Enchant recharge mechanic; how about 2*x success rate and a minimum recharge % of x?



It's problematic to make a good solution for this, the UI is not designed to scale well.


I can't change the save game format to record this, because it poses compatibility problems in the future. I could make the game default to running on load, though.



How will the player tell the game to split a soul gem, and select which one, and know what the outcome will be? Filled soul gems are attached with only the captured creature ID rather than a soul value, anyway.


I hoped there was an MWSE command to discover trapped containers, but there isn't. Time to change the description again. Target casting from activators doesn't work, so I have no idea how to spawn a projectile and attach the magic correctly.



Knowing what to include is most of the work. I haven't changed it since some minor edits in 1.9, so I'll have to go through it myself.



It just uses the quality. I meant something like the expected weight result from the secret master equipment is what I said it should be now, a bit lighter than exclusive potions.

To begin, I want to make it clear that I recognize that we all have differing play styles and we will all see things a little differently and therefore the ideal situation is to be able to change EVERYTHING.

Your first question confuses me a bit and it might help for you to reiterate it. If you mean to suggest that a recharge will fail very often with enchant at level 65, then I believe you are mistaken. I have not done my own testing, but, from what I've looked at so far, it would seem that at 65 recharge becomes consistently successful and comparable in success rates to the other skills such as conjuration. The only thing that might appear to be a failure is getting those annoying 1s on the random roll but we'll get to that in a second.

Carrying, for example, a large stash of common soul gems around could prove to become an issue but I'm not inclined to believe that this should be a real problem since, on the whole, I think it's overkill to be able to constantly recharge your artifacts as you deplete them. This is about how easy you want the game to be and, again, we all have different preferences.

Now, about those annoying 1s. Correct me if I'm wrong, and I may well be, but I think a Golden Saint is 300 points? Well, if that is the case, then you should be seeing an average return of something like 112.5 which is much more reasonable than a lousy 3 points. Certainly, even with high skills, we may miss with our swords but we can still be relatively competent and eventually slay whatever we are whacking away at. I am more interested in what the average numbers look like in this case. Of course, since I haven't looked into these numbers at much depth, I could be just plain wrong about this so please correct me in that case.

Soul gems are not really difficult to locate. At least this is the case if you are using Tribunal. In just plain Morrowind, I think that you might only be able to find restocking gems up to common so beyond that you would need to mod something in and no one would blame you if you did. I don't really see 12lbs of rocks in my inventory an issue if it means that many more uses of my Jinkblade. And about the Amulet of Shadows... it's already overpowered as it is, in my opinion. 5 charges of 80pts chameleon for 60s seems like plenty to me. But again, it's preferences. Also, there are plenty of mods out there that make the game "difficult" enough to warrant having access to more useful tools than vanilla offers.

I think that people not using recharge is more about it not truly being necessary in vanilla due to the auto-recharge factor. Just rest for x number of hours and presto. Removing that factor makes recharge much more attractive for players. I realize that recharge is probably intended to be an attractive choice unmodded, and, honestly, I think it is if you are not going to exploit resting all over the bloody place. In certain areas, being able to instantly recharge your Amulet of Shadows without resting could prove to be extremely valuable and well worth carrying the extra rocks around.

As far as I can see, without difficulty-enhancing mods, the numbers look relatively okay. I think that to make them much more in the players favour would be a bit unbalancing. For this player, at least.

edit:
I should probably add that there being a "punishment" for higher skill levels just seems odd.

Do they not work at all or not well? I could have sworn I was doing target casting from activators at some point...

Also, having run the default would be great since I doubt many spend the majority of the time walking.

Though Hrnchamd already answered, the last beta had both Grandmaster and Secret Master capping at 0.25, if I remember correctly.


