Until Witcher 3 came along, Oblivion was my favorite AAA title of all time. The general aesthetic, the character progression, the soundtrack, the plot progression. Pretty much everything about this game I completely fell in love with. There was, however, a glaring issue. An issue so game-breaking I'd call it a fatal flaw. The level scaling.
I always played assassin-type characters. Ever since I was a kid, I've always found an indescribable pleasure in being unseen. In games where you can build your own character, I've always wanted to go for being able to kill instantly and with invisible impunity. As a result of Bethesda's level scaling, by level 15 it would always get to the point where my assassin characters wouldn't be able to kill instantly with a stealth damage bonus from a bow. Not only that, but even after the stealth damage bonus I would still need about 15 hits to kill my enemies. I would die very slowly and my enemies would also die very slowly. Fights descended into a meaningless CLING, CLING CLING- BLOCK! CLING, CLING CLING- BLOCK! Needless to say, this was infuriating and would cause me to outright lose interest in the game, thus why I call it a fatal flaw.
I'm going to download this mod, but I've got other games to play at the moment and other other games in the chamber for when I lose interest in the games I currently play. I probably won't have experienced this mod by the time you read this message. That being said, I've got a question or two.
Will this mod solve the problem I just described to you? Will this mod make it so I can experience instant kills once more? Will this mod make being an assassin great again?
You should look up a mod that changes damage to be higher. I myself consider that not a fatal flaw but a pretty bad one. I have made changes in the CS to make fighting feel a lot more dangerous, being dead in just a couple of power attacks if you do not wear armor at level 1, and while you get tougher, I still keep a sense of danger. It was personally infuriating how low a difference in Strength made in damage. I should really get back to some things I'm doing in it, particularly uploading a game-file of all the changes I use.
The last post here was a while back, but: The stupidly long time-to-kill in this game is a bit of a meme at this point, but if anyone else is asking. there are now a lot of mods to try to spice up the combat.
here are the ones I'm using: DamageRebalancer (has a .ini so you can set your own difficulty customized to your personal tastes), GMArcheryRebalance (honestly makes bows a bit op, so get the mod that makes arrows heavier; for balance sake X- ), UnidirectionalAttack (NPC ranged units are still stupidly accurate, but in melee, the NPC actually miss you now; it's awesome), cancel the attack. (lets you cancel an attack with a block; at any time) I would also recommend getting a stagger reducer or remover, because death while soft-locked is just depressing.
I've been running all of these together, and have been for just over 200 hours, with only one noticeable problem: this combination makes bows very OP, for you and the NPC's, personly I love it. But fair warning: fear the bow and buy many arrows.
I may have used features from two separate damage mods inside my DamageRebalancer.ini file but mine allows me to set damage values, block values, and damage through armor as well as to armor and shields.
But don't take me too seriously, I'm a sucker for ReadMe's and .ini's and any mod with both is already 90% of the way into load order.
I really like the idea behind this, however.... Static NPC levels on unique low level NPCs is likely to break the sneak and pickpocket detection system. An NPC's detection score is based on its sneak score which is based on its level. Then the sneak score is compared with yours. So when you go into a shop, and the shopkeeper is level 1, and you are level 10 rogue, well... I would expect you could steal everything including his items no problem. The same goes for pickpocketing citizens etc. Yes its a dumb system and can be broken in other ways as well but not my fault B made it that way. Perhaps static NPC's like shopkeepers could be edited to have sneak score raised. Going to try this out anyhow, just my thoughts.
Very belatedly (last comment here was a couple of years ago):
How do the level caps affect the equipment owned by monsters?
Are monsters which have equipment, generated with equipment based on their capped level (some way below yours), or are they generated with equipment depending on the player's level?
If the player is level 40 and would face a vanilla level 40 bandit leader whose level is capped to 25 by this mod, obviously the bandit leader's HP and damage output are capped at level 25, BUT, is his equipment going to be that of a capped level 25 bandit, or an uncapped level 40 bandit?
To anyone that may stumble upon this mod and has same question:
Armor and weaponry are distributed according to separate leveled list. It ends at level 22 with enchanted Glass/Daedric tier equipment (regular is 20). That means weaker Bandit variants are limited to enchanted Elven/Ebony equipment (lvl 18), while leaders make use of best gear (lvl 25).
This mod doesn't track 'true' level value, it simply caps enemies at appropriate levels.
This mod does not change when more difficult mobs will spawn as you advance in level. It will still scale from Imps - Trolls - Minos This mod does provide "Oh, holy crap!" moments for example walking into a dungeon that is populated with minotaurs when you're level one.
