I have been trying out the game's default Atronach birthsign (before perhaps modding it to mirror how it was in Oblivion) with Hervor. I have been seeing something weird though. Sometimes when Hervor is hit by an animal, the swirly spell absorption effect goes off around her. It does not happen all the time with animals though, and never when she is hit by npcs with weapons.

Has anyone else seen this? I cannot tell if she is actually absorbing any magicka or not, since too much is going on when it happens. I am wondering if the animals are trying to give her a disease, and she is absorbing that somehow instead? I think the game treats diseases as spells, so it might.

Edit: Looks like I was right. The UESP page on Spell Absorption says it absorbs everything except base weapon damage, falling damage, and drowning damage. Wow, this birthsign is hugely overpowered!

Dammit I thought this was going to be a spell absorption affect that plays Stevie Wonder. Consider me sorely disappointed!

Never noticed this happen, though I only played one character with the Atronach and that was both ages ago and for not very long, so that may be why. Never heard of that before, either. Odd.

Yep, the diseases have a chance to be absorbed. I haven’t noticed poisons being absorbed, though. Probably because there’s no magicka being used there’s none being gained, and half of the time they work. I’m pretty sure that Shouts have a chance as well, since when Jerric was not skating across the floor on his back in the last ruin he was gaining magicka. Of course there were also draugr covering him in frost the whole time, so I can’t be sure that Shouts give magicka either.

Also you have to be careful with mods since people use spell effects for things that are not magical, like snow sticking to you.

Taking magicka regen down to zero is really necessary for the Atronach, in my opinion.


eta: Oh, and there's also a Restoration spell you can't use because it refills your magicka. Circle of something. I mean you can use it, but it's kind of a cheat so I don't. Although that may be fixed in the unofficial patch. Jerric hasn't gotten that far in Restoration yet.

I don't see anything like the Stunted Magicka effect from Oblivion. So did you just set the Damage Magicka Regeneration effect down to 100%? I keep thinking that can be overcome with the positive magic regen bonuses from things like robes. Though it would certainly make things more difficult for a starting character who has not gotten a magicka regen enchantment yet.

That’s exactly what I did, I set whatever it is to be full damage instead of partial. Also I don’t use any enchantments that give a magicka regen bonus, since that kind of defeats the whole purpose. One of the armor mods we tried gave +125% magicka regen! That’s when I learned how to change such things in the CK.


added: Oh, and the Avoid Death Restoration perk that comes after Recovery is off-limits, as are the Recovery perks. I don’t want to mess with them though, since my mages love those Recovery perks. But sadly Jerric is the one who really needs Avoid Death!

I just started giving it a whirl with -100% magicka regen. It does do the trick! I noticed that magicka does not regenerate after waiting either. Does sleeping also not regenerate it? What about altars?

Hervor just had the most interesting fight with a dragon cultist in Forelhost. He was a frost user, so he was blasting her with that novice level frostbite spell. Hervor was absorbing it, but still taking damage. So she unequipped her shield and hit her novice healing spell. So his spell was damaging her, and giving her the magicka she needed to heal it all back. Ahhh, just like the old days playing Oblivion!

I also tweaked the Tower sign in my standing stone mod too, since I never use that one. I renamed it the Wildling, and now it makes animals friendly, using the Voice of the Sky power you get from reading the High Hrothgar tablets. I am thinking about changing the amulets of Kynareth to do the same, and her shrines.

Nope, not from sleep and not from altars. It’s wonderful. Jerric walks around with almost no magicka most of the time. He likes to save bandit mages for last.

You know, I hadn’t thought about changing the amulets. Good idea. I’d like them to be more useful so that my characters would actually wear them.

Abiene is using the Tower sign since she can’t cast the Expert Unlock spell yet. She’s my first to use it. I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the Ritual. That’s her Birthsign, but raising undead just does not work for her.

I turned on the auto healing, since I am not sure if I could manage without it. So far it is going rather well that way. It brings back that weird way of doing things, like saving the mages for last. Hervor just finished Forelhost (she went up 5 levels in that place!), and it seems like every other baddie was a Draugr Scourge with the frost spell. So she would stand there with healing spell in one hand, sword in the other, alternating between hacking away and healing herself up with the magicka she absorbed from his frost spell.

The Oblivion Ritual sign gave you a massive healing spell once per day, and a Turn Undead so that is a thought. Another idea is to give a bonus to all Restoration magic. Hmm, I kind of like that. It would go well with the extra 20% one and two handed damage I have the warrior doing, and the extra 20% archery I have the Thief set to. That might give me a reason to actually use the Ritual.

There is an effect called MGR21RestorationEffect that lowers restoration spell costs, and raises their potency. It is used in the Shalidor's Insights: Restoration scroll. I think that might work nicely for the Ritual Stone. Maybe at 10% or 15% lower cost and the same in higher potency.

That actually would go very well with a free Guardian Circle cast per day.

I tried out the Amulet of Kynareth, and it works. Though if you take it off critters immediately turn hostile, and they remain that way even when you put it back on.


That would work well. Since I never remember those once a day powers, I would never use it. But Grits might.

I found a weird side effect to my Kynareth amulets. They work by giving you the Voice of the Sky power you get from reading all the etched tablets on the way up High Hrothgar. All that really does is put you in the Kyne's Peace faction. And all that does is make the Predator and Prey factions friendly to you. Somehow this also makes vampires friendly. Yep, I just discovered this in Dimhollow Crypt.

I took at look at the vampires, and the only faction they seem to be in is the vampire faction. Taking a look at that, I do not see anything that would make them friendly to the Predator or Prey factions, and certainly not the Kyne's Peace faction. So I have no idea why this is happening. I set the vampire faction to be enemies of the Kyne's Peace faction, and will see what that does.

The only possible explanation I can come up with for this is that maybe Vampires/NPCs in the Vampire faction are part of the Predator faction. Considering that in traditional vampire lore, and in the Ur-Text of vampire canon, Dracula, the Count (and presumably other vampires) is able to command predators like wolves, this might have been Bethesda working that into the game a little bit; members of the Predator faction are friendly to vampires to represent this command.

Alternatively, the coding may have just gone squiffy, that's another possibility.

I thought that too about the predator faction, so I looked at its members, and there are no vampires in there. I also looked at some of the vampires. But the only faction they belong to is the Vampire Faction. The Vampire Faction does have a friendly relationship with the Wolf Faction and the Spider Faction, but it has no relationship with the Predator faction. It is really strange.

Ah ha! I found it. I forgot to load the dawnguard esm when I checked before. The new vampires it adds are also members of the Prey faction for some reason. That would make skeevers friendly to them.