I feel like a noob now that i am getting completely mauled at Default difficulty but then again thats why im here, right? Anyways, I have played a marksman/theif before with the difficulty slider all the way to the easiest because i didnt play often, And when i did it was for fun, being the unfriendly person you wouldn't want to see even on good days ( Slaughtering millions. Yunno, The usual ) So i didnt feel the need to try for the most part. Well, Now that its summer and with most of my friends away on vacation i have more free time and decided its time to boost difficulty for more of a challenge. More of a challenge indeed it is. It takes me about 2minutes of firing arrows, dodging/blocking and healing to kill a simple bandit. Even then, My magika is drained, I've waisted a ton of arrows and I'm 2 hits away from dieing by the time im done. I am frustrated with my damage output and crappy survivability. So that leaves me to ask, what's a good way to make a Thief character that focuses on marksmen but can have good damage output with decent survivability?

Couple notes:

Enchanting, I know what it does. How to do it... Not so much. As stated above most of my time was spend causing mayhem. So i never really got into the whole enchanting thing. Pretty sure that'd help me out now more then ever. So firstly, How do i enchant my weapons/armor? And secondly, What do i enchant with what. So like do i make a bow do fire damage or a curiass with fortify health?

Also yes, I'm up for a challenge, But doing the 5/5/5 or 5/5/1 training is a bit too much of a hassle for the game game enjoyable imo.

Current Class Layout ( Critisism needed as i more then likely screwed up here too lol )
Race: Wood Elf ( bosmer )
Sign: Thief
Class: Thief
Main Attributes: Speed, Agility
Major Skills: Sneak, Security, Marksman, Merchantile, Speachcraft, Light Armor, Acrobatics

Im guessing going for the OBVIOUS thief choices was bad? Haha

Thanks in advance to any kind person willing to reply =)

That's the stock Thief build. You could do better by dropping Security to minors. Try to avoid using Speech - it's worthless. Bribe or Charm instead.

Enchanting:

1. You'll need access to an enchanting altar. In Vanilla that means doing the Recommendation quests to qualify for the Arcane U. If you have the Frostspire DLC you can activate that altar instead. Or many user mods provide enchanting altars in houses. Alternatively you can use a sigil stone, but once you can trap even a lesser soul you can make better damage enchants.

2. You'll need a filled soul gem to enchant. Soul Trap requires 25 skill in Mysticism which you can get by casting Minor Detect Life repeatedly. When you do your enchantment, add a 1 sec Soul Trap to the effects. It's a bit cheaper to use several elemental damage effects than to use just one but you can start with just fire damage, which is good just about anywhere outside of the Gates. In Gates, Shock is more generally effective.

3. Do Azura's quest to get her Star. This is very useful for recharging since it's a reuseable soul gem.

4. It's very handy to be able to summon a skeleton for a quick kill to recharge your weapon. Requires Conjuration at 25.

5. Black soul gems can get you grand souls easily, which provide maximum enchantment power. Read up on wiki on how to obtain these.

6. Of course you need Armorer skill of 50 to be able to repair your enchanted weapons/armor.

7. Armor can be enchanted with only one effect. Go to the Jone stone and learn the Fortify skill effect, then enchant yourself with Fortify Marksman to raise damage.

Poisons can also be very effective!

Mara

For enchanting http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Enchanting

5/5/5 is not really necessary, with a decent build you should be fine playing normally, if you can get +3s on level up then you should be fine at normal difficulty.

For your build, the default leveling system can be counter intuitive. You have all speed and agility skills as majors, this will actually cause those attributes to increase more slowly.
The usual recommendation is to take one skill from each attribute as a major.

Poison + sneak attacks is the way to go for marksmen. Also make sure you keep your bow in top shape.

To make your own enchants, you need access to the Arcane University, which is obtained either through membership in the Mages Guild or through the Frostcrag DLC. Make sure to add a soul trap effect to your bow (among others) to make recharging easy.

Finally, your build. Perhaps the biggest problem I see is that you've only got one means of attack. I'd definitely throw in either blade or destruction for when baddies get in close. Backpedaling for miles is no fun. Speechcraft and mercantile will help keep your level down but that's about all they're good for. I'd drop both. You've also got all three agility skills as majors, which may be an issue (with Bosmer + the Thief, you're starting with obscenely high agility anyways).

I'd probably go with something more like this:

Bosmer Atronach
Alchemy
Blade
Block?
Illusion
Light Armour
Marksman
Sneak

Block just because I didn't know what else to put there, to be quite honest. I'd also make a point to level up armourer as much as possible as quickly as possible so you can repair the enchanted items you'll be making, as well as learning some low level summons to provide distractions when needed.

This is almost exactly the build I use (replace Block with Mercantile, Antronach with Theif).

As people have said, Sneak and Poison - always make sure you have the best bow available. Even at lvl1 you should be able to get hold of a steel bow at some armourers, and always buy the best one you can, and should look to be using the best arrows available - id say Iron lvl1-4, steel lvl4-10, silver lvl10-15, dwarven/elven lvl15-20 and then glass/daedric from then on.

