Does "Efficient Leveling" Really Matter Here?

[zephydel]

Or it does not matter because your broken will be character at level 100 no matter what they do?

[Rez Elwin]

You won't reach level 100, you only level off Major Skill gains. You'll usually end up in the mid to high 40s at the highest, dependent on your character and chosen skills. So Yes, efficient leveling not only matters, it's almost a requirement or your character will end up incredibly weak, literally 1/5 as strong as somebody who leveled their character proporly.

[psychotron666]

Not at all. The attributes barely do anything and aren't the reason why you'll be strong or weak. It's all about your skills and equipment.

[Nite69]

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

You won't reach level 100, you only level off Major Skill gains. You'll usually end up in the mid to high 40s at the highest, dependent on your character and chosen skills. So Yes, efficient leveling not only matters, it's almost a requirement or your character will end up incredibly weak, literally 1/5 as strong as somebody who leveled their character proporly.

Yep this, I am level 16 I believe with my current playthrough and I couldn't pass the first Oblivion gate at kvatch so I been working on trying to level up my other skills to get it back balanced

[Drunkenstein]

Your level doesn't really matter when it comes to how powerful you are. However, stronger enemies appear and more powerful loot. If you know how you can pretty much become god using that loot.

[Lunar Rover]

IIRC enemies have no level cap so it's very important. You can probably still cheese the game though.

PushTheWinButton made mods that fix vanilla levelling with minimal changes. Consider them if you got frustrated with vanilla levelling.

[Martial Autist]

To an extent it is important, some attributes are very important while others less so. However you don't really need +5/+5/+5 on every level up. +3's work fine for the most part, though granted that is still somewhat 'efficient' as opposed to the +1's and +2's you may otherwise get if you pay no attention. Personally I would recommend anyone worried about attributes while leveling to just get this mod[www.nexusmods.com]so you can pay it little to no mind.

Either way, just make sure endurance gets as many high bonuses as possible to get it to 100 ASAP as this is the only attribute that is not retroactive. After that your main priorities are intelligence and willpower (very important to max at some point), and after that strength which doesn't need to be maxed but oblivion is very stingy with carry weight. Any well-rounded character will at least dabble in magic, even a melee centered build will use restoration and alteration. Meanwhile only heavy armor builds really need a lot of extra carry weight.

Everyone else can make do with enough to loot a dungeon and not leave anything valuable behind and not have to go immediately back to town after every single one you clear. Strength's impact on physical damage is also not as much as weapon base damage and weapon skill level together. Some will say attributes are useless but personally I do not agree. The game has them for a reason, and especially when you start dabbling in fortify attribute spells you notice just how powerful this stuff can become. Really max INT and WILL (and another total +200 magicka from race/sign/enchants) is a must as that is merely the entry fee for high level spells, and to not wait a long time to regenerate magicka after one such cast. At high level just my pre-battle setup during tougher encounters is two buffs costing almost 400 magicka each.

Also, to become as powerful as you can in relation to the world around you it is generally a good idea to stop leveling at some point. At which point just never sleeping again, and canceling out of sleep before the first hour passes to trigger quest objectives that require sleep. Damage potential caps out relatively early and from there it is just health pools that keep growing, so the higher your level the spongier everything is. My current character for example maxed out attributes at 29, the previous one I played did so at 26. So 30 is my preferred cut-off point as that is also where the last unique equipment stops getting stronger. (on which note; this mod[www.nexusmods.com]is also a lifesaver) Melee is still good enough on default difficulty there, though late-game magic is insanely strong by comparison.

I did try moving the slider to make magic more balanced but to do that you end up just tickling even basic enemies with melee. But I digress. My recommendation is to just play and experiment, look for more general tips like good gear, (custom) spells, etc. and just feel out how the balance is for you as you progress and learn. Everyone plays differently which is why questions like this will have polar opposite answers from comment to comment. And most importantly; everyone's first playthrough is always a complete mess. So don't sweat it. ;)

(edit; fixed typo)

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by Nite69:

Originally posted by Rez Elwin:

You won't reach level 100, you only level off Major Skill gains. You'll usually end up in the mid to high 40s at the highest, dependent on your character and chosen skills. So Yes, efficient leveling not only matters, it's almost a requirement or your character will end up incredibly weak, literally 1/5 as strong as somebody who leveled their character proporly.

Yep this, I am level 16 I believe with my current playthrough and I couldn't pass the first Oblivion gate at kvatch so I been working on trying to level up my other skills to get it back balanced

Yeah and this problem has nothing to do with your attributes but instead your combat skills and gear.

