@Nagazora - there's a mod called Stars Sandbox Settings that will let you access those setting in Apocalyse and Survival modes. It's a bit of a pain to find the exact setting, but it should let you adjust them

Oh im sure its the sandbox setting issue, I dont have any mods that could conflict over it. Thank you for answering!

Welp, I've just tested it again, and it's working as intended by itself, and in my modded playthrough with a ton of other mods, including Lifestyle: Hobbies which I know can screw over the Skill Tapes series if the patch mod is not enabled, and they mod order is not set correctly.

Check your game settings and make sure that Maximum Media XP Leve is actually set as higher than level 3. You stated you got XP beyond this from VHS before, but you may be mistaken - all default versions start with this set at 3, and this applies to vanilla VHS as well. The only way it could be higher is if you manually changed this setting yourself in Custom Sandbox .

Start a new game to test which mod is causing the issue. It's probably another VHS mod (not one of mine though), but anything which directly affects media could be responsible.

Hmm, I have no idea what it might be. Its true I had lv 3 already, but other skills did improve past lv3

@Nagazora - Yes they do. Chances are you are using a mod that is causing a conflict and breaking this one, probably another VHS mod. Try re-ordering your mods. If you are using the Lifestyle: Hobbies mod you need the patch.

Finally, vanilla settings make media only awards XP up to lvl 3, so if your skill is higher you will not recieve XP from tapes unless you change that setting.

The tapes don't add any XP