leveling speed

[Boy Looks Like A Lady]

how slow/fast leveling can affect my game in a good or a bad way? i kinda want to experiment with making a build but im not sure if i want to level very fast or slow and how it will affect my game

[Icedfate]

well the 2 people who posted before me were talking about morrowind and oblivion and i saw that and commented because i thought the topic was about "leveling up fast vs leveling up slow" as in playing slow and deliberately not leveling as opposed to playing fast and leveling at every opportunity. I weighed in with my opinion that the latter might end up gimping yourself, because you might end up at max level without maxed stats.
. as i explained twice, i made a mistake and realized tha's not what's being talked about here.

and i'm not confusing games.
both oblivion and morrowind have pretty much the same system for gaining levels, and the same mechanics when you apply the level ups.

yeas, oblivion has mobflation, morrowind does not.
but my point was that when i just played where i didn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about optimizing my stat gains, i would end up in the mid 20's with garbage stats, too many underdeveloped skills and enemies that were way stronger than i was.

the enemy scaling is there, it's just different in both games.
in morrowind, it just replaces low tier enemies with higher tier enemies. like winged twilights and golden saints. if you play suboptimally, than you're gonna have a really bad time fighting those when they they first start appearing. they don't have to spawn in large numbers to be a problem. by "everywhere" i meant, whatever area i would go into, there they would be there.

maybe i am playing a different game than you, beause i didn't find cliff racers to be a problem after leveling up a bit.
maybe i just didn't spend a lot of time in those areas where they spawn frequently, i dunno.

in oblivion, at max level, everything takes a bajillion hits to kill. this is a problem in several bethesda games, like fallout 3 and to some extent, fallout 4 and skyrim, but those aren't a smuch a problem because of how you can supremely overpower yourself with broken mechanics.


and again, i understand this is not relevant to the topic, but i thought it was relevant at the time i chimed in.

I'm sorry i don't know as much about this game as you apparently do.

you do seem someone annoyed that i have a different opinion of how the games are played. as i said before, i never told anyone they have to play like i do.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... you do seem someone annoyed that i have a different opinion of how the games are played. as i said before, i never told anyone they have to play like i do.

No comment to the content of your post this time (would be yet another cycle).

I'm not annoyed at all, and I certainly never criticise others for having a different opinion than I (to the contrary: I appreciate the difference of opinions). And I never criticised you for telling others how to play (I said this in an earlier post already) - you haven't.

My issue with your posts is that you describe experiences (not opinions) which, according to my knowledge and experience, are simply not possible in the underlying game (Morrowind or Oblivion), and where I can't even find a basis for in UESP.
There are other "odd" experiences you describe, which can be explained by making mistakes when developing your character - these are a different story. It happened to me, too, often enough.

I should probably have remained silent from the beginning. But I had decided at the time to at least point out that there are one or two things which don't make sense, to help clarify and avoid confusion. And then things developed dynamics neither you nor I had intended, I suppose.
Should you feel personally offended by my posts, I apologise.

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by lonetrav:

My issue with your posts is that you describe experiences (not opinions) which, according to my knowledge and experience, are simply not possible in the underlying game (Morrowind or Oblivion), and where I can't even find a basis for in UESP.

well, it feels like you are calling me out for telling falsehoods.

yes, i'm exaggerating when i say that the dremoras in oblivion have "a zillion hp", because i don't know how many hp they have, but the game does inflate them and gives them a ton of hp when you're max level.

with the high tier mobs in morrowind, i also specified that it only happened to me the very first time i played, on the xbox version.
when i played GOTY version, i did my slower, optimized leveling strategy and didn't encounter that problem. The high tier mobs were appearing, but i was strong enough to deal with them. I concluded it must have been due to my different approach.

you seem to disagree with me. Your assertion is that a player doesn't have to optimize and can just play casually and level their skills however and take the character levelups as they come and that the game is perfectly balanced and never throws anything at the player that they can't handle and you have a right to your opinion.

