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Version5.28
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This page was last updated on 03 January 2025, 11:44PM
- Changelogs
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Version 5.28
- REUPLOAD NOTE: Resaved with header version 1.70 so it works with Skyrim VR and older versions of SE like it always has so far
New features:
Training Room (Meditation Space)
- A new small zone where you can practice Spellsiphon combat.
- Accessed via the Spellsiphoning book and you can return to exactly where you were in the world at any point.
- Contains neutral life and death sources
- Has a possibility to summon aggressive enemies that do low damage and scale to your level. These can either be killed or dismissed via an interactable to end combat. Corpses can be used to practice reanimation mechanics but cannot be brought out of the room.
- Has an option to purge exhaustion effects so you dont need to worry about cooldowns
- You can perform the entire tutorial from start to finish within this space, there are however some Mastery objectives that will require you to venture out in the "real" world.
- You cannot enter Meditation while in combat.
- Whenever you enter the Meditation area the cell will attempt to fully reset. Note that this will DELETE ANY ITEMS you've dropped in there. So dont try to use it as storage! Immediately reentering it after leaving may let you get back in without a reset but any prolonged time outside of meditation will reset it.
Bound Weapon Set expansion
- Sets have been increased from 2 to 6! You can now choose a primary set summoned through Bind, 4 more sets summoned via Powers and a final set summoned through sneaking.
- Each of your Re-powers (Reverse, Reshape, etc.) can be pointed to a specific weapon set (e.g. dual daggers or bow). Using that power while holding a bound weapon will summon that set. Using that power when already holding its assigned weapon set will return you to your Primary set.
- Sneaking will change your Primary set (if enabled) to another that you choose. So if you Bind while sneaking, you will get the "sneak set" instead. Or if you are on one of your other sets and return to the Primary set by using a power, you will return to the sneak set if you are sneaking.
Controlled Empowered Binding
- Short-press Bind can now be configured to perform a weak Bind even if Binding II is unlocked, with long-press then causing the Empowered variant. The opposite is also possible, Empowered on short-press, weak on long-press.
- Note that this option cannot coexist with assigning Powers to be cast with Bind so chose one or the other (or none)!
Other Changes:
- Unsealing tomes will no longer cause tome copies if using various spell-learning mods that prevent the tome from getting eaten.
- Offhand spell now returns after detonating the weaving circle if you had some external spell there
- VR left handed mode users can now enable support for it in the MCM (so the ward shield appears in the correct hand) rather than needing to set it during installation in the FOMOD. The FOMOD option has been removed.
- Life Discharge no longer insta-kills reanimated creatures nor Anima. You can still kill a World or Life Anima that has lost its invulnerability shield and trigger the Stasis Rift that way. But Life Discharge will now instead serve to heal a Reanimated creature as with any other ally
- Bind cooldown is now natively set to 100 seconds and is then forced down to 1 second via script. This prevents shout-cooldown-reduction effects from making its cooldown <1s. The issue with <1s cooldown is that it makes the shout able to chain-cast when the shout button is held down which is very annoying.
- Bind Focus no longer causes a re-equip in Werewolf form since some people were able to cast Bind while in this form and get Draw/Ward equipped which prevented them from attacking. You will need to manually re-equip it or use a Power to trigger the reequip after exiting Werewolf. This is the same situation that Vamp Lord has had all along
- Imbue will now always "Interrupt Power". "Continue Power" option has been removed as this just added confusion and i doubt anyone was using it.
- Books and popups have had some minor improvements for easier and clearer use.
Bug fixes:
- Flamestrike explosion no longer causes an "ouch" sound and blood spatter on screen even though it did zero damage to you
- Super elusive Ward bug that has been hiding in the shadows since 2019 seems to finally have been tracked down and squashed. This bug could cause you to enter a repeated stagger-loop when hit by any form of magic and is caused by a Creation Engine quirk where the Ward Power stat is able to get stuck at a tiny value when dropping the Ward. After much experimentation, the circumstances in which this "stuckness" occurs were pinned down and the Ward has been edited to prevent those circumstances from occurring ever again. Do let me know if this bug still happens to you though!
- REUPLOAD NOTE: Resaved with header version 1.70 so it works with Skyrim VR and older versions of SE like it always has so far
-
Version 5.27
- - Opening the Spellsiphoning book for the first time now gives you a confirmation window if you want to start up the mod or not. Curious users who got the mod via a modpack would sometimes start the mod unintentionally, leading to confusion and most likely a disabled tutorial which wasnt helping anyone :D
- Opening the book again to change your tutorial preferences will now grant a popup immediately instead of waiting until you close the inventory. This popup also now contains the option to "Keep previous choice" so you dont accidentally end an ongoing tutorial and have to start it over from scratch.
- Removed the small amount of magicka that Draw was sneakily draining from enemies hit
- Removed the school property on all cooldown effects, fixing the issue of some other mods increasing their duration
- Fixed a typo on the Elemental Binding II cooldown descriptions
- - Opening the Spellsiphoning book for the first time now gives you a confirmation window if you want to start up the mod or not. Curious users who got the mod via a modpack would sometimes start the mod unintentionally, leading to confusion and most likely a disabled tutorial which wasnt helping anyone :D
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Version 5.26
- - Fixed an issue where imbued weapon warding and shout refocus would stop functioning after transforming to and from werewolf or vamp lord form
- Fixed an issue where being imbued would cause perks triggered by power attacks (like Ordinator's Smite) to function incorrectly or not at all
- Fixed an issue where you couldnt complete the "hit with a weapon while imbued" objective if you were using a Bound Weapon
- Fixed an issue where Element Reflections could be cast if you just held them down long enough and where they could let you enter a slightly bugged state if Reshaping while holding them. Also changed them to one-handed cause they just looked bugged when 2 handed
- - Fixed an issue where imbued weapon warding and shout refocus would stop functioning after transforming to and from werewolf or vamp lord form
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Version 5.25
- - Increased Spell Focus delay by 0.3s (the time before auto-returning to Draw/Ward after casting an external spell). This solves the issue that self-targeted charge&release spells like Fast Healing could not be casted several times in a row before auto-returning cause their post-cast animation was too long to start a new cast in time. It also makes chain-casting aimed spells like Firebolt easier. The downside is ofc the slightly less responsive return to Draw/Ward after casting a single spell.
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Version 5.24
- - Fixed a bug introduced in 5.22 that prevented Bound Weapons from granting Conjuration XP on hit. They should now be doing this again. Note that Spellsiphon Bound Weapons do NOT grant XP on summoning in combat like vanilla ones do. It's only on hit and on a 3-second interval so using faster weapons wont give faster XP.
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Version 5.23
- (Reupload note: Fixed a text mistake in the FOMOD)
- Bound Arrows are now optional for both the SE/AE and Enderal editions of the mod. You can choose if you want them or not in the FOMOD.
- Fixed a compatibility issue with Vigor where you would get Spellsiphon Imbued wards for free on every swing.
- Fixed some harmless papyrus error messages introduced in 5.22
- Changed the description on Bound Weapon Reflections to avoid possible misinterpretation.
- (Reupload note: Fixed a text mistake in the FOMOD)
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Version 5.22
- WARNING (again):
- Due to some removed quest stages and objectives, all ongoing Spellsiphon quests will reset when updating to 5.22!
- Due to significant changes to the MCM, it will need to re-initialize when you load your game, you may need to wait a little before you see the new one and the old one may linger next to it in the list for a while.
(5.19, 20 and 21 were quickly replaced due to various hotfixes so I've now moved all those notes into this version)
Summary of the most important notes below (TLDR):
- It's now smoother to play with Bound Weapons often without triggering accidental Discharges
- You can now keep your Imbued effect while Bound Weapons are out
- Imbue now lasts forever instead of just 1 hour.
- The "Ward only" and "Imbued Parry Only" etc. Presets are now easier to access, easier to use and easier to understand and will appear on the MCM "frontpage"
= Changes to Discharge =
From now on, your Discharge element will be decided when you *summon* your weapon. As you cast Bind (or reshape your weapon to a secondary one), you will get a new "Weapon Element" effect, dictated by your attunement at that time. This effect will not change until you summon a new weapon. When you Discharge, it's the Weapon Element and not your Attunement that decides which Discharge you get (the weapon glow color will show you the Weapon Element if you've been switching attunements and forget).
This shouldnt have much of an impact on normal Spellsiphon rotations where you just summon and discharge immediately but people who use Bound Weapons extensively will benefit greatly from this change (after an initial adaption period). You can now cast, weave and fully utilize Spellsiphon with your Bound Sword/Dagger out, without being forced to Discharge. "Purge Attunement" did help with this before but since every cast would re-attune you it still didnt really work to play like this. Until now. Purge is still there btw, but it works on the Weapon Element instead of your Attunement. When you summon your weapon, you can now immediately purge it to save your Discharge for later then just draw, cast, bind and swing your Bound Sword to your hearts content. Once you're ready to Discharge, just reshape to your secondary weapon to apply the Weapon Element again and go to town. Once you have Discharged once, the Weapon Element will be gone. If you wish to use both your Discharges back-to-back, you can reshape to your secondary weapon to regain the Weapon Element and Discharge again.
Note that this means your Attunement will no longer get dispelled ever.
= Changes to the Imbue system =
The Discharge change also impacts how Imbue interacts with Bound Weapons. Previously it would get disabled while they were summoned since the Attunement effect they grant would be applied simultaneously as the Discharge which caused logical ambiguity on which Discharge would occur. Now that that's no longer a problem, Imbued elements will simply work fully, Bound Weapon or no. So you can now Power Attack parry with Bound Weapons too. And weave with them, alternating swings and casts.
Since Bound Weapons can now be imbued and gain the "Resonance" effect (granting Woven Power on hit) from that, they no longer cause "Resonance" themselves. This is to keep them on par with physical weapons and remove unnecessary complexity.
Imbued effects are now *permanent* rather than limited to 1 hour. You never need to refresh them unless you want to switch element. If you want to remove them, there is now a new option in the Research book and the MCM to clear any active Imbued element.
= MCM Restructured again, standalone modules (previously called Presets) are now easier to use =
After the recent 5.18 patch i wasnt quite happy with the MCM layout and have once again reshuffled it a bit. Most notably, the Presets menu is gone and replaced with a starter-menu (first one you see when you open the MCM) that has the standalone modules listed. These are:
- Ward: Allows learning the Ward spell individually, without the rest of the mod features. Next to it is a setting for selecting the hand the Ward should appear in (you wont be using Reverse in this simplified version) and a setting for re-equipping Ward after other spell use (Spell Focus but without having to dig into the menus for it). Alongside the Ward spell, you will also be granted Bind as an alternate way to equip it.
