Guide to Improving Combat Strategy

[Wahooka]

I have been playing Oblivion for a while and reached level 49. I've completed all the guild quests, the main quest, and probably at least half of the side quests. I'm still finding combat to be a grind, and I haven't gotten that much better at it.

I don't want quest or game spoilers, but I would like some combat advice.

I will quickly discuss my current combat strategy and abilities.

Level 49

Kahjit Warrior Spellsword

Health 631
Magicka 280
Fatigue 414

Strength 102
Intelligence 140
Willpower 100
Agility 102
Speed 66
Endurance 110
Personality 98
Luck 77

Skills include complete mastery of Blade, Block, Heavy Armor, Mysticism, Conjuration, Destruction, Alteraion.

I have Reflect Damage at 61% and Spell Aborption at 46%.

My basic strategy is very simple, I just swing my magic weapon about 10-20 times until the creature is defeated, or I cast a destruction spell that does 100 damage, and keep drinking potions to restore Magicka.

Both these methods are rather time consuming. I sometimes do a Paralyze spell if it is one opponent, and then still it takes a lot of attacks to finally win.

I find the majority of the skills and abilities in the game do not help me any further in combat. For example, trying to Damage Strength or other attriubtes isn't that helpful, nor is Disintegrate Weapon worth the time it takes. Seems other strategies and spells I have explored don't do that much, for instance Summon Wraith and other creatures doesn't help much either, I am stronger then anyone I can summon.

In the end, combat just stays a long grind, and I wonder if there is some key to strategy that I'm just missing, or is there some way more efficient?

Thanks for advice.

[Wahooka]

One thing I forgot to ask:

If you get your Destruction skill over 100, does this have any effect on additional effectiveness of all the weakness and drain spells, or does it effect anything else?

Thanks.

[CullinB]

In vanilla system nothing happen destrution over 100.
You must craft spells or enchants as effectively as possible.
And high level enemies do reflect you spells that requires you to learn how to use Dispel in your high power destructive spells. It will be fun for you.

[The Flying Rodent]

Spellcasting skill only effects the Magicka Cost of casting spells in a particular school. The formula is [1.4 - 0.012 × Skill] for that component, and skill maxes at 100. 'Effectiveness' of a spell is determined only by whether or not the player is wearing armour, and their current armour skill.

So short answer: there is no point boosting Destruction above 100. The same goes with any other skill that is NOT Acrobatics or Athletics, which have an effective '8-bit' limit [i.e. 2^8 - 1 or 255]. Attributes and Health/Magicka/Fatigue however can be boosted basically infinitely.

With regards to Reflect Spell: Very few enemies have this in Oblivion, but occasionally some enemies to cast this. If you happen to be 100% resistant to magic [which can be achieved], you need not bother IMO trying to dispel these enemies, as their reflected spells will not harm you. It's more time efficient to just keep blasting them.

However if you are not: Dispel is a Mysticism effect, BUT due to the way that custom spells work, the most powerful spell effect governs what school the spell is cast from. So if you are a Master in Destruction and an Novice in Mysticism, and make a custom spell with Destruction effects + Dispel, so long as the most powerful destruction effect has a higher Base Cost [i.e. independent of skill] than the Dispel effect [even if the Dispel effect is effectively a higher level than you could cast normally], the custom spell will be treated as a Destruction spell, and you should be able to cast it. Mysticism will still be considered for the spell cost of the Dispel effect itself, but NOT your ability to cast the spell. If that makes sense.

It's outlined in here anyway. :)

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Spell_Making

The skill level requirement is determined from the base Magicka cost of the overall spell (summing the costs of all individual effects, and without adjusting based on your current skill level):

Magicka < 26: no skill level requirement
26 ≤ Magicka < 63: requires skill of 25
63 ≤ Magicka < 150: requires skill of 50
150 ≤ Magicka < 400: requires skill of 75
Magicka ≥ 400: requires skill of 100

For multi-effect spells, the requirement will be in the school of the single effect with the highest base Magicka cost. (Therefore in a spell with four alteration effects and one illusion effect, illusion could easily be the school of the spell). Also, the experience you gain for casting this spell will only be in the primary school.

