Did you do the quest in which you have to get a dagger called Nettlebane from a hagraven? Try doing that at a low level. You gonna get scorched. Although they are weak in close combat.

Also, some people send hired thugs after you if you steal something. When at a low level 3 of those guys can frick you up.

Well... it may be my awesome sword (an elven sword that lets me absorb 11 health on every strike), but a blood dragon landed near Riften's gate and I owned him... that said, there were 3 horses and 4 NPCs, but I guess that it was a lesser one. Looked small.

They really did learn absolutely nothing from Oblivion and Morrowind in regard to level scalling.

20 hours in, I grinded Pickpocket (pickpocket all the things), Lockpick (riften thives guild, master chest) and Smithing (about 200 iron daggers) to 100, while doing a few sidequests. 3x100 skill gave be about level 30.

The consequence? The enemies eat me for breakfast, because my armor skill and 1hand skill are so low I barely scratch them.

Fail Bethesda, simple, truly utter failure.

have you encountered the mage draugrs? they're pretty tough, much tougher than the normal warrior draugrs in the draugr dungeons.


To the person above me, I recommend lowering the difficulty for a few levels and training or leveling up a combat skill. (and then returning the difficulty back to what you had it at, once youre done gaining a dozen or two dozen skillups in a combat skill)
That's why bethesda put things like skill training in the game, so you have control over your progression if you need it.

Lol the game isn't that bad for the leveling system. It's just that I wanna be a jack of all trades cuz I love the new magic stuff and dual wield and I love how they just put it as one handed and two handed so I can use axes/maces whenever I want. I like bows too. The combat system is a little shaky though, feels realistic and harder. Trolls and mammoths just stomp on me. If there is enough people, like forlorn ppl, i could get killed quick. good balance.

I skipped Fallout altoghether. Skyrim is still in the mail and I want to ask a few things related to leveling.

First, I read the following statement, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111111135135AA1XucI. Is it true that Skyrim leveling work just like Fallout?


Another couple questions about difficulty setting. (edit: simplified)

Does the difficulty setting only affect the "toughness" of enemies (as in Oblivion's damage multipliers related to NPC)?

Does it also affect the Player (as in regeneration, bonuses and the like)?

It seems to be - the main difference being that with Oblivion - no matter where you went the world scaled with you. With Fallout 3, on the other hand, once you visited a region the difficulty would be set at the level. I think it actually worse than Oblivion only because it doesn't really remove the illusion that you are always the toughest thing out there.

As you know the http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/820948-scaling-overhaul-comparison/ no need to repeat, but I could see an unleveled overhaul like TIE being very desirable.

As for Fallout3 overhauls the one that got into really addressing level scaling was Marts Mutant Mod (surprised he has not shown up yet). MMM had these options (cut and pasted from its readme):
Note that even this info is slightly outdated as the last version had ingame menus for adjusting the degree of unleveling.

So far difficulty only seemed to be adjusting the damage formula - I haven't experimented much with it.

No Attributes though Just skills and what was in Oblivion Derived attributes (health magicka fatigue), so I don't know how the damage formula is even done now.

That's definitely a matter of opinion. What you're saying is a lockpicking, pick picketing blacksmith should be on par with someone that is more combat orientated. To me that would be bad design. But I can understand where you're coming from given that the levelling system artificially emphasises it.

I comlpetely agree with you, Psymon, about locked leveling for visited regions. It is absurd. One upside is that you may encounter rather different spawns in another play through. However, the downside is that fake illusion of invincibility. It completely ruins it. The game should be varied but not at the expense of locking everything in one go. There is still room for variety, as in mixing more powerful spawns while keeping a couple weak spawns alongside.

Just like Phitt, I am starting to understand the urgency of a leveling mod.

BTW, thanks for the references Psymon

God no!

This was the single worst thing for me in Oblivion. Surely they haven't made the same freakin' mistake again!?

No, I'm saying the leveling system is utterly broken this way. I was grinding the 3 skills, because I wanted to see the stats of glass and dragon armors. And I wanted the perk where I got the 50% chance for better loot. Since I've been stealing & fencing stuff of like crazy to finance my grind I got pickpocket to 100.

