RAB’s skills and experience in reading books

Reading books now allows you to experience randomly selected skills. Why? Two different people may read the same book and learn completely different lessons! And, this way, Skyrim's normally useless book clutter is now useful for all classes!

Reading books now allows you to experience randomly selected skills. Why? Two different people may read the same book and learn completely different lessons! And, this way, Skyrim's normally useless book clutter is now useful for all classes! I also didn't want to assign a skill to each of the hundreds of books - so I let the random number generator do a lot of the hard work for me :-)

Require

Vanilla version requires two DLCs

Book Cover Skyrim and Book Cover Skyrim - Lost Library versions require their own modes.

SKSE - for scripting functions

Inspired by (alternatives) - All of these are the same concept but only improve voice skills, and many lack book covers for Skyrim support.

Reading improves speech

Earn XP for reading

eloquent reader

free mods

Reading is good - I like how this mod handles skill books; you benefit from reading them ahead of time rather than saving them until later in the game. My mod doesn't touch skill books, so they work fine together.

Book Cover Skyrim and Book Cover Skyrim - The Lost Library - fantastic retextures of vanilla books, and a welcome addition to the variety.

how does this work

When you read a book you haven't read before, you gain variable experience with half a randomly selected skill. I tried to make the amount of experience gained at lower levels significantly greater, but not overpowering.

This mod doesn't touch skill books (because I like "reading is good" to deal with those) or notes/letters/journals (none of which have anything to learn.)

I like the idea of ​​random skills versus the more common voice-only mode, since two people might read the same book and take away completely different lessons. It also makes the books more useful for all classes - even a barbarian can learn how to swing an axe - you never know!

That being said, I'm more likely than others to randomly choose some skills since you can only learn how to swing an ax from a book!

Most likely: Speechcraft

Fairly common: Smithing, Charm, Destruction, Lockpicking, Alchemy, Transformation, Magic, Illusion, Restoration

Rare: one-handed, two-handed, heavy armor, pickpocket, light armor, sneak, blocker, marksman

configuration

There is currently no MCM available, but if demand arises I could enable skill toggles, as well as sliders for min/max XP learned per book.

Script loading

Small! Less than 100 lines of code, only runs when you open the book included in this mod. There is no activity or intrusion running in the background to cause you any grief.

This mod has been bundled with ESL-tagged ESP so it will not count towards your load order. Neat-O!

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Reading books now grants you experience in a randomly picked skill. Why? Two different people may read the same book and learn totally different lessons! And, this way, the normally-useless books cluttering Skyrim are now potentially useful to all classes! I also didn't want to specify a skill for each of the hundreds of books - so I let the randomizer do the hard work for me:-)

Requirements

Vanilla version requires both DLCs

Book Covers Skyrim and Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library versions require their respective mods.

SKSE - for scripting functions

Inspired by (alternatives) - all of which are pretty much the same concept, but only boost the speech skill, and many lack Book Covers of Skyrim support.

Reading Improves Speech

Earn XP for reading

The Eloquent Reader

Complimentary mods

Reading is Good - I like how this mod handles skill books; you benefit by reading them early, versus saving them until the late game. My mod doesn't touch skill books, so they work great together.

Book Covers Skyrim and Book Covers Skyrim - Lost Library - Fantastic re-texturing of the …