» Sat Nov 05, 2016 9:06 am Five years this game has been out, and I found a truly major bug.
This whole time, atronach spells have been giving the WRONG EXP.
You've probably noticed that atronach spells were giving bad EXP, but the other spells in the Conjuration skill give wacky EXP already and that's probably intentional. For example Raise Zombie gives the most EXP out of all the reanimation spell (besides Dead Thrall). That's likely intentional so that higher leveled players can pick up Conjuration and breeze through the earlier spells.
The atronach spells however are straight up bugged.
Let's look at the non atronach conjure spells for a comparison.
Apprentice - Conjure Boneman gives 50% of its base magicka as EXP.
Adept - Conjure Mistman gives 75% of it's base Magicka as EXP. Conjure Ashman gives 75% of its base Magicka as EXP. Conjure Seeker gives 75% of its base Magicka as EXP.
Expert - Conjure Wraithman gives 100% of it's base Magicka as EXP. (Dremora Lord gives 200% of it's base EXP and it's absolutely insane. Don't know if that's intentional or what.)
Now get this, all of the above spells distribute their EXP in the same way. The SummonBoneman magical effect in the ConjureBoneman spell in the creation kit has a XP modifier of 0.50. All the Adept levels gives 0.750, and the Waithman gives 1.00. The Atronach spells do the exact same thing EXCEPT the SPELL has two magical effects. Summon[Type]Atronach AND PerkSummon[Type]AtronachPotent.
Normally a conjure spell has only one magical effect in the spell but the atronachs have both and they BOTH contribute towards the total magicka cost of the whole spell. For Flame Atronach that's 75 + 75 = 150. Now for Conjure Boneman there's only the one magical effect in the spell and the Magicka total calculates to 129. When you cast the spell you get roughly 64 EXP. That's 50%. Flame Atronachs total is 150 but you get 37 EXP. That's 50% of the 75 from the magical effect SummonFlameAtronach. When I changed the values for SummonFlameAtronach the spell would give me the changed EXP value unless I had elemental potency. With elemental potency it have the old XP vlaue.I have to change BOTH SummonFlameAtronach and PerkSummonFlameAtronachPotent to have it give the same EXP regardless of whether or not I have Elemental Potency.
Frost atronach is the same. It has a modifier of .75 just like every other Adept level Conjure spell, except it gives far less EXP. That's because it costs 214 Magicka split between 107 for SummonFrostAtronach and PerkSummonFrostAtronachPotent.
The fix is easy, just change the value of both of the magic effects for the three atronach spells (for flame 1.0, Frost 1.25, and Storm 2.) and Bob's your uncle.
Also Conjure Dremora Lord gives DOUBLE (2.0) it's magicka cost in EXP by default, and when you put it 1.0 it matches up in exp very nicely to the Storm Atronach after it's been fixed. Don't know what's going on there.
Anyway, I've made a mod that makes these changes. It's called KPatch Conjuration EXP. I've submitted to the Unofficial Patch but it hasn't been seen yet.
