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About this mod
Convert items, corpses and souls into a form of energy, and store it in the forge. Use the energy to unlock and cast custom spells, respec your build, fill souls gems, recharge weapons, duplicate items, etc. Also acts as a teleport-accessible player home.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
Overview
This mod allows you to convert any item, corpse or soul into a form of energy, which is stored in the forge. The energy can then be used to unlock and cast custom spells, respec your character build, fill soul gems, recharge weapons, restore your health, cure disease, duplicate items, open fixed portals, and as well as other forge unlocks and upgrades.
It also acts as a teleport-accessible player home, containing categorised and auto-sorting storage, a bedroom and kitchen, as well as a workshop containing a full set of workbenches.
Features
Forge Functions
Spells
Spells are unlocked by crafting them using a recipe book, items and energy.
Many spells are available in up to 6 tiered variants at different strengths, which unlock between player level 1 and level 50. Spells focus mostly on utility, so many of the spells are in the Alteration and Conjuration schools of magic.
More spells may be added in the future.
Items
More items may be added in the future.
Forge Upgrades
Using the forge involves collecting energy, then spending it. However, there is an efficiency penalty so that spending energy costs more than what is gained.
Efficiency starts capped at 30%, but can be increased to 90% by upgrading the forge, using items and energy. Efficiency also slowly drops whenever energy is spent. Efficiency can be increased again up to the current cap using dwemer scrap metal items to maintain the forge.
Finally, fixed portals start with a 7 game day time limit, after which time they close automatically. The duration can be increased in levels via upgrade recipes, from 7 to 42 days, and then finally becoming permanent portals at the maximum upgrade level.
Installation
Extract the zip file into your data folder and use the load order screen to enable it, or use a mod manager.
Once you load the game, the teleport spell will be added automatically under the conjuration school of magic.
It is highly recommended that you also use Papyrus Tweaks NG to improve Papyrus script performance, otherwise some forge functions will be extremely slow.
Configuration
There is a configuration file stored in: \SKSE\Plugins\StorageUtilData\EarthForge\EnergyConfig.json
This contains the following settings:
This mod is not compatible with MCM.
Recommended
This mod is designed with the expectation that you will be using a modlist that increases the amount of loot available for conversion into energy. For reference, the mod was balanced against the Wunduniik IV modlist. If you do not have extra loot, it is recommended to adjust the energygainmult setting in the JSON config file.
It is highly recommended to use Papyrus Tweaks NG to improve script performance. Without this certain forge functions such as deconstructing items for energy or depositing items will be very slow.
It is not recommended to use Alchemy Station Variants - Base Object Swapper, as the model from that mod will overlap with the placement of potion bottles on the alchemy station in the workshop.
Optional
This mod will support automatic storage sorting for the following official Creation Club content:
These mods are optional and are not required to use Earth Forge.
The following Nexus mods are also supported for automatic sorting:
Items from the following official Creation Club content are included in crafting recipes:
The items will only be required in the crafting recipes if these mods are in use.
Finally, a separate ESL is included for Survival mode, which sets up the Summon Light braziers to act as a heat source.
Questions
Why is this an ESM?
This mod is far too large to be an ESL. By making it an ESM, other mods can patch over this mod to make modifications without changing the original mod, or the energy system can be used by other mods to add new spells or functions that provide or consume energy.
Why is it so hard to gain energy and so easy to spend it?
This mod is not intended to make the player too overpowered, especially in the early game. For this reason you will need to actively manage collection and spending of energy, and consider which items to convert, which to sell, which to store, what spells to unlock, and so on. This mod is targeted towards hoarder players who like to pick up everything, and those doing long play-throughs who like to randomly explore, rather than just doing objective after objective.
To effectively gather energy, you will need to be completely clearing dungeons of every item, every chest, every corpse, and so on. You should endeavour to unlock spells like summon chest, absorb corpse, item transport, bulk transport, soul capture and black hole totem as soon as possible. These will greatly improve your ability to gather energy. Note that chest summon is the most cost effective way to transport items to the forge.
