Attention Please
This is the first version of my first release of a mod for Skyrim. I have attempted to be diligent in making sure it is bug free and will cause no problems, but it's easy to miss things in software development. Please understand that this is still in the testing phase, that I am not aware of any issues at the time of uploading this, and that I will strive to resolve any that you guys find.
In addition any problems or other feedback, I am seeking specific information on the following:
- Whether this works on other versions of Skyrim - I've only tested it on AE 1.6.1170, but in theory it should work on SE/VR/previous versions.
- Notable mods that should be added to the blacklist - that is, mods that contain armor but it's not appropriate to be altering them for whatever reason
- Any other closely related features that would do well to be bundled into this mod, including integrations with other mods. I'm not going to promise to add everything, but if it makes things easier for players and can be done quickly I will at least think about it.
About
This utility exists so that you can rapidly convert custom armor to conform to normal Skyrim items. For example, taking a set of armor that looks like mage robes but has the stats of ebony armor and converting it to actually have the stats and keywords of a mage robe. Or the opposite, taking a mage robe and giving it armor then daedric - how you want to use it is entirely up to you.
This is not restricted to armor sets that only have the normal 4 item slots (chest/head/hands/feet) - it's written so that when additional pieces exist, the stats will be distributed among the various pieces so that the totals will closely reflect the original armor set.
In addition, you can have it add or modify recipes to reflect your changes, and you can have it be automatically distributed throughout the world as loot or from vendors.
How to Use
First, opening QAR can be done by typing 'qar' as a console command - or you may use the Power or MCM provided as options in the installation.
Hopefully the above image is self-explanatory, but if not:
The core process is 3 steps:
- Pick the mod containing the armor you want to modify
- Pick a set of vanilla armor you want to convert it to
- Click apply
Assuming you haven't fiddled with any other settings, all items in the mod will be converted to have stats based around the conversion target. If you do want to tweak any of the parameters, details are below.
Non-Obvious Things You Probably Want to Know
All changes are saved external to your Skyrim save file. Any additions or changes to distribution will only take effect when restarting Skyrim.
Apply only works on items that are shown and checked in the right list - so you can easily work on a subset with filters, or exclude specific items by unchecking them. In addition, the right list has the following features:
- Double-clicking an item will give and equip that item on your character
- Alt + Double-clicking an item will give and equip the associated set to your character
- Shift + Alt + Double-clicking an item will select the associated set in the list
There is a Settings menu with additional useful features. The button for it only appears when you hover over the window title bar.
While the UI is open, it blocks the input to Skyrim. The arrow in the upper left corner will collapse the UI, and will allow input to Skyrim again - but you'll have two mouse cursors. You can block input to Skyrim again while holding Alt - this is useful if you want to re-open QAR but don't want to pan the camera around or otherwise click Skyrim stuff.
You can delete all changes to a mod by Ctrl + Alt + clicking it in the mod list. You will need to restart Skyrim to undo any changes. Or you can delete or edit the files by hand.
Parameter Details
- Modifying Keywords - This adds and removes specific relevant keywords to make them match the conversion armor set. Some keywords are slot specific. This also includes changing underlying "Cloth/Light/Heavy" armor type which isn't exactly a keyword but fits here.
- Modifying Stats - The sliders allow you to tweak the values the armor gets (or disable changing them entirely). This is a percentage of the base armor set, NOT the current armor. For example, if you are converting a set to Steel armor, setting the armor rating to 150% will update the armor to have 150% of Steel's armor rating.
- Modify Temper/Crafting recipes - This will replace any recipes with whatever the recipe the base item has, with the number of components scaled down if appropriate (but never below 1). If the converted item doesn't have a recipe, the second checkbox allows you to automatically generate one. If the base set doesn't have a recipe (eg. clothing sets), the third checkbox will still modify or create a recipe by making it free. Note that if the custom armor has a recipe book, this will remove that requirement but that behavior can be changed in the Settings menu.
- Stat Distribution Curve - This determines how sets with mis-matched pieces distribute their stats. When custom armors have more then the basic 4 pieces, in order to best match the conversion base armor it needs to decide how best to split those stats - for instance in a set with chest, pants, and shoulder items, this determines the way those 3 items get their final values. Two curves are provided: QAR and QAR Merged. The main difference is QAR Merged will assume any missing slots should be ultimately treated as a part of the chest slot and thus the chest piece can inherit the stats of the helm/gauntlets/boots when they are not present.
Distribution Details
First, know that distribution only takes effect when restarting Skyrim.
Enabling distribution allows custom armor items to be automatically distributed as loot or on vendors. There's only a couple of settings here to keep it simple, but to keep it simple I unfortunately had to decide what the appropriate distribution numbers were. I've tried to keep it balanced and lore friendly, but if you want to change it (or see details) you can change or replace them in the config files.
If you just want custom armor to appear as loot without thinking about details, leave the settings on Treasure - Universal and Common.
The first drop down is intended to loosely represent where the item is likely to be found in the world. It is NOT the same as the conversion armor type (which is only about the stats of the item).
- Clothing items are relatively common place and not treasure, and will be found where you'd expect.
- Treasure - Ordinary is meant to represent everything that is likely to be found or made in the current era. As its from the current era, it will NOT be found in Ancient Nordic or Dwarven ruins.
- Treasure - Dwarven or Ancient Nord is the opposite, it will only be found in places expected to have items from those civilizations.
- Treasure - Mage is armor mages are more likely to collect, but it is not restricted to them
The second drop down is the rarity, a hard-coded Common (75%), Uncommon (20%) or Rare (5%) chance. This chance is relative to other items in their grouping, so if you only have 1 rare item and no commons or uncommons, then it will still appear frequently.
