Okay so im 17 hours into the game. I just got to level 12 and i am a theif/acrobat like character. So i just finished the arena quest line and i leveld like 5 levels because i kept sleeping after every fight. So.. no i just did a quest and i kept getting murdered by common enemies and it takes like 10 minutes and 20 potions just to kill one enemy... What do i do now? Lower the difficulty? That seems kind of cheap... =( i really dont want to do that. But seriously...wtf. I thought im supposed to get stronger as i level but im just getting weaker.

One of the side-effects of having the entire world level up with you. If you level up too fast, you'll find your enemies quickly outclassing your character. You hit the nail right on the head there, too. Oblivion's leveling system really is that bad, where not being careful about your level-ups will cause your character to get weaker rather than stronger.

Don't worry or feel bad about lowering the difficulty. No one will ever think less of you for doing that.

http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem

This article addresses your problem far better than I can, but I'll give it a shot.

You say you're playing a Thief/Acrobat kind of character. The problem here is that Oblivion has a leveling system that tries to keep up with the player. As you increase in Level, more powerful enemies begin to appear in the game world and certain enemies (such as bandits) simply become stronger. Unfortunately, this leveling system does not take into account the fact that some characters do not focus heavily on combat. If you have not been increasing your combat skills, along with your Strength and Endurance attributes, you will have a very tough time in the teen Levels. The enemies have become stronger, but even though your character has leveled up, his/her combat prowess has not improved.

This is a major problem with the type of character you are playing. It's not your fault, though. After all, you're just playing the character that one would be expected to play. At the moment, your best option is to simply decrease the difficulty. The game isn't very kind to non combat-oriented characters.

I agree with Ruiner87. The wiki is best for the understanding of how you got where you are. I'm sure this thread will spawn several posts, about how you should have done this or that. The current issue is where you want to be, and how to get there. There is no shame in lowering the diff, that's for sure. Other than that, you will need to change your tactics, a bit. Not knowing what you stats are and your Major / Minors, and the level of each of those. I'll have to leave it general.

For the time , you could concentrate on using your Minor skills. They contribute to the bonuses, each time you level. But there are a lot of them, and you can raise a few of them to a high point. Like 50 or even higher. Without having to level up. ie...get the icon to level, and possibly loose out on bonuses. That way you can catch up in the enemy to player ratio. If illusion is one of your minors, you could use some of those spells to help hide you. The school of Illusion is arguably, the most powerful in the game.

The down side is that you may be drastically changing your character and your playstyle. Hope this helps, and Good luck.

Indeed. Yours truly has now done it, tired of having to empty the quiver in order to bring down ONE goblin warlord :shakehead:
It′s halfway down from default and although it feels a bit too easy now, I guess it′s actually more realistic. Especially when sneak-attacking :ninja:

When I played an archer, I ignored the strength/endurance and suddenly found myself having a tough time trying to kill goblins and cougars. Anything stronger than a cougar (trolls, ogres, etc), were damned near impossible to kill.

So what I did was just run for my life when confronted with these beasties.

Leveling up by increasing your sneak skills will not get you very far in a toe-to-toe fight.

At level 12, some seriously nasty creatures appear on the scene. If you are otherwise happy with your character just lower the difficulty slider and enjoy. It takes a great deal of time to learn this game.

After a few years of playing, some of us have to intentionally gimp our character to keep it interesting. Acadian's Mystic Bowgirl, Buffy can strike like a rattlesnake but in a toe-to-toe fight she would crumple like a butterfly. My own character, Angel has never worn armor or carried a shield. She rarely uses enchantments and then it's only to prevent having to kill someone or some thing. I play by the dead-is-dead rule so if Angel ever died in the game I would mourn her loss but never again load or reroll her. She has come very close to meeting her ancestors more than once. I play on the default difficulty which gives everyone an even chance in combat. Angel has waded through an army of Deadra and left them piled up in drifts; all without armor, shield, or enchantments.

It just takes time.

As my only character, Lothran is made to be somewhat of a bada** melee fighter among other things. I don′t know if I would have made him this strong should I redo him, but he makes a good melee complement to Buffy′s bow

bobg and mirocu, thank you for the kind words! Buffy would indeed be very safe, whether under the protection of Angel's shroud of invisability or Lothran's powerful blade and magic. ^_^

One rule of thumb I have found helpful is to ensure that one's primary killing skill (say, marksman for example) starts as a major, then goes up by 3-4 each level. Once that skill is maxed, I generally stop leveling the character (around level 20). This is facilitated by how you select your other major skills. I pick some to help slowly level up while not conflicting with the smooth progression of that main killing skill. I also pick some others to never touch to help 'cap' how high the character can level. This all helps my characters remain 'ahead' of thier foes. There are so many ways to play and level, but these ideas have helped me.

