Wow, I misunderstood the book exchange!
I thought the book exchange was to exchange Magazines so you could collect 12 to craft a +1 periodical from.
I didn't realize it was to exchange the actual +4 (with Comprehension) skill books.......
I think I'd better start reading the Readme.txts a bit better.

Actually, that's probably a better alternative, instead of being able to exchange skill books, exchange magazines,
because I'm having a heck of a time finding 12 of ANY magazine, I'd rather exchange magazines I keep finding that
I don't need the skill boost from anymore, and exchange them for magazines that I'd like to collect 12 of and get a +1 bonus to skill.

Or does the mod already do that too? :biggrin:

It's alright. How you craft Annuals is that you take 12 skill mags to a workbench when you have the Librarian of the Wastes perk. Exchanging skill books is right off the bat I believe.

The mod doesn't do what you state. However, exchanging magazines can also be overpowered as well. For instance, the Locksmith Reader skill mag. You can keep the mags, simply get your Lockpick up to 80, and obtain enough for you to lockpick every single Very Hard lockpick vanilla, which there aren't too many. Of course, like with skill books, I would suggest a "Used" variant for balance. Possibly cut it down by half, making Used skill mags +5, +10 with Comprehension. Or a bit higher.

Honestly, this is a very hard system to get balanced. Whenever Antistar gets onto his second playthrough, I'll be waiting for the next update so that my next character can be less of a beast.

Well, if the skill book exchange was changed to the magazine exchange, and the +10 bonus was removed from the magazines, and
you had to get 12 in order to make a book that gave you +1 to a skill, could be a work-around for "magazine abuse" :biggrin:

FWIW, My character is a beast and I've never used the book exchange, of course she's level 20 now, but I focus on two skills
at a time, so if I get 17 skill points per level or 15 per level, I'll put 8 or 7 (respectivley) into 2 skills, and use the extra 1 to slowly build
a third skill in preparation of maxing the 2 skills.

I use XFO accuracy, so a low Gun skill really svcks

How my post works, it's more or less +5 without comprehension, +10 with. That means it'll take 60 skill mags to completely compensate for the "Used" variant without comprehension, double with. Honestly, it's a bit rough but it sounds viable to be balanced. Or as you said a "Work-Around", albeit, a hefty "Work-Around". :wink_smile:

Ah, so that's where the difference is. Personally don't like overhaul mods all that much. While they're quite modular, I still feel that all the base game needed was a few adjustments and I would be content with it, primarily XP rates. Only overhaul mod I've used was OOO in Oblivion, simply because I liked Morrowind's perspective a lot more in terms of enemies and scaling.

I happened to see a mod pop up on the Nexus just the other day that let you swap one skill magazine for another. I didn't look at it closely, but it should be compatible with LOTW.

Further on balancing; thanks for the continued thoughts and discussion; I will take it all into consideration. However with all the different character builds possible in this game, ways to power-game (or not), and then all the ways things can be changed with other mods, it is going to be impossible to please everyone.

I only use a couple from XFO, basically the overhaul esp's that make it tougher for ME...

With Oblivion, I'm using FCOM with OOO, MMM and Francescos and something else too....
I better back up my data folder, because I don't even remember what I did to get it to all work...

As far as Morrowind......hehehe, I've got a character currently on hold in Balmora with the GOTY edition, punching rats,
After playing FO3 and Oblivion, then getting the GOTY copy of Morrowind (because I was too lazy to hunt down
my original CD's and do all the updates) I forgot how hard and unforgiving Morrwind is on new characters...

Back on topic, I became a fan of Antistar when I decided to look for something new for FO3, and tried
his WMK mod, then he came out with WMX, so I tried that too, and I really like this Librarian Mod, it's pretty original,
I'm hoping for some new recipes like maybe an "Increase Critical Chance" recipe, or maybe even recipes that can be used once,
or (limited to Endurance and how many other enhancements you've already added to yourself) that can boost a S.P.E.C.I.A.L.
by +1, maybe only once, it depends (read further down for why I said "It depends"), like the bobbleheads did in FO3.

