Wrye Leveling removes usage and training based skill leveling altogether and replaces them with all an all-at-once skill+attribute leveling system. Here's a brief overview:
* Leveling up costs gold. It's not cheap.
* You cannot level beyond the maximum level (40).
* For each levelup, you have a fixed number of points to spend on attributes and skills. Attribute points can be spent on any attribute, regardless of what skills. I.e. no power leveling.
* All of this is very configurable. You can make it quite easy or quite difficult as you prefer.

For a list of other leveling systems, see http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=790175 (section 4). (I'm not sure where this fits in this scheme, other than that it's pretty much the opposite of natural grow type systems.)

Links:
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/#OblivionMods or http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23322
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Leveling.html

Screenshots:
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/images/Leveling_01.jpg: Shows all attributes with current values and distributed attribute points. Clicking on an attribute takes you to sub-menu...
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/images/Leveling_02.jpg: Shows attribute and related skills with current values and points assigned to them. Clicking on attribute/skill adds a point. Shift-clicking removes a point. Any single attribute can be increased by up to 5 points, any single skill by up to 10 points. (Note: These limits, like most of the limits are configurable.)
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/images/Leveling_03.jpg: Can config cost, round limits, final limits.
* http://wrye.ufrealms.net/images/Leveling_04.jpg: Config points available, max gain per attribute/skill, min days between levelups. (Note: These are not the default settings.)

Nice job Wrye! The community thanks you for the release!

Although personally this seems to be opposite of what I like, but to each his own.

Good job and excellent effort as usual!

Cool, sounds interesting. And definitely different.

Quite different from the regular leveling mods, although lately they have been rather different. Oblivion XP leveling, Wrye Leveling, and another REL that does something similar to this, gives you a set amount of points for you to distribute among your attributes and skills.

Anyway, how exactly would I go about changing from spam to using this? On existing characters at least.

Also, how much gold is required for the levels and will this work with Elys uncapper?

vs. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15619
This mod has been pointed out, and it's a good contrast. OXPL looks quite nice (from the readme which I just browsed). It offers gains based on a fairly broad type of experience (i.e. not just killing things), and is generally more complex than Wrye Leveling. (If you're looking for a leveling mod you should check this out as well as the other mods in BG's list.)

My quick impressions of the differences are:
* Wrye Leveling is a lot simpler. And a lot more focussed on money.
* Wrye Leveling is a bit more free. Namely, Wrye Leveling purely leaves it to the user as to where to spend their points. You can raise endurance w/o ever raising any endurance related skill.

I should mention that the main reason for me to create Wrye Leveling was to support Wrye Morph. In Wrye Morph, you can morph between different characters, each with different stats. I needed a way to avoid the vanilla leveling system (which is totally thrown off by Wrye Morph's wild stats switching), but I also wanted something simple which would allow me to level individual npcs without much effort. So, Wrye Leveling should help with that. (Though I still should do more work on the Wrye Morph side.)

Quick answer:
* Cost: default cost is 150gold x nextLevel. I.e. if you're going to level 2, it's 2*150 or 300 gold. If you're going from level 39 to 40, then it's 6000. But this, like almost all numbers in the mod, is configurable.
* Elys uncapper: I don't know. You can configure it to allow going over 100 on skills and attrributes, but I haven't really tested that.

ShadowChao: Check the readme and see if you have any questions left. I haven't used SPAM. Let me check quickly... Hmm... Seems to still be using Oblivion's usage based system -- it's just changing the impact that it has. (I think.) In that case, conversion should be pretty much the same as for vanilla. As I note in the readme, when switching to WL, you're likely to get a one time only vanilla level up screen. It would probably be the same for SPAM.

You have rather unique mods, Wrye! Nice job.

So...

Between what you've written here and the readme document, this would seem to essentially put you in complete control of your levelling. As in, "Hmm, I've had enough of being level xx, I think I'll level now.", select the option, pay the gold and there we go until you feel like leveling again. Right? So you could keep playing at level one without ever increasing your skills and stats if you really wanted.

Very interesting way of doing it, and it certainly completely evades the "levelling too fast" and "major is minor" issues. It reminds me of some of the old paper and pencil stuff I did years ago.

I haven't installed it (yet), so I'm not sure how configurable it is in game, but with something like this I would hope it's quite easily configurable in-game for CS-phobics: 150 gold seems very cheap to me, but then I can just open it in the CS and change that if I want to.

Looks like a good option anyway. If I ever use an overhaul like OOO or Frans (or even FCOM) this may well be my choice of levelling mod to go with it.

Vac

Thanks for sharing and the linky, will add this to the list ! ! ! !

Alright, thanks Wrye I will make sure to use this. Your mods are always wonderful

Wow...something to make mercantile useful!

Thanks!