In multi-effect spells, the skill adjustment is applied to each component effect separately. Therefore, if your skill level is 100 in Alteration but 25 in Illusion, the Alteration component of a spell will be relatively cheap, but the Illusion component expensive.

If your skill levels are very different in two different schools, multi-effect spells can be used to create spells that otherwise you would be unable to cast. For example, if you are a master of illusion but a novice in destruction, normally you would be unable to create a Fire Damage 16 pts on touch spell (base magicka cost 26). However, you would be able to create a spell with a combined Paralyze 6 pts on touch (base magicka cost 285) and Fire Damage 100 pts on touch (base magicka cost 272), because the combined spell would be identified as an Illusion spell.

Actually being able to cast this spell might still be difficult, however, because of the high magicka cost: even for destruction=25, the actual magicka cost would be 356 (285×0.2=57 for the paralyze component, 272×1.1=299 for the fire damage component).

[Wahooka]

I noticedthat there were a few creatures that I could not effect at all with magic.

One was commonly found in the daedric planes, I think it was called a Xilian or something similar. The other I encountered in the Knights of Nine final mission, they are called Aurorans I think.

Both seemed to be reflecting or at least immune to magic.

Btw, what did you mean by "tanky enemies with leveled health" that you said in an earlier message? And why did you suggest a different strategy for fighting those enemies, I think you said Rainbow attack of lightning, fire, shock is better then Drain Health against those enemies.

[CullinB]

And too much relay on paralyze is useless many critter are free from paralyzing

[arottweiler]

A useful spell effect to include in a multi weakness spell is light which lights up the target so you can use it as a touch, target or area spell and it will light up everyone affected by the spell. It's useful because you can see easily who has been affected by the spell so in a chaotic battle you can use follow up attacks more effectively. It's not an attackl spell so can be used on its own to make human torches. Just hit them with a light spell and they will illuminate the area they are in.

Another tip when making damage spells is to add the frost attack first because that means the final spell will use the frost spell animation which is much faster moving than anything else. If you add the fire damage spell first to a multi damage spell it will use the fire spell animation which is very slow and makes it easier for the target to dodge.

[CullinB]

@arottweiler
Light enemies is good idea
How you make a spell ?
Will you give us some samples?

[Wahooka]

Yes, if you don't mind posting the actual spells and the magicka cost for casting them, and what their ultimate purpose is, it might help, but if that is too time consuming, I understand.

I am basically understanding the strategy you are suggesting, so I am looking forward to playing again soon with the new ideas.

[arottweiler]

This is an enchanted weapon and new spell I created a few days ago after realising my current spells were overpowered so I was wasting magica. I also shortened the duration to 10 seconds for the weakness effect (the enchanted weapon) and 5 seconds for the damage spell. The magica needed for the spell is 362 and the blade has 19 uses before it needs to be recharged.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125655865

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125654778

This screenshot shows the light effect on a Skingrad guard who I have just attacked with the blade. You can see an orange dusty glow around him which always happens when they are hit with a weakness spell so this is a visual indicator but this isn't always easy to see and it wears off in a few seconds. You can see the ground around him has lit up slightly which is the light effect of the spell and you can make that last much longer and be brighter. That uses more magica though.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1125665822

[CullinB]

Thanks
I have created LightEnemies Spell and Tested by myself alreay.
<Target spell Light magnitude:50ft area 30ft duration 45sec>

But from your post i will remake it with Calm + Light with less magnitude 15 area 50ft.
that spell will be used in LostBoy Cavern with OOO + kobal Addons this cave contains full of Ghostly Warriors ,Spectral wolves ,Liches and many other nuisances.

[The Flying Rodent]

引用自 Wahooka：

I noticedthat there were a few creatures that I could not effect at all with magic.

One was commonly found in the daedric planes, I think it was called a Xilian or something similar. The other I encountered in the Knights of Nine final mission, they are called Aurorans I think.

Both seemed to be reflecting or at least immune to magic.