- Parry system: Allows you to turn on the Spellsiphon Power-attack/bash parry system individually. This is now only a toggle box in the MCM and requires no imbuing process of any kind. It also comes with it's own non-magical little wind whirl instead of the fire/shock/frost effects of an imbued parry. Contrary to other standalone modules, this one does not require Spellsiphon's tracking scripts to be active at all, so you wont get a "Spellsiphon" Active Effect on you for enabling it. It could basically be its own mod but i cba to make another page :D
- Bound Weapons: Gives you Bind, configured to Reverse on long-press. So you can summon your primary and long-press to swap sets. This configures Bind to immediately summon the weapon to you'll never see Draw or Ward.
- Auto-reequip Bind and auto-cast Powers: These are just copies of the settings found elsewhere in the MCM but brought to the front for visibility. Mostly here to be mixed with the Bound Weapons module but can be useful for the Ward module as well, or just for the auto-cast feature (though you'll get Bind equipped as a side effect then).
There's a screenshot of this new MCM starter-page here under Images.
= Other Changes =
- When changing the Power assigned to Bind short/long press, the new version of Bind will now auto-equip if you already had Bind equipped.
- Some quest objectives, book texts and effect descriptions have been clarified further
- The tutorial objective to perform a timed parry with an imbued weapon has been removed as it can be a cumbersome to do depending on the combat scenario and fits better into the Mastery quest instead.
= Bug Fixes =
- The slow-mo caused by entering (empowered) Elemental Overload or detonating enemies thrown by World Discharge now has a duration-failsafe like all other slow-mos have. This prevents a vanilla bug that can cause time slows to last much longer than intended. They should have had this from the start but i missed it.
- Imbued parry will no longer cause a purple particle effect on the player (this one was only intended for the purple-colored Ward spell)
- Maybe fixed the issue that "Reverse" was not properly capitalized in the MCM on some LOs. This is a SkyUI bug that i've now *maybe* worked around. Let me know (i dont have this problem myself in my own LO so i cant check).
- WARNING (again):
-
Version 5.18
- WARNING:
- Due to changes in quest stage structure, all ongoing Spellsiphon quests will reset when updating to 5.18!
- Due to significant changes to the MCM, it will need to re-initialize when you load your game, you may need to wait a little before you see the new one.
(Reupload note: Fixed a minor quest text mistake)
(Reupload note 2: Fixed the FOMOD text for Instant Unlock to reflect the changes to this potion described below)
= Tutorial quest intro restructured =
The parallel start of the Research quest once you completed the very first step of the main tutorial quest was a bit overwhelming. Especially for those that jumped straight on it and opened the rather extensive Research journal before barely grasping what Spellsiphon is. Research is now postponed until after you've completed the full basic tutorial up to the first unlock book stage (this takes something like 5 minutes, but it's an important first 5 minutes). Acquisition of the Research journal itself is also postponed to this point, directing your full attention towards the basics before throwing you head-first into the deep end of the research pool. If you opt to skip the tutorial, you will be granted the Research journal immediately as before.
The Reverse Power is now auto-learned when you Bind for the first time and is explained by the tutorial immediately. Contrary to the other Powers taught by the Research journal, i feel Reverse is not something i can postpone since people need to be able to decide their Draw and Ward hand from the get-go. Not to mention it's an essential tool for Spellblade playstyles.
Powers can now be learned individually as you progress the Research quest rather than you getting all 4 dumped on you in one go, which improves the pacing of the tutorial.
The Research quest objectives have been clarified to point you precisely at the chapters and subchapters in the journal that you need to go to rather than forcing you to figure this out yourself.
Once the Research quest starts, the main quest now has a natural waiting point objective where it allows you to fully focus on Research if you want to and continue on the main path only when you're ready. There should no longer be issues where you're accidentally completing objectives on both quest paths at the same time and missing the intended lessons of one of them.
= Refocus and Rebalance - Confusion and changes =
- Removed the Refocus Power. Sorry to anyone who was actually using this mid-combat to toggle it. The reason it was removed is that it caused repeated confusion for lots of new users as it is the only long-term configuration that is a Power rather than a book option, especially considering that Power and Shout refocus is in the book. Many would use this Power once to test it, not understand what it did and then not understand why Draw/Ward got so "sticky". Or they would forget they turned it on at some point, come back later, try to turn it off via the book (logically) and not find the setting. I also feel the Power was difficult to use smoothly mid-combat and mostly just contributed to Power bloat.
- An option is now available in both the MCM and the book to enable the previous Refocus state. This state is now simply called "Spell Focus", coinciding with the existing "Power & Shout Focus" which work the same way.
- Now this will get confusing but... Renamed the "Rebalance" Power to Refocus. Hear me out :D. "Rebalance" was a name that originated when the ability always equipped you with both Draw and Ward. The idea was that you were "restoring balance" as you were now back at your inwards-energy-Draw and outwards-energy-Ward setup. Energies cancel each other out, balance is achieved. With the introduction of settings to allow Rebalance to only equip one of the two spells, the name no longer makes any sense and so this ability will instead inherit the now unused "Refocus" name. Appropriate due to it performing an immediate Refocus (rather than just enabling a mode as Refocus did before).
= Drawing stabilized =
This has been a long time coming but i've gone into the 3-year-old drawing code and polished it up. A common situation previously was that you would try to Draw from a Life or Death source, miss a bit at first and realize you wouldnt get the element in time, so you would stop your Draw and restart it to get the full second of time again. Problem was that the new attempt at Drawing (if you did it quickly), would fail to give you Life/Death, even when perfectly aimed. You would just get World instead. This should no longer occur. Interrupted and restarted Draws, no matter how fast, should now keep being able to extract any element.
Draw has also had it's damage pattern changed. Previously it would work like Life, dealing X/s damage as you beamed someone and then linger for 1s after you were done beaming. Now it will deal X damage immediately on contact but will not get extended by keeping the beam on the target. Only after a full second has passed can the same target receive the same damage again. Since Draw only channels for 1s, you will normally only be able to apply this damage once per target. This means that intentionally missing a target with Draw in order to get World, then bringing the beam onto a target at the last moment will now do equal damage to Drawing on the target for the full second. It also means sweeping your Draw across multiple targets is always a significant damage gain whereas earlier this harder-to-perform action was barely rewarded at all.
Draw will now cause a lightning blast from every target it touches rather than just from the first. This makes it easier to determine if you've successfully applied the immediate-damage-package to each enemy you swiped your beam across in a multi-enemy encounter. And it looks cooler :)
= Other combat changes =
- Freezing targets will now dispel any magic effect containing the keyword "MagicDamageFire". This should make it easier to keep your frozen foes from breaking free when you have perks that apply long damage-over-time effects after hitting enemies with fire spells. Or, you know, some other mods that may or may not have Fire conductions that may or may not have mixed very well with freezing effects up until now. You can technically also freeze an ally to remove a burn effect from them.
- Power auto-casting will no longer target the player specifically and should now work properly for Powers such as "Nightingale Strife"
- The ice swirl around the Death Anima before they die has been increased from 2.5s to 4.5s, giving you a more reasonable window to react and Fuse the Anima before it shatters.
- Weaving circle cooldown has been reduced from 15s to 10s. This cooldown is only intended to prevent stagger-locking through repeated circle detonations but it should preferably not be something that otherwise affects your gameplay. I feel 10s is a sweetspot where it doesnt get in the way of normal gameplay while still preventing stagger-lock exploits.
= Settings menu improvements =
- Restructured and reworded the MCM in some places to be easier to read and navigate
- Added the option to disable the mod and disable specific unlocks to the MCM, so it now has everything the research book does.
- Added "Back" buttons to almost all submenus of the research journal, so it wont force you to select new settings when you entered a submenu by mistake
- Improved the descriptions of several research journal sections
= Improved clarity =
- Reshaping will now also swap out the Element Reflections to show the new behavior of your spells
- Several spell and magic effect descriptions have had additional information added, such as Attunements. The more arcane descriptions have also been clarified, like Bound Weapon cooldowns.
- Heavily edited the Spellsiphoning tome's intro text to be... well... better.
- The Element Reflections will no longer litter your magic menu if you have Draw disabled and will no longer appear until you've used Bind for the first time.
= Other general changes =
- Spellsiphon will now redo the check for Shout Cooldown mods on each game load, so if you add a conflicting mod mid-save, the Spellsiphon shout separation system will properly auto-disable itself.
- The Re-powers of Spellsiphon can now be learned and unlearned individually rather than being all-or-nothing.
- Removed the blank page at the start of all tomes, making is slightly quicker to flip to a later passage when looking something up
- Unsealing "Elemental" tomes will now require your "Base Skill" to be at the required level. This means you can no longer use effects that temporarily boost Destruction/Conjuration to break these seals early. You need to level the skill properly.
- The cheat potion is now called "Potion of Seal Breaking" and will no longer boost your Destruction by 100, it will instead specifically allow the breaking of tome seals and nothing else. Its duration has been increased to a full minute since it's no longer potentially exploitable for other means so i dont need to rush you anymore ;)
= Bug fixes =
- Fixed a bug where you could not set "Both Powers" as your Imbue option in the MCM
- Fixed a bug where the tutorial would fail to progress past the Ward accumulation stage if the last objective you completed was the one that required you to lower your Ward while accumulating
- Fixed a bug where with certain mod combinations, casting scrolls could result in you auto-equipping Draw and Ward afterwards even with Focus settings disabled.
- WARNING:
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Version 5.17
- Reupload note: Fixed a few errors in the Adamant patch. Apparently there were some issues in applying perks for Ward healing and concentration spells (Life and reshaped World). These should now apply properly.
- Added Adamant patch. This was supposed to be part of 5.16 but fell through the cracks.
- Removed healing burst when performing successful timed blocks with Ward or Imbued weapons. Timed blocks are already sufficiently rewarding with the stagger, time slow and Woven Power stack effects. The scripted nature of this healing effect also made it work even when under effects that are supposed to block all healing which wasnt great. And many players even missed its existence entirely cause it's not intuitive.
- Reupload note: Fixed a few errors in the Adamant patch. Apparently there were some issues in applying perks for Ward healing and concentration spells (Life and reshaped World). These should now apply properly.
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Version 5.16
- === Spellsiphon damage has been made more transparent in game ===
- World, Life and Death now have "reflections" in your magic menu which you can use to view their exact damage.
- Reshaped World and Death do not have their own reflections but their damage can easily be calculated by a single multiplication.
Discharge, Binding, Animation and Fusion effects do not have their own reflections as it would be too much clutter in the Magic menu. Instead, their damage is still given in their books similar to the previous "does x times the damage of Draw" but its now e.g. "does damage at x times World Potency" with the World Potency damage being given by the World reflection spell.
So before you would have to take Draws base damage (4), multiply it by your Magicka Regen bonus, multiply it again by your perk bonuses, multiply it again by any gear bonuses and multiply it yet again by any special mod effects (like if you're running Awakened Magicka) and finally multiply it one last time by the number in the book to get the final damage.
