Idk if it is just me, but it seems that Restoration takes way too long to level up. Iirc it is about the same as Destruction, but do most of you guys really use it as much?

For a Full-Mage Destruction is the only method of attack, and most of the time as a full-mage you spend your time -not- getting hit, either by running away while flinging spells or by conjuring up creatures to tank for you. In the end, you use alot of Destruction spells and gain alot of points in it (so Destruction's skill gain is good, imo), but if you succeeded in not getting hit, you won't need to use Restoration at all.

Idk how it is for you multi-taskers, but this is just coming from a full-mage.

So, should the Restoraton skill take less castings to level up in Skyrim? Maybe equal to Alteration or something...

It does take too long in Oblivion, yes. According to the Progress mod it leveled half as slow as Destruction and a 5-10 times slower than the other schools. That's because it's used more often than the other non-Destruction schools if it's used at all, and Destruction requires a target so it had to go up faster to account for misses and some lack of spammability.

My Progress settings have it at half the progression rate of other schools (a third of Conjuration) and the same progression rate as Destruction. It seems fairly balanced to me.

In Oblivion? Yes. Very much so. Although Alteration leveling may be construed as possibly too fast.

Alteration was set at a value of 3
Destruction and Restoration were set at a number of less than 1.

I think an acceptable number would've been 1-2, somewhere in between.

Yep. I also use it the least amount compared to the other schools, which makes it lag behind even more. Conjuration also levels way too fast than it should.

It's even slower than Destruction? man, i think gamesas underestimated its players, lol

As someone who plays Oblivion most commonly as a melee fighter/thief character, Resto leveled pretty quick. But, then, that's because I used it constantly - with the amount of damage that pounds through your average shield block, there's always damage that needs to be healed. (Resto's also basically the only school of magic those characters use - the other ones only get leveled up enough to get the basic spells, so they're available for weapon & armor enchanting.)

Additionally, as mentioned, it has the advantage over, say, Destruction, in that it's easy to "train" - you don't need a target, you don't need to be wounded, etc.

This applies to the other schools as well, but they still leveled 5-10 times faster.

The problem with Restoration is that it's hard to level up naturally as a pure mage because your use of Destruction magic will end battles quickly, but it's even harder to train using repeated cast on self spells because it's so painfully slow to level up. It would take hours of self-heal spam to level it to 100, while it would take a small fraction of that time to spam any other school. Yes, even Destruction, because you can always make a Disintegrate Armor spell on self or something.

Restoration is the second-slowest skill in Oblivion - second only to mercantile.

It's........ complex. Yes - as noted, full mages often don't increase it much (unless they use it fairly extensively for buffs or even for offense - absorb health is deadly), since the point is more to not get hit than to get hit, then heal. I run into the same problem with characters with The Lord for a birthsign, since Blood of the North is such a massively useful healing spell, but doesn't count for restoration experience.

But my non-mage and non-Lord characters are generally just fine with restoration increasing as slowly as it does, and actually prefer it that way. A warrior in particular might get into a fight, then cast Heal Minor Wounds a couple of dozen times as he's walking down the road. He's not going to learn a more powerful spell, so that's just the way it ends up - casting that same spell over and over. And since Oblivion doens't weight experience based on difficulty, casting that spell that many times would add up quickly, and the warrior neither needs nor wants any real skill increases in restoration - just enough to cast Heal Minor Wounds is plenty.

Hopefully - not just for this reason alone - Beth will introduce a system that weights experience based on difficulty. In this case, that would make it so that non-mage characters can cast whatever few simple spells they might cast as much as they desire without continuing to gain potentially unwanted skill increases, while more dedicated characters could go on to casting more difficult spells and continue to gain skill at a good pace.

Yea, i'd like a spell power based leveling system too. Maybe to go from Novice to Apprentice you have to cast novice spells. Apprentice to Journeyman, novice spells don't work so only Apprentice ones do. Expert to Master, only Expert spells

Much simpler and much more effective to just base experience earned on magicka spent.

That works too

this would only really work for basic restoration and basic destruction skills but perhaps they increase based off of straight healing and damage done... this however falls apart when you get Restoration skills that increase a stat as well as Destruction skills that reduce stats...



So this is a better method then mine... but that one sets president for all of them to be based off of that statistic... not necessarily a bad thing however.

Edit: Typos

Holy crap power leveling with Restoration was such a pain in the ass if i recall. It always lagged behind the other skills for my mage.

I think the idea of effort = experience should apply to all skills.

- A warrior using power attacks should level faster than one spamming slashes
- A thief should level sneak faster around multiple targets than just around the 1.

Definitely.

There's an optional plugin for Progress which makes magic experience based on magicka spent. There's a melee plugin which bases experiences on swing speed. I don't know if there's anything for power attacks, but Skyrim should have it. Marksman experience could even be based on range in Progress, which would be nice for Skyrim. Especially because archery in Skyrim is all about sniping now.

This it should be based of the power of the spell/ability used to determine the overall experiance gained.

For me restoration filled up fast but I repeatedly used it over and over again.