ACCEPTED Skyrim -Community- Uncapper (by Elys)

[EssArrBee]

The guide is excellent actually, nice job. (I only had to read it once, but you know how some are.   :O_o:  :confused: )

 

Thanks @Kesta.

What type of playthrough do you want me to start with? Mage, Thief, or Warrior. I could also go into something a bit more specialized. Stuff like prevention of spamming level ups with crafting, slowing down overall leveling, making skills contribute more to player character leveling than others, selecting certain skills as specializations, and/or placing caps of leveling speeds or skill level. 

 

My current INI is setup for two major skills and two minor ones. An archer that is good at Illusion magic are the main ones. Secondary combat is sword and board, secondary magic is alteration. Also, have one bonus skill of pickpocket. I don't recommend doing more than five skills that are specialized. Also, I don't like making characters that good at crafting unless it's an assassin that is good at alchemy for poisons. 

[GrantSP]

Good question.

I figure there are certain "types" of characters that we all play at some time. I was thinking of setting up some settings to have these types of characters:

 

Archer/hunter: focuses on bows and alchemy with little use of big weapons and armour and very little magic

Soldier/merc/brawler: all the weapons and armour he can get and has no use for magic. Quite capable of making a sword if asked

Pure mage: no armour and now weapons except for maybe a dagger and lots of magic and alchemy. Enchanting is of course a big plus

Scholar: alchemy heavy with light armour and weapons and a little magic. Doesn't get their hands dirty so no weapon armour crafting

Thief: light armour weapons and perhaps a little magic and alchemy

 

If we can provide broad strokes to show how to minimise leveling where we don't want it, and maximise it where we do.

 

Your points in the wiki about changing the rates at certain levels were interesting, I'd not thought of that until you showed how it might work. If we can also show the better ways to progress with that, that would be good.

[EssArrBee]

Well, from the following section you can change how much each skill contributes to leveling or how far the little blue bar moves when a skill levels up. This is how I might do something for my archer illusionist...

[PCLevelSkillExpMults]
; Set the Skill Experience to Player's Character Experience Multipliers to
; betwen 0.0 and 10000.0
; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution.
; Default game value = 1.0
; (Setting bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel to 1, will use Character Level instead of Base Skill Level for the subsections)

fAlchemy=0.25  <-4 alchemy level up to make one regular level up to prevent spamming. 
fAlteration=1.1 <- secondary magic
fArchery=1.25 <-  Main weapon
fBlock=1.1 <- secondary weapon
fConjuration=0.5 <- Not strong in this skill
fDestruction=0.5 <- Not strong in this skill
fEnchanting=0.25 <- Prevents spamming
fHeavyArmor=0.5 <- Light armor is main armor category
fIllusion=1.25 <- Main magic 
fLightArmor=1.0 <- It's the main armor, but making it higher or lower is optional
fLockpicking=0.5 <- Not strong in this skill 
fOneHanded=1.1 <- Secondary weapon
fPickpocket=1.1 <- Bonus weapon
fRestoration=0.5 <- Not strong in this skill
fSmithing=0.25 <- Prevents spamming
fSneak=1.0 <- Standard strength like light armor
fSpeech=1.0 <- Speech is always a weird skill, so I just leave it at 1
fTwoHanded=0.5 <- Not stron gin this skill

So 25 and 10 percent bonuses for the main skills and a big reduction in other skills. This encourages players to focus on their skill set. Also, it gets rid of spamming since crafting is pretty broken from a balance standpoint. 

 

You can also use the following section to make it something that changes as you level up. So, if you want to limit the crafting spamming early in game when Blue Mountain Flower and Hanging Moss lets you level up alchemy really fast, then change it later in the game when the skill takes a lot to level up.

[PCLevelSkillExpMults\Alchemy]
1=0.25 <- Skill starts 75% reduction
25=0.3 <- level 25 it goes to 70% reduction
30=0.35 <- 65% reduction
35=0.4
40=0.45
45=0.5 <- By time you get hear it takes so long to level up that you only get half a reduction than vanilla. Removes the penalty for spamming as spamming becomes harder.
...