you seem to believe that winged twilights and golden saints and other high tier mobs don't just randomly start appearing places when the player is high level? i'm 99% they do appear on the world map, not just in dungeons but in regular zones, even zones that you may have already visited at a lower oevel, when you return later, there will be high tier enemies there. I have seen them appear in places you have to go for the main story quests.
again, when i said "everywhere", it was exaggerating, because that's what it felt like from MY POV. everywhere I happened to go, i was seeing them, just because i wasn't going in the mountains with the cliff racers, has nothing to do with winged twilights appearing in places where they normally don't at low levels.

you said that a lot of players find the cliff racers to still be a problem at high levels, because they "are omnipresent, attack from above and behind, and several of them at the same time (and often accompanied by several terrestrial enemies). They are a constant harassment".
and maybe that's to a player that didn't optimize their level ups. . .to my characters, the cliff racers stopped being a problem when i leveled up.

the entire point of my rant was that i believe that a slower methodical leveling up approach results in a stronger , more well rounded character, but it's also more time consuming, because one has to sit there , leveling up skills instead of getting out there adventuring. .


this thread was about character creation and leveling up speed. I went off on tnagents , but my views are relevant in the sense when i said leveling slower results in a more powerful character.

so, it's still somewhat relevant here. when i made my character in the character customized class creation, i paid attention to that sword on the side, because i did not want to let it jump into that "x3" section.
i set advantages and disadvantages on my character so that it would go back down around the "average" zone.

I dunno what it would take to have a character in the X 0.3 zone, yeah, that character might level super quickly, but can't imagine them being able to actually survive anything. unless it's some sort of gimmicky pacifist character that somehow doesn't have to fight stuff and maybe there is a way to do that in this game?

there's a bunch of skills i never saw in later games named after monster species called like "daedric", "giantish", "orcish" that the wiki says they are "languages" and that the player can use these to pacify creatures and i'm still not sure how that works.

Originally posted by lonetrav:

Should you feel personally offended by my posts, I apologise.

i'm not "personally offended" by your posts. I'm not sitting here "angrily banging at my keyboard", but I do feel like i'm being called out and being forced to justify my statements to you, just because my gameplay experience was different than yours.


edit : imalso realize now i might be using the wrong word "optimized", vs "maximized". I guess "optimized" could be interpreted as only leveling what one needs to level in order to achieve the desired power level as quickly as possible, while i just tend to max out as many things as i can , no matter how long it takes.


i mean, it does feel like we're in a "who's on first" here. what seems to have triggered you is my statement "i'm not telling anyone how to play" and you keep responding "i never said you were" and i keep saying "i know you didn't say i was, i'm just saying i wasn't " and you keep repeating "i never said you were" and i know that. I said it as a clarification INB4 someone said i was.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

well, it feels like you are calling me out for telling falsehoods.

No. I say that your posts contain statements about Morrowind and Obliivon which are wrong. Not that it was your intention. My guess is that you were mislead by your memory. Happens to me sometimes, too. And not a big deal.
For example, you seem to confuse Morrowind and Oblivion sometimes (for example in the context with the leveling system and monster leveling or "monster spawning" (I mentioned it in my posts).
I commented your statement "i played the most recent version of morrowind GOTY on steam a couple years ago and they seemed to have fixed most of that problems" by saying that Steam (or Bethesda) didn't fix anything. If there is a difference between Morroiwnd on PC and XBOX (I don't know the XBOX version), then it's probably because these versions were always different.

Let me quote you again: "Your assertion is that a player doesn't have to optimize and can just play casually and level their skills however and take the character levelups as they come and that the game is perfectly balanced and never throws anything at the player that they can't handle".
Nothing could be more wrong. There are many ways to play Morrowind and Oblivion (and the other TES games) successfully, and probably even more ways to fail (which is part of what makes them great games for me).
There is no "one size fits all" approach. In particular, the approach to make skills you don't want to use frequently your major skills, in order to manage level ups, and that +5s at level up are of critical value for playing successfully, may work (especially for fighter characters, less for mages), but is by no means necessary.
I said use if this is how you want to play and enjoy the game. But I don't like it, and I don't use it.

