Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
The Magely Mathematician's Guide
to Attribute Advancement
Level Advancement FAQ V1.0
By Xevious
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PARTE THE FIRST: VERSION CONTROL
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Version 1.0 (18-Sep-2002): Initial revision
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PARTE THE SECOND: THE BORING STUFF
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Copyright notice: Copyright (c) 2002 Xevious (xevious@hotmail.com)
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This document was authored and is maintained by Xevious, and is the
sole property of its owner. All rights reserved, yadda, yadda, read
USC Title 17 for more information if you're *that* interested.
Exclusive permission to electronically host this document has been
granted to GameFAQs.com (http://www.gamefaqs.com).
If you're not this organization, you may not host this document,
nor may you reproduce, retransmit, modify, paraphrase, intuit,
dream, psychically transfer, or launch this document into space.
On with the show...
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PARTE THE THIRD: THE FAQ
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For those of you who can't wait to dive into the mathematics of
attribute advancement, this guide is for you! Although a number of
other guides have touched on attribute advancement mechanics, none
have quite gotten the mechanics right. This guide will focus only
on these mechanics, allowing players to optimize their characters'
attributes through targeted skill advancement while leaving the
details of *how* to efficiently increase skills to other authors
and other guides.
ATTRIBUTES AND ASSOCIATED SKILLS
Each skill is associated with a certain attribute, as follows:
Strength:
Acrobatics
Armorer
Axe
Blunt Weapon
Long Blade
Intelligence:
Alchemy
Conjuration
Enchant
Security
Willpower:
Alteration
Destruction
Mysticism
Restoration
Agility:
Block
Light Armor
Marksman
Sneak
Speed:
Athletics
Hand to Hand
Short Blade
Unarmored
Endurance:
Heavy Armor
Medium Armor
Spear
Personality:
Illusion
Mercantile
Speechcraft
Please notice that Strength has more skills (5) than any other
attribute, while Endurance and Personality have the least number of
skills (3 each). This will be important when we get to the "tips"
section.
SKILL CATEGORIES
At character creation, you place each skill into one of three
categories: "Major", "Minor", or "Misc". For the purposes of
advancement, the Major and Minor categories are functionally
identical, so I will refer to them collectively as the
"Major/Minor" category.
ATTRIBUTE ADVANCEMENT MECHANICS
Here's the good stuff. To begin with, you will want to write down
all of your skill scores EVERY time you advance a level. Unless you
are gifted with an iron-bound memory, this is essential to keeping
track of your current attribute multipliers.
Whenever you gain a total of ten skill levels in any combination of
Major/Minor skills, you will gain a character level. This level
will be applied as soon as you rest. The happiest part, of course,
about gaining a character level is that you get to increase the
score of three different attributes of your choosing by 1 to 5
points each, depending on each attribute's multiplier.
Simply put, this means that for each and every character level,
you get to allocate anywhere from 3 to 15 points to your
attributes. Obviously, you want to be a greedy little player and
get as close to that 15 point limit as you can with evey level!
Here's how you do it:
Using the skill list above, write down the number of levels each
skill has increased during the current character level. It
doesn't matter whether you paid to train the skills or if you
earned 'em the hard way; it's all the same to the game.
Now, for each attribute, add together the total number of levels
gained in each skill associated with the attribute, APPLYING ONE
IMPORTANT RULE WHILE DOING SO: "Misc" skills may contribute no
more than 4 points each to each attribute's grand total. There
is no such limitation for Major/Minor skills.
Finally, divide each attribute's grand total in half, rounding
down. The resulting number is the current multiplier for that
attribute. Note that the multiplier cannot exceed 5, and that
even a single point earned in one of an attribute's skills will
give you a multiplier of 2. Therefore, the only way to NOT have a
multiplier in a given attribute is to have failed to increase all
of that attribute's skills by even a single point. (2x is a bit of
a freebie.)
The rules, in summary:
1) Each skill increase contributes .5 points towards its governing
attribute's multiplier.
2) A "Misc" skill may contribute at most 2 points.
3) There is no limit to the number of points that a "Major" or
"Minor" skill may contribute.
4) It DOES NOT MATTER how these points are earned - using a trainer
works the same as bashing or blasting baddies.
5) Even .5 points will earn a 2x multiplier; 5x is the maximum.
TIPS
During character creation, you might want to ensure that you have
at least one Endurance skill and one Personality skill in a Major
or Minor category. Otherwise, you will have to train EVERY
Endurance or Personality skill in order to get a 5x bonus.
It's hard to completely control which Major/Minor skills you will
be increasing while adventuring. Due to this and the fact that you
really DON'T want to continue to increase Major/Minor skills after
you are eligible to level, I recommend concentrating on Misc skills
to optimize your multipliers. The easiest way to do this is to
decide which attribute multipliers to increase, then pay to have
the Misc skills for those attributes increased, keeping in mind
that any Misc skill increase of more than 4 levels is wasted. In
this manner, each Misc skill can add up to 2 points to your current
multiplier. Assuming that you're not using Misc skills much while
adventuring, this method allows you to easily (and cheaply) buy
three 5x multipliers each character level!
If Luck is important to you, start putting a point into it every
character level, as Luck is the only attribute that never gets a
multiplier!
CAVEATS
All skill advancement continues to apply to the current character
level, even if your character is eligible to advance to the next
character level. This means that if you continue to train a
Major/Minor skill after you are eligible for advancement, while
it will contribute towards your current multiplier, it will make
it more difficult to achieve good multipliers for your next level.
DO NOT TRAIN MAJOR/MINOR SKILLS ONCE YOU HAVE REACHED A TOTAL OF
10/10 POINTS TOWARDS CHARACTER LEVEL ADVANCEMENT!!
At least on the PC version, when an attribute approaches the limit
of 100 points, if an attribute multiplier is earned that would
increase the attribute past a score of 99, the multiplier is RESET
to 1x instead of being set to a value that would allow you to max
out the attribute. Example: say your character has a 95 Strength,
and you earn a 5x multiplier for your next character level. When
you level up and allocate attribute points, you will discover that
all of those Strength skills have been wasted as your Strength
multiplier will have been reset to 1x. Fun stuff, no?
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PARTE THE FORTH: POSTSCRIPT
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CONTACT INFO: xevious@hotmail.com
Address all comments, suggestions and corrections to this address.
This is my big 'ol spam bullseye, so be patient... I check it
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send another email and make your subject line look less like spam!
Thanks to all you fellow gaming addicts out there!
-Xevious
