Observations on Max Level, Max Attributes in Remastered

[Cheb]

Just posting my rambling thoughts while they're fresh in my mind. I say "fresh", but I'm sleep deprived.

In OG Oblivion and Morrowind (and to a lesser extent Daggerfall, but that's complicated), placing skills that had any kind of bonuses to them in your Major (and Minor in Morrowind) skills, lessened your overall max level.

In Morrowind, for instance, making a Breton, specialising in magic, but only putting Combat and Stealth skills into his chosen skills, meant you could potentially see 9 extra levels. Since OG Oblivion's leveling system worked much the same as it did in Morrowind, albeit with less Major skills, I imagine the same concept was true there.

I ran a quick test to see if the same was true in Oblivion Remastered, considering the drastic (and welcome) changes to the leveling system. To do this, I again made a Breton.

I first ran a test with only Major skills that had no racial or class bonuses, leaving my Major skills at 25. I took the Lord birthsign, and +5 Luck from my class specialisation. Upon leaving the sewers, I used the player.advskill X commands to raise each skill exactly to 100, before finding a safe bed and leveling up.
The result was a maximum level of 44. What I discovered was that putting a single point into Luck each level, in this instance, meant I was not able to max out all my attributes.

For the second test, I instead began with all the Breton-buffed, class-specialised skills in Major, and went through the same player.advskill process, only this time I took the Thief birthsign, in hopes my attributes would have an easier time reaching 100.
The result was again, a max level of 44, but with the Thief birthsign providing an extra 10 Luck, as well as +10 to speed and agility, my attributes were closer to max: when putting a point in Luck each level, I was 29 attribute points shy of perfection.

So the value of our Major and Minor skills had no affect on our max character level. We also observed that, unless skill decay via jail time works to increase our maximum potential level (I never bother with this type of thing), it's impossible to have a base of 100 in each attribute. Maybe incarceration is a good thing?

Now let's consider that we may value our core attributes slightly more than Luck. In test 2 with the Thief birthsign and Luck as a specialisation, I ended up 29 points short of all 100s. With each point in Luck costing 4 virtues, that means nerfing our total Luck by a mere 8 points (32 virtues) could have allowed for clean 100s in our other attributes, which would mean leaving our Luck at 92 points with this setup. Without the Thief birthsign or specialisation we'd be a further 15 points (60 virtues) of Luck down, as well as 20 points/virtues down from the lack of Speed and Agility.

I did a third test: the same Breton, Lord birthsign, no Luck specialisation. I was able to max out core attributes and get my Luck to 74. Since Personality isn't amazing, You could nerf it a little to bring about a balance of Luck and Personality.

TL;DR: Don't sweat about which skills you're putting into Major skills in Remastered - you'll always end up at level 44 once you max out every skill. And while we run into trouble maxing out our attributes in Remastered, at least we don't have to worry about 'efficient leveling' anymore. Thief sign and Luck specialisation is obviously mandatory for high Luck builds, but it's up to you whether you want to treat Luck or Personality as a dump stat. Personality truly isn't that worthwhile in Oblivion, but once you max all your skills, is Luck really that worthwhile either? The main takeaway is that your build doesn't affect your level anymore, but perhaps doing hard time for a few years might boost your levels.

[Drunkenstein]

Wow that is so bad. So the new system actually sucks. It's more simple but you can't be max at everything without going to jail or using commands.

But you know you can increase 2 attributes by 10 with Oghma Infinium so that would make you 9 points short of perfection, when focusing on luck, if you play it right.

[Just Chill]

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Wow that is so bad. So the new system actually sucks. It's more simple but you can't be max at everything without going to jail

That said... I started to be the villain yesterday.

Am LVL46 now (just 5 more :D), but I absolutely forgot the cap of a reduction of 10.

I've wiped out all guards in Chorrol (15k bounty) and got for over 200 days into jail.

Still only a total reduction of 10 randomly on Armorer, Athletics, Blade, Block, Blunt, Hand to Hand, Heavy Armor, Alchemy or Alteration.
The decrease varies between the skills.
For example -1 Armorer, -2 Athletics, -2 Blade, -1 Block, -3 Hand to Hand, -1 Alchemy.


So basically you just have to kill 1 guard (1k bounty) and then go to jail and sleep off your sentence.

I still have some skills to raise (as I grinded on going to jail a lot), but I am not sure if I still can reach 47.

[Cheb]

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Wow that is so bad. So the new system actually sucks. It's more simple but you can't be max at everything without going to jail or using commands.

But you know you can increase 2 attributes by 10 with Oghma Infinium so that would make you 9 points short of perfection, when focusing on luck, if you play it right.

