I've played probably 450+ hours of Oblivion on my xbox and sold it. So now I'm on my PS3 playing it and have yet to come up with something I truly enjoy. I love the warrior type characters with a blade and shield, but I also like bows and magic. To be honest, I've never actually mastered the art of making a perfect character in this game. I would really like to learn how and have been reading the UESPwiki Oblivion pages and am learning, but I still kind of need some help. I want to level my character efficiently, you know, the 5/5/5 way? Problem is, I would like to increase my mana pool and agility at the same time. That way I can cast decent spells and do great amounts of damage with a bow as I can with a blade. Is that even possible? I know you can level to 100 if you use the jail exploits. So my question is this, is it possible to max strength and go to jail over and over and end up increasing my intelligence for a greater mana pool? Basically, I just want some help with whatever you feel is necessary to explain after reading this. I really appreciate all answers. Thank you for your time. ^^

Well if you check the link in my sig, it describes how I build my characters. It took me a long time to find my perfect match too, but I think I finally did it.

I don't cover much efficient leveling, as long as you level endurance early you will be solid, kinda works good if you do arena first because its easy, good money, and a good way to build endurance and strength.

I don't think there is such a thing as a 'perfect' character. If you mean perfect for you, yes there is. I once had a so called 'perfect' character, high sneak, markmanship, and 100% chamelion. Only problem was, it was too easy. Got bored with it so fast it wasnt funny. One shotting enemies is good, but all the time, and never getting detected, took all the fun out of the game

Well, if you want to level 5/5/5, the trick is to choose only ONE skill per attribute, thus having 2 other skills to train.

Also, you should choose the skills you put as majors carefully. Preferably are those which are HARD to train.

The difficulty lies in actually doing so ...


For Strength, its pretty easy. Take blunt as major skill, use blades / hand to hand often.

Endurance is pretty hard ... you can just unequip all Heavy Armor to avoid leveling it, but then opponents will hit you extra hard.

Speed, well Athletics autolevels anyway, and is easy to train (just find a safe place to swim). So thats a given Minor unless you want to rocketlevel uncontrollably. Acrobatics can be avoided to be used, and so can Light Armor.

Dexterity - Stealth is easy to rocketlevel once you passed the lower levels. Marksman might be avoided, Security levels slowly and is needed (in fact you cant avoid having to use it sometimes)

Personality - Just like athletics, you cant avoid Mercantile. You can train it if you collect arrows and sell them one at a time. Speechcraft can be avoided completely, so can Illusion (and the later can replace Speechcraft).

Willpower + Intelligence - all spells are easily trainable once you have access to the mage guild spell creation in the arcane university



Keep track of all 21 skills per level, so you dont miss if you need to train before you get the levelup.

Once you have the levelup, its too late to train - the game wont take it into consideration any more.



Seriously, I myself did that in Morrowind already, and in Oblivion, I just cant be bothered. I just leveled my character with the console. There. Done.

Imho ignore EL its a pain in the [censored], just play for fun and muck around.

My favourite characters all made without EL.

Osmundas Hlaalu: blade, illusion, speechcraft, mercantile, alchemy, alteration, security.. a AD&D style bard role played as a Dunmer noble with atronach bs: very powerful but fun to play.
Anna: H2h, sneak, acrobatics, block, blade, light armour, security.. a true brawler, a modded race I play as a tiefling: can avoid most fights and break heads when caught.
Ash'kailia: blade, block, acrobatics, destruction, illusion, alteration, conjuration.. pretty much a master of combat defence and offence: up to three on one she will win in a straight fight no tricks.

The more I tweak and power play the less time I spend in game learning actual survival skills and helping my pc's come to life.
You said you're looking for something to enjoy try something you never have before imo.

Efficient levelling:

Breton (for their magic resistance), Mage birthsign

specializaton: stealth

Acrobatics (spd), Blunt (str), Block (end), Restoration (Will), Marksman (Agi), Mysticism (int), Mercantile (per)

Marksman is a good starting place. Plan to increase End, Agi and a third attribute each level.

Wear heavy armor (except for boots, go barefoot until Sneak hits 50 or wear enchanted shoes). Train Armorer at the end of each level until it reaches 50, then put training points into heavy armor until End reaches 100.

