This mod fixes player incentives in Skyrim and removes skill grinding tendencies.
Consider:
Weapons skills: In vanilla (to my knowledge, and UESP) weapon skill experience is determined by base damage only, meaning if you want to maximize the speed at which you level up - say - your one handed weapons skill, you will use unenchanted, unimproved daggers only. Smithing, one-handed damage enchants, or fire/frost/shock enchants all slow down your experience gain by reducing the fraction of your damage that generates experience. With Gold is Souls (GIS) you use whatever you want to do damage, because there's no incentive not to do so.
Lockpicking: ever delay picking up keys until you picked a lock for the experience gain? That's another of Skyrim's perverse incentives. The goal in vanilla isn't to open doors, it's to pick locks. With GIS, keys suddenly have immense value. The standing stone ability that opens doors is useful.
Restoration: this one's one of the worst in vanilla. Restoration levels really slowly in vanilla, and has its own incentive issues. Skill gain generally corresponds to magic spent to cast, meaning if you take perks that improve restoration spells, you cast less frequently to heal the same amount, reducing your experience gain. With GIS, the regeneration perk (restoration level 20, spells heal 50% more) is one of the best early game perks you can get, and a strategic five points in restoration will get most characters there (Nords, etc, who start at 15).
Armour/block: in vanilla, you are incentized tolet enemies hit you. This is awful - it rewards playing without style, and it actively bores the player. With GIS and a dodge mod you never need to get hit again. Your armor is protection in case you get hit.
Smithing: no more iron daggers.
Enchanting: see Smithing.
Alchemy: now you'll only make potions you can either use or want to sell for profit.
Sneak: you'll stop standing in corners or beating your horse. The latter was always really uncomfortable to read as a UESP recommendation. Leave Shadowmere be.
Pickpocket: you don't need to rob every person in Skyrim just to gain the ability to play tricks on bandits.
Destruction: same as restoration, the elemental damage perks are worth claiming as soon as you can (if you are going to use destruction magic).
Conjuration: no more beating your own summons, or soul trap spam.
Speech: no more selling arrows one-at-a-time, or buying and selling the same expensive item back and forth to generate experience.
Alteration/illusion: these two are primarily used (at least by me) for a few specific utility spells and passive perks (magic resistance and quiet casting, I'm looking at you) levelling them was a grind.
Comments are in no particular order, perhaps just in order of how annoying these things were in vanilla.
Finally, I want to praise how GIS incentivizes prioritizing the skills you intend to use. As I started a playthrough with this mod I picked one-handed weapons, heavy armor, and speech, and - aside from five tactical points in restoration (see above) - I didn't level any other skills until these had maxed out. I effectively had a build, which is not a feeling one usually encounters in Skyrim.
I hope Bethesda takes note for future entries in the Scrolls series. My thanks for this mod.
Loved the mod but had to unistalled due an uknow error:
It seens the level up is linked to how much gold you obtain, rather then how much you level your skills.
I cheated alot of gold to give my start char a boost (way to many playtroughts... got bored of early game) and now everytime I sleep My char level up twice, even tough I hadn't improve my skills more than 20 levels total.
How to make this mod even more like Dark Souls using the Core Mechanic: c o m m i t
Spoiler:
Show
- Open SSEdit - Open "Messages" - Select "aaaGoldXPConfirmRaiseSkillMessage" - Remove "Message Box" Flag, change Display Time from 0 to 10 - Remove all Message Prompts - Change "This skill, You have" Description to a related Dark Souls quote -- Personally, I use "Do what [thou] need'st to be done..." --- "Seek strength, the rest will follow..." is also a good alternative - Save Results and Play - Profit
Congratulations! You removed 1000 Message Prompts (Or more if you Respec) And Over 3 0 0 0 Inputs (Or more depending on what Menu you use)
Version 1.5 doesn't seem to work on my end, MCM doesn't show the mod, and getgs fXPPerSkillRank returns 1.00
version 1.4 seems to appear on MCM, but after I wake up I don't see the menu, the game enters in menu mode (I see the cursor arrow of the menu) but it doesn't show anything
Thank you man, i needed a way to spend my gold so badly and this mod is perfect way to do this. Using Trade & Barter with hardcore setting, to limit the gold i have from selling loot, and use faster enemy respawn, i can grind on a dungeon to get more loot. Its a nice change, i can focus more on combat and looting, instead of grinding on specific skill, which is so tedious and boring after you spend like thousand hour on skyrim.
