Oblivion enemies broken

[avenger94]

There are some games that are hard. There are some that are tough. There are some that are STALKER. And then there is the burning ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is Oblivion. I do not know where to start, so much that is broken, so much that makes no sense.
The other month I broke out my old discs, installed Oblivion and promptly forgot about it until last week. Im now Level 11 and (after installing no less than 3 mods to stop my character being raped by basic enemies) am at the end of my tether after tonights playing. There is a dent in my wall where my fist impacted out of pure frustration and rage.
My character is an Imperial Warrior built for sword and board melee (before I knew that Imperial soldiers do not resemble Roman soldiers in any way). Right now I have Steel Armour, a Dorf shield and a Fine Steel Longsword (or did, the latter has now been replaced with a magic Deadra blade)

So the hole in my wall? That was from fighting a Clannfear in a Keystone tower. I cleared the tower, cleared out the armoured sword carrying Daedra and whatever the hell that lord is in it. And then this magical dinosaur hit me. And I died. So reloaded, buffed myself and tried again. And failed. So I tried again but with stealth and more buffs. And got trampled. And again and again and again and again.... On the 8th try I finally killed it, having burnt through *all* my healing potions and several Deadra hearts I jumped off the edge in desperation and it followed. I hit it in midair and it died on impact. I do not know how I didnt, I did not even have a pixel of HP left. It took everything and in the end dumb luck got it. Those things are broken as hell and there is no way I can face another.

And then there are the Goblins. Even with the mods to stop them from reaching godlike levels they are way too tough. They are fast, recover from being stunned almost immediately and, like the Clannfear, can just spam stunning attacks like no tomorrow. They hit crazily hard and I would love to exchange my steel armour for Goblin hide because that stuff just absorbs impacts like no tomorrow. One or two are just about manageable but any more than that and im a gonner, they are all but unbeatable unless I luck out and the AI cant find a path for some reason or other so I can shoot them and watch them absorb arrow after arrow. Goblins are weak basic mooks in every other game, and even in Goblin Slayer they are only scary because of just how cunning they are. In Oblivion Goblins really should have toppled all other cultures long ago through sheer force of arms.

Im not sure if I want to go on, the difficulty slider is set to normal and right now im getting raped by what should be basic ♥♥♥♥♥ foes. Enemies are HP sponges and my own equipment degrades stupidly fast. Who the hell designed this game? And which ♥♥♥♥♥♥ okayed it?

[Valden21]

It's not the enemies that are broken. It's the leveling system. The variety of enemies you face in the game is directly tied to your level, so regardless of your skills, you'll eventually start facing tougher enemies and tougher varieties of basic enemies.

There are multiple ways of dealing with this. The first is just to lower the difficulty. The second is to never sleep in-game. Unfortunately, that option's closed to you now. Finally, there's the third method. The problem with this is that to get the maximum benefit from leveling, you'll need to get a +5 bonus to three of your attributes per level, and those attributes need to be the ones that help you the most. Why is this a problem? It's a problem because to get a +5 bonus in the attributes that help you the most, one of the skills that you'll be using a lot needs to be one of the minor skills. The best way to control that is via making a custom character, as you have more control over the skills you'll be using. So if you want to continue with this character, my advice is to bite the metaphorical bullet and lower the difficulty.

Equipment availability is also tied to levels, and the stuff you have is just not fitted to the variety of enemies you're facing. Steel armor, even a full set, is low-tier compared to what you should be using by level 13. Ideally, you should be using Mithril or Orcish armor, depending on your skills. Weapons follow a similar deal, which brings me to that Daedric sword you've got. Ditch it; it's not actually a Daedric weapon, as Daedric weapons NEVER show up before level 20. Instead, what you've got is a Dremora weapon, which are the in-universe equivalent of a cheap knock-off of a Daedric weapon. By level 11, Elven, Dwarven, and Silver weapons start showing up as loot, and silver weapons are available in shops by that time. Invest in one of those weapons, as it'll be a much better choice for you.

Do all this, and your survivability should increase. Now get out there and save the Empire!

[The Great Cornholio]

If you're not powerleveling your stats to get x5 every level up and not using any magic the default difficulty is going to be obnoxious. You're definitely not the first person to have this reaction.

If you're just going to melee through the game lower the difficulty slider.

Carry healing potions. Use summoning spells. Use paralyze on touch spells. Use poisons. Alchemy is very powerful. Enchant your weapon for frost/fire/shock damage, soultrap everything you fight and recharge your weapon with Azura's Star. A spellsword/battlemage type character works very well.