Do the mage guild recommendation quests asap. At level 2 go get Azura's Star. Don't use any of your major skills except marksman and mercantile. As soon as armorer hits 50 enchant a suit of steel armor and a silver bow.

Most of your attribute bonuses MUST come from raising minor skills so make sure you don't raise them so quickly you run out of skillups before your attributes are maxxed. This leaves you a lot of room to play with conjuration, alchemy, illusion, alteration and destruction.

Destruction will be very slow to raise so if you can't automate it you might want to consider making it a major and lose mercantile. Just don't use alteration until you want to raise willpower in that case.

You'll have plenty of starting magicka between Mage sign and being Breton, so no need to raise INT early. Alchemy and Conjuration are great skills to have though so it's a good idea to do some INT levels.

You can vary this quite a lot but this is the way EL works.

Mara

Awesome answers, I really appreciate all of them. I know I'll probably get bored with an overpowered character, but who knows, I might find a way to make it fun. I don't play it on PC so there is no modding or tweaking. Mara, I'm really liking your idea, but will that character still be a warrior?

if i may, "perfect character" and "come up with something I truly enjoy" may be conflicting if pefect means invincible (100% magic resist, 100% chamaleon, efficient leveling, etc...). it will be possible if perfect means 'makes sense to ur style'.

For example, all my characters had endurance 30 and only one had strength > 30. Why? because to me the 'perfect gameplay'' includes being able to beat the odds thru intelligent strategies, despite having weaknesses (such character with chameleon 100% could still be invincible). it feels good to know that your character won all those fights, but had u somehow missed a sneak check or run out of invisibility options , that charging minotaur would have the better of u.

So, what is ur style? Direct charging / fighting? Sneaking / archery? Magic from distance, conjuration to distract, etc... These will lead u to a better chance of enjoting rather than the info on the website.

Well, before when I had it on xbox I had the 100% chameleon. Which I admit, got kind of boring. But I always snuck up and tagged them with my sword which killed anything in two hits. Meh, I may just play my character now and go with it. But the thought of a high level character with great amounts of strength and intelligence just beckons me. lol

No such thing as a perfect character. No matter what though you should max endurance as fast as possible for the best health you can get, fatigue and magicka will be the same at level 50 no matter when you max intelligence and the fatigue related attributes. Id recommend doing 5/5/1 to get high luck, it helps a ton and you also only have to worry about leveling for two skill bonuses instead of three..

I don't efficient level. You will find, that as you hit the higher levels, that ALL characters eventually round out to be approximately the same. Taking notes, calculating my levels, ruins immersion for me. I pick the majors that I will use, and done. I do not spam skills or spells. Unless you are very diligent, you can seriously screw up your efficient leveler. And the world becomes more hostile and hard to beat. If I get a +5, yay, but if I only get a +2, I'm cool with that too.

I guess after ten or eleven full game characters, what I'm saying is that every single character I've created, not efficient leveling, can still kick serious butt. I up the difficulty. I like playing a game where I know I have a real possibility of dying. It requires you to use different strategies, different spells, etc. The game gives you all the ingredients for success, it is your implementation of those ingredients that determines your success.

Nice. I like the way you put that. I think I might try both and if it's too tedious, I'll just go back to my other character.

Eventually, yes. But s/he would start as a marksman/magic user. The advantage is that Agility (and sneak ) gets maxxed before you start melee and you'll have a nice head start on heavy armor skill. If you want to start with a Marksman/Warrior combo you can build Blade as a minor skill. You should probably spec combat if you do that and raise STR, AGI and END each level. You can add attribute or skill enchantments to your armor to make up for any temporary deficiencies.

This character starts out decidedly underpowered as far as bow/weapon combat is concerned but a little work on the minor magic skills will take care of that.

Mara

Try all these approaches out. if u can install a mod called 'Skip Introduction' (which requires something called Oblivion Mod Manager), u can create several characters and see what fits u more, without going thru the initial dungeon. I'd say something like4-5 hours of actual gameplay could be an indicator of how to polish your character (or whether to restart the whole thing).

PS.: As a side note, do try to start a character of every different race, so u can enjoy the introductory remarks by ur fellow cell-mate... Khajiit in special is hillarious!

No mods for him on PS3 unfortunately.