Btw, what did you mean by "tanky enemies with leveled health" that you said in an earlier message? And why did you suggest a different strategy for fighting those enemies, I think you said Rainbow attack of lightning, fire, shock is better then Drain Health against those enemies.

Xivilai [the tall Daedra that summon Clannfear] have 50% Spell Absorption[en.uesp.net], similar to what the Atronach Sign would grant the player. This means that half the spells cast at them are absorbed instead of dealing damage, and become Magicka for the Xivilai to use. Sadly there is no way to 'dispel' this effect, so the only way around it is either to just plug away at them with spells until they die [which does eventually happen given time], switch to ranged/melee weapons, and/or use poisons.

Xivilai are probably the most irritating type of enemy for a Pure Spellcaster to have to deal with: Overcoming Spell Absorption + not getting pummelled by a repeatedly summoned Clannfear attack-dog at the same time can be tedious and draining on Magicka. Thankfully, one can usually just cast Invisibility and run past Xivilai in an Oblivion gate if they do not wish to fight them.

Most enemies in Oblivion have a fixed health value, independent of what level they're found at. For e.g. a Rat will always have 4 HP, whether or not you're fighting it at Level 1 or Level 50. However, some enemies have Health which increases depending on the character's level: A 'Levelled Health Bar' in other words. The tankiest of these in the Vanilla game is an Ogre[en.uesp.net]. They will have "26×(lvl-3)" HP, and a minimum of 406 HP.

So if you were to fight an Ogre at level 20, they would have 26x(20-3=17) = 26x17= 442 HP.

If you were to fight an Ogre at level 40, they would have 26x(40-3=37) = 26x37 = 962 HP.

Both Xivilai[en.uesp.net] and Aurorans[en.uesp.net] [the Knights of the Nine Daedra with Battleaxes] have Levelled Health bars, so they'll get 'tankier' as your character levels. Aurorans unlike Xivilai do not appear to have any innate Absorption: However they are a little bit resistant to Magic and Shock, and occasionally wear Levelled Jewellery, which could include an item with Reflect or Absorption on it.

So! Going back to the first post:

To 'stack' Weakness to Magic Spells, requires 2 spells of different names to be cast one after the other on a target. So say you had the two spells 'Weak 1' and 'Weak 2' that both dealt Weakness to Magic 100% for 5 seconds [Cost at 100 Destruction is about 15ish magicka], and the Drain Health 100 points for 1 second spell, 'Killshot' [cost at 100 Destruction is 10ish magicka].

Killshot alone = 100 Damage.
W1 + KS = 200 Damage.
W1 + W2 + KS = 400 Damage.
W1 + W2 + W1 + KS = 700 Damage.
W1 + W2 + W1 + W2 + KS = 1200 Damage.
W1 + W2 + W1 + W2 + W1 + KS = 2000 Damage, which is enough to kill anything in the game on Normal Difficulty.

This would be the most efficient way, magicka wise, to kill high level monsters. The downside is that you'd have to land a lot of Weakness Spells quickly and in succession on one target for this to work. If the 'Weakness Chain" gets broken or interrupted, resulting in not enough Weaknesses active for the Drain Health Spell to kill the target [for e.g. if the Weakness Spells missed or got reflected/absorbed/dispelled], then the target returns to full health after the Drain Health effect runs out. Xivilai and Dremora could be a pain to get rid of using this technique.

The advantage of Elemental Damage, whilst it can be a bit more expensive, is that lots of 'weaknesses' can be packed into the one spell, and damage can be dealt more quickly with comparatively less spells cast.

In other words: "Magic Weakness stacked" + "Drain Health" combo is cheap on Magicka, but requires comparatively more spell casts to deal the same amount of damage as a one-two punch style "Magic and Element Weakness" + "Fire/Frost/Shock" combo [which I labelled 'Super Weakness' and 'Rainbow Killshot'].

Against either a very high level enemy [e.g. Ogre, which at level 49 would have 26x46 = 1196 HP], or against an enemy that can disrupt the Weakness Stacking pattern through Absorption/Reflection/Dispel [e.g. Xivilai, Dremora], it might be more useful to sacrifice more magicka for less casts, and use a "Weak + Elements" combo rather than a "Weak + Drain" combo.