I prefer this system for its simplicity. Focusing too hard on the leveling system always got in the way of the game itself, for me, and retroactive Endurance health is nice.
I believe the Oghma Infinium can boost attributes above 100, so save it until the stats you want are maxed.
Also, as I stated, I don't think having a maxed out Luck or Personality is worth it in either OG or Remastered, so we get to max out the important stats, at least.

[EricHVela]

Originally posted by Cheb:

...perhaps doing hard time for a few years might boost your levels.

This last bit is interesting to me.

The "Hero" was just put in prison as the heckler mentions it. So, whatever stats the (not yet) "Hero" had prior to imprisonment would likely reflect the kind of life the (soon-to-be-if-not-doing-all-sidequests-first) "Hero" had before whatever happened to get imprisoned happened.

I kinda wish they had some momentary backstory based on the chosen stats when exiting the sewer, but the possible combinations would be a lot of work and an immense task to have that generated backstory affect any other story in the game. Still... woulda been interesting to me to see something like that.

[Drunkenstein]

Originally posted by Cheb:

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Wow that is so bad. So the new system actually sucks. It's more simple but you can't be max at everything without going to jail or using commands.

But you know you can increase 2 attributes by 10 with Oghma Infinium so that would make you 9 points short of perfection, when focusing on luck, if you play it right.

I prefer this system for its simplicity. Focusing too hard on the leveling system always got in the way of the game itself, for me, and retroactive Endurance health is nice.
I believe the Oghma Infinium can boost attributes above 100, so save it until the stats you want are maxed.
Also, as I stated, I don't think having a maxed out Luck or Personality is worth it in either OG or Remastered, so we get to max out the important stats, at least.

Regardless this causes huge imbalance, because the Thief is stupidly overpowered now, it's basically 60 virtues. All other birthsigns that increase attributes give up to 20. In the OG even if you didn't pick Thief you could still reach max in everything at level 46 if you got +5 to luck from custom class. And even if you don't care about getting 100 in all atrributes, there will be others who do.

[ZemX]

I'm beginning to think focusing at all on Luck was a bad idea. Whether you plan to max all skills or just the ones you use all the time, it won't provide any benefit above 100. In other words, best case for non min/maxers, it will boost some skills you don't plan to max at 100. But the cost for that is enormous. And if you don't max all skills, you won't be anywhere close to maxing all attributes if you dumped all those points into Luck.

Yeah, it does other things, but I'm struggling to think of a really important random chance event that I need improved. Lockpicking? Easy. Pickpocketing? I'm more an assassin than a thief when I go for stealthy characters. Mehrune's Razor? Meh.

I think any character you have gotten even just your most-used skills to 100 on won't benefit much from Luck and certainly not enough to justify the cost. You can much more easily max all your other attributes by considering Luck a dump stat. At the default 50 it won't help anything but it also won't hurt anything. Seems a fair deal.

[magne.moe]

Originally posted by Cheb:

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Wow that is so bad. So the new system actually sucks. It's more simple but you can't be max at everything without going to jail or using commands.

But you know you can increase 2 attributes by 10 with Oghma Infinium so that would make you 9 points short of perfection, when focusing on luck, if you play it right.

I prefer this system for its simplicity. Focusing too hard on the leveling system always got in the way of the game itself, for me, and retroactive Endurance health is nice.
I believe the Oghma Infinium can boost attributes above 100, so save it until the stats you want are maxed.
Also, as I stated, I don't think having a maxed out Luck or Personality is worth it in either OG or Remastered, so we get to max out the important stats, at least.

Agree, luck is nice but charm 100 for 3 second is an cheap spell and solves most of the Personality needs, not sure if if high Personality help illusjon?

One thing I learned playing Fallout 3 is that I prefer to have low health, this way enemies are dangerous without being bullet sponges, i took this back to Oblivion and into FO NV.
Now mods who split enemy damage and your damage solves this.
Also on build, I mostly play light armored characters.
And retroactive Endurance is very nice

[ZemX]

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Regardless this causes huge imbalance, because the Thief is stupidly overpowered now, it's basically 60 virtues.

But you don't need 60 virtues as you can max all attributes ignoring Luck by level 36 even picking a birthsign with no attribute boosts.

In other words, it's not overpowered if Luck isn't powerful. And honestly... it's not. It's especially not that valuable for a max level character with 100 in all skills because it confers zero benefit to skill calculations at that point. Prior to reaching that point, yeah, it was boosting your effective skills. But kind of a bummer that it becomes almost pointless once you max out.

At that point it only has whatever hidden benefit Luck has to the various random chance events in the game. And is that really a big deal compared to the other side of the equation which is that NOT taking a stat boosting sign like Thief means you could take a more interesting/impactful sign like Atronach, Mage, Apprentice, or Lord?

