This article was inspired by the following (paraphrased) comment on the mod discussion page:Shame that I already reached level 14 when I found this mod, so I changed the xml to be one perk each since I've already missed the previous points, which would make me feel bad.
Unfortunately the game doesn't have any console command to give you "missed points" from previous levels. The perk points that you've already gained at the old vanilla (1 per level) rates aren't auto-adjusted when you change the perk point gains per level via this mod. So if you had 13 perk points before installing this mod, you'll still have 13 after installing it. The new "perk points per level" will only apply from the moment when you reach the next level.
But there's luckily a great and very easy solution for your situation!
- First, we'll just have to ensure that your character status is ready for the changes!
- Begin by editing progression.xml in this mod's folder, and set it to give 1 perk point per level.
- Then go into the game once with this mod enabled, and do something to gain XP once (you could for example place and upgrade a block once), to ensure that the XP scaling changes are applied to your save and to look at your character's current level, such as "17".
- Then exit the game.
- Next, simply consider how many points you've missed, and add that number to the "2" in progression.xml. I'll explain how to calculate that, below. It's easy!
- To figure out how many points you've missed, just take your current level minus 1. For example, let's say that you're currently level 17. You never get any perk points in this game for being at level 1, so you've therefore missed 16 extra points from this mod (current 17th level, minus the 1st level = you've had 16 levelups).
- Therefore, set the progression.xml to give 2 (this mod's intended value) + 16 (or whatever number of points you've missed from previous levels) = 18 perk points per level in this example. Set this to your own personal value!
- Then level yourself up to the next level in game, and you'll then get the 2 intended points PLUS ALL the points you've previously missed, and you will fully catch up!
- Then just save the game (don't level up any further), exit the game or server completely, and set progression.xml back to "2" as intended by this mod. You'll then be fully caught-up with the smoother progression of this mod, and you can now enjoy the game at a more reasonable progression pace!
- If you're solo, it's very quick and easy to do these steps! And if you're on a small server with friends, you should simply repeat this process separately for each friend, only doing 1 player at a time, to give each person the exact amount of points they were missing (since you're most likely all at different levels and need different amounts of catchup points). If you're doing this for several friends, you could make them all admins so that they can use the game's "giveselfxp" command to make them level up immediately (in step 8) to speed things up. Just be careful, make a server backup before this, and tell them to look at their "xp to next level" in their character stats, and only give as much XP as they're missing, so that they only gain 1 level. Otherwise they'd end up with multiple levels and therefore way too many perk points (if you accidentally give them multiple levels at the higher point rates). But I trust that you're all smart and responsible enough to be careful when giving out XP, if you decide to use the command to speed that up.
I highly recommend doing these point adjustments on your existing saves, because only having 1 perk per level is like watching paint dry in this game. It's slower than pretty much all other games on the planet. And it also makes your choices extremely punishing since you'll never have enough points to make any fun or meaningful impact in the game unless you grind forever, and by that stage you will already be bored with the game's repetitive grinding and won't even enjoy your points anymore. You'll burn yourself out at just 1 point per level. There are so many skill trees that cost 3 perk points (3 levels!) at the higher tiers of that tree, which means that you'll spend hours and hours and hours doing repetitive missions to level yourself up 3 times just to get one extra skill, which feels absolutely awful. Having such slow progression (1 perk per level) is only recommended if you're truly willing to put 100s of hours into one save and you're fine with extremely slow progression, which is why I described how to change the value back to 1 if you really want to. But if you're more in the mood for "playing the game and having fun until the next patch/update and starting a new save then", and want to be able to experiment with different builds, then I would highly recommend 2 perk points per level.
But if anyone's reading this and thinks "okay, the game is very grindy, so I'll just set myself to gain 3+ points per level then!", I'd say that you should always stick to 2 points per level. Unless you're interested in a super quick run where you only invest like 30 hours into a save, in which case you can feel free to massively boost your XP and perk points to mess around. In fact, in general, I'd still always recommend sticking to 2 perk points per level, and just massively boosting your XP Multiplier instead (in the single player game menu or the server settings), if you really want fast progression in this game. Because then your character will be higher level and will have higher action skill XP in Undead Legacy, which in turn is more balanced towards the loot you'll find and threats you'll be facing, since your character level affects a lot of difficulty and loot scaling in this game. It's better to be higher level than lower level, if you're interested in a quick run.
I hope this idea about how to "catch up on missing points" helps you or someone else out!