I'm a "gut-feel" player and I don't play by books or guides, but I'm a good observer, too, and I learn by observing, experimenting, and (like I said) not least by failing. Build on what works, and don't do what doesn't. And I try to play in line with the role I want my characters to assume (and with a couple of individual per-game "house rules" to make the games more interesting - like using hand-to-hand fighting only, or playing without armour, or (in Oblivion) playing a Conjurer who lets conjured minions do all the fighting).
I do level up very carefully and deliberately, using my observations and experiences.
And I level attributes, not skills (the latter get better by using them, leveling improves attributes only).
Last but not least, I find Morrowind and Oblivion amazingly balanced, in the sense that you can play and enjoy them in lots of very different ways. But they are definitely not "perfectly balanced".

PS: Forgot the cliff racers -:): I said many players hate them. Not because they are so strong, but because they always get in your way, especially when you're in mountainous regions (which means at least half of Vvardenfell, and where the second half of the main quest plays). Don't tell me that you rarely have to deal with them.
I myself like them. My character is the intruder, the mountains are their home, and they are predators. And not really tough enemies individually.
Not least, you can use them to develop a huge veriaety of skills in the way you want (melee, ranged, spells, block, run away, ...).

[Icedfate]

i did say that the reason i likely didn't have to deal with the cliff racers is that i usually play the bethesda game such that i ignore the main quest for as long as possible to focus on all the side stuff and then end up overleveled when i finally do it, which could explain why i was seeing different monsters.

now THIS game, in particular, i'm seeing a serious problem. . because i'm level 4 and i talked to the princess of wayrest and she sends me to this necromancer dungeon and everything thing there is 1-2 shotting me.
and i WOULD just go off and level up some more, but all the leveling in this game is gated by time passing, (only 1 skill point per 6 hours), combined with an imposed time limit of 30 days, of which 10 of those days are already gone from the travel time to go from wayrest to dragontail mountains. leaving me 20 days to levelup my skils and complete this dungeon and i'm notmsure if i have to travel back to turn in the quest, which would mean i actually only have 10 days to do this, at 4 skill points per day maximum. .

it could be that the unity version i read that they made a mistake when tuning zombies and the zombies can hit for 50 damage and i'm level 4, i have 74 hp and that's from save scumming level ups to get the maximum hp per level. i cheesed the zombies because there is a set of stairs and the bottom stair is too high to "walk" , one has to jump and the zombies got stuck there and i was able to poke at them with my sword, there's right now some dark elf looking lady she chaced me back at the bottom of those stairs, she can't get to me, but i can't get by her and she can kill me in 1 hit with her bare hands. (i'm not sure if she's a vampire or what, or maybe i made a wrong turn somewhere, the proncess told me "if you see the rift you went too far", but i barely even went very far at all. I'm trying to cheese her like i cheesed the zombies, but she has longer reach.

i guess i screwed up when making my character (?).
magic doesn't work on her, she just "saves" every time.
arrows don't seem to work, they just disappear into her.
i did manage to get one hit in with my sword, but it feels broken to have to cheese enemies like this.

maybe i should have leveled up more before attempting the main questline, but everything seems to have a time limit


edit : it was a vampire. .and i did get hit once before i killed it, survived with 1 hp. hope i'm not a vampire now, but IIRC , in TES, vampirism is a "disease"(haemophilic pyrophilia?) and i gave my character disease immunity at character creation, which did bump up that leveling speed sword quite a bit.

also, in regards to game balance, it's really just the combat i always found unbalanced in Bethesda games with enemies seesawing between doing nothing to me or 1 shotting me and enemies taking forever to kill at hig levels and having to cheese them.
There's a reason "stealth archer" is the most popular way to play these (i stubbornly refuse to play that way, always opting to go for melee with spellcasting on the side. . .which could be why i struggle )


edit 2 : yeah, in regards to that quest. .i just went the wrong way. .the "correct" path avoids all those vampires and wraiths and ghosts and skeletons and crap i had to "cheese"

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i did say that the reason i likely didn't have to deal with the cliff racers is that i usually play the bethesda game such that i ignore the main quest for as long as possible to focus on all the side stuff and then end up overleveled when i finally do it, which could explain why i was seeing different monsters. ...

Possibly. If you played predominantly in the western half of Vvardenfell, you would be attacked by cliff racers not so often, and rarely by several at the same time.

Regarding Daggerfall:
(if you know Daggerfall well enough, my notes may not tell you anything new; In this case, just disregard the rest of my post - and if your experience is different from what I describe, well, this is possible; I play my own way)

I play both Daggerfall (DF) and Daggerfall Unity (DFU), the former more than the latter. This means my comments are mainly about DF, not about DFU (there are noticeable differences, if you know both games).