I'm not sure you get what I meant. The player would do nothing. I was just thinking that when a creature's soul was captured, if there was no suitable gem in the inventory, the soul could be split into the largest gems that the player has, then possibly filling the next level down, or discarding the leftover. I realize the naming of the filled gems would probably be problematic. Maybe "Creature Name: Partial", or something. Not sure it would work. I don't know if you could change it to use the soul value instead, though that is one thing I dislike about Oblivion, that you can't see what is in the gem.


I guess you just need to make a MWSE XE now, hehe. Activators can cast a target spell. Maybe you can get something from there.

Oh yeah, I was catching up on the MGE XE threads recently. Glad to see that GMSTs are finally editable in-game. Now I just need to get a better grasp on MWSE...

That would give a 100% success rate at an enchant skill of 38 with an intel of 40 and luck 40. That's not too bad, and seems a fair compromise.
So, if x = 50 that's a 50% recharge which would also be fair.

I like that idea, as it would give almost all characters a shot at a recharge with a small magnitude of success unless they have a good enchant skill.

I don't understand the cap on luck, it seems to negate any fortify luck potions or spells if the end result is above 100... but it's not a big deal, I guess.

My first question is a bit.. obscure, I guess. What I was trying to say is that in almost any other skill, success equals success in a boolean fashion. A successful "Open" spell does not half open the door, a scamp is not half summoned, a lockpick does not reduce the lock 10 or 20% at a time for each successful attempt. It works or it doesn't, simple as that.

If all you are going to do half of the time is recharge an item a small amount, then it is a fail, and that is as simple as that.

A Golden Saint is actually 400... but remember that the formula is:

x = (enchantTerm + intelligenceTerm + luckTerm) * fatigueTerm
roll 100, success if roll < x
on success restore charge: soulgem charge * (roll / x)

So, by the example I gave

x = (100 +20 + 4) * 1.25 (if not fatigued) or x = 155

If the roll happens to equal 1 then
soulgem charge * (1 / 155) or 400 * 0.00645 = 2.58 Round it off you get 3.

If x = say 70, then in reality any roll above 70 is an automatic fail, so the average successful roll will work out to be around 35, so:
restore charge = soulgem charge * (35 / 70 ) or 200 in the case of a golden saint. That's not so bad, but again consider the case of that Amulet of Shadows with a capacity of 1200. Six grand soul gems with golden Saint souls to fully recharge it. What's their value these days? 7000 gold each, I think... How much does it cost you each time you miss with your sword?

Just resting to recharge is fine, assuming you can. How often have you found yourself in a bad place but at a relatively peaceful spot and tried to rest only to get "You can't rest here, enemies are nearby.". do you really want to just stand around in that particular spot waiting for your item to recharge? I guess it wouldn't be so bad if you had something to read, and a mod that makes time pass while you do it.

Recharging all of your items on the fly is not really the question here, but I doubt that you could do it in any case. I'm not looking for a cheat, just a more realistic solution. People don't use the recharge function because it so loaded against them that it's not worth it. I just want to change that a little bit.

I agree with this too.

By the way, I'm wondering how soon we might be able to see this included in MCP? I'm a bit excited by the prospects. :celebration:

I can't think of a good reason why recharge must function the same way as other skills. Actually, summoning half a scamp sometimes might lead to interesting experiences.

In my mind, having a grand soul gem or two giving you another 80 pts of chameleon for 60s is reasonable. I think an empty grand soul gem is 200g. Buying one with a Saint should be something like 80k gold, but just taking an empty gem, summoning the Golden Saint and then killing it isn't really that difficult for a player at moderate levels so this seems balanced to me. Well, to be honest I don't think I feel soul trapping summoned creatures is really that balanced but this is another topic... And about the sword - missing with it can cost you your life in some cases which really is only apparent when you commonly attack enemies that outclass you character. Recharging seems relatively less of a gamble in such circumstances.