Another good way to get energy is converting dragon souls, as these will give you 1000 energy per dragon - for comparison, completely clearing a large dungeon of items gives about 1500 to 3000 energy (on Wunduniik IV modlist). The reagents and catalysts can also be converted, which can provide a lot of energy depending on tier.
If this approach is not to your liking, you can adjust the JSON config file to make it easier to gather or less punishing to spend energy.
Why are Spell Tier, Reagent and Catalyst items so expensive?
Reagents can be found quite commonly as loot on enemies and in chests, so it is expected you will find them this way. However they are also available for sale in case you don't have one, but have a high cost as a penalty for buying instead of finding.
Catalysts are quite rare to find. Their main purpose is upgrading the forge, which is a major upgrade. As such they have a very high cost.
Spell Tiers unlock all spells at the given tier, and only need to be purchased once. Due to the amount of spells unlocked per tier, this gives a reason for the player to still engage in trading and accumulate money, as the item duplicator makes buying items largely unnecessary.
A good way to make money is to sell excess Reagents, as it is likely you will accumulate many more of these than you really need.
Why are some spells so expensive to cast compared to others?
Utility spells are relatively cheap, with offensive and defensive spells being much more expensive. This is by design, as some of the spells are quite powerful and the mod does not intend to make the player overpowered.
Why does the teleport spell cost energy and have such a long cast time?
The teleport spell is not intended to be a "get out of dying free" spell. The long cast time (3 seconds) makes the spell less practical to cast in combat. The energy cost is to make you think about when you want to teleport early in the game when your energy supply is low. The teleport can be made free using the config file.
Why do spells have "EarthForge" at the start of the spell name?
Because the spells in this mod use energy as the source and not magicka, the prefix is there to clearly indicate spells from this mod, so you know when you are going to be spending energy.
Why must the rooms, racks, mannequins and workbenches be unlocked with energy?
The purpose of this mod is not to make vanilla content redundant. In the base game, at first you don't have a house and must use equipment in towns. Even after you buy a house, you need to buy furniture, crafting stations etc. This mod aims to replicate that concept of progression, but replacing gold with energy as the method of unlocking.
How does everything work? Is there documentation?
There are books located around the forge that provide guidance on all the forge controls. The spell and item crafting recipe books also explain what the spells and items do.
Why is the energy amount displayed as a message instead of UI element?
I do not want to tie this mod to any specific UI mod, nor do I want to conflict with screen placement of various other UI mods screen elements.
Does this work with items from other mods?
This will work with items from any mod. All items in the game except for vanilla quest items, vanilla and creation club uniques, keys, gold and forge-specific items can be converted to energy.
The auto-sorting storage is based on item type and keywords. As long as mod items are setup correctly in line with the vanilla game, they should store correctly. The exception to this is uniques, which are unknown to this mod. Uniques from the official creation club mods listed above are supported.
Will this conflict with other mods?
This should not conflict with other mods, everything in the mod is new content that does not modify the base game, with a single exception.
The Bulk Transport spell uses a custom collision layer to work, which is setup to interact with existing collision layers. Doing so does modify those collision layer records from the base game, so any mod that does the same may have an issue. However, it is expected that mods that change collision layers should be fairly rare.
Specifically, the following collision layers are modified: L_BIPED, L_BIPED_NO_CC, L_CHARACTERCONTROLLER, L_CLUTTER, L_CRITTER, L_DEADBIP, L_NONCOLLIDABLE, L_STATIC, L_WEAPON.
Finally, ideally do not use Alchemy Station Variants - Base Object Swapper. This does not conflict per-se, but the changes to the NIF file made by that mod will overlap with the placement of the potion bottles on the alchemy station in the workshop, making them hard to access.
Issues
The magic swords are invisible
This is an issue with certain modlist configurations.
