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About this mod
This is a simple mod to get (just) a little character XP from skills while primarily getting character XP as the Experience mod intends. I've mainly uploaded it so that my learning process can be of benefit to others.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
[CURRENTLY SUPPORTS EXPERIENCE 2.0]
WHAT THIS IS:
A tiny espfe that sets character XP gains from achieving skill ranks to 10% of the normal rate, modifications to the ini file for Experience to reduce other XP sources to compensate for the additional XP gained as a result, and other modifications to the ini files of Experience and Skyrim Skill Uncapper that I felt work.
WHY:
I've recently tackled Lexy's Legacy of the Dragonborn modlist, which gave me some exposure to a bunch of tools I haven't previously used. I won't claim an expertise in them, but I have enjoyed the learning process. For example, when the time came to add some mods I felt I needed, but hadn't made Lexy's cut, I hit the 'help' button in SSEEdit and learned how to make a conflict resolution patch. I just want to mention that, because it's one of those things I've heard modders discuss in passing like it's the easiest thing in the world, but always sounded like magic to me. But, if you take the time to learn, and think about what you're doing, it's not that hard. If I can do it, you can do it.
What I've done here, I didn't initially think would be necessary. The Experience ini file lets you apply skill XP normally (I didn't want to use that by itself, because then you're getting vanilla levelling with what felt to me 'bonus' XP from Experience's sources). Lexy's list includes Skyrim Skill Uncapper, which has variables to control the character level XP contributed by skill rank ups. Unfortunately, as z4x explained to me in the Experience comment section, his mod and the Uncapper are trying to use the same function, and only one can work. However there is an ingame variable, fXPPerSkillRank, normally equal to 1, that character level XP from skills gets multiplied by. It's not as flexible as the uncapper, but it's enough for what I wanted to do. The biggest problem is that the primary way to set it is to use the setgs console command, which isn't persistent across saves. I could have made a one line batch file with a short name (like "me"), and then access it by typing "bat me", which reduces my typing in the long run, but means I would still have to open the console every time I launched the game.
z4x explained the simplest solution "would be setting it in CK then saving as esp plugin." Now, I've only ever used the Creation Kit to get my form 43 files converted to form 44, and that only because someone (or some program) told me to. So, *magic*. But I loaded up the creation kit with only Skyrim.esm (File >> Data, double click Skyrim.esm, but don't click 'Set As Active File'). I panicked a bit at the huge array of buttons across the top of the window, but as with many problems, if you just evaluate each option one at a time, you can find the solution. In this case it was Gameplay >> Settings... and about two-thirds of the way down the list is fXPPerSkillRank. So I clicked on it, changed the number in the field in the right half of the window from 1.0 to 0.1, hit File >> Save, and named the new esp. Then I spent ten minutes looking for the file because I had forgotten that due to launching the CK from Mod Organizer 2, it got sent to MO2's Overwrite file, like several other files that were produced during the installation of Lexy's list.
And that's the hard part. I've also included the Experience and SkyrimUncapper ini files I use. I'll explain my thinking regarding those in a bit, but I put them in the mod because it made them easy to find (following Lexy's instructions, the Experience ini, which she has modified, is in the Experience folder, but the SkyrimUncapper ini is in the (SJG) Omega folder). But for that to work, you need to follow the...
Installation Instructions: Install the mod last (or at least after anything else that has either of those ini files, so that this mod can overwrite them-this is easy to do in MO2, just by dragging this mod to the bottom of the left panel). Load the esp last. It's literally one thing, so if anything overwrites it, there's no point to having it. Yes, I cleaned it just to be sure. No, it didn't show as a conflict with anything on Lexy's list, or the other mods I'm using. Yes, I set the ESL flag, because, seriously, it's only one thing.
