Beginner Character Progression/Leveling Tips For Oblivion

This is a guide that should adequately teach you how to level your character quickly and explains some simple tips on character creation and progression.

Information:

1. When picking your Birthsign, try to avoid choosing ones that permanently take away something like not allowing you to regenerate Magicka or things of said nature. It is almost never worth it from my experience.

2. When creating your class, you should pretty much always create a custom one as choosing a pre-made one is rather useless unless you want to role play in some form or another.

3. As you create your custom class, keep in mind that anything you choose is almost useless in the grand scheme of things when speaking in terms of special importance on one specific skill or another. If you choose Heavy Armor as a major skill and Light Armor is a secondary, the only difference is that when leveling up Heavy Armor it will count towards helping you level up.

4. If you're impatient and simply want to have a high-leveled character as fast as possible, picking simple skills to level up such as Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Mysticism, Alchemy, Conjuration, Alteration, and Illusion are the way to go. Heavy and Light Armor skills can be leveled up at the beginning of the game to around 50 or so (even higher if you're patient enough). This is done by gathering up a few rats and letting them attack you whilst you wear Heavy or Light armor (for some reason this levels both armor skills quickly) and just using Minor Restoration (also, if you hold down the right mouse button and hold/tap C you can cast much faster) or using potions to heal. Another quick way to find a larger amount of guaranteed rats is to start the first Fighters guild quest from Azzan in Anvil. He will give you a quest called 'A Rat Problem' which requires you to speak to a lady in a nearby house that is having issues in her basement involving her pet rats being killed/in danger. Once she tells you to go to her basement and check what is going on, quickly kill the lion(s) attacking the rats and then hit each of the rats so they begin attacking you. Over the course of leveling Heavy or Light Armor to 100 in one-sitting you'll have to repair your armor probably about 10-20 times (depends). So bringing repair hammers with you is a good idea. Though, you can simply go to the shop just aside that house to repair your armor if you choose to do it that way.

Mysticism is the skill that will most likely take longest to level depending on whether or not you own The Mage Tower DLC (Frostcrag Spire). I say this because you only need to gather about a few thousand gold and by one of the Magetellow Candle sets, travel to the spire, and you can begin making spells. If you don't yet already have a Detect Life spell, go buy one from a spell merchant and you will have it available to make spells out of when creating them. Make a Detect Life spell with max area and only 1-3 seconds. This should only cost around 3-5 magicka depending on the duration you choose. Once done, I'd recommend going to the market district again during day hours, and spamming the spell whilst running around or standing in a good spot that will hit the most npc's each time. Soul Trap is another alternative but rather slow depending on if you choose to buy/duplicate a lot of magicka potions. I won't go into that right now.

Alchemy is another one that will take longer if you don't own Frostcrag Spire DLC. This is because in the spire, if you buy the proper additions from the Mystic Emporium, you will get a large garden of many plants. You can choose to do this the "legit" way or just by simply duplicating harvested plants. The rest is fairly self-explainatory. If you choose to duplicate, just find the right combination of plants, and dupe them. If you choose to not do so, find out the specific wait times of said combinations of plants and gather them. Then just mash create potions until level 100.

Conjuration is fairly easy and shouldn't take more than an hour or two to get 100 in. Just hold down right mouse button and tap/hold C on the default skeleton spell you have by default or by creating your own skeleton spell that has the minimum duration so it only costs about 3 Magicka to cast. I'd recommend leveling Conjuration later on after Light & Heavy Armor so that you have a bit more Magicka/regen to spam the spell. This goes for most spell-casting skills.

Alteration is another one of the fairly easy and somewhat quick skills to level. All that is needed is to use your default 'Open Very Easy Lock' spell or buying that same spell from a merchant (it's very easy to find). And then just using it over and over on a door somewhere (my favorite spot to do this on is the northern gate to Bruma). Again, shouldn't take more than an hour or two of constant doing.