Which means I did all 30 levels almost completely combat-less, save a few examples. Now I was ready to go out and really start the game, and I couldn't. I couldnt kill any enemy. Bandits vanished, they've been replaced by Marauders, and Chiefs.

In short: I can't do [censored], I have to restart the whole game and ditch the 3 grinded skills, becaus otherwise I stand no chance at all, if I don't want to cheat via tgm.

This is the crux of the matter, enemies scale based on level and level does not equal combat prowess.
If you level like Phitt solely through your main combat ability (2 handed). your enemies are scaled roughly to die to your blade. If you want to do any other activities in this game you start to lose the power race against enemies. This is not "gimping" yourself, as has been offhandedly said; this is playing however you want to, I shouldn't be punished with insurmountable odds for pickpocketing entire towns, or wanting to explore the various crafting systems.

Even if the players logic runs like this. I want to craft to get powerful / enchanted weapons and armour to give me an edge in combat, they are actually losing out, because the perks in this game give far more power than item quality or enchantment.

There may be many ways to approach this problem.

• either create a major / minor skill divide, which lessens or removes the effect non-combat skills have on level.

I don't particularly like this idea. It takes away some of the immediate satisfaction from levelling these misc skills, and may potentially be a lot of work.

• Or make enemy scaling use a behind the scenes number calculated from the sum of the players combat skills.

This way the players get an appropriate challenge since much of their power lies in the level of their combat skills, without the enemies being obviously tied to their level.

• redistribute some of a characters power out of perks to skill / equipment.

To some extent this would work, because almost all remaining levelable skills tie in some way to combat. however there would still be great potential for the ideal situation to be missed completely.

That is one major problem with level scaling. And that's why I personally prefer static levels, which would be option number 3 (and basically what I'm asking for). If enemy levels are location based only and completely independent from player level it doesn't matter which skills you raise. Just fight enemies you can defeat and leave tough enemies alone until you can defeat them, using whatever skill set is available to you.

I know that some people say static enemies push you in a direction and take away from the freedom of exploring the world. I don't think so. It all depends where the really tough enemies are. I would put them in remote areas far away from civilization so you don't stumble over them while following the main road from Whiterun to Solitude. And personally I don't want to be able to explore the whole world with my level 1 character. That was one of the main reasons why I thought vanilla Oblivion was incredibly boring. The only difference between the various regions was the type of trees you could see. That has nothing to do with freedom, more with boredom.

I guess some mild level scaling in areas close to roads/cities and (more or less) static enemies in remote locations and dungeons would be the best way to go - for me at least.

I find static levels never works well in open world games.

When I first played Oblivion I had to mod it as I did not like the scaling, I thought MW static approach was much better. But after playing Fallout 3, I realized that scaling was good if used properly. OB overdid. In MW after level 20 something the challenge ended. But I still did not think it was a must, now after playing Fallout New Vegas, I think scaling is a must for open world rpgs. In linear rpgs there is scaling by default, as you progress the weapons/armor get better, the beast get harder,etc But with the open world design you lose that with out scaling(level range scaling) that sense of progression.

Also encounters are less fun because there either too hard or too easy. In Morrowind the battle system was not great so it mattered less but as combat gets better is matters more and more. Take Oblivion for example, I recently tried playing Nerhim(?). When I started out the monsters were easy and I just bashed the attack button as fast as I could, I thought to myself well I guess Oblivions combat has not aged well I use to think it was the best rpg combat out there, oh well. Then later on I fought some stronger guys and suddenly things changed, no longer was I spamming the attack button but now I was using the block button, dodging attacks, trying to figure out the best time to use a strong attack or perhaps some quick weak attack spamming is enough to finish this guy off. Skyrim will use an even more elborate system than Oblivion, I don't want to spend my time spamming the weak attack in Skyrim because I have reached x level and everything is a joke, nor do I want to be confined to a small area of the world because if I go any were else I will die in one hit.