Not being able to *always* rest and recharge your items is a good thing imo. ESPECIALLY for players using the Amulet of Shadows

As for looking for a realistic solution... bear in mind that this is a fantasy game I feel that it's good how it is, but I really believe that players should be given the option to modify the numbers if they like. To me, recharging seems like something that might mostly just be practiced by experienced mages and so requiring a level as high as 65 to make it potentially extremely useful doesn't seem bad to me. Also, the skill seems to level very, very quickly when you are recharging. Someone playing as a warrior with the auto-recharge factor modded out might very well be disappointed to see powerfully enchanted items take such a drop in their usefulness and I can sympathize with this. My own experience, though, is that Morrowind could afford to be more "difficult" at least for those of us who have been playing it for a very long time.

To be sure, Morrowind is not all that difficult in most cases. However, there are mods to take into account... For instance, I currently have an orc character engaged in a mod that currently has me in a place I cannot fight my way out of under any circumstances. In open combat my level 30 character can survive for about 5 seconds. My alternatives are to teleport out without what I came for, or to use stealth.

I have limited magicka, so even though I have the "hide" spell, I can't get out before my magicka is gone. I'm in the deepest part of the dungeon, I currently am in no danger, but there is no way to rest. Moving just a few feet brings immediate death... I have the amulet of Shadows, but it is exhausted. I used a grand soul gem with a Hunger to recharge it, successfully, and got 8 points out of it. If I try to summon a saint to capture, I won't be able to hide while I do that, so that isn't going to work. I'd say that sounds difficult and challenging to me..

You're right, it is a good thing that you can't always rest.

I do realize that this is a fantasy game, but I still want the illogical to be logically ordered enough to allow me to use the tools that are provided in the game. If realistic play is discounted, you end up with two 5 year olds saying "gotcha!" and "Nope, ya missed me!"

Well, I don't know if we really need to take mods into account when talking about "fixes" if you want to call this that. It's more of an issue of balancing in the mod imo.

I think punishing the player for having higher enchant skills is pretty illogical, but the rest seems fine to me. On the other hand, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to see recharging become more useful.

To put it in the category of "fixes" is really very simple... if a thing is so badly designed that it is in fact not usable in any real sense, then it's broken, eh? I've been playing and modding Morrowind for several years, and while I've made a number of enchanted items in-game, I can count the number of things I've sucessfully recharged on my fingers with digits left over at the end.

Well, I've played the game with auto-recharge removed and went about filling up common soul gems with Bonewalkers and Ancestor Ghosts and such and, even with extremely low enchant levels(I started at 5 and quickly got to 20ish) I felt that I was able to charge my Dwemer Jinksword and other items relatively easily. It felt nicely balanced. Now, I definitely can't say that recharging stills seem like a good option compared to the auto-recharge that is functional in vanilla Morrowind, but I think that is kind of unbalanced to begin with.

I can't agree that recharge is not usable in any real sense, but I do agree that it is not nearly as useful as simply waiting for an item to recharge in unmodded Morrowind. I can understand that it might be worthwhile to make recharging with a soul gem more useful relative to just waiting so that it sees more use, but then you are making a game I see needing to be more difficult less difficult. I would rather go the other way and make items recharge slower or, even better, just use a mod that make soul gems the ONLY way to recharge an item. That's just my personal preference.

It's a pretty easy mod to create, if you're interested. Only a single gmst to change and it's done.

I guess my suggestions got drowned by this gameplay discussion, so I'll repost it. I'd just like to know if these are even possible at all with the code patch?

I replied to you in my previous post.

Sorry about that, I guess the wall of text made me assume that it was all not related to me, so I just scrolled past your post. My bad!

Regarding 1): How is MW FPS Optimizer doing? Can you not do something similar? I'd rather not have a background app running while I play MW. Plus, I am happy with my 60 FPS configuration, I don't want anything to "manage" my FPS.
Regarding 2): I think an option to start the game in auto run mode is good. Beats having to constantly press Caps Lock everytime I load a game!