So here's what I'm thinking as far as the values go. I haven't finished a playthrough with Experience or Lexy's guide. I did get very far in a couple Requiem playthroughs in Oldrim. No matter how crushing I set the economy (I love Trade and Barter for this, by the way), I always wound up with mountains of gold and no good place to put them (I mean, I bought more crafting mats and sent those skills into the stratosphere, but that gets silly after a while). My plan in Lexy's list is to directly pump up skills (with Oghma Inifinium - A Training Station), but I need a reason to do so late in the game (past the formula caps in the uncapper) so I want to get character XP, and therefore levels and perks, but *not too much*. So I figure a balance of 80% of Experience's sources to 10% of vanilla XP from skills (Yes, I know that's less than 100%, I've halved the skill XP to keep it under control). Specifically, I've done the following:
Get Skill Experience With Experience.esp
-Only get 10% of vanilla character XP from skills (if you want another value, just do what I did above and make your own easy mod. Trust me, you'll feel better. Alternatively, load my mod into SSEEdit, and change the value of 0.1 to what you want. That's probably a good skill to develop, too)
Experience.ini
-bEnableSkillXP has to be set to 1 for any of this to work.
-iMaxPlayerLevel is set to 999, because I don't ever want to hit a level cap.
-Questing, Exploring, and Clearing awards reduced by 20% where possible, with Lexy's values commented out for reference (If you haven't done any programming, there's no reason to know this, but here, ; causes the program to ignore what follows so you can leave notes to yourself or others. Further I want to mention, because it confused me when I first looked at Skyrim ini files years ago, those lower case letters that begin a variable name are a naming convention programmers use to quickly remind themselves what sort of variable it is. So bEnableSkillXP is a boolian value, either 0 for false or 1 for true. fXPPerSkillRank is a floating point variable, which is to say a fraction. iXPQuestMain is an integer, which is why in some cases I had to round the 20% off)
-fXPKillingMult is set to 1.6 (which is also 20% off).
-This is otherwise as Lexy altered the original file from Experience
SkyrimUncapper.ini
-SkillCaps are all set to 999, because I don't ever want to hit *any* level cap.
-SkillFormulaCaps are all set to 175 so that bonuses still count for a while after getting a skill to 100, but the character can eventually become godlike. If necessary, I'm going to bump the difficulty up. I just wanted the extra levelling allowed by the uncapper to count for more than character XP for a while. I didn't go to 200 as I recall that caused a problem in Oldrim and didn't want to risk it.
-SkillExpGainMults\BaseSkillLevel are now all the same across all skills, just as a personal preference.
-LevelSkillExpMults show what I was originally trying to do, multiplying the 0.1 factor in here. As mentioned above, these settings have no effect.
-PerksAtLevelUp has had the adjustment at level 100 removed. I figure at that point, the levels are going to be pretty far apart and all I'm getting per level is 3 stat and some carry weight, so I may as well be getting a perk or two every level.
-Health/Magicka/Stamina AtLevelUp have been smoothed out. I didn't like getting huge bonuses on a few levels, mainly because I didn't want to remember which levels those were. I prefer to spread out my stats pretty evenly, so each of those values last levels in multiples of 3.
-Carry Weight at Level Up is 10 for any stat because I'm using Smooth Attribute Scaling which handles carry weight increases (as well as other sources like Achieve That and Dragon Soul
Relinquishment. You may want to modify this if you aren't getting extra
carry weight from another source.
So that's it. If you can use my mod, please do. If you learned anything by reading this, that's even better.
Additional Adjustments
Requiem Users
WHAT THIS IS:
A tiny espfe that sets character XP gains from achieving skill ranks to 10% of the normal rate, modifications to the ini file for Experience to reduce other XP sources to compensate for the additional XP gained as a result, and other modifications to the ini files of Experience and Skyrim Skill Uncapper that I felt work.
WHY:
I've recently tackled Lexy's Legacy of the Dragonborn modlist, which gave me some exposure to a bunch of tools I haven't previously used. I won't claim an expertise in them, but I have enjoyed the learning process. For example, when the time came to add some mods I felt I needed, but hadn't made Lexy's cut, I hit the 'help' button in SSEEdit and learned how to make a conflict resolution patch. I just want to mention that, because it's one of those things I've heard modders discuss in passing like it's the easiest thing in the world, but always sounded like magic to me. But, if you take the time to learn, and think about what you're doing, it's not that hard. If I can do it, you can do it.