[arottweiler]

It sounds like you have been levelling up too fast and not getting enough time to train major and minor skills so you're not well equipped against enemies you encounter after a few levels. It's happened to me and is very frustrating. Encounters with Daedra and closing Oblivion gates will be very difficult. Clanfears are also one of the toughest enemies to deal with so I try to avoid them if I can.

You can make life easier by combining melee and magic in battle and it can make a seemingly impossible to beat enemy much easier to handle. Enchant an iron dagger with weakness to fire and make it last for 20+ seconds so you have plenty of time. Then create a fire damage spell and make it as powerful as you're skill level will allow. You can then slash the enemy to apply the weakness spell and quickly follow it up with the fire damage spell. If the target already has a natural weakness to fire it will very quickly drain their health bar. Repeat this with iron daggers and damage spells for frost and shock and keeping it one spell per weapon means you can make it more powerful. I carry a main weapon but also carry all three daggers with me as they are very light and I feel more prepared. Use shield a lot as well to start building up the skill.

This is useful for working out what the resistances/weaknesses are:

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Creature_Resistances

Use summons and followers to help you out. There are some great follower mods and you can even give them summon spells so when you encounter an enemy your follower summons an extra fighter to help out. Get the Frost Atronach summon as soon as possible because it's a strong summon but is also good for blocking tunnels with it's massive size giving you time to recover with health and magica potions.

I know I'm repeating what has already been said with all of this but I would start a new game and choose custom skills and aim for efficient levelling. Only major skills count towards levelling up and you can increase minor skills as much as you like on each level without increasing the level progress. When I came back to the game a few months ago I ended up restarting at around level 12 because I had messed up my major skill choices.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Efficient_Leveling

[vior wolfkin]

Sounds like you have levelled too fast in too few areas .... LOWER THE DIFFICULTY SLIDER ! ... I usually have the slider set low as i like to keep the story flowing ! As you learn how to level up without falling behind the npc's you can increase the difficulty . The problem is simple ... as your levels rise so do the npc's ! if you arent careful you level up to make some things easy for yourself at the cost of disadvantages elsewhere ! ..... BALANCE IS KEY !

[gustav1n]

yes

[DesertSailor]

lol this was me before I learned about powerleveling.
If you don't painstakingly focus on leveling certain skills to get that +5 bonus (get endurance to 100 ASAP) at the end of each level, you're gonna end up having epic battles with mudcrabs come level 15.
Unfortunately Oblivion has among the worst leveling systems I've ever seen in an RPG, one cannot feasibly follow a niche class to level 10 and beyond unless they powerlevel.

For now, that difficulty slider is your best friend.

[The Shaver]

Either make sure to use the "correct" Build or lower the difficulty everytime you level up.
Oblivions scaling system is the worst out of all TES Titles

[SumatranRatMonkey]

Originally posted by The Great Cornholio:

If you're not powerleveling your stats to get x5 every level up and not using any magic the default difficulty is going to be obnoxious. You're definitely not the first person to have this reaction.

If you're just going to melee through the game lower the difficulty slider.

Carry healing potions. Use summoning spells. Use paralyze on touch spells. Use poisons. Alchemy is very powerful. Enchant your weapon for frost/fire/shock damage, soultrap everything you fight and recharge your weapon with Azura's Star. A spellsword/battlemage type character works very well.

Normal difficulty is generally fine without power gaming (I've never bothered) but there are some obnoxious parts like e.g. main quest finale. Agree the difficulty slider is the solution to ♥♥♥♥♥♥ balancing even while I don't mind Oblivion's system as such.

[ArcticStan]

what the hell are you people talking about? why you need +5 to attributes each lvl?
first of all it is skill that does most damage, not attribute, secondly, game has 100 opportunities to get +++ to all attributes, doomstones, potions, enchanting, spells... redguard for examples starts the game with spell which makes his strength 100.
OP has problems because he didn't stick to 3-4 main skills and went jack of all trades style. by 11 lvl he could had expert lvl in block/blades and could disarm/stun and knockdown people left and right.

[Nonbinary]

most people have already given good advice, for defense its essential to force up your endurance to 100 as soon as you can. enemies stumble you less if they dont hit your hp hard enough, getting locked in the stumble animation is the common most lethal thing that can happen to you. block their attacks and counter them everytime, and you should be pretty safe in any fight. daedra are generally a pain to deal with no matter your level. try to keep your fatigue bar up so you hit them hard too (kind of stupid having high fatigue is a good thing in this game...)

^ what people mean with powerleveling is mostly related to endurance. if you level endurance too late, your health suffers really hard. someone who maxes endurance at level 25 for example will never have the same amount of hp as someone who maxed it much earlier. the rest of the attributes you just have to nitpick carefully when to boost according to your needs, so you dont waste attribute boosts because you leveled too many skills. but maxing those late wont have a negative impact