For example, using vanilla Skyrim + ENB + reshade with default presets, the swords work normally. However in the Wunduniik IV modlist, the swords are invisible. This appears to be part of a broader problem with the Wunduniik modlist that breaks effect shaders - for example membrane shaders on spells do not work, nor do the membrane shaders applied to locked workbenches in the workshop. The specific cause is unknown, but it does not appear to be caused by the EarthForge mod itself.
Energy costs balancing
Energy costs may require further balancing.
Item costs balancing
Gold costs of items may require further balancing.
This mod allows you to convert any item, corpse or soul into a form of energy, which is stored in the forge. The energy can then be used to unlock and cast custom spells, respec your character build, fill soul gems, recharge weapons, restore your health, cure disease, duplicate items, open fixed portals, and as well as other forge unlocks and upgrades.
It also acts as a teleport-accessible player home, containing categorised and auto-sorting storage, a bedroom and kitchen, as well as a workshop containing a full set of workbenches.
Features
- Teleport accessible home
- Categorised and auto-sorting storage for weapons, armour, clothes, potions, ingredients, ores, ingots, soul gems, scrolls, arrows, books, uniques, etc.
- A workshop containing all standard workbenches
- Living mannequins - bound dremora that act as mannequins, but have idle animations.
- Floating weapon racks
- Forge controls for carrying out the various functions (see below)
- Various energy-powered spells (see below)
- Fixed portals to allow transport to and from the forge to various locations (intended for use in a no-fast-travel play-through)
- Switches to change the brightness and colour of lights inside each room of the forge
Forge Functions
- Deconstruct items into energy
- Duplicate items using energy
- Respec health/magicka/stamina (redistribute points)
- Refund perks
- Respec skills (redistribute points)
- Store or extract dragon souls
- Cure disease & dispel effects
- Full restoration
- Recharge weapons
- Fill soul gems
- Forge (craft) spells
- Forge (craft) items
- Perform forge maintenance
- Upgrade forge
- Upgrade portals
- Unlock rooms, racks, mannequins, and workbenches (costs energy)
Spells
Spells are unlocked by crafting them using a recipe book, items and energy.
- Teleport (costs energy or a filled soul gem)
- Open/close/refresh portal
- Return beacon
- Anti-summon
- Impenetrable barrier
- Imprison
- Summon chest
- Rebuild/summon/project/detonate dwemer construct (additional permanent follower)
- Raise/summon/project/detonate zombie (additional permanent follower)
- Fully restore target living/undead/construct
- Fully restore self health/magicka/stamina/all
- Item transport & bulk transport
- Summon permanent light fixtures
- Illuminate self/other
- Bound flame/frost/shock magic swords (magic damage + debuff)
- Summon/project/resurrect follower
- Summon/resurrect horse
- Scavenge/devour/distil/alchemize/sympathise/detonate corpse
- Absorb corpse (convert to energy)
- Soul Capture (soul trap but converts to energy)
- Spirit Burn
- Marathon / pack mule / quick escape
- Time freeze
- Black hole totem
- Unlock
Many spells are available in up to 6 tiered variants at different strengths, which unlock between player level 1 and level 50. Spells focus mostly on utility, so many of the spells are in the Alteration and Conjuration schools of magic.
More spells may be added in the future.
Items
- Arcane Star (required for Soul capture & Black hole totem)
- Magic Arrow
- Corrupted / pure / divine blood potions
- Spell tier, Catalyst & Reagent items used for crafting
- Spell and item recipe books used for crafting
More items may be added in the future.
Forge Upgrades
Using the forge involves collecting energy, then spending it. However, there is an efficiency penalty so that spending energy costs more than what is gained.
Efficiency starts capped at 30%, but can be increased to 90% by upgrading the forge, using items and energy. Efficiency also slowly drops whenever energy is spent. Efficiency can be increased again up to the current cap using dwemer scrap metal items to maintain the forge.