[zephydel]

Originally posted by Martial Autist:

Personally I would recommend anyone worried about attributes while leveling to just get this mod[www.nexusmods.com]so you can pay it little to no mind.

I tried it out. I like it. I think it is best leveling mod for Vanilla Oblivion because it small, simple, straight to the point, and does not require other mods to work.

[Martial Autist]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Originally posted by Nite69:

Yep this, I am level 16 I believe with my current playthrough and I couldn't pass the first Oblivion gate at kvatch so I been working on trying to level up my other skills to get it back balanced

Yeah and this problem has nothing to do with your attributes but instead your combat skills and gear.

You really can't say that without knowing his exact build. It can be- and probably is more than one factor.

[Rez Elwin]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Originally posted by Nite69:

Yep this, I am level 16 I believe with my current playthrough and I couldn't pass the first Oblivion gate at kvatch so I been working on trying to level up my other skills to get it back balanced

Yeah and this problem has nothing to do with your attributes but instead your combat skills and gear.

You need to level to get most good gear, and if you have low endurance and willpower, your health, magicka, and stamina will suffer for it. Since Stamina effects melee damage and you need magicka fo spells, even if your armor can make up for your lower health your damage output due to low stamina or magicka would make the game far harder than it need to be than if you had leveled better. I do agree that skills are more important than stats, but you still are going to want to take consideration to level more efficiently.

[psychotron666]

Originally posted by Martial Autist:

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Yeah and this problem has nothing to do with your attributes but instead your combat skills and gear.

You really can't say that without knowing his exact build. It can be- and probably is more than one factor.

Yeah the factors are combat skills or gear, or both. The attributes are frankly irrelevant to the difficulty because of how little they do. Like strength is nice for carry weight, but the damage strength contributes to is so little you won't ever notice.

[Martial Autist]

Originally posted by psychotron666:

Originally posted by Martial Autist:

You really can't say that without knowing his exact build. It can be- and probably is more than one factor.

Yeah the factors are combat skills or gear, or both. The attributes are frankly irrelevant to the difficulty because of how little they do. Like strength is nice for carry weight, but the damage strength contributes to is so little you won't ever notice.

Some of them contribute a lot to your performance. Intelligence and willpower can be quite important for combat, as is endurance. Even strength, while not very important for direct offense still has good utility in the form of more carry weight making you noticably faster between the low and high end of it. Give me nothing but 100 int/will/end, journeyman restoration and alteration, and expert conjuration, and I am already unstoppable. No other skills required, but god have mercy on me if I don't have my large magicka pool and magicka regen to support those spells. x'D

I was doing high level oblivion gates with just that, around 40 block/blade, and an enchanted dagger. Literally everything else on me, attributes (str/spd/agi) and every not previously mentioned skill, ranged from sucks to average. Not to say that skills aren't indispensible as long as you keep up with the few that you use for your playstyle, but even with moderate investment there I already had the game beat. I got that OP just off those two attributes being maxed early and having at least average magical proficiency to work with.

(semi-off topic)
In fact at late-game you need intelligence and willpower provided you want to graduate from casting fireballs to doing the videogame equivalent of dropping nukes in densely populated areas. With all my buffs (which require a base 400 magicka to even get the train going) I can chaincast 400 magicka spells and regenerate magicka quicker than I spend it. A rate of approximately 1500 magicka regenerated per 7 seconds when fully juiced up. Do you absolutely need it, surely not. But daaaaamn is it powerful. Ridiculously, world-endingly so. That's the power of attributes my friend. ^^

(back on topic)
Point being; yes attributes can be a factor just as skills are and we don't know enough about his character, playstyle, or his specific problems to say anything conclusively other than that he is hitting a wall. He will know better where his current flaws lie than we do and it may very well be a bit of everything.

[Nite69]

it was willpower and intel causing it cause I prefer Blade and Bow not mage, I need to get those up, which can be easily done by using basic school of magic spells related to them

[joeball123]

Originally posted by Nite69:

it was willpower and intel causing it cause I prefer Blade and Bow not mage, I need to get those up, which can be easily done by using basic school of magic spells related to them

I have to say that that sounds far more like a playstyle issue than an attributes issue. A Blade+Bow character will be weak because of something like refusing to use some combination of weapon enchantments, poisons, and sneak attacks to improve their damage output, not because the character has low Intelligence and Willpower scores impairing a spellcasting ability that they don't really use anyways.

[SirSill]

No, the game is perfectly balanced