For character development I use the same approach as I described for Morrowind and Oblivion. Experimenting, observing, role-compatible, learning by doing and from failures.
The result, the real approaches are different between all games (and between different characters, too). Again, one size doesn't fit all.
This is why I find it difficult to describe in meaningful terms how good or bad slow or fast leveling (the thread topic) are - the only answer I could give is "depends".

There is a major difference between DF and Morrowind / Oblivion: DF is far less "balanced": The game doesn't always confront you with enemies you can manage (like Oblivion does, and Morrrowind in the way that in certain regions you have a higher probability to encounter more powerful enemies than in others - you'll find out when you go there, and then you can decide to stay, or to go elsewhere and return when you're stronger.

In Daggerfall you may find enemies which are far too powerful for your character from the beginning. You don't know when you accept a quest what enemies you'll encounter. This describes mainly side quests, guild or temple quests, etc.), and DFU has a mod which creates better balance in this respect (not that I recommend to use it). Like it or not, it's part of the game to decide to fight or to run away - and to accept that you may not be able to complete a quest during its time limit. Morrowind and Oblivion throw you into such situations, too, just not so hard, and the quests don't have time limits.

The time limits are another major difference. Although DF's are generally "not too challenging", they do require you to be able (and motivated) to navigate the huge convoluted dungeons. Again this is more about side quests than about the main quest where the dungeons are hand-designed. The others have all been created "procedurally" and using standard building blocks during development, but are persistent - always the same in all games (and in particular not random in the sense that every new game presents new dungeons to you). That standard building blocks are used can help with the navigation, but also confuse players less familiar with dungeon navigation. Once you lose oriententation, it's not unlikely that you miss the time goal.

I don't know if it applies to you, but when you get the impression that your character "doesn't work" in DF this may mean that you made wrong leveling (or skill usage) decisions, but also that you had a few "bad" dungeons in a row. It is generally possible to distinguish the two reasons, if you pay attention to the enemies you encounter - some "should be" defeatable others rather not.
In my games I just accept that I can't complete quests sometimes and move on.

[Icedfate]

yeah, okay. I just got mad at the game because that necromancer dungeon is a main quesline dungeon and i read that failing to meet deadlines in any part of the main questline will fail the main questline and the game won't even tell you and just let you keep playing and then it just becomes a procedural generated sandbox with no particular endgoal.
when i realized that the necromancer dungeon is one of those handcrafted dungeons and there's an easy path to the objective with only bats and a skeleton in the way. (the game even highlights the path with environmental hints). only problem there was those 2 zombies, which were only such a problem because i'm playing DF Unity.

on the leveling topic, I am now of the opinion that faster leveling will make the game far less frustrating, given how slow level gains actually are, being gated by the 1 point per 6 hours.
but then again, someone dedicated could probably take x3 leveling and still do it if they are willing to sit in the tavern and pay for night after night as they train up skills.

I saw another thread in here about broken builds. . 1 said it's possible to get into 0.3x leveling territory (the fastest) and still be overpowered.
i made mistakes at character creation, i am certain , but i'm not sure i want to start over and try something more optimal.

so yeah, maybe it doesn't matter too much in the long run, as long as you get your skills leveled up and your equipment sorted out.

maybe all that stuff i said about TES 3 and 4 is untrue, but that's what things looked like from my POV. I don't know how to open up the game's code and look at it and interpret it, so i make conclusions based on what a game is doing to me. I realize that often, when a game seems unreasonably difficult or unfair, it's likely due to me not understanding a fundamental mechanic.



more edits : i'm about to throw away my original opinion. . fast leveling is where I want to be at.
since i know a little more about the game now, i have been experimenting in character crration and there's ways to get that desied 0.3 and still be strong.
example : i took restriced iron,steel, silver, elven, orcish since dwarven can appear as early as level 3-4.
i took critical weakness to paralysis, since the free action spell prevents it entirely.
and darkness based magic, since most of the time i'll be underground.

