MCC Leveler

by mg979

Version 1.8

Requirements: latest MGE-XE contains everything you need.

Tested with MCP 2.4.

About

With this mod I tried to unite the simpleness of use of MADD Leveler and the realism of GDC. I was a fan of

GDC, at least of the concepts behind the mod. But when I first run it, endless questions and stuff to set just to get

started. There were too many different versions, and reports of crashes and weirdness. So, in short, I made my own, and

here it is.

Installation

To activate and configure the mod: Alt+M+L in inventory menu.



If you choose Quick Start, mod will be installed with default values. Once it's initialized, if you want to change

settings and reinitialize it, select 'Revert changes'. You can also do this to perform a clean uninstallation.



F.A.Q.

Show

Is it compatible with mod x?

It should be compatible with everything. There could be inconsistences with birthsign mods.



Will it affect my frame rate?

I took special care in making it absolutely weightless. All scripts only run during sleep.

Magicka regeneration updates every 2s.



Is it compatible with MCP uncapped skills and attributes?

Yes 100%. Skills and attributes may go after 100. It's actually recommended that you enable that feature.



Do I have to activate everything?

No, all components are independent from each other, and can be used in any

combination. You can use extra options without initializing the leveler, but

if you do this and then you revert changes, all other features will be inactivated

and you will have to activate them again. State-based health is an

exception in that it's an irreversible process.



Does it make the game more difficult?

It depends on the settings you choose, but to increase difficulty is not

the goal of this mod.

Spoiler:

Main features



All features are optional and configurable.



Skill-based leveler



- Attributes are calculated on the base of your starting values and your skills. The proportion of these two elements

is defined by the 'Starting Attribute Factor' (SAF) that you can configure.



- So, skill advancement directly influences attribute advancement. Not at level-up, but continuously.



- Skills aren't governed by a single attribute, and each skill influences the development of more than one attribute in

different proportions. You can think of it this way: when you fight with a sword, you don't use just your strength,

but also your agility, and maybe your speed. When you haggle with a merchant, your personality is important, but why

not intelligence? Etc. You can read all this in the included Excel file.



State-based health & Magicka regeneration



- Your HPs depend on your current stats only, and Endurance gains are retroactive. A magicka regeneration option is

also included.



Skills decay



- After a certain number of days (default 7), skills you didn't train in will drop by 1 point.

The bare minimum you should know

- Once the leveler is initialized, attributes are recalculated on the base of your

starting attribute, and the skills that would influence that attribute's growth,

plus a bonus depending on the difficulty level.



- Starting Attribute Factor(SAF): you can choose the fraction of your starting

attributes that is transferred to the new values. The rest is contributed by skills.

Recommended value: 50 or more.



- Increase your skills to increase your attributes. Less SAF, more influence

from Skills. More SAF, higher starting attributes, but more static character.



- Difficulty: another fraction of your starting attributes can be transferred

'for free'. Easy is 1/2, Normal 1/4, Hard 1/8, Very Hard 0.



- Each skill influences the development more than one attribute at a time, and in

different proportions. For instance, Long Blade helps increasing Strength, Agility,

Speed.



- You still get attribute points at level-up to distribute, but no multipliers (1x).



- There is an included Excel sheet where you can learn more and test your builds.

More in depth

There are two Esps for each variant (MWSE standard/alpha).

Show

The 'More GMSTs' version includes some other GMSTs. The changes are:



- skill advancement rates for major/minor skills are slightly slower (from

0.75/1 to 1/1.25 respectively), the one for misc skills is even slower (from

1.25 to 2).



- slower armor skills advancement rate (3/4).



- training cost increased by 50% (from 10 to 15). This is recommended since

skills can have a big impact on your attributes values.



- picking locks is harder, as it is disarming traps. Security advances faster,

though.



- less gold from sold potions (iAlchemyMod from 2 to 1).



- more difficult to remain unseen (fSneakViewMult to 2 from 1.5), but sneak

advancement is easier, especially while pickpocketing.



- merchant gold isn't reset after one day, but after three days.



- armorer improves slightly faster



You may have other mods that change the same GMSTs, so it will depend on your

load order which settings will be used. For example, if you use BTB Improvements

(that alters far more settings than this mod), some of them will be different

(notably gold from potions, training cost, and merchant gold reset time).



Choose the version that you prefer, but keep in mind that this mod absolutely

needs the level up GMSTs to work properly, so this mod, in any case, should be

loaded AFTER other GMST-changing mods.



