Modders have put an awful lot of effort into making sure Skyrim has continually evolved and expanded in the years since it was first released into the world.
Many have focused on massively overhauling the game by adding the likes of new quests, huge building projects, and interesting player homes to it, with a few even going as far as making changes like turning the province into a maze of mysterious doors or adding Pong to its loading screens.
However, sometimes the mods that stick around longest in load orders are the ones that simply make minor tweaks that can increase your immersion, improve how you interact with the game or add a tiny pinch of fresh intrigue to it, with a new mod achieving the latter by bringing a dose of magic to your dull ores and ingots.
Feel like the blades and armours your crafting in Skyrim could do with some extra sparkle?
The mod in question is called ‘Mystical Materials’, and is the work of modder sasnikol. Some of their previous work has given Skyrim’s NPC proletariat some more fitting names, in addition to the ability to dynamically learn skills alongside the player.
This time, they’ve decided to help out those business-minded adventurers seeking to earn part of their fortune by making weapons and armour, imbuing them with powerful enchantments and selling them on at a profit.
Inspired by a Reddit post, the mod accomplishes this by giving nine of the game’s base materials buffs, that can be activated by placing enchantments that match specific elements, such as fire, frost and light, upon items made with them, provided your character has the prerequisite ‘Mystical Materials’ enchanting perk.
For example, place a fire damage enchantment on a Dragonbone sword and it’ll automatically be 25% stronger than it would be if applied to, say, an Elven sword, which would instead make an enchantment like shock damage 15% more potent.
While there is a multitude of combinations that’ll reward you with stronger enchantments, you can expect the likes of Glass, Daedric and Dragon-based gear to offer the largest percentage increases, as the rarer and more expensive materials used to create them are considered by the mod to be mythical tier goods.
Regardless of whether you’re now arranging for several cartloads of ebony ore to be delivered to Breezehome, make sure to follow us for more updates on The Elder Scrolls 6 and the interesting world of Skyrim modding. You can also check out our mods of the month for December 2022.