That continues for every individual skill and it can be tied to skill level or player level.

[TechAngel85]

I would say that if there are some recommended changes that will better balance the game, then we should offer that as a STEP option. Then, base the rest of the "roleplaying themes" off this balanced option.

 

I agree that some balance is needed in some areas like sneaking and enchanting. I would keep in mind those that for alchemy, we have Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul in testing.

[EssArrBee]

Kryptopyr's mods definitely help, but only to a degree that is within the bounds of STEP I'd say. I'd almost say to use Disparity with STEP Extended since it can really help as well.

 

My goal may be to offer a select group of classes to use that we can offer people. I'm just lazy and don't want to do it I guess. It's actually less work than I'm making it out to be, but it would be time consuming. THat is something I don't have much off until next month.

[TechAngel85]

Completely know what you mean. I'll have some vacation coming up and I am soooo ready for it!

[GrantSP]

That's what I was thinking. If we show basic "rules of thumb" ie. slightly boost the preferred skill and degrade those skills that result in spamming XP and reduce the skills that we don't specialise in.

 

So instead of, or in addition to, providing pre-made INIs, we can have the wiki say:

Boost your desired skills by 10%

Reduce non-preferred, but used skills by 50%

Massively reduce spammed skills to 25%

 

Your points on the level at which the rate changes are right on the money. That's an area that can only be developed by players that have been through the level machine 100s of times. I defer to your knowledge on that matter.

[EssArrBee]

The problem I have is the starting skill increase speed. If you are going to play a pure mage then it can be hard to do it because if you start with a base value of 1 for every skill and then give bonuses for every skill that class focuses on, it will mess up the leveling speed because you're only going to focus on those skills. I think I may have to come up with a different solution. Maybe make the base .8 or .85 and give the bonuses up to 1. 

 

Here's something simple for the speed of skill increases for a pure mage:

[SkillExpGainMults]
; Set the Skill Experience Gained Multiplier to
; betwen 0.0 and 10000.0
; Using too low or too high values may crash the game. Handle them with caution.
; Default game value = 1.0
;(Setting bUsePCLevelNotBaseSkillLevel to 1, will use Character Level instead of Base Skill Level for the subsections)

fAlchemy=1.0 <- crafting are left at 1
fAlteration=1.25 <- all magic get 25% bonus
fArchery=0.25 <- all combat and thief skills get 75% reduction
fBlock=0.25
fConjuration=1.25
fDestruction=1.25
fEnchanting=1.0
fHeavyArmor=0.25
fIllusion=1.25
fLightArmor=0.25
fLockpicking=0.25
fOneHanded=0.25
fPickpocket=0.25
fRestoration=1.25
fSmithing=1.0
fSneak=0.25
fSpeech=1.0
fTwoHanded=0.25

I think that is something that would work, but the initial leveling would be a bit overpowered. The other approach is tying the bonus to skill level like so...

[SkillExpGainMults\<skill>]
1=1.0 <- initially normal skill speed increase until skill level 30
25=1.01 <- two ways to do this
26=1.02 <- first way is to increase by one percent per skill level increase starting at 25 to make it unnoticeable
27=1.03
28=1.04
30=1.05 <- second way is to increase 5% at level 30 and add additional 5% bonus every 5 skill levels until reaching 25% bonus
35=1.1
40=1.15
45=1.2
50=1.25

Either way is okay to me, I just make one list and copy paste to other skills or sections in the INI. Just wanted input if it's better to get 1% a level or 5% every fifth level. You may notice the increase with it being every 5 levels, but won't with 1% per level. Also, is it better to do it based on skill level or just make one bonus from the game start.

 

The same problem occurs in the next section for each skill level up's contribution to the next player level up. 

[Greg]

Any recommendations on how to create a good balance given the player's base abilities when combined with bonuses from some of the stones? I'm thinking something like a wood elf character with a bonus from either the Warrior Stone or the Lover Stone might level archery fairly quickly. I'm assuming the same may be true of a Nord character in one-handed abilities.

