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Leveled Lists for Beginners
Introduction:
Quote
“Leveled lists are used to create dynamism in the game world. In general, leveled lists can be used to introduce random chance into events - characters being equipped at random with one of a set of weapons - or they can be used to scale the environment to the player's level - seeing a Rat at level 1 and a Mountain Lion at level 17. Many leveled lists focus on providing one or the other, but they can also be partially random, partially level-based, depending on the way they are set up.” - The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki
Leveled lists give Oblivion it’s random loot, or what decides what creatures you’ll fight in random encounters or even what spells mages are gonna toss at ya. They are also how Oblivion scales the world around you. There are three main types of Leveled Lists. The first is vanilla, which scales the world so low level items and creatures will appear only at the characters low levels and disapear as you progress further. The next type is harder levelling, which is what major overhauls like Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul or Francesco’s Leveled Creatures/Items mod. They make it so theres a low chance of finding strong items and creatures through the entire game at any level. You will be able to encounter say a Daedroth at level one or a scamp at level 30. It is a system similar to The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. The last main system is Unleveling like the overhaul;s Tamriel Immersion Experience or Waalx Animals and Creatures does. They make it so any item can appear at any level with equal chance.
Editing Leveled Lists:
Many excellent user mods simply consist of a new item(s) being put in a crate or in a store. While a good way to make it available, many players prefer being able to find the new item on an enemy or as loot. Many modders find it easier to just drop in that crate or store however so Im going to teach you how add to levelled lists in accordance with the three types discussed before. But first we need to know how to edit them so lets do that first. Start up the CS and load Oblivion.esm. Once it is loaded expand the items tab by clicking the + sign. You should see a number of items with a green box and a question mark in the middle in the section now. This is where all levelled items are contained from books to swords to gold to soul gems. Lets make a new one! Right click a listr and choose new. You should get an empty levelled list form. Give it a unique ID. I usually start all my entries off with the prefix JE, my initials. Now lets put some stuff in it. How about an example of vanilla levelling swords? Leave the form open and find the weapons section. Find the item in the objects panel “WeapIronLongsword” and drag it into the list. It should appear as a new entry. Beside the name, you should see “Level” and “Count”. Level means the lowest level that item will appear. Count means the number that will appear when that item is selected by the game to appear. Next click on the “Steel” section and find the entry “WeapSteelLongsword” and drag it into our new list. At the side of the form look for the text entry field where it says level. Steel items appear at level 2 so change 1 to 2. Next find the silver longsword and set its level to 4. Than find Dwarven weapons and drag the Dwarven longsword into the form. Set its level to 6. Repeat for Elven at level 9, Glass at level 12, Ebony at level 16 and Daedric and level 20. Click ok on the levelled list form. Congratulations! You just made and edited a levelled list. Open the containers panel and make open one up. Change its editor ID and delete all entries in it by clicking them and hitting delete. Now navigate back to the levelled list section and find our levelled list. Drag that list into our new chest. Now lets put our new chest in-game shall we? In the cell view window find the testing hall(editor ID Testinghall). Drag the chest into the cell and press “f” to make it drop onto the floor. Now save and call the plugin “My First Leveled List”. Now close the construction set and fire up the Oblivion Launcher and activate our plugin via the data files. Fire up Oblivion and head to the Testing Hall via the console(command: COC Testinghall). Find that chest and open it up and see what sword is in it. Depending on your level you should find one of the swords we put in the list. Easy right? I thought so! Your probably wondering now, How do I make the swords and armor and stuff show up on enemies though? Easy! All ya need to do is add the items to existing lists. I wont name each list, theres way to many for that! The lists name contain what the list is about like “LL0NPCWeaponLongsword100” is a sword list. They are usually grouped together for easy editing but the items that appear on creatures, like goblin weapons are separate so you’ll have to search for them. Just open the lists, add your item at the appropriate level and click OK and your done. You’ll have to do multiple lists for the item to have a good chance at appearing though, only doing a single list will give it a very very very miniscule chance of appearing.
Editing Levelled Lists for OOO:
Levelled lists are done in the same fashion as in vanilla, open the list drag the item, put a level, repeat for the amount of desired items and hit ok. It is recommended when doing this you have OOO.esm set as a master file for your mod. This will give you references on how to set the levels. Why don’t you do that now, open the construction set and load oblivion.esm + OOO.esm. Poke around in the levelled lists and see how things look. You may have noticed something. There are a lot more levelled lists than in vanilla oblivion offers. This means your gonna have to edit quite a few levelled lists to see your items appear when you use OOO.
