Skyrim talk:Magical Effects

Spells

Some of the spells in Ilussion include invisibility, chameleon, frenzy and detect life. The last two were shown in the demos.I would add these myself but I would probably make a complete mess of it! If somebody adds these effects and the namespaces to the page, I can write the page and spell description. RIM 20:00, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I think, that now you have created so many effects a Magical Effects page could be in order, and i believe it should be based around Oblivions Magical Effects page. --Kiz ^{·•· Talk ·•· Contribs ·•· Mail ·•·} 20:12, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Alright, I'll give it a shot.Thanks:) RIM 20:14, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I wont be very good at making tables, columns etc. so here is a list if somebody wants to make the page;

Destruction:Fire, frost and shock damage.

Conjuration:Summon creatures and armour.

Alteration: water walking/breathing, paralysis and magical protection.

Illussion: Silence, invisibility, chameleon, light spells.

Restoration:Heal, fortify attribute/skill, shield spells. cure poison/diseise and turn undead.

RIM 20:30, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Have you specifically seen shield spells and turn undead listed as restoration effects? In past games shield spells have always been alteration (which would be suggested for Skyrim, too, by "magical protection"), and turn undead spells have always been conjuration. Plus, I don't much rationale for moving the effects to restoration, given how many effects are already included in the school.

Also, while on the topic, has anyone seen information on the new schools for the old Mysticism effects? Most importantly, Soul Trap, since it's one effect we know is being kept. In the absence of other information, I'd guess Conjuration -- just so we have a place to list it for now. --Nephele^Talk 17:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

(←) OK, I just noticed that 'Turn Undead' is in the in-game description for Restoration, so it does look like that one has moved. But my impression is that 'magical Wards' refers to some type of new game feature, comparable to Destruction's spell runes. --Nephele^Talk 18:05, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I saw, in a video of a public demo in London, where a vampire cast a "shield" spell and basically it looked like an actual shield made of energy which floated in front of him. It looked pretty cool and this is probably what a shield spell is. Yes, some of the spells have been moved to other schools of magic. For example, detect life used to be a mysticism spell but now it's an alteration spell. They have been kind of mixed around in Skyrim. I'm not really sure what ward spells are either. Oh, also reanimate spells are in conjuration as a regular effect, necromancers use it on their allies. RIM 15:42, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I've set up a first version of the page, including several effects in addition to RIM's list. Some are implied by various other game details -- for example, Night-Eye and Charm are used in racial abilities; the Command effects seem necessary to make sense of Illusion perks such as 'spells work on higher level animals'. Others (e.g., Feather) are such a standard part of game play that it seemed safe to assume Bethesda wouldn't remove them. I also figured we could be somewhat generous in assumptions, given that there are supposedly 85 magical effects -- I've only listed 40 so far.

In any case, I think there are enough effects to give readers a reasonable idea of what each magical school does. I stuck to a simple list format for now -- we'll have to redo the whole page later, anyway, in order to fill in all the details covered in the tables at Oblivion:Magical Effects. — Unsigned comment by Nephele (talk • contribs) at 03:42 on 8 October 2011 (GMT)

The page looks pretty good:),on another note, I think ward spells could be like Demoralise spells from Oblivion, just a guess though.RIM 09:24, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Adapting this page for changes in Skyrim

I'm wondering whether we should combine all effects (MGEF: Spell effects, alchemical effects etc.) into this single article (and rename it). The .esm data does this anyway, and Skyrim no longer has a set of clearly defined spell effects that are instantiated on a regular basis. For example, an effect like "Fire damage" is defined multiple times, for different spells.

For spells I would propose the following: We remove all links to spell effect articles (most of them don't even exist), and instead we keep a spell article as base article. There are a few cases where spells are nearly identical, apart from the magnitude (like the Alteration Ward spells), but I'd propose to handle them on a case by case basis (e.g. cross-referencing).

Alchemical effects and enchantments seem to have more in common (like all the Fortify effects), so we might have to look into that a little more, but at least we could start removing references to spell effects, and create individual articles for spells instead. --Timenn-<talk> 14:54, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I just dove in and took my own stab at overhauling all the magical effects to handle Skyrim's effects.

I'm not sure what you mean by combining effects and renaming this page. The intent was always for this to be a page providing an overview of all sources of magical effects, just like Oblivion:Magical Effects. I'm not sure what other name would be more appropriate, especially since the CS name is 'MGEF'.

As for individual effect pages, I spent a day trying to sort through, categorize, and generally understand Skyrim's magical effects. As background for anyone else who happens to read this, Skyrim has 958 separate magical effects. For comparison, Oblivion has 146 and Morrowind, 142. The main reason for that is duplication. Skyrim has 10 different effects that are all named "Fire Damage", whereas Oblivion only had one such effect. Skyrim also has 60 other effects that inflict fire damage, but use different names (Fire Storm, Fireball, Flames, etc.)