Now, you just take the number in the World reflection (which autocalculates ALL of those extra factors for you) and then multiply that by the number in the book and you're done.
=== Draw and Ward are now normal spells ===
You can now see and equip Draw and Ward like any other spell in the game through the magic menu. They do still however enforce their "handedness" as they always have. If you equip Ward in the right, it will auto convert to Draw unless you Reverse first. Then the opposite will be true.
All other old ways of accessing Draw/Ward remain unchanged. This is just an extra option.
=== Enderal SE/VR version released ===
As part of 5.16 I've removed all dependencies on the DLCs from the Spellsiphon.esp that i can. A very small number remain though that can't be removed without breaking things for SE so this main SE release can still NOT be used on Enderal. However, i have released a separate version of the esp on the Enderal Nexus that is adapted specifically for that game version. Note that this is released as a BETA at first cause i dont have the time to extensively test it myself. An initial attempt has been made with good results, the only bug found was that the Life Foci arm FX didnt show (and i still dont know why). I would greatly appreciate anyone else willing to give it a go and report back to me with either good and bad news ;) Here's a link to the page: https://www.nexusmods.com/enderalspecialedition/mods/357
Other changes:
- All Spellsiphon spells and abilities have been recategorized as "Novice" level. This basically only affects people who run with the "Vancian Magic" perk from Ordinator. If you grab that perk along with "Intuitive Magic" you can now use the entire Spellsiphon kit even when your Vancian allowance has been depleted. Note that Spellsiphon usage will still deplete your allowance if you have any of it left.
- Bind, Rebalance and Refocus can now be configured to only equip the left hand or only the right hand. Before they only allowed a "Draw only" and "Ward only" setting. Now you can pick a hand instead.
- Multiple text changes have been made to the MCM and research book to make things clearer. There are also some changes made to ability descriptions (notably Bind).
- Some FX tweaks as usual. Fixed Death Draws corpse raising FX to only last during the actual drawing process instead of continuing afterwards. Removed its lingering blue swirls and related sounds. Removed its interval limitation where you would only get it once every 7 seconds. You can now get it as often as you can Draw. Also changed World Fusions sound design to have its own unique stuff instead of reusing Flamestrike sounds.
- Life Infusion (Reanimation) has had its duration reduced from 5 to 1 minute. Now matching the duration of vanilla reanimation spells. It can still be increased via perks.
Bug fixes:
- When having Refocus active and Entangling a spell, you would get a bugged hand animation afterward, looking like it's holding a spell but with nothing in it. This has been fixed to properly just Refocus that hand to Draw/Ward.
- Hitting enemies during the World Discharge timeslow while having the other Discharge cooldown repetition available would trigger a second World Discharge from the same attunement. This was not intended. The attunement will now be properly consumed before the time slow takes effect. You can still trigger a second Discharge during the time slow but you then need to reattune yourself with a Draw + cast during that time.
- === Spellsiphon damage has been made more transparent in game ===
-
Version 5.15
- Minor polish patch
Changes/Additions:
- The elemental overload FX will now take player rotation into consideration. The flames/lightning/falling ice will now always appear on your left and right sides, leaving the center of your vision free from obstructions. Some other minor improvements have been made to the FX.
- Refocus state can now be seen and toggled in the MCM as well.
- Added a bit of a knockback when shattering frozen targets or breaking targets out of Stasis. If targets break out on their own or via DoT effects, they will simply fall straight down as before.
- If updating from a pre-5.12 version to this one, the new 10-skill "Elemental Binding" book will now be added to your inventory automatically. You can alternatively get this unlock book by opening the Spellsiphoning book again or get the unlock automatically by already having the old "Elemental Binding" unlocked when you update.
Bug Fixes:
- When Refocus auto-reequips Draw/Ward, it will no longer count as an "action". This means it will no longer immediately break invisibility effects (or other similarly "volatile" effects like Ethereal) after you cast them. This bug was introduced somewhere around 5.0.
All previous patch notes can be found by expanding "Changelogs" under the "Logs" or "Description" tabs.
- Minor polish patch
-
Version 5.14
- Minor fix patch 2 following 5.12.
- After the addition of the new unlock step in 5.12 i forgot to move the numbering of the "Reject Teachings" buttons in the Research book. This means that the "Reject Animation" button had the function of "Reject Everything (Disable mod)" and the "Everything (disable mod)" button did nothing cause it's outside the number range. This has been fixed.
All previous patch notes can be found by expanding "Changelogs" under the "Logs" or "Description" tabs.
- Minor fix patch 2 following 5.12.
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Version 5.13
- Minor fix patch following the more substantial patch 5.12.
- The single Bound Dagger weapon choice was not properly being scaled by health or by the Mystic Binding perk since patch 5.8. This has been fixed.
- The "Weapon Binding" research book option will now have a proper warning if you try to read it before unlocking Bound Weapons.
All previous patch notes can be found by expanding "Changelogs" under the "Logs" or "Description" tabs.
- Minor fix patch following the more substantial patch 5.12.
-
Version 5.12
- Information for XBox players:
Bethesda is currently having issues with accepting new mod updates ever since the beginning of May. This means XBox is currently one version behind on Spellforge (so 1.7) and now 4 versions behind on Spellsiphon (so 5.8).
They're working on fixing it and you can track the status on this thread: https://bethesda.net/community/topic/454105/problems-updating-mods-on-bethesda-net
_________________
Ability unlock order has been changed to improve the levelling experience.
_________________
WARNING: Updating to this version will reset all Spellsiphon quests (tutorial, research tutorial, mastery) due to significant changes.
The reasoning for this redesign is written further down. First, let's go through the new progression layout:
Immediate access: Bind, Draw, Ward, Woven Power, Life Reanimation, Imbuing self, Entangling spells, other Research book powers and configurations.
Skill 10: Bound Weapons and Weak Elemental Binding
That's right, Bound Weapons are no longer part of the immediate access. However, this can be unlocked immediately at level 1 since you start at 15 skill in all trees. The reason it's in a book is to reduce complexity for beginners and allow them to activate this layer when ready (or not at all if they're not interested in any combo mechanics beyond Woven Power).
Weak Elemental Binding refers to the Bindings you would normally do when trying to Bind an element during Exhaustion. So the Weaving Circle, the 1s Ethereal form followed by getting Death and the 0-damage Death rune that only causes attunement and lingering death effects (mainly a Woven Power building tool).
For the Weaving Circle, you will not be able to Flamestrike, only do the weaker fire blast. The Overload mechanic is also heavily nerfed; you will not get a stagger wave, no time slow and only a 30% spell damage increase (10% for Entangled spells). The "real" Overload will be granted with the 50 skill unlock as before.
"Novice Binding" (the short defensive swirl you'd get when Binding before unlocking Elemental Binding before this patch) has been removed entirely. Binding before unlocking this 10 skill book will now only serve to equip Draw and Ward, nothing else. Even with an element held, Binding won't do anything special.
Skill 30: Elemental Discharge
No changes except it's now at 30 instead of 25.
Skill 50: Elemental Binding II (aka Empowered Binding)
This will grant you access to the Exhaustion-causing full-power Bindings. So the circle can now Flamestrike, Overloads gain their full potential, Life Binding now heals, restores stamina and magicka and provides a full 10s Ethereal Form. Death Rune now charges up and can freeze and cause damage at full charge. Weak Bindings will occur if you're Exhausted just like before.
Skill 70: Elemental Animation
No changes, just moved to 70 skill instead of 75.
Skill 90: Reserved for patch 6.0… currently going under the working name "Elemental Unity". This will be coming some time later this year.
When updating on ongoing saves, you don't have to worry about unlocking the new 10 skill Binding if you already have the 50 skill Binding, it will auto-unlock for you.
Reasoning:
These progression changes were made for several reasons.
- The dual casting perk is available at 20 skill but could not be used by Spellsiphon until 50 skill, this was a little weird
- The Novice Binding mechanic was something I never quite liked since it was a copy paste of an existing mechanic (going against the mod goal of everything being unique) and a placeholder that then just disappeared when you got to 50 skill (which goes against another goal; nothing becoming obsolete). Basically, it never really belonged in the mod and was something I threw in for lack of better options at patch 5.4 and have looked for good ways to replace since then.
- The weaving circle is one of the hardest abilities in the entire mod to learn how to use smoothly and efficiently. By granting it earlier on, players have more time in their playthrough to train with it and git gud ;)
- This change makes for a more varied and interesting pre-50 gameplay. Weak Bindings have so many more subtleties to them to get creative with.
- It makes Weak Bindings a mechanic that players have more time to get familiar with and incorporate into their playstyle rather than them just being a forgettable detail of Empowered Bindings.
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Spellsiphon now has a built-in mechanism that separates Bind from the normal Shout cooldown.
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This means XBox players will now get the ability to use shouting without blocking Bind! And anyone else that hasnt previously installed the PC-specific solutions to this problem will now have a built-in one.
This is not compatible with other shout cooldown separation mods. If you have “Shout & Bind” or “Individual Shout Cooldowns”, it will be automatically disabled. If you have something else along these lines, you can manually disable this new mechanism in the Spellsiphon MCM.
The way it works is that the cooldown is split into two: The "normal cooldown" (shown on the compass as usual) and the new "background cooldown".
Whenever you switch to Bind from any other shout, the background cooldown is set equal to the normal cooldown and then the normal cooldown is set to 0 (allowing you to use Bind unhindered). You will get a magic effect on you (seen in SkyUI) that shows your background cooldown (it will continue ticking down). Then when you switch away from Bind back to any other shout, the normal cooldown is set back to whatever the background cooldown is now at and the magic effect will disappear.
The magic effect will clearly show when your other shouts are ready to be used again but it does so in a bit of a special way (due to technical reasons caused by not using SKSE. I wont get into that here). To put it shortly, it will show the cooldown in 10s increments. Here's an example of what that means: say you use a shout with a 100s cooldown. This will put a 100s normal cooldown shown on the compass. Then you equip Bind. Your normal cooldown becomes 0 and you will get a 10s magic effect on you (yes, just 10s). Once it expires, it will be reapplied for another 10s and will continue to expire and reapply until 100s have passed at which point it will stop reapplying. The last 10s effect will have a unique SkyUI icon to show that shouts will become ready when it expires. Also, when the cooldown expires completely, there is a special sound effect that will play (like with other Spellsiphon cooldowns).
While this is more unintuitive than just having a single magic effect with the full duration of the cooldown (i recommend using the mod "Shout & Bind" if you want that), this one does have a couple of advantages.
1. Since the cooldown changes icon when it's low, it's easier to notice it's about to expire at a quick glance.
2. Since the duration is just 10s per increment, the last duration bar will move at an easily visible pace, allowing you to see exactly when the shout will become ready. Compare this to a 100s duration bar that will practically be standing still unless you stare at it for a while.