Alright, I'll try this. =] One last thing, I think I may have asked already. If I wanted to be a warrior with all those perks, good mana pool and nice bow skills, which race/birthsign should I start with? I have a saved game right at the end of the sewers so I can just edit it, and move on.

If you are going to be a warrior first, I'd take the Warrior as your birthsign so you get the highest possible health. I always choose Bretons for my race so I'm not the best advice giver for that.

Honestly, I dont see much differences among all races, exept for aesthetics preferences (eg, I'd never be argonian, orc or khajiit). Even Redguard, supposedly more fitting for combat classes, is so only in the beginning. A level 20 High Elf with 100 Str, End and Blade will fight just as well as he does.

The only exception imo is the BRETON. That 50% Spell resist is unique - and if u catch the Mundane Ring, u have 100% magic IMMUNITY with only one item.

As for Birthsign, since you wanna basically be a warrior, I would recommend Attronach - together, you will have a lot of mana (if you pump intelligence) and be able to absrob spells.

From then on, only make sure your specialisation is Strength and Endurance... There are lots of great advice above.

I'll do Breton with Attronarch. I like Maras idea a lot, but I'm confused. Aren't you supposed to raise like say one major skill (Marksman) then a minor such as conjuration then another major like Block? That way it will come out as 5/5/5? Or am I missing something. Because you said not to use any major skills besides marksman and mercantile. Why mercantile?

Bump. Sorry, I know I've asked a lot of questions and many people have helped, but I'm sitting on the pause screen waiting for an answer. lol So why mercantile and marksman only?

Personally I would not go Breton Atronach. Sounds like you want this one character forever to be hi level and play a lot of hours. So you want to build it accordingly. So what you need to develope is what is referred to as an 'Endgame' strategy, meaning what kind of character do you want when 'maxed out'. A Breton has 50 resist magic, so most people, including myself, advocate aiming for 100% resist magic with them as your Endgame strategy, which can be accomplished with as few as one enchanted item. Atronachs endgame strategy is to get 100% absorb magic, which is going to require any race or character the same number of magic items. Therefore, a Breton, would essentially 'waste' their innate 50% magic resistance if you had 100% absorb.

As for increasing attributes you just need 10 skill raises for the corresponding skill each level, regardless of major or minor. I would say Ramara's build is pretty good for what you want to achieve, but contrary to common thought having one skill from each attribute isn't necessary, or IMHO even the best way to do it. However, still Ramra's build is a good one, but I would consider taking out Mysticism and having both Speechcraft and Mercantile as you will not likely care much about Personality, and both of those skills are slow and/or controllable. Also I say this in case you like to use Detect Life a lot, then Mysticism will level you for no good offensive trade off.

The OP should notice that I am not as much experienced as other posters (heck, I cannot even play the game for the 3rd day straight).

I do have one question though? Isn't the problem with absorb magic that, once you absorb to the max of your mana-pool you cannot abosrb more, till you cast something? I mean, u r not really 100% immune just coz u can absorb 100% magic, yesn't? the next spell will hit u... But then maybe the rationale behind this is that u will have so much mana that u will always be able to absorb sth (i dont know, s.o. here pls clarify this so the OP can know exactly what he's getting into).

Okay, so should I go with the mage birthsign then? And yes, I want this to be my ONE character with many many hours of gameplay. I don't quite understand why I would want speechcraft and mercantile though. I'm sure there is a good explanation for it, but using it would level my personality right? So saying I leveled my minor skills 10 times I would level? Again, I'm sorry for making this complicated, I just don't want to mess up.

So lets look at it like this: Breton with Mage birthsign. Spec is stealth and has Acrobatics (spd), Blunt (str), Block (end), Restoration (Will), Marksman (Agi), Mercantile (per), & Speechcraft (per) So my question is, why would I swap mysticism for speechcraft since speechcraft does nothing for my int?

And thanks for throwing that in, I never thought of it that way.

With 100% Absorb you won't be damaged by incoming spells even if your magicka bar is already full. Note that you'll also absorb Blessings from altars and shrines and can't benefit from them.

Mara

Awesome! Okay Mara, I know you have helped quite a bit. Much obliged! But will you spare just a few more moments and answer a few last questions? The ones asked above that is. Should I go with mage instead of atronarch? And why would I just use Marksman and Mercantile?