Skyrim’s skill and progression system is pretty simple, with all of the pros and cons that suggests. Your skills go up, your character levels, and you spend perk points to unlock new abilities. Even the concept of major and minor skills from previous Elder Scrolls game went away.
Well, none of that matters anymore because your skills have nothing to do with how to you level up! Let’s take a look at how the mods in MGO rework all of that: how you level up and what perks are available.
- Experience
- Adamant - A Perk Overhaul
- Adamant Tweaks for ADXP and VR
- VR Perk Extender
- Dragon Souls to Perk Points
Leveling up
In vanilla Skyrim, your character level is driven entirely by your skills. Swing a sword enough and your One-Handed skill goes up. Level enough skills, and your character level goes up with them. It works, but it also means the “optimal” way to level is to grind whatever skill happens to level fastest, regardless of whether it has anything to do with how you actually want to play.
MGO changes this with the Experience mod. Your individual skills still improve through use. You get better at sneaking by sneaking, better at destruction by casting destruction spells, etc. But your character level is no longer tied to that grind. Instead, you earn experience by adventuring: discovering new locations, clearing dungeons, and completing quests. You level up by playing the darn game. You can specialize however you like without fear of falling behind, and you can’t cheese your way to a high level by spamming a tiny number of skills without ever leaving home. (Sorry, cheesemongers.)
Next level`
Perks
Adamant completely overhauls Skyrim’s perk trees. Vanilla is full of flat percentage bonuses and the like, and most have zero any impact on the way you play. Picking an Adamant is an actual choice.
Because MGO’s combat runs on a heavily modded VR foundation, it also includes Adamant Tweaks for ADXP and VR, which adjusts a handful of Adamant’s perks so they behave correctly alongside the VR combat mods.
A number of Skyrim’s perks rely on actions that vanilla Skyrim VR simply doesn’t register properly (e.g. power bashing). VR Perk Extender fixes that.
Getting more perk points
Who among us hasn’t wondered if there’s console command to just add perk points? There isn’t, but MGO includes Dragon Souls to Perk Points, which is arguably better anyway. (It doesn’t feel nearly as much like cheating… unless you add the dragon souls via the console.)
If you don’t cash in a lot of shouts, you may find yourself with more dragon souls than you know what to do with. This mod lets you trade them for some delicious perk points. Grab the spell tome from the shrine just inside the entrance to High Hrothgar (or up at the Throat of the World), learn the spell, and cast it to convert your surplus souls into perk points. By default the exchange rate is 5 dragon souls per perk point, and the game will show you the cost before you commit. If that feels too stingy or too generous, the mod’s settings let you adjust the ratio to taste. You can also make the cost go up or down each time you use it.
Save your souls
Races and stones
The race and Standing Stone systems are also reworked in MGO, via Aetherius and Mundus respectively. Since you’ll settle on your race during Character Creation, that’s where I cover both in more detail.