Phi's Carefree Leveling

Optimal vanilla leveling for OpenMW 0.48+

OpenMW 0.48

Grab everything in the 0.48 folder

OpenMW 0.49 or later

For OpenMW 0.49+ grab everything in the "0.49 or later" folder

TES3MP

The TES3MP version is in the pclmp folder. Theres a separate README for TES3MP in there.

What it does

Vanilla Leveling but always optimal, no more worrying about optimizing skill leveling, no more prioritizing endurance early on if you don't want to.

In a nutshell, this keeps track of skill increases and levelups and recalculates your attributes and health to be what they would be if you had leveled optimally (+5 to 3 attributes every level (or 2 and luck), prioritize endurance first during the low levels to maximize health gain)

This means you can just play without worrying about optimizing your skill and attribute increases to occur in a certain order.

To be specific, this mod:

• keeps track of your skill increases
• Keeps track of your level ups and which attributes you increase
• If you choose an attribute on leveling up, that attribute's "cap" is raised by 5 points
• when an attribute is below it's cap, if there have been 2 or more skill increases in a relevant skill, it is increased (and those skill increases are used up)
• unlike vanilla, unused skill increases carry over to future levelups
• (optional) recalculates your health as if you had prioritized endurance for the early levels.
• (optional) lets you get +2 or +3 luck per level if your other attributes are maxed out (i.e. if you select speed,strength,luck but strength is already at 100, you'll get 2 luck, if strength and speed were both at 100, you'd get 3 luck)
• (there's also an off-by-default setting to just increase luck gain, so you can get +2,+3,+4, or even +5 luck when it's chosen. This is the only setting that is an actual departure from what is possible in vanilla morrowind, but I thought some players might want it)

for example

• You start the game with 40 Strength, 50 Speed, 40 Luck
• You level up a major skill (athletics) 10 times and rest to level up
• You select speedx5, strengthx1, luckx1
• You now have 40 strength, 55 (+5!) speed and 41 luck
• (note that your strength did not yet increase since you haven't leveled any strength skills)
• (You have 5 banked strength)
• You level up acrobatics +1
• You level up acrobatics again +1, your strength increases to 41
• You level up acrobatics 8 more times, strength is now 45
• you level up acrobatics 20 times (no attribute increases yet)
• you level up athletics 10 times, rest and level up
• you choose strength, speed and luck again
• your strength increases to 50, your speed to 60, and your luck to 42
• the remaining 10 acrobatics increases are still tracked, and will be applied if/when you select strength on a level up again

Installation and Use

REQUIRES OPENMW 0.48 OR HIGHER

REQUIRES A FRESH SAVE TO WORK. The scripts should just ignore old saves (though you will get a message about missing data).

see: https://openmw.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/modding/mod-install.html

TL;DR: if you download this mod such that the carefree_leveling.omwscripts has the path: OpenMW Mods/Phi's Carefree Leveling/carefree_leveling.omwscripts

(where OpenMW Mods is the path to your openmw mods folder)

you'd just need to edit your openmw.cfg and add two lines to the end of it:

data="OpenMW Mods/Phi's Carefree Leveling"

content=carefree_leveling.omwscripts

Press P to toggle the status menu (key changable in the "Scripts" options in game)

The status menu shows attributes with queued increases (i.e. if you level governed skills it will increase) as well as skill ups (2 skill ups gives you 1 attribute point)

Settings

In game, in the "Scripts" options, you can turn off retroactive health and retroactive luck, you can also change the luck multiplier, and which key is used to open the status menu (default is P).

You can also set the status menu horizontal and vertical alignment. I can add more options if anyone needs it.

The way I previously used to make the status menu draggable stopped working at some point and I don't have the inclination to fix that right now (hence the alignment settings), but pull requests are welcome.

About Bittercup

Technically, in vanilla morrowind it is possible to minmax health by using Bittercup to increase endurance early on. This mod's "Retroactive Health" does not take bittercup into account, so if you're going this route, this mod won't help you with that. I feel like rushing bittercup is against the carefree goal of this mod but if anyone desperately wants an option to handle calculating that correctly It's not out of the question. To be clear, drinking from bittercup shouldn't cause any problems, it just will essentially count as if you had chosen the raised attribute on 4 level ups instead of the lowered one. (which in some sense ruins the point of drinking it - since the only utility I can see would be rushing endurance - but shouldn't break anything) if you do encounter a bug (related to bittercup or otherwise) please let me know.