Now as I said at the start Oblivion did not do scaling well(I used frans mod). Total scaling is bad, but I think the way Skyrim is going, using a level range scaling system like Fallout 3 is good.

These are my main reasons for scaling:

-Surprise factor during replay, if all chest are static you learn whats in them and you lose a lot of the fun factor in finding them.

-Better challenge curve, things don't become lame when you reach x level. Even the best combat system is lame if everything is a pushover. And you don't get overly frustrated by everything being to hard.

-Better loot curve, as you get better you get better stuff, long ago when I was a console player I was really into the Final Fantasy games, and it was great the steady progression of better and better stuff. This was lost in MW, great more crap, oh whats this, more crap,etc

But we don't want to go overboard like Oblivion, I want a system that still does stuff similar to more static systems like:

-Sense of getting more powerful, its always a lot of fun squashing some beast that a few hours earlier you had to run for your life from.

-It adds a great dynamic of risk/reward, you take a risk and get rewarded appropriately. Like in MW were you managed to sneak past tons of powerful beasts, then found a cool new sword for all your trouble.

-Realism/immersion makes me feel more like this is a living world that would function whether I am there or not.(though when I was younger I never understood why as I went through a linear rpg each new area always had stronger beasts and better loot)

So to get all this a level ranged scaling system like Skyrim will use seems best. Fallout 3 had hand placed loot and tough encounters & places yet gave you a lot of freedom from the start. And no scaled unique items, which is absurd.

I don't have much of any problem with the level scaling. Like others have said, go say "hello" to a giant, and see if everything's too easy for you. I've had to use a fair number of health potions so far, but mostly just on boss fights.

The leveling speed however, should be slowed considerably. I'm glad the cap isn't 30. I am a little disappointed that the second level perks require 30 skill. With leveling so fast, you're jumping through the levels, but your skills aren't going up all that fast. So I have several unspent points for perks because the skills aren't up to snuff yet.

Beth's leveling speed is always way to fast, its fine for most players that won't ever reach 100 hours, but otherwise not good. I always use a level slowing mod.

I wish there was still the major/minor skills of old as that helped to reduce the potential of Sounaipr situation.

Level scaling has been something of a staple in bethesda games, they have gotten better at doing it, but it is really irritating. However to be fair many prefer the scaling system and that is where bethesda should be thanked for aiding the modding community by providing a toolkit in order to fix/customise the game to the individuals taste.
How many times have you played a game and found a feature that....... svcks.... and that has basically ruined the game from your POV and then wished or wondered why the game developers didn't release a toolkit for it? I know i have, and its a common occurrence.


So hopefully the toolkit gets released soon and we can tailor our skyrims and their leveling systems and the scaling to our tastes.

I know this sounds dumb but if you haven't done this already double check your difficulty. I've had it reset on me to the original setting.

I posted a thread as an attempt to get a "de-scaling" project going, but no one seems to care so I'll just post some of my thoughts here.

Morrowind: Leveling was pretty much unrestricted, and you could reach several tens of levels higher than the hardest enemy since everything was static. Everything got one-shotted when you reached ~80.
Oblivion: They tried to solve this by adjusting everything to your level. It was obviously a crap idea and ruined all fun, hence all the mods tinkering with the scaling.
Skyrim: They solved Morrowind's problem by implementing a new leveling system that caps the player's level at ~50 (if I remember what Beth said correctly), but they still kept the scaling! Why? Surely the problems encountered in Morrowind were solved by the new leveling system? Why do they still scale things?

Considering all the time that was spent on mods trying to fix the scaling in Oblivion, we should just do it right from the beginning this time and remove scaling in dungeons completely. There are 150 dungeons in the game, and with 5 or so people it would be a reasonable workload to get it done in not too long. Simply go through every dungeon and replace scaled items and enemies with static ones (also, enemies with proper names; no "bandit" or "bandit chief" but actual names as in Morrowind). The first thing needed would be to make a list of every dungeon and add all necessary information:

What quests take place here?
Where is it located? Near a city or on a remote mountaintop?
Does it have some kind of a connection with other dungeons?
What's the back-story?