3. If you use SkyUIs duration filter so it only shows short effects, this mechanic means the cooldown will always show for you (letting you know if shouts are available or not) no matter how long the remaining cooldown is.
This background cooldown tracking is a little inaccurate (get "Shout & Bind" for higher accuracy). You will have between 0 to 5 seconds more cooldown on your shouts than you would if you let the cooldown expire the normal way (on your compass). Rapidly switching back and forth between Bind and your other shouts during the cooldown will also cause it to get a little longer but why would you be doing that though? The inaccuracy will always err on the side of *increasing* the cooldown to avoid it being used intentionally to cheat.
The tracking is built to be extremely lightweight. It will only apply an unnoticeably tiny bit of script load once every 10s while a background cooldown is counting down. If you haven’t shouted recently, the script load is 0.
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Other changes
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- A whole bunch of tutorial objectives have been rewritten to be clearer. And some new ones have been added to clarify often-misunderstood mechanics like accumulation.
- Death Rune cooldown will no longer activate if the rune is triggered before it even has a chance to start charging (while the orb is moving upwards, this takes roughly 2 seconds). If triggered during the following charging animation, you will still get the cooldown without getting the fully-charged effect. This change means you won’t be as harshly punished for accidentally placing the rune at the enemies’ feet. It also means you can “undo” your rune placement by immediately detonating it (you’ll still get the weak explosion though).
- The white-colored player glow when holding Bound Weapons but not having a Discharge ready to go will now fade after just 3 seconds. So if you want to "de-glow" yourself you can just purge your attunement and still keep the weapon. And if you use any playstyle without Discharging unlocked, you won't have any unnecessary glow. The colored glows are still infinite in duration since they provide important information.
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Bug fixes
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- Fixed an old invalid parameter that caused some harmless warnings in wrye bash. These should no longer appear.
- Information for XBox players:
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Version 5.11
- When using "left handed mode" in VR, the Ward shield was attached to the wrong hand. New FOMOD options have been added to fix this in the Complete Edition.
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Version 5.10
- Changes/Additions:
- Added compatibility patch for Vokrii. Apparently Enai switched the method in which he applies Bound Weapon perks between Ordinator and Vokrii which broke compatibility with this mod’s Bound Weapons. So yeah, Ordinator is still fully compatible out of the box but Vokrii needs this patch. This patch can be installed mid-game without worries. It will take effect even if you already have the (previously not working) perks on your character.
- Added a Woven Power display to the “Spellsiphon” Power. So it now shows both your Magicka Regeneration / damage total as well as the exact number of Woven Power stacks you currently have active (reasonably somewhere in the span of 0 - 20).
- With the change above that makes Woven Power more directly visible, all quest objectives that previously required a certain amount of Magicka Regen to complete will now instead require a certain number of Woven Power stacks. This also means they can no longer be completed by simply equipping regen gear, you actually need to learn proper weaving rotations (as intended).
- Added a new Preset “Imbued Weapon Warding Only” that just grants access to easy imbuing using only the shout button. For those that dont want the full system but enjoy deflecting arrows, spells and melee with a swing of their weapon.
- Added a “Restore to Defaults” Preset just for convenience.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed some typos along with an incorrect description in the new Presets tab of the MCM.
- Changes/Additions:
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Version 5.9
- New Ward graphics:
The Ward has gotten a complete visual overhaul as seen in this demo video:
https://youtu.be/eIrc_BLPpkQ
While the new design is very different for all editions of the game, the VR edition has gotten a special massive improvement: The Ward is now properly attached to your hand and can be moved around like a real shield! So it's no longer glued to your face/torso. It is also now using a new animation where you're holding it at the back of the hand like you would with a shield, but there's an optional file for restoring the vanilla Ward casting animation if you want to.
The hand-flip actually also applies to all other editions of the game since the casting animation has changed as well.
The timed block VFX has been tweaked a bit as well to better match the new design.
Stand-alone Ward and stand-alone Bound Weapons using MCM Presets:
You can now very easily configure the mod to get only certain modules without access to anything else. Just enter the MCM, go to the new Presets tab and make your choice. All the details are explained there. Each preset will automatically enable the mod and grant you only the stuff relevant to your selection. So you don't even need to open Spellsiphoning tome which also means you dont need to mess with the tutorial system, the additional books or anything like that. Here are the Presets that will be available at 5.9 launch:
Ward only:
This is as close to having Ward as a separate spell as you're gonna get. It's actually better than that because you not only get the ability to equip the spell via hotkey, you also get several extra hotkey-free ways to equip the spell included in the package. Note that it is still not an actual separate spell (due to multiple technical reasons). To get access you will instead select a power called "Rebalance" via hotkey or menu and that power will auto cast, which will equip Ward. So the process is the same as if it was a separate spell; press hotkey -> get spell.
Bound Weapons only:
This one will give you access to the hotkey-free triple-weapon-set system (1 physical weapon, 1 primary bound weapon set and 1 secondary bound weapon set) but nothing else. Can be a nice way for any kind of multi-weapon character build to conveniently swap between weapons by only using the shout button.
Ward + Bound Weapons only:
A combo of both of the above.
No Ward:
Do you find the Ward doesn't fit into your game's balance setup? This Preset will remove it entirely from the mod while still retaining all other features.
Other Changes/Additions:
- Sheathing and unsheathing your weapon/hands while imbued will no longer attune you to the imbued element. This could be exploited for faster weaving which was not intended.
Bug fixes:
- It was possible to access Draw/Ward via the MCM before properly activating the mod by reading its book, this causes all abilities to malfunction until the book is read. The MCM will now ensure the mod is active or assist in activating it before granting any abilities.
- The World Fusion objective in the tutorial was only possible to complete if you used the standard World spell to detonate your Anima. Using Reshaped or Entangled World did not complete it. This has been fixed.
- It was possible to infinitely clone a weapon by having it equipped, summoning a Bound Weapon to replace it, dropping the replaced weapon on the ground and then dismissing your Bound Weapon. This would re-equip the dropped weapon which causes Skyrim to spawn a new one out of thin air. The mod will now ensure that you have at least one of that weapon in your inventory before trying to equip it.
- Related to the above, having a weapon equipped in the right hand, summoning a Bound Weapon to replace it, then equipping your previous weapon in the left and finally dismissing your Bound Weapon would make the mod try to re equip your weapon in the right hand again. Since it is now equipped in the left this weird thing would happen where it equips the 1 handed weapon in both hands, kind of cloning it (you'd have 2 equipped) but not actually cloning it (you still only had 1 in the inventory). Anyway, this is fixed too.
- New Ward graphics:
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Version 5.8
- (Reupload note: Switched default "Bind Weapon" setting to requiring "Draw AND Ward" as this is less likely to confuse newcomers. Ongoing saves will not be affected. This change was intended to be part of 5.8 but i forgot about it...)
Changes/Additions:
- When Binding Life while having Elemental Animation unlocked, you are now able to avoid summoning the Life Anima if you allow the Ethereal form to expire on its own (after 10 seconds). Breaking out of it early will summon the Anima (using the left-over energy), letting it expire means all the energy was already consumed so nothing is left for the Anima. This can be useful when you’re just Binding Life for something like jumping off a cliff and have no intention of using the Anima following that. I didn’t like that there was no way to avoid this summoning as i think it takes away from the feeling of being in control of your magic. Avoiding summoning the World Anima is already possible by exiting the circle but no such method existed for Life until now.
- The sizzling sound emitted by all the Bound Weapons has been removed. It’s just a roughly 3 second long sound loop so it quite quickly gets annoying if you run around with the weapon summoned.
- Elemental Animation book has been updated to match the changes and has had some structural improvements.
Bug fixes:
- It was possible to Entangle the Life Foci spell, causing multiple mod-breaking issues. This can no longer be done.
- Using the Bound Dagger as one weapon set and Dual Daggers as the other caused some equipping issues when swapping between them. This has been resolved.
- There was a header error in the Dagger Animation fix ESL that caused some warnings, this has been fixed.
Note that the last 2 Bug fixes there means a new version of the Dagger Animation fix is required. Get that as well when updating (if you're using it). It's ofc included in the 5.8 Complete Edition so you dont need to get it separately if you're using that.
- (Reupload note: Switched default "Bind Weapon" setting to requiring "Draw AND Ward" as this is less likely to confuse newcomers. Ongoing saves will not be affected. This change was intended to be part of 5.8 but i forgot about it...)
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Version 5.7
- Reupload note: An unintentional override of the "ReanimateAshPile" script had made its way into the BSA archive. This has now been removed. Shouldn't be any major concern but i noticed it so i wanted to clean it out.
Changes/Additions:
- Added settings for deciding what your Powers do while holding a Bound Weapon. Previously these would all swap between your primary and secondary choice. Now you can choose individually for each power if it should swap weapons, act as it does when you don't have a weapon out (meaning you can now e.g. Reverse while holding a 1 handed bound sword) or, an entirely new function, purge your attunement (see below)
- You are now able to purge your attunement while holding bound weapons by using a Power of your choice. This allows you to avoid triggering a Discharge (and putting it on cooldown) when you just want to use the weapon to attack normally. A common use case for this is when you want to make a more stealthy entry with your Bound Bow.
Bug fixes:
- The USSEP Bound Dagger animation set fix added in 5.6 has been rolled back due to causing crashes in VR. This fix is now instead available as an optional file in the FOMOD and on the page (it's ESL flagged). Note that if youre not using “First Person Combat Animations Overhaul” you most likely wont notice the animation set difference even if you install this fix.
New playstyle options:
-Bound Weapon + Draw/Ward: Since you can now set Reverse and Reshape/Realign to work as normal with a bound weapon out and can use the new "Purge" mechanic to decide when Discharges happen, it is now a fully viable playstyle to have a Bound Sword or Dagger out most of the time. I still personally recommend using a normal sword/dagger with the Imbue system as your "every day weapon", only bringing out the Bound one occasionally. But if you want to play a spellblade using just your Bound Weapons, the option exists for that now. You can even Bind elements and summon Anima with the Bound Weapon out.
- Reupload note: An unintentional override of the "ReanimateAshPile" script had made its way into the BSA archive. This has now been removed. Shouldn't be any major concern but i noticed it so i wanted to clean it out.
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Version 5.6
- Changes/Additions:
- MCM has been added to give a quick overview of your Research journal settings and allow you to switch them around in a practical manner. Note that this menu does not explain any of the settings at all, you’ll still need the Research journal for that. The MCM is mainly intended for veteran players looking to quickly set up new characters or for just checking what your current settings are (see new screenshots on the Images tab).