What I've done here, I didn't initially think would be necessary. The Experience ini file lets you apply skill XP normally (I didn't want to use that by itself, because then you're getting vanilla levelling with what felt to me 'bonus' XP from Experience's sources). Lexy's list includes Skyrim Skill Uncapper, which has variables to control the character level XP contributed by skill rank ups. Unfortunately, as z4x explained to me in the Experience comment section, his mod and the Uncapper are trying to use the same function, and only one can work. However there is an ingame variable, fXPPerSkillRank, normally equal to 1, that character level XP from skills gets multiplied by. It's not as flexible as the uncapper, but it's enough for what I wanted to do. The biggest problem is that the primary way to set it is to use the setgs console command, which isn't persistent across saves. I could have made a one line batch file with a short name (like "me"), and then access it by typing "bat me", which reduces my typing in the long run, but means I would still have to open the console every time I launched the game.
z4x explained the simplest solution "would be setting it in CK then saving as esp plugin." Now, I've only ever used the Creation Kit to get my form 43 files converted to form 44, and that only because someone (or some program) told me to. So, *magic*. But I loaded up the creation kit with only Skyrim.esm (File >> Data, double click Skyrim.esm, but don't click 'Set As Active File'). I panicked a bit at the huge array of buttons across the top of the window, but as with many problems, if you just evaluate each option one at a time, you can find the solution. In this case it was Gameplay >> Settings... and about two-thirds of the way down the list is fXPPerSkillRank. So I clicked on it, changed the number in the field in the right half of the window from 1.0 to 0.1, hit File >> Save, and named the new esp. Then I spent ten minutes looking for the file because I had forgotten that due to launching the CK from Mod Organizer 2, it got sent to MO2's Overwrite file, like several other files that were produced during the installation of Lexy's list.
And that's the hard part. I've also included the Experience and SkyrimUncapper ini files I use. I'll explain my thinking regarding those in a bit, but I put them in the mod because it made them easy to find (following Lexy's instructions, the Experience ini, which she has modified, is in the Experience folder, but the SkyrimUncapper ini is in the (SJG) Omega folder). But for that to work, you need to follow the...
Installation Instructions: Install the mod last (or at least after anything else that has either of those ini files, so that this mod can overwrite them-this is easy to do in MO2, just by dragging this mod to the bottom of the left panel). Load the esp last. It's literally one thing, so if anything overwrites it, there's no point to having it. Yes, I cleaned it just to be sure. No, it didn't show as a conflict with anything on Lexy's list, or the other mods I'm using. Yes, I set the ESL flag, because, seriously, it's only one thing.
So here's what I'm thinking as far as the values go. I haven't finished a playthrough with Experience or Lexy's guide. I did get very far in a couple Requiem playthroughs in Oldrim. No matter how crushing I set the economy (I love Trade and Barter for this, by the way), I always wound up with mountains of gold and no good place to put them (I mean, I bought more crafting mats and sent those skills into the stratosphere, but that gets silly after a while). My plan in Lexy's list is to directly pump up skills (with Oghma Inifinium - A Training Station), but I need a reason to do so late in the game (past the formula caps in the uncapper) so I want to get character XP, and therefore levels and perks, but *not too much*. So I figure a balance of 80% of Experience's sources to 10% of vanilla XP from skills (Yes, I know that's less than 100%, I've halved the skill XP to keep it under control). Specifically, I've done the following:
Get Skill Experience With Experience.esp
-Only get 10% of vanilla character XP from skills (if you want another value, just do what I did above and make your own easy mod. Trust me, you'll feel better. Alternatively, load my mod into SSEEdit, and change the value of 0.1 to what you want. That's probably a good skill to develop, too)
Experience.ini
-bEnableSkillXP has to be set to 1 for any of this to work.
-iMaxPlayerLevel is set to 999, because I don't ever want to hit a level cap.
-Questing, Exploring, and Clearing awards reduced by 20% where possible, with Lexy's values commented out for reference (If you haven't done any programming, there's no reason to know this, but here, ; causes the program to ignore what follows so you can leave notes to yourself or others. Further I want to mention, because it confused me when I first looked at Skyrim ini files years ago, those lower case letters that begin a variable name are a naming convention programmers use to quickly remind themselves what sort of variable it is. So bEnableSkillXP is a boolian value, either 0 for false or 1 for true. fXPPerSkillRank is a floating point variable, which is to say a fraction. iXPQuestMain is an integer, which is why in some cases I had to round the 20% off)
-fXPKillingMult is set to 1.6 (which is also 20% off).
