About this mod
It's time to "be the smith".... With the help of VRIK, Spell Wheel & HIGGS and with your trusty Black Smiths hammer in hand, improve weapons and armor like never before!
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
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Translations
- Russian
- Changelogs
- Donations
Immersive Smithing aims to provide a more "VR Centric" overhaul to Skyrims menu driven smithing mechanics. Players can now create a Black Smiths hammer at any forge and learn how to smith like some of the finest in the trade.
Players can finally smelt ore in a real time, context sensitive way at one of Skyrims many smelters before using those precious materials to improve their favorite weapons and armor. Why dive into a menu which removes you from the game world when you can actually use the many tools and workstations dotted around the forge to upgrade your items? Why stop there? When paired with Realistic Mining the process of creating ingots for smithing can now be completed without opening a single text based menu!
Combine Immersive Smithing with Shizofs amazing Durability VR mod in order add another exciting layer of depth to your Skyrim VR experience! With the two mods combined you can immersively complete maintenance tasks on your favorite weapons and armor peices between adventures and optionally repair those items broken in the heat of battle!!
Before installing this mod be sure to have read its required mods list and installed all of the mods listed on it. Every one of them, other than 'Durability VR', are required along with their own dependancies - Be sure to have installed them and completed any in-game configuration which may be required before installing 'Immersive Smithing'.
Installation:
- Install Immersive smithing with your favorite mod manager
- If using SMIM ensure that SMIMs version of 'blacksmithforgemarkerwr.nif' is overwriting the version provided in this mod.
- If you are using SMIM in your mod list be sure to grab the optional smelter patch from the optionial files and install that ensuring you overwrite the nif included in SIMM.
- Collect 1x Firewood and 1x Iron Ingot
- Locate a forge and create a Blacksmiths hammer.
- Add the Blacksmith hammer to Spell Wheel, in order for the mod to work, you will need to both equip and unequip the item by using Spell Wheel - VRIK Holsters should also work - however manually equipping and unequipping the hammer is not recommended or supported.
- Configure the mods MCM to your tastes.
Immersive Smithing does not interfere with the vanilla smithing game mechanics in any way. Feel free to choose between using the new functions provided by this mod or the standard menu based smithing depending on your mood - the choice is yours!
It is worth noting that Immersive Smithing only targets weapon & armor improvement and does not deal with new item creation. I feel that crafting is better left in a menu for the time being, I'll never say never.... but at this time there is no support for item creation.
So, how do I improve my items with this mod installed? Don't worry there is an ingame tutorial which will guide you through your first weapon and armor smithing attempts, this can also be re-enabled in the mods MCM at any time should you need a reminder. Below is more indepth look at how things work.
Stage 1: Starting Immersive Smithing
- To start immersive smithing simply equip your Blacksmiths Hammer via Spell Wheel while near a forge. Don't worry, if you are too far away you'll see a notification telling you so, simply unequip the hammer via Spell Wheel and try again when you are a little closer.
- With the mods default settings you should now see the forges owner + any apprentices stop smithing immediately.
- You can stop immersive smithing at any time by unequipping (not sheathing) your Blacksmiths Hammer using Spell Wheel or by walking 1000 units away from the forge.
- With your hammer in hand, walk to the main forge and open Spell Wheel in the hand which is not holding your hammer
- Browse to the 'Smithing' category and select a material which matches the base material of the amor or weapon you want to improve. For example a steel ingot if you want to improve a steel sword, or a piece of leather to improve a leather helmet.
- Note: You can also use the "The Smiths Eye" skill to determin what material an item would need in order to be improved or repaired. See notes on this below.
- With your hand positioned over the inner wall of the forge drop this material into the fire, you will see it melt away.
- Now re-open Spell Wheel and select an armor or weapon which matches the material you just dropped into the forge. In the event that the item doesn't match the material you melted in the forge or if you are not skilled enough to improve the item you selected, you will be shown a notifcation message warning you of this problem. Should this happen you can stash the item using HIGGS and choose another or start the process again by thowing a different material into the forge.
- With your item now in hand, hold it over the forge, you'll feel haptic feedback and a sfx will play while your item heats up and is embued with the material you melted in forge.
- Note: You can move your hand away from the forge and the heating process will stop and your item will begin to cool, eventually the item will cool back to air temperature and you'll have to start the heating from scratch.