For your average skirmish however, it's definitely more Magicka economical to use a "Weak" + "Drain" combo. The "Weak + Elements" combo is more of a Reserve way of dealing with tougher enemies, that might require the odd Restore Magicka potion if used consistently.

[The Flying Rodent]

Another thing:

I enchanted all my armor to Fortify Intelligence by 10, so I have gained about 100 extra Magicka that way, plus the Fortify Magicka will give me 400 total, or 380 if I wear Mankor Camoran's robe instead of a magical Curiass.

By the sounds of it, you've enchanted your gear with Fortify Intelligence to increase your Magicka. If you're able to do so: Fortify Magicka Sigil Stones are far superior to this. The highest level Fortify Intelligence stone is +12 [or +24 Magicka], and the highest Fortify Magicka Sigil stone is +50, which is more than double that.

There are from memory 9 equipment slots that can be enchanted, so it is theoretically possible for any character with 100 Base intelligence to reach 200 + 50x9 = 200 + 450 = 650 Magicka from gear alone. Of course, there are items in game that can be more practical than pure Fortify Magicka equipment, so it's often not worth it to go all out, even with a Pure mage. But regardless: Fortify Magicka enchantments beat Fortify Intelligence hands down.

You also mentioned earlier that you saw a youtube video of someone casting a spell that cost 'Over 2000 Magicka'. If you have 100 Restoration, this is easier than you think to achieve, though it does take a fair bit of effort to keep up:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=888102371

[Wahooka]

Thanks Flying Rodent, your posts are always very helpful.

Do you have to search Aelyid ruins for a specific type of Sigil Stones that fortify Magicka? Are they hard to find? Actually, I have some already in my inventory, I think I got them in the Daedric Planes of Oblivion if I recall.

I seem to have one that Fortifies Magicka 50 and also will Absorb Magicka 50 points on Strike. Does that mean I have to use this one on a weapon, since it is "On Strike" with its effect?

[The Flying Rodent]

引用自 Wahooka：

Thanks Flying Rodent, your posts are always very helpful.

Do you have to search Aelyid ruins for a specific type of Sigil Stones that fortify Magicka? Are they hard to find? Actually, I have some already in my inventory, I think I got them in the Daedric Planes of Oblivion if I recall.

I seem to have one that Fortifies Magicka 50 and also will Absorb Magicka 50 points on Strike. Does that mean I have to use this one on a weapon, since it is "On Strike" with its effect?

You're welcome. I'm a teacher by trade; I like explaining things. :)

Sigil Stones[en.uesp.net] are found in Oblivion gates. They're the item you pick up right at the end to destroy the gate.

There are 30 different types of stone, all of which have a random chance of 'spawning' when picked up (Miscellaneous item in inventory). They each come with two effects that can be used for enchanting: one for equipment, and one for weapons. So for e.g a Fortify Magicka / Absorb Magicka stone will enchant an equipment item with Fortify Magicka if applied, or a weapon with Absorb Magicka On Strike if applied.

2 out of the 30 types of stone have Fortify Magicka as their equipment component (the other being Fortify Magicka / Damage Magicka), so the player effectively has a 1/15 chance of picking up a Fortify Magicka stone from a gate.

Given that there's a maximum of 60 gates that spawn per game, it's not likely that the player will gather enough Fortify Magicka stones to use from Random Chance alone. To get around this: one can save/ reload in front of a stone in a gate until it spawns a variety that is useful (which is what I do). Failing that, one can also use Console Commands to spawn them.

[Wahooka]

Well the bad news is I already closed all the major Oblivion Gates, and solved the main quest, so there are no stones left. But I do have one that fortifies Magicka, so I can at least use that one.

Would you rather have scenario 1 or 2?

1 Wear all enchanted heavy armor and get 350 magicka, with Reflect Damage at 41% and Spell Absorption at 25% and Reflect Spell at 25%

2. Or would you rather use Mankar Camaron's robe, have Reflect Damage at 61% and Spell Absorption at 46% and no Spell Reflect, and have Magicka at around 280.