In the end, the most logical organization seemed to be one where effects are grouped together. Not just grouping together all effects with the same name, but also grouping together effects that work the same way. For example, all effects that increase aggression (frenzy, rage, mayhem; for alchemy, enchanting, and spells) have been combined onto a single Frenzy page. Some of my reasons for doing that:

• Tips about how to use all the related effects are likely to be the same or at least similar
• The game groups effects together. For example, Resist Fire affects all forms of Fire Damage, even if there are 70 different forms of Fire Damage. Perks, such as Augmented Flames, affect all fire spells.
• Spells typically combine multiple effects, and often some of the extra effects are dependent upon perks. For example, Intense Flames adds a Fear effect to all fire damage spells. When describing such a multi-effect spell, it seems to make more sense to link to appropriate articles on the extra effects instead of trying to document everything on one page.

At a minimum, this organizational idea has allowed me to fix the majority of the effect-related red-links on the site. Pages such as Alchemy Effects and Generic Magic Weapons are no longer oceans of red links. The few oddball effects that are still missing are relatively low priorities, as far as I can tell.

However, I am aware of some general problems with the pages I've just created:

• I have no way right now of telling what weapons/armor can be disenchanted. I've just filled the pages with guesswork -- basically assuming that generic items can be disenchanted, but not artifacts or unique items. Unless pages such as Enchanting gave me details to the contrary.
• I also don't know which equipment slots can be used for given enchantments (e.g, "head", "chest", "feet"). I've tried to copy that information from Enchantments, so the information should be reasonably good. But it's not the typical direct-from-the-bot reliable facts.
• I intentionally ignored powers, abilities, dragon shouts, etc. when coming up with my list of noteworthy effects. In most of those cases, any documentation/details probably don't belong on magic effect pages. For example, the effects "Animal Allegiance 1", "Animal Allegiance 2", and "Animal Allegiance 3" should be covered at Animal Allegiance without any need for a separate page. However, there are probably a few that need to be given magic effect pages.
  • The first example that comes to mind is "Spell Absorption" to document the Breton power and Atronach Stone perk. I skipped it in part because I'd run out of energy, but also because I don't know what "School" to put it in -- it doesn't have a Skyrim-defined school, and Mysticism doesn't exist any more.

Nevertheless, I think I'm declaring my work on this project done for now. There are 100-odd ingredient pages to create, and leveled list levels to fill in, and generic magic weapon pages to reorganize, and.... --Nephele^Talk 07:01, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Absorb Magic vs Absorb Magicka

My edit was undone for this reason: Fluff (Talk | contribs) (→Restoration: Absorb Magicka is a Destruction effect, not a Restoration effect.)

It may be in the wrong area, if you think so, please explain. I undid your removal of my edit because you did not actually move it. Instead, you deleted it and said it belongs in Destruction. You did not actually put it into Destruction, so I think you are confusing it with a different effect. Absorb Magic is NOT the same as Absorb Magicka. Please note the difference.

• Absorb Magicka is an attack on a person, removing magicka points from their magicka pool and adding it to your pool.
• Absorb Magic is more like a shield or protection spell, similar to Resist Magic or the old "Absorb Spell" (but it works on more than just "spells" so I guess that's why it's called Absorb Magic instead of Absorb Spell).
• Absorb Magic is a percentage chance of taking the magic attack thrown at you and pooling it into your own magicka pool, without receiving damage. Please see the Skyrim Talk:Spell Absorption page for a description. If you don't believe me, you can also look at the Skyrim:Magic Overview page, that's where I got the description from.

I added Absorb Magic to the Restoration effects because it is most similar to Resist Magic, and it is not an attack on a person. Because the effect is not available as a spell you can "purchase" I may have placed it in the wrong section. If you think it belongs in destruction, just explain why, but it will need to be added in addition to Absorb Magicka. Thanks, --Amsuko 21:26, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, the wiki has referred to this as "Absorb Magic" (which is annoying to deferentiate from "Absorb Magicka"), but a person using a console has said that "Absorb Magic" does not come up in the console. Instead it is probably called "Spell Absorption" which would match what it was called in Oblivion. But if we change the name to Spell Absorption, the name should be changed on the Magic Overview page, and any other places we can find it. --Amsuko 22:09, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Fortify Spells

The spells with effects that Fortify are under the Restoration sections and each of there pages says Restoration. However the only spells I can see with those effects are under the Illusion magic. Should this be changed or is Restoration correct? — Kimi the Elf ^{(talk | contribs)} 22:03, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

This is a page about magical effects -- as used by enchanting, alchemy, spells, etc. -- not just spell effects. Most magical effects have a specific school listed in their game data -- and that's the school shown on this page and the individual effect pages. For example, Fortify Archery's enchantment effect has "Restoration" listed in the game data.

Even though spells have the most obvious connection to the schools of magic, the schools can be relevant to enchanting and alchemy -- in particular they may be affected by perks in that school, or they may even be affected by your skill level in the school. In the case of Fortify effects the single biggest reason why Restoration is relevant is because Fortify Restoration magnifies other Fortify effects -- leading to various exploits, such as the infamous enchanting exploit. --Nephele^Talk 23:09, 23 April 2012 (UTC)