The third factor in distribution comes from the base armor you've selected. This splits loot up into 7 tiers loosely based on the levels set for the base items in Skyrim, so an armor set converted to Ebony armor should only appear around when Ebony armor would randomly appear in the game.
The Pieces checkbox allow items to appear individually, whereas the Set checkbox allows them to appear as an entire set at once. Note that this is a set (1 item per armor slot), not every item in the mod. This feature exists because if you have a significant amount of custom armors, it is actually quite difficult to find an entire matching set. Full sets will appear far less then pieces, generally only in boss chests.
The Matching Sets option is there to keep sets together. For example, if a mod has 4 color variants, it will attempt to keep the pieces of sets you find as all the same color - and this way you shouldn't have to manually sort out which pieces belong to a set. Note that this is largely based on the item names, and every mod has their own naming convention, so may produce incorrect sets - feel free to point me at problematic ones and I'm willing to take a look at them. Also note that modular armors that are meant to be mixed and matched probably do NOT want this setting enabled.
Technical Details
Should be compatible with AE/SE/VR all versions (needs verification).
Safe to install, update, or remove at any time. As an SKSE plugin it has no scripts of significance and should cause no save bloat.
CPU use is very minimal. All CPU use is either at the time of opening Skyrim before the main menu appears, or in direct response to using the QAR UI. The addition to Skyrim launch time should be negligible unless you have an insane amount of custom armors to be changed (estimates from my machine are around 100,000 changes to add 1 second of launch time). Technically distribution also adds more time to resolve loot lists but that shouldn't be noticeable in any circ*mstance.
Memory use is similarly minimal. Most of note is that item distribution will generate many new loot lists, but these are still an insignificant cost of memory.
Stability has no currently known issues, but for completeness here are things that are likely to be impacted if I'm wrong:
- There was a crash from giving items to the player while the inventory menu was open (the crash was delayed until you hovered over an item with your mouse). This was resolved by blocking item giving when the inventory menu is open, but potentially other menus could have similar problems.
- I've seen a couple comments for other mods that modifying loot lists can cause a crash. I've not seen any evidence of this happening myself, please let me know if you end up getting this.
- QAR only does stuff when launching Skyrim and in direct response to using its UI. The only other thing it's likely to affect is when loot lists are being distributed. If the game crashes or has other issues outside these things, it is extremely unlikely to be from QAR.
- Not a direct QAR issue, but allowing QAR to generate a lot of recipes may cause performance issues with crafting menus.
Compatibility should generally not be an issue, but here's how it interacts with other things:
- ESPs that change stats will not conflict and are in fact incorporated by QAR. For example Weapons Armor Clothing and Clutter Fixes changes the stats of various Skyrim armors - these changes will be automatically used and reflected in any item changed by QAR, even when installed mid-playthrough.
- Other SKSE mods that potentially change stats such as SkyPatcher are the most likely to have inconsistent conflicts with QAR when set to modify the same items.
- Mods that alter items in script such as Proteus will take effect when the game loads and thus will overwrite any changes QAR makes to the same items.
Questions
Q: Will changes carry across saves?
A: Yes, all changes are stored outside of any particular save.
Q: The stats for armor don't exactly match the base set stats?
A: This is mostly due to rounding. For armor rating, Skyrim rounds up on every piece individually before adding them together to get your total armor. Thus if you have an armor set that is 10 pieces instead of the default 4, it's almost certain to get a few extra points. The helm slot is also source of inconsistencies because different armors use slots 30, 31, and/or 42 resulting in things not matching up well - I've tried to make it work well, but could probably be improved further.
Q: Will you add support for weapons?
A: In development.
Q: Will you add support for editing armor slots?
A: Planned.
Q: Will you add support for enchanted items?
A: I would like to, but the brief amount I've looked into it makes it seem a bigger project and beyond the scope of what I was aiming for. Distributing items as loot was already intended to be a different mod, and I want feature creep to be kept within reason.
Q: Will you add distribution to NPCs as outfits?
A: Unlikely. A lot of the foundation exists to support it, but determining what NPCs should get a particular armor set is a complex decision. As such it may be beyond the scope of QAR and best left to SkyPatcher, SPID, or similar.
Q: Can I distribute changes I make with QAR?
A: Yes! I did my best to keep things easy and friendly to use for different Skyrim mod lists. Simply take files from the
folder, and PLEASE move them to a folder named
shared(instead of local) instead. This will allow users to keep or replace any changes you share with their own without issue. Please note that any significant changes to the loot configurations may make them incompatible, and I'd also recommend not using any CC armor sets as base if you want to redistribute them.
Q: Will you add support for other languages?
A: If there's sufficient interest in QAR, sure.
Q: Any mod recommendations to pair with this?
A: One thing that would compliment QAR well is a mod that provides basic cloth crafting and tempering so that QAR has recipes to work with. Another would be something to distinguish wardrobes that are located in cities from those located in random dungeons, currently they're the same and thus wardrobes in dungeons will get far too much clothing distributed to them. I'm not aware of either of these existing, but I think it would be great if they did.
Permissions
I made QAR to benefit those who wish to use it. As long as its done with similar intent, I really don't care what is done with it.
Credits
QAR was only possible due to the incredible efforts of many people developing the tools that got Skyrim modding to the point is today. Too many people to name and if I tried I know I'd miss a lot of notable ones - but seriously, thank you all!
Furthermore, QAR is only worth making due to the many amazing works of the various artists that create custom armors. Also much thanks to you all!
For sources of specific contributions:
mrowrpurr for providing tutorials allowing me to jump into development in a couple of hours.
CatHub and Open Animation Replacer for code relating to integrating imgui.
Custom Console for code to work with the Skyrim console.
