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Acquisitive Soul Gems (by bluedanieru)


stoppingby4now

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Acquisitive Soul Gems by bluedanieru
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Acquisitive Soul Gems changes the way soul-trapping works in Skyrim so that you'll never 'waste' a soul gem again, such as by trapping a petty soul into a grand gem, or a common soul into a greater gem, etc. With this mod, petty souls only go into petty gems, lesser souls only go into lesser gems, and so on. If you try to trap a soul, but you don't have any gems of the right size, you'll just fail to trap the soul. So for example, if you try to trap a common soul, but you only have an empty greater gem, then when that creature dies its soul will escape rather than partially fill the greater gem like it normally would in Skyrim.

It also changes black gems, including the Black Star, so that they only hold black (i.e. human and elf) souls, not the souls of creatures. This is how it's indicated to work in in-game texts, and how it worked in Skyrim's predecessor, Oblivion.

It does not change the way Azura's Star works, and you can fill that with any size soul you want. I made this exception because a very common use of Azura's Star is for recharging weapons without caring what the size of the soul is, and it's hard really to waste a reusable gem anyway. (Although, allow me to plug here another mod of mine, Soulfire, which handles weapon recharging a bit differently and which you may like if, like me, you find tedious constantly trapping and using souls to power your Dwarven War Axe of Flames.)

Finally, there is a bug in Skyrim that when you drop a soul gem on the ground, or place it in a container, it can lose its charge. This mod fixes that too.



Dropped in 2.2.8. Replaced by Smart Souls.

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  • 8 months later...

The concept is not a serious deviation from vanilla... it is just a matter of fixing a feature that is obviously broken from the start.

Why would you ever want to put a petty soul into a grand gem if you also have a petty gem ?

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The concept is not a serious deviation from vanilla... it is just a matter of fixing a feature that is obviously broken from the start.

Why would you ever want to put a petty soul into a grand gem if you also have a petty gem ?

If you have a petty gem, then soul will go into petty gem in vanilla. What Acquisitive Soul Gem does is prevents smaller souls get into larger gems in case you don't have matching soul gem.

That's the trick. You don't choose where to put the soul, it finds its way automatically. If you've heard the conversation between Neloth and his apprentice Talvas - NPCs also "spoil" soul gems:

https://www.uesp.net/wiki/Dragonborn:Neloth#Conversations

 

You may think of this as of mini game. Rough comparison would be if in Oblivion you change repair hammers to be unbreakable from the beginning (why would you want to break hammer? you'll just grind save&reload function and repair all the gear with 1 hammer)

 

I also may want to fill any soul into a soul gem and I don't really care if it will be common or greater soul in a grand gem - because I need it to recharge my weapon and I'm fine with having a bit less charge (because it's already empty and I badly need some charge).

In fact, soul gems (even grand) in Skyrim are far too common and cheap to bother. Unless you're playing some hardcore mod which nerfs barter, you can easily buy a grand soul gem for ~400 gold, which isn't much.

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And so it says:

 

Neloth: "Did you fill those soul gems like I asked you?"

Talvas: "Yes, master. Although the grand soul gem only has a common soul in it."

Neloth: "Idiot! Those are hard to find. Next time don't fill it at all if you can't do it properly."

Which would make you think that a skilled enchanter should know how to direct the right soul into the right soul gem! Perhaps, to be strictly lore friendly, the gems should be filled randomly at start, but then then chances of getting right souls in right gems improve with your skill? Not a bad idea imho.

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EssArrBee, if I read the description correctly, Smarter Souls looks immersion breaking to me (because it says it displays what soul size has been captured - the original game's idea is to find it out on your own).


And so it says:

 

Neloth: "Did you fill those soul gems like I asked you?"

Talvas: "Yes, master. Although the grand soul gem only has a common soul in it."

Neloth: "Idiot! Those are hard to find. Next time don't fill it at all if you can't do it properly."

Which would make you think that a skilled enchanter should know how to direct the right soul into the right soul gem! Perhaps, to be strictly lore friendly, the gems should be filled randomly at start, but then then chances of getting right souls in right gems improve with your skill? Not a bad idea imho.

No, I don't think this is the idea of that conversation. I think Talvas just confused creatures soul sizes and trapped the soul from the wrong creature.
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  • 2 weeks later...

That depends on context. My impression is just as valid as yours. I don't know if this problem is mentioned anywhere else in lore. Logically thinking though, let me repeat: a skilled enchanter should know how to direct the right soul into the right soul gem. This is lore friendly to me, unless lore proves me wrong :P

 

Anyway, ASG was updated today to a new version. Need to see if it now carries changes from new USKP.

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Requiem adds a spell "Dispel soulgem", which is a workaround for vanilla Skyrim Soul trapping issues. It empties a filled soulgem.

I think it would be nice to require a perk to be able to trap multiple souls in one soul gem and to direct the soul into the right soul gem or even divert the soul from your gems if it isn't big enough to fill one on it's own. As a standard there should be a small chance that the soul trapped goes whacko and chooses any of your soul gems (unless it is a black soul or you only have a black soul gem, but it's a "white" soul), if you lack the beforementioned perk(s).

This makes enchanting a lot harder to level and more interesting (I think).

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  • 2 years later...

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