SureAI

I've noticed some people on the forums complaining about the process of learning skills through meditation, and while I've yet to play Enderal long enough to feel that the process has become a chore, I think that expanding upon the existing system could be way cooler than simply implementing the old one Skyrim uses!


The "meditation room" will henceforth be referred to as "sea of consciousness", which is very fitting since there is water surrounding the platform!

Consider the following: What if you had a way to expand your existing sea of consciousness to allow for storage, passing the time(by sleeping in a bed perhaps?) or even housing! Why not even throw in a secure chest in there? It could potentially become your own portable home!
Let me set the scene for you:
You're in a dungeon, been adventuring for a while now, as one can tell from the gargantuan load of items on your back that you've been steadily accumulating. You tell yourself that maybe it's about time to head back to town after finishing your current quest, when suddenly your legs give in to the weight of your possessions and alerts you of your predicament by moving you with the pace of a snail... you're over encumbered, nice going legs...
You look through your inventory like so many times before; expel the less valuable items, make room for the more valuable items. During this process you might even succeed in fooling yourself that you'll come back for the items you've dropped later on, like, that never happens, does it?
Imagine instead that you could simply blink out of the corporeal world and enter your sea of consciousness to deal with items, lack of sleep, crafting and spending memory points on skills! You'd have more than one reason to meditate if this was your reality, sadly it's not... yet anyway!


The way to gradually expand your sea of consciousness could be something of the following:

• Reading specific books.
• Collecting sufficient knowledge.
• After completing quests.
• Combination of the above?
  ...
• Whatever you might come up with!

Note: It's about broadening your mind basically, the more you know the bigger your mind, and consequently your meditation room.
Enough to even house crafting stations? I hope so!

What's this you say? Not realistic to have physical objects in an immaterial, thought-controlled space!? Well, that's true and I can't argue against it, however it's possible at the time of writing(patch 1.1.2.9), to simply drop items on the ground of the meditation room, which is supposedly a space that exists within your mind... wicked!
And sometimes you've just got to say: "Fuck it, this is too cool to rationalize! Not to mention convenient!".

Whether it be a third-party modder or the team of SureAI, I sincerely hope that this could become reality for all those like-minded!

Hi Nightshade,

This is well thought out.

My personal opinion, however, is that this would defeat the purpose of having to manage inventory and to think ahead and plan in much of the aspects that makes Enderal a lot of fun (even more so than Skyrim, because fast travel was taken out).

You already have the Mark and Return spells, which is an outstanding addition to the game, another element we can manage too, but to have in the Meditation "room" a mini house, of sorts, seems too much for me and would make it too easy, I think.

Now if you' were talking about new Memory Stones with new paths, for example for the Crafting skills, that would be excellent, as it would add to the choice, without taking away the management and foresight which is part of the game too.

Regards!

Thanks for the reply Ragnarok!
Sorry for not replying sooner, I've been swamped with school :/

The initial idea behind an expanding meditation "room"(perhaps "space" is more appropriate?) was to elicit the potential of the current system and combat the pain of going through loading screens when upgrading skills, though I'm obviously biased about my own ideas and wants.

The goal of the concept was also to allow for more time actually playing the game, than say, still having to manage inventory and looking for crafting tables in higher levels. This process will definitely get more and more tedious over time, but with this type of gradual expansion you'd still be forced to do all this micro-management in the beginning, seeing as you'd only get the perks after growing more powerful, so to speak.

Maybe you're right though, having all these nice things could perhaps make Enderal too easy and inadvertently subtract from the game, in the sense that you wouldn't have to plan ahead as much. I don't think it would be any less challenging though. It's basically just convenience and efficiency since all of this is accessible through other means, in a more roundabout way.

I really value your input Ragnarok, I've been able to clarify some things thanks to you!

I feel I may be a bit overzealous here though, in which case anyone reading can feel free to disregard me and file me under an internal list of crazy people! (*Maniacal laughter* )

However if you've stumbled upon this thread somehow and feel that it would make a nice addtition to your game, be sure to let me know! Maybe I'll take up modding Enderal if I see enough desire, and time allows for it!

Thanks for your response!

It is certainly not a matter of being overzealous. There is for sure room for improvement regarding the Meditation Room (which was, as the authors admitted, already a workaround due to being impossible to mod the skill trees of Skyrim for some reason).

The thing is I just feel it would be too much accessible in a place that should be specifically for the Memory Points level-up.

However, like I said, I do feel that three new Crafting Trees should be added to give perks for group crafting skills, as is done for the fighting skills. Crafting needs incentive and this would be a way to not only personalize but also motivate the player to build unique sets of armor for the char (imagine perks to put three enchantments or make set armors with adding bonuses the more pieces you wear, for example).

That would really make my day in Enderal!

Regards!

What i was expecting/dreading was that on "Meditation Island", any stuff i dropped at my feet would vanish when I left/restarted the Game.

In line with that (and i hate myself for this already, being a squirrel/hoarder) is that that is what should happen.

i.e. you meditate, and if you drop the fabled Crown Jewels of Arc, then they get whisked into the surrounding sea (either immediately or once youve left). Warning messages would be nice, of course.

Or possibly that after a few days the island is treated as standard "unsafe storage" as with the standard Skyrim barrels/streets/corpses.

(Mind you im not sure that that isnt what happens already, since ive only just thought of it, and my random dropped clutter item has not been persisting for weeks on end, yet).

Oh and "excellent job" from a serial re-starter, by the way (4th character, probably more than 100 hours, and one of my bods has actually reached Arc! Yay! (I take it there is a bit more after that...)).