advantages are x3 magic points (because casting costs in EVERY elder scrolls game to date are so absurd, if you're hoping to use any magics at all, you need to maximize this)
athleticism for reduced fatigue drain.
weapon expertise (weapon of your choice, i chose hand 2 hand for the early game because of all my material restrictions)

and set it to 30 hp per level, much higher than the 12 i set before. since armor in this doesn't reduce damage, it only reduces the chance of being hit, i feel like maximizing hp is necessary to avoid being OHKO by lucky strikes that sneak past my guard.

after only hours playing, i'm level 2, with more hp than my other character imwas playing for 30 hours at level 5.
my minor and miscellaneous skills are already higher as well. like i do something 3-4 times and rest and get a skill gain, it almost feels like cheating

TLDR my new opinion is that you should play around with the creator to try and get the sword icon as low as possible to save yourself from insanity.

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... maybe all that stuff i said about TES 3 and 4 is untrue, but that's what things looked like from my POV. I don't know how to open up the game's code and look at it and interpret it, so i make conclusions based on what a game is doing to me. I realize that often, when a game seems unreasonably difficult or unfair, it's likely due to me not understanding a fundamental mechanic. ...

Fair enough. And most of what you said about Morrowind and Oblivion isn't really untrue (perhaps exaggerated sometimes) - you just "allocated" a few things to the wrong game (like Oblivion monster leveling to Morrowind).
And, for example, I found how you explained that managing leveling in Oblivion is necessary really good - problem is that the specific method you explained, doing it by choosing or not choosing certain skills as majors, may work (if done well), but doesn't lead to an enjoyable game for all players, to say the least.
I developed my own method to "optimise" leveling in Oblivion (not in Morrowind) over time: I stay a level or two below the transition to a new level range (every 5 levels), when new and stronger enemies appear, as long as possible, at least up to level 15 - afterwards it becomes less important. For example, to do the Kvatch quest at level 6 is harder than to do it at level 4 or 5, because new Daedra appear at level 6.
Often I don't use it, simply because it's not necessary (Oblivion is not a really difficult game for me anymore - and Morrowind even less).

"i make conclusions based on what a game is doing to me." This is exactly how I play, and, of course, you make mistakes quite often, wrong decisions, wrong interpretations, ...
I played Morrowind and Oblivion (and Arena and Daggerfall, too) from the beginning, without internet, UESP, guides, all I had were the manuals. Much more fun for me than "to play on rails" - that is, guided by either a hand-holding game (Oblivion's quest markers come close, I admit), or by internet help (which isn't always helpful - but that's a different topic).
And "not understanding a fundamental mechanic" is part of the process.

[Icedfate]

i never attributed monster leveling to morrowind. I said that when you level up, higher tier monsters start appearing where they would not appear of you were lower level.

you're saying that all spawns in morrowind are fixed and static and don't scale to the player level?

and i agree that the leveling strategy i used in my last playthrough really wasn't that fun. I had to keep track of all my skill gains, so that i would get exactly +5 to my stat bonuses and don't level up skills any more than i needed to.

the idea of putting skills you aren't using on the major and minor skills is so that you don't "accidentally" level up while just doing stuff.
whatever your intended "build" is, you can put it all under the miscellaneous skills and use it all you want without leveling up, which prevents the higher tier enemies from spawning. .mostly. I think there are some places that have guaranteed spawns of specific enemies.
but then, that's not efficient either, because once you gain enough skill levels to get the +5, then you ideally want to level up right there, so you have to keep track of how many raised, somthere isn't any "waste"


i didn't invent this strategy. It was lifted directly from the wiki page for morrowind : leveling
and then the wiki page for "oblivion:leveling" takes it a step further and goes into even more detail.
I didn't write the wiki page. I just used it.


maybe i rely on the wiki too much, but when implay the bethesda games, there's so much stuff and so many little things one can miss, like a unique item sitting somewhere, or the locations of all the skill gains books or the stones of barenziah in skyrim. I dunno how anyone can find all that without the wiki

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

i never attributed monster leveling to morrowind. I said that when you level up, higher tier monsters start appearing where they would not appear of you were lower level. ...

... which is exactly how Oblivion works :-).

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... you're saying that all spawns in morrowind are fixed and static and don't scale to the player level? ...

No. More precisely, I simply don't know.

