Transmuting 2 Gold ore from 1 Silver ore

[|Hubris]

I recently noticed a little quirk of the transmute spell while trying to quicken the pace of turning all my iron to gold. If there is only one silver ore and multiple iron ores in your inventory and you dual cast transmute, you will occasionally (roughly 30% of the time) get 2 gold from the single silver ore transmutation without losing any of your Iron ore.

In my last attempt at proving this I started with 29 iron ores and finished with 38 gold ores.

A few notes: I do not have any perks in the alteration tree and do not know how those perks might affect the results - namely the dual cast perk, which might have some strange interactions with this. Also, it seems to work best when both halves of the LR dual cast are started at the same time and are released about half way through the casting animation (long enough for the cast to complete, but not all the way to the end of the hand wave animation).

I wanted to throw this one out into the wild to see if anyone else could replicate it, and if so, if any one could get a better success rate than me, and maybe figure out the particulars of what causes it to happen.

[Ignis Shadowflame]

Thanks for letting the world know.

[ralphtobybob]

That spell works like this: Iron ore is turned to silver ore. If it's still in your inventory, it's turned to gold ore.
Some gemstones need gold, some silver. So I grab a bunch of ore and head out to a smelter.
First though, I put on a mage robe with a regenerate of 75% or more, enchanted alteration gear that reduces alteration costs, etc.

If you need silver, convert then drop the ore. When you have enough pick them up and smelt them into ingots.Tthen make the rest gold. Or quit, since it's really boring and tedious. But it gets the job done.

[|Hubris]

Originally posted by ralphtobybob:

That spell works like this: Iron ore is turned to silver ore. If it's still in your inventory, it's turned to gold ore.
Some gemstones need gold, some silver. So I grab a bunch of ore and head out to a smelter.
First though, I put on a mage robe with a regenerate of 75% or more, enchanted alteration gear that reduces alteration costs, etc.

If you need silver, convert then drop the ore. When you have enough pick them up and smelt them into ingots.Tthen make the rest gold. Or quit, since it's really boring and tedious. But it gets the job done.

Yep, that is how the spell works.

My post was more to detail a glitch in the spell when dual casting that can result in more gold ore being produced than the amount of iron ore you started with. Give this a try and see if you can replicate it!

[ralphtobybob]

Originally posted by |Hubris:

Originally posted by ralphtobybob:

That spell works like this: Iron ore is turned to silver ore. If it's still in your inventory, it's turned to gold ore.
Some gemstones need gold, some silver. So I grab a bunch of ore and head out to a smelter.
First though, I put on a mage robe with a regenerate of 75% or more, enchanted alteration gear that reduces alteration costs, etc.

If you need silver, convert then drop the ore. When you have enough pick them up and smelt them into ingots.Tthen make the rest gold. Or quit, since it's really boring and tedious. But it gets the job done.

Yep, that is how the spell works.

My post was more to detail a glitch in the spell when dual casting that can result in more gold ore being produced than the amount of iron ore you started with. Give this a try and see if you can replicate it!

I'll have to find an old game. I don't usually take dual casting so I'll have to generate a level up for a perk.

[ralphtobybob]

Originally posted by |Hubris:

Originally posted by ralphtobybob:

That spell works like this: Iron ore is turned to silver ore. If it's still in your inventory, it's turned to gold ore.
Some gemstones need gold, some silver. So I grab a bunch of ore and head out to a smelter.
First though, I put on a mage robe with a regenerate of 75% or more, enchanted alteration gear that reduces alteration costs, etc.

If you need silver, convert then drop the ore. When you have enough pick them up and smelt them into ingots.Tthen make the rest gold. Or quit, since it's really boring and tedious. But it gets the job done.

Yep, that is how the spell works.

My post was more to detail a glitch in the spell when dual casting that can result in more gold ore being produced than the amount of iron ore you started with. Give this a try and see if you can replicate it!

Couldn't find an old game near enough to level up. Faster to do search:


This spell cannot be dual-cast. However, it is perfectly fine to cast the spell simultaneously in each hand, which will simply activate the effect twice.
If casting in each hand, with a bit of timing, it is possible to get two silver ores at once: if both spells are launched at the very same time, only one effect will be applied. If launching both spells with a short delay (around half a second or a bit less), both spells will take effect on an iron ore, if no silver ore is previously contained in the inventory.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Transmute_Mineral_Ore

[Classified: TS/BBR]

My experience is, IIRC, that Transmute can be Dual Cast, but doing so normally offers no benefit (2.8x magicka cost for same result as a single cast).

[|Hubris]

Ok - with some more experimentation I have some better instructions to follow for everyone to replicate this effect.

Reminder: this is all done with NO perks selected in the alteration skill tree - you do not need to have the dual cast perk selected to assign this spell to both L and R hands and cast it with both at the same time - that is what I am doing here. From here on I will refer to this as "simul-casting" for the sake of clarity.

The Alteration Dual Casting perk has no effect on the Transmute spell according to the wiki ( https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Alteration ), because the "overcharge" from the perk only affects spell duration - and Transmute has no duration, it is instantaneous.

All this bug really requires to work is that you have only a single actionable ore in your inventory. Actionable here refers to the spells target preference for silver over iron, meaning you can have multiple iron ores in your inventory as long as you only have a single silver ore. HOWEVER, for the most efficient outcome, one iron ore should be simul-cast at a time. If the simul-cast results in a duplication (2 silver ores), one of the resulting silver ores should be removed from the inventory so that a single silver ore can then be simul-cast in hopes of duplication again.

In my experience this duplication bug happens roughly 15-30% of the time a single ore is simul-casted. Meaning that if you do this for each stage of transmutation (iron to silver, and silver to gold) you can increase your gold ore output by 30-60%. Over the course of typing up this post I did two trial runs with a set of 20 iron ores to start each run. On the first run I finished with 27 gold ore and on the second run I finished with 32 gold ore.

What I think is happening:

ralphtobybob mentioned that the wiki details a process by which two transmute spells can be launched with a short delay, with each taking effect on a stack of iron ore. If the spell is performed in this way, with multiple actionable ores in the inventory, two transmuted ores can still be produced. Unfortunately, the spell will consume just as many actionable ores as it creates if they are available in the inventory. However, if only one actionable ore is available, the game will occationally glitch and still produce two transmuted ores.

As I have expressed in my word choice, I do not think this is the intended effect of simul-casting this spell. It is almost certainly a bug, and a pretty inefficient one at that, for the purposes of duplication. However, it has been fun testing it out, and I hope someone else will give it a try and verify my results at some point!