Casting time. You’d have to cast Minor three times to get roughly the same amount of healing as one cast of Major–during which time something may still be beating on you. So, if you need a relatively large chunk of health in a hurry, you cast Major and accept the efficiency hit as a trade-off. At least, that’s why I might design it that way.
Presumably it would lower the cost of Minor as well but I won’t pretend to know the details.
In my limited experience, neither spell is great while actually in combat but that might be my melee-centric play style. Casting after the fact, Minor has it beat hands down for restoring health since you get 37hp back for the same mp cost as Major (25 pts)
Anyway, it just seemed counter to every other magic system I’ve seen (higher level usually means more efficient). Even if custom spells are better than store bought, that’s no reason for making higher level store bought spells markedly worse than even your newbie starter spell.
I never did the math above, but I use Heal Major wounds for the time savings over Heal Minor in combat.
Once I had a complete set of armor & shield I liked (glass), I enchanted each piece with a +50 magicka sigil stone, for a total of 250 extra magicka points. I used every one of those points during higher level combat, along with rings and necklaces enchanted to regen magicka faster. Didn’t have to drink healing or magic potions much after that. Most of the time outside of heavy combat I wore the Dark Brotherhood armor because it looks cool and has good stealth and acrobatics perks. Murder someone (possibly a beggar) and then sleep to trigger the Dark Brotherhood quest. It’s really well-written with some neat plot twists.
To get the five +50 magicka sigil stones, I used the trick of saving right before you activate the sigil stone in an Oblivion tower. As soon as you get the message: "sigil stone added to your inventory (during the big ball of flame animation) you can check you inventory to see what kind of sigil stone it is. If it’s not one you want, you can immediately reload from your last save point and repeat as many times as you want until you get the stone you want. I enchanted a pair of leather boots to get a sweet pair of water walking boots that way, too. You get more powerful sigil stones at higher levels, so early ones may only offer +30 magicka. There are about 50 different types of sigil stones, but I usually hit on one I liked after a dozen reloads (each cycle takes about 30 seconds on the XBox 360).
Do the same for four other Oblivion towers and you’ll have enough stones for your set of enchanted armor/clothing. Just select the sigil stone in your inventory and it’ll ask you what article you want to enchant.
I don’t waste too much time fighting every monster while on the Oblivion plane. You can sprint by most of them on your way to the tower and get your hands on the sigil stone in about 5-10 minutes vs. 30-40 fighting your way there. Punching or pushing tough enemies off bridges and ledges into the lava is an easy and very satisfying way to kill them.
My most indespensible piece of equipment is the Finn Gleam helmet. Permanaent night vision and detect life for 60 feet when worn. It’s underwater near Anvil, but you can dive down and get it right at the start of the game. Makes dungeon crawling much easier on the eyes, and it’s not a cheat. I consider them my night vision goggles. Just Google it for the exact location.
One of the main points of OOO is to fix the levelling problem in vanilla so you should be fine (caveat: I’ve not played using OOO).
Well, by half-assed, I mean that I don’t think the install actually took. And I’m okay with that. When I read the files for OOO, I wasn’t crazy about what I was reading, and I’d already built a character-class around not leveling too quickly, so I’m just going to hope that I’ll be fine. We’ll see how it goes.
Fair enough, I’m one of the few who never really had a ‘levelling problem’ with vanilla anyhow. So I think you’ll be fine.
Quick question about magic weapons: I’ve noticed that they fire themselves dry within a single fight, maybe two if lucky. Do you just keep pumping them full of souls or just keep them on reserve for specific fights or just let them run dry 99% of the time? I’ve gotten to where it’s generally the latter and I’m keeping a magic weapon around just to damage ghosts and wisps.
There’s a quest that gives you an infinitely re-fillable grand soul gem. It’s called the Star of Azura, or something like that. I created a 60-second soul trap spell that I’d throw before attacking a bear or minotaur and could finish it off in time and get a pretty good charge off it. I used staffs a lot for offense, reserving my magicka for healing spells. Grizzly bears are pretty good grand soul targets, but black and brown bears in the lower parts of the map are OK, too.
Another handy staff given as a quest award is one that turns one creature into another random creature. For instance, if you come across a minotaur, fire this particular staff it it and it will turn turn into a sheep or a deer for enough time for you to easily kill it. If you time it right, you can throw a soul trap spell at a target, change it into a sheep with the staff, almost kill it, then wait for it to turn back into the high-level form and finish it off for an easy grand soul capture. I can’t remember the name of the staff, but if you search the Oblivion wiki for shrine quests or reward staffs, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. I think it works on wisps, too. I usually used fire staffs on ghosts (hit them with a weakness to fire spell first if able).
Another cool quest staff is the one that clones your target so you get to see your enemy fight its even-eviler twin instead of you.
If you finish the mage’s guild quest you can create all kinds of spells and enchanted equipment at the Arcane University. I created a weakness to fire spell combined with invisibility then followed up with my custom-created fireball + invisibility spell to take advantage of the sneak damage bonus (x3 if I remember). I could one-shot kill almost anything doing that.
