About level-ing

[Big Yager]

Im a bit confused about the leveling aspect of Morrowind. Its
suggested that you should at least gain 10 points in your Major/Minor
skills, and also gain 10 points in your Misc skills before you level
up to maximize the bonus you will receive. Am I reading that right?

[Tobias Küster]

Post by Big Yager
Im a bit confused about the leveling aspect of Morrowind. Its
suggested that you should at least gain 10 points in your Major/Minor
skills, and also gain 10 points in your Misc skills before you level
up to maximize the bonus you will receive. Am I reading that right?

You need 10 Points in your Major/Minor Skills to level up.
Every Skill has a related Attribute (e.g. Strength for Blunt Weapon).
You can distribute 3 points to your attributes every time you level up.
These points have a x2(x3,x4,x5)-multiplier when you raised 1 (5,8,10)
skills related to that attribute, no matter wheather the skill is major,
minor or misc.
So you can train 10 misc-skills related for the three attributes you
want to spend your points on and you will have three x5-multipliers (an
so 15 points in total).
But don't bother with level-up-managing, it doesn't pay. Later in the
game you will be strong enough (even too strong), no matter how you
play. Just play, sleep, make a surprised face and contribute your points
with 2 x2 and maybe one x3-multiplier, that's not a bad result.

[Peter Strempel]

Post by Tobias Küster
But don't bother with level-up-managing, it doesn't pay. Later in the
game you will be strong enough (even too strong)

I agree. It tends to spoil the game when you hit all those 100 stats at
a relatively low level (30 or so). That's usually the time to trash a
character because he is demigod.

I'm currently playing with the Levelling mod (from TheLys webpage),
which addresses this problem nicely. You still gain stats about the same
speed as without the mod, but only those you really use. My Nightblade
seriously lacks strength and endurance, as the Nightblade class (vanilla
one, not customized) has no strength/endurance related major/minor
skills. That makes a sucky close combat character with low hitpoints,
and overall the game way more interesting. On the contrary, I shortly
tried a warrior char with the levelling mod (though didn't play far),
and while he kicked serious ass in battle, he couldn't really cast
anything more than the most puny spells. No more "get cash, train
restoration, get 3 x 5 willpower points" to beef up the magical stats.

I can highly recommand this mod, it makes the game more difficult and
forces the player to stick more to the role of the character.


Peter

[Rick Cavalla]

Post by Big Yager
Im a bit confused about the leveling aspect of Morrowind. Its
suggested that you should at least gain 10 points in your Major/Minor
skills, and also gain 10 points in your Misc skills before you level
up to maximize the bonus you will receive. Am I reading that right?

Getting lots of x5 bonuses is not particularly important in the overall
scheme of things. Going from level 22 to 23 is not much harder or more time
consuming than going from level 2 to 3, so you will be raising levels fairly
consistently and gaining attribute points regularly. Even if you only gain
2 or 3 points at a time, they will add up soon enough for you to complete
the game.

Now, if you really want to know how to get x5 multipliers:

As soon as get 10 Major or Minor skills raised, you level up the next time
you sleep. The bonus is based on what skills you actually raised, and their
underlying attributes. The bonus is skill raise / 2. So if you raise
Mercantile (underlying attribute = Personality) 7 times between levels, you
get 7 / 2 = 3.5 bonus. It always rounds down, though, so you would get an
actual bonus of x3. If you also raised Speechcraft (another
Personality-derived skill) 3 times, you would get another x1.5 (rounded down
to x1), for a x3 + x1 = x4 bonus to Personality.

For Misc. Skills, the maximum bonus you can get is x2. So if you have
Athletics as a misc skill, and raised it 47 times between levels, you still
only get a x2 bonus to Speed. If you also raised Short Blade 47 times as a
misc skill, that would be another x2 to Speed, for a total of x4.

I hope that is correct. The formula may be slightly different, but this is
close enough for all practical purposes.

[Greg Johnson]

Post by Rick Cavalla
For Misc. Skills, the maximum bonus you can get is x2. So if you have
Athletics as a misc skill, and raised it 47 times between levels, you still
only get a x2 bonus to Speed. If you also raised Short Blade 47 times as a
misc skill, that would be another x2 to Speed, for a total of x4.

There was originally a cap on the misc skills, but it was removed in one
of the early patches. Now they give you exactly the same bonuses as your
major skills.

[The Horny Goat]

Post by Big Yager
Im a bit confused about the leveling aspect of Morrowind. Its
suggested that you should at least gain 10 points in your Major/Minor
skills, and also gain 10 points in your Misc skills before you level
up to maximize the bonus you will receive. Am I reading that right?

Essentially each skill is associated with an attribute (strength,
intelligence, wisdom etc.)

When you level you gain attribute points based on how many skill
boosts you've earned since the last time you levelled.
1 = +1 attribute point gain
2-3 = +2 attribute point gain
4-6 = +3 attribute point gain
7-9 = +4 attibute point gain
10+ = +5 attribute point gain.

Since you also gain hit points per level (and gain more if endurance
is higher) if you were to gain say 50 endurance points then 50
strength or intelligence points your character would end up with more
hit points than if he/she gained the intelligence/strength first and
endurance later. That's why it's useful to gain those endurance points
in your first few level gains. You CAN win the basic game with a level
10-15 character if you're good and with a level 20 character if you're
not. If you wait till level 30 before finishing the main quest you're
probably finding it easier than you should be.

(I've done all of the above on difficulty 100 - well finishing the
main quest at level 11 and finishing the Bloodmoon main quest at level
13 though the latter was done on minimum difficulty at least in the
werewolf maze that is the last part of the BM main quest.)