- You will see a visual effect play on your item once it reaches its "critical point temperature" and all haptics will stop.
Note: It is important to stress that at this point the 'immersive smithing' process is now locked into improving that item only, if you change your mind at any point from here on out you will need to restart the process by HIGGS stashing the item you heated and unequipping your Blacksmiths hammer via Spell Wheel - All materials thrown into the forge will be spent and you'll need to start over.
Stage 3: Weapon or Armor?
Weapons:
- Take your heated weapon to the anvil
- With your weapon held over the anvil hit it with your Blacksmiths Hammer
- Improving your weapon will require a certain number of strikes, this is determined by your overall smithing skill. The better the smith you are, the less strikes it will take to complete this stage in the process.
- Once you have work hardened your weapon enough a sound nofication will play, you will notice that further strikes will no longer produce sparks.
- After this stage has been reached you will need to plunge your weapon into the near by water trough in order to cool it. Keep the weapon submerged until you see steam rise from the waters suface. Note that weapons which do not require sharpening, such as Bow, Maces and War Hammers require no further work after cooling, smithing will be completed at this stage.
- For all other weapons the final stage of weapon improvement has now been reached so you will now need to sharpen its blade. Take a walk to the Grinding Wheel and reach out for the seat with the hand which is holding your weapon in order to sit at the wheel.
- Once seated raise your weapon to the top of the grinding wheel to start the wheel spinning and sharpen that blade. Keep sharpening your weapon until hear a sfx effect play and the wheel will stop spinning. Again and just like the anvil, the time spent sharpening your weapons will be determined by your overall smithing skill.
- Great, you have now completed your weapon improvement! Inspect your work and then stash it over your shoulder with HIGGS, you should now be able to exit the Griding Wheel with your move forward / backwards controls.
- Note: If your weapon was assigned to a VRIK holster, you may need to reassign it at this point. It should just be as simple as equipping the weapon via Spell Wheel and then holstering it as normal using the VRIK holster it was originally assigned to.
- Take your heated armor peice to the workbench
- With your armor held over the workbench hit it with your Blacksmiths Hammer.
- Improving your armor will require a certain number of strikes, this is determined by your overall smithing skill. The better the smith you are, the less strikes it will take to complete this stage in the process.
- Once you have work hardened your armor a sound nofication will play and you will notice that further strikes will no longer produce any sound.
- Awesome, you have now completed your armor improvement! Inspect your work and then stash it over your shoulder with HIGGS. With your Blacksmiths hammer still in hand you are now returned to 'stage 2' of immersive smithing - you can continue to improve other items or stop immersive smithing by unequipping your Blacksmiths Hammer or walking more than 1000 units away from the forge.
The Smiths Eye Skill:
Activated by equipping the BlackSmiths Hammer when near a Forge and then grabbing a weapon or armor from Spell
Wheel. Once the item is in your hand simply stash it over your shoulder (HIGGS Stash) and you'll recieve a pop up message detailing:
- What matieral the item requires to be improved or repaired
- Warns if you do not have the skill to complete the improvement or repair
- Warns the player if the forge they are using is missing a grinding wheel or
workbench (depending on what you're trying to improve or repair).
While I recommend taking time to read the above instructions because they provide some finer details that you will need to understand, you can also see an overview of the mods features and how they work in the video below.
- Locate a smelter and while stood close to it open Spell Wheel on your left hand
- Thanks to Shizof, Spell Wheel will now display all of the ore types currently stored in your inventory
- Select one and drop it into the smelters bucket for it to be melted down
- Most smelting recipes require two lumps of ore, so if you're creating an ingot which requires 2, drop your second into the bucket to be melted.
- Once your ore has been melted, with your right hand reach for the lever to the right of the smelting bucket
- You should find that touching the base of this lever will start the smelting process
- Wait for the process to end at which point you'll find an ignot in the mold below the bucket.
Note: There is an MCM option for 'Quick Smelting'. This is off by default but enabling it will cause the mod to check your inventory during smelting and convert all of your ore of the same type automatically to ingots. Not as immersive, but a quick way to convert 14 peices of silver ore into 7 silver ingots. A word of warning.... Steel ingots require 2 different ore types (Corundum / Iron), with quick smithing enabled you will need to decide how to spend your ingots as to ensure you get the desired outcome, for example; choosing Iron would use all of your Iron ore and prevent you from creating steel....so do keep that in mind.
