Smithing Experience Rates

[Banana125]

So I have an idea for a mod, but I'm not sure A) if it already exists, or B) where in the CK I would go to begin making something like this, if it doesn't exist (I've never really used the CK for changing mechanics--just placing items, making interior cells, etc).

 

Smithing leveling has always seemed a bit weird to me--iron daggers are a viable smithing option at level 90, for instance. Lately I've been thinking about making a mod to change this, making the experience you get drop off with each additional level or each additional item you make of that kind.

 

E.G.--you start out making iron daggers. Your first one nets you the normal 38.4 experience. Your next one nets you, say, 38 experience, then 37.5, etc etc; the point being, you can only get so far to being a master smith by making the same, super basic/low-level item over and over again. Ideally, this dropoff would only start after you're at/a bit past the level for the next materials tier.

 

A more ideal system would be one that decreases your experience based on the number and type of item. So maybe making an iron dagger makes your experience drop off as 1/(3n), where n is how many you've made. Meanwhile, it makes experience for all other iron weapons drop of as 1/(2n), and all other iron items as (1/n), and a similar dropoff for tempering items. That particular rate would just be awful, granted, but it serves to illustrate the idea I'm trying to get at. This should, naturally, reset after you reset your skill level somehow.

 

So--is there already a mod like this? If not, where would I go in the CK to start making one like this? I don't think it would be sufficient just to change the experience gain multiplier, since that would just make the whole skill slower; the point would be, basically, diminishing returns on making the same item over and over.

Edited December 8, 2013 by Banana125

[Xander9009]

I don't know if there's already a mod like that, but I think you messed up your expressions. When I make an iron dagger, I'd expect the experience from making further iron daggers to drop by more than the amount for all iron weapon. I'd also expect the weapons to drop by more than the drop for all iron items. Your numbers now would do this:

 

Daggers: 1/3n || Weapons: 1/2n || Items: 1/n

1 -> 1/3 || 1/2 || 1/1

2 -> 1/6 || 1/4 || 1/2

So, the experience from iron daggers drops by a third of a point while the experience from general iron items drops by a whole point. They should probably be the other way around.

 

Anyway, I don't think you can alter the experience gained from a specific item. You can only set that value for the skill as a whole. Even in perks, the only things I've seen change experience gain rates were for entire skills. However, if you look at the mage stone perk (called "doomMagePerk"), you'll see it uses the condition EPModSkillUsage_IsdvanceSkill to decide which skills to affect. There are similar condition options which might be useful. Namely EPModSkillUsage_AdvanceObjectHasKeyword. You might be able to use that to change the effects of different classes of armor and weapons. I can't be certain those would work, but it's worth trying.

 

If that doesn't work, an alternative might be to greatly increase the necessary experience to level up at higher smithing levels, lower the base experience gain from all smithing activities, and increase the value multiplier for smithing activities. The end result should be that as you level up, the only efficient way to continue levelling up would be to craft more valuable items. That would all be changed in the game settings, but I don't know exactly which settings to change to what values for it to have the desired result. It would take some tinkering and educated guesses.

 

EDIT: I understand you weren't intending to use those expressions, and that they only served as examples. I just meant in general they were backwards.

Edited December 9, 2013 by Xander9009

[Glanzer]

Check out Elys Uncapper, it allows you to get more/less experience from smithing (or any other profession) based on either your profession level or your character level.

[Banana125]

I don't know if there's already a mod like that, but I think you messed up your expressions. When I make an iron dagger, I'd expect the experience from making further iron daggers to drop by more than the amount for all iron weapon. I'd also expect the weapons to drop by more than the drop for all iron items. Your numbers now would do this:

 

Daggers: 1/3n || Weapons: 1/2n || Items: 1/n

1 -> 1/3 || 1/2 || 1/1

2 -> 1/6 || 1/4 || 1/2

So, the experience from iron daggers drops by a third of a point while the experience from general iron items drops by a whole point. They should probably be the other way around.

 

Anyway, I don't think you can alter the experience gained from a specific item. You can only set that value for the skill as a whole. Even in perks, the only things I've seen change experience gain rates were for entire skills. However, if you look at the mage stone perk (called "doomMagePerk"), you'll see it uses the condition EPModSkillUsage_IsdvanceSkill to decide which skills to affect. There are similar condition options which might be useful. Namely EPModSkillUsage_AdvanceObjectHasKeyword. You might be able to use that to change the effects of different classes of armor and weapons. I can't be certain those would work, but it's worth trying.

 

If that doesn't work, an alternative might be to greatly increase the necessary experience to level up at higher smithing levels, lower the base experience gain from all smithing activities, and increase the value multiplier for smithing activities. The end result should be that as you level up, the only efficient way to continue levelling up would be to craft more valuable items. That would all be changed in the game settings, but I don't know exactly which settings to change to what values for it to have the desired result. It would take some tinkering and educated guesses.

 

EDIT: I understand you weren't intending to use those expressions, and that they only served as examples. I just meant in general they were backwards.

Er, I meant those examples to be multiplicative--i.e., you get (1/3n)*(base experience). Rather than (base experience) - (1/3n). In which case, iron daggers would be dropping faster. But, whatever, just wording. The general gist seems to have been gotten across.

 

I'll definitely look into those few effects, see if I can make anything reasonable. I'd thought about just increasing the experience required between levels, which would definitely do the trick, but then I'd probably have to go through and hand-edit every item to add various tags/keyword to increase their experience without jacking their values way up. It could be done, but I'd rather change as few things as possible. Thanks for pointing those out.

 

Glanzer--I'd been peripherally aware of Elys Uncapper, but I'll give it a look. If it does what I'm thinking of (or something close), I'll just grab that rather than trying to figure it out myself. Thanks!