Oblivion's level-up system is somewhat unique, as prior posters have pointed out.

Depending on the majors (and minors) you increase prior to the sleep icon appearing on your screen at level-up time, you may become more powerful than your enemies, or in some ways you can become less powerful.

If you are going to rely on melee of any sort, then at the very least you probably want to make sure your endurance is growing quickly as you level up, since melee characters will almost inevitably get hit as they fight (though there are techniques to minimize this). To grow endurance there are three skills to think about: block, heavy armor, and armorer. As a sneak character you probably do not wear heavy armor at all. That leaves you with block and armorer to think about. You would need to raise block and armorer, collectively, by 10 points before the sleep icon appears on the screen -- to ensure the max gain in endurance at level-up time. Repairing everything you wear and the armor of everything you kill helps a lot with this. Taking time to level block as well will also help. You could also consider wearing heavy armor (but no boots so you stay quieter when sneaking). This will all lead to you having more hit points after you level up.

The other thing, even for a sneak melee character, is to think about strength. It's not as important as your actual weapon skill, but it does factors in to melee damage. Strength is influenced by: blade, blunt, and hand-to-hand. Even if you prefer to use a blade (and have made it a major), if you have blunt and/or hand-to-hand as a minor, you may want to consider increasing them a few times per level to help make sure you get a high strength bonus at level-up time. It's unlikely you will get 10 points in blade before the sleep icon appears, since other majors are likely to be rising also. So, to make strength grow faster, you supplement your blade use with some side use (or training) of blunt and/or hand-to-hand.

If you are not focusing on archery, I'd say the third stat to think about early on is speed. If you are into archery (marksman) then agility would be your third consideration.

Finally: You can always increase your intelligence later (and thus your magicka). You can use items to compensate for low willpower. Personality is rarely, if ever, game-breaking.

What I've learned to do, and it's minimally invasive on my "fun, play-as-I-like" time is as follows:
(1) When I start a new level, right after I've just leveled up, I ask myself: what stats would I most like to focus on during this new level?
(2) Will these three stats grow naturally all on their own or do they need help?

Remember, you can pay to train any combination of skills up to five times, per level. So let's say blade is a major skill of yours and blunt and hand-to-hand are minors. You could, if you like, go a trainer and train up blunt 5 times, or hand-to-hand 5 times, or a combination of the two 5 times. This right there gets you halfway towards that +5 you want in strength. Then you just have to make sure blade increases 5 times before your next level up. This makes raising strength much easier. The reason I recommend training minors is because they count towards your stats, but they don't count towards leveling up. This buys you time to raise the majors you want.

The "difficulty slider" is not a "cheat." It's a way to balance the player character's combat strength vs. the enemy's combat strength to create a satisfactory gameplay. It does this by adjusting relative damage given/taken. That's all it does.

Obviously, since the game's enemy-leveling system is creating an imbalance, the proper (and logical) thing to do is to readjust that slider to the point where things are back in balance.

I never touch the difficulty slider, not for 2 years now, I'm proud to say. the thing to do is to employ Major skills that dont' get used as often, it's called "minors as majors". The game levels up at a slower pace, and it's all good. Even back when my games used to level too fast, I used to have problems moving the diff. slider around. I know you guys say it's not cheating, and in a way I agree with this, but it sure felt "cheaty" to me. :shrug:

The problem with leveling up the game slower is I never get to have those higher-level loots and quests everybody talks about. But personally, I'd rather NOT have glass-wearing bandits and minotaurs & spriggan at every turn, and goblins that take until Christmas to bring down, than have some awesome set of armor that only shows up at higher levels.

You might feel differently about the slider if you had a character that you liked, that you'd spent a hundred hours playing, and you now find that enemies are too strong through no fault of yours. Then you come to this forum, and people tell you to start all over again with blah blah as majors and minors, because there's something wrong with the game. And by the way, never touch that slider, even though it fixes the problem, because that's cheating. :whistling:

I fully agree with you on the slow leveling, and do something similar (although nowadays I use a leveling mod that fixes the imbalanced leveling). I don't like seeing the whole world gradually changing just because my character changes. There's no reason that grizzly bears should now be encountered every five feet, when it used to be rats. And bandits living in tents and wearing armor worth thousands of septims is just ridiculous.

Come on G, the bears ate the rats, and the bandits stole the gear. It's not that crazy. Is it?

