My Take on an Optimized Character

An amalgamation of techniques and some exploits to make a character capable of easily playing at the highest difficulty.

Character Attributes

Disclaimer: This character takes advantage of a few exploits that some may consider cheating. However, they're not game-breaking and don't require difficult setup, so I consider them fair game.



First, I'd like to clear up some things regarding the character's attributes. The reason they are so high, as I'm sure many of you already know, is because of an exploit involving felldew during the Addiction quest. Felldew withdrawal lowers your attributes by an amount depending on the level of withdrawal severity (up to 10-15 depending on the attribute). This is useful because it is coded as an ability rather than a temporary effect. This means that an attribute that is already 100 or greater can continue to be increased if felldew withdrawal brings it below 100. Another thing that may seem strange is 83 Luck. I personally don't value Luck, as it does next to nothing late game (and nothing I consider important). 83 is simply the highest Luck achievable while still maxing the other attributes by level 45. This is done with 26 levels of (5, 5, 1), 16 levels of (5, 5, 5), and 2 levels of just increasing Luck, courtesy of the Oghma Infinium.

Major Skills

The major skills chosen are identical to the built-in Mage class. This is because as a High Elf, these major skills combined with a magic specialization results in the lowest possible maximum level. This is important because enemies get stronger as we level and being a higher level than necessary will make us relatively weaker. A custom class is still necessary to select endurance and luck as favored attributes.

Character Sheet

I'm sure you know that maxing endurance early is important, but to reach the maximum health shown in the first picture some additional strategies must be employed. The first of which is utilizing Mara's Blessing, awarded at the end of the Knights of the Nine questline. This increases endurance by 5 points and is applied as an ability, meaning it will affect health gain on level up. Its existence necessitates completing the entire questline before reaching level 3 in order to achieve the highest possible max health. We will swap this out for Julianos' Blessing when we are done leveling for more magicka. It is also important to carefully sync attributes when leveling, to avoid having to bring endurance below 110 with felldew withdrawal any more times than necessary when leveling up. Finally, it is important not to level conjuration, destruction, and restoration beyond level 90. We will be reading the Oghma Infinium, taking The Path of Spirit, to get the remaining levels in these skills. Keep in mind that you will only be able to efficiently level on the first of the three level ups that the book will give you, and destruction is leveled first (+5 willpower).

Equipment

Equipment:
Helmet of the Mage (Fortify Magicka 20 pts, Spell Absorption 14 pts)
Cursed Magebane Gauntlets (Drain Magicka 10 pts, Spell Absorption 24 pts)
Escutcheon of Chorrol (Reflect Damage 35%, Fortify Endurance 10 pts)
Amulet of Axes (Reflect Damage 33%, Fortify Blunt 25 pts)
Ring of the Iron Fist (Reflect Damage 33%, Fortify Hand to Hand 25 pts)
Ring of Vitality (Resist Disease 100%, Resist Poison 100%, Resist Paralysis 100%)
Perfect Madness Cuirass (Fortify Magicka 50 pts)
Perfect Madness Greaves (Fortify Magicka 50 pts)
Perfect Madness Boots (Spell Absorption 15 pts)



The primary weapon of this build is a Durable Daedric Dagger enchanted with multiple weakness effects. It is important that Weakness to Magic is last in the list, so that the effects will "stack". They don't stack in a literal sense, but the Weakness to Magic effect of the previous strike will affect all of the enchantments of the next, effectively stacking additively. Eg. Magnitude 100, then 200, 300 etc.

Spells

The primary damage-dealing spell (and all spells that this build frequently uses) takes advantage of another exploit. The telekinesis spell effect is blocked by spell absorption and returns the base cost of the effect. At 100 Mysticism, this equates to returning 5 times the cost of the effect. By having a telekinesis effect that is one fifth of the total spell cost, the spell can be cast for free. This magicka "refund" is unfortunately applied before magicka is spent on casting the spell, so it only allows free casting of spells with a cost of up to half our total magicka. In this character's case, 312. The Dispel 67 pts on self is to avoid the spell being reflected back at us, killing us very quickly on max difficulty. A value of 67 is required because dispel can remove the effects of a spell with a cost up to 5 times the dispel value. E.g. Dispel 50 pts can remove all of the effects of a spell that cost the caster 250 magicka to cast (not base cost). Keep in mind our spell effectiveness is only 95% so 67 is required rather than 312/5 ≈ 63. Dispel only works to avoid spell reflection on on-touch spells, and Shock Damage effects must have a duration of at least 2 seconds.

With spells of this magnitude and the weapon described in the previous section, difficult enemies, even on the highest difficulty will die to a few slashes followed by a spell cast.

Thank you for reading, I know a lot of this information is probably not new to you, but I hope you learned something. I credit UESP wiki as my primary source of information, and even found that their Oblivion:Character Optimizing page came up with an extremely similar build to mine over a decade before me.

[Driski]

Good Read, Helpful in understanding how to wrangle this games mechanics!

[Mannelite]

haha nice, congrats.