With this mod enabled, you will have a number of "slots" for shout cooldowns, configurable by MCM or console. Each time you shout, a slot is consumed; that slot will be available again once the shout's cooldown is done. One slot is equivalent to vanilla behavior. With multiple slots, you can shout several times in a row or save your slots in case you need them. The general idea is to make combat shouting more tactical and out-of-combat utility shouting more convenient.
A few examples to illustrate how this works with the default three slots:
- If you use the full Fire Breath shout three times back-to-back, you'd need to wait 100 seconds for those three slots to cool down, and then you can shout three more times.
- If you use Fire Breath (100s), Dragonrend (15s), and Become Ethereal (40s) back-to-back, you would be able to shout once after waiting 15s, twice after waiting 40s, and three times after waiting 100s.
The shout cooldown bar at the top of the screen will represent the shortest cooldown remaining. After shouting, if you can shout again immediately, the cooldown bar will reflect this correctly.
As a convenience and balance option, the MCM also allows you to to modify the duration of all shout cooldowns by a fixed percentage. Setting this value to 50% makes all shout cooldowns take only half the time. This can be set as high as 1275%, for cooldowns to take 12.75x as long, or as low as 0%, for all cooldowns to be instant. Please be aware that due to how shout recovery speed is coded, this setting stacks additively with vanilla buffs such as the Amulet of Talos enchantment (20% faster cooldown); with this mod's MCM setting at 20%, wearing the Amulet of Talos will make all cooldowns instant.
See also:
- Individual Shout Cooldowns and its remake, which instead make each distinct shout have its own cooldown
- Souls Do Things 2, which among other features can decrease cooldowns progressively per unspent dragon soul
Progression
As of version 1.1, this mod includes options to gradually gain more shout slots as you shout more times, learn more words of power, absorb dragon souls, and/or fully unlock shouts. This functionality is off by default. The MCM allows you to set the number of times you'd need to shout / learn a word of power / etc to gain another slot, as well as a hard cap on the number of slots that you can have.
If you turn this feature on, each time you gain a new slot a notification message box will pop up to let you know.
Widgets
Optional widgets are now available to show (1) the number of times you can shout if you have empty slots remaining and (2) the status of your internal slots. Positions and some other details of widgets are customizable in the MCM. This option is experimental; please let me know if you see any issues!
If you want to use the widgets, you'll also need to install iWant Widgets. This mod has support for both ESL and ESP versions of the library built into the main file.
After changing any widget settings in the MCM, you'll need to save and reload the game to get the widgets to display the new settings.
If you're planning on using the meters, be aware that they will tick down time while you are in the menu or console and time should be paused. I haven't worked out any good way to pause/update the widgets when coming out of the menu without adding extra script events. This doesn't harm the functionality of the rest of the mod, but if you pause often you may notice the meters finishing before you actually get the slot back. When you shout again, or when one of your slot cooldowns actually does finish ingame, the meters will update and show the correct time again.
If you have an issue with some widget and it doesn't fix itself within ten seconds or so, try saving and reloading the game once to reset it. Let me know if a problem keeps popping up or you see anything especially wonky.
Installation
This mod can be installed however you normally would. The only hard requirement is the base-game files.
iWant Widgets is a soft requirement; you need to install it if you want to use the widgets.
Bug Fixes SSE or another fix for the ability condition bug is a soft requirement. You can use the mod without it, but if you enable the widgets and play on the same save file for a long time, you may eventually find that the widgets stop responding. If so, you can also get them to work again by disabling the widgets, exiting the MCM, and then re-enabling them.
SKSE and SkyUI are not required, but if you have them you can access the MCM menu. Otherwise you can control the number of slots with the console; for example, to increase the mod to ten slots:set __CooldownVarStreamCount to 10
The valid range for number of slots is 1 to 129, inclusive.
Compatibility
This mod should be compatible out of the box with mods that add new shouts or overhaul shout mechanics. It will also work together correctly with mods that reset the shout cooldown (such as the Rolling Thunder enchantment from Summermyst). Only the cooldown currently displayed by the cooldown bar will be reset in such a case.
If you have a mod that makes all shout cooldowns longer or shorter-- whether via a perk, enchantment, or other effect-- please be aware that if you choose to set this mod's cooldown multiplier so shouts will cool down faster than in vanilla, cooldowns could actually be made instant if a large enough buff is applied from another mod.