Creating an open lock + invisibility spell let me open doors right under guards’ noses.
Wabbajack. Wabbajack? Wabbajack!
play through vanilla once or until you get bored. It’s good to do your research so you can realize what needs modding.
The best guide I’ve found for modding visuals is here
So I just hit level 4 (playing slowwwwwly). My first level increase, I got +5/+5/+1 luck. My next one was +5/+4/+1, and then this one was +4/+3/+1. Am I dooming myself to failure by not getting +5/+5/+1 every level, or is this okay?
I recently fired up Oblivion again, started playing with a Breton and took great care to level up efficiently, making the +5 on all three attributes (started with willpower, speed, endurance). By the time I hit level 13 with willpower at 100 and endurance almost there, I decided to stride forth and vanquish all that lay before me - until my very next quest took me to a cave where I couldn’t beat three mercenaries that attacked me together. I haven’t gone back to it since.
Funnily enough, on my first playthrough years ago, I didn’t have the slightest clue about efficient leveling, and played the game it’s meant to be played(actually chose major skills I use, leveled up whenever I leveled up) and I don’t recall having any such problems.
I’ve never tried to metagame the level system in Oblivion, although I do have some mods installed that balance out the combat a little and change the way your magicka is earned. (It’s nice to have a challenge, but every single one-on-one battle should NOT be an epic struggle for survival that ends with me barely alive and my armor at 25%.)
I never beat it when it first came out (stuff kept coming up), but I started it up again recently with the intent of beating it before I get Skyrim.
I will agree with the previous poster that Azura’s Star is an ESSENTIAL if you intend on using an enchanted weapon.
Long post ahead, sorry. I had a lot of spare time to play Oblivion this year. No, I’m not unemployed, just letting my inner geek flourish.
I metagamed the leveling system by creating a spreadsheet to track my level ups and to help plan my actions so I could get as strong a character as soon as possible. It was fun in an OCD way, but involved lots of grinding. I was closing in on a pretty strong character (before I accidentally deleted it), but was still getting challenged by enemies, so I switched my combat style to one using followers as tanks, duplicating enemies using the special staff in my previous post, turn-undead spells, conjure and “frenzy” spells/staffs. Oftentimes I’d perch on a rock and just watch the 6-9 NPCs battle it out while I controlled the fight using these tools. I felt more like a quarterback than a linesman - that was fun. Oh, I’d also cast “heal target” spells to keep my allies in the fight. After all the bloodshed I’d hop down and collect the loot, feeling like the British officers in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life consoling their troops after the Zulu battle.
Some grinding tips, if anyone’s interested. I got these from the Elder Scrolls Wiki:
Increase Athletics: Swim against the castle walls in Cheydenhall by putting a rubber band on the controller while you watch TV. Takes increasingly long to level up doing this, ao I eventually started buying athletics lessons.
Armor / block training: Put on either light or heavy armor, go into the Avelia’s (?) basement in anvil and let her pet rats attack you. Provoke them with a harmless spell like drain mercantile, or simply punch them. Put the game on easy mode before this so you don’t kill the non-respawning rats and so your health drains slowly as they attack you. When you get the skill increases you want, simply leave the basement and the rats will calm down. Don’t finish the rat quest or you’ll lose this valuable free training location.
Blade/blunt/destruction/recovery training: Again, put the game on easy mode to “strengthen” your target, pick up a cheap dagger (quickest attack), or a low damage fireball or a cheap iron mace and attack the ewe that hangs around Weynon Priory. As the ewe gets weaker, cast a “regen health on target” spell to prevent its death. Don’t attack the ram - he runs off. This is a liitle grindy, too but much faster than conjuring a skeleton or scamp. I just left the cheap iron weapons laying around the sheep pen so I didn’t accidentally sell them.
Magic skills training: create cheap, short duration (1 second) spells in the school you want and cast over and over. Exapmle, casting a “heal 1 sec” spell while wearing an enchanted necklace that drains your health will boost your regen skill pretty quickly.
Using my spreadsheet, I could tell when I was getting close to a level up, so I’d spend the first half of a new level adventuring, then go to a grind location to make sure I got max points in the skills I wanted to get a 5/5/5 bonus. This obviously isn’t for everybody, but I wanted to “beat” the game’s screwed-up leveling system on the 360 where no mods are available.
Finally, if you’ve got the coin, ALWAYS buy five training sessions per level if that works into your leveling plan, especially for the more grindy skills. Also, with enough speed you can simply outrun bothersome enemies, like those stupid cougars, or get them to chase you into a roving Imperial guard and let him finish it off for you.
Sorry, I meant to say put the game on hard mode before punching the rats and when attacking the ewe to increase their health, but put it on easy mode when the rats are attacking you to keep your health high without wasting restore health potions. To get access to Avelia’s rats, request to join the fighter’s guild in Anvil and they’ll give you the quest.