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... the idea of putting skills you aren't using on the major and minor skills is so that you don't "accidentally" level up while just doing stuff....

I know, and it's a good strategy - in principle. As long as you enjoy having to improve a few "odd" skills whenever you want to level up. Contradicts my understanding of role-playing.
But you're probably aware that you never level up accidentally - you always have to rest.
I determine when I level up, and sometimes, especially in Oblivion (because of the monster tiers mentioned above), how many times I level up in a row (depends on which character I play, and which strategy I want to use).

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... It was lifted directly from the wiki page for morrowind : leveling, and then the wiki page for "oblivion:leveling" takes it a step further and goes into even more detail. ...

I know. I never use UESP for playing, but sometimes for looking up things, mostly in the context of forum posts. And in my opinion it's a great repository of TES knowledge.
You just have to be aware that UESP contains opinions, too, for example the leveling sections you mention. I don't say they are wrong, only that they reflect their writers' opinions - in this case they favour so-called min-maxing approaches.

I know they work - if applied and executed properly. Which isn't as easy and straightforward as it may seem. And it's not fun to play in this way for all players. If it works and is fun for you, just use it, there is nothing wrong with it. But it's not the only way to play and level up successfully (whatever it means for you).
I tried it once, and, yes it worked. But I would rather not play than to use it again. Which is a personal decision.

[Icedfate]

the "accidental " leveling i refer to is when too many skills get leveled up and then one hits the rest button without thinking.

if i use the langauge of UESP, they say the "efficient method"

their method would be like, say one aiming for a levelup that gives +5 str, a +5 agility. (luck can never be +5, so one just has to aim to take the +1 each player level and since it's not tied to skills.) One would want to level exactly 10 miscellaneous skills related to both of those and only those. and then level 10 major/minor skills related to tuose and only those.
it takes a lot of deliberate planning to level up exactly the amount of skills one wants to level, especially when some just kinda level up, like armor leveling when you take damage, running leveling as you run around, jumping leveling as you play, so yeah, one needs to take frequent breaks from actually adventuring and sit there somewhere leveljng in place and i completely agree that it ISN'T that fun to have to interrupt the adventure to control my leveling.


this is all moot because Daggerfall does it differently. When i first chimed in, i thought daggerfall did leveling the same way, but now i know that isn't the case.

a level in daggerfall is just random amount between 1 and whatever your hp max you set at creation and then a random amount 4-6 bonus attribute points. wheich can easily be scummed by quicksave abuse.
so i'm not even sure it's possible to end up with 100 on every stat.
although, if one does want to level all skills to 100, ome does need to hold off on leveling their "primary" skills to 100 and there is still the issue of skills justnleveling up naturally as you play, such as running, jumping and medical , so one might not want to put those as primary skills but then medical and language skills take forever to level, so one probably doesn't want those either. so again, maybe one might put like, a combat skill they aren't using as primary, so that their main combat skill can be in miscellaneous, and then then they can level that combat skill to 100 without overleveling themself and the enemies don't scale, but if you want to level up long blades to 100 without the game then imposing a 95% cap on your other skills, you need to make sure the primary skills are not ones that "accidentally " level up.

but then i guess it's not that big a deal in this, because who really needs 100 in every weapon skill anyway?

one mistake i might have made is i took critical strike as a primary skill and that's one of those skills i really can't control when it levels, dunno if i shouldn't have done that.

edit : sorry for the edits, when i type these i'm on a mobile device and have to fix lots of typos

edit 2 : i will admit, i never considered making a highly specialized character in these. I always aim to kake characters that can do everything, maxed out on everything, but yeah, RPing a mage that can only do mage things or a skinny thief that dies if anything coughs on them, so they have to stay stealthed at all times could be interesting as well. it's just a different playstyle.

anyway, i shot myself in the foot by writing all these posts, because aint nobody gonna read all this. . .

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

... if i use the langauge of UESP, they say the "efficient method" ...

I know how leveling works, in Daggerfall, in Morrowind and in Oblivion. "Efficient" is always associated with a goal, UESP defines it in this way:
For Morrowind "If you want to maximize your attribute bonuses at each level ...".
For Oblivion: "Efficient Leveling is getting 10 skill-ups under 3 governing attributes every level, so that on leveling you'll gain +5 in all 3."
And, like I said, the method does work (to achieve the goal stated), if used correctly.
But they don't say, why maximising attribute bonuses is essential, important or desirable,
Welcome in the world of opinions!