...and based on that decide on what level to base it around. Dungeons that are supposed to contain legendary artefacts (such as the dungeon in Meridia's quest) should be really difficult, at least level 50, and the artefact should be a static item that is truly legendary. Meanwhile, things like bandit encampments near major cities should be low-level cannon-fodder for the early levels, with a last boss that has maybe some bits and bobs on him that a low level character would like to equip.

I think this would make the game a million times more enjoyable. I'm already sick of going through dungeons and finding that the final boss is named a generic "Bandit Chief" and drops an "X of Y" item (Leather helm of Fire for example) that has been scaled to my level. There is nothing exciting at all finding some crap like that as a reward for your struggles. It's vendor-crap in 90% of the cases.

*wave* Pseron!

I initially scaled back to novice just because I was having a hard time getting used to the UI and controls and didn't want to get smacked too hard while I was fiddling with the keys, but after the first couple of fights realized that was way too easy. Bumped it up a notch. Then another. It seems to me like everything Adept and below is practically the same. I don't like hard games much, but this is just too easy. I'm going to try at some harder settings when I get back in the game.

M'Aiq I totally agree with you. Can't wait for the tools.

the scaling is not that bad if you ask me. acutally beth did a GOOD job this time. no emeny disappears. but stronger enemys start to appear together with the weak ones later. thats ALL.

i am lvl 28 right now. i am STILL encountering normal bandits and draugrs and skeletons in some dungeons were i have NEVER been before. funny i havent meet a single dragon yet^^ i think because i abadoned the mainquest even before talking to the jarl of whiterun.

i have only one skill at 100 which is smithing and smithing is totally op i think^^. my only other skills are heavy armor (65) and one handed (60)

i dont believe what the above posters are talking about.

if you are not able to kill a single maraudur with FULL deadra gear which can be aquired whitout FIGHTING at ALL through smithing. then you are doing something wrong even without perks this gear is strong sure WITH perks it would be stronger but the enemeys are still killable you may have to be a bit more carefal at the start yeah but thats it.

sure you WILL take a while to lvl some of your combat skills. but not that long. and what about your perk points of these 30 levels? if you put ALL of that points in these 3 threes then you are an idiot because you must have taken nearly ANY perk there.

not all perks are really needed. in smithing focus on ONE armor type side. not both if you want to see the armors save skill the perk make the gear LOOK at it and reload after dragon armor is not needed if you have deadra. jack of all trades is still possible but not with ALL good perks for every three LOOK at the perk threes before skillung them. a veteran of the series shouldent have problems to decide which perks fit his style of play.

saying you are STUCK because you didnt lvl combat skills is a flat out LIE. you can still continue. the lower creatures dont disappear like they did in oblivion. you just have to be a bit careful until your combat skills have reached a higher lvl.

please guys PLAY some more before you cry for a level scaling fix.

the ITEM SCALING is completly GONE guys. sure there is a bit of randomness when it comes to the chests but thats not a big deal.

I'm a fan of completely UNSCALED overhauls, since I prefered TIE, OWCND and WAC in Oblivion.

Heres to hoping we get a TIE for Skyrim soon

Hmm. It may be a case of how focused ones' combat skills are.

I'm a bit of a generalist, and I keep being excited by all the options.... so I've got Smithing, Alchemy, Lockpicking, Resto, One-hand, Archery, Block, Light Armor, Speech, and Sneak all in progress. Only a few skills above 30. Just hit level 14-15. Made an Elven armor to go with my Fine Leather. Superior Skyforged Steel sword, Fine Imperial Bow, resist fire Elven Shield. I think the most perks in any one skill is One-hand (2x Armsman, Fighting Stance).

Except for some sneak bow attacks on lesser mobs, and swinging a sword at rats, I've not one-shot anything. Typical minion takes 3-4+ swings (plus the attendant blocking). Bosses (at least the ones that don't just wipe me out without effort) are long battles involving healing up from low health one or more times.

Oh, and this is at normal difficulty.