Well inspired by this thread I went and downloaded OOO (and the oblivion mod manager) and started a new game. Levelling in OOO is really slow! Make sure you read the readme so you select the mods you want when you install it. Harvest Flora is great (you can see which plants you’ve already picked) and the Living Economy thing seems okay (although it makes money even tighter at low levels). I’m toying with the idea of getting all the Unique Landscapes patches as well anyone ever used this?
My impressions of OOO so far are positive, things are a lot more dangerous for the novice adventurer - so you have to be careful and save often. Oh and traps are now deadly rather than inconvenient.
Personally I don’t think this is too much of a problem, so long as you’re raising your combat effectiveness as you go up (not levelling up in skills like Restoration and Speechcraft etc every time). Oh and I never realised just how powerful luck is until recently - essentially it fortifies every skill by 40% of every luck point you have over 50 so at 60 luck every skill goes up by 4 and things just get better as you keep raising your luck - that’s incredibly powerful.
Because this is what happens when you level up in non-combat areas - bldysabbas essentially created a long-distance runner with an awesome magicka regeneration rate and health, but without the combat skills to foot it with the rubber-banded enemies that go with a higher level. Although to be fair, if you’re talking about the mercenaries you come across in the Dark Brotherhood questline I remember them being pretty difficult as well. Can you summon something up to divert their attention? Maybe take one out from a distance with a sneaky poisoned arrow?
Quoted for truth. Personally I have no qualms about dropping the difficulty slider from time to time when I’ve already been killed several times by the same damn monster. I even confess to using the console from time to time. Oh and dealing damage at a distance helps out a lot. Feather them with arrows if you can I say.
I’ve never bothered with the whole grinding thing that Pine Fresh Scent describes. I just play how I wish to and let my character evolve accordingly. If things get too broken I’d consider just using the console, but I see that’s not an option for everyone.
Oh and final point in an already long post, if you first timers are getting a bit bored with the ‘generic fantasy world’ if Cyrodill don’t forget to check out that mysterious door in Nibben Bay…
I’m playing vanilla since I was far enough along that I didn’t want to mod the world by the time I read this thread. I’m level 24 now and have been doing… okay. There’s been a lot of “Fight, rest for two minutes, fight, rest for two minutes” which was tedious and I hit a patch where I was feeling seriously under-equipped but then I did the Azura’s Star quest and one of the vamps was nice enough to drop a breastplate and greaves of whatever the high tier armor is (stuff after ebony) and I have ebony on the rest. Except my gloves because, damn it, no one wants to drop some new gloves. Still wearing dwarven gloves which break every three fights. And I had to BUY those since I haven’t seen a pair of mittens drop since steel.
Anyway, the Azura’s Star thing was a lifesaver since I can use magic weapon effects regularly now and enchant my gear with grand souls on a regular basis. And my Restoration is high enough now that, with custom made spells, healing after fights isn’t such a soul-wearing grind.
One spoiler complaint:
I did the Oblivion gate fight at Kavaek (sp?) where you close the gate and then have to enter the town and eventually the castle to save the Count. Holy cats was that a long and tedious slog with the NPC warriors being worthless and giant waves of opponents. I only got through it by exploiting the hell out of the geometry; wedging myself into corners around doorways so mobs would get blocked by the wall while I healed, etc. And, for all that, an incredibly anticlimatic ending. “Oh, he’s dead. Well, that sucks. See ya.”
Yeah I hate unmatched armor sets too.
Re your spoiler complaint:
I had the same problem my first time through Kvatch. Basically the problem seems to be your enemies scale with your level but your allies don’t do so nearly as much. So if you do this part when you’re at a higher level you face masses of strong creatures (Clannfears and worse), rather than the scamps and the like you’d see at lower levels. It was a lot easier running through at a lower level.
I hate, hate, HATE Clannfears! Fast, nasty, dangerous jerks. Burnin’s too good for 'em. They should be re-named Messerschmitts.
Kvatch, part II was tough for me, too. I finally got through it by running back across the bridge between the castle and the church and perching on that statue’s base to pick off the Clannfers. That was the start of my “quarterback” combat style v. slogging it out in the big messy battle.
For dungeon combat, I sometimes like to open my attacks by hiding behind a wall/door way and summoning a Flame Atronarch in the doorway to open the attack and act as a damage sponge (don’t forget to throw a weakness to fire spell, too). By the time my enemy fought their way through two or three rounds of my Atronarch they’d turn the corner and I’d be waiting for them at full strength. I really enjoy the combat options of this game.
One of the most aggravating things i’ve encountered, as the last few posters have noted, is that your allies’ level DOESN’T scale with your own the way your enemies do. At higher levels, this makes escort missions all but unplayable - the person you’re supposed to be “protecting” charges headlong into a pack of half a dozen vampires/liches/dremora lords and lasts all of five seconds. I’m not a big believer in cheating, but whenever I get an escort mission I use the console to set the escortee’s health to about 50,000 so I don’t have to bother with it.