“Isn’t it weird how scratching at a gold ore vein for a few seconds yields enough ore to smelt a brick of gold?” asks modder LetTheWookieeWin882 in the description for Precious Metals By The Ounce, to which I can only reply: “Yes! Yes, it is!”
LetTheWookieeWin882 goes on: “And that same brick provides only enough material to make a single ring or necklace?” Again, my reply is affirmative. This makes no sense. Hence the need for their mod: Precious Metals By The Ounce is an immersion mod that changes Skyrim’s huge ingots of gold and silver to more reasonably-sized ounces, about one-eighth as big.
If you miss the heft of the ingots and the wealth they bespeak, then you can still combine eight ounces or 16 ore pieces into an ingot. You’ll have to break them down again if you want to use them for crafting, but no material is lost in either direction. You can download the mod here.
It’s a lovely bit of attention to detail that will delight pedants everywhere (I say this as a pedant, and thus intend no offence – quite the opposite). There are even variant ounces stamped with the seals of the East Empire Company and Silverblood Family, which have been added in appropriate locations.
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Alas, pedantry has to yield to practicality at some point. LetTheWookieeWin882 acknowledges that the ‘ounces’ weigh different amounts depending on the metal, but defends this as a necessary game balance choice: “I wanted to give gold a higher value/weight ratio than silver” – which makes sense – “at the cost of being heavier overall.”
Creator LetTheWookieeWin882 plays with two other popular immersion mods – True Medieval Economy and True Realistic Item Weights – as well as mods that add weight to coins. Precious Metals By The Ounce stands on its own, but also complements these, for those of you who are after a further touch of Medieval authenticity.