Major/Minor Skills in Oblivion

[J4320]

I know this should probably be in the RPG section but no one really checks there so I thought I'd ask a quick question here.

What is the difference between major skills and minor skills? I've been using sneak a lot and I'm getting more stealthy but it's not one of my major skills. I should have made it one of my major skills but I didn't. Will I never have the same potential with my sneak than I would if it was my major skill now?

[swivel]

I know this should probably be in the RPG section but no one really checks there so I thought I'd ask a quick question here.

What is the difference between major skills and minor skills? I've been using sneak a lot and I'm getting more stealthy but it's not one of my major skills. I should have made it one of my major skills but I didn't. Will I never have the same potential with my sneak than I would if it was my major skill now?

Your sneaking ability will be the same, whether it is a major or a minor skill. A 50 in sneak will be the same in either place. However, it will start off smaller as a minor skill, and level up slower as a minor skill. Also, only leveling up major skills will level up your player.

This means that if you play long enough, and practice enough, you can make every skill 100%, and be a Master at all of them. But you will have to cast a TON of Alteration spells to get to 100 if it isn't a Major skill.

I have finally gotten my Restoration and Destruction skills above 50, but it has taken me ages of running around healing myself constantly, and throwing fireballs to lead into and out of every fight.

I spent an entire day bow hunting, and leveled that minor skill up 20 points.

The important thing is to understand what the benefits of each skill is, and which ones you want to Master. For instance, I think Armorer is one of the most important skills. Not only can you fix your gear cheaply, you can repair items up to 125% which makes weapons do more damage, and makes armor higher rated as well. It is like adding a magical bonus to everything you weild or wear.

Maxing out you armor class is also key. Once my Heavy Armor hit 100%, the game changed immediately. Now my armor no longer encumbrances me, which means the weight of my armor doesn't add to the amount that I am carrying as long as I am wearing it, and I run as fast as I would if I was naked. Huge benefit here to have my armor rating over 80, and be able to run a deer down with my sword drawn!!!

And lockpicking is almost too easy once you become a Master at it. I could use a single lockpick for the rest of the game, even the Very Hard locks look like the Very Easy ones now.

[ShadedNine]

Actualyl, sneak is terrible as a main skill. Why? It levels up easily.

Sounds odd, but in truth, a well balanced character needs as many skill gains in minor skills as major. The problem is the rather silly attribute point system they dragged in from morrowind.

Lets go over it, shall we? Lets say Blade is a major skill for you, a level 5. If, right after reaching 5, you go and level Blade up 10 times, but gain NO other skills. You'll reach level 6, and when you levelup, you'll be able to select +5 str (the max for a single level), but only one point in any 2 other attributes. If you mix it up a bit, and level 8 blade and 2 block (another major), you'll levelup and receive 5 str (1 + 8/2) and 2 endurance (1 + 2/2).

Ideally, to max your character out, you can gain 15 attributes points per level. But this requires 24 skillups (3 + 24/2), only 10 of which can be majors (otherwise, you'd level up too soon, and the rest of the skillups would count towards the next level).
The other catch, is you want to plan ahead what attributes to work on during any given level. If you were to levelup a major skill from each attribute 1-2 times, and gain a level that way, you might end up walking out with a measly 4-5 points.

Worse still, if you keep doing that, your enemies scale by your level #, not your actual strength, so you'll find yourself badly crippled at the higher levels. If you max it out each level, you'll find yourself quickly reaching the caps, and may want to start to dump points into luck (you can only raise it 1 point per level, ever).

In particular, endurance should be hastened to its cap. You gain 10% of your endurance every level in hitpoints, but it doesn't scale back. Dumping more points into endurance at level 45 isn't going to give you the 10% from all 45 levels you would have gained by increasing the attribute sooner.

[nesgamingcom]

yeah if u just walk around in the sneak mode then your sneak skill advances i read on a website that that is one of the skills you dont want to pick as a major skill.

[ShadedNine]

Picking a skill as major does not make it level up faster. The only factor that affects how fast a skill goes up is your "specialty" that you choose (or inherit from your chosen class), either fighting, magic or thievery.