Noooo, it's not crazy at all... :whistling:

So where were the bears before, when there were rats running up my legs every three steps? I'd say that somebody has been running around the countryside with the Wabbajack...

As for the bandits, why don't they just sell that armor and buy the house in Skingrad, and live happily ever after? Why are they out there bothering a dangerous mage on the highway?

:wink_smile:

I'll offer some comments and suggestions. It seems very likely that you lack development of certain skills and stats. Hopefully, this will offer you some ideas. You don't need to change the difficulty setting, either, by the way, although you can, of course.

The leveling system in TES games is not imbalanced, nor is it incorrectly implemented, per se, aside from the choice in TES IV to have everything randomly generated in leveled lists, including enemies, loot, etc, with no specific items to bother exploring to obtain. However, as far as general implementation, it works just fine (i.e., you develop characters based on what you do). As far as enemies leveling with you, it makes sense that your reputation would cause stronger opponents to seek you out for one reason or another. Actually, what doesn't make sense in Oblivion is the overall frequency of encounter. There is simply no way that so many encounters could exist within such a small space as they could not survive on the resources available. The problem with everything being random is that there is no goal to strive for and everything becomes simply a roll of the dice with no influence from the character. That's a different issue than general implementation or leveling mechanic, though.

Like any game or simulation, one must learn the rules of the world. This is like our physical existence, too, isn't it? We try to learn the rules and live as best we can.

Although I define major skills as being skills that required special courses, training, practice sessions, etc to develop, I have also played characters where majors mean most used. However, even in such a case, minors does not mean "ignore and do not use."

I play stealthy characters, but not thieves or assassins, per se. It annoys me greatly that Beth and other companies have equated "stealth" with "thief." Acrobats and similar professions do not have to be thieves, after all, and it would be nice for a company making RPGs to avoid equating the two areas.

Many people equate leveling up with getting stronger, but that isn't really true in a traditional RPG sense. Rather, leveling up is supposed to indicate experience in life. Getting stronger is also relative to what you do, of course.

Stealth characters (or magic characters) do not need strength, nor do they need endurance. You can do the math and see why this is so. There are better, more powerful ways to alter such stats through magic (enchantments, potions, scrolls, spells) than can be done through leveling them when they are not your character's focus.


Between stealth bonuses for attacks and poison effects, stealth characters can easily take out any opponent in one hit even on max difficulty. Or you could use magic with stealth bonuses. Either way works.

Stealth characters should excel in speed and agility, and maxing these stats allows them to win or avoid most any encounter. Boosts can be gained through potions, spells, etc, of course.

Note: I also boost Personality early and start with it fairly high (50) compared to many people. I also boost Luck (most important stat, by the way, especially in early to mid levels). My characters tend to use guards and other factions. Speedy, agile, stealthy characters are not for toe-to-toe knock down, drag out fights. I can't imagine a character of such a personality who would want to get into such a brawl. However, leading an opponent into another area to fight someone else makes sense. Commanding them to do so makes even more sense.

I'm a believer in the Luck, as well. But the Personality....Why? I'm not trying to critic as mush as I'm trying to understand. What does it affect? What could you gain from it other than a higher initial approval rating with NPCs. Because their rating can easily be maxed out, even if it's zero, with a 100 charm for 2 sec. Prior to talking to them. I never put points in it. Is that wrong?

You're not missing anything on personality. Stat wise it does nothing for you that a nice charm spell can't do better. The only reason to toss points into it is for RP. For RP reasons, my character, at her top and capped level of 20, has endurance and strength of 30, but personality of 100.

Excact same thing happened to me, and at the same level. I was playing a thief/archer type and just hit a wall. I found myself perched on rocks pumping a quiver full of arrows into the average enemy to bring them down.

If you really like this character (sounds like you do), the only solution is to slide the difficulty down to a manageable level. I did that and continued to play my old character for a long time. For future characters, you might look into things like efficient levelling, picking majors that don't get used much etc. Nowadays I just set the slider to about 15 percent under "normal" when starting a new character, and leave it there. There are some mods that tweak levelling as well.

In general I have found the game to level well as long as I made sure my character cleared dungeons every level to keep up with the best loot available. I never did any efficient leveling.

I think you have a great point there, and I suspect that this is a case of too-fast leveling rather than a problem with efficiency.

OP indicates Level 12 at 17 hours into the game. I just looked back at some of my recent characters' low-level saves for the sake of comparison...

Four different characters:
1. Level 3 after 23 hours...
2. Level 9 after 35 hours...
3. Level 5 after 18 hours...
4 Level 7 after 21 hours...

