IHarvest

Chasing butterflies, diving into rivers, sifting through foliage, poring over every stump and inch of cave wall to find the fungus among us...there are things I look forward to when beginning a new playthrough, but meticulously grinding for alchemy ingredients is definitely not one of them.

I had a look over existing solutions to this problem, and I find none of them to be satisfying on either a functional, or technical level.

To remedy this, I present my solution: IHarvest.

-- Usage --

This mod adds a single spell, "Harvest".

To use the spell, just cast it. Note that, as a concentration spell, it will continue to operate as long as you cast it. It will scan your surroundings, learn what in the area can be harvested, and finally send out little, magical Getter Critters to fetch stuff for you.

To get the spell, you'll have to find a spellbook. I hand-placed about 20 of these around Skyrim and Solstheim—check areas where alchemists live (more specifically, lived, especially those who met an unfortunate end), in witch or hagraven dwellings, etc. If you have trouble finding a copy, some hints are down below under --- Locations ---.

Somewhat harder to find, also available is a Staff of Harvest. I especially recommend its use for less magically-oriented characters, but don't disregard it even if you can afford to cast the spell, as it operates slightly differently, and is useful in its own right.

You don't really need to know anything else, or to read the rest of the description unless you want to—the mod is designed to "just work™".

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Still reading? The rest is pretty tl;dr, but more power to you.

The spell's range and "refire" speed will improve as your Alchemy and Alteration skills level up, and dual casting the spell further increases range and refire rate substantially. Casting the spell separately in each hand doesn't seem to work on account of some engine limitation or other.

The mod will automatically harvest any TREE and FLOR records that produce ingredients, as well loose ingredient items, and most scripted activators that produce ingredients.

The mod will never steal, which means that it will ignore any object marked as "owned", even if taking those ingredients would not count as stealing on account of interpersonal relationships. It will not search containers, as that is not in the spirit of the mod.

As of v1. 1. 0, the magicka cost of the spell is still pretty cheap, but is considerably higher than before. Use of the Staff of Harvest is recommended for less magically-oriented characters, however you may also choose to retune the magicka cost to your liking using the MCM menu.

You can adjust how much A