When you hit for a poisoned sneak attack as your first hit, you probably won't need many more than 3/4 arrows to take an opponent down - and if they get too close switch to your blade, paralyze them with your illusion and wail-away!

Pretty much what these guys said.

Also http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg, welcome to the forums ^_^

"Drain Health 100 Pts for 1 Second on Strike"

A simple enchantment that does wonders for any bow. Rush to get access to the enchanting alter and put it on a Black Bow useing a filled common, or greater, soul gem.

Oh, and find your marksman trainers and buy five trainings every level till it's maxed at 100. It'll be septums well spent as this skill raises painfully slow even as a Spec+Major.

The trouble with Thief is that you're already starting with high agility and speed. Once you've got those maxed, you effectively have no more birthsign. Atronach gives you 50% magic absorption forever. You should try it.


I wouldn't worry too much about this. At very low marksman levels, the difference between iron and steel is nil. Iron bows and arrows are much easier to come by (bandits, anyone?). High level arrows will always be hard to find. Steel arrows (the best you'll be able to get with any sort of consistency) and a good bow and you're set.

For OP, there is much good advice above. Let me add a couple considerations:

Take marksman as one of your majors and make sure it goes up by at least 3 before each level up. Work on your agility attribute. This will help keep your killing up to snuff, for as you level up, so do your foes - you just need to level up smarter than they do.

I like to provide some support for archery. Two options work fine:
1. Blade. When you get baddies in your face, fight with a blade.
2. Illusion. When you get baddies in your face, immobilize them and continue firing.

My character uses the illusion path and won't touch a melee weapon, but either (or both) paths can work.

Once my character gets her top bow and both marksman & agility to 100, she stops leveling (level 20-23). Beyond that, she won't get any more lethal and she sees no reason to allow enemies to keep gaining hit points.

Plenty of detect life, stealth and good poisons are very helpful.

High sneak is essential to pure bow. If you get jumped, the fight almost always goes very, very bad.

Start the fight from as far away as you can, and keep watching the sneak eye - if you fire a shot, and they don't spot you, they will still probably run to the spot you're standing in. Either stop them with another shot (which can be tricky if they're moving, but it usually pauses the target for a couple more seconds, giving time for even more shots) or move in another direction and wait for them to calm down and decide a rat just shot them through the head.

If they spot you, start peppering them with poisons. One or two cheap and easy to find damage healths will kill anything, if you keep your alchemy at a decent level and upgrade your apparatus.

Better still, poison the first shot and they'll often drop dead before ever reaching you.

i recently started with oblivion and pretty much did what was said above. Sneak and poison for thougher enemies. I used blade aswell so i can defend myself vs meeles, to much backpedalling is no fun.
The enchantments should depend on what you need to make up for weaknesses. Also try to get detect life on your gear this way you can make the best use of sneak

Lot of great replies here. About taking damage from another archer: I never backpedal. Watch them as they nock their bow. They will fire immediately, unless you dodge behind an obstruction. As soon (even a millisecond before they fire) as they fire, step to the side. Miss. They will then lock on your new position and fire. Step to the side. Miss. I can do this with two archers firing on me, when it gets to three, I try to position myself so that one of them is actually hitting one of his own. You can do all of this with your bow nocked and arrow ready. Every time you move, the enemy locks on your new position. After a while, bow combat results in me doing a little stutter step as I evade arrows and inflict my own damage. When faced with an archer and a melee guy at the same time, I poison my bow and whack the melee guy first, take him down and then go back to the archer. I use iron arrows for these bow one-on-ones, as they are cheap. My marksman skill usually rockets up when I do this.

My character doesn't backpeddle and she doesn't use melee weapons. On the rare occasions she is confronted at melee range, she blocks with her bow as she immobilizes her foe (paralize, command, etc) then opens fire with her bow. When the melee threat is a crowd, even better - she uses a command spell to get them to fight each other. Then she turns, calmly walks out to get some distance, poisons her bow and waits for the enemies to kill each other. The wounded survivor gets her arrow.

Panic button = invisibility

Underwater = block with bow and cast absorb health touch spells.

Also, since it somehow hasn't been mentioned yet, if you don't want to get involved in close quarters combat, frenzy is your friend. Detect life + frenzy = easy mode.

Here's a wood elf Marksman/Alchemist I played around with awhile back:

Major Skills: Athletics, Alchemy, Alteration, Illusion, Acrobatics, Marksman, Sneak

He was not efficiently levelled, more of a role playing type, with skills chosen from racial bonuses except I dropped light armor - my marksmen usually don't wear armor. At lvl 9 Marksman was 65, Sneak 59, and he was 2 shotting evverything with a self-enchanted bow. Hadn't really started using poisons yet.

The DB light armor is nice for the bonuses but wood elf guys look fugly in it.

Mara

I guess there is an abundance of good input here for Marksman, so now the Q is back to the OP of whether they want to continue with this character or start a new one. If you want to continue with this character, there might be some more specific input available if we knew what your some of your current misc skills were such as Blade, Armorer, Alchemy, and Illusion. I'd say if you don't already have some skill in those it might be difficult to turn it around, but you would obviously have to increase them quickly.

