Besides NCGDMW Lua Edition, this mod's other namesake is one of my favourite Oblivion mods, Ultimate Leveling. A lot of the design ideas come from that mod, but were tuned with Morrowind's unique gameplay experience in mind. All of the implementation of these design ideas is either my own or comes from NCGDMW Lua Edition. If you like what I've done here, I suggest you check out both NCGDMW Lua Edition and Ultimate Leveling.

Features:

This is a natural progression mod much like the original where Attribute Growth and Player Leveling no longer require manual allocation and are instead advanced organically through Skill Use. However, I have made significant alterations from the original to how these are calculated which will be explained in greater depth later on. Skills are capped at the vanilla 100, and Attributes at 1000, but both of these values can be modified. Magicka-based skill progression and Decay have been retained from the original along with some new additions such as an Experience Bonus determined by the number of skill books read, a Training Cap based on the Player's Level with unused training sessions carrying over on levelup, and a new means of raising Luck by gaining Reputation. All of these features are customisable and can be turned off and on using the mod's in-game settings menu which can be found under Scripts, NCGDMW Ultimate Leveling. The mod should ideally be installed on a new save, but it will function on existing saves regardless of whichever version of NCGDMW you were using before.

Attribute Growth:

Skills now impact more than one attribute and this impact is dictated by the new Skill-Attribute Distribution which is inspired by the KCAS wheel from Oblivion modding and can be examined in the Optional Files. The crux of the new Skill-Attribute Distribution is that 60% of a skill's Attribute Impact is allotted to the skill's Governing Attribute and the other 40% is spread between other relevant attributes. This allows every character archetype to have a bit of Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, etc. without necessarily having to specialise in any skill directly governed by these attributes. The impact a skill has on an attribute is further modified by new factors that take into account whether the skill is a Major/Minor/Misc Skill, whether the skill is part of your Class Specialization, whether the attribute being impacted is a Favorite Attribute, and whether the attribute is one that your Race has a particular affinity for. These factors are intended to make choices during Character Creation more weighty beyond simple static boosts at the beginning of your playthrough. By the end of their respective playthroughs, a Khajiit Bard and a Breton Healer, despite reaching the max value for every skill, should look completely different attribute-wise.

Luck:

Unlike other attributes, Luck is not impacted by your skills at all. Instead, Luck is entirely determined by the your Reputation. Reputation is gained by questing and adventuring and represents the Player's renown. The greater your renown, the more attention you'll attract from Aedra and Daedra, the more divine favour you'll receive.

Player Level:

The level calculation relies on a new Player Max Level which defaults to 100. Major, Minor, and Misc Skillups contribute to this Max Level and by default provide 40%, 35%, and 25% respectively. For instance, if you increased all Major Skills to their max value while neglecting Minor and Misc Skills, the Player's Level will be 40. All of these values are configurable.

Health:

The Player's Health is calculated using the following formula:

(strength + endurance / 2) * healthMultiplier + [(startEndurance + baseEndurance) * (playerLevel - 1) * retroactiveHealthMultiplier]

The first addend (outside the square brackets) represents the player's starting health as its calculated in vanilla. The Strength and Endurance values there actually scale with attribute gains and are subject to temporary attribute modifiers. The second addend represents health gain as a result of player level and takes into account the Player's starting Endurance and base Endurance without temporary modifiers. This allows the Player's Endurance as it increases to apply retroactively to health gains. No longer will you need to rush Endurance in order to maximise your HP. You can modify the formula using the healthMultiplier and retroactiveHealthMultiplier.

Skill Books:

Skill books now grant a permanent bonus to all experience gains with the relevant skill as an alternative to vanilla's static skillups. This experience bonus increases with the number of skill book read and maxes out at 5 skill books per skill by default. The experience bonus is meant to make the discovery of skill books useful throughout your playthrough and deter "saving" skill books until you reach higher skill levels where the static skillup is more valuable. There's also an option to prevent skill books providing their bonus unless the book is read from your inventory. This is meant to prevent the Player from rifling through NPCs' bookshelves for free skill gains. Now, you actually have to steal the book to get anything out of it.

Training Cap:

Training is capped by default by the Player's Level similar to later Elder Scrolls games except that unused training sessions carry over on levelup and the number of training sessions per level is easily customisable. This is meant to make the Player's Level a little more significant beyond just the health calculation and prevent going from zero to hero in any skill if you have enough cash. You can still do the latter if you store your training sessions ahead of time.

The Stats Menu:

NCGDMW Ultimate Leveling features a revamped Stats Menu the hotkey for which can be configured from the mod's in-game settings menu.


If you encounter any bugs please post either here or on discord.

Credits:

Thanks to EvilEye, johnnyhostile, and mym for NCGDMW Lua Edition which became the base for this mod and which itself is a port of Greywander's "Natural Character Growth and Decay - MW" mod.

Thanks to Maskar for Ultimate Leveling which served as the ultimate inspiration for this mod