Major->Misc skills exchange through save file edit try, messed with Leveling up..

[ruthan]

Hi,
i found out, that my skills arent what is easy to level up.. So i tried edited Save file, its plain text, if it will work.
I simply exchanged:

"careerTemplate": {
..

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"MajorSkill2": "Restoration",
"MajorSkill3": "Alternation",

for:

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"MajorSkill2": "Jumping",
"MajorSkill3": "Climbing",

It looked as working, all was replaced in Character screen, skills were progressing fine when i used them.. but it messed with leveling up..
When i click on - Level progress before sleep - i see - 86%, after i sleep and get some skills increase messages im back on 13%.. So something is wrong.. (update: its not, but you have to understand why, see bellow )

So its more complicated, there are other values to adjust, some synergy, some arrays, objects, collections connected etc.. unless this is some other know leveling bug.

My guess could be "skillUses": [ part.. some number could now overflow.. because order of skills is now different.. // there are not labels for these values..

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 "skillUses": [
                44,
                11,
                12,
                58,
                ..
                

Update: Not a case, its probably protected from overflow.. Or i did not hit such scenario, order its the same as order of skills values, in case you would need to edit it for some other reason.

Other place could be, but checked old saves and it looked similar:
Now, still im still on level 5:

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"startingLevelUpSkillSum": 180,
            "currentLevelUpSkillSum": 225,

But it seems fine..

Before edit, i was on level 5, values from old save, i did not edited it:

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"startingLevelUpSkillSum": 180,
            "currentLevelUpSkillSum": 229,

I did not edit skills values, i part bellow, because i dont mind to levels Climbing and Jumping and a bit higher Restoration and Alternation.
Update: I should, it created this problem, see post bellow..
Beside i wasnt sure what is actually Major and Minor skills bonus to substract it and readd it?
Majors are + 10 or +15?
Minor + 5 or +10?
To make my changes more fair and clean..

You need to edit this part too:

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  },
            "skills": {
                "Medical": 16,
                "Etiquette": 28,
                "Streetwise": 21,
                "Jumping": 30,
                "Orcish": 6,
                "Harpy": 4,
                .. // another 30 kills list values
                

[ruthan]

Other option is that i dont fully understand leveling formula and it was just updated because new values.. decrease from 86% percent to 26% its right.. (Update: It was the case.)

Formula is here:
https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Daggerfall:Lev ... Leveling_2

I have lots of skills (all Primary, Major and highest Minor ready to increase) ready to increase sleep, expect level up dialog, but no level up dialog and level progress is decreased rapidly.I have no idead how its that 86% percent value actually calculated, i checked save file for such value, but found nothing..

Formula from link above:
L = floor((S − S0 + 28)/15)
S = the sum of the three Primary Skills, the two highest Major Skills, and the highest Minor Skill
S0 = the value of S at the time of character creation. Note that the skills may be different.

Before sleeping:
Primary skills: 45,41,38
Major: 43,30,15
Highest Minor: 28
-----
Using formula above:
S=124+73+28=225
S1=180 // Number from save file see above
- I saw these values somewhere, now i understand
Level=(225-180+28)/15 = 4.86 // I saw thing number 86% somewhere too..

Now i understand how it is calculated:) im actually overleveled for my stats, because my edits..
I should be level 4, im level 5.. because i have lower values of my skills - 3 primary +2 highest major + and 1 highest minor skills sum, that before edit.. all its right from game logic.. Level is sort of hard coded, its not checked back for some crazy edits So there is nothing like level back check or even level rollback. Developers can add to level progress dialog check, if you LVL is align with with level calculation and add some funny a bit of cheating message into it:)

Now question is if game is robust enough to handle this mess (it could be avoided by replacing skills values too) with between skills values and character level.. It not crashed, it seems that after sleeping im actually proper level 5.. with progress 26% to level 6 and i dont leveled twice, what would be bug... Big question is if would progress on level 6, I think that i would be fine..

If it will work, i will need a bit more grinding to get level 6, and i will probably reach higher max lvl level because my major skills are lower, than should be..

If you want to avoid this.. not just exchange skill names, but also their values, that part is a bit bellow primary/major skills definition (see first post).

This is just interesting exercise, yes original edit seemed to work (until i wrongly expected Level Up dialog), i would lost 10 hours of gameplay in worst case, but maybe this will help others too

[ruthan]

Just for info i progressed to LVL6 fine, so all its good.