All changed GMSTs in detail ('More GMSTs' version), default in brackets:



fBarterGoldResetDelay 72 (24h)

fMaiorSkillBonus 1 (0.75)

fMinorSkillBonus 1.25 (1)

fMiscSkillBonus 2 (1.25)

fPickLockMult -1.25 (-1)

fSneakViewMult 2 (1.5)

fTrapCostMuIt -0.5 (0)

iAlchemyMod 1 (2)

iTrainingMod 15 (10)



Acrobatics: jump/fall 0.1/5 (0.15/3)

Alchemy: potion/ingredient use 1.5/0.5 (2/0.5)

Armorer: progression 0.6 (0.4)

Athletics: run/swim 0.01/0.05 (0.02/0.03)

Armor skills/Unarmored: progression 0.75 (1)

Security: trap/lock 5/2.5 (3/2)

Sneak: sneak/pickpocket 0.5/5 (0.25/2)



Spoiler:

In short, how attributes are calculated.

Show

Attributes are the result of:





DF + SAF + Skills

(difficulty) (0-99%) (100 - SAF)%







DF (Difficulty Factor) depends on the difficulty level you choose.

It's a fraction of your starting values that is guaranteed independently of

anything else. This value ranges from 1/2 (Easy) to 0 (Very Hard).



SAF (Starting Attribute Factor) is the role of starting values in defining the

new values. If 50, it means that another 50% of your starting value is

transferred to the new value. The rest (another 50% in this case) is contributed

by skills. If the Starting Attribute Factor is 0, your attributes values will be

entirely defined by your skills (except the guaranteed value from the difficulty

choice).



This means also that at start your character will have very low attributes, and

it's not really recommended. Attribute increase progression is faster, though,

and you can more easily reach values over 100 (if MCP option is enabled). A

value of 99, on the other hand, means that your starting attributes values will

never change throughout the game. They start at a higher value than

in vanilla, and you'll still be able to increase them with level up points.



You will still gain 3 points to distribute at level up, but no skill

multipliers. This will allow you to adjust some attributes to an higher level

that your skills would allow.



Attributes are recalculated every time you sleep, on the base of your current

skills, starting values and Starting Attribute Factor.

Spoiler:

More in detail, how attributes are calculated.

Show



Three things are important:



After having taken in account SAF and difficulty bonus, the rest is contributed by

skills. How? As I said, each skill can contribute to the advancement of more attributes,

in different proportions. There are 27 skills and 8 attributes. I assigned 80 points to

each skill, and distributed these points into the attributes they influence.

Each attribute will receive 270 points from the various skills.



The formula for the different attributes is the same, the skills that take part

to the formula change. For example, this is the Strength formula with Normal difficulty:





iSTR = initial Strength SAF = Starting Attribute Factor



DF + SAF + Skills =



= iSTR/4 + iSTR*SAF/100 +



+ Skills / ( 270 / ( 1 - SAF/100 ) )





Skills is the sum of the contributions to Strength from

the various skills (each skill = 80 points distributed among different

attributes), multiplied for the skill multiplier (SM from now, 1 for misc skills, 2

for minor skills, 3 for major skills).



Example, Armorer. 80 points distributed as follows: 30 STR, 5 INT, 10 WIL, 5

SPE, 30 END. So Armorer contributes for 30 points in the Strength calculation

(x1 if misc, x2 if minor, etc.).



Back to the Strength formula, now it will look as follows:



CombatSkills = Armorer*30*SM + Athletics*10*SM + Axe*30*SM + Block*10*SM ... + Spear*30*SM

MagicSkills = 0

StealthSkills = Marksman*20*SM + ShortBlade*10*SM + HandToHand*25*SF



Their sum will be divided by





( 270 / ( 1 - SAF/100 ) )





For a SAF of 50, this will be = 540, so:





iSTR/4 + iSTR/2 +

+ ( Armorer*30*SM + Athletics*10*SM + ... + HandToHand*25*SM) / 540





Low SAF means low initial attribute average, high dependence on skills, high

spread over attributes. High SAF means high initial attributes, no dependence on

skills, low spread. Makes PCs more static, if you're after that. And it will

make the late game definitely more difficult. I think 50 is a good compromise.



Note: increasing the SAF makes the game more difficult, because skills will

help less. If you increase the SAF, you'd better select a lower difficulty

factor.



With the Excel file I provided, you'll be able to test your builds.

