How Oblivion engine deals with NPC leveled equipment
by Blade9722
I spent a night making some experiment to find out how Oblivion engine deals with levelled item lists for NPCs equipment.
I asked some expert modders, and all answered the same “ It’s based on player level”.
Howewer, I always had many doubts about this, because I realized many balance mods which introduce maximum levels on NPCs, but don’t touch levelled item lists, actually are also limiting NPCs equipment. I never found a confirmation of the common sentence “Use G_S Loot Mod unless you’ll find lvl 1 bandits in daedric equipment”.
So I made some test. I point out in advance that I used Wrye Bash to import NPCs levels into save games.
Here’s what I performed
Player level=31
- First, I started a Vanilla Oblivion session and, using my lvl 31 character, I fought a group of marauders. They where all lvl 28/29, and carried a mixture of daedric/ebony/orcish stuff.
- Then I put a -21 offset to Marauders throught CS and made the same. Now they were all lvl 10 and carried a mixture of dwarven/steel/iron.
- This time I introduced a maximum level of 10, without changing offset. Same result: lvl 10 marauders with dwarven/steel/iron stuff.
Player level=10
- Then I started a Vanilla Oblivion session with a lvl 10 character. I found lvl 7/8 marauders wearing dwarven/steel/iron.
- I put a +20 offset through the CS. I found lvl 30 marauders in dwarven/steel/iron.
- I introduced a minimum lvl of 30, and I encountered lvl 30 marauders in dwarven/steel/iron.
From this experiments, it’s clearly evident that NPCs levelled items are based on minimum value between player level and NPC level, rather than player level only.
So if your player level is 15:
A level 5 NPCs will have level 5 equipment
A level 25 NPCs will have level 15 equipment
Comments
I'm getting somewhat different results. With a lvl-40 character, I'm finding Beserkers (from MMM) with glass armor even though they are level-capped at lvl-24 and are using leveled lists that have been edited by OOO to require a minimum of lvl-30 before spawning any glass items.