Finally, fixed portals start with a 7 game day time limit, after which time they close automatically. The duration can be increased in levels via upgrade recipes, from 7 to 42 days, and then finally becoming permanent portals at the maximum upgrade level.
Installation
Extract the zip file into your data folder and use the load order screen to enable it, or use a mod manager.
Once you load the game, the teleport spell will be added automatically under the conjuration school of magic.
It is highly recommended that you also use Papyrus Tweaks NG to improve Papyrus script performance, otherwise some forge functions will be extremely slow.
Configuration
There is a configuration file stored in: \SKSE\Plugins\StorageUtilData\EarthForge\EnergyConfig.json
This contains the following settings:
- energycostmult: Global multiplier to energy costs.
- energygainmult: Global multiplier to energy gained.
- efficiencylossmult: Multiplier to amount of forge efficiency lost each time energy is spent
- respecstatcostmult: Multiplier to cost of doing a stat respec. Stacks with global multiplier.
- respecskillcostmult: Multiplier to the cost of doing a skill respec. Stacks with global multiplier.
- respecperkcostmult: Multiplier to the cost of refunding perks. Stacks with global multiplier.
- itemdupecostpenaltymult: Multiplier to the additional per-item-class energy cost penalties for item duplication.
- teleportisfree: Flag to make teleporting free, so it doesn't cost energy or require a filled soul gem
- unlockisfree: Flag to make it free to unlock rooms, weapon racks, mannequins and work benches
This mod is not compatible with MCM.
Recommended
This mod is designed with the expectation that you will be using a modlist that increases the amount of loot available for conversion into energy. For reference, the mod was balanced against the Wunduniik IV modlist. If you do not have extra loot, it is recommended to adjust the energygainmult setting in the JSON config file.
It is highly recommended to use Papyrus Tweaks NG to improve script performance. Without this certain forge functions such as deconstructing items for energy or depositing items will be very slow.
It is not recommended to use Alchemy Station Variants - Base Object Swapper, as the model from that mod will overlap with the placement of potion bottles on the alchemy station in the workshop.
Optional
This mod will support automatic storage sorting for the following official Creation Club content:
- Fishing
- Survival
- Saints & Seducers
- The Gray Cowl Returns
- Civil War Champions
- Dead Mans Dread
- Arms of Chaos
- Daedric Mail
These mods are optional and are not required to use Earth Forge.
The following Nexus mods are also supported for automatic sorting:
Items from the following official Creation Club content are included in crafting recipes:
- Fishing
- Survival
The items will only be required in the crafting recipes if these mods are in use.
Finally, a separate ESL is included for Survival mode, which sets up the Summon Light braziers to act as a heat source.
Questions
Why is this an ESM?
This mod is far too large to be an ESL. By making it an ESM, other mods can patch over this mod to make modifications without changing the original mod, or the energy system can be used by other mods to add new spells or functions that provide or consume energy.
Why is it so hard to gain energy and so easy to spend it?
This mod is not intended to make the player too overpowered, especially in the early game. For this reason you will need to actively manage collection and spending of energy, and consider which items to convert, which to sell, which to store, what spells to unlock, and so on. This mod is targeted towards hoarder players who like to pick up everything, and those doing long play-throughs who like to randomly explore, rather than just doing objective after objective.
To effectively gather energy, you will need to be completely clearing dungeons of every item, every chest, every corpse, and so on. You should endeavour to unlock spells like summon chest, absorb corpse, item transport, bulk transport, soul capture and black hole totem as soon as possible. These will greatly improve your ability to gather energy. Note that chest summon is the most cost effective way to transport items to the forge.
Another good way to get energy is converting dragon souls, as these will give you 1000 energy per dragon - for comparison, completely clearing a large dungeon of items gives about 1500 to 3000 energy (on Wunduniik IV modlist). The reagents and catalysts can also be converted, which can provide a lot of energy depending on tier.
If this approach is not to your liking, you can adjust the JSON config file to make it easier to gather or less punishing to spend energy.