So it says it first says that it hasnt changed the spawn lists for monster so that you dont see strong enemies at low levels, but then it says its possible to see Minos at level 1? Minos dont spawn until you hit Level 14. So which one is it?
Have tried this mod, and when I use the console to check a level (say a guard for instance) it still shows a very high, godlike level. Guards aren't showing as level 20... they show about 10 levels higher than me at all times.
What am I missing? Is there a specific load order? How do I test and make sure this actually has an impact on NPC leveling?
30 comments
I always played assassin-type characters. Ever since I was a kid, I've always found an indescribable pleasure in being unseen. In games where you can build your own character, I've always wanted to go for being able to kill instantly and with invisible impunity. As a result of Bethesda's level scaling, by level 15 it would always get to the point where my assassin characters wouldn't be able to kill instantly with a stealth damage bonus from a bow. Not only that, but even after the stealth damage bonus I would still need about 15 hits to kill my enemies. I would die very slowly and my enemies would also die very slowly. Fights descended into a meaningless CLING, CLING CLING- BLOCK! CLING, CLING CLING- BLOCK! Needless to say, this was infuriating and would cause me to outright lose interest in the game, thus why I call it a fatal flaw.
I'm going to download this mod, but I've got other games to play at the moment and other other games in the chamber for when I lose interest in the games I currently play. I probably won't have experienced this mod by the time you read this message. That being said, I've got a question or two.
Will this mod solve the problem I just described to you?
Will this mod make it so I can experience instant kills once more?
Will this mod make being an assassin great again?
The stupidly long time-to-kill in this game is a bit of a meme at this point, but if anyone else is asking.
there are now a lot of mods to try to spice up the combat.
here are the ones I'm using:
DamageRebalancer (has a .ini so you can set your own difficulty customized to your personal tastes),
GMArcheryRebalance (honestly makes bows a bit op, so get the mod that makes arrows heavier; for balance sake X- ),
UnidirectionalAttack (NPC ranged units are still stupidly accurate, but in melee, the NPC actually miss you now; it's awesome),
cancel the attack. (lets you cancel an attack with a block; at any time)
I would also recommend getting a stagger reducer or remover, because death while soft-locked is just depressing.
I've been running all of these together, and have been for just over 200 hours, with only one noticeable problem: this combination makes bows very OP, for you and the NPC's, personly I love it. But fair warning: fear the bow and buy many arrows.
I may have used features from two separate damage mods inside my DamageRebalancer.ini file but mine allows me to set damage values, block values, and damage through armor as well as to armor and shields.
But don't take me too seriously, I'm a sucker for ReadMe's and .ini's and any mod with both is already 90% of the way into load order.
Static NPC levels on unique low level NPCs is likely to break the sneak and pickpocket detection system. An NPC's detection score is based on its sneak score which is based on its level. Then the sneak score is compared with yours. So when you go into a shop, and the shopkeeper is level 1, and you are level 10 rogue, well... I would expect you could steal everything including his items no problem. The same goes for pickpocketing citizens etc.
Yes its a dumb system and can be broken in other ways as well but not my fault B made it that way.
Perhaps static NPC's like shopkeepers could be edited to have sneak score raised.
Going to try this out anyhow, just my thoughts.
How do the level caps affect the equipment owned by monsters?
Are monsters which have equipment, generated with equipment based on their capped level (some way below yours), or are they generated with equipment depending on the player's level?
If the player is level 40 and would face a vanilla level 40 bandit leader whose level is capped to 25 by this mod, obviously the bandit leader's HP and damage output are capped at level 25, BUT, is his equipment going to be that of a capped level 25 bandit, or an uncapped level 40 bandit?
Armor and weaponry are distributed according to separate leveled list. It ends at level 22 with enchanted Glass/Daedric tier equipment (regular is 20).
That means weaker Bandit variants are limited to enchanted Elven/Ebony equipment (lvl 18), while leaders make use of best gear (lvl 25).
This mod doesn't track 'true' level value, it simply caps enemies at appropriate levels.
This mod does not change when more difficult mobs will spawn as you advance in level. It will still scale from Imps - Trolls - Minos
This mod does provide "Oh, holy crap!" moments for example walking into a dungeon that is populated with minotaurs when you're level one.
So it says it first says that it hasnt changed the spawn lists for monster so that you dont see strong enemies at low levels, but then it says its possible to see Minos at level 1? Minos dont spawn until you hit Level 14. So which one is it?
What am I missing? Is there a specific load order? How do I test and make sure this actually has an impact on NPC leveling?
Thanks
Thanks!
First of all, can it be used with an older save? Meaning, do i have to start a new game to use it?
Secondly, is it updated to SI and all the DLCs? It probably isn't, since it dates back to 2006... but never hurts to ask
Thanks!