I won't discuss the role of attributes (it's explained well in UESP). But I think it's clear that improving attributes makes sense only if you know what to do with the improved attributes. And that you do something to improve the attributes makes sense only if you think it's worth it (and more worth it than doing something else, unless you can do both at the same time).

Think about it. If you think, a better attribute makes sense for you, for your game, for your character, and that it's worth the effort (whatever it means for you personally, nobody else can tell you), just go ahead and improve the attribute. See what happens, and if the result is what you expect (and the effort was worth it), continue using the method. Otherwise think about what went wrong and why, and try to find a better one.
It doesn't matter much which method you use initially - it matters how you improve it, adapt it to what matters for you (and not for me or anyone else).

For me, improving Endurance makes sense in most games. More Strength is also often a good choice, mainly for fighters, or generally, for characters who have to carry a lot (like weapons, armour or loot), while Willpower is more suitable for mages. Etc. And you can improve them all if you use the skills most relevant for your character's role (if these skills are major skills).
And what's the real diiference between adding, say, 3 or 5 to an attribute value at level up? According to my (subjective) experience not enough to justify the effort. You have to give your (subjective) answer yourself.

[Icedfate]

wouldn't stand to reason that higher number on attributes is always better than lower numbers? and that having 100 in every attribute is better than not having 100 in every attribute?
I agree that maximizing the attributes is mostly unnecessary. one can safely dump INT if you're not using magic. Personality can be safely dumped as it only affects speech related skills, which in daggerfall are mostly useless except for mercantile.

one thing about Endurance is that it confers a binus to hp when leveling, but does not apply the bonus retroactively, so it's to one's maximal benefit to max that one ASAP or else not even bother with it..



and yes, i'm aware that wikis are user generated and are biased to the opinion of the one who wrote them.
yeah, the way it presented the information, makes it seem more important than it is. The wiki seems to stress the importance of "efficiency" and maximizing the stats and since I generally like to try and do "everything on a single playthrough", instead of doing multiple playthroughs, I determined that would ultimately be my "ideal" way to play.


the reason the wiki talks about "efficiency"in morrowind and oblivion is because there are only so many skill points gains you can get before all skills are 100, which creates the level cap. if you're trying to get those +5 bonuses, you only need 10 skill ups , any extra skill ups are essentially "wasted" as they don't carry over to count toward the bonus on the next level. They do still count toward leveling up if they are major or minor skills, but they don't count toward the attributes bonuses


i agree that it makes the game less fun, having to keep track of all my skill gains , so i don't have any "wasted" skill gains.
you say "well, if it's FUN to play that way", but then, i could contend that "fun" and "optimal" are two different concepts.
Like marriage. . which has nothing to do with love.
I'm glad i never got married. . .with children.


anyhoo, there's so many ways to game the system in this one, i think it is better if OP tried playing around with the custom class options to try and get down into the coveted 0.3 section.
taking disadvantages such as "forbidden weaponry" and "forbidden materials" can do wonders for dropping that slider and have little to no negative impact.
say , orcish materials for example, those start appearing around the same time as daedric and daedric is clearly superior, so one can safely pick forbidden materieals : orcish.
elvish is only relevant in the early game and if one doesn't mind waiting until level 3-4 to get dwarven, elven can be safely forbidden as well.
mithril and adamatium are virtually identical in stats, so forbidding one while allowing the other has low impact.

if one only cares about 1-2 weapon types, one can forbid the others.
i myself forbade iron,steel,elven,orcish (if i did it again, i would forbid mithril or adamatium and keep iron so i could train weapon skills on immune enemies) and did not forbid any weapons, as i want that flexibility, but in playing the game itself, i realize, all weapons swing the same way, one only needs to focus on a single weapon type, but i did read somewhere that skill in certain weapons is a requirement for certain guilds, loke short blades for the thieves guild, but i can't remember where i saw that, so i could be misquoting it.

it should be fairly easy to make a powerful character and have fast leveling.
also, supposedly, setting reflexes faster gives you faster leveling, but i left that one on average

[lonetrav]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

wouldn't stand to reason that higher number on attributes is always better than lower numbers? and that having 100 in every attribute is better than not having 100 in every attribute?
I agree that maximizing the attributes is mostly unnecessary. one can safely dump INT if you're not using magic. Personality can be safely dumped as it only affects speech related skills, which in daggerfall are mostly useless except for mercantile....

