Greetings,

I've been roaming through the creation kit and the Skyrim.esm file for hours it seems like. This is my first game playing with the modding community, so I may be overlooking the obvious or common knowledge parts, but I can't seem to find anything other than sounds relating to the menu in-game, or the perk trees.

My goal currently is to add a new perk tree in the game, and inevitably fill it out with Monk related skills, inevitably two perk trees, one being unarmed, the other being spirituality, and so on. The end goal being a fully operational, balanced, and amusing Monk class. But, for now, just trying to start with creating the outline, the perks, in their own perk tree. Any suggestions on where or how this can be done?

Go to character, actor values, find the skill whose perk tree you want to edit and click it. Then on the right side there is a button labeled perk trees.

Ah, well it's a start. Thank you.

I noticed when I duplicate a "skill" it removes the skill tag, I can't seem to rename it's Script Name, even though when I rename it on the list, it seems to go through, as in doesn't error or refuse, just doesn't act. Is it possible to use the Duplicate command to create a new tree? Or will I have to settle for editing one tree rather than adding a new tree?

I was looking for this as well. Thanks for the info.

I tried to create a new Actor Value instead of duplicating, but with that attempt, it changes to [null] for a Script Name, blank Type like the duplicate, the only things that can be edited is the In-game Name, the Abbreviation, and the Description. Maybe the Image, but since the above images are blank as well, I haven't bothered.

Argh, tried saving and reloading the plugin I was using when I added the new Actor Value and now it crashes the CK when I try to load that plugin Active or not. Actor Values are dangerous.. What a pain. Got to restart that plugin, good thing I created it just for playing around with this perk issue.

Hm, doesn't seem to be too much buzz on the subject. Though I am glad someone was helped by the information the forums provided, would've been nice to see a method to get around this unavailable sections in the Actor Values.

Thought I'd check and see if anyone knows anything more now.

No news huh? Well, I'll keep the topic up every now and then and see if any information for adding new Perk Trees comes up, or just the ability to duplicate or create new Actor Values, which could be used to discover the ability to add new Perk Trees.

Bump

Dude, bumping your own thread like this is not cool, 6 posts in a row, that doesn't tell you something?

It doesn't seem like we can add new skills/trees. I messed around with that for a few hours last night before finally giving up.

It may be that the best we can get is modifying existing skills/trees.

I've looked around and even tried hacking around with tesvsnip, but haven't been able to get a new skill working. It either still overrides something, errors/ignores it, or crashes the CK. So something else is being overlooked, or the engine still has a limit on definable skills.

Yeah, it's certainly seeming that way. I am going to work on editing a perk tree and see if it's possible from that. Seems like Actor Values are a slippery slope in terms of editing, one wrong move can break a save or crash the CK or game it seems, from my research at least. If I make any discoveries, I'll post them. In the mean time, if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, please post them. A community effort towards total growth of the game's mechanics!

I was reading over some past threads and information from other games as well as this game, with lots of theories and concepts, and it actually sounded interesting. Since clearly with the removal of the ability to edit or add Actor Values in the public CK, we can't touch the skills menu without removing something in it's place. But, for example, my monk idea, if you have the trainer, able to increase the skill itself which probably can't be an 'actor value' but maybe a variable if I can figure that out, give him a 'vendor' status as well, enabling you to purchase perks from the vendor, perhaps with conditionals allowing you only to purchase them, if you have a base or preempted perk or as a free-for-all, pick and choose. You purchase the perk, and it's automatically activated as a Magic Effect on you, or teaches you a skill, like a spell book.

Like I said, not an original thought, but just working out the mechanics in my head. Any thoughts on it? Or different suggestions?

I have also fiddled around witrh the perks a bit for my mod. What I found out is that the whole UI is not very mod firendly since based upon third party tools (namely adobe's scaleform). Thus editing the perk trees is limited in terms of visible effect. Editing existing skill trees is possible in the CK by "manually" changing the tree. What I mean is: If you change the "next" of any perk the game works with this and it even has some effect in the skill menu. I did create two new perks one depending on the other and the lower one depending on arcane blacksmith. I changed the "next" of arcane blacksmith and in the skills menu it looked like arcane blacksmith got two new ranks. It also diplayed the skill requirement correctly.

That of course was no satisfying solution. So I instead went to granting the perks using books, which seems a sleak nice way. Your Idea of having a trainer that sells the perks is also very nice you should definetly persue this. In my opinion that's anyways the way it should have been in vanilla. The majority of perks are new techniques and I find it a little bit unlogical that you discover those solely on your own while you actually can increase your level of practive (skill level) by talking to a person. That should be swapped. You gain practice (skill) solely on your own and learn new techniques (perks) solely from other persons (trainers).

What I still have to figure out is how to display my perks, so the player knows about them. Does marking a perk as trait actually display it anyhwere?

Right in the CK's perk tree and choose add perk

Whenever I try that while data files (esms, esps) are loaded nothing happens (Pressing the "Perk Tree" Button for any skill yields no effect). Without data files loaded the perk trees for any skill is empty, meaning I'd have to build it from scratch even though I would just want to add new perks or change some. Could you verify that this is a problem specific to me? If so: Got any advice what could be causing this?

Also I've read some posts here that creating new perk trees that way has the game/CK crashing when loading the esp. Besides: what the OP originally wanted was adding new skills along with perk trees, which yet is not possible since adding new actor values appears to be bugged/not working, which includes creating new skills.

Yeah, don't add new, or duplicate actor values, it's easily corruptable. As far as displaying your perks, I'm not sure it's possible. I'm currently pursuing making them appear in Magic Effects in the Magic section of your menu, if that works, I'll drop the process here. You should continue playing with it in a duplicate esp so you don't mess up your progress while trying things. I haven't edited a tree yet, as I was starting the vendor idea so didn't need them, but I'll try editing one later and let you know if it's possible to sneak the points in somewhere, where you can view them. Considering the guarded nature though, it's unlikely, at least in the skills tree.

I wish bethesda could give a little insight why actor values can't be edited because it seems like a bug...

Actor Values are a bit buggy:
-if I can open perk tree I just have to restart the AV window
-if you're crashing, then you need to clean your mod TesSnip

Actor Values can't be edited/made because they're used only as reference by CK they're hard-coded into the engine.

Hi so I found out why the perk tree button was not working for me. The problem actually wasn'T the esm's but my esp. I had tagged the hidden flag for my two new perks which seemed to cause the problem. As soon as I had removed it i could edit perk trees without a problem. Now I have my two new perks apper in the smithing perk tree, which is good.

Sadly the playable flag isn't working as expected: If I uncheck it i can still get the perk ingame upon level ups. For the time being I make them unselectable by setting the needed skilllevel to 101. Which is not really cool.

Most likely I will remove them from the tree again and instead add entry points to them that causes an ability type magic effect to appear whose only function will be to inform the player that he has the perk. That's not nice and clean either but I actually like it better than having a perk in the perk tree that needs 101 skilllevel and has a greyed name even if the player gained it.

As for creating new skills. As we now have the confirmation that we cannot add real new skill only alternatives would be change existing skills or do it via scripting. For the latter you'd most likely need SKSE for tracking the actions that train your skill but this depends on the skill but I think it's basically doable. As for changing existing skills: Either remove "unneeded" skills, whichallways is a tradeoff. Or go the extramile to collapse some skills and their skill trees: Like for instance collapse one-handed and two-handed into a combat skill and combine their skill trees or collapse the 5 Magic schools into one magic skill. This way one could free up space for new skills without necessarily loosing existing skills/perks.