-This is otherwise as Lexy altered the original file from Experience
SkyrimUncapper.ini
-SkillCaps are all set to 999, because I don't ever want to hit *any* level cap.
-SkillFormulaCaps are all set to 175 so that bonuses still count for a while after getting a skill to 100, but the character can eventually become godlike. If necessary, I'm going to bump the difficulty up. I just wanted the extra levelling allowed by the uncapper to count for more than character XP for a while. I didn't go to 200 as I recall that caused a problem in Oldrim and didn't want to risk it.
-SkillExpGainMults\BaseSkillLevel are now all the same across all skills, just as a personal preference.
-LevelSkillExpMults show what I was originally trying to do, multiplying the 0.1 factor in here. As mentioned above, these settings have no effect.
-PerksAtLevelUp has had the adjustment at level 100 removed. I figure at that point, the levels are going to be pretty far apart and all I'm getting per level is 3 stat and some carry weight, so I may as well be getting a perk or two every level.
-Health/Magicka/Stamina AtLevelUp have been smoothed out. I didn't like getting huge bonuses on a few levels, mainly because I didn't want to remember which levels those were. I prefer to spread out my stats pretty evenly, so each of those values last levels in multiples of 3.
-Carry Weight at Level Up is 10 for any stat because I'm using Smooth Attribute Scaling which handles carry weight increases (as well as other sources like Achieve That and Dragon Soul
Relinquishment. You may want to modify this if you aren't getting extra
carry weight from another source.
So that's it. If you can use my mod, please do. If you learned anything by reading this, that's even better.
Additional Adjustments
Spoiler:
These are the settings I'm using in my current game based on personal preference and my last playthrough.
iXPQuestNone = 0, Quests set as type None give no XP, as they should (consistent with patches for Experience)
fXPKillingMult=0.4, I reduced XP from kills by 75% because I felt it was overwhelming other sources, and with this mod, you're getting some XP from skills used in combat.
fXPGroupFactor=0.0, There's an issue with Skyrim's ability to count followers and I just don't feel like fighting it. I feel I've already reduced killing XP enough.
[SkillExpGainMults\CharacterLevel\OneHanded]
1 = 0.67, Most skill growth has been reduced by a third. Crafting skills got slightly more of a nerf, again based on the way the figures worked in my previous playthrough. Speech gets a huge nerf since the old bug that only counts a stack of items sold as 1 has been fixed (Bug Fixes SSE)
[PerksAtLevelUp] , Slight nerf here, as I'm using several mods that add perk points (the one for skill levels 50, 75, 100 from the Ordinator page, Quests Award Perk Points, and ESO Skyshards), now you just get one perk point per level and a second at 10, 20, 30, etc.
I also recommend Experience - Slower Leveling - ESL Flagged, which is a single game setting adjustment like my esp. I've changed the modifier to 475, which increases the amount of XP needed per level and is proportionally more important at early levels, Skill Zeroer which sets all your skills to 1, and Incremental Injuries which models wear and tear during a day by lowering max stats until you sleep.
My goal has been to recreate the feel I got in LE with Requiem where I started weak and felt like I earned the power that accumulates at higher levels, and with Lexy's list (which I strongly recommend) and these mods, I feel like I've done that, and I've been able to pile a couple dozen quest mods on top of it.
Show
These are the settings I'm using in my current game based on personal preference and my last playthrough.
iXPQuestNone = 0, Quests set as type None give no XP, as they should (consistent with patches for Experience)
fXPKillingMult=0.4, I reduced XP from kills by 75% because I felt it was overwhelming other sources, and with this mod, you're getting some XP from skills used in combat.
fXPGroupFactor=0.0, There's an issue with Skyrim's ability to count followers and I just don't feel like fighting it. I feel I've already reduced killing XP enough.