Yes, but you have to do something to get better attributes. If it's worth the effort, fine. It's why I mentioned the difference between +3, which you get easily by just playing according to your role (if the skills fitting your role are major), and +5 which you may get only by doing something "odd" (if you feel differently, or find it acceptable, fine).

Depending on the role you play, one or the other attribute is useless indeed. But for every attribute there is a role where it's useful and matters, including, say, Personality. I repeat that it's one the major strengths of the TES games for me that they let you play so many different roles. Choose a role, decide which attributes and strengths are important or useful for the role, and then develop your character accordingly. In addition, you can always choose to play the main quest or in a "choose your own adventure" fashion (or combine the two).

Originally posted by Icedfate:

.. you say "well, if it's FUN to play that way", but then, i could contend that "fun" and "optimal" are two different concepts. ...

Sure, if you define "optimal" in a way that it has nothing to do with fun. Generally, "optimal" (like "efficient") makes sense only if you say for what, there is no abstract "optimal". I don't play to get the highest attribute increases out of my skill increases, and so I choose to play suboptimal in this respect. Instead, I prefer to optimise other things. On the other hand, for other people optimising attribute bonuses may be part of the fun, and so it helps them optimising the fun they have.

It always comes down to the question "Is it worth it", doesn't it? If yes, do it, otherwise you can still do it, but why? And it's all subjective.

[Icedfate]

This is gonna be a bit off topic. .

i'll admit, i'm playing morrowind now and i'm doing the math. Uesp says that the potential level cap in morrowind is like 89(ish).
if one does my "maximize" stragedy to get +5 on 3 stats on every level, they would have 100 in every stat, except luck at around level 31(ish)
if one wants to maximize luck as well, then they could have 100 on every stat except luck at around level 43-44 and then their luck would be 100 at level 61.

i say approximately, because i'm not familiar with all the race's starting attributes. ideally, one would want to start with a high luck character, if they wanted to go that route.
i'm playing a breton, who started with 40 luck, and 1 luck per level, means level 61.

in this sense, my "efficient" leveling might actually be LESS efficient, because all that time to have maximizing my stats by the mid 30's early 40's , means that i'm gonna be having lots of levels where all i'm getting is the +1 luck, because all the other stats are maximized already.

hoever, if i just play "organically" and take x3 bonuses on every levelup, i could have 100 in every stat by the late 50's and then finish off luck at level 61.

my character will struggle though, because i'm only boosting 2 stats alongside luck instead of the 3.

time will tell if i run into the problem of the winged twilights in the mid 20's spawning everywhere or not.

the fact is that morrowind does scale spawns to player level. i'm level 5 now and i'm already seeing it. at the very beginning, there were mudcrabs, scribs, kwama foragers around, but now i'm seeing nix hounds and kagoutis and cliff racers. although, I may be level 5, but the cliff racers are already not much of a threat to me and i'm killing them fairly easily, as long as i'm not getting ganked by multiple enemies. I fought 4 slaughterfish at once in the water and had to retreat to heal multiple times before eventually beating them. haven't seen any dreughs yet.

i suspect that the cliff racers that people had trouble with are the "blighted" cliff racers that spawn in specific parts of the map and are stronger than regular ones.

I know that humanoid enemies scale with the player level, or at least their equipment does. they will drop higher tier gear as my level rises. as well as the dark bro assassins from tribunal expansion, if one does not do the quest to stop those guys from spawning, there will be more and more of them, spawning multiple guys as your level rises.

so my whole thing about the "efficiency" was just to ensure that when the player reaches that minimum level when certain enemies begin spawning that the player doesn't end up underpowered and under equipped.

I agree with you though, in that since the level cap is so high, there really is no problem that is insurmountable, since the player can just grind out more levels.

so yeah, the game probably IS more fun just playing organically and letting levelup come as they may, since you're gonna max out the stats anyway if you play long enough