly find myself with a pinky on the shift key grabbing the opposite of whatever I intend. Oh well, re-education camps are fun...

The free-wheeling camera is just too cool for words, and it works well but can have unintended consequences. For instance, running down that path, camera observing from the front, move the camera 90 degrees and the character turns some 10 or 15 degrees. It's really a kick trying to guide the character that way, but it is very difficult and disorienting (at least for me).

Then hit caps lock and it doesn't always return a standard third person, and it seems to sort of briefly stick somewhere between free camera and third person for a second or two. You'd be amazed at what can happen to a running character in a second or two, eh? All in all, I love it though.

[EDIT]Okay, I tried the recharge and enchant with a new character... A Breton, enchant skill 10, intel 70 (With Mentnor's ring) luck 40 level 1. I successfully used a petty gem with an Skeleton to make a very low level waterbreathing ring. I ran it out of charges and recharged it with petty soul gems, first a scrib for 4 points, then a rat for 3, and the remainder were added with an alit soul also in a petty gem.altogether it cost me about 130 gold to buy the gems, I soul trapped the scrib myself,, but recharging a ring with a max charge of 20 cost me the whole thing.

It seems reasonable at that cost, I certainly wouldn't be trying to do that on a regular basis, it wouldn't be cost effective enough. If I was trapped deep in a grotto I certainly would though...

If you run through the formula for your level 29 character, you will see you have over 100% chance to succeed recharging due to your high intel, though you can't rely on getting more than 50% of the maximum recharge due to your low enchant skill. Should the failure rate be adjusted more?

Maybe I'm not following the formula correctly. My level 29 character should be:
22 + 16 + 4 + 0 = 42 for a net result of 84.

I realized that there really was very little difference between the Lvl 29 char and the Breton when all was said and done, so I tested with another new character, this time one geared more toward combat skills.

A lvl 1 Dark elf, intel 40, enchant 5, luck 40. He was able to sucessfully recharge items 4 times out of 5 (not ectensively tested, but those were the results so far) with recharges only slightly less than the Breton.

I don't really understand why those were the results, because by my calculations he should have had a result of 5 + 8 + 4 = 17 then x = 34 and he should only have been successful about a third of the time.
If I'm reading the formula correctly, I think the formula should perhaps be more closely tied to the enchant skill, perhaps like:

Enchant term = enchant * 2

x = (enchantSkill + intelligenceTerm + luckTerm) * fatigueTerm
roll 100, success if roll < x

It really doesn't seem like a combat-oriented character should be on a par with a mage... there's something out of whack, eh?

You've missed calculating and applying the fatigueTerm, it's not 0 or an addition; with default GMSTs it's 1.25 at maximum fatigue.

For testing the outcomes of the new mechanic fits expectations you need to run a binomial test model with a good sample size (at least 25 samples), if you only did 5 samples there is a 10.8% probability of getting 4 or more successful recharges which isn't conclusive.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26348

• Detect life should no longer leave traces of NPCs on the map when it expires.

Check it works.

I din't realize about fatigueterm... I thought it resulted in 0 at max fatigue. Silly me...

So, I managed to get 25 soul gems with skeletons ( That would be a lot easier if I knew how to put charged soul gems into inventory) here's what happened:

Successful recharges: 15 Failed 10

Average recharge per success 8

Character:: Dark Elf Level 1, intel 40, enchant 5, luck 40 The enchant skilll did increase while doing this, and successes occurred more often near the end with 3 failures in a row at the beginning. There was never more than three successes or failures in a row.

It apparently doesn't need tweaked much if any. If I'd been using grand soul gems the failures would have seemed enormously expensive.

Would it be possible to make durations for active magic effects appear in the tool tip for the active effect?

About 50-50 chance of failure with no magic stats should be okay for people with a pure combat role but still wants to recharge their weapons. I may have to tune it down a bit if it gets to over 60% too easily with a few level ups.



I could, but as with any timing display on the interface it can encourage excessive checking or other behavioural side effects (e.g. quest marker tunnel vision). The precision of timers can make it all seem less magical and more mechanical, as it removes the tension of anything running out unexpectedly and allows perfect recast timing. Too much detail can be a design problem. If there are more specific situations where it would provide more benefit than the cognitive load of checking, then I would add it with restrictions.

player->addsoulgem “CreatureID”, “misc_soulgem_type” 1 "Type" would be replaced with any of the following: petty, lesser, common, greater, grand, azura.

You can get the console commands from the CS, Morrowind Scripting for Dummies, or the Unofficial Elderscrolls Pages.

Well, yes... but you're talking about a level one character with low enchant. They shouldn't expect to be able to handle big and expensive souls reliably. Working with one at that skill level should definitely carry significant risk. That's what skill training is for with low-value gems and low-value souls where failure doesn't matter so much. As long as the skill increases with practice, there are plenty of petty gems (and cliff racers etc.!!) available in-game for characters to work up to the big souls. Exactly what items would a level one character have access to which need such a huge recharge anyway?

Well, artifacts, for one. A low level character could still find one in their travels, and successfully get it. I'm not saying that they should be able to recharge it, though.

Unfortunately, it's not like you can find an enchanter to pay a bunch of money to and get your items recharged.

Now that is helpful... Thanks!

IanB2


Let's consider a moment... A low level character who is mainly combat oriented will likely not have the ability to capture high level creatures in grand gems, so they must be purchased. they are not cheap.

It took 25 soul gems with skeleton souls (higher level than cliff racers) to get a recharge of about 200 points. On an item of any real power that's a negligible recharge. .

There is a cave full of daedroths someplace in the ashlands North of Red Mountain. If you are in there with a dead weapon, I doubt you will find an enchanter hanging around. Even if you did, it's unlikely that a low level character could afford a recharge... unless he sold the artifact, eh?

I don't know about other players, but when I'm at low level money is the hardest thing to come by. If you want training, new spells, new armor (think adamantium), or perhaps you need an enchanted weapon just to kill off something resistant to normal weapons for a specific quest.

Hrnch, a thought just occurred to me. Can you remove the "Now Loading" message during gameplay? Total immersion breaker.


Yes, recharging services would be wonderful. I guess they figured it wasn't necessary with auto-recharge, or auto-recharge was added because a recharge service couldn't be implemented correctly.


You don't need an enchanted weapon. Silver, Nordic Silver, Dwarven, Orcish, glass, ebony, Daedric, and even Dreugh all work as well, without mods. Not to mention Volendrung, which has no enchantment without mods for some reason.

I assume that is what you got without the balance patch?

Skeletons have pathetic little 30 point souls unmodded. With a 60% success rate and 50% average recharge that's about right for the balance patch, it would be worse in vanilla.

Anyone mind testing the beta 16 change?

I promise to do it soon. I'm modelling a book for a planned quest right now, and I want to keep going at it before I lose my motivation again. I'm sure I can test it out after dinner or something, because I'm getting hungry now.

I've been meaning to test more, really. I just got the urge to continue modelling after what, a month of not working on it?

Perfectly true (and obvious) but generally, you don't find many of those laying around when you're at level 1 or 2. Yet you are very likely to be given an enchanted sword very near the beginning of the main quest while you are likely low level. Who knows, you might actually need the enchantment to work...