I have encountered an odd issue. The Speech skill is missing from the level up list. The other skills I've tested work fine though. I needed a gold sink like this, thanks for making it.
that happens to me when i have multiple highl evel level (iirc 80+) skills, the highest level will be gone until you level up the 2nd highest one, then it will appear momentarily until you choose to increase the level of other skill, then it'll be gone again. so for me it was sneak, so in order to level up Sneak i need to level up the one below Sneak (level wise) to make Sneak appear.
what a fantastic mod. this mod single-handedly make the gold economy a lot better. now we gotta be careful how to spend our gold. love it! curious, is there a way to increase the skill level up cost for all the skill after choosing to increase the skill? currently the cost goes up but only for the selected skill. i want the cost to increase for all no matter what skill you choose. idk if that make sense, or the mod already provide the means to do that, if that's the case please do let me know!
I agree with this; maxing out a skill takes a lot of gold, meaning one levels more slowly as one advances. Once that skill is at 100, switching to a new skill means costs are really low for the first 40 levels or so (an unused skill at 15 only costs ~80 Septims if you don't change the scaling) and you level really fast afterwards. Adding some form of level scaling would help stabilize the rate at which one levels. I see a few ways to go about this; to start, we have the cost equation from the front page:
C = 0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x - 895
One option is to add a penalty term based on the character's level, call this L, so:
where a, b, and c are reasonable parameters that yield a steady increase in cost independent of the skill level, depending only on the character level.
This creates a nice balance. If you want a more Dark Souls style levelling experience, then one could use
C = 0.02L^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L - 895
where the per-skill increase cost is the same but will increase every level (or 10 skill increases) forever.
Or, one could duplicate the parameter values for x and L:
Which would mean at level 1, you would pay the ~80 Septims for the first skill increase, increasing in value with higher skill number x, but also bumping up the total cost C every ten skill levels as L increases. By level 80, L becomes a major component of the total cost, meaning that increasing a skill one has ignored the entire game is now going to take a lot of investment. Given the availability of high-value items late-game, I think the extra penalty would balance out the player's increased access to wealth.
Of course, the sky is the limit here. It is possible to balance skill and level penalties any way one would like. I would like to see some form of level cost included, myself.
Precisely. To me, it just incentivizes proper character build in a much simpler way, and also making gold a lot more valuable commodity. Your proposed alt formula also sounds fair, honestly. I don't know how balance it is to just straight up copy the Dark Souls formula, but right at the top of my head, it seems to be balance enough, especially with how much gold we're getting from endgame loot/economy. I tried tinkering with the provided source code, but sadly to no avail between editing it and failing to compile the script. Would be really, really awesome if someone could help here!
In my comment I provided a way to incorporate player level. I started from the Author's cost equation, and added the player's level as a second term, multiplying the total by one half so that the first skill point at level one costs the normal amount. Like I said, there are a lot of ways to go about it.
Here's some more ways to play with this equation. Starting from the suggested cost equation:
where A and B are tuning factors available to the player.
Setting A=1 and B=0 is the existing mod functionality. A = 0.5 and B = 0.5 gives the same starting cost*, with the player level contributing to an increasing total cost by level. A = 1 and B = 1 gives the original cost plus a level penalty. A = 0 and B = 1 gives you pseudo-Dark Souls behavior, with all skill points costing you the same across each level, but increasing with every level
Of course, you can mix and match to your preference.
*Note: this would only give the same starting cost if the player level term L is actually L = L0 + 15 (where L0 is the player's actual level) to account for the fact that skills start at 15 and level starts at 1. The offset should correct the cost term so that the skill and level penalties have the same value at the same number; i.e., the level penalty is adjusted so that it has the same cost contribution at level 1 as a skill at 15.** **I'm sorry for this madness, but because Bethesda decided that skills would start at 15 minimum, we have to do this cost adjustment ourselves.
Hello! This is my new favourite mod of all times for skyrim, makes game much more rewarding. Although i have a problem - my character stopped getting EXP from leveling skills at some point. Im playing Skyrim VR with few dozens of mods. In debug zone in MCM there are all zeros. Is that how it's supposed to be? Hope to hear from the author, for now im just gonna turn off most of the mods to see if i can find a conflict.
Update: i managed to fix the issue by reenabling the mod in the MCM. Don't know what caused it tho. And now i can just wonder how much levels i lost before i noticed i don't level up anymore xD
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Note that the mod has a new dependency (UIExtensions).
Consider:
Comments are in no particular order, perhaps just in order of how annoying these things were in vanilla.