 

I like the concept you're presenting in which the experience boost is scaled from the lower levels to prevent the character from becoming overpowered too quickly, but I'm wondering whether this should reach a certain peak and remain flat (like you have at 50=1.25 with no further bonuses) or peak and scale slowly back down (50=1.25, 60=1.2, 70=1.1, 75=1.05, ...)?

[EssArrBee]

Any recommendations on how to create a good balance given the player's base abilities when combined with bonuses from some of the stones? I'm thinking something like a wood elf character with a bonus from either the Warrior Stone or the Lover Stone might level archery fairly quickly. I'm assuming the same may be true of a Nord character in one-handed abilities.

 

I like the concept you're presenting in which the experience boost is scaled from the lower levels to prevent the character from becoming overpowered too quickly, but I'm wondering whether this should reach a certain peak and remain flat (like you have at 50=1.25 with no further bonuses) or peak and scale slowly back down (50=1.25, 60=1.2, 70=1.1, 75=1.05, ...)?

Use the sub sections ([SkillExpGainMults\<skill>]) that focus on the skill's level to give bonuses as the level increases. Maybe even give a penalty early on if you don't want it to move to fast. The other thing you can do is start with the first section ([SkillExpGainMults]) and set a base for the skill. The second set of sections ([SkillExpGainMults\<skill>]) will use that for it's multiplier. So if you want to level up archery quickly then set the first section to 1.1 or higher then the second section set the skill to increase more and more as you level up the skill. 1=1, 20=1.1, 40=1.2, 60=1.3... By combining the two sections you get staking multipliers. First section * second section. 1.1*1=1.1 until level 20, then 1.1*1.1=1.21 until level 40, 1.1*1.2=1.32 until level 60... and so on. Penalties for the first section help balance too. First section at .8, then multipliers as you level up will slow things down at first then you can speed them up. .8*1=.8 until level 20, .8*1.1=.88 until level 40, .8*1.2=.96 until level 60... You have to think ahead and plan accordingly. Then add in a stone and you add another multiplier. .8*1.2*1.2=1.152 for the standing stone bonus.

 

The reason it doesn't go back down is how ridiculously long it takes to level up a skill when it gets really high. Archery and Sneak are really bad when you get over about 60 levels. I'm even considering spreading the bonuses out a few more levels. Maybe instead of a 1-25% bonus from level 25-50, I'll spread it out from 25-75. Giving a percent every other level.

[GrantSP]

I'm beginning to like the "[SkillExpGainMults\<skill>] way" more then a flat rate at each level. I also tend to favour the larger boost at certain levels rather than the smaller incremental changes each level.

ie.

25=1.0

30=1.05

35=1.1

etc.

 

This whole concept could easily take a few playthroughs to finetune how the various methods affect play. I'm still a little unsure of the way the PCLevelSkillExpMults will pan out when used in conjunction with the above. Should we lower these to take into account raised values for SkillExpMults or raise those also to add further. Still finding my way with these.

[TechAngel85]

I can say this from by last play being a ranged bow users. I was leveling that skill too fast. At level 22 I could one-shot a lot of lower level enemies like bandits. An arrow is only going to kill you in one shot if you're hit in the head or heart. An artery hit will kill in one shot, but only over time. Not instantly.

 

I don't like the thought of a big increase every few levels. Leveling should be gradual. As you use the skill more often, you would slowly get better over time; not all at once.

[LidiaSun]

Hi suddenly I had about 12 mails from the activity of this topic and I just passed to say hello

 

There is a mod which almost is doing the same things in the Uncapper but when you make your own parameters then you can have your unique game playthrough. It has a lot of potentials and can help you either to reach 199 level or something between 100 ---> 199. If you want to be able to carry 10k kilos with you or just 120 it is up to you. How fast you will level up a skill and up to which level or how slow and how much all these may or may not effect your progression on your character level. It is so great although in some cases tests would be required but really playing with the values in ini are amazing.