Spoiler:

Some example builds (HARD difficulty, SAF 50)

Show



Dunmer Barbarian

---------------------



Vanilla stats:

Str 50, Int 40, Wil 30, Agi 40, Spe 60, End 40, Per 30, Luc 40



Mod Stats:

Str 56, Int 31, Wil 31, Agi 46, Spe 56, End 55, Per 24, Luc 33



You can see that starting stats are more in line with what you would expect

from a melee-oriented character: higher strength, speed and endurance,

reduced intelligence, personality and luck (that has a 'mystical'

flavour in this mod and is influenced by skills as other attributes).



Breton Mage

---------------------



Vanilla stats:

Str 40, Int 60, Wil 60, Agi 30, Spe 30, End 30, Per 40, Luc 40



Mod Stats:

Str 27, Int 65, Wil 64, Agi 23, Spe 24, End 23, Per 58, Luc 54



Very different scenario (and slightly suicidal build, probably): slight

increase in Intelligence and Willpower (they were quite high already),

big boost to Personality and Luck, at the expenses of the physical

attributes.



Spoiler:

State-based health and Magicka regeneration

Show

Magicka regeneration is activated automatically if you choose Quick Start, State-based

health can be activated in the configuration menu.



The State-based health present in this mod differs from other ones in two

particulars. First, Willpower-based characters are less penalized. In fact:



- for starting health, if WIL>STR, formula won't be (STR+END)/2, but

(STR/2+END+WIL/2)/2, that is, Willpower will contribute as much as Strength.



- at level up, if WIL>END, formula for new hit points won't be END/10, but

(END/2 + WIL/2)/10. Willpower will count as Endurance in calculating new HPs.



I made these changes because a system where you cannot pump up Endurance easily

will favor fighter-type characters, and pure mages would be extremely penalized

compared to vanilla. It's not a huge bonus but it should help them.



Second, it can detect your favored attributes. This means some 5-10 more HPs, if

one or both your favored attributes are involved in the starting HPs formula.



If your character is at level 1 (new character), then the base attributes will

be directly considered. In this case, it is better that you activate State-based

Health after having initialized the leveler, so that your base health will be

calculated on the base of the new attributes.



If the character isn't at level 1, starting HPs will be then derived from a pre-

made table of starting attributes per race, and not from your current

attributes. Favoured attributes will still be considered, though.



Magicka regeneration is more straightforward. Regeneration speed is based on

Willpower and max Magicka, as in other Magicka regeneration mods. Formula is:



Willpower * Max Magicka * Multiplier

/ 100 / 100



For the multiplier there are 3 options (slightly faster=0.75x, default=1,

faster=1.5x) or you can disable the extra regeneration.



Characters with Willpower < 50 have slower regeneration. Their WP is

considered WP*WP/50 of their real WP.

Spoiler:

Skills Decay

Quick Initialize

Final Notes and Warnings (MWSE non-Alpha only):

Show

This mod updates your stats when you sleep. It will only change your attributes

and never your skills. But to check your skill values, skill fortifying effects

active on your character are removed. This means that if you have a constant

effect on you given by items, you'll need to re-equip the item again to restore

the effect on yourself. This could also mean that if the effect is given by

abilities such as modified birthsigns, then I don't know what could happen. Your

fortifying effect could be lost permanently, I mean, but I'm not aware of

anything that could cause such an occurrence.

Spoiler:

Change log:

Show

Version 1.8: rewrote initialization scripts, to fix a potential bug.

Simplified and restructured other scripts. Magicka regeneration is not enabled

with quick initialization.



Version 1.7: fix for bug that causes attribute damage when a fortify spell/potion is

used on top of a running "drain attribute" spell. Not sure this mod was the cause,

but it should be a less common situation now. State-based health isn't activated by

default anymore.



Version 1.6d: hopefully fixed a bug that messed stats in certain circumstances after

initialization



Version 1.6b: some fixes



Version 1.6: fixed bugs from previous version. Configurable skill decay

system. Adjusted starting HPs for difficulty level. Tweaked Magicka

regeneration for low-Willpower characters. Quick initialize.



Version 1.5b: fixed magicka regeneration in menus



Version 1.5: prevent starting mod before character generation is complete; added

configurable state-based health and magicka regeneration; added Very Easy

difficulty option; auto-launch with default settings (can still be adjusted in

the configuration menu)(MWSE Alpha); fixed and updated xls file; better readme.