Would it at all be reasonable to make it much harder for players with low speechcraft to force NPCs to love them like a family member by maxing out their disposition? I feel that, at least for those without godlike powers of persuasion, disposition should only be able to reach the mid 70s or 80s using standard methods.

Also, it might be interesting if player gender was a factor in persuasion.

Hehe, Morrowind actually had a run by default option all along. Edit morrowind.ini, add Always Run=1 in the [General]section.




The soul value is read by checking the soul from the creature template. You can't use a soul value that isn't bound to a creature, and I can't assume the save format works properly with new creature types.


Anything can cast with the console command, but whatever function that casts the trap from locked doors and containers is missing something to spawn a projectile, it's really hard to tell what it should be. There's also the problem of self collision with the projectile, it may impact the container before it reaches you depending on the projectile spawn point.



The big problem are the artefacts with soul reservoirs larger than any normal soul gem. Recharges that only recover a minimal amount really become annoying,

Well, that's that, then. Thanks!

Still hoping for a GUI solution built into the code patch though...

Just looked at all of the documentation included in the latest beta. I'm a complete layman, but everything there seemed error-free and easy to understand. :goodjob:

Hrnchamd, have you thought of making any of the patches configurable with the Morrowind INI file?

I was thinking, in the case of this supposed balance fix for enchantment recharging, that it might be a good idea to make the patch read constants for the formula from the INI file so that people testing it can try to figure out what works best. You could also test out different formulas this way too if necessary.

Regarding enchanting: I don't think it was meant to be designed in such a way that you were meant to always have access to abilities from an item. The enchanted items are meant to have some downtime and you are meant to survive on more than just one skill. For instance, I don't repair my sword after every swing, let alone every fight. I suppose I could carry 5 swords around and swap them in and out so that my weapons stay fairly well repaired throughout combat, but that's a bit much, right?

The amulet of shadows is a particularly bad example. You're right. Throwing soul gems at it to recharge it isn't feasible, but you should consider that it probably isn't meant to be feasible. Do you think that the item was designed so that you were meant to have unlimited usage of an 80 point 60 second length chameleon spell?

Boo to hidden .ini settings. Got any more?


Yeah, I was sure the names would be a problem, and that new creatures would probably need to be created... Oh well.


Well, wouldn't that information be present somewhere else? I didn't even think about collision, though. I know scripting could fix it, but it might make some incompatibilities, though I doubt very many.

To add to the enchant discussion, I remember failing a lot or getting very little charge. Though, I only used soul gems to increase my skill to level up, more or less. I'd use up some cheap enchanted item's charge while walking just to recharge it. The auto-recharge usually refilled things enough for me, though I wouldn't rest just to do so. Necessities of Morrowind made sure that I rested frequently though, so in the end it's not much different.

I think, at least, that a high enchant skill should allow you to almost always get all of the charge from a gem.

I don't think making enchantment recharging more balanced would suddenly lead to people only using it to survive. This is not such a significant change. One of the more annoying problems was mentioned before, where having a higher enchant skill seems to have some negative consequence.

"Isn't meant to be feasible" sounds like an excuse for a badly implemented game mechanic.

I think there is a large misunderstanding of the nature of the change to enchantment recharge that is being proposed...

To cite your example of your sword, you may not repair it after every swing, but after it has unequipped itself because it's condition is 0, isn't it nice to be able to use a repair hammer to get a few more swings out of it while you extricate yourself from your current situation? If your repair hammer almost never repaired it enough to get more than one swing out of it before the hammer is used up, would anyone carry a repair hammer?

The Amulet of shadows is a perfect example.. It holds enough charge, and uses enough charge each time it's used that you could conceivably go through a dozen soul gems and still not get even one use out of it. Especially if your enchant skill is extraordinarily high. I don't think anybody is actually looking for a way to make it have unlimited usage... just a way to make it work for one more use for an expenditure of a mere 7000 gold.