Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Mods [Main Campaign Mod] Infinite Use Skillbooks

Throughout Rivellon skills have been passed from teacher to pupil in the form of Skillbooks. But books have been a transient thing; once read, the book itself ceases to exist. Should a student try following another path and then come back to their roots, they find the books they read as a child exist no more.

This mod changes the Skill-books of the Main campaign so that they can be read an infinite number of times. If you re-spec and then later wish to relearn a skill from a rare book, now you can.

Download Link (for v. 1.0.57):
http://www.mediafire.com/download/202ngyjvft12cfj/Enhanced_Skillbooks.zip

Installation instructions:
Extract/copy contents to the corresponding folders wherever Divinity - Original Sin is installed. Activate the mod from the main menu and then start a new game.

Notes: Due to the nature of how mods currently work (as of 1.0.57) only one mod can work in the main campaign. Saves made using this mod are forever locked into using this (or any other main campaign mod). This means that by default this won't be compatible with any other mod that modifies the contents of the main campaign.

The contents (in Data/Public/Enhanced Skillbooks/RootTemplates/EnhancedSkillbooks.lsb) of this mod *should* be safe to delete, since all I changed was the 'Consume on Use' property for all of the skillbooks. But as always, use a mod at your own risk.

There also might be an issue with a certain Teleportation skillbook. The skillbook for Teleportation_FeatherDrop is different than Teleportation_Featherfall and variants in the Editor, and doesn't have any effect when its skillbook (if it exists) is used. Normal teleportation and Featherfall should work fine though, since those are separate skills in the Editor.

Edit:
We have figured out how mods like this one (which only modifies an existing RootTemplate) can be safely installed/uninstalled into any play through of the game, even if it's mid-campaign.

Thread where I have laid out the steps to do so is here:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=514372#Post514372

Why didn't you release this before i delete all my savegames after level 17!! (raqequit because of couldn't buy utmost needed skills)

Because there has been a severe lack of documentation and I only managed to figure out how to do this properly today. There's no need to delete any saves on account of this mod though; it doesn't work with existing save-games and doesn't help any with obtaining the skillbooks themselves.

Speaking of documentation, here is how I created this mod:
1. In the Divinity Engine, I created a mod called Enhanced Skillbooks that has a dependency upon the Main module.

2. I copied the Book_Scrolls.lsb from the Unpacked Main.pak files (in it's Public/Main/RootTemplates/Book_Scrolls.lsb) to my mod's Data\Public\Enhanced_Skillbooks_25602373-8487-4951-9b8b-af40d658e15a\RootTemplates\Book_Scrolls.lsb (I then renamed the lsb file in my mod's RootTemplates folder to Enhanced Skillbooks)

3. I reopened my mod in the Divinity Engine and opened a random level (Character Creation). I can now edit the Book_Scrolls resources (which contains the skillbooks) properly since the file exists in the mod's folder.

4. Editing resources involved looking for the Skillbooks in the Template viewer and the Sidebar (View -> Sidebar). I looked for the OnPeaceUsed property and changed the ConsumeOnUse property.

5. After all was said and done, I saved and tested it a little bit to make sure it worked. The single Minor Heal skillbook I bought in Cyseal worked for both characters.

This looks great, but what if you want to remove the mod at some point, can you do that without messing up your game?

edit: nevermind, I understand now. Shame that it doesn't work on existing saved games.

I don't know if this is a serious question, or just a venting of frustration.

Either way, back up and don't delete unique data you can't just re download from the internet. This applies to everything like pictures, notes, or recordings.

From what I can tell, it's impossible for a game-save to remain viable should the mod be completely removed (unless the Mod is added back in).

Removing the Mod's folders from Data/Public and Data/Mods causes a game that relies on this mod to freeze upon loading due to missing dependencies. Removing the Module info from the Save File's Metadata in Documents results in the game declaring the Save incompatible.

Of course, this might change in the future if Larian Studios makes the main campaign (and game in general) more mod-friendly, but as of right now this is how it is.

Rhidian, if I may ask for clarification or most likely a second round of saying "No can do".

1. I use the Speed Mod, so using that and this doesn't work as it can only work with one mod, correct? If so, they need to make some major revisions...

2. How it functions. If I buy a spell-book, lets say I can learn this spell because I have +1 To Pyromancy on some armor. I learn the spell, then later I get better armor but lose the +1 to pyro, as the game stands vanilla I lose that spell immediately. If I wanted the spell back later I'd have to buy it again and re-learn. In this case I can simply use it and it doesn't disappear as many times as I like. This is a pretty good sized deal. It was an issue that was brought up in beta, sorta sucked when you lost spells that way and had to re-buy it.

Thanks.