- Added setting where you can choose if Bind and Rebalance should equip both Draw and Ward or just one of them. This can be useful for people looking to use Ward exclusively (basically as a stand-alone spell) or ignore Ward entirely (if they have some other preferred defensive measure).
- Added a setting where you can choose to summon a Bound Weapon only if BOTH Draw and Ward are in your hands when you Bind (default is that only one of these spells need to be in your hands to get a Bound Weapon from Bind). This means you can switch off to an external spell or weapon in one hand, then use Bind to return to your Draw/Ward loadout. Mainly useful for people who don’t want to use Refocus and would rather have the convenience to easily return to Draw/Ward over the convenience of having direct access to the Bound Weapons.
- Compressed the FOMOD settings into 1 single install step.
Bug fixes:
- Added the USSEP Bound Dagger fixes to the Spellsiphon Bound Daggers. This means they will now properly use the Dagger animation set (mainly noticeable if using “First Person Combat Animations Overhaul”) and are now properly silent.
- Also added the USSEP fix that enables Critical strikes on Bound Swords and Daggers (the Bow and Axe dont have this problem).
New playstyle options:
-True Ward-only: setting Bind, Rebalance and Refocus to Ward only will now get you as close to a standalone Ward spell as it's gonna get. This way there is no way for you to access Draw, you'll just have these 3 ways to get Ward and can choose what suits you best. Also set "Bind Weapon" when holding "Draw and Ward" and you will not be able to summon any Bound Weapons either, it will truly only be Ward.
- No Ward: If you for any reason don't want to have the Ward spell (maybe you want to use some other defensive option instead), you can now access all of Spellsiphon without ever getting it equipped by setting Bind, Rebalance and Refocus to Draw only.
- Bound Weapons only (this one was already possible before this patch but i wanted to mention it anyway): Just want the convenience of extra weapon sets without needing hotkeys but dont want the entire Spellsiphon spell and combo systems to go along with it? Put "Bind Weapon" when holding "Anything" and put "Bind Power" on "Reverse" and "Long press". Now you can press your shout button to get your primary weapon set, press again to return to your previous loadout or long press to switch to your secondary weapon set. No Draw or Ward accessible.
- Ward + Weapons only: Use the Ward-only settings above but put "Bind Weapon" when holding "Draw or Ward". Now you can press your shout button to get Ward, press again to get your primary weapon set, press yet again to return to your previous loadout or long press to switch to your secondary weapon set.
For translators:
- Moved Spellsiphoning Folder messages out into Message objects.
- Shortened the toggle message for Refocus.
- Changes/Additions:
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Version 5.5
- - Research book has had some structural upgrades to the menus.
- New setting available to tweak how Refocus works. You can now restrict it to only re-equip your Draw hand or only your Ward hand. This will be particularly useful for people who want Ward as a standalone spell as this very nearly provides that function. It is also useful for mage builds that want one "Spellsiphon hand" and one for other spells without it getting constantly swapped back to Draw/Ward.
- Life Anima no longer has a yellow circle FX at its base, only an aura. The range of the aura has been doubled so you no longer have to hug the anima to get healed.
Bug fixes:
- Fixed some issues with Entanglement if you for any reason are casting the spell you're trying to entangle with both hands.
- Some players were having issues with Bound Weapon summoning breaking down and Bind no longer doing anything, as well as all Spellsiphon powers being redirected to Reverse while in this state. I have not found the reason for this or managed to make it happen myself *but* i have added new failsafes to Bind that will fix this if it happens. Reject Teachings has also received a failsafe that will properly reset this state if it happens. Some of the affected players have received this version in advance and reported the issue as resolved.
- - Research book has had some structural upgrades to the menus.
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Version 5.4
- (Reupload note: Just changed the FOMOD info.xml version to properly say 5.4 instead of 5.2 as it said earlier. No other changes.)
Another minor fix patch. This time for some less-critical issues but one of them is pretty important for the new-player experience. Barring any severe new bugs, i expect this to be the last patch for a while.
-Before unlocking Elemental Binding, if you draw an element and then use Bind, you will no longer get your Bound Weapon. Instead, you will get an elemental Ward identical to an imbued power attack/bash at the cost of 50 stamina. This is not really intended to be a new central mechanic but is mostly just a placeholder that is closer in nature to the real Binding you'll get later (in that it attunes you and is affected by the held element). This makes it less of a relearning process when you unlock real Binding. It also avoids the unintuitive issue that if you had drawn an element, then used Bind to get a Weapon and then triggered a Discharge, you would not get the Discharge for the element you drew. Finally, it fixes a bug introduced in 5.3 where if you did this with the Bow or Axe weapon choices, the element was not possible to release after returning to spells.
- For translators: The "Advanced Binding" (now called “Novice Binding”) page has been rewritten to reflect the new mechanic and the “Bound Weapon” page has been changed as a consequence of the rephrasing in the previous page.
- Fixed an issue with the Weaving Circle where if you fired your offhand spell right before starting a Draw, your Drawing duration could get reduced to a split-second and would consequently always grant you World.
- (Reupload note: Just changed the FOMOD info.xml version to properly say 5.4 instead of 5.2 as it said earlier. No other changes.)
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Version 5.3
- Minor fix patch. Pushed out quickly due to a missing Life Foci texture and a Weaving Circle exploit in 5.2.
Changes:
- Detonating enemies during World Discharge time slow will now be instantaneous when hitting with the Life Foci or Draw beams, it was previously delayed by up to 1 second.
- Using Reverse or Rebalance while inside the Weaving Circle will now detonate the circle as if you moved out of it. This also fixes an issue where imbuing an element with Rebalance inside the circle would allow you to get Draw back after Overloading.
- Tweaked the sound on Death Rune triggering (to make it darker, more "deathy") and Life Stasis break (to give it instant audio feedback when broken, the previous sound was delayed).
- Added new FX when triggering World Discharge detonation while the time slow is still active (to give more immediate visual feedback). This is most noticeable when detonating using the Life Foci beam. Also tweaked the sound effect.
Bug fixes:
- Life Foci were missing textures when used by female characters, causing them to appear as solid white gauntlets instead of the intended transparent purple model seen on male characters.
- Life Foci were incorrectly draining health during World Discharge. During this time slow where the damage over time effect is so slowed down that it basically does 0 damage, the intention was for it to also (logically) drain basically 0 health. Now it does.
- Fixed duplicated text on the Woven Power page.
- Minor fix patch. Pushed out quickly due to a missing Life Foci texture and a Weaving Circle exploit in 5.2.
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Version 5.2
- File structure updates:
The mod is now BSA packed. This won't affect anyone using a mod manager. You can update as usual, replacing the old version.
WARNING: If you've installed manually you'll need to make sure you delete all the old scripts and meshes, you cant just drop the new version in and overwrite. Go to Data/scripts and delete all files that start with kssc_ then go to Data/meshes/magic and do the same. Then just drop the new esp and bsa files into Data and you're good to go.
In addition, there is now a FOMOD installer for the mod so you no longer need to download any of the optional files separately, you can just download one file and pick and choose features later while installing (and it will all be gathered up as a single entry in your mod manager).
For those on ongoing saves, i will be keeping and updating the separate optional files too (Instant Unlock and Arrow Cooldown have both received updates). So you don't need to mess with reinstalling everything or using a mix of FOMOD and separate files. I do not recommend swapping to the FOMOD on ongoing saves.
If you want to swap to the FOMOD version and will start a new game, just remove all your old optional files and the main mod then run the new installer.
The Instant Unlock optional file is now a script replacer only. It will no longer claim a plugin slot for SE or VR users. Along with this change, it has also been integrated with the main mod and will now (if installed) be granted from the Spellsiphoning tome with a new text message. Clicky Sound Begone and the Book relocations still need to be separate plugins but they're at least ESL flagged now.
New features:
Discharging with a spell
There is no longer any need to touch a weapon in order to use the full range of Spellsiphon abilities. This new option also does not have the usual Bound Weapon summoning animation that some felt disrupted combat flow.
-The "Discharge-spell" is equipped by selecting "Bound Life Foci" as your "Shaping" option in the Research book and then using Bind as usual. These appear as ethereal gauntlets that allow you to tap into your own Life force and channel it as a focused lightning beam.
- The spell counts as Destruction Shock damage for the sake of perks and is "invasive" like the Death Rune and Death Anima, meaning it bypasses resistances. This allows you to use it as a general damage source against any enemy, just like the other weapons.
- The cost of using the spell is 5% of your total health every second.
- Each hand can cast individually but even if you just use one hand, 5% health is still transferred into both Foci every second. An unused Focus will just dissipate the power for no effect. In other words, you always want to be casting with both hands. In SE this means you should grab the Dual Casting perk to get the 20% extra damage bonus (the animation also looks better). In VR this means you can direct the 2 beams towards different targets or dual cast towards a single one depending on the situation.
- Just like all bound weapons, this one scales by your current health. The more you have, the more damage you'll do every second. The damage of the spell is locked at the time that the beam hits a target. As long as you don't take the beam off the target for more than 1 second it will keep doing the same damage. So any health drained or damage taken during the cast will not reduce your damage as long as you can maintain your channeling and your aim.
- It is *not* affected by the Conjuration Bound Weapon perks. The spell also won't grant any Conjuration XP on hit like the weapons do. It will only grant Destruction XP.
- The damage is initially set at 4/s (8/s since you'll always be casting with both hands) and will scale at the same rate as the bow.
- Seeing as this is a stream of Life energy (it's just yours rather than some Life you stole from an enemy) it will also cause Life Reanimation if targeted at a corpse.
- Reaching less than 10% health will automatically interrupt the channeling (so you don't kill yourself). You are however allowed to cast the spell again while below 10% health, in which case it will interrupt again after 1 second. Do it enough times and you will eventually die.
- Even though the spell in each hand is separate, the Foci only come as a pair. Trying to replace either one with a different weapon or spell will cause the other to dismiss as well and you will return to your non-bound-weapon loadout.
- The ethereal gauntlet graphic occupies the "FX Armor slot" which it shares with the vanilla Dragon Aspect shout. If you have this shout active, its dragon armor graphic will be temporarily removed while the Foci are out and return when the Foci are dismissed.
Compared to the bow (which is the closest weapon to compare it to since it is also ranged and two handed) the damage per second is identical. The bow takes 2 seconds to fire and initially does 16 damage per shot. The Life Foci channeled over 2 seconds will do 4 x 2 Foci x 2 seconds = 16 damage. Since they scale at the same rate, their base damage will stay identical no matter your health. So with that in mind, the advantages are as follows:
Bow advantages:
-Can sneak attack and stay stealthy
- Can bash
- Can receive damage boosts from enchantments (fortify archery)
- Has higher damage boosts from vanilla perks (100% compared to Destructions 40%, requires more levels in the perk tree though)
- Can use custom arrows for extra effects (custom arrows will never do more base damage than Bound ones though)
- Benefits from Conjuration Bound Weapon perks (notably the +40% damage mystic binding perk).