A possibility to really earn that +1 to a SPECIAL might be to collect 12 of each Magazine that the SPECIAL skill enhances...
So in order to get a +1 in Agility, you'd have to collect 12 Magazines of the Guns Magazine, and the Sneak magazine and combine them
to add a +1 to Agility etc....
(I think Strength is the only SPECIAL that only affects ONE skill...'Melee')... but all the others, with the exception of Luck affect TWO skills
Luck could maybe be like 6 of EVERY skill magazine in order to increase Luck +1. considering Luck affects all the skills in a small way.

Actually that Idea, kind of Polices itself, because there are only so many skill mags in the game anyway, so
if you decide to go and boost luck by +3, you're going to need to sacrifice 18 of every skill book there is, which
will leave you short for abusing the magazines to boost the other SPECIAL's

EDIT: open parentheses

Increase Critical Chance recipe? Well, just get 12 True Police Stories and there ya go. Obtaining 12 though, without exploiting vendors, is a whole other story. It would be interesting to see recipes for SPECIAL's, even if they're one time use. Though, I fear for exploiting vendors, especially for Intelligence as that can be easily obtained once you donate enough to the FotA, then Farkas opens up her skill mag collection that respawns every time you go into that dialogue tree. All three skills that Intelligence governs, Repair, Science, and Medicine, all have their mags in that cycle, as well as Charisma's.

The way to offset this though, is to combine it with the chems that you make from campfires, or really rare ones. I honestly thought that was an excellent idea as that limits getting most of the chems you can make from the workbench until mid-late game. Heck, I even didn't have enough ingredients to make all of them in one go and this was on a character that rarely used chems. While I did believe I said they could be lowered a tad, I now think something like the Carry Weight or DT ones should be that strict, simply because they increase a vital part of any character's setup. Something like resistances, depending on which one, could go either way, more stricter or less.

@Antistar:

I think the best way to balance this mod, to the best of yours, and possibly our, abilities, if you decide to consider our thoughts into balancing it further, is for you to simply balance it in relation to how you play and go from there. Finding a balance without some sort of base is merely impossible. So while, I hate to you label you a guinea pig, you somewhat dictate how this mod will develop. Don't worry though, I'll make a guinea pig out of myself and start a new character when an update comes, so the feeling will be mutual... I hope.

Oh, I didn't even realize that Julie Farkas or other vendors sold Magazines, I thought there was a finite amount,
I'm too busy looking for the word "MOD", to notice any magazine titles :biggrin:
As this is my first play through using hardcoe, the Ox-Inate has been a life saver for my character, and I have my strength at 8, and took the Strong Back perk,
and now have 5 doses of Ox-Inate and I'm still close to being Encumbered. (I didn't realize ammo weighed something in hardcoe), so no more
toting around 3000+ rounds of EVERYTHING for me this time through.

I don't know how hard or easy it is, as I'm no scripter, but Advanced Recon Tech and Armor has an in-game menu where you can set your options
such as Night vision using Energy Cells for power or not, and how many minutes of power each cell should provide etc...
It also has a small option choice at installation per FOMOD asking how much stealth do you want the armor to provide etc..

So a real nice feature would be an in-game object that opens a menu where you can set your own personal preferences such as
"How many points do you want Ox-inate to add to your carry weight?" +10, +5, +2, +1 etc.....
LOL, Of course we're sitting here thinking up a whole bunch of work and scripting for Antistar

First experience with hardcoe you say? Honestly, I've had it on since early-mid November over the span of half a dozen characters. I know ammo management pretty nicely. Hint: Take Pack Rat. If you want to carry around ample ammunition, that IS your lifesaver. It's not as useful non-hardcoe, but unless you're running with Large Guns 24/7, it's a great perk on hardcoe, even greater than Strong Back in my opinion. Using both of them in unison is the best way to go though, best of both worlds you could say.