Here's some more skill gain tips:
For some skills, your skillup rate is also affected by how you perform the action. For example, you get a large bonus to sneak when you pickpocket, but slowly increase it just by sneaking. You get 10x as much skill gain by 'falling' then you do by simply the jump action, so jumping up a hill rapidly doesn't work like in morrowind. You also gain athletics faster by swimming.

Also note that targeted spells have to actually hit something to increase your skill. The cost or level of the spell doesn't seem to affect the skill gain (kinda stupid, but oh well), so don't always go for the most mana intensive spells. Same for weapons, the faster you hit, the faster you'll skillup. Don't ever eat your ingredients to skillup alchemy, it's practically worthless, and you can gain just as much making a fatigue potion from bread + rice as you will some fancy 4 ingredient uber potion.

I don't care for the skillup system, and I don't know if modding can fix this, much of it is hardcoded (other than the rates themselves), but time will tell I guess.

[swivel]

I don't care for the skillup system, and I don't know if modding can fix this, much of it is hardcoded (other than the rates themselves), but time will tell I guess.

I was wondering about this today. How hard would it be to mod in DnD rules to this game? Imagine having an exp count, and getting a raw number for each kill, and for completed quests. You could pick the Journeyman, Expert, and Master bonuses as your skill bonuses as you level. That would be so much more rewarding. Each level would give you a dozen points to distribute amongst your skills, and a few for your attributes.

I would much prefer this system. I like watching my exp climb, and noting how far to the next level. I like getting exp for finishing quests, collecting things, discovering places.

I hope some brilliant modder feels the same way and is working on this right now...

[wulkar]

no, its just harder to reach its peak because the skills you picked before had starting bonuses and the ones you didnt pick dont

[ShadedNine]

I was wondering about this today. How hard would it be to mod in DnD rules to this game? Imagine having an exp count, and getting a raw number for each kill, and for completed quests. You could pick the Journeyman, Expert, and Master bonuses as your skill bonuses as you level. That would be so much more rewarding. Each level would give you a dozen points to distribute amongst your skills, and a few for your attributes.

I would much prefer this system. I like watching my exp climb, and noting how far to the next level. I like getting exp for finishing quests, collecting things, discovering places.

I hope some brilliant modder feels the same way and is working on this right now...

I don't mind gaining skills by use, but the major/minor system is kinda silly. With the way the mobs scale with your level, the most powerful build relative to his environment is one that puts the least used skills as major, and most used as minor.

The other thing that I miss is the incentives to go exploring deep in the furthest dungeons for powerful artifacts. It seems all the ones in this game are given as quest rewards, most of which start in town. Getting a full daedric set and powerfully enchanted daedric sword should require clearing a multitude of the game's furthest off dungeons, which should be guarded by powerful mobs that either don't scale, or scale only past...say, level 25. Thankfully, mods should take care of this.

We need some balance between the easy access to daedric weaponry at level 1 from morrowind and the silly level based loot system of oblivion.

[swivel]

^^ Agree ^^

Perfect game in almost every other way, though.

[SPARTAN VI]

Mod? Did someone say mod?

http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Category:Mods

I'm using Balor's Leveling mod - Vehem's edition (http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Balor%27s_Levelling_-_Vehem_Edition)

Description:


Got rid of of "levelup" screens and "skill points per level" thingy for good.

However, each time you train skills under appropriate stat for 3 points, you'll get that stat increased. An immense increase in realism. You can customize how many skill increases you gain by typing (in console):

set BalSkillsForStat to <number> (3 default)

Level is increased by 1 each time you accumulate extra 3 stat points (any points, from any skills).

You can customize how your stats affect your level with:

set BalStatsForLevel to <number> (8 default)

Also, your stats will go further then 100 this way.

When you train your skill at a trainer, your stats grow only with half speed, customizeable typing:

set BalTrainMult to <number> (0.5 by default.)


That's it for now. Skill degradation and/or major/minor skill differentiation will come later... and since this mod is still in beta, please report bugs - I bet there are some.

For now, this mod should be completely existing character frienly.

Balor's Levelling - Vehem Edition, an edited version by Vehem, has also been made.

Retrieved from "http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Leveling"


Works wonders. I'm tired of minding my skills and playing to my stats instead of to myself.

[Kyle Static]

. With the way the mobs scale with your level, the most powerful build relative to his environment is one that puts the least used skills as major, and most used as minor.


