New Player Struggles..

[Ignis Imperia]

Hey

So I have played the game for the first time now for about 30 hours already, done most of Dark Brotherhood, Thieves & mage recommendation quests, haven't really touched main quest yet, and I picked expert difficulty for first run as I am generally quite capable in games of most sorts (SP FPS, RPGs, CRPGs, Strategies & Tycoons mainly).

I was managing thus far, but I feel like i've hit a dead end now. I got now at level 16 sent to retrieve seer's stone for one of the recommendation quests from a dungeon, however, I immediately found out it's not going to be quite as simple the moment I entered and there was a bandit in full orcish armor with dwarven weapon.

I have most of my skills above 50 by now, including blades, I use a shortsword as a weapon, I use plenty of alchemy, and I try to use spells as much as possible in my fights. With all that in mind, I feel like my run is... over? Because I fought this bandit 1v1, I did manage to beat it, yes, eventually, after about 20 minutes of kiting it back and forth sniping it with a bow. Now, the issue is, the moment I step into the next room, there's 2 more such bandits. There is no way I can fight 2 of them at once given they basically kill me in 3 hits and I need roughly 100 power attacks to kill one. I also used over 20 restore health potions on the first fight.

I tried different things to up my odds in the first fight upon loading a save and nothing really seemed to make a difference. Tried corrode armor - despite casting it over 20 times it didn't seem to do much, tried absorbing strength, health & fatigue, didn't really help much except lower their damage slightly for a short while. Tried summoning skeletons, they got oneshot and did basically 0 damage.

I don't really know what to do in the game at this point, I'm actually considering a mod that adjusts difficulties, because it just feels frustrating now, and instead of the joy of wonder one feels in Bethesda games such as Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4, Skyrim, Fallout 3, upon discovering a new location, in this game I find myself avoiding combat as much as possible because it always feels like I'm fighting a level 100 enemy at level 1 with a toothpick.

Any suggestions on what to do in the run to make it enjoyable to play?

[Wendrig]

i play on adept Difficulty and all works fine.

[SmallArchangel]

There is a huge difference between adept and expert difficulty, much larger than that in the OG I think. I tried it briefly, and went straight back to adept.... I played the original back in the day, and my late game saves were all set to the highest difficulty, but I don't think I will be doing that here!

IIRC level 15 is where the mobs really get hardcore... If I were you I would either drop the difficulty level or seek out a mod to balance it a bit (there is at least one on Nexus).

[psychotron666]

Your combat skills are incredibly low for level 16.

Level 16-18 is when the game will be the absolute hardest, and your combat skills like blade should be level 50~ by about level 4-5. You're basically fighting the strongest enemies in the game with level 5 combat skills.

[Marmarmar34]

Use poisons and enchant your gear.

[-Singularity-]

Having a blast with it so far. But the difficulty settings and level scaling are wonky.

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/58
I use this one set to Expert. Made the game way better. They have other multipliers available as well id 2.5x isn't to your liking.

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/182
Level caps for npcs

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/2269
This one so far made the game much more enjoyable but changes a lot.

Some of them only have instructions for manual install, but you can install all 3 with Vortex. I've not played all the way through with the 3rd one yet, but so far its pretty good.

[Sirius Black]

Use a strong paralyze spell or poison, along with other powerful poisons. Create a golem at Frostcrag Spire and let it defend you. Use powerful magic scrolls. Find various skill masters and level up your major skills. If you're playing on one of the two highest difficulty settings, you need to use EVERYTHING that can make you overpowered. They did the same thing in Skyrim, by the way — and it was never enjoyable without mods that tweak the difficulty settings.

[raditzaceme2]

Learning how to enchant/craft spells will make life so much easier. Try this spell order:
Elemental attack at 10 for 4 seconds
Weakness to said element at 100% for 4 seconds
Weakness to magic at 100% for 4 seconds

What this does is creates a weakness stacking effect, where it continuously makes the next hit deal more damage. Adding these effects in the same order onto a weapon will make the weapon powerful as well since each hit will increase the next ones damage even more.

This combo here can trivialize a lot of enemies so take care of clicking spoilers. On master difficulty, can 1-2 shot most normal enemies:

2-3 different Spells with the same effects:
Weakness to Fire 100% for 20 seconds
Weakness to Frost 100% for 20 Seconds
Weakness to Lightning 100% for 20 Seconds
Weakness to Magic 100% for 20 seconds

The attack Spell/weapon enchant:
Soul Trap (if you desire to use it)
Fire damage: 30 points for 1-2 seconds
Frost damage: 30 points for 1-2 Seconds
Lightning damage; 30 points for 1-2 seconds
All of the weakness again

[15543641354361]

the hero or champion squeletton invocation is very helpfull, the squeleton can even kill mobs by itself, don't use other than hero or champion cause the other ones are weak.
the freeze astronach is very good too, even better than squeleton.you need to level invocation by spaming a cheap invocation spell untill you have the level for those squeleton spells. dunno which guild mage sell them.

along with this, you need to put shield ( 8 or 10% ) on your armor parts and rings by enchenting them with shield spell. nevertheless this requires some effort in order to be able to do that. this will make your global armor reach 70 or higher ( 85 max ).
the things to do to be able to do that are long to explain, maybe someone can tell if you're interested.

nevertheless, only being able to summon a powerfull creature like hero or champion squeleton, or cold astronach, will make your life easier.

[Ignis Imperia]

Originally posted by raditzaceme2:

Learning how to enchant/craft spells will make life so much easier. Try this spell order:
Elemental attack at 10 for 4 seconds
Weakness to said element at 100% for 4 seconds
Weakness to magic at 100% for 4 seconds

What this does is creates a weakness stacking effect, where it continuously makes the next hit deal more damage. Adding these effects in the same order onto a weapon will make the weapon powerful as well since each hit will increase the next ones damage even more.

This combo here can trivialize a lot of enemies so take care of clicking spoilers. On master difficulty, can 1-2 shot most normal enemies:

2-3 different Spells with the same effects:
Weakness to Fire 100% for 20 seconds
Weakness to Frost 100% for 20 Seconds
Weakness to Lightning 100% for 20 Seconds
Weakness to Magic 100% for 20 seconds

The attack Spell/weapon enchant:
Soul Trap (if you desire to use it)
Fire damage: 30 points for 1-2 seconds
Frost damage: 30 points for 1-2 Seconds
Lightning damage; 30 points for 1-2 seconds
All of the weakness again

Well, the thing is, I have yet to gain access to the arcane university, that's why I'm trying to do the recommendation quest.. however now I advanced to level 18 and it¨s full of marauders in ebony armor and enchanted glass weapons.. I am downing them by spamming like 10 damage health poisons at once.. but I still gotta be very careful not to get cut.

Originally posted by 15543641354361:

the hero or champion squeletton invocation is very helpfull, the squeleton can even kill mobs by itself, don't use other than hero or champion cause the other ones are weak.
the freeze astronach is very good too, even better than squeleton.you need to level invocation by spaming a cheap invocation spell untill you have the level for those squeleton spells. dunno which guild mage sell them.

along with this, you need to put shield ( 8 or 10% ) on your armor parts and rings by enchenting them with shield spell. nevertheless this requires some effort in order to be able to do that. this will make your global armor reach 70 or higher ( 85 max ).
the things to do to be able to do that are long to explain, maybe someone can tell if you're interested.

nevertheless, only being able to summon a powerfull creature like hero or champion squeleton, or cold astronach, will make your life easier.

Tried leveling conjuration but it goes extremely slow, so far I can only summon skeleton, zombie & the fireball imp (scamp?), all of which are very short duration and generally die in one hit..