Stamina and Magicka Skill Cost

Enodoc

Hey guys, I'm trying to figure out what affects the base cost of skills (before passives and gear come into it), so if anyone has any insights or directions to previous discussions, please let me know!

Specifically:

• Is skill cost based only on level (that's what ESOhead suggests, but I've never directly tested it), or is it based on anything else?
• If everything was equal (say, you had no gear, no passives, and hadn't spent any attribute points), would the Magicka and Stamina costs of an ability and its morphs (say, Fiery Breath/Burning Breath/Engulfing Flames, or Piercing Javelin/Aurora Javelin/Binding Javelin) be the same? So for example, if the base ability and the Magicka morph both cost 2394 Magicka, would the Stamina morph cost 2394 Stamina?

Thanks!

Asayre

Hi @Enodoc

I use the following equation to estimate the cost of skills

The Base Cost of a spell is the tooltip cost value, without any points in Magician and without any equipment or skills that provide either a percentage or flat cost reduction, divided by 1.1625. For instance, the tooltip cost value for Fire Rune is 3654. The Base Cost for Fire Rune is then 3143.

I believe the 1.1625 is related to level (0.025*Level) but I haven't really tested on lower level characters. If you define the Base Cost as I have then nothing will affect the cost of the skill.

I think for the majority of skills the base cost of the stamina morph tends to be a bit lower than the base cost of the magicka morph. You can try checking out this spreadsheet on the sheet Skill Data for a list of 'base' skill cost. The skill cost were obtained without any passives etc. but have not been divided by 1.1625 (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YN8YWDpi1-d4CfoagRy1F9ath2w2nb-TniL4MjdJdz4/edit#gid=1436108730)

Enodoc

Hey @Asayre, thanks for the info!

What level is that tooltip cost found at? 1.1625/0.025=46.5, which doesn't seem to work out, as you'd want a whole number for 0.025*Level. I'd assume you're doing this at VR16 (call that Level 66), then you'd have 0.025*66=1.65, or 1.1625/66=0.01761.

Interesting to hear that the base cost of the stamina morph tends to be a bit lower than the base cost of the magicka morph, as I can't see why that would be the case (magicka and stamina each go up by the same amount when you level up), but if that's the way it is, then so be it

Asayre

Woops I was meant to write (1 + 0.025*(Level - 1)) and V16 is level 66.

I'm just guessing here with regards to your second comment but maybe it's something to do with the ease of stacking Magicka compared to Stamina?

Enodoc

Asayre wrote: »

Woops I was meant to write (1 + 0.025*(Level - 1)) and V16 is level 66.

That doesn't work either

1 + 0.025*(66-1)=2.625 (not 1.1625), or conversely
(1.1625-1)/(0.025) + 1 = 7.5 (not 66)

Should it be 0.0025? That works for 66, but the result seems too high for anything else; if you put that in with Level 5, then the cost of Fire Rune using your Base Cost of 3143 is:

Spell cost = (3143 * (1 - 0) - 0) * (1 + 0.0025*(5 - 1) - 0) = 3174

A Level 5 character would barely even have that much Magicka. I'm sure the cost of Fire Rune at Level 5 is something around 600.

I'm just guessing here with regards to your second comment but maybe it's something to do with the ease of stacking Magicka compared to Stamina?

Yeah, maybe that's all there is to it.

Asayre

Haha yes i forgot a 0 =( Yea I'm not sure the level scaling. What is the cost for a level 5 with Fire Rune IV?

It turns out someone else is also asking the same question and I think their answer is much better informed

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/pts-2-1-2-sorcerer-arithmagic/page/25/#post-645278

To partially correct and answer my own post…with a little more digging I have a very tentative relationship between the spell cost and character level. It seems to be split into two linear parts, one from level 1 to 50, and another from v1 to v16.

MaxCost = Tooltip cost of spell at v16
Level = Character level 1-66 (v1 == 51)

Cost Level 1-50 = MaxCost * Level / 65.5367 + MaxCost / 10.7466
Cost v1-16 = MaxCost * Level / 110.942 + MaxCost / 2.46882

I only have about 20 data points across the levels for mainly one skill but the few values I do have seem to match these equations within +/-5. If anyone can find more accurate equations that would be great, though the main issue is a source of characters across all levels with a zero (or known) amount of spell cost reduction items/skills in order to correct the displayed tooltip cost.

Enodoc

Haha yeah, it was exactly for the UESP Skill Browser that I was asking
It seems @Reorx_Holybeard has found the answer we were looking for

Thanks for your help!