Why are Spell Tier, Reagent and Catalyst items so expensive?
Reagents can be found quite commonly as loot on enemies and in chests, so it is expected you will find them this way. However they are also available for sale in case you don't have one, but have a high cost as a penalty for buying instead of finding.
Catalysts are quite rare to find. Their main purpose is upgrading the forge, which is a major upgrade. As such they have a very high cost.
Spell Tiers unlock all spells at the given tier, and only need to be purchased once. Due to the amount of spells unlocked per tier, this gives a reason for the player to still engage in trading and accumulate money, as the item duplicator makes buying items largely unnecessary.
A good way to make money is to sell excess Reagents, as it is likely you will accumulate many more of these than you really need.
Why are some spells so expensive to cast compared to others?
Utility spells are relatively cheap, with offensive and defensive spells being much more expensive. This is by design, as some of the spells are quite powerful and the mod does not intend to make the player overpowered.
Why does the teleport spell cost energy and have such a long cast time?
The teleport spell is not intended to be a "get out of dying free" spell. The long cast time (3 seconds) makes the spell less practical to cast in combat. The energy cost is to make you think about when you want to teleport early in the game when your energy supply is low. The teleport can be made free using the config file.
Why do spells have "EarthForge" at the start of the spell name?
Because the spells in this mod use energy as the source and not magicka, the prefix is there to clearly indicate spells from this mod, so you know when you are going to be spending energy.
Why must the rooms, racks, mannequins and workbenches be unlocked with energy?
The purpose of this mod is not to make vanilla content redundant. In the base game, at first you don't have a house and must use equipment in towns. Even after you buy a house, you need to buy furniture, crafting stations etc. This mod aims to replicate that concept of progression, but replacing gold with energy as the method of unlocking.
How does everything work? Is there documentation?
There are books located around the forge that provide guidance on all the forge controls. The spell and item crafting recipe books also explain what the spells and items do.
Why is the energy amount displayed as a message instead of UI element?
I do not want to tie this mod to any specific UI mod, nor do I want to conflict with screen placement of various other UI mods screen elements.
Does this work with items from other mods?
This will work with items from any mod. All items in the game except for vanilla quest items, vanilla and creation club uniques, keys, gold and forge-specific items can be converted to energy.
The auto-sorting storage is based on item type and keywords. As long as mod items are setup correctly in line with the vanilla game, they should store correctly. The exception to this is uniques, which are unknown to this mod. Uniques from the official creation club mods listed above are supported.
Will this conflict with other mods?
This should not conflict with other mods, everything in the mod is new content that does not modify the base game, with a single exception.
The Bulk Transport spell uses a custom collision layer to work, which is setup to interact with existing collision layers. Doing so does modify those collision layer records from the base game, so any mod that does the same may have an issue. However, it is expected that mods that change collision layers should be fairly rare.
Specifically, the following collision layers are modified: L_BIPED, L_BIPED_NO_CC, L_CHARACTERCONTROLLER, L_CLUTTER, L_CRITTER, L_DEADBIP, L_NONCOLLIDABLE, L_STATIC, L_WEAPON.
Finally, ideally do not use Alchemy Station Variants - Base Object Swapper. This does not conflict per-se, but the changes to the NIF file made by that mod will overlap with the placement of the potion bottles on the alchemy station in the workshop, making them hard to access.
Issues
The magic swords are invisible
This is an issue with certain modlist configurations.
For example, using vanilla Skyrim + ENB + reshade with default presets, the swords work normally. However in the Wunduniik IV modlist, the swords are invisible. This appears to be part of a broader problem with the Wunduniik modlist that breaks effect shaders - for example membrane shaders on spells do not work, nor do the membrane shaders applied to locked workbenches in the workshop. The specific cause is unknown, but it does not appear to be caused by the EarthForge mod itself.
Energy costs balancing
Energy costs may require further balancing.
Item costs balancing
Gold costs of items may require further balancing.