Version 1.4: added a MWSE Alpha version, that doesn't rely on RemoveEffects

(therefore much safer to use). Now when you revert changes you can choose to

keep your initial skill multipliers, so that you can change difficulty or

settings in your current game without messing up your stats. Removed most GMSTs

from the base version. Should be compatible with older versions (you'll get a

warning but just press 'yes'), but the revert changes fix won't work as

intended. It's not necessary unless you want to reinitialize the mod for some

reason (eg. difficulty change). For it to work, you need to: 1. update 2. revert

changes 3. write down attributes that changed from game start (increases from

level up) and bring them back to starting values from the console 4.

reinitialize 5. add back manually those points via console. Sorry for this, but

previous version mistakenly didn't remember your starting attributes, that were

reinitialized if you reverted changes and initialized again.



Version 1.3: fixed a number of issues, some introduced by 1.2. Sorry for the

problems caused. Now correctly removing skill fortifications before calculating

attributes values. Fixed stats mess after resting if game has been reloaded and

if points had been gained. Removed some redundant skill tweaks from the ex-

normal version (now called 'more GMST'). Fixed some GMSTs. The esp that before

was called 'Less GMST' has become the normal version. Crossing fingers, it

should be finally working as intended.



Version 1.2: any increase of the base attribute (eg level up points) will be

preserved after sleeping (it wasn't working before). Added the option to revert

changes for clean uninstallation of the mod (you won't get back the lost

multipliers from level ups, quite obviously).



Version 1.1.1: updated xls file.



Version 1.1: I screwed the first release as usual. Introduced a difficulty level

that affects how much of your starting attribute is automatically transferred to

the new value, independently from all other factors. I didn't update the xls

file, that still refers to what now is the 'Easy' difficulty.

Spoiler:

_____________________________________________________________________Version 1.8: rewrote initialization scripts, to fix a potential bug.Simplified and restructured other scripts. Magicka regeneration is not enabledwith quick initialization. Updated Excel sheet. Tested only with last MGE + MWSE 2.1.Not savegame compatible!Version1.7b: fix for constant bonus/penalties(curses or diseases), now it always restoresattributes after a new drain effect, unless there's been a damage or there is a constantcurse/drain/disease._____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________Skills aren't governed by a single attribute, and each skill influences thedevelopment of more than one attribute in different proportions.Some skills influence certain attributes more than others. Some skills maybe very focused on a certain attribute, while other may spread theirinfluence over more attributes in a more even way.The mod cannot detect which your major and minor skills are, but when themod is first started, skills that are over 30 pts are considered 'major',and their influence on attribute advancement will be multiplied by 3. Skillswith over 15 pts will be considered 'minor', and their influence onattribute advancement will be multiplied by 2.This has two important consequences, one positive and one negative. Thenegative side is that if you don't start a new game or have a relativelyfresh character, this mod can make your character slightly (or heavily)overpowered. The positive side is that also racial and specializationbonuses have their say in the character advancement, since you can reach 15points in a skill without it being selected as a minor skill at charactergeneration.Another difference is that Luck is a living attribute. It is considered as ameasure of the favour of the Divines, and it is influenced by skills likeMysticism or Conjuration, through which you establish a link with theotherworldly forces, and by many other skills in a smaller way. The TOTALinfluence of all skills is PERFECTLY evenly distributed among attributes.This means that if you raise all of your skills by 100, all of yourattributes will be raised in the same way (but remember that skills that areconsidered major or minor have an increased influence).The normal version doesn't include extra GMST changes, but there are no level-upmultipliers (all set at 1). If you use this version, it is recommended that youalso use some mod that tweaks some settings (BTB Improvements or similar).I especially recommend a setting to increase training cost, because cheaptraining can dramatically change the natural progression of a character'sattributes.____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////Disabled by default. After a number of days that you can configure (default 7for quick initialize), skills you didn't train in will drop of 1 point. Skillswill never drop under their starting value, and will only drop if you didn'tmake any progress (1 full point) in the defined time interval.////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////You can choose to initialize with default values in the config menu. As of v1.7,these values are:- Normal difficulty (bonus 1/4 of vanilla starting values)- SAF 50- Skills decay: every weekNor Magicka regeneration, or State-based health are activated by default./////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////My other mods and projects: Morrowind Cinematic Combat (WIP) Quick Loot for MW Comfortable Stashing for Fallout 3 Realistic Encumbrance and Burden for Oblivion