Heh, too true @ the last statement. Though, this mod is probably best off with just one setting. I think that there should be mods that add unique content but yet still offer balance to the average player on one setting. Project Nevada for instance with it's Cyberware. It limits your implants to 8 and offers a variety of implants to choose from. Of course, there's the somewhat-overkill quadruple Kinetic Accelerator setup but that's after taking a great amount of effort to get them, if you're playing a new game. So the end reward is being overpowered, again somewhat, but the journey to get there was long, unlike leveling skills with vanilla XP for me...

I believe that same balance can be achieved here, given enough effort to put towards it. I have high hopes for it because it can greatly expand role play options as well. My current character's doses were strictly just HP, AP and Resistance types. That's just who she is as a character. Maybe my next character will be DT, some resistances, half carry, half HP. The choices are there for great customization of characters.

I only use the Ox-Inate and Radvac, mainly because I never have enough of anything else to make anything else,
and since I'm not a real Stat and Numbers person I don't really know if a +1 to DT is helpful or not, so I never take it.

(You're probably going to hate this :biggrin: ) but I use a mod called "Skill Based Perks", I.E. get a 70 in Guns, you get the Jury Rig perk,
I think Pack Rat is when you get 70 or 80 in Barter, I currently have Pack Rat and Strong Back (Strong Back I had to take, it's not a skill-Based perk)
I like the mod because it makes the skills mean a little more than just numbers.

I don't use the HP chem or the DT chem
I want my character to get Mercuron (the AP one), but I never have any of the stuff. :shrug:

DT is quite valuable. +1 may not seem like much, it does have an impact overall. You'll definitely notice the difference if you take all 5.

And I looked at that mod once. Not my flavour of choice per se. In my opinion, perks are special to the character. Earning them through skills makes characters less unique, as there is definitely going to be overlapping between characters. There's also other alternatives to making skills more than just #'s. Heck, I found one the other day called http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40652. One of the settings has you aiming worse when you have lesser skill than the required amount for a weapon. There's also strength requirements, and a whole ton of other stuff. It's made by Pelinor, who made the Ammo Spread Fix. Give it a try. It makes things a lot more realistic. I still tremble even with my EW being at 100, but mainly because I set it so it's like that. Very nice change of pace.

As for the Mecuron, didn't have much of a problem with that. Then again, I rarely do use chems so I had them all handy. You'll get it eventually.

Thanks for the alternative!
I'm currently using XFO's Accuracy and right now it's a bit buggy, but at low levels I almost use up all the ammo
Sunny gives me just trying to shoot 3 beer bottles because I'm waving all over the place.
But there are times even with a very low skill and crouching, if you go from 'hidden' to 'caution' the gun will 'lock on'
and act like you've got 100 in the skill (that's the buggy part), so until Xodo comes back, I've been slowly replacing
XFO piece by piece with alternatives.

No problem.

@The 3 bottles part: That sounds a bit unbalanced. Well then again, that may very well happen with More Realistic Aiming, depending on your settings. Haven't tried it on a new character yet, as I'm waiting for the LotW update to do so.
---------------
I guess I should post this. I've been using this since the mod basically got released, but maybe it should just get onto the Nexus as an optional file, for these certain types of people.

And that would be a Librarian of the Wastes - Sorted mod. I decided to be "cool" when I did it. I'll just C and P the description for Antistar:



If you're fine with the decisions I made, here's the http://www.mediafire.com/?2r2k0tt5hqze4z9 for it. You can put it onto the Nexus page if you want to. I do believe you said once that you weren't the Inventory Sorter type. Then again, that may of changed so who knows.

It's more that I'm not really the 'alternate versions/add-on patches for every single mod in order to support inventory sorting' type.

Feel free to put that up on the Nexus though, if you like. I'll put a link to it on the LOTW page.

Yay, I'm happy to see my mod get noticed :celebration: . I had just read the first post and thought that I should mention it, only to see you do so. Anyway, for those interested, here's my http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=40669.