I have been playing oblivion on a 64 bit Windows 7 PC, using the Steam GOTY edition of the game. I have a fair amount of experience with installing mods, but I encountered a problem which has caused me to do a reinstall of the game. Part of the problem was that all weapon and armor stats where badly nerfed, so that for example a stock iron dagger did 1 damage, and a full set of steel armor provided just a 14 armor rating. It applied to all weapons and armor, including those added by mods.

I now have a completely stock oblivion directory (hence why I am not posting in the Oblivion mods forum), and I have deleted the My Games/Oblivion folder so that all the ini files are reset. Yet somehow the weapon and armor stats are still exceptionally low when I start a new game, I really am stumped on this one. I previously had the same problem on another computer with the DVD version, but I thought it was caused by the mods, not vanilla.

I searched the wiki and forums to no avail, any suggestions?

When you uninstalled the game, did you delete the old install directory?

What level are you? If you are low level, with the subsequent low starting values for skills, armor and weapons won't be very effective.

Thanks for the reply. My main character is level 12, but the save file is dependent on FCOM and a bunch of other mods, so I can't use it with a stock oblivion directory. I did delete the modded directory before replacing it with vanilla, in order to prevent problems caused by overwrites. The problem is the base damage of the weapons, not the multipliers applied to them; i.e. in the inventory the weapon damage stat displayed is low. I just can't work out how a problem can carry over from a modded game to vanilla, especially since I wiped all traces of the modded game first.

If you are first level, that would be normal.... I am a bit confused on that point.... Is this a 'new' game?

ArmorRating = ( 0.35 + 0.0065 * Skill ) * BaseArmorRating

I.e. although a full Steel Armor gives you 45 defense at skill level 100, you'll get less at the beginning of the game. Working backward from your value of 14, that means your skill would be negative! So I assume you don't have a full set (maybe no shield?) and you'll have to do the calculation yourself.

A Steel Cuirass has a BaseArmorRating of 11.25 so with a skill of 25 you'd see an AR of 6 (5.78 rounded up) or maybe 5 if it truncates instead of rounding. The factor of Base is about half at level 25, so 14 is about right for a set without shield.

I did start a new game to test it, but I have the same problem with my level 12 character, who is a journeyman with heavy armor. I just checked, and my character currently has a Dwemer cuirass, greaves and helmet, along with iron greaves and gauntlets. The total armor rating is only 19, and the sum of the individual armor ratings is also 19 (e.g. the dwemer cuirass has an armor rating of 8, instead of 12.5). According to the UESP wiki, my base armor rating (before being adjusted by the formula above) should be 33 for the same equipment. Do the base damage/base armor rating values of individual items change according to proficiency with that skill?

I am sorry if I was misleading in my first post - the problem is the base damage of weapons and the base armor rating of armor, not the armor rating displayed at the bottom of the inventory.

The values shown in inventory aren't the base values, they're the ones you'd get when equipping the item, so the formula applies there as well. If you increase your skill, the same item will show a higher value.

*facepalm*. My bad, I didn't realize that the player has to have strength 100, blade 100 just to have the sword's base damage rating listed in the wiki. Sorry I wasted your time, but thanks for the help! You can close this thread, moderators.