[R3sistance]

I haven't tested it yet but does the old Drain Skill method not work? Cast Drain Heavy Armor on self 100 points, go to a heavy armor trainer, get training, after spell wears off, you now have 105 heavy armor instead of 100?

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Regardless this causes huge imbalance, because the Thief is stupidly overpowered now, it's basically 60 virtues. All other birthsigns that increase attributes give up to 20.

Compared to other brith signs that only give attributes it is overpowered, however not all birth signs give attribute points. Mage in my opinion is still the most overpowered overpowered birthsign unless you're doing master difficulty where Lord is now the best choice due to the early Armor and Magic resist being invaluable.

Mage is the best as it's extra Magicka with no downsides, Apprentice gives weakness to magic, atronarch is perm stunted magicka, spells were always overpowered in Oblivion and that is still true in the Remaster but the only limit to spells is generally Magicka and Magicka regeneration, thus Mage is insane, mixed with Breton that is an increased +100 Max Magicka with 50% magic resist from the start of the game.

[Drunkenstein]

Originally posted by R3sistance:

I haven't tested it yet but does the old Drain Skill method not work? Cast Drain Heavy Armor on self 100 points, go to a heavy armor trainer, get training, after spell wears off, you now have 105 heavy armor instead of 100?

Originally posted by Drunkenstein:

Regardless this causes huge imbalance, because the Thief is stupidly overpowered now, it's basically 60 virtues. All other birthsigns that increase attributes give up to 20.

Compared to other brith signs that only give attributes it is overpowered, however not all birth signs give attribute points. Mage in my opinion is still the most overpowered overpowered birthsign unless you're doing master difficulty where Lord is now the best choice due to the early Armor and Magic resist being invaluable.

Mage is the best as it's extra Magicka with no downsides, Apprentice gives weakness to magic, atronarch is perm stunted magicka, spells were always overpowered in Oblivion and that is still true in the Remaster but the only limit to spells is generally Magicka and Magicka regeneration, thus Mage is insane, mixed with Breton that is an increased +100 Max Magicka with 50% magic resist from the start of the game.

Oh brother you are correct but you are wrong about the Atronach, it does give you stunted magicka but it also gives you 50% chance to absorb magic. Plus you can still regenerate magicka fast using potions, so it's not actually a problem.
But if you want I can show you how to become so overpowered it basically breaks the game.

[Timmy Tuff Nutts]

Use the leveling glitch after you hit 43 and keep going, got up to level 83 on a altmer and everything is now maxed, skills and all attributes. Once all attributes are maxed you really can't level higher as it will say you cannot improve on perfection.

Also if you are using a trainer to level a skill and use a spell to drain the skill by 100 points, (Making the training nearly free as well as lower level trainers being able to train you all the way to 100) then you can actually train the skill above 100 to 101-104. SO if I was at 98 blade and used a spell to drain it 100 points and then used any blade trainer to train those last 2 levels it would say I am now a master when I did the 2nd one and then I would still be able to train the other 3 times and then I would end up with 103 blade. ((Not really that helpful to most skills but Acrobatics and Athleticism continue to scale after 100 so doing this with a trainer every level could let you get your acrobatics or athletics way over 100. Giving you a much higher jump height or movement speed naturally.))

[Dork_Stalker_310]

Outside of healthmaxxing, is there any discernible difference to any level above 25? The loot caps out at lvl 24, If I recall correctly, so do the leveled enemies.

[Subset6]

I think the new system is too overpowered. It's pretty much exactly the +5 all attribute mod from OG Oblivion. This too was OP. Why? By around level 10 or so you start to significantly out scale enemies, and the higher level you go the worse it gets. So by level 15 or so your basically god tier.

The original leveling system had it flaws but if played organically (not gaming the leveling or forcing level skills) it offered a much more balanced experience all the way through.

At the very least I would have liked a toggle in the options to switch back to the original system. That is at the core of what this remaster is aiming to do, is preserve as much as the original as possible.

[Timmy Tuff Nutts]

Originally posted by Dork_Stalker_310:

Outside of healthmaxxing, is there any discernible difference to any level above 25? The loot caps out at lvl 24, If I recall correctly, so do the leveled enemies.

No. After level 25 nothing really changes.

[Drunkenstein]

Originally posted by Timmy Tuff Nutts:

Originally posted by Dork_Stalker_310:

Outside of healthmaxxing, is there any discernible difference to any level above 25? The loot caps out at lvl 24, If I recall correctly, so do the leveled enemies.

No. After level 25 nothing really changes.

No it's actually 30, there are a few items that are leveled up to 30.