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About this mod
Rebalances the entire game to support a new level progression based around a max level of 25, where every level up requires double the xp but you now gain a perk every level.
- Requirements
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- Changelogs
One of the improvements that I would argue Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 share, compared to New Vegas or even Fallout 1 and 2, is receiving the option to pick a new Perk every level. Perks are supposed to offer exciting ways to expand your character's options for interacting with the world and specialize their build. The levels without Perks where you just gain some HP and assign a few more skill points don’t feel nearly as interesting by comparison.
Now, obviously, the intended balance of New Vegas would be completely broken if characters were able to pick 50 Perks. That's why the game only allows a single character to choose 25 by the time they reach max level. What if you could have the best of both? The solution is seductively simple--cap the player level at 25 and allow them to take a perk every level.
Now supporting that change in the best way possible requires a few additional tweaks because, otherwise, the player would level up so quickly they would reach max level before they had tackled everything they wanted to in a single play-through, depriving them both of the intended challenge and sense of progression.
There are a few different means you can use to achieve this result, depending on your preferences. These changes will cause you to go a little longer in between levels, but the sense of accomplishment and feeling of reward when you do level up should be stronger.
Using my prewritten LStewieAl's Tweaks INI File
For users looking to keep things as simple as possible, I have uploaded a file containing the INI files prewritten with all the necessary Tweaks and GameSettings that you can install with your mod manager. This will take priority over the same settings in your main StewieTweaks INI file. Therefore, in order for the file to work properly, you will still need to have the mod LStewieAl's Tweaks enabled in order for the game to read it.
You must make sure that the following setting is enabled in your Stewie Tweaks ini in order for this file to work:
; allow INIs in the Tweaks\INIs folder to overwrite the main INI
bMultiINISupport = 1This file makes the following changes to gameplay:
1) the player's max level will be capped to 25
2) the player will receive a perk point every level
3) the player will receive half the amount of xp whenever xp is earned
4) the player will receive double the amount of skill points on level up
5) the player will receive double the amount of health on level up
Editing your own LStewieAl's Tweaks INI file
For users who already feel comfortable customizing LStewieAl's Tweaks and it's associated ini file for their games, you can get the same effect. Open the INI and make the following tweaks:
Spoiler:
Under
Find the
This will program the game to give you a new perk every level up while setting a universal reduction on earned xp by half.
Two additional tweaks I would recommend to compensate for the above changes are increasing the skill points gained on level up and the health scaling per level for the player. 25 fewer levels means at least 250 fewer skill points overall. After playing with this mod for some time, I recommend changing this in LStewieAl's Tweaks using the bModifySkillPointsEarned tweak to double the base skill points gained on level up from 10 to 20. Otherwise, the long stretches between levels can make it feel as though you're starving for enough skill points to qualify for the perks you want by that point in the game.
Likewise, 25 fewer levels means at least 125 fewer hit points overall though this isn't as noticeable if you play with a low HealthLevelMult for the player and NPCs to start with. If desired, this can also be changed in LStewieAl's Tweaks using the fAVDHealthLevelMult tweak. Simply double the value to 10 for the player to equal the amount of health you would gain over the course of a vanilla playthrough.
Show
Under
[Tweaks]iMaxCharacterLevel = 25
bReduceXP = 1
fXPMultiplier = 0.5Find the
[GameSettings]
section and add the following line underneath it:iLevelsPerPerk = 1This will program the game to give you a new perk every level up while setting a universal reduction on earned xp by half.
Two additional tweaks I would recommend to compensate for the above changes are increasing the skill points gained on level up and the health scaling per level for the player. 25 fewer levels means at least 250 fewer skill points overall. After playing with this mod for some time, I recommend changing this in LStewieAl's Tweaks using the bModifySkillPointsEarned tweak to double the base skill points gained on level up from 10 to 20. Otherwise, the long stretches between levels can make it feel as though you're starving for enough skill points to qualify for the perks you want by that point in the game.