Editing Levelled Lists for Unleveling :
What is unleveling you are probably asking now. Unleveling is when there is no set level to anything. Overhauls that utilize it are T.I.E - Tamriel Every item in the levelled list forms are set to 1, meaning you have an equal chance at finding a daedric longsword at level as you do an iron longsword. This method of levelling provides the biggest challenge to players. This is the easiest method to do as well actually, because as you guessed it is only drag and drop and its done! Lets have a try shall we? Make a new levelled list again and drag each kind of longsword into new levelled list form. Now hit ok, and make a new chest put that new levelled list into it. Lastly put that new chest into the Testing Hall like we did before. Why don’t you go check out your list in-game now?
So what sword did ya get? You had equal chance with the unleveling to get any sword you put in that list. This is what makes unleveling difficult to play in-game with, its completely unpredictable and you’ll never know what your going to find. It does make for an excellent challenge though, which is a lot of fun!
Now you know how to do 3 levelling set-ups! So now when you make that new armor piece or weapon, you know how to make it appear on enemies and not just in the store now! Now on to a few advanced questions of levelled lists that were requested for this tutorial.
Mods that edit levelled lists without a patch:
Mods that both edit levelled lists of items or creatures will not work together. You will get the levelled changes from the one that loads latest in your load order. To get them to work together, you will either need to patch them by creating an .esp that contains all the changes and loading it after the other mods that change the levelled lists OR use wrye bashes bashed patch to merge the levelled list changes from the mods together. Using wrye bash is preferred, since it is only a few clicks to merge them. Doing the manual patch method takes awhile to do. This is why you cannot just install OOO and MMM at the same time and have them work seamlessly. Since they both edit creature lists, the one loading last wins and shows, the other doesn’t.
Patching a level scaling mod to unlevel:
This is easy. Just open the mod in the construction set and go through the changed lists and set the items levels to 1! Using the TES4Edit to see what lists were changed is a good idea, so you don’t have to go through each list and make changes.
Conclusion:
And now you know all about leveled items! Magic and creatures work much the same way, though i havent taken a good look through those quite yet. If ya have any questions, post away and ill answer to the best of my ability!
Introduction:
Quote
“Leveled lists are used to create dynamism in the game world. In general, leveled lists can be used to introduce random chance into events - characters being equipped at random with one of a set of weapons - or they can be used to scale the environment to the player's level - seeing a Rat at level 1 and a Mountain Lion at level 17. Many leveled lists focus on providing one or the other, but they can also be partially random, partially level-based, depending on the way they are set up.” - The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki
Leveled lists give Oblivion it’s random loot, or what decides what creatures you’ll fight in random encounters or even what spells mages are gonna toss at ya. They are also how Oblivion scales the world around you. There are three main types of Leveled Lists. The first is vanilla, which scales the world so low level items and creatures will appear only at the characters low levels and disapear as you progress further. The next type is harder levelling, which is what major overhauls like Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul or Francesco’s Leveled Creatures/Items mod. They make it so theres a low chance of finding strong items and creatures through the entire game at any level. You will be able to encounter say a Daedroth at level one or a scamp at level 30. It is a system similar to The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind. The last main system is Unleveling like the overhaul;s Tamriel Immersion Experience or Waalx Animals and Creatures does. They make it so any item can appear at any level with equal chance.
