[SUGGESTION] Enchanted Items and degradation (for a Mod or base game)

[Leeux]

I dislike the fact that enchanting items with on-held effects, and other properties that should tax the items, do not make the items degrade as the do in the classic game, but I kinda understood the rationale for that, from what I've read at least... still, it feels a little tad unbalanced to me

So I was thinking of alternatives/ways to handle this and I thought perhaps it could be fitting to use the "Soul Gems" currently existing in the game to "recharge" the items, at the risk of losing the gem and releasing the captured creature, maybe? (EDIT: Forgot to clarify, I've put the term "Soul Gem" in quotes in all of this due to the fact that the game actually calls them Soul Trap... Soul Gems are the name given to them in the later titles.)

So, my idea was, reintroduce item degradation, but instead of just degrading and breaking definitively to the point they'd disappear as they do in the classic game, just decrease the "charge" of them as they get used and be able to use a "Soul Gem" or Soul Trapped creature to replenish the charges... this is fitting if we're going by what soul gems and soul trapping do in later Elder Scrolls games, at least. But I'm open to the fact that this could contradict Lore existing in Daggerfall, so... I'm a little hesitant on the validity of the proposal, for now... as I haven't read all Lore that exists in-game that applies to Daggerfall's time.

The actual process for doing this could be simple, or complicated... maybe it would require casting a spell, or maybe it would instead require going to the make item guy and paying for the recharge too. Perhaps the consequence is that the item will be modified and made Soul Bound as a consequence of recharging it, or perhaps simply there's just a chance that the recharging would fail and the creature be released... but that only applies if you do the recharge by ourselves and not using the service of the NPC.

Con of this proposal is that Soul Gems seem to be only available to high level Mage Guilds characters... not sure if School of Julianos (or some other) that offers Item Making also sell them.

Anyways, this is just basic idea... I'm not an expert in the ways the old game, and particular I don't know much about Soul Binding and trapping mechanics, so for this that I wrote I'm going by what the UESP says on that... as I haven't used the mechanics myself yet.

In any case, for now I'll still keep using the overpowered items

EDIT2: typos

[Jay_H]

I dislike the fact that enchanting items with on-held effects, and other properties that should tax the items, do not make the items degrade as the do in the classic game, but I kinda understood the rationale for that, from what I've read at least... still, it feels a little tad unbalanced to me
...
So, my idea was, reintroduce item degradation, but instead of just degrading and breaking definitively to the point they'd disappear as they do in the classic game, just decrease the "charge" of them as they get used and be able to use a "Soul Gem" or Soul Trapped creature to replenish the charges... this is fitting if we're going by what soul gems and soul trapping do in later Elder Scrolls games, at least. But I'm open to the fact that this could contradict Lore existing in Daggerfall, so... I'm a little hesitant on the validity of the proposal, for now... as I haven't read all Lore that exists in-game that applies to Daggerfall's time.

Magic item degradation is in the game, and is based on the best information Interkarma has. If anyone has a more accurate formula than what he has, and can prove it, then he would much prefer to use that instead.

[Leeux]

I was basing all my exposition above on what happens in-game atm (at least for me!) The effects I'm noticing is what made me make this post... I thought the degradation was left out of the game on purpose! According to that post there should be some form of degradation already present in game?

What I'm observing is: I made a bunch of enchanted items when I was around ~L14 (earliest game I've where I have them equipped, dated in-game as "22 Second Seed 3E405") and in the last savegame I made yesterday I'm still holding the same items which all of them are still in Condition: "New", yet the save game date is 24 Sun's Dusk 3E405.. more than 6 months of in-game time have passed between them (assuming I did the calendar math right )

What I noticed is that items with Cast on-held effects aren't recasted after 7 or 8 hs periods (or at least the cast effect isn't shown?,) as in the classic game... but I've tried de-equipping them and re-equipping them by hand to simulate that, and they still haven't decayed.

((I wasn't able to read the thread in full yet... I'm supposed to be working atm. Gonna have a good read later! That wasn't the thread I've read in the past, that I mentioned in my original post.))

As for checking the classic game, I can do that... I have a classic daggerfall install with a sufficient high level char in it that can create enchanted items, problem is, I do not know how to look at the savegames and see the actual item's life values... is there any tool that can help with that?

There are some effects that are permanent, even in the classic game and do not require recasting periodically in order to be kept active... those effects are mostly passive, like the Enhance Skill or Extra Weight, etc. There are effects that generate degradation even if they seem to be passive, like the Extra Spell points one... which seems to cause degradation each time the effect is triggered.

But the worse offenders are the Cast on-held ones... they surely produce degradation in classic daggerfall... Degradation of a tick per 7 or 8 hs of having them equipped. The question is how much life each tick (each cast) takes away...

EDIT: clarification

[Jay_H]

I can't remember which ones I used, but some save game editors will allow you to see the health of the items you have equipped. That should provide good info. If you're able to bring out any new findings, they'll be valuable

[Leeux]

I did some testings... here's the summary:


My old character doesnt have access to MG enchanting yet (it's MG rank #4) so I had to make do with whatever I could find... luckily I was able to buy a Daedric Cuirass with Strength, and a Shirt with Torgo... and I already had a Water Walking Ring from before, that's was mildly used... that's why it starts with less quality than max.

I used the tool called Daghex2f.zip taken from the page you linked above.

I started by generating a save and called it initial state (this is the one that I attached, in case anyone has Daggerfall and want's to repeat the test.) After each step, I saved the game to a new save and exited the game and launched the Save editor and read the values for the items, and took a screen capture.

So I did the following tests:

1. Equipped all the items
2. Rested for 6hs
3. Made a mistake, I accidentally removed the Cuirass so I had to reequip it... so I took a second screenie for the new state, but in this step only the cuirass quality state changed.
4. I did a travel from Wayrest to Daggerfall region (to the city called Grimfort) that took 49 days (reckless, using inns.)
5. I did the same travel back to Wayrest from where I was.
6. I unequipped all items and requipped them.
7. I rested for 24hs
8. I rested again for 8hs.

The results are shown in the above image, and that image was taken as screenshot from the following shared spreadsheet (google docs.)

I'm attaching the initial save (from classic daggerfall, in case anyone wants to repeat the checks) and a ZIP file containing the captured images from the tests.

Here's a couple of the images inside spoilers, as example:

Spoiler!

I can probably repeat some tests for other items, if needed... I'd want to confirm if the valued decremented on-equipping correspond to the effect's cost from the corresponding spell being cast and if it's independent from the max quality at all or not.

EDIT2: What baffles me is the number consumed on traveling (49 days!) and that each travel was a different number

EDIT: typo

[Leeux]

I'm intending to do a bit more of testing and data gathering when I have some time... I need to grind a bit of MG ranks in my classic character and then do some tests with more advanced magic items.

In any case, there's still the issue of the travel times and the degradation not matching any pattern I could think of... I hope more testing gives me some idea of what's going on behind the cover there... else it'd probably require some reverse engineer of the code itself, for which I'm not totally sure that I have the time to do it atm