- Does not drain health
Life Foci advantages:
-Ignores armor and resistances
- Summons in 0.5s (compared to Bow at 2s)
- Deals damage constantly which can finish off low health targets up to 2 seconds earlier than the bow.
- Easier to aim, will do full damage as long as you don't miss the target for more than 1 whole second (compared to bow that can miss arrows far more easily, losing 2 seconds worth of damage)
- Does not slow your movement
- Shares perk tree with your other Spellsiphon abilities, skilling up faster, receiving perks earlier and saving perk points.
These advantages are very tough to compare so determining a cost and damage for the Life Foci that is balanced with the bow is a work in progress. The current numbers may change in a coming patch given enough convincing data to motivate a different balancing point.
New switching effects
The effect used to cover up ugly weapon-pop-out when swapping to Draw/Ward or to/from your Bound Weapons has been overhauled. This new effect does not depend on particles or bloom. Which means it works much better than the old one when moving around (which spreads out any particles), when using ENBs that reduce or remove bloom or when using VRIK that greatly reduces particle effects on your hands. This new effect also does not cause the whole screen to flash which i know some people disliked. And it disappears faster than the old one.
Damage display streamlining
The Stasis Weapons have been removed. Instead when you summon a bound weapon, you will now get a temporary "weapon reflection" in your inventory that is an identical copy of your held weapon. The reflection is removed when you dismiss the bound weapon. This means when you want to check damage, you'll now do it like with any other normal weapon: get the weapon (summon it in this case), open inventory, check. No other steps involved. The reflections are "intangible" (as reflections tend to be), meaning if you try to interact with them (i.e. equip or move them) they will disappear (think of it as reflections in a still pool of water).
New VR Arrow Cooldown alternative
There is now a new approach to VR bow balancing available. This one will bring the VR bow damage all the way down to the correct SE standard (what the rest of the game and this mod is balanced for) in a way that hopefully feels immersive and not too annoying. Note that this new add-on is designed to be used along with a quiver mod (SRA or MageVR). You can read about how it works in the FOMOD installer or on the Description tab under "VR Bow Balance add-ons".
Changes:
FX:
-An issue that caused several sound effects to be very silent or completely inaudible in VR has been kinda fixed. This was particularly problematic when using VRIK for some reason. The main abilities affected were Rift Arrow, Flamestrike, World Fusion and Death Fusion. Expect all of these to have more "oomph" to them in VR from now on. There are other abilities still affected by this issue but their sounds are still audible enough so I'm gonna leave it for now.
- Draw has received a new impact effect when hitting enemies or the ground that is far less "flickery" than the old one. When Drawing in melee range, this should make it a lot easier on the eyes. It also looks better in general.
- World Discharge FX has been expanded with a new fiery center-explosion, new effects on thrown enemies and more unique sound effects. The time slow timing has also been moved a bit earlier, suspending enemies closer to the center of the explosion and each other. This not only makes spotting targets easier but also looks more "cinematic".
- World Fusion initial and on-death explosion has been switched to something more 3D and its sound effect has been switched to something more subtle and appropriate (it was a bit too loud for something that can trigger quite a lot)
- Death Anima will now get an ice swirl around it 3 seconds before it expires, as a warning. You can look for this cue to Fuse the Anima before it's lost.
- Several other minor improvements.
Other:
-When choosing to play without the tutorial quest, you will no longer be spammed with pages. The loose pages will now remain within the folder item until you choose to take them out.
- A new final page has been added to the loose pages bunch to wrap up the basic mechanic section and direct you towards the unlock tomes and Research journal.
- The Woven Power page has been rewritten to be a bit clearer.
- Weak Life Bind will now grant Death afterwards, just like the normal Life Bind does. This gives you easier access to the element but takes longer to do than Drawing from a corpse and will not give you the Death Draw bonus power (basically if you have corpses available, using those is better).
- Swapping Bound Weapon sets is now possible while on full Discharge cooldown. The Discharge book lore page on this has been updated to reflect the change. I want things like swapping to the Bow after a World Discharge to detonate targets or swapping to the battleaxe after a Death Discharge to shatter frozen targets to be possible no matter if you're on first or second charge cooldown.
- The "End Research" and "Close folder" buttons have been moved to the beginning of the menus (and is thereby the default selection) to make things quicker for gamepad and VR users. Sorry in advance to everyone that will be incorrectly jumping into the "Reject Teachings" section before relearning the new button position. I know i have a lot of times now ;)
- If you interrupt an external spell cast while Refocus is active by equipping a weapon or a different spell, you will now get to keep that weapon/spell (it will no longer get immediately removed and put back to Draw/Ward). This happens especially often when using Weapon Throw VR and getting the weapon returned to you while using an external spell. It was kinda confusing to have the weapon fly into your hand only to immediately vanish a split-second later.
Bug fixes:
-The popup when opening the Spellsiphoning tome on a new character (informing about the items contained within) will no longer appear a second time when opening the book again.
- Fixed Life Bind ethereal form ending unexpectedly. This happened whenever you had an enemy locked in Stasis or when your Death Rune got triggered
- Killing an enemy with Life and then keeping the channeling going to the point where reanimation happens could put the enemy in a state where the sound and visual effects play on the corpse but they dont stand back up. This was most likely to happen when a killcam triggered (which extends the Life channeling time). Reanimation is now blocked from occurring on enemies that died within the last 2 seconds to avoid this.
- Fixed an issue that could cause an empty left hand after a bound weapon summon and dismiss.
- Imbued weapon hits were incorrectly granting Conjuration XP, they will now only grant weapon XP.
- File structure updates:
-
Version 5.1
- Bound Weapon auto-dismissal after Discharging has been removed but the cooldown system otherwise functions as in 5.0. This means the effect of the cooldown is now two-fold:
- It prevents you from Discharging.
- It prevents you from creating new weapons (including switching to your secondary Bound Weapon as that is a type of weapon creation)
Reasoning: The point of the auto-dismissal was to improve flow but as it turns out, it would often have the opposite effect. Due to it being easy to miss if you're on first-charge-cooldown or not, you would often not be sure if you're gonna be allowed to keep your weapon after the Discharge or not. This creates a paralyzing uncertainty where you're kind of just waiting after the Discharge to see if the weapon stays or not cause that will determine what your next input should be. This can make things feel very clunky.
All other cooldown abilities in the mod are designed to avoid this issue by having a roughly similar full and "weak" effect. Flamestrike knocks back, weak flamestrike causes stagger which is still a form of control so even if you are surprised that you got the weak effect you still got roughly the expected result, allowing you to adapt without getting stopped in your tracks. Same with Life giving Ethereal form for both full and weak effects, just the duration and following heal differs. And with Death where the rune is created either way, it just acts differently when triggered. Weapon cooldown did not follow this mold.
Other changes:
- Weaving Circle Overload FX has been overhauled. The elemental cloak FX were a bit too blinding when trying to aim your dual casted spells so there is now an initial element-specific quick effect and after that there's just a fairly subtle glow on the player.
- If you're holding a weapon in one hand when you create the Weaving Circle, that weapon will now return automatically when the circle ends. Only works for weapons held in the right hand due to scripting restrictions.
- The page folder you get when opening the Spellsiphoning book is now possible to interact with and can store all your loose pages and take them out again at a later time. If you've thrown this item away, you can get a new one from the main book.
- Detonating World Discharge victims in the short window after suspension ends (e.g. by queueing up arrows in the air that hit after the suspension) will now trigger an extra 2-second time slow to accentuate the skillful hit.
- World Discharge duration has been increased from 4 to 5 seconds allowing you to more reliably have time to fire at least 3 arrows.
- Detonating World Discharge victims now requires that the detonating hit does some form of damage. This is to prevent enemies from seemingly auto-detonating out of nowhere when various invisible effects hit them (this can happen a lot when using various mods that affect enemies).
Bug fixes:
- World Discharge had an issue where it would sometimes instantly trigger detonations on all thrown enemies without you needing to hit anyone. This has been fixed.
- Fixed a bug with the new Bound Dagger choice that caused it to not get affected by the Mystic Binding perk.
- Fixed an issue with Life Fusion enemy pull-in where they would get stuck in ragdoll state if pulled while ragdolling. This fix requires me to always knock all enemies down after they are pulled (similar reasons to why i added knockdown to freeze effects in 5.0). This of course becomes a buff to this fusion but it was the weakest of the bunch so that’s probably a good thing.
- Corrected damage number in the book text for World Discharge detonations from 4 to 6x draw. Actual damage hasn't changed, only the text was wrong.
- Fixed an issue with lightning tendrils sometimes getting stuck in the air after Stasis Rift ends.
- Poison and Disease will no longer pass through the Ward when you block things like spider and rat bites.
- Bound Weapon auto-dismissal after Discharging has been removed but the cooldown system otherwise functions as in 5.0. This means the effect of the cooldown is now two-fold:
-
Version 5.0
- IMPORTANT: The old experimental "Freeze Anything" addon is *not compatible* with this version and will cause issues if used.
====== New system: Entanglement ======
By learning new powers from the Research book, you can now "entangle" 1 custom spell (from vanilla or any mod pack) to each drawn element (the spell must do e.g. fire damage to be entangled with World).
These entangled spells will be drawn instead of the normal Spellsiphon ones and will carry all the normal combo potential (they will attune you, create Woven Power, can be Bound, can be used to Imbue weapons and can trigger Fusion).
Entangled spells will still have their normal magicka cost and damage numbers and will *not* scale in damage via Woven Power.
You will be able to toggle between these entangled spells and the normal ones by using the new "Realign" power (which works similarly to Reshape). Like Reshape, you can use the power while Drawing (through power-auto-cast in the Research book) which will waste 0 time as opposed to using the Power while holding the elemental spell, in which case you'll have to watch the re-equip animation. Both are valid options though, if you don't mind the clunkyness of the latter.
The interaction between Realign and Reshape looks like this:
- If Realign is active and a spell is entangled with the element: You get that spell drawn.
- If Realign is active and no spell is entangled with the element: You get the Reshaped spell if Reshape is active, otherwise the normal spell.
- If Realign is inactive: You get the Reshaped spell if Reshape is active, otherwise the normal spell.
To entangle a spell, use the new Entangle power which will put you in a trance for 10 seconds. During that time, cast any spell containing fire/frost/shock damage and it will be entangled with the element that it matches. Use Entangle again to end the trance or just wait it out.
Entangled spells will be removed from your Spells list and can only be cast via drawing them after this point. If you replace an entangled spell with a new one within the same element, your previous one will return to your Spells list. You can also use the "Untangle" power to return all your spells and remove your ability to Draw them.
The one mechanic that is not available with entangled spells is Life Reanimation which still only works using the standard Spellsiphon Life spell. You'll need to Realign back whenever you want access to that.
