Is Oblivion leveling system really that bad?

[Wasakii]

Also,is effective levelling a pain in the ass to do?

[AC Denton]

Subjective
Subjective

[Unmotivated]

Originally posted by Mattmoo:

No.

Here’s a pretty good video that explains how to make a strong build, just follow this and take notes if you have to.

Like, it explains how to make a character that’s practical and has a balance between leveling moderately quick and having a powerful character. Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/fWyLdaJhAXc

P.S. Yeah efficient leveling can be hard to do sometimes. If you have the time to do it, go ahead but if you can’t spend at least 2 hours a day between doing that and playing the game, I don’t know that I’d recommend it. I mean it’s nice, but tedious if you don’t have much experience with the game.

Also it’s not a very fun way to play the game unless you can relax and work on your skills, leveling up six skills, thirty times in total a level is going to take some notation and can break the immersive experience at times.

i wouldn't really say it breaks immersion. in a way, this is sort of the difference between practicing and perfecting a skill in real life.

you can figure out ways to DO a skill well and make it work out of necessity, but it takes actual dedication and proper training to perfect yourself, which requires multiple areas of said training to be worth the effort.

kinda like how you can run a mile and be slightly winded, but if you go to the point you're fatigued every single time, it's not going to help you. and if you don't run at all, you can't run for very long either.

[Bomb Bloke]

One half of the coin is that it's hard to max out your character unless you have a strong understanding of the system before you start out. This is intentional: Bethesda wanted you to end up with a character weighted towards your chosen class, not a "can do it all" super-hero.

That, on its own, would only bug the powergamers... if not for the way enemies automatically advance a level every time you do. And they're all pretty much combat-orientated, so if you go out and gain a bunch of levels by advancing "peaceful" skills (like alchemy), you'll get mauled when you later go out adventuring.

But so long as you're aware of it, it's not a difficult problem to avoid.

[Dumah]

Yes it is that bad. Story of my Oblivion playthrough - 1st attempt: Khajit thief, fast leveling via qests, leave city for the first time - GG i cant even beat boar and stalked by minotaurs. Character scraped. New character - argonian warrior, fast leveling trough quests, go in to sewers get mowdown by skeletons. Bye. 3rd attempt - i take pen and paper and create orc woman, by the level 20 i already running around naked killing daedras with bare hands. Uninstall.

[Johnny Casey]

Originally posted by Dumah:

Yes it is that bad. Story of my Oblivion playthrough - 1st attempt: Khajit thief, fast leveling via qests, leave city for the first time - GG i cant even beat boar and stalked by minotaurs. Character scraped. New character - argonian warrior, fast leveling trough quests, go in to sewers get mowdown by skeletons. Bye. 3rd attempt - i take pen and paper and create orc woman, by the level 20 i already running around naked killing daedras with bare hands. Uninstall.

All those character builds were failed because you didn't bother to utilize any spells; the most powerful tool in the game.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

All those character builds were failed because you didn't bother to utilize any spells; the most powerful tool in the game.

- first of all how do you know what i utilised and what i didnt? Secondly only two first "builds" ( that term is unaplicable to TES games ) failed, third one was OP and made me quit the game. Oblivion is a stain on TES franchise.

[Millennial_KiwiGamer]

Theres a mod called Oblivion XP its pretty neat alternative to Vanilla leveling. Its more aligned with the Fallout leveling system where you gain XP doing tasks, killing foes and completing quests and lets you allocate a preset amount of attributes an skills per level.

I'm enjoying Oblivion far more with it but Ive played many hours of Vanilla on the ol 360 and enjoyed that too, however, being 27 now and having a heavy work schedule I just want the easier more streamlined level up system XP is offering.

[Johnny Casey]

Also just found out this guy hasn't even bought the game.

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Also just found out this guy hasn't even bought the game.

That would be difficult for you to determine - even on PC, Oblivion wasn't exclusively released through Steam.

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Well, if you did managed to utilize spells, you wouldn't scrap those characters for being weak. The fact that your character became weak means that you were focusing more on combat skills than anything else, like how everyone do so in this game.

- the fact that my theme based laid back characters failed prooves that Oblivion is a terribly balanced and designed game. Magic would not factor in anyway in the fact that you would be stomped by mobs if your character lacked combat skills, i thing that would not happened in Morrowind for example.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

And no. Your third attempt was a failure in my term since it made you quit the game. You wouldn't quit the game if you utilized spells.

- my third attempt breaked the game, game became unfun when i just trashed everything around me with OP character. And again how on earth you dedacted that i did not used magic in PNP approach?

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

But what am I doing here? Talking sense to a ruskie? That's not something that ever gonna happen, is it?

- oh my oh my, we have a ballsy one here!

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Also just found out this guy hasn't even bought the game.

