Enchanted Arsenal
Easily create custom visual effects for your enchantments, by mixing and matching the animated effects of more than a dozen popular enchantment effect mods.
Enchanted Arsenal is a mod that allows mixing, mashing, and creating entirely
new visual enchantment effects for Skyrim, by synthesizing the creative assets of
more than a dozen other enchantment effect mods.
Enchanted Arsenal’s MCM system allows you change the visual effects associated with enchantments
while you’re in-game. You can swap quickly between visual effect presets that resemble the mods they
originally came from, or you can go much further, and design your own completely custom visual
enchantment effects by mixing and matching hundreds of visual ingredients and 3D effects.
Each of these details can be customized using the Advanced MCM options:
Enchant Shader – this is the colorful pattern you see on the surface of your enchanted weapon. Vanilla
enchantments are primarily just a simple Enchant Shader.
Enchant Art .- this is the 3D animated effect that appears on your weapon. Although the vanilla game
doesn’t use much Enchant Art, some popular mods, like “Animated Enchantments
Overhaul” rely heavily on Enchant Art to produce their visual effects.
Hit Shader . – the glowy effect that colors an enemy’s entire body when you hit them with your
.enchanted weapon. Soul Trap’s purple Hit Shader is probably the most familiar.
Hit Art – this is a 3D animated effect that appears on the enemy when hit by your enchanted
.weapon. For instance, a small explosion of particles.
Lingering FX – this setting will adjust the length of time that visual effects play on victims hit by an
enchanted weapon. Effects with a timed duration (like Soul Trap or Fear) can only be
toggled on or off, while contact-type effects (Elemental Damage) can be set to a
variety of different Lingering FX durations.
Every enchantment effect mod defines these unique features to make up each of its visual effects.
Enchanted Arsenal takes all of these features from more than a dozen different visual effect mods, and pools them
together, allowing you to freely mix and match the visual components you like best for your enchanted weapons.
Over twenty billion unique combinations of visual components are possible for any single effect that you can build.
It can be as simple or as complex as you like. With the click of a single button, you can choose from among
more than thirty pre-defined global presets based on the original mods included in Enchanted Arsenal. Or
you can be more adventurous and tweak the Advanced MCM options to give your enchantments some real flair.
Keep in mind that you must sheathe & redraw your weapons after making any MCM
changes in order for the new effects you’ve chosen to show up.
You can also save your own unique enchantment visual effects to a preset, to share with friends or to load
onto new characters that you create, so that you don’t have to go through the process of tweaking the
MCM options all over again every time you play.
(Presets are optional, and FISS is not required to use the mod)
Using FISS, the mod supports custom re-loadable presets! You can save every detail of your entire MCM setup,
and then load your presets for different characters or even when you start a completely new game.
Instructions ~
.*.Download the FISS Plugin for SKSE
.*.Enable FISS.esp in your mod load order.
.*.Enchanted Arsenal will automatically recognize FISS, and a new Presets page will appear in the MCM
.*.You can now save, load, and rename your custom presets!
If you manage to create a preset that you think is particularly cool, feel free to send it to me and I will upload
it to the mod site to share with others. You could also share some pics of the best-looking effects you cook up.
*.Start by using Demo Mode to cycle through all the possible effects and find what you like!
*.It can also help to choose a Preset you like before moving on to tweak more detailed settings.
*.Using a Hit Shader in combination with Hit Art might lead to overlapping or messy effects, since they’ll
both appear simultaneously after hitting an enemy. You may want to try just one or the other to start.
If you’re testing Hit Art or Hit Shaders using demo mode, make sure to set the other one to “NONE” in
Advanced options first, so that you can see what you’re demo’ing more clearly.
*.Only one set of Enchant Shaders & Enchant Art will appear if you’re using a multi-enchantment weapon,
the game chooses which effect to play by looking to the most “expensive” effect. However
*.Hit Art & Hit Shaders from will play from all enchantment effects on impact, meaning if you double-enchant
a weapon, or use a dual-effect (like the Pale Blade), you’ll see all the visual Hit Art from each effect.
*.Enchant Art is rigidly shaped/animated, so it may not always look as good on every type of weapon.
.How do I customize other enchantments not included by default?
Version 2.0 now can edit the visual effects of ANY enchantment (even enchantments from other mods):
1) Wield the enchanted weapon (examples: Dawnbreaker, or a Stalhrim Greatsword of Chaos).
2) Open the MCM and go to the “Custom” page.
3) Click “Add New”
4) The new enchantment will be added to the page.
5) Click on its name to customize its visual effects.
Please Note: Due to the added complexity, these new custom enchantments won’t be saved with your FISS
preset. FISS will still only be able to save/load the 14 core vanilla enchantments. The edits you make to
other enchantments will only be remembered for the particular character that you make them for. (I may
add FISS support for these extras in the future)
.One cool thing Enchanted Arsenal makes possible is real-time Enchant Art swapping.
A big challenge for mod authors trying to create 3D Enchant Art has been that the Enchant Art must
be made in a specific, rigid shape, which doesn’t always look right on every weapon. This is why
Animated Enchantments Overhaul was never able to be a replacer for the vanilla enchantments,
because it had specific enchant art for daggers, swords, and battleaxes, and you would have to choose
only one to make it a replacer. (So you might end up having battleaxe-shaped 3D art on top of your
enchanted dagger, which would look pretty bad).
Enchanted Arsenal supports weapon-type detection and will automatically swap out the correct 3D Enchant
Art depending on the weapon type the player, follower or another enemy is wielding (example). It is even
possible to dual wield two different weapon types (like a dagger and a sword) that will use their own
appropriate Enchant Art even if they have the same enchantment (however, due to engine limitations, you
have to wield your right-hand weapon first, and then equip the left hand weapon afterward). You can
see some screenshots showing how this works.
By default this enchant art swapping is only necessary for GRIMELEVEN’s effects, since no other mod
has yet been made that includes different art for different shaped weapons. However, the MCM menu
allows you to specify the Enchant Art to be used for each weapon type, so you can add more variety, or
remove any art that you feel looks bad on a particular weapon type.
.Compatibility
As of version 2.0, Enchanted Arsenal is now compatible with anything, even mods that add entirely new
enchantments to the game. You can use the “Custom” MCM page to edit the effects of any enchantments
besides the basic 14 vanilla enchantments already included.
Since Enchanted Arsenal makes all its changes during run-time, and doesn’t edit any resources of the vanilla
game, it should be fully compatible with any other mod, even major game & enchantment overhauls.
You do NOT have to uninstall other Enchant Effect mods in order to use Enchanted Arsenal.
.Known Issues
When you load GRIMELEVEN or foster xbl presets, since these presets only have Enchant Art for swords, daggers,
greatswords, warhammers, and battleaxes, other weapons may look like they have no visual effects. You can fix
this by assigning alternative Enchant Art to the other weapon types manually in the Advanced MCM menu. Click
the “Expand” button to open up the Enchant Art settings for each individual weapon, and choose another Art
choice for the blank weapons (waraxes, bows, and maces will need to be set like this). Unfortunately it was
too complicated for me to try and add an option to chose a “backup” preset to fill in those blanks automatically.
.Uninstallation
Enchanted Arsenal doesn’t directly modify any game assets and none of its changes will stick in
your savegame. Thus, it’s pretty easy to remove. Just choose the Uninstall option from the
MCM menu, save & exit, and then remove all the mod files and reboot the game.
