I had a look at the creation kit and did some research but I couldn't fully figure out how the improve item system works.

I know that there are temper***recipe reciepeitems that specify conditions and materials to upgrade and item.

Some things are still unclear for me:

Where is the setting that specifies how good an item will be upgraded?
Is it even possible to set this individually for items or is there any global variable?
Is it possible to make each upgrade stage require different materials?

I have made a custom weapon where I want each upgrade to have a different texture (or model), is that even possible with the CK?
In the tempered...recipes is a variable to set which item will be created (default setting is the base item). I could set this to a different item with different textures, but that still wouldn't make every upgrade different.

i believe the improvement amount is based on associated perks and armor material.

for example an armor flagged with DaedricMaterial keyword is controlled by the Daedric perk which has a multiplier value of 2.0.

you might be able to create a new armor material type and a new perk for this material and set that multiplier to whatever value you want. i'm not sure if there is another way to do this yet.



as for swapping new meshes per upgrade level (i'm assuming fine, superior, epic, legendary etc), i also dont hitnk that will be easilly done with the CK if at all.

using a new mesh requires a new crafting recipe, as there is currently no option i know of that lets you assign multiple meshes for any single form ID for a piece of armor. if you change the item in the tempering recipe, that only makes it so that item is now temperable, the original item will now be ignored in the workbench (non-upgradeable)

i've tried experimenting with adding a create object ability to the armor workbench but this overrides its ability to temper said item.


long story short, i dont think its possible without editing somethiing in the game's base behavior (probably done with scripting i guess if at all).