-

[Dumah]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

So you're basically suggesting that "Oblivion has failed to achieve a decent game balance, because (...) " - and what does that have to do anything with the topic we're having right now? Did you just conveniently forget what we're on about?

- the conversation that OP started was about leveling. Leveling in Oblivion suck. Dixi.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

Yes. That's something what I already know, as I am a mankind who actually bothers to read and comprehend what other's have stated before making mine. I don't understand why you're repeating to make an exact same explaination you just did once, as if I don't know what you're on about.

- apparently you did not understood what i wrote and demonstrated that again.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

I already stated it how I figured it out. Perhaps you should carefully read and comprehend what I have wrote before hand.

- you wrote a bunch of nonsense. You did not demonstrated anything beyond your own ignorance and lack of intellectual prowess.

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

At this rate, you're writing whatever comes out from your mind and desire, rather than something that's actually related to the topic we're discussing, which is frankly, what ruskies would do at this point. I thought you might be different than the others, but that was clearly a mis-understandment as I see it right now. I won't proceed this dicussion we're having any further, for I know there will be nothing good come out of it. Already figure out everything I should know, so I'm outta here. You can continue this if you want to. I know you would.

- the one who is writing off the topic here is you, the one who is engaged in ad hominem attacks here is again - you. The topic of discussion is leveling in Oblivion, not my nationality ( its not even russian BTW, my unhinged xenophobic "friend" ), or my playstyle. Ciao.

[Frostbite]

Originally posted by Johnny Casey:

All those character builds were failed because you didn't bother to utilize any spells; the most powerful tool in the game.

Nah, i dont use any except some lewd mod spells. Working wonders with my 'Kangaroo Archer' class. I utilize alchemy A LOT though.

[arottweiler]

The levelling system works but it took the Skill Book mod for me to fully understand it and the difference between major and minor skills. Once I cracked it I realised it's not that difficult to understand after all. The first time I played Oblivion I went through all the main quests and Guilds without pressing the cast key once and had complete ignorance to skills and the magical aspect of the game which I now know is the most enjoyable part. I play as a Breton and like to get to master level on the six magic skills as soon as possible while still training heavy armour, blade and block so this takes a lot of practice against summoned creatures.

In my latest play though I didn't choose so well because I chose four of the six magic skills along with armourer, blade and block as major skills and that's making it difficult to manage but The Skill Book mod helps. I'm now level 15 and during the first 4 or 5 level ups I forgot to use trainers or bothered with the +5 +5 +5 rule so it's taking some effort to catch up. I've not even been to Kvatch yet and am more interested in repeated surprise visits to Sundercliff Watch with Bag Of Holding to get my character ready to take on the large quest mods that have much tougher enemies than the vanilla quests. I've not played the guild quests at level 21+ before so that will also be interesting. Before that I want to play through some heavyweight mods like the Midas quests and Dungeons of Ivellon with needs some skills planning.

I've never increased luck but have been wondering if it would be worthwhile increasing it by just one? If I have 51% luck would that make a difference over the course of a long game? There are a lot of containers in Sundercliff Watch so I wonder if 51% luck would result in better loot. I've never understood the benefit of the levelling technique of of +5 +5 +1 (increase luck by one every level up).

[Bomb Bloke]

Originally posted by arottweiler:

I've never increased luck but have been wondering if it would be worthwhile increasing it by just one? If I have 51% luck would that make a difference over the course of a long game?

Luck provides a buff to most skills - for example, just as increasing Alchemy increases the power of your potions, so does increasing Luck (albeit by a smaller amount). You hit harder with weapons, spend less mana on spells, and so on.

It doesn't affect loot at all, however.

Originally posted by arottweiler:

I've never understood the benefit of the levelling technique of of +5 +5 +1 (increase luck by one every level up).

To increase a stat by +5 during a given level up, you need to've gained ten points in minor or major skills associated with that stat by the time you get your tenth major skill gain (which qualifies you for your next character level).

Thing is, Luck doesn't have any skills "associated" with it: so you can't gain any bonus points, and the most you can advance it by is +1 for each character level.

Because it's so slow to increase, if you want to max it out then the 5/5/1 system is best started as early as possible in your character's development.

Endurance is also of interest, since each character level gives a health boost based on that stat - increasing it later doesn't retroactively give you better boosts for earlier levels, so you want to cap it out sooner rather than later.

[d0g]

If it's your first playthrough of this game, seriously, why not just play it blind. Don't listen to the crying from the prior page. I got this game at launch and played it endlessly without knowing a single thing about how leveling worked and managed to beat it just fine before browsing the net for tricks and build ideas.. The developers obviously didn't intend for us to +5/5/5 every level..

min/maxing makes the game easy and lets you break out of your game intended role a bit. Chances are after you beat this actually great game, you'll want to come back with a stronger character and have some fun. Read up on builds then IMO after having the blind experience.

Enjoy Oblivion!