In the past I've simply gone with the default levelling system. I would like to try one of the alternatives and it looks like the best fit for me would be Oblivion XP. However in looking at various threads, it looks like there are some issues with it. Could you please give me your opinions on whether this is stable enough to use?

Also, with the base levelling system, I always had to choose skills that I really didn't use all that often as my majors (I had efficient levelling down pat, as tedious as it was). Do I still need to do that sort of thing with the alternatives? I'm also considering Realistic Levelling.

Thanks!

Nope... I'm pretty sure fixing that is one of the primary goals of every leveling overhaul.

Whether Oblivion XP has bugs or not depends on the rest of your mod setup. There are some heavily scripted magic and combat overhauls that can't be detected by XP. If you make heavy use of these I wouldn't recommend it. Personally I've been using it for 25+ hours now without a single problem (except for the well known and imo very minor bug where you get xp for the summoned creature of a conjurer when killing a conjurer while he has an active summon) and I love it.

i vouch for ob xp, great mod with few bugs.
i never really liked morrowinds/tes system of leveling in the first place though.
actually 'leveling' has always felt somehow rewarding and satisfying.

the only real incompatability i've come across has been with unnecessary violence; you dont get xp when you kill mobs with a UV attack, i.e, to finish them off,
simple solution: don't!
(i think both mod creators are fixing this soon though, so np).

best way to figure out if its for you is to... try it ;D
use an omod and its easy to deactivate anyway.

Hmm anyone can confirm that you get xp from using midas spells now? I know in previous versions you couldn't.

In ObXP you still have to pick class/majors but only because of the tutorial dungeon. This time majors play no role in leveling. Majors however get reduced points, while minors get increased points.

For example, I'm a mage and thus my majors are all the schools of magic. I can put 2 points into them, while the rest, the minors, need 4 points per increase. This can of course be changed in the ini, and all major and minor cost 3 points.

Yeah some people have issues getting ObXP to run with no problems..

It's a great mod.. been using it since 3.0 and I like the idea that was put behind it. Like the other leveling mods out there, this one opens the door for no limitations. Lvl200 character with 255 skills? hehe

Oblivion XP is highly configurable. It is well worth the time to read the readme and the ini file. The more you understand what it is doing, the more accurately you can set it to your liking. How many skill points per level, differences between major and minor skills, whether reading books give you xp and how much, etc., etc. - all is configurable.

I enjoy this mod very much.

gothemasticator

Yes if you want to be a jack of trades, then you need to edit the ini

Find on line 80


1 = character specialization
0 = jack of all trades

Thanks guys! Lots of great responses.

So it actually sounds with this, that if I wanted to leave it at the default settings, I could choose majors that are my weaker skills so I don't have to use as many skill points to increase them?

I usually wind up being a jack-of-all-trades because I like joining all the guilds and doing the quests (just can't resist ). I did notice that you can configure the ini so you spend 3 points on all skills.

Looks like I will check this one out

This doesn't make much sense. Of course you should choose the skills that you need as majors or you won't be able to level up quickly in them. If you pick the useless or weak skills as major skills you can level up quickly in these skills, but what's the point if your most used skills eat all the points on level up because they're so expensive?

That is actually one of the things I love about Oblivion XP - specialization and major skills matter a lot because it is very hard to bring a minor, non-specialized skill to a decent skill level unless you want to waste all your points on it.

If you like to be a Jack of all Trades be warned though. With default settings you will never be able to bring all your skills to 100, not even closely. Another thing I love about it. You have to choose in which direction you want your character to progress. Unlike in vanilla, where it doesn't matter and a character that started as a plain warrior class will be a masterthief-archmage-superwarrior at level 30.

Yeah it didn't come out very well. I'm so ingrained with the skills you use most getting all the increases, that I haven't quite changed over to the D&D rules of general xp to be distributed to your class and non-class skills. I've played enough D&D that I know the other system - just having a hard time laying that on top of Oblivion! I'll get there... I never got all my skills to 100, even under the old system!