These are strong characters, designed with no concern about leveling whatsoever. I'm confident that I could take any one of them through any major quest line.

The key to this game is to take it at a relaxed pace, explore dungeons, find good equipment, and develop the fighting skills that you are actually using. A relaxed and patient approach will always result in a stronger character.

I also find slow leveling very safe and helpful. Buffy achieved her top level of 20 in 400 hours. At 660 hours, she is still and permanently at level 20. It was a pretty smooth and steady trip at about 20 hours per level. We found three (at least benefits) to this approach:

The world changes slowly enough around you (enemies and equipment) that it feels pretty natural. Capping at level 20 ensures that things like Deadric weaponry and minotaur lords are fairly rare. These two factors 'fix' the gear/foe scaling problem as far as I'm concerned.

It allows plenty of time to make sure one's primary killing skill is maxed by level 20, which I think is a nice progression. It also allows plenty of time per level to prepare nice attribute gains for one's most important attributes (we ignore several less important attributes).

Capping at level 20 ensures that foes are not ridiculously large piles of hitpoints.

I don't cap my characters, but I might as well. I play numerous characters, and they're generally ready to "retire" by the late teens or early 20s. That's usually somewhere between 100 and 150 hours, if it's a character that really "sticks." (If not, I tend to lose interest in them sooner.) After they "retire," I keep their last save-game handy, and play them occasionally for a while, but rarely save after the session. It's like a visit with an old friend.

Good point. Even though I find myself often explaining how efficient leveling works (and I've done it in the past), my favorite character, Maia, rarely gets +5's at level-up time yet she is very powerful.

At level-up time t's usually an assortment of +4's and +3's and +2's that I'm choosing from. Aside from training up 5 minors when she levels, I don't even think about efficient leveling when I play anymore. I sort of did what Acadian and others do: I picked majors which are a blend of what I do (blade, heavy armor, restoration) and what I will never do (light armor and conjuration) and what I will do someday down the line (marksman and alteration). Also like Acadian, I plan to cap Maia at around 20 or so.

At this point in the game (level 10 after about 40 hours, and the levels are starting to slow down now), she has great gear, good stats and abilities with regards to what she does, and room to grow. Far from perfect in any way, but definitely a force to be reckoned with.

After joining this forum, recently, I've changed my gameplay somewhat. My 1st playthrough, as with most, was just from the hip. I ran into the leveling issue around the teens. I didn't change the diff setting, as I didn't think about it. I was playing from a plug-and-play standpoint anyway. I figured out the +5 bonus thing, and ended up training all the time to max out my character. During that time, I wasn't actually playing. That didn't really set in until I played a couple of more characters.

Maxing out their stats from the beginning, then playing. When I say maxing, I mean ALL stats to 100, Majors / Minors / Atrbs. That proved to be boring after a while. Not just the training, but the actual gameplay after that. I had to set the diff all the way up, and that proved to be no help. I was breaking the game before I even started. The only way to keep it interesting, was to change my character's playstyle on the fly. Take on this mission as a Mage, and another one as a Warrior.

I usually play with choosing a Major of each Atrb. My last character had Majors that he NEVER used. So he either leveled when I wanted him to, or he didn't level at all. That wasn't working either.

I've started trying to play more from an RP viewpoint, in an attempt to get a more balanced and enjoyable gameplay. I started a new character, using only Majors for the most part. It has proved to be the enjoyment and challenge I was looking for. I reached level 4 at 25 hrs into the game. RPing her all the way. She reached a point, as her character, to become a Master of the arts of magic. Not really concerned with quests at the moment, being the main or the guild lines, but focusing on training her skills. Seeking the help of the illusive masters, to further her evil plans. She hit level 13 / 30 hrs, level 34 / 35hrs, level 39 / 44 hrs. She is currently still at 39 with a possible 47.

Will she get to 47? Who knows...better yet, who cares. I have created a fun character that is very strong, as well as very weak. She is as maxed as I'd want her, and it was done while not just grinding endlessly for levels and stats. And, with no regard to what level she was at, at the time. Although, there was techly, grinding involved, it was done from a character viewpoint and not from a player. That made it more enjoyable, and created a bond with the character. A bond that was lacking with all the previous.

Playing from this max-and-play style, also lets me get the leveled loot and rewards that will actually prove to be useful. In other playthroughs, the special items svcked for one reason or another. Finding a great piece that was rendered useless after a few levels, chapped my behind. These were favorite items, for looks as well as function. Only to be sold or kept as a trophy. I know some of you think, "You should give them up when you find others. That's part of playing the game." But, they aren't any others. Some of these items are irreplaceable.