Illusion, again is another pretty simple one to level, but it just takes some patience. The method to doing this fast is pretty similar to leveling Mysticism, make a Charm spell that has an area of 100 and duration of 1-3 and spam this in the Arcane University's courtyards during day time when students and teachers are walking about and/or gathering. The Imperial City Marketplace is another good spot for this (remember during day hours is better). One thing you may encounter is not being able to find a low-level Charm spell from a merchant or anything else. Finding ones that require an Illusion skill of 50 or higher is very easy and not hard. If you're in this situation, just use a custom Night Eye or Light spell with a large area and small duration over and over until level 50, then make a custom Charm spell and continue towards 100.

5. When you sleep in a bed to increase your level, you should always try to pick the attributes that gain the biggest bonuses so that you can simply get the most out of them. Sometimes though, you will not get any attribute bonuses during a level-up and what I tend to do is spend them on Luck, Strength, and something else that probably won't get a bonus. But, this is entirely up to you.

6. To increase your level after you've gotten all of your major skills to 100; attack a guard and go to jail, sleep and leave. This should decrease one or more of your major skills by a bit. This will not decrease your actual level or progress (if I'm not mistaken the larger the crime, the larger degregation of your major skills). This is tedious and slow but it is the only way I have found to get to the true maximum level (255 iirc).

7. One last note, if you become a vampire, I heavily recommend to rid of it unless you enjoy its perks, and to never drink potions or beverages that permanently kill your stats (like Skooma) unless you want to just do it for fun and save beforehand.

Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily saying duplication is the way to play the game and that you should do it. I feel that if you find that fun and a way to enjoy the game, do it. If you don't, don't.

Guide on how to duplicate items:

Good luck.

[The Spud Lord]

Though contrary to the guide, I for one enjoy the atronach birthsign for mage characters
In my opinion the 50% spell absorption is a must and even though you can't use it in enchantment making you can find items with said effect, therefore maximizing your chance to absorb said spell and restore your magicka
Alternatively you can keep a duplicated supply of welkynd stones hotkeyed for quick use

[76561197971992647]

illusion is a must have for doing secret squirrel calm spell spin into sneak attack, i love demolishing sewer rats in this fashion

[ultra masculine white girl]

Thanks for such a nice guide - it's helpful when you're coming back to Obvilion from Skyrim :)

[Drag]

Oh, and the amount of attribute points you can get on leveling depends upon how many of each skill governed by the attribute you leveled between levels, up to +5. Leveling acrobatics (governed by speed) 10 times in a level will allow you to get +5 speed when you sleep to level. Luck is the only attribute that has no governed skills, but with meticulous development, you can pretty easily get many attributes maxed while still taking that single point of luck every level. Luck does have an impact on the game in various ways (one of the most notable being that it reduces the magicka cost of spells) and it has a great impact with a significant increase.

[Drag]

Well, simply put, the explanation for the armor skills is simply due to the way the game grants experience to skills. For every skill, the experience is granted based on the number of times something was done. In the case of armor skills, taking hits to an armored location of the appropriate kind of armor. The magnitude of the attack you took doesn't matter; a rat's hit will grant the same experience as a minotaur lord.

Magic skills gain experience due to the spells hitting something. Thus any self-targeting spell will always grant experience, and flinging fireballs into the sky won't do a thing. But if you make a spell to light yourself on fire, it'll grant experience. Once again, the magnitude of the spell is irrelevant. Heal minor wounds grants the same experience as heal greater wounds.

And there is a difference between a major and minor skill. Major skills gain experience faster than minor skills. Skills within your class's specialization also get a further bonus.

[Juleris]

Level 10 in Oblivion feels like level 25 in Skyrim.

[Hermit]

advlevel for you!!!

[Purple Pete]

I've played for 5 hours and I'm still lvl 2 ;c

[Pilk Gaming]

player.additem 000000f 999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
infinite goldz

[Aarquen]

I wish I had read this before creating my character and playing the game for almost 20 hours (and I'm still level 2 because I created a mage and I didn't like to cast spells). Anyway, this is a good guide! :)