If Wrye Leveling has not added its own level cap on the skills or stats, and that Wrye Leveling formulas work correctly beyond 100, then it should work with the Uncapper, as the Uncapper does not change anything to Oblivion but the caps in the standard leveling system. As for the various skill damages and magicka cost benefit of value above 100 for the Uncapper, it's just the original Oblivion hardcoded formulas that have been replaced. So whatever leveling system you may be using, as long as its not modifying these damage and spell cost formulas, it should be compatible.

I've added some screenshots of the leveling up menus to make it clearer (see first post).

All: Thanks! Hope you find it useful.

Vacuity: Freedom/Control: Yep, you're in complete control. You can level pretty slowly if you like. Or if you're really hard charging, try to level up pretty quickly. Part of the point is to allow you to quit leveling up if you prefer. (My older Must Train mod also allowed you to stop leveling if you preferred -- but this is more controlled.) And yeah major/minor considerations go away. Of course, you don't want to spread your points across too many skills. (And if you want to force yourself to build an even more focussed character, just cut down on the number of skill and/or attribute points available per round.)

Vacuity: Cost: Levelling from 39 to 40 costs 6000 gold. Doing the calculations, going from level 1 to level n costs (roughly) (n*BaseCost + n*n*PerLevelCost/2). With default Basecost of 0 and perlevel cost of 150, that comes out to 120,000 gold to reach level 40. To reach level 30: 67500. To reach level 20: 30,000. So, that's a chunk of change. And depending on your other mods that can be difficult. (E.g. house prices under OOO are inflated. Running Living Economy makes gold a lot harder to come by.) Anyway, both cost factors can be configured up and down pretty substantially.

Example: My level 37 character has 70k gold in hand, so that's a chunk of change, but still far short of 120k. OTOH, I've got tons on unsold stuff lying around. I think that the default settings would be fairly stiff, but doable. And by the time you're in the thirties, you're near the max level of 40, so you start thinking end-game for your stats.

Furious George: Yep. Good catch. Pumping up your mercantile one way or another is definitely useful.

Elys: Thanks for the info. I just checked and Wrye Leveling will correctly raise stats over 100 if you've configured it to allow that. So, it should work with your uncapper.

New Version: 02: Faster Menus, Minor Tweaks
Main improvement here is that I've moved the level up point distribution menus so that they show while you're still in inventory mode. When you go to apply changes, you'll drop out of inventory mode.

The reason for doing point distribution while in inventory menu is that the menus display much faster and the mouse pointer does not jump back to the middle of the screen, but rather stays where it was before (which is useful for repeat clicking the same button).

I've also made a few minor tweaks to menu text and functions. E.g. luck no longer has a submenu (not needed since there are no associated skills).

Sounds great. Thanks for sharing. I'll check it out.


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Looks great. I've got a question though, does this still have skill experience accumulating but 'ignored' (e,g, it sets iLevelUpSkillCount to 65535 or something), or does it work by reducing experience gain in all skills to 0? I ask as I'm trying to track player attacks using GetPlayerSkillUse, but if it'd be incompatible with Wrye Leveling then I'll try and find another way.

I currently have skill use gain turned off. But I could instead change http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/FSkillUseExp from 1.5 to 5, which would almost completely turn off skill raising by use, even though you're still gaining experience.

iLevelUpSkillCount is different -- that's what controls how many skill gains result in a level up (default value 10). I already set that to a high value.

Edit: I just checked, and setting fSkillUseExp to 5 seems to do the job. And it allows me to avoid modifying skill records, which is better for compatibility. So I'll do this in the next release. (Maybe this weekend.) Keep in mind that this means that skilluse may become fairly high -- still, it should be well within a reasonable resolution on floats.

Great, thanks Wrye.

well am using it now and its like you say. your in total control.
only the gold you have to pay is a little high in the beginning if you use rarer loot from TIE.
but on the other side now you have to work for leveling.

great mod wrye. one more am going to keep using.
thank you .

I really love this method of leveling. It makes the game feel more D&D'ish, in that your character stays static in power stat wise until they gain a level or they find better equipment.
One thing I noticed though is that there is a cap in the options menu for total skill points at 20. If I've done my math correctly, on my new character I have a total of 1775 skill points possible to gain over the next 39 levels (if I leave the level cap at 40). With a cap of 20 skill points a level that means I will get a total of 780 skill gains. Which means I'll only be able to max out my majors plus maybe 2-3 other skills. With OOO that's pretty rough, it certainly forces you to be extremely picky about where you allocate the skill points. I'm just curious if that was your intention or is there a coding reason why the cap can't be higher than 20? I would love to be able to bump the skill point gain to a more comfortable 30 points/level. That would allow me by level 40 to max out around 2/3 of all my skills.