- To start 'Immersive Tanning' simply walk up to a tanning rack and equip any dagger in your right hand using Spell Wheel VR or a VRIK holster.
- You will see the tanning tack model change to just an empy frame indicating that you can now string up a pelt / hide of your choosing.
- Open your offhand Spell Wheel and select your chosen hide / pelt / leather
- With the pelt / hide in your hand move it toward the tanning frame until you see it glow with a blueish white hue
- Let go of the pelt / hide / leather
- At this stage (providing you are not dropping leather) you will see your hide / pelt strung up on the tanning rack, use your dagger to slash or scrape at the item.
- Once you have worked your hide / pelt enough you will see it vanish from the tanning rack and a peice of leather will be placed in your hand. Note: If you strung up a hide / pelt which give more that 1 leather then the remaing leather will have been added to your inventory automatically.
- You can now stash the leather using HIGGS or repeat step 4 to spawn the leather chopping block which will allow you to turn leather into strips.
- To end tanning simply unequip your dagger using Spell Wheel or by returing it to a VRIK holster. You can also walk away from the tanning rack to end 'Immersive Tanning'.
- Forge / Anvil Replacers: The mod uses a custom mesh for 'blacksmithforgemarkerwr.nif' so mods overwriting this file (Outside of SMIM) could cause the message "this location doesn't have proper smithing equipment" to be displayed when equipping the blacksmiths hammer while attempting to use the forge outside of Warmaidens in Whiterun. Additional issues may be encountered with mods which drasitically change the appearence of the forge (i.e more than a retex).
- Grinding Wheel: The mod uses a custom mesh but this is only swapped into the world at the point you will sharpen your weapon so "should" be compatible with any retexture which replaces the original models textures. You may notice oddities if a mod were to drastically change the look of the grinding wheel as you'd see it swap out for my mesh.
- Smelter: I fixed a small glitch in the smelting animation present in all versions I've seen of the model including the original, I guess it was not overally noticable until now. Due to this I'd recommend using my mesh or if you use SIMM the optional SIMM compatible model in the optionial files. The mod will still function fine even if you choose not to replace the vanilla or any other version of the smelter mesh with my own, the only downside is you'll see the animation glitch more when the smelting completes.
- Custom Weapons and Armor: Immersive Smithing doesn't check improvement recipes, it simply checks for an items base material keyword in order to determine what material is required for improvement, for example a Steel Sword would have a keyword of 'WeapMaterialSteel' and as such would need 1 steel ingot to be improved and a Leather Armor item would have a 'ArmorMaterialLeather' keyword so would require 1 leather in order to be improved. If the item provided by a custom mod doesn't use one of the vanilla keywords for its base material type then Immersive Smithing will default to requiring 1x Steel Ingot for Weapons and 1x Leather for Armors.
- VRIK Actions: After making every effort to educate its author as to why it is so dangerous for him to create a mod which listens for very loose and all encompassing conditions such as 'Are player controls disabled' and then interprets that to be a green flag for his mod to mess with vital VRIK settings we reached an impasse. Until such a time where its author becomes skilled enough to curb what his mod indiscriminately targets and then breaks in the process, all of my mods which are effected by his script - including this mod - will show a warning on game load if VRIK Actions is detected before shutting down its polling script in order to prevent damage to your game. I am in no way forcing you to choose my mod over VRIK Actions, if you wish to continue using the later please remove this mod from your load order. You have been warned and I will not provide any support to people who end up stuck or have broken saves because they didn't heed this warning or tried to circumvent my safety measures.
- Shizof: Spell Wheel VR and Durability VR, and a very special thanks for adding new features to Spell Wheel in order to support this mod.
- Prog: For VRIK
- Flying Particle: HIGGS VR, PLANCK and his help and suggestion to use phantom collisions / ontrigger events.
- Brumbek: For the smelter mesh from SIMM which was used for the replacer in the optionial files
- Rally, Cangar, BlazeyBoy, Xerlith, Crit and Mango Pirate for support, suggestions and their help testing (plus anyone I forgot - sorry!).
- ElSopa: Thanks for the permissions to use your meshes in the patches I created so our mods work together.
- mindflux: Thanks for the permissions to use your meshes in the patches I created so our mods work together.