Reasoning:
This system is practically a way to get 3 spell hotkeys out of a single one (Realign) or 0 if you put Realign on Bind long-press. It is also less clunky than hotkeys as you can avoid watching the re-equip animation by Realigning during your Draw. Another big plus is that it allows you to benefit from the combo system while casting these external spells, rather than them just being something you throw in in-between weaving. The fact that they keep costing magicka will eventually force you back to using "normal" Spellsiphon spells from time to time so this is not a complete replacement for your trusty old Woven-Power-scaled magicka-free spells.
Spells are removed from your Spells list because you could otherwise just equip 2 entangled spells side by side in your hands and spam them to build insane amounts of Woven Power.
The reason entangled spells can't reanimate is partly because it's technically difficult to do but also because entangled spells can potentially affect huge areas and would then rez entire armies which would be cool and all but also extremely gamebreaking.
====== Spellsiphon ability changes ======
\/ Elemental Discharge & Bound Weapons \/
Cooldown:
Weapon summon cooldown has been redesigned. It is now applied when you perform a Discharge combo instead of when you summon a weapon. Like before, it will prevent you from summoning a weapon if both charges are on cooldown. Unlike before, when the second charge is consumed (which now happens right when the second Discharge occurs) the weapon will dismiss itself automatically.
The cooldown duration has also been increased from 30s to 1 minute and the magicka recovery effect applied when summoning weapons has been removed.
A new sound will be heard when one of your weapon cooldown charges become available again, to give you a headsup especially if you don't have the SkyUI overlay. There is also a new sound when summoning a weapon while the first charge is on cooldown, informing you in advance that a Discharge with this weapon will dismiss it.
Reasoning:
Magicka recovery is removed since the ability is now spammable. The cooldown increase was done due to the Discharge effects providing too much control for the player to exploit.
The change to how the cooldown works has multiple implications:
- You can now only do 2 Discharges at the start of combat before being on full cooldown. Coming into combat with a weapon summoned and attuned will still be useful for various Discharge-based tactics but it will no longer grant you an additional "free" Discharge. Being able to chain 3 in a row was a bit too powerful but I still wanted to keep the double-charge system because it enables specific double-Discharge combos mid-combat and enables better cooldown utilization. I also wanted to keep the start-of-combat Discharge possibility. This solution allows both of those to remain but still brings the number down from 3 to 2.
- If you let your cooldown recharge between each Discharge (in other words, you only utilize your first charge), the system will act much like before. You will keep your weapon after Discharging and can use it as normal until you choose to manually dismiss it. This satisfies my general goal of not removing functionality without good reason.
- For those that do not use Discharge combos but rather have the Bound Weapon mechanic as a convenient way to access more weapon sets, there will no longer be any cooldowns to worry about. You can summon your weapons as frequently as you want, allowing it to truly be a complementary weapon set without any unnecessary restrictions.
- For those that optimize their usage of cooldowns (striving to use abilities as often as possible) the automatic dismissal of the weapon will be a nice improvement to combat flow, allowing you to quickly move on to other things after getting your desired Discharge. Since this playstyle will almost always be operating on the second charge (except for the very first Discharge in combat), they will consistently get this convenient auto-dismissal.
- Also for those that optimize their cooldown usage, you are still able to check if your Discharge is ready by simply attempting to summon your weapon (like before). If the weapon pops up you can be sure that it will also be able to cause a Discharge. If it doesn't, you can move on to other things without needing to manually dismiss an inert weapon.
- Draw can now coexist with the Bound Sword (and Dagger) since this will no longer allow infinite Discharges. Its illogical auto-unequip behavior is removed, allowing you to Bind elements while holding Bound Weapons and quickly chain 2 Discharges back to back by drawing and casting a spell in between if you want. Just note that the weapon will quickly go into full cooldown when used this way.
- Missing with Weapon Throw VR will no longer waste an entire Discharge cooldown for you. You can just resummon the weapon and try again.
Damage scaling:
Bound Weapons now scale from your Health instead of your Magicka. The scaling rate has been reduced by half. E.g. the bow would previously gain 1 damage for every 10 magicka, it will now gain 1 damage for every 20 health. The minimum damage of the weapons (at 100 or less health) will still match vanilla lvl 1 (iron) weaponry.
Reasoning:
With the new Entanglement system, having magicka drained down to 0 will be even more common practice than before. The removal of the magicka recovery mechanic from weapon summoning also means magicka will often only be at the start of its regeneration phase while using the weapon. The old scaling from current (not max) magicka would then very often result in minimal weapon damage. Why not scale by max magicka? Well i would if i could, but Skyrim doesn't provide that possibility. Instead, Health is a resource that is far more likely to be topped off and is additionally a more attractive stat for any type of character build. Not everyone using Spellsiphon will necessarily be playing a mage...
Health is also lore-wise appropriate as when Binding while holding Draw you have no element available except the Life within your own body. Hence that Life will be made part of the Binding process and serve to determine the strength of the shaped weapon. Bound weapons also already adhere to Life's color theme (purple/yellow).
World:
No longer does instant damage, instead each target is surrounded by swirling energy that is detonated if the target is hit by *anything* (can be e.g. a following arrow shot, an external spell or Draw). If the target is not hit while suspended or within 1 second afterwards, the swirling energy will dissipate doing no damage.
Reasoning:
This raises the skill ceiling of the ability, gives you more reason to actually try to predict the flight path of suspended targets and try to hit them and just feels awesome when hitting multiple targets with suspended projectiles and making them all explode simultaneously.
Death:
The storm now freezes all targets in range immediately. The freezing duration has been reduced to 7 seconds. The storm will no longer cause any damage. However, a new mechanic has been added to the freeze effect: The damage source that breaks the ice will now be doubled, regardless of what it is.
So it is now preferable to break your freeze effects with the strongest single-strike damage source you have, be it a 2 handed weapon power attack, a high damage external spell or a combo finisher like the Death Rune or Rift Arrow (note that Tri Bolt will not be doubled as it is always preceded by a weapon hit which will be doubled instead). If an enemy cannot be frozen (dragons, mammoths, dwarven machines, etc) it will instead get a swirling ice effect around it with the same mechanic of doubling the damage of the next incoming hit. This lasts the same duration as the freezing effect and will stagger the target when triggered or when it expires.
Since breaking the freeze effect with Draw is now a very suboptimal choice, the lingering death effect has returned and will surround recently shattered enemies for an additional 7 seconds. This allows you to draw Death from these enemies instead of Life.
When broken out of the freeze effect, enemies will now fall to the ground and have to stand back up.
Reasoning:
The previous way that the storm worked was a bit unintuitive. Having everything in the blizzard get frozen is just more straight forward and natural. It worked like this in the past but was reworked due to being OP with its old 30s duration. That is no longer an issue though.
The previous way also heavily favoured fast weapons (swords) since you could freeze more enemies that way. Id like all bound weapon choices to stay equally viable to the greatest extent possible. In addition, this new approach is just as useful if your weapon is discarded after triggering it. Which is now a very common occurrence with the new weapon cooldown mechanic but also when using the popular Weapon Throw VR mod. Finally, with the new damage mechanic, freezing everything at once enables you to perform cool area break attacks with e.g. a 2 hander with the sweeping strikes perk or vanilla Firestorm. With the old way it worked you would need to manually hit every target which, with the new 7 second duration, would break out the first target before you got to the last. Why not have more than 7 seconds then? Well, Spellsiphon's long-duration CC had to be redesigned a bit to avoid exploits and that meant keeping this one short and making a new one to take on the long-duration role. More info on this below.
Dropping shattered enemies to the ground was a required change to avoid an issue where enemies could become unable to move after being shattered.
Life:
Works as before but if it fails to kill the target, that target will now be trapped in Stasis.
Stasis prevents the target from taking any action for 1 minute but will be broken if the target takes damage. In addition, if the Stasis effect is *not* broken within 3.5 seconds the target will start recovering 100 health every 2 seconds until broken out (so attack it twice in a row if you're using it to do damage). Breaking the stasis effect causes 2x the damage of a drawn spell, that means that a target hit and then immediately broken out of stasis will now take 10x the damage of a drawn spell, up from 8x.
This discharge will no longer cause damage to allies (the weapon hit will though). This makes it completely viable to use Stasis in order to heal an ally if you can keep them from being broken out.
Time Rift has been renamed to Stasis Rift but works the same. It can still be triggered by the initial Life Discharge as before but you now also have a second chance to trigger it if the target dies while in Stasis or from the Stasis Break damage. The Rift duration has been reduced from 30 to 10s.
The initial strike will now instantly kill any ally reanimated by Life or summoned via Elemental Animation, triggering the Stasis Rift. This will bypass any invulnerability on the creature and will kill it regardless of remaining health.
Reasoning:
I still want the mod to contain long-duration CC effects that allow you to take key targets out of a fight since it adds an interesting tactical element.
However, the way freeze worked prior to this patch was too strong. You could abuse it to freeze a boss mid fight just for the sake of waiting out your cooldowns, then spam them with said cooldowns and follow that up with another freeze. Repeat until they're dead. To fix the issue, this new stasis effect will fully heal the target if you wait it out, essentially resetting the fight.
The other issue was that you could reduce any multi target fight into a 1 on 1 since you could freeze a large number of enemies at once for a long time. The new Stasis only targets 1 enemy (2 if you spend both your Discharge cooldowns).
The second Rift trigger point allows players with their main damage numbers invested into other things than Spellsiphon combos to still have a reasonable way of triggering the Rift. You no longer need to kill with the Life Discharge itself but can add anything else you have on top to kill the target as you break the Stasis.
This change also grants natural compatibility with the "FEC" mod (Frozen, Electrocuted, Combustion) which has this thing where it overrides any instant damage effect and makes it into a 1 second DoT effect. This causes the Life Discharge damage to finish applying 1 second after where the Stasis Rift trigger point used to be, meaning you needed to kill targets with the bound weapon damage alone which is significantly harder and not intended. Now, the target can die several seconds after the Discharge lands and you'll still get the Rift. The Stasis effect has also been made unbreakable for the first second to prevent that FEC damage from immediately breaking it.
Stasis Rift duration has been decreased for the same reason of preventing exploiting it to wait out your cooldowns.
The instant kill mechanic will give you a Stasis Rift on demand at the cost of a corpse or what could otherwise be a Fusion (once that is unlocked). What you choose to use that for is up to you but breaking freeze effects with it is pretty effective.
\/ Elemental Binding \/
General:
All Binding cooldowns have been increased from 30s to 1 minute.
A new sound is now heard when any of these cooldowns expire. The sound is unique for each element.
World:
- World Exhaustion now triggers when Binding the circle into Flamestrike instead of when the circle is summoned.
- Summoning the circle can now be done while World Exhaustion is active.
