Hello and thanks for reading.

The good news is that, after purchasing Oblivion back at the time of release, I'm finally progressing through my first honest-to-goodness playthrough (a long, boring story). The main factor that held me back was that I knew I wanted a fairly modded game, but I also knew that setting up a fairly modded game for the first time was going to be a huge time sink. Thankfully, I've done it (with plenty of help from the generous folks here) and it's very stable thus far.

So, as is already clear, I'm not playing "vanilla" Oblivion. Of note, I have OOO, Realistic Leveling, Shivering Isles and a number of popular magic mods installed. The full list is below:

But in terms of play experience, I have run into some issues involving game balance. Primarily, I'm quite weak and struggling some to get "unweak." While I am able to kill foes, though it can take multiple attempts, I often have to resort to cheap tricks to do it. For example, I'd say that my most powerful ability is a command humanoid spells that turns many enemies into allies for a time. I frequently end up casting this multiple times to get my would be attackers to fight among, and ultimately kill, themselves while I cower somewhere out of sight. I'll admit that this is entertaining, but it's overpowered. Nothing seems to resist it and the ability to recast it ad infinitum is ridiculous. Somewhat less effective, but equally cheap, overpowered and ridiculous is the ability to pacify foes, attack them and then pacify them again. Pacifying once is legit, but once they are wounded by the hand that pacified them they should be so intent on killing you that no amount of pacification should work again (or it should be a very high level and magicka-costly spell).

Ordinarily, I wouldn't resort to such highly questionable tactics. But if I go toe to toe with many of my foes, I'm doomed. Even armed with a magic blade, with which I can hit them a good many times, they'll take me down.

At this point I should mention that I'm playing at a difficulty level of 45%.

The problem may be that I spread myself too thin. I thought I had a good handle on creating a balanced character during creation. I'm playing a dark elf. I focused in strength and intelligence and specialized in magic (I don't recall my sign/god, but I believe it was a magic-based one without significant penalties). My skills are blade, block, light armor, sneak, marksman and mercantile. Why no magic skills? Well, I figured I'd focus in skills I knew I wanted but that weren't favored by my magic specialization because those skills would rise quickly (and, in many cases, began with something of a bonus anyway).

While this may sound terribly watered down, much of it actually worked out pretty well...I think. I have ample endurance to give me a respectable amount of health. Similarly, I have a large pool of magicka. I even have a good amount of strength to carry gear (something like 270 units worth). Where things turn problematic is my skills, I believe. For the most part, my main skills are somewhere in the 30s. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to translate into much success out in the world. I can fell foes with the best blades I've found (somewhere around 8-10 damage), but only after quite a few hits. Block does mitigate damage, but foes like tundra wolves can take me out in three or four shots anyway. I can sneak at a distance, but always get detected long before anything like sneak attack range (and that's barefoot in light armor). My arrows do little damage (around 5). Sneak attacks are a bit more effective, but maybe shave 15% off of most foes' health. And mercantile? Well, even with NPCs that "like me" (disposition around 90%), I'm looking at getting 30% of the item's value (briastplate worth 260 nets me 90) and paying something like 200%. And that's in towns that say they value the goods I'm selling.

Unfortunately, a number of the skills I use most are too low to give me the punch I need in combat. Though I pick every ingredient I can get my hands on, alchemy only reveals the first effect, and potions (using full novice apparatus) and poisons are too weak to be of much help. Destruction magic just shaves a bit off the enemy for every cast, so I end up kiting everything, which again feels cheap. But since none of my magic school skills (except maybe illusion) exceed 20, I can't cast somewhat more potent spells. I'm still conjuring skeletons that mobs disintegrate in a single blow.

The second issue is that I feel like I'm leveling too slowly. I finished all of the mage guild quests to gain access to the Arcane University — and a bunch of other miscellaneous quests along the way (not to mention fighting random mobs and clearing a few dungeons) — and I just hit level 2. Perhaps that's as it should be, if OOO and Shivering Isles add a ton of content that would otherwise level you too fast, but when most games have you gaining your first level within 15 minutes, it feels really odd to gain one after a decent number of hours. And I don't even think I set my game's leveling speed to be quite as conservative as OOO recommends (but I can't recall).

Perhaps I answered my own question, at least regarding skills, and I need to focus more. Surely, swapping out, say, sneak and mercantile for alchemy and destruction would make a noticeable difference. But I can't really judge the leveling speed since I have no idea how much game I've got ahead of me. Maybe it's supposed to be this slow.

Any advice, guidance, suggestions, etc. are most welcome.

Thanks,

ELB

What level are you at? You must be fairly well into the game if you're messing with Calm and Control spells.

Some people around here might want to burn me at the stake for saying this, but personally I would ditch OOO. I have heard it can add some pretty tough creatures early on, and this seems to be what you're up against. I'd play the game without OOO, but add MMM 3.8 instead. This adds a variety of new creatures & NPCs to the game--some hostile and some peaceful, but all of these creatures and NPCs can be toggled on and off (via a variety of esp choices) so you can choose what to have and what not to have around. I'm not sure if OOO allows this too.

MMM 3.8 can be found at TES Alliance, if you're interested. I don't think it's at Nexus, or maybe some older versions are at Nexus. I got 3.8 at TES A though.

Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul is another option. I like this mod because it can possibly add a lot, but like MMM, we have the choice to add or subtract as much as we'd like via this mod's config file. It's very easy to add what you want, then see how it all plays out. Does OOO offer this?

Another option is to get rid of OOO and just see how the vanilla game works for awhile. This might be rather immersion-breaking of course, but it might help. This way, you'd be giving your character a chance to survive without resorting to out-of-character tactics. The vanilla game can be jarring the way it introduces new creatures to the game (whereas with OOO they're already added from Level 1, right?) but it offers just enough challenge that you won't need to worry so much about character 'build'. Plus it might help to just see how the vanilla game handles things (so far as the way it adds new enemies), for awhile anyways.

You've got a variety of other mods I'm not so familiar with, like Better Dungeons. Not sure if these make the game more difficult or not.

After years of playing, I'm also at the point where I don't need to touch the difficulty slider at all. I just leave it at default. Instead of messing with the slider (or worrying about build) I usually give my characters 3 major skills they're definitely going to use, one or two which won't used as often, and one or two which never get used. This slows leveling down to the point that the game is still challenging, but easier to deal with than if all 7 majors were being used 24/7.

Finally, I use a mod called Fundament, which allows the user to slow down (or speed up) all 21 Skills individually via its ini file. Some skills level upwards much more faster than others (Mysticism versus Restoration, for instance), and it helps to set everything just how you'd like it.