[SkillExpGainMults\CharacterLevel\OneHanded]
1 = 0.67, Most skill growth has been reduced by a third. Crafting skills got slightly more of a nerf, again based on the way the figures worked in my previous playthrough. Speech gets a huge nerf since the old bug that only counts a stack of items sold as 1 has been fixed (Bug Fixes SSE)
[PerksAtLevelUp] , Slight nerf here, as I'm using several mods that add perk points (the one for skill levels 50, 75, 100 from the Ordinator page, Quests Award Perk Points, and ESO Skyshards), now you just get one perk point per level and a second at 10, 20, 30, etc.
I also recommend Experience - Slower Leveling - ESL Flagged, which is a single game setting adjustment like my esp. I've changed the modifier to 475, which increases the amount of XP needed per level and is proportionally more important at early levels, Skill Zeroer which sets all your skills to 1, and Incremental Injuries which models wear and tear during a day by lowering max stats until you sleep.
My goal has been to recreate the feel I got in LE with Requiem where I started weak and felt like I earned the power that accumulates at higher levels, and with Lexy's list (which I strongly recommend) and these mods, I feel like I've done that, and I've been able to pile a couple dozen quest mods on top of it.
Requiem Users
Spoiler:
Lexy's LOTD list is great for what it does, but I 'grew up in Skyrim' on Requiem, so what I've wanted to do for the longest time was use Requiem and the content from her LOTD list, and this year Requiem (specifically all the Requiem - content patches) finally reached a point on SE, now AE, where I felt I could, given the patching skills I learned from several runs of her list, make it work. And, happily, my tweaks of this mod have gotten it to a point where the pacing feels right in Requiem. As I write this, I'm close to level 8, having finally bested a couple bandits (Some Stormcloaks killed a bandit that was sporting Dwarven armor which I liberated from the corpse, and am now feeling pretty good about taking a hit!), mostly doing Missives courier quests (to the places I can reach on foot - about 60 according to my tally on Radiant Quest Point System), and the pacing has felt exactly where I wanted it to be.
In SkyrimUncapper.ini, I've reset all in formula skill caps to 100 so as not to break Requiem's balance on that front. Skillcaps remain at 999, but note that you'd have to get your character level to 400 or so before Experience's caps get that high. I've left SkillExpGainMults where they were in 1.09, and I am also using Requiem's MCM option to decrease XP by 50%. It *seems* like both of these are taking effect, but I'm not 100% certain. A little testing convinced me that Requiem will override any changes to stat and carry weight gain, so I reverted those values to what Requiem will give you. I don't know about the perk points per level, so I also reverted that to 1 per level up.
In my own game, I have several mods working on top of this. I use
-Smooth Attribute Scaling SE Port to handle my stats (+.125 H/S for Warrior skills, H/M for Mage skills, S/M for Thief skills, 1 carry weight per attribute, base set to match Requiem at level 1). That gets me close to what stats a level 81 uncapped Requiem character could expect with similar development, and I'll grow beyond that, but Experience's caps will keep that under control.
-Dragon Soul Relinquishment (5 souls per perk point, or 1 soul per +2 H/M/S/ unarmed / 20 carry) I may manually increment that souls per perk point when I get that far, I'll have to see how much of a pain the debuff from Dragon Combat Overhaul is these days
-Quests Award Perk Points
-Arthmoor's Skyshards
-Radiant Quest Point System (90 points +10 per increment, per perk point)
-Smart Training Tweaked SE (5 training per level, 1 perk point per 50) that effectively gets me a bonus perk point every ten levels as long as I can train skills
-Achieve That SE English (I pour all my points into carry weight)
-The Curators Companion (awards on gives some additional stat and perk points)
Which may seem at a glance to be a lot of extra perk points, but it's all pretty spaced out, and I have several mods giving me additional perks in Requiem's trees.
In Experience.ini, I think my tweaks were pretty minor. The only one that sticks out was reducing the Objectives award down to 6 XP. That's now about the same I'm getting from enemies I'm surprised to defeat, so it feels about right.