I heeded your advice in that regard. I just restarted with a new character, having my least used skills in the major position and my most used skills in the minor. I was tired of getting my ass kicked by a wolf (when I was a level 11), because the majority of my level-ups were brought on by the sneak and Speechcraft skill upgrades. This time around my sneak, blade, marksman, and restoration are all going up fast, but it doesn't make me level up, so my character is becoming more and more powerful for his level.

[swivel]

Mod? Did someone say mod?

http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Category:Mods

I'm using Balor's Leveling mod - Vehem's edition (http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Balor%27s_Levelling_-_Vehem_Edition)

Description:



Works wonders. I'm tired of minding my skills and playing to my stats instead of to myself.

Thanks Spartan. This reassures me that we will have dozens of level-up routines to choose from eventually. Within 6 months, this will be a game that no two PC owners have the same copy of. You will get to create your own RPG from scratch.

I'm already planning on adding to a few of the most remote caves and putting the various parts to an Uber-Armor set in them. Either that, or create a series of treasure maps with very difficult directions. I need to make a shovel mod, where you can dig at any spot, and if you are over buried treasure, it will dig it up.

[ShadedNine]

Thanks Spartan. This reassures me that we will have dozens of level-up routines to choose from eventually. Within 6 months, this will be a game that no two PC owners have the same copy of. You will get to create your own RPG from scratch.

I'm already planning on adding to a few of the most remote caves and putting the various parts to an Uber-Armor set in them. Either that, or create a series of treasure maps with very difficult directions. I need to make a shovel mod, where you can dig at any spot, and if you are over buried treasure, it will dig it up.

The problem with doing that yourself though, is when you play such a mod, you don't want to know in advance what items are where. Thank goodness for an enourmous modding community, and one that has already had years of practice with a very similar game :)

For spartan's mod though, 9 of any skill / levelup seems a little too extreme. I'd say something along the lines of 15 or so. Though if you were to clear the way endurance works on a per level basis, just calculate a solid average and divide it by endurance...then the levelups themselves wouldn't really matter, other than keeping the difficulty more or less static (or slowly increasing) across the game.

[J4320]

Well I'm now a level 100 in sneak. It took me forever to just sneak around guards all of the time. Now I can pretty much pick pocket anyone. I need to get started on some magic pretty soon.

[J4320]

Sorry about the double post but does anyone know when you become a master of sneak? I'm a level 105 in sneak and I'm still an expert.

[ShadedNine]

Sorry about the double post but does anyone know when you become a master of sneak? I'm a level 105 in sneak and I'm still an expert.

Are you modding? Because in vanilla, all your skills stop at 100, which is also 'master' level.

[Kyle Static]

Sorry about the double post but does anyone know when you become a master of sneak? I'm a level 105 in sneak and I'm still an expert.

Yeh..choo are a liar mang...now I'm gonna cut you..:cool:

[swivel]

Sorry about the double post but does anyone know when you become a master of sneak? I'm a level 105 in sneak and I'm still an expert.

Take off any items you are wearing that increase your sneak skill, like the Blue Suede Shoes of Sneaking, or any Rings of Treachery. Then you can see what your skill really is.

[J4320]

Lol I hadn't checked back on this thread. Yeah I noticed that my skill went down when I took off my shrouded armor from the Dark Brotherhood. It was boosting my sneak by 10.

I was getting pissed when I was at level 109 and I was wondering if I'd ever be a master and all and then I hit 110 and I leveled up to master.

And no, I'm not modding. I did kind of cheat though... I taped my controller forward behind this guard and I was getting free sneak skill. I didn't really care though because it's just the same as sneaking around all day and I don't have time for that.

[Kyle Static]

And no, I'm not modding. I did kind of cheat though... I taped my controller forward behind this guard and I was getting free sneak skill. I didn't really care though because it's just the same as sneaking around all day and I don't have time for that.

I confess to that as well. I did that with my previous character, but I just restarted. I thought it was cool at the time...but when I could crouch in a corner and shoot an enemy to death with arrows without them even knowing where I was...."Sneak Attack 4x Damage!" it just got boring. Figure I'll play it straight this time....except for the speechcraft skill.....mwuaha.