- Binding the circle during World Exhaustion will now cause a stagger wave and area damage equalling 2x that of a drawn spell. Leaving the circle at any time will cause this same effect.
- The initial stagger waves have been removed.
- Flamestrike now knocks enemies back near the center of the explosion.
- A single stagger wave is now sent out when entering any elemental overload.
- When the circle is removed by either Binding or leaving it, it now triggers a secondary effect called "Weaving Circle Instability" that prevents creating a new circle for the next 15 seconds. Trying to create it during this effect will just result in the weak area damage effect, no stagger.
Overload tweak: ALL damage within the overloaded element is now increased by 30%. Normal drawn spells still have a 100% increase. This damage increase is mainly aimed at drawn Entangled spells but it can be used by e.g. spells fired through VR gestures as well or by elemental shouts like Fire Breath. Equipping external spells manually into one of your hands will end the overload effect as before.
Reasoning:
The initial stagger waves were a bit too much control for something that can be used every 30s and affects a massive area. The mechanic was also unintuitive and easily misunderstood or missed entirely. With the new approach, putting the wave on overload gives you another reason to enter it even if you don't plan on casting spells with it, adding some depth.
The change to how the cooldown works was made to encourage using the circle in any circumstance where you have significant breathing room and want to build quick Power. With the previous long circle cooldown you would often find it unavailable when an opportunity presented itself. This would be especially true with the increased 1 minute cooldown. That long cooldown is meant to limit your access to the strong CC, damage and the atronach summoning provided by Flamestrike, but there was no reason for it to also limit your access to the circle weaving mechanic. The remaining 15s cooldown on the circle is there due to the two area-stagger abilities it still provides, having those spammable would be game-breaking.
The 30% damage increase is there for people who will mainly use entangled spells and dont want to switch back to normal ones just to get any benefit out of overload. The increase was put at 30% rather than 100% because external spells can get quite a lot more powerful than the normal Spellsiphon ones can so doubling that seemed like a bad idea.
Life:
Has inherited the magicka recovery mechanic previously found on the Bound Weapon summon. All recovery numbers have been increased, landing on 200 health, 200 stamina and 50 magicka. Magicka recovery is scaled by Magicka Regeneration / Woven Power and the health/stamina recovery is scaled by Restoration perks.
When cast during Exhaustion, this Binding will now make you Ethereal for 1 second but will no longer heal you at all.
Exhaustion is now applied when exiting ethereal form instead of when entering it.
Reasoning:
I still want some way in the mod to use built up Woven Power to create a burst of magicka recovery when you need it. The innate recovery stat increase of Woven Power doesnt quite provide this on its own. Number boosting has been done to match the increased cooldown.
The change to how the weak binding works means you can now rely on it to always save you from an incoming hit, if timed right before it lands. Previously you would sometimes use Life Bind to dodge, only to get killed because you didn’t realize the cooldown was still active. This will no longer be the case.
The cooldown startpoint was moved to discourage staying in the ethereal state just for the purpose of waiting out part of the cooldown.
Death:
- Rune detonation no longer causes agro from nearby allies. This is the last large AoE effect in Spellsiphon that had this issue so you can now safely use followers without risking agro unless you directly attack them.
- Visual effects have been added to make the Rune far easier to keep track of after placing it. Charged and uncharged runes now look slightly different and explode with entirely different FX. New FX have been added when the rune is placed and when it is triggered.
- There is now a hard limit of having 1 rune regardless of perks (but who was placing more than 1 at a time anyway?).
- Enemies hit by the rune will now Freeze (same effect as Death Discharge, including the double damage mechanic) for 7 seconds.
- Rune damage is now scaled by Magicka Regeneration / Woven Power instead of Magicka and now does 6x the damage of a drawn spell.
- Weak/uncharged Rune detonations are unchanged (only applies lingering death that can be drawn and attunes you if you hit yourself, nothing else)
Reasoning:
It was very easy to lose track of where your rune was since the graphic is very dark and sometimes doesnt even appear (because that's just how runes are…). This often led to the ability being left unused or unexpectedly triggering when you forgot you even put it down. The new visual effect is easily spotted in any environment and the new placement and triggering FX make the ability feel a whole lot more unique and fun to use. The separation of charged and uncharged explosions has been something ive wanted to do for a long time cause it just makes sense but it was weirdly complex to accomplish and kept getting pushed further down the todo list.
Adding the freeze effect makes it deeper and more fun as well and is balanced out by the increased cooldown.
\/ Elemental Animation \/
The atronachs summoned from this mechanic have been renamed from “Animated World/Life/Death” to “World/Life/Death Anima”. As a group, these will from now on be referred to as "Elemental Anima" or just "Anima" rather than "Atronachs" as they are both mechanically and lore-wise completely different from normal atronachs.
World Anima is unchanged
Life Anima:
Healing aura strength doubled, landing on 40 health/stamina per second. Also added 10 magicka per second to match the change to Life Bind which this Anima originates from. The magicka recovery is scaled by magicka regen.
Reasoning:
Life Bind that creates this Anima has had its cooldown doubled, this balances that. Also the old strength was a bit too weak to really encourage you to stand in it.
Death Anima:
Now summons much faster, uses a better visual effect that does not obstruct the battlefield as much and frankly looks a lot cooler than the old one (pun intended). Duration reduced to 15s.
Attack damage now scales from Magicka Regeneration / Woven Power rather than Magicka. Base damage is now 2x that of drawn spells. This means there are now zero Spellsiphon effects that scale via magicka. Investing in magicka will still benefit Entanglement, Ward healing and external spells.
Reasoning:
The big blue ball was very obstructive, didnt work when standing close by and wasnt unique either (death rune already uses a smaller, far less obstructive variant). I mainly chose this visual effect to hide imperfections in the transformation animation but I've found a better way of doing that now. Also the summon delay made it hard to use the ability reactively when you needed it. The duration was reduced for balancing reasons.
\/ Elemental Fusion \/
World and Reshaped World:
Have been merged. Both drawn variants will now trigger the same effect and that effect is an instant damage explosion followed by a long-duration DoT and a firewall. The firewall applies the DoT as well but not the instant damage. The DoT cannot stack, only refresh to full duration. If a target is killed while the DoT is on them, they will explode, causing the same instant damage and spreading the effect.
Minor detail: Freezing a target affected by this Fusion will remove the burning damage but the target will still explode if it dies within the duration.
Reasoning:
Having different separate fusion effects for normal and reshaped spells added a hotkey requirement for those that don't normally use reshaped spells. Also, the new Entanglement system would require at least 3 new fusion effects for the system to stay somewhat logical if it's split up this way. So instead, each element now just has 1 fusion, just like how all the other combos work. World and reshaped World fusions kind of belonged together mechanically anyway.
Death:
Has been removed. Now triggers the same effect as Reshaped Death. Note that this means you can create multiple Death Anima with a single spell by passing the ice storm through multiple creatures.
Reasoning:
This one was not mechanically unique and so it broke one of the main design goals of the mod. Freeze is already represented in Death Discharge and a large piercing high-damage projectile is already represented in Time Rift.
Reshaped Death and Life are unchanged.
====== Other changes ======
- The Bound Dagger (single and dual options) is now available! Rejoice you patient people that have been waiting a year for this, sorry it took this long ;)
- Range of the Draw beam has been doubled. Should now be easier to draw Life from flying dragons.
- Imbue effects now only show a visual glow for the first 5 seconds after applying them or after reactivating them (by dismissing a bound weapon or sheathing and drawing your weapon). With the 1 hour duration they now have, there is little reason to constantly obstruct the player's body with an effect that doesn't relay any important information. I still want to keep the short VFX when drawing your weapon though to give you an active maneuver you can do to check which element is imbued in case you forgot.
- Death Anima will no longer attack other Death or World Anima. It's supposed to be crazy, but not *that* crazy.
- Bound weapon summoning no longer grants Conjuration skill. Instead, Conjuration is now increased by attacking with a Bound Weapon (scaled by health/damage) or by performing Reanimation and Anima summoning (scaled by Conjuration level).
- There is now an option for re equipping Bind after power use without autocasting them on equip. You can use this mode if autocasting behaves weirdly for certain powers. In this mode, Spellsiphon powers will still autocast (since i can ensure those work fine with it theres no reason not to auto cast them)
- Having 100% spell absorption should no longer break multiple mod mechanics and partial spell absorption should no longer decrease Woven Power gains.
- Improved the World Fusion firewall placement to work a little better on uneven terrain.
- Removed the moving flames that follow Weaving Circle detonations and the blue flame that follows charged Death Rune triggerings. These effects are extremely performance demanding for some reason and are not worth the cost.
- The "Weapon Shaping" Power that created "Unbound Weapons" has been removed to lessen Power bloat. This feature is now instead available in the Research book under a renamed chapter now called "Basics". The lore and look of these weapons has also changed but their function is the same as before.
- All quests have been updated to cover all the new mechanics, including new mastery objectives.
- The "shift attunements 5 times within 10s in the circle" objective from the main tutorial has been moved to the mastery quest and made a little harder (now requires 7 times).
- The issue of certain quest stages sometimes completing prematurely in both the main and mastery quests has hopefully been resolved.
- Changed SkyUI icons for Bound Weapon cooldowns.
Was: an arrow for the first charge and a bow with a downward indicator for the second charge.
Is now: a bow with a downward indicator for the first charge and a sword with indicators pointing outwards for the second charge.
This is intended to show a weakened bow at first and then a dissipating sword.
-Removed the 3 second Bound Weapon Woven Power generation cooldown effect from showing in the UI. This is now a hidden effect but works the same. I want to keep SkyUIs overlay as clean as i can.
- Fixed a World Anima exploit. By using the Wait command or fast travel to eliminate the cooldown, you could summon entire armies of these. From now on, summoning a new one will destroy the previous one.
====== Bug fixes ======
- The alternate books in Hrothgar and the College will no longer be marked as stolen goods (this may require a new game… I'm unsure)
- Made the "Spellsiphon" Power accurately show Magicka Regeneration numbers below 100% (including negative ones). It now shows separate numbers for your regen and your damage where the damage number is capped at a minimum of 100%.
- Fixed a bug where the Weaving Circle would detonate immediately if summoned while holding the Broken Ward spell.
- Fixed a bug where breaking your Ward by drawing an element into it would not properly grant you the drawn spell once the Ward goes down.
- IMPORTANT: The old experimental "Freeze Anything" addon is *not compatible* with this version and will cause issues if used.
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Version 4.6
- This and all older patch notes can be found in this google doc instead:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17wESSwvYzqisRkElLMIIdDIiPpn946BSUTjhTow8c_Y/edit?usp=sharing
They were removed because Nexus started freezing up on mobile when opening the Changelogs drop-down.
- This and all older patch notes can be found in this google doc instead:
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