Editing Leveled Lists:
Many excellent user mods simply consist of a new item(s) being put in a crate or in a store. While a good way to make it available, many players prefer being able to find the new item on an enemy or as loot. Many modders find it easier to just drop in that crate or store however so Im going to teach you how add to levelled lists in accordance with the three types discussed before. But first we need to know how to edit them so lets do that first. Start up the CS and load Oblivion.esm. Once it is loaded expand the items tab by clicking the + sign. You should see a number of items with a green box and a question mark in the middle in the section now. This is where all levelled items are contained from books to swords to gold to soul gems. Lets make a new one! Right click a listr and choose new. You should get an empty levelled list form. Give it a unique ID. I usually start all my entries off with the prefix JE, my initials. Now lets put some stuff in it. How about an example of vanilla levelling swords? Leave the form open and find the weapons section. Find the item in the objects panel “WeapIronLongsword” and drag it into the list. It should appear as a new entry. Beside the name, you should see “Level” and “Count”. Level means the lowest level that item will appear. Count means the number that will appear when that item is selected by the game to appear. Next click on the “Steel” section and find the entry “WeapSteelLongsword” and drag it into our new list. At the side of the form look for the text entry field where it says level. Steel items appear at level 2 so change 1 to 2. Next find the silver longsword and set its level to 4. Than find Dwarven weapons and drag the Dwarven longsword into the form. Set its level to 6. Repeat for Elven at level 9, Glass at level 12, Ebony at level 16 and Daedric and level 20. Click ok on the levelled list form. Congratulations! You just made and edited a levelled list. Open the containers panel and make open one up. Change its editor ID and delete all entries in it by clicking them and hitting delete. Now navigate back to the levelled list section and find our levelled list. Drag that list into our new chest. Now lets put our new chest in-game shall we? In the cell view window find the testing hall(editor ID Testinghall). Drag the chest into the cell and press “f” to make it drop onto the floor. Now save and call the plugin “My First Leveled List”. Now close the construction set and fire up the Oblivion Launcher and activate our plugin via the data files. Fire up Oblivion and head to the Testing Hall via the console(command: COC Testinghall). Find that chest and open it up and see what sword is in it. Depending on your level you should find one of the swords we put in the list. Easy right? I thought so! Your probably wondering now, How do I make the swords and armor and stuff show up on enemies though? Easy! All ya need to do is add the items to existing lists. I wont name each list, theres way to many for that! The lists name contain what the list is about like “LL0NPCWeaponLongsword100” is a sword list. They are usually grouped together for easy editing but the items that appear on creatures, like goblin weapons are separate so you’ll have to search for them. Just open the lists, add your item at the appropriate level and click OK and your done. You’ll have to do multiple lists for the item to have a good chance at appearing though, only doing a single list will give it a very very very miniscule chance of appearing.
Editing Levelled Lists for OOO:
Levelled lists are done in the same fashion as in vanilla, open the list drag the item, put a level, repeat for the amount of desired items and hit ok. It is recommended when doing this you have OOO.esm set as a master file for your mod. This will give you references on how to set the levels. Why don’t you do that now, open the construction set and load oblivion.esm + OOO.esm. Poke around in the levelled lists and see how things look. You may have noticed something. There are a lot more levelled lists than in vanilla oblivion offers. This means your gonna have to edit quite a few levelled lists to see your items appear when you use OOO.
Editing Levelled Lists for Unleveling :
What is unleveling you are probably asking now. Unleveling is when there is no set level to anything. Overhauls that utilize it are T.I.E - Tamriel Every item in the levelled list forms are set to 1, meaning you have an equal chance at finding a daedric longsword at level as you do an iron longsword. This method of levelling provides the biggest challenge to players. This is the easiest method to do as well actually, because as you guessed it is only drag and drop and its done! Lets have a try shall we? Make a new levelled list again and drag each kind of longsword into new levelled list form. Now hit ok, and make a new chest put that new levelled list into it. Lastly put that new chest into the Testing Hall like we did before. Why don’t you go check out your list in-game now?
So what sword did ya get? You had equal chance with the unleveling to get any sword you put in that list. This is what makes unleveling difficult to play in-game with, its completely unpredictable and you’ll never know what your going to find. It does make for an excellent challenge though, which is a lot of fun!
Now you know how to do 3 levelling set-ups! So now when you make that new armor piece or weapon, you know how to make it appear on enemies and not just in the store now! Now on to a few advanced questions of levelled lists that were requested for this tutorial.
Mods that edit levelled lists without a patch:
Mods that both edit levelled lists of items or creatures will not work together. You will get the levelled changes from the one that loads latest in your load order. To get them to work together, you will either need to patch them by creating an .esp that contains all the changes and loading it after the other mods that change the levelled lists OR use wrye bashes bashed patch to merge the levelled list changes from the mods together. Using wrye bash is preferred, since it is only a few clicks to merge them. Doing the manual patch method takes awhile to do. This is why you cannot just install OOO and MMM at the same time and have them work seamlessly. Since they both edit creature lists, the one loading last wins and shows, the other doesn’t.
Patching a level scaling mod to unlevel:
This is easy. Just open the mod in the construction set and go through the changed lists and set the items levels to 1! Using the TES4Edit to see what lists were changed is a good idea, so you don’t have to go through each list and make changes.
Conclusion:
And now you know all about leveled items! Magic and creatures work much the same way, though i havent taken a good look through those quite yet. If ya have any questions, post away and ill answer to the best of my ability!
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