Finally, I want to praise how GIS incentivizes prioritizing the skills you intend to use. As I started a playthrough with this mod I picked one-handed weapons, heavy armor, and speech, and - aside from five tactical points in restoration (see above) - I didn't level any other skills until these had maxed out. I effectively had a build, which is not a feeling one usually encounters in Skyrim.
I hope Bethesda takes note for future entries in the Scrolls series. My thanks for this mod.
It seens the level up is linked to how much gold you obtain, rather then how much you level your skills.
I cheated alot of gold to give my start char a boost (way to many playtroughts... got bored of early game) and now everytime I sleep My char level up twice, even tough I hadn't improve my skills more than 20 levels total.
c o m m i t
- Open "Messages"
- Select "aaaGoldXPConfirmRaiseSkillMessage"
- Remove "Message Box" Flag, change Display Time from 0 to 10
- Remove all Message Prompts
- Change "This skill, You have" Description to a related Dark Souls quote
-- Personally, I use "Do what [thou] need'st to be done..."
--- "Seek strength, the rest will follow..." is also a good alternative
- Save Results and Play
- Profit
Congratulations!
You removed 1000 Message Prompts (Or more if you Respec)
And Over 3 0 0 0 Inputs (Or more depending on what Menu you use)
getgs fXPPerSkillRank returns 1.00
version 1.4 seems to appear on MCM, but after I wake up I don't see the menu, the game enters in menu mode (I see the cursor arrow of the menu) but it doesn't show anything
I'm on AE 1.6.1130
Using Trade & Barter with hardcore setting, to limit the gold i have from selling loot,
and use faster enemy respawn, i can grind on a dungeon to get more loot.
Its a nice change, i can focus more on combat and looting, instead of grinding on specific skill, which is so tedious and boring after you spend like thousand hour on skyrim.
curious, is there a way to increase the skill level up cost for all the skill after choosing to increase the skill? currently the cost goes up but only for the selected skill. i want the cost to increase for all no matter what skill you choose. idk if that make sense, or the mod already provide the means to do that, if that's the case please do let me know!
C = 0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x - 895
One option is to add a penalty term based on the character's level, call this L, so:
C = 0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x - 895 +aAL^3 + bL^2 + cL
where a, b, and c are reasonable parameters that yield a steady increase in cost independent of the skill level, depending only on the character level.
This creates a nice balance. If you want a more Dark Souls style levelling experience, then one could use
C = 0.02L^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L - 895
where the per-skill increase cost is the same but will increase every level (or 10 skill increases) forever.
Or, one could duplicate the parameter values for x and L:
C = 0.5(0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x + 0.02AL^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L) - 895
Which would mean at level 1, you would pay the ~80 Septims for the first skill increase, increasing in value with higher skill number x, but also bumping up the total cost C every ten skill levels as L increases. By level 80, L becomes a major component of the total cost, meaning that increasing a skill one has ignored the entire game is now going to take a lot of investment. Given the availability of high-value items late-game, I think the extra penalty would balance out the player's increased access to wealth.
Of course, the sky is the limit here. It is possible to balance skill and level penalties any way one would like. I would like to see some form of level cost included, myself.
Here's some more ways to play with this equation. Starting from the suggested cost equation:
C = 0.5(0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x + 0.02AL^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L) - 895
I will note that this is equivalent to:
C = 0.5(0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x) + 0.5(0.02AL^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L) - 895
which leads to a simple tuning factor that could be made available to the player in an MCM (the author already gave us A, actually):
C = A(0.02x^3 + 3.06x^2 + 105.6x) + B(0.02AL^3 + 3.06L^2 + 105.6L) - 895
where A and B are tuning factors available to the player.
Setting A=1 and B=0 is the existing mod functionality.
A = 0.5 and B = 0.5 gives the same starting cost*, with the player level contributing to an increasing total cost by level.
A = 1 and B = 1 gives the original cost plus a level penalty.
A = 0 and B = 1 gives you pseudo-Dark Souls behavior, with all skill points costing you the same across each level, but increasing with every level
Of course, you can mix and match to your preference.
*Note: this would only give the same starting cost if the player level term L is actually L = L0 + 15 (where L0 is the player's actual level) to account for the fact that skills start at 15 and level starts at 1. The offset should correct the cost term so that the skill and level penalties have the same value at the same number; i.e., the level penalty is adjusted so that it has the same cost contribution at level 1 as a skill at 15.**
**I'm sorry for this madness, but because Bethesda decided that skills would start at 15 minimum, we have to do this cost adjustment ourselves.
Hope to hear from the author, for now im just gonna turn off most of the mods to see if i can find a conflict.
EDIT: Problem is gone. No clue as to why.