1. Technically, if both mods are working separately, then one of them will fail. That being said, the work-around should be to put the RootTemplates of one of the mods (ie my EnhancedSkillbooks.lsb) into the RootTemplate folder of the other mod, and then activate the other mod.

This way only one mod is activated while both RootTemplate over-writes are in effect, and thus gaining both the Speed Mod effect and the Infinite Book mod effect.

Now I'm theorycrafting here, but if you already have a save made with the Increased Speed mod then you should just be able to transfer my RootTemplate over into that mod's folder, and your game save should acquire the new functionality since technically the mod dependencies weren't changed. You might want to make a backup of the save before trying this though.

2. When you use a Skill book with my mod, it stays in your inventory. So if you use it at level 5 and then need to re-learn it at level 10, you can do so provided you still have the Book.

Alright then, like the answer in #2. Will follow up on #1, I'm taking what you are saying is I'm adding your mod to the speed on, since the speed one is already associated to the save that perhaps it will not only work, but not have to start over.

To me that sounds like we should make a base Mod called "Base Mod" that really doesn't do anything and we always start a game with "Base Mod" checked and then we can add RootTemplate mods to the Base and get the affect without a re-start.

We'll report back shortly how merging speed and permanent skill books work out.

I managed to add my Unbreakable Lockpicks RootTemplate to my Enhanced Skillbook RootTemplate folder and saw the new lockpick in an existing save from earlier, so it's possible to merge mods that modify the RootTemplates.

That being said, while it might be easy now due to there being just two/three mods that change a RootTemplate, this limited mod issue will become more prominent in the future as more people make mods. This doesn't even go into the potential issues that item-adding mods might cause when merged (and/or removed); right now we can only really say that merging works for modifications of existing items/characters.

We just hit one over the fence, it worked.

I have both Speed Mod and Permanent skill books mod working together by moving your single Root table file over into the Speed Mod's root table folder, which I have that mod associated with my current game.

I cannot trade the spell book to another character, it moves but disappears, which I actually like as it would have been a little too much cheese. But it totally fixes the idea of unlearning and relearning spells on any level for each player. This was actually a beta issue I had, now erased, like the speed one.

So am I thinking right, that perhaps we should make a Blank Base Mod and check that when we start a game and then we can add mods to that as we go without having to restart?

Anyways, it has begun. Mod count 2 on my game!

EDIT: Of course as you say over time putting too much in one can have other undesired affects, but even in Skyrim that could happen. We'll see, I'm still happy about this little feat.

So where can I download this unbreakable lockpicks mod? Not sure if I'll use, but interesting none the less.

Do you think modifying the level maps would work with this method?

I'm willing to try if someone can point me to a mod of that nature.

In the other thread where I worked out my first RootTemplate mod:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=512069#Post512069


It would probably work, since it's the Mod levels that are actually being loaded. Don't trust me on this though, since I have no idea

I highly doubt merging multiple level mods would work though even if mods are capable of modifying the main campaign maps.

Edit:

Which skill book is disappearing when traded between characters? I only modified a single property on the skill books and was able to transfer a Minor Heal book between two characters, so I don't see what could be the issue.

Still, that would be enough for people to make mods that alter the main campaign without having to restart. You may only be able to have 1 active, but it's better than nothing in my opinion.

We're on fire, thanks Rhidian.

3 for 3 at this pace I'll be at 30 by end of night. Keep feed'm to me!

The .lsb files/mods should probably be named a little more specific. Or can I name them anything I want after download? So in the case someday if there were two tool.lsb, one wouldn't overwrite the other.

What would a blank mod look like? I wouldn't mind testing that. Start a new game with a Blank Base Mod, then add in these three after to see what happens.

So my quick attempt to modify Cyseal both before and during a game failed to work (copying and modifying the Cyseal level in the Data/Mods/Mod_Name/Levels/Cyseal/); the rocks and Rain scroll that I deleted in the Editor showed up when I loaded the game.

Mid-campaign, this kind of makes sense; the map changes immensely during the course of the game, so changes to the base map won't have any effect.

It not working pre-campaign however points to it either not working or me not doing something correctly (both of which are highly likely).

Man, that sucks. Really wish we could just retroactively mod saves/campaign. Oh well, looks like it's never going to work.

The .lsb files in the RootTemplates can be named whatever. I think that the name would only matter if two different Template files over-wrote the same item; presumably whichever one is loaded last will be the one that has the effect.

A Blank Mod would look like any of the current three RootTemplate mods, just without the RootTemplate in it (initially). It would have a Data/Mods/Mod_Name (with meta.lsx) and an empty Data/Public/Mod_Name/ folder (into which you would create the RootTemplates folder to contain the modded Templates).