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.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! You awesome person! This made adventuring a lot more rewarding! As said by JustAnotherNewModder, yes, I can finally prioritize specific skills. I also paired this with Simply Rest (or Sleep) Anywhere, some enemy combat overhaul and now loving the new gameplay. I wish I can give you more than one kudos.
I had made thief characters before that have gotten so filthy rich that I didn't even know how to spend the money, which made the game boring. This mod makes gold more useful than ever and certainly helps to make the game more of a challenge as well. However, it seems that the newest versions (1.5 and 1.2) don't really work as I've tried to open up the menu with those but had no luck at all, so I'll stick to the 1.3.6.
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)
Would you mind to explain more in details what to do? I would love to implement this into the mod but I'm afraid of deleting things that I should not delete.
I like the mod, but is there a way to exclude player summons from the list of enemies that drop extra gold? I use smart harvest to automatically pick up gold, so when my summons die or are unsummoned (by summoning another thing), it drops gold into my inventory before the previous summon de-spawns.
I understand it's a weird exploit caused by combining mods, but I was hoping there was a way to just exclude my own summons (or all) from the list of enemies that drop extra gold.
Finally, after nearly 2,000 hours of Skyrim, for once gold is actually valuable and scarce, and not something I collect just for the sake of it. I also no longer have to do things like obsessively picking every lock just to level up, intentionally get hit to raise my armour skills, intentionally not attacking enemies while sneaking so I can gain a little more experience, or craft a thousand weapons just to improve my gear.
Would be possible to ask for a EdgeUI patch? I like this mod a lot but it doesn't go "well" with Edge UI as the menu for the level up doesn't match the UI.
Found a "Fix" for this: if in the MCM you enable the old menu, Edge UI overwrite it and it blends into the UI. The only "issue" is that the meny isn't aligned at the center perfectly, but it's a minor nuicance.
I really like the idea of this mod. I ran into an issue when I wanted to increase the Twohanded skill for my Wood Elf, and the game told me, "You have reached the cap for this skill." Is there any way to change this cap? Thanks.
Edit: It seems that Archery, One Handed and Two Handed are broken. Other skills are OK. It is a pity, because in this state the mod is unusable :(
If anyone's having problem leveling up the highest skill by the option disappearing, enable old menu in MCM. It will bring back the skill option while having an old leveling menu.
I would love to take that further with a combination of static skill leveling menu and something like the Attributes mod which condenses available level up attributes to classic DND/souls style options (str, dex, steam, etc).
Without weapon scaling based on attributes, str would have to be used for all melee damage and dex for accuracy/ranged/lock picking/sneaking.
It would definitely require some flash and script work, but it would be so cool to implement it.
108 comments
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.
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)
I understand it's a weird exploit caused by combining mods, but I was hoping there was a way to just exclude my own summons (or all) from the list of enemies that drop extra gold.
Edit: It seems that Archery, One Handed and Two Handed are broken. Other skills are OK. It is a pity, because in this state the mod is unusable :(
Without weapon scaling based on attributes, str would have to be used for all melee damage and dex for accuracy/ranged/lock picking/sneaking.
It would definitely require some flash and script work, but it would be so cool to implement it.