Efficient leveling

[Charlemagne]

I know how to level efficiently in Oblivion and have used it to good effect, however it bores me. Are the monsters really unbeatable if you level naturally (2-3 attribute increases in each level)? Has anyone played it through with natural leveling? Why would the game designers bother with character classes if it was impossible to win with them?

I'm playing Morrowind with natural leveling after giving up on efficient, of course there's a difference there that monsters don't level with you (although you do face tougher ones as you advance). I was planning to switch to natural in oblivion too, I would be grateful for opinions, especially if anyone has actually played that way, share your experiences.

[JtDarth]

I would say that so long as you are always improving your combat skills (blade, marksman, blunt, block, armour, magery) you should be fine, you wont deal as much damage as quickly, but that can be supplemented with poisons. You should still be able to beat any monster you come across with natural levelling, so long as your skills are high enough, it will just take a little longer.

[$n@ke Eye$]

I would use effecient leveling for at least a few levels. I know efficient leveling can be tedious and boring, but during the early levels it is worth it imo since all your skills are so low.

I prefer getting heavy armor to 100 asap, so I can't imagine not getting 10 skillups per level and gaining +5 Endurance every level for maxhp.

I think the leveling system would be so much better if you could raise 4 stats per level and requirred 20 skillups in major skills to gain a level, so you could play more casually and actually get to focus on using major skills without worrying about gaining a level too early.

[Charlemagne]

What I dislike most from EL is being a mage and practicing heavy armor or blunt weapon, or being a warrior and practicism Mysticism, etc. I have to get myself some heavy armor, which is out of character for my mage persona, go find a rat, and stand there until my skill increases 10 times. Now that's exciting. I go out and while adventuring mt thoughts are more like, "I should avoid using any Alteration spells on this quest or I might levelup" instead of "this is an interesting dungeon".

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

What I dislike most from EL is being a mage and practicing heavy armor or blunt weapon, or being a warrior and practicism Mysticism, etc. I have to get myself some heavy armor, which is out of character for my mage persona, go find a rat, and stand there until my skill increases 10 times. Now that's exciting. I go out and while adventuring mt thoughts are more like, "I should avoid using any Alteration spells on this quest or I might levelup" instead of "this is an interesting dungeon".

El as a mage in a nutshell: do everything but use magic. I usually just go punch mudcrabs and wolves early on to get my endurance up if i feel its necessary. Any type of character can benefit from unarmed anyway, so its not like i'm boosting something I will never have a use for.

[Charlemagne]

Originally posted by DarthNachoz:

El as a mage in a nutshell: do everything but use magic. I usually just go punch mudcrabs and wolves early on to get my endurance up if i feel its necessary. Any type of character can benefit from unarmed anyway, so its not like i'm boosting something I will never have a use for.

My point exactly, I'm a mage but I have to spend a lot of time doing un-magely things. Or have all my magic skills down in the minors where they can do no harm even if they increase a lot. But the problem in having only skills that you never use up as majors is that then it becomes hard to gain levels.
As I said I have EL figured out, what I want is to stop using it, if I can.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

Originally posted by DarthNachoz:

El as a mage in a nutshell: do everything but use magic. I usually just go punch mudcrabs and wolves early on to get my endurance up if i feel its necessary. Any type of character can benefit from unarmed anyway, so its not like i'm boosting something I will never have a use for.

My point exactly, I'm a mage but I have to spend a lot of time doing un-magely things. Or have all my magic skills down in the minors where they can do no harm even if they increase a lot. But the problem in having only skills that you never use up as majors is that then it becomes hard to gain levels.
As I said I have EL figured out, what I want is to stop using it, if I can.

go ahead and stop using it, just understand that things will be a bit more difficult for you. Also, even without effecient leveling, if you can't control when the skill increases, dont have it as a major. Even if you aren't efficient levelling, you still have to be careful not to level too far ahead of your combat skills. It is somewhat okay to have underpowered skill if you are using marksmen, because poisons can pick up the slack, as can evasive manuvers and kiting.

[Lankylars]

Naturally leveling, and playing the game the way you enjoy (i.e. not simply doing some random, out-of-character action to boost a skill) will mean you'll need to be more creative (and choosier) when taking down enemies. But I find the game more fun that way anyway. And I don't have to follow a formula to do it.

[Charlemagne]

Aren't skills more important than attributes? For example, having high Destruction is powerful even if your Intelligence or Willpower are not at maximum. Of course, maxing out everything makes you stronger, but perhaps it isn't that crucial. I mean, for your magical attacks gaining 10 levels of Destruction is more effective than gaining 10 levels of Intelligence. Not that we wouldn't like to gain 10 levels of Intelligence, of course, but when weighed against a more enjoyable, natural game not gaining them might be an acceptable tradeoff.

Maybe striving to gain 5 skill level per attribute per level for a +3 increase of an attribute is a good compromise. This is what I'm doing in my current Morrowind game and I find it more balanced than maxing everything when you're still relatively low level. I worry less of gaining all 10 skills per level per attribute, I spend less money training only 5 skills per level per attribute instead of 10 (sometimes even less since many of these increases occur naturally). The only excception being endurance which early on it is wise to increase as much as possible.

[__-__-__]

It is entirely possible to play this game naturally, it's easiest with the combat classes, I have never done efficient leveling in all my time playing this game. The main thing is to focus on combat skills and if you improve a skill that doesn't have a use in combat you don't have to level up at all, you can be level 4 and have the skills equivalent to a level 20 character. If I ever in doubt about a characters combat skills hold them back, don't level until you are ready.

[Charlemagne]

Yeah that's what I did in previous playthroughs, I would place all the skills that I used a lot down in the minors, but then the same problem surfaced in reverse- when I wanted to level, I had to go and artificially train those unused primary skills. I just want to go out, play and adventure, and let leveling take care of itself, but in all TES games Oblivion is the one where this is more difficult (and dangerous?). Skyrim claims to have done away with this since you just play and level, but there is still a risk. If you gain too many levels of "filler" skills like alchemy or smithing, easy to do since they are fun and rewarding to practice, you can still level up too quickly without your character having gained enough important skills.

[__-__-__]

I may not have explained myself very well, I wasn't trying to describe how to level efficiently. I was describing how I play the game, this game's enemies make it essential to game the system a bit unless you focus and master combat skills first.

[Charlemagne]

That's fine for warriors, but what about mages? Concentrating on combat skills is out of character, and tedious.

[JtDarth]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

That's fine for warriors, but what about mages? Concentrating on combat skills is out of character, and tedious.

Fallout 3 did things so much better it isnt even funny.

[__-__-__]

Originally posted by Charlemagne:

That's fine for warriors, but what about mages? Concentrating on combat skills is out of character, and tedious.

Destruction, Alteration, Conjuration and Restoration can be considered combat skills for mages. I realize "combat skills" means something in this game but what I meant when I used it is skills used in combat, mages deal damage with Destruction, Conjuration and Restoration, and can avoid it with Alteration, Conjuration and Restoration. It is a bit harder with mages as the spells must be bought from stores for the most part, there aren't enough spellbooks if you have that dlc, and if you don't have good enough spells putting off leveling can help.

Natural leveling requires that, you identify the aggresive and defensive strategies of any given class and develop them to the exclusion of most other abilities until you are around level twenty (when the strongest monsters appear) and then focus on other things your character should be good at.

[Juwudas]

what i did is just use water walking for a while