Favorite mods for adressing leveling?

[Bird Stalker]

Wanted to do a new playthrough and immediately wound up in a situation where if I continued to play the game at all I would overlevel a skill. I was like "well, ♥♥♥♥. I'll resolve this later" and after months I'm finally looking to get back to it. Rather than subject myself to that nightmare I'd like to circumvent that system in a way that doesn't upset the balance of the game.

[psychotron666]

What do you mean you'll over level a skill?

[arottweiler]

It sounds like you have chosen a skill that you use a lot as a major skill so it's forcing you to level up. That happened to me and I was about level 10 when I realised my major skill choices were wrong. I lost a lot of progress by starting again and making different choices but it was worth it. Start a new game, make a hard save before you exit the sewer and spend time deciding on what your major and minor skills are.

[psychotron666]

Efficient leveling isn't needed at all. The only thing you need to watch is that you don't have for example alchemy a major and then just level up alchemy 50 times for 5 level ups without leveling others.

Attributes are near useless in this game, so all that really matters is that your combat skills (weapon skills, armour skills and offensive magic skills but only the ones you actually use) are increasing at around the same pace of your levels.

You can have 20 strength at level 30, with a blade of 100 you'll decimate everything in your path.

You just don't want to level up a bunch of times from non combat skills without increasing your combat skills too

[Bird Stalker]

Originally posted by arottweiler:

It sounds like you have chosen a skill that you use a lot as a major skill so it's forcing you to level up. That happened to me and I was about level 10 when I realised my major skill choices were wrong. I lost a lot of progress by starting again and making different choices but it was worth it. Start a new game, make a hard save before you exit the sewer and spend time deciding on what your major and minor skills are.

Nah, I was very deliberate in choosing things that I could dictate the pace of. The issue was like any sort of adventuring at all would put a minor skill past where I needed it to be. It wasn't a huge deal, just miss one attribute point way later down the line. I was also dirt poor with like nothing to my name. I forget the exact situation, but it boiled down to the fact I couldn't afford a trainer or tools to level what I needed, and if I went about acquiring those tools or money via adventuring I'd overlevel.

[Bird Stalker]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Efficient leveling isn't needed at all. The only thing you need to watch is that you don't have for example alchemy a major and then just level up alchemy 50 times for 5 level ups without leveling others.

Attributes are near useless in this game, so all that really matters is that your combat skills (weapon skills, armour skills and offensive magic skills but only the ones you actually use) are increasing at around the same pace of your levels.

You can have 20 strength at level 30, with a blade of 100 you'll decimate everything in your path.

You just don't want to level up a bunch of times from non combat skills without increasing your combat skills too

I mean, even before I knew how leveling worked I didn't do that. I'd just play the game and adventure with all the skills I'd actually use designated as my major ones, but eventually ♥♥♥♥ would scale into "What the ♥♥♥♥ why" territory regardless of my not farming one non-combat skill to get levels. So if what you say is true it doesn't at all track with my experience.

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by Bird Stalker:

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Efficient leveling isn't needed at all. The only thing you need to watch is that you don't have for example alchemy a major and then just level up alchemy 50 times for 5 level ups without leveling others.

Attributes are near useless in this game, so all that really matters is that your combat skills (weapon skills, armour skills and offensive magic skills but only the ones you actually use) are increasing at around the same pace of your levels.

You can have 20 strength at level 30, with a blade of 100 you'll decimate everything in your path.

You just don't want to level up a bunch of times from non combat skills without increasing your combat skills too

I mean, even before I knew how leveling worked I didn't do that. I'd just play the game and adventure with all the skills I'd actually use designated as my major ones, but eventually ♥♥♥♥ would scale into "What the ♥♥♥♥ why" territory regardless of my not farming one non-combat skill to get levels. So if what you say is true it doesn't at all track with my experience.

That's just how oblivion works on general. The world scales up with you and you fight tougher monsters at higher levels. A mod that changes how you level won't change that at all.


What matters most to your success as you level up is your combat skills you use and your gear.

[arottweiler]

I've tried out a few console commands which might be useful. There could be mods that allow you to change your skill level or slow down how fast it increases but these commands seem stable enough and if it doesn't work as expected just reload. I don't normally use console commands and have never tried these apart from just now and setting the value and seeing it changed on the skills screen.

player.forceav [skill] [level]

For example:

player.forceav sneak 4

This will set the sneak skill level to 4 but not the original skill level. Instead it handicaps the skill to reduce it. NOTE: The player.forceav console command 'cannot' be used to increase a skill beyond it's original value. It can only be used to set it to a lower value or back to the original.

To set the skill at a higher level than the original skill level:

modpcs [skill] [level]

For example:

modpcs sneak 80

Whatever the sneak skill level is that console command will set the original skill level to 80.

Another option is to keep being arrested which reduces random skills but that probably increases infamy. Or use followers so they do all the work. I'm playing a new game and have just moved up to level 3 but realised Vilja is dead. She's been missing for a while and when I used the summon Vilja spell I got the dreaded "Vilja is dead".

[Tiwily]

Attribute Progression Redesign.
I think this is what you're looking for, and it's my favorite anti min-max mod ever.
Basicaly what it does is storing all earned attribune bonuses in a "pool", allowing you to spend them on level up whenever you're ready. It's very simple yet ellegant idea, that completely solves the over/under leveling problem, whyle preserving vanilla balance.

Another mod that perfectly complements the first is Real Retroactive Health Formula.
It does what it says. You no longer need to rush increasing endurance.

On top of that I use Balanced Creature Stats and Balanced NPC Level Cap. Both mods stop enemies from infinitely scaling with player level and gaining stupidly inflated health as a result. Now all enemies have fixed level after which they stop growing in power.

And finaly I use Lower Level Enemies Don't Disappear. This is another simple mod, that does exactly what it says. Even at high level you can still encounter low level creatures like wolfs, boars and such.

[Bird Stalker]

Originally posted by Tiwily:

Attribute Progression Redesign.
I think this is what you're looking for, and it's my favorite anti min-max mod ever.
Basicaly what it does is storing all earned attribune bonuses in a "pool", allowing you to spend them on level up whenever you're ready. It's very simple yet ellegant idea, that completely solves the over/under leveling problem, whyle preserving vanilla balance.

Another mod that perfectly compliments the first is Real Retroactive Health Formula.
It does what it says. You no longer need to rush increasing endurance.

On top of that I use Balanced Creature Stats and Balanced NPC Level Cap. Both mods stop enemies from infinitely scaling with player level and gaining stupidly inflated health as a result. Now all enemies have fixed level after which they stop growing in power.

And finaly I use Lower Level Enemies Don't Disappear. This is another simple mod, that does exactly what it says. Even at high level you can still encounter low level creatures like wolfs, boars and such.

These sounds awesome. Thanks for the recommendation!