As for the original build, stock thieves are playable, you just have to play them a certain way, like described in the prior posts, and using the above minor skills quite a bit makes them more powerful in direct relation to how much you use those skills.

Something that has not been mentioned yet is the use of Damage-Speed or Drain-Speed in poisons. As a secondary damage, It can slow your opponent and even cause them to forget you are there allowing repeated sneak attack bonuses.you might also add it to a bow as an enchantment.

The thing about this skill build is 2 things. One, Alchemy. Doesnt that skill level up insanly fast as compaired to others? Would be kinda tough to have to watch how much i make and when so that i can keep my marksman about the same as my character level in general for my character to stay effective. Second being Blade and Block, I want to go full Bow n Arrow. I just had a warrior for a while so im quite tired of the same ol hack n' slash tactics that accompany it.



This sounds like a good idea, Altho, It sounds like a good idea thats only a good idea when written. Honestly no clue how you could go wrong with 50% spell absorption BUT the other birthsigns do have some great benefits aswell. ( As for thief, The 10 extra luck helps on dungeon diving. Higher the luck higher the chance of good drops or something. Cant remember how the game engine calculates that )

I make potions only as needed and alchemy levels nice and slowly. :shrug:



Actually, most of them don't. Most of them are terrible. Luck also doesn't affect loot at all. You get 40% of every point of luck above 50 added to your skills (except acrobatics and athletics), so it has a minor effect at earlier levels and almost no effect at higher levels.

Still, it's your character so you're free to play however you choose.

http://chorrol.com/oblivion_help_dungeon_diving.html

#5 under Section 1

anybody can right guides like that and that person probably posted a 'I ran this dungeon one time with luck high and one time low and look what I got" but everytime someone tried to replicate that, ie, the scientific method, no signficant difference can be found, many people have tested this. In fact, I think one guy even did 100 trials of the same area with same character, one with hi luck and one with low, and there was no difference really in how many Mundane rings etc he got.

As for your character, it sounds like your Alchemy skill might be pretty good, so that will help, and if you can make enchantments that will help, like the drain speed and/or some type of damage with a 1 sec soul trap, and Azura's star's does wonders.

I have 17 level Thief Stock Thief Sign female Imperial, and she uses a bow with weakness to f/f/s 50% for 5 sec f/f/s 8 ea. or so and 1 Sec soul trap. it works great. The Drain Speed effect works well too, about 20 pts for 7-10 secs. the drain speed works better on creatures than humans and dremora, whom it affects very little as far as i can tell

I don't think this has actually been proven. In fact, the uespwiki says it doesn't help with loot as loot is based on leveled items. I believe all it TRULY does is affect skills and some random stuff like the arena.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Luck


Edit: Whoopsie, Ninja'd!

It can, but ultimately including it in a build is up to you. If you know you'll be careful about brewing potions and poisons, choose it, otherwise don't. Main thing is to use it so you can poison your bow. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Useful_Potions#Multiple-Effect_Poisons will give you some good ones to start with.


But you wouldn't be hacking and slashing, the blade (or any other form of attack) is used as a backup, for when a bow would be less effective. The skill doesn't even have to be a Major; making it a Major will mainly mean that you'll start out more proficient with it, but you can still carry a sword or dagger in case it's ever needed.


It doesn't. Over the years there have been a LOT of experiments by a LOT of players, and a LOT of discussions about the Luck attribute. Basically, it affects stats, not loot.


A couple other things:
- Make sure you're in sneak mode when you take that first shot with your bow. Sneak attacks will deal a good chunk of damage, and when the bow's enchanted and poisoned, you can inflict a lot of damage with that first shot.

- Another way to avoid melee is to keep in mind that you can jump up onto things, and stay out of reach while you continue firing arrows. Sometimes the enemy will be able to follow you onto the obstacle, but they won't be able to jump like you can.

- With that original build, all three Agility skills are Majors, which means you'll never get higher than a +3 even if you try. Take out Sneak or Marksman, since they'll be used often anyway, and you can get a +4 or +5 just by using the skill, no monitoring required.

- Don't discount the Endurance signs, because they'll help increase your health. Pick the Lady if you'll use magic and want the Willpower boost, or Warrior if you want the Strength boost -- in this case, it'd mainly be so you can carry more.

- I agree about using some magic too. There are MANY very useful spells, and you don't need to be a caster class to use them.

I don't remember if this has been linked yet: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Enchanting. Basically you'll need the item to enchant, a filled soul gem, some gold, and a spell you know and can cast -- for instance, to apply Shock Damage to your bow, you'd need to buy a spell with that effect (the cheapest one will work), but to apply Fire Damage, you already start with a spell that'll provide that effect, so no need to buy one.

My mystic archer finds the ability to block very handy, even though the only weapon she will touch is a bow. When cornered, she pops that bow up to block for a moment as she casts a spell to immobilize her foe. Then she opens fire. A master of block, when blocking with a bow reduces melee damage by 50%. Since is costs nothing to develop bow blocking, my girl finds it very helpful. She also uses it when fighting underwater while casting absorb health touch spells.