I was using this last night (with fSkillUseExp at 5) and I still got a usage based leveling but that was for a skill at level 5. Wyre Morph makes things complicated for me (since I may cast a lot of spells as a high level restoration char, then drop down to a char with low level restoration and suddenly all that adds up and ups the skill for the low level char). So I'll probably use an optional esp to turn off usage based leveling for myself. Again, this would probably only be an issue for Wrye Morph users.


Thanks. If you're using something that limits money gained pretty strongly (TIE and/or Living Economy), then you may want to change the cost basis. Or you can tough it out.

Twenty skill points per level is quite a few. Keep in mind that in vanilla, you can only get 10 major points per level plus 5 trainings plus whatever usage gains you've made. So a cap of 20 is pretty reasonable. Options:
* Raise max Level. More levelups == more total skill points available.
* Manually change the limit. In console type "set wrLevZ.skillPoints to 30" (or whatever). WL will accept that.

Generally speaking, it IS my goal to produce less uber-of-all-trades characters. So yeah, you need to watch where you put your points. Still to each his own. If there are more requests to uncap those limits, I'll do that.

I will grant that this approach can be a problem with OOO in particular whose bosses are essentially designed for uber-of-all-trades characters. Or more accurately, are focussed against pure mage chars (esp. pure mage chars with the 100% weakness to magic birthsign. :angry:) I can tell you that I had a heck of time with the vampire lord character trying to win by magic, but after falling back on my 80 level marksman skills and helped by a summoned Golden Saint, I was able to take him down pretty quickly.

So again, I think that if you're smart about your distribution, you'll be okay. (As for myself, I'm running at 9 attribute points plus 14 skill points per level, which is one point below default for each.)

I'll point users to http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=828869 as well. Makes life a lot more interesting. Got my level 39 sheo-gal who isn't much challenged these days. But then I've got other chars who find the world more challenging. A level 21ish stealth fighter who can barely handle a goblin cave (she got killed -- damned 100% weakness to magic and lightning attacks from Shaman!) Then I decided to take a level 5ish Augusta Callida (proprietress of the Tiber Septim) out for a stroll in the IC Dungeons. No problem with the rats and crabs, but then she came up and got killed by a mugger from Crowded Cities while strolling back home. But I've got http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Shivering%20Death.html, so she recovers from death, exits to the Shivering Isles -- where she finds herself butt-naked at the top of a mushroom where the fall alone will probably kill her. I could cheat and fast travel, or shape shift to someone stronger, but I think that I'll try to run her back to castle sheo to recover her lost equipment before shape shifting. Should be fun.

Thanks for the console command. I think I will give it a go at something I've never done before, that is making a non jack of all trades char. I have to wean myself off of uberness though so I'm going to set the skill points/level to 25. Gives me the option to raise up other skills and still forces me to have to do without some skills.

Far as I'm concerned this is the best leveling mod out there. It puts you in complete control of leveling and even gives it a feel like you have to plan out your character. Heh if enough people adopted this mod we could even have a character "build" thread ala Neverwinter Nights style. Classes and skills actually mean something with this mod.

Edit: Nevermind, nothing to see here. Move along. :hehe:

Vac

I think you need to check the readme, Vac.

Leveling rings and what not... svck. Okay, they're better than doing stuff with console, but you lose track of them. Which is why Wrye Leveling (and just about all of my mods), use Cobl's options menu. It's sophisticated. It's swank. It's easy to use. You won't lose or misplace it. And it doesn't clutter your inventory with tons of little config tweak things. See the first post -- it includes some screenshots of the WL config menus.

Frek's complaint was only that the Wrye Leveling options menus still do limit you a little bit. (There are upper and lower caps on various settings to keep the player from getting too crazy. But he wanted to get too crazy. Which means bypassing the normal config menu and using the console. If enough people want to be that crazy, then I'll loosen the bounds a little bit.

Re cost. Cost per levelup is basecost + n*perlevelcost. Suppose that you leave basecost at 0. Then cost to go from level 1 to n is roughly (n^2)*costperlevel/2. So suppose that you want to spend x gold to reach level n. Then costperlevel = 2*totalGold/(n^2). E.g. suppose that you want to spend 200000 to reach level 25, then that means 2*200000/(25*25) = 640. And at 640 gold, then total cost to reach:
* level 5 is 8,000
* level 10 is 32,000
* level 20 is 128,000
* level 30 is 288,000
* level 40 is 512,000

If you want to configure this high a level, it's fairly easy. Just click the costperlevel button in the config twenty times (20 clicks * 25 point increments per click == 500 points, on top of default value of 150 gets you to 650). That seems pretty darned high to me, but it's easy to config it that way if you like.

Ahh, curses, I've gotcha! :facepalm:

I'll just quietly walk away and pretend I never misunderstood...

Vac