Likewise, 25 fewer levels means at least 125 fewer hit points overall though this isn't as noticeable if you play with a low HealthLevelMult for the player and NPCs to start with. If desired, this can also be changed in LStewieAl's Tweaks using the fAVDHealthLevelMult tweak. Simply double the value to 10 for the player to equal the amount of health you would gain over the course of a vanilla playthrough.
So what’s the point of this mod then? It aims to do all the additional work for you so that everything supports this new leveling progression as smoothly as possible. Specifically, I’ve gone through every record by hand and halved all the level values for encounter zones, messages, perks and the leveled lists for creatures, NPCs and items, both for the base game and all the DLC, rounding up where necessary, as well as a handful of scripts and dialogue conditions which checked for GetLevel, in order to support a new level progression rebalanced around a max level of 25.
It took a while to go through every single entry and was very tedious. You're welcome. Doing this ensures that you won’t accidentally be locked out of any content when playing using the leveling method I’m suggesting here. Additionally, any of the records I’ve edited here which have bugfixes in YUP have had those fixes forwarded to maintain consistency for your load order.
In case you're wondering, the Logan's Loophole trait has been renamed to Double Down and now caps your level at 11 instead of 21. I think the flavor fits New Vegas pretty well.
To install to your Mod Manager, go to Files and click the Mod Manager Download button.
To install manually, put the downloaded esp file in the Data folder of your New Vegas installation folder. Move the INI file to the NVSE folder of your game installation.
Using the ESP-less script runner
An ESP-less scriptrunner written by Franscar is provided as an optional file which will halve the required level for all perks and leveled lists using the power of the JIP LN NVSE script extender without the need for hard edits to the record entries. This has the advantage of working for any perks and leveled lists entries added by mods as well without the need for a patch.
The only thing to keep in mind is that the levels will be halved based on whatever level the entry is set to in the winning conflict of your load order. So, for example, the scriptrunner would set the required level of a perk to level 25 if it would normally require level 50 in the base game. But if you also use JSawyer Ultimate which sets the required level of the perk to 34, the required level for that perk would be set to 17 by the scriptrunner. This could easily be resolved by making a patch which sets the required levels of perks in JSUE back to their default values so that the script runner can halve them properly.
This mod requires all the New Vegas DLC (Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Gun Runner's Arsenal) as well as Yukichigai's Unofficial Patch, because I wanted to carry over any bugfixes when making this mod.
Load this mod low enough in your load order to make sure no other plugin is overwriting it's changes. Use FNVEdit to check if there is anything overwriting its edits which you don't want for your game or to merge the changes from other mods into it or a personal patch while retaining the new level values.
Now includes a version made just for a game built on the excellent Viva New Vegas modding guide, which includes the YUP and Unofficial Patch NVSE Plus bugfixes as well as PushTheWinButton's JSawyer Ultimate. This version requires xNVSE!
Additionally, alternate versions of the mod are provided for users of PushTheWinButton’s excellent mods: JSawyer Ultimate and the Mojave series: Mojave Arsenal, Mojave Wildlife and Mojave Raiders. Any of the records I’ve edited here which those mods make changes to have had those edits forwarded and the level requirements halved, to spare you the chore of making a patch manually if you want to play with only those mods.
For DUST players: Load this plugin before DUST, but all of DUST's customized leveled lists and perk requirements are completely unleveled anyway, so there is no need for a special version of the file.
Use only ONE main file at a time as each is a separate, independent version.
In case you were wondering, this does not yet edit the levels of individual NPCs. Very few of them are actually coded over level 25 anyway, but some of the characters and enemies from the DLCs certainly are. Partly this was due to laziness and partly due to a desire to avoid compatibility issues with mods that already edit NPC records like Brave New World or Mojave Raiders.
Logo image made here.
Joshua Sawyer for the original JSawyer mod and, you know, directing New Vegas in the first place.
Yukichigai for the Yukichigai Unofficial Patch -- the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of non-scripted bugfixes for New Vegas
PushTheWinButton for JSawyer Ultimate -- the most well-maintained and compatible version of the original JSawyer mod.
Qolore7 for Viva New Vegas