Again the goal in all this was to slow down the pacing to the point that those perk points when they come really feel earned, as did that first victory over bandits, and so on. I think I've achieved that. And Smooth Attribute Scaling keeps me honest about my stats. I won't get useful at Magic until I spend some time learning those skills, or at least pay to train a lot. It isn't my purpose to generate a specialized build of the sort I read about on reddit, but I think if you play with that goal in mind, it can still happen. In my playthrough, I just want to be a guy who uses a sword and heavy armor to survive, makes some moral compromises in the course of collecting for the Dragonborn museum (those Daedric artifact displays aren't going to fill themselves), and in 'endgame' develops a proficiency in magic. Anyway, if you also want to take your time with Requiem (or have a great deal of additional quest content as I do), I hope you'll find this useful.
Show
Lexy's LOTD list is great for what it does, but I 'grew up in Skyrim' on Requiem, so what I've wanted to do for the longest time was use Requiem and the content from her LOTD list, and this year Requiem (specifically all the Requiem - content patches) finally reached a point on SE, now AE, where I felt I could, given the patching skills I learned from several runs of her list, make it work. And, happily, my tweaks of this mod have gotten it to a point where the pacing feels right in Requiem. As I write this, I'm close to level 8, having finally bested a couple bandits (Some Stormcloaks killed a bandit that was sporting Dwarven armor which I liberated from the corpse, and am now feeling pretty good about taking a hit!), mostly doing Missives courier quests (to the places I can reach on foot - about 60 according to my tally on Radiant Quest Point System), and the pacing has felt exactly where I wanted it to be.
In SkyrimUncapper.ini, I've reset all in formula skill caps to 100 so as not to break Requiem's balance on that front. Skillcaps remain at 999, but note that you'd have to get your character level to 400 or so before Experience's caps get that high. I've left SkillExpGainMults where they were in 1.09, and I am also using Requiem's MCM option to decrease XP by 50%. It *seems* like both of these are taking effect, but I'm not 100% certain. A little testing convinced me that Requiem will override any changes to stat and carry weight gain, so I reverted those values to what Requiem will give you. I don't know about the perk points per level, so I also reverted that to 1 per level up.
In my own game, I have several mods working on top of this. I use
-Smooth Attribute Scaling SE Port to handle my stats (+.125 H/S for Warrior skills, H/M for Mage skills, S/M for Thief skills, 1 carry weight per attribute, base set to match Requiem at level 1). That gets me close to what stats a level 81 uncapped Requiem character could expect with similar development, and I'll grow beyond that, but Experience's caps will keep that under control.
-Dragon Soul Relinquishment (5 souls per perk point, or 1 soul per +2 H/M/S/ unarmed / 20 carry) I may manually increment that souls per perk point when I get that far, I'll have to see how much of a pain the debuff from Dragon Combat Overhaul is these days
-Quests Award Perk Points
-Arthmoor's Skyshards
-Radiant Quest Point System (90 points +10 per increment, per perk point)
-Smart Training Tweaked SE (5 training per level, 1 perk point per 50) that effectively gets me a bonus perk point every ten levels as long as I can train skills
-Achieve That SE English (I pour all my points into carry weight)
-The Curators Companion (awards on gives some additional stat and perk points)
Which may seem at a glance to be a lot of extra perk points, but it's all pretty spaced out, and I have several mods giving me additional perks in Requiem's trees.
In Experience.ini, I think my tweaks were pretty minor. The only one that sticks out was reducing the Objectives award down to 6 XP. That's now about the same I'm getting from enemies I'm surprised to defeat, so it feels about right.
Again the goal in all this was to slow down the pacing to the point that those perk points when they come really feel earned, as did that first victory over bandits, and so on. I think I've achieved that. And Smooth Attribute Scaling keeps me honest about my stats. I won't get useful at Magic until I spend some time learning those skills, or at least pay to train a lot. It isn't my purpose to generate a specialized build of the sort I read about on reddit, but I think if you play with that goal in mind, it can still happen. In my playthrough, I just want to be a guy who uses a sword and heavy armor to survive, makes some moral compromises in the course of collecting for the Dragonborn museum (those Daedric artifact displays aren't going to fill themselves), and in 'endgame' develops a proficiency in magic. Anyway, if you also want to take your time with Requiem (or have a great deal of additional quest content as I do), I hope you'll find this useful.