Oblivion arguably isn’t really Oblivion if you’re not bouncing around Cyrodiil in an effort to level up your acrobatics slightly faster. Oblivion Remastered‘s devs knew that, and so opted to keep the classic “level up by doing the abilities you picked” approach, with some minor tweaks to make it less frustrating.
If, however, you long to ding by being handed boatloads of XP simply from completing quests and killing NPCs by any means, a modder’s got you covered. While working on fleshing out a full Fallout 4-esque settlement system for Oblivin’ after midnight, MadAbormodding’s decided to double down on the rads and bring Fallout 3‘s levelling system to Cyrodiil.
Their mod, an alternate levelling system dubbed Mad Experience, is billed as a simple effort to let you gain XP from kills, quests, and discovering new locations, instead of levelling being tied to skills.
It looks like your skill stats will still go up as they do in the original game, they just won’t contribute to you vaulting up the levels and getting the option to boost the values of three attributes. So, you’re just racking up points in a different way. That said, I’d say that MadAbormodding’s maybe underselling how impressive all this is, given that making fresh additions that fit seamlessly into the base game’s mechanics or interface is something modders have initially struggled with.
Cue mods that add new skills, but, for example, require you to track your progression up the ranks of that particular skill by consulting a book, rather than just being able to glance at the same menu which displays the rest of your abilities. That’s not say modders haven’t successfully made plenty of tweaks to aspects of how Oblivion Remastered’s level-by-skilling system works, but to the best of my knowledge, this is the first time someone has totally rejigged it like this.
I’m not sure whether it’s a mod I’ll actually use in the long-term, bouncing around the map because I specced into acrobatics being a thing I consider pretty central to the wider 2006 charm that I’m looking for when I decide to fire up Oblivion. That said, more options are always nice, and mixing 2006 nostalgia with 2008 nostalgia to form a weird rose-tinted soup could make for an intriguing experiment.
As it stands, Mad Experience lets you tweak how much XP each source dishes out via a config file or an in-game menu, with the latter requiring you to grab MadMCM. MadAbormodding wrote that they’re working on adding the likes of a proper progress bar, plus the ability to gain XP from the likes of lockpicking and pickpocketing. They’re also thinking about static skill leveling that’d increase the Falloutyness by making skill values something you control by delegating points on level up.
If you fancy giving this mod a go, UE4SS is a hard requirement. Unlike in vanilla Oblivion, a set of knees made of particularly robust jelly are not.
