I want to a play a powerful evil mage, but sadly i've found it hard to do that. my mage isnt exactly very intimidating since it takes nothing to kill him. i've started playing spellswords alot, which is what the thing often recommends to me (that or some stealth class like thief or assasin, i love to open locked chests and doors but due to my crappy reflexs and dexterity i prefer to just use spells for this).

i tried doing a spellsword, but i had problems in the first oblivion world. i kept getting killed by that demon guy in the second floor of the tower. i had the same problem the very first charcter i tried (though my first character was a battlemage, not a spellsword) and i just kept trying over and over until i got lucky and managed to do it without dying. at the time btw, i was playing a good guy and trying to complete the main quest, i dont think i'll bother with it for now since i have huge problems surviving.

i tried doing a sorcerer, but that didnt work out very well bc i chose astronach constellation so i normally dont have mana. i was doing that quest where you kill zombies in one of the recommendation quests, and i ran out of mana, and that goblin staff ran out of charges surprisingly fast. i ended up hacking the last zombie down with a dagger, i had to slash it four or five times to even see his bar go down! mysteriously enough everytime i take the astronach constellation i have an absurdly hard time making mana potions to restore my mana. with my next character i'm probably going to do a spell sword (i invision my 'evil mage' as being this demonic knight with a giant sword, thick armor, and immense magical powers) with either the mage or the lady constellation. i also considered the tower constellation so i could break open average locks earlier, but i dont think i'd like to take a constellation that will be useless rather quickly, and will cause me to take damage every single day. doesnt it deal 120 damage or something like that? my mages tend to have alot less hp than that.....though it may not be that big of a problem since i seem to have health potions galore. btw, i found the heal spell you start off with to be completely useless it drains an absurd amount of your mana and still doesnt heal you that much. my mage has over 250 mana and like 90 hp and he cant heal himself to full with that spell before he runs out of mana!

so now i'm considering doing this 'effecient leveling', since if i want to have some unstoppable arcane juggernaut i guess i have no choice in the matter. the only issue is i'm not sure how to step up my character to do it, the wiki doesnt help much. if tells you to avoid skills that level automatically, which makes sense, but skills like that are the only ways you can increase your strength, endurance, and agility! i havent the faintest idea how to build my character so i can do this.

btw, i also enjoy playing rogue-like characters, even though the lock-picking mini-game is a pain for me. and i do know about the skeleton key, but i cant figure out where on earth it is nor do i want to learn, i want to discover it myself. i'm sick of spoilers ruining the game for me. i want to role-play but all this stuff i'm getting off the wiki is making me powergame.

of course, i was also just thinking about reducing the difficulty, but what exactly does that do anyway? it's not going to help me much unless it makes me more durable. and solves my mana problem with astronach or w/e it's called.

Wow, that's a lot of text to read. So I didn't read it all.

But if you're asking how to efficiently level, this should help:

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

And the difficulty slider affects the damage you take and the damage you deal. Some info on that here:

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

Power-game or not to power-game?

I kind of see where you're coming from. But I have learned that the harder the game is, the more rewarding each little accomplishment becomes (to a certain extent). I managed to efficiently level a character with +5/+5/+5 all the way to level 10...with a mod that made leveling skills about 4 times slower.

What was I thinking? Eh, it was just kind of an addiction in the end. The character was noticeably more powerful. Given the higher difficulty setting and combination of world mods I was using, it was a necessary evil to train those skills, but after you reach about level 15 or so, you should have access to enchanting your equipment with skill boosters...a few thousand gold and a greater soul will get you +13 or so in any skill.

As far as efficient leveling...well, it's a tough decision to break down, take the time, and level those skills you don't need. I try to make it a bit more realistic by using guild halls to train.

Any character should try to get +5's in Endurance and Intelligence for the first several levels. Those 15 points of Endurance will give you more hit points every level - it's a major bonus throughout all the rest of the game, and spellcasters need the mana pool to even be able to cast higher level spells.

You should spend some time donning a full suit of rusty iron armor you scrounge from somewhere, find a rat (or conjure skeletons) and let them bash you while you are unarmed and blocking. That way you level both block and heavy armor at once. A good way to do this is to conjure a skelly, let him bash you into a pulp, then rest for an hour so your health pops back up. As your Conjuration increases, that helps out your Intelligence.

Basically, the reason to be using efficient leveling to gain that Endurance bonus is that a hybrid character (a mage-thief or a fighter-mage for example) will now be able to stand up in direct melee combat long enough to actually be effective without, say...running backward, or hiding in high places, or using strategic kills all the time. When that ogre bashes you from behind, you have a chance.

:trophy: On higher difficulties, it's definitely recommended. I got sick of all the boring training after a while, and I tend to just live with trying to get 10 points total every level (+3,+4,+3). :sleep2:

Note that there are mods out there that change how many times you can train per level, and how fast skills level up. Vanilla Oblivion tends to level you up really, really fast. Using a mod like Progress you can actually edit each skill's multiplier (each time you hit with a blade, how much that increases your skill, etc), to balance out the leveling problem.

:grad: If you're looking to play a tougher game, basically you've gotta take at least a little time and plan a solid character build, and train up those lower skills. The ones I mainly keep as minor to train Endurance and Intelligence are Mysticism, Alchemy, Block, Heavy Armor, and Armorer.

The only one I would possibly remove to make a Major skill is Block because it's crucial in many combat situations, especially for mages who need that little pause when the enemy backs up, to cast destructive spells. But still, this is probably not recommended.

EDIT: Math error. Wasn't using fingers.

: S

okay, let me shorten it:

i have an issue with survivability. even if i play a warrior in metal armor i still tend to die alot. and the restoration spell i start off with barely does anything but consumes alot of mana, and sadly i cant find a better one. not to mention i'm also having trouble getting money, which means i cant buy new spells and equipment very often. with my spell sword i got to the point where most of my equipment was broken and i didnt have a penny! and this is dispite me using alchemy all the time, and the fact that i know which houses have alot of money in them. btw, i tend to break 10 or 20 lockpicks trying to do any lock that's average or higher.

so my main issues, i die easily, and i have no money.

my idea to remedy this was to max out my stats and see if that makes any difference. though if what you're saying about the difficulty slider is true, then that would solve my survivability issue. but that still wouldnt solve the fact that i have no money to buy spells and equipment. not to mention there's still the problem with me not being able to make mana potions everytime i choose the astronach constellation.

is that simpler?

okay, so the primary thing i need to do is focus on endurance more. my sorcerer is the first time i've actually tried to lvl the endurance skills, so i guess that was my problem. i'll try another sorcerer, and this time i'll give him the lady constellation so i can actually recover my own mana.

That's a good idea - you'll be pleasantly surprised how much difference a few Endurance points make. To keep track of your skill progress, maybe make a text document with something like this:



Then every time you level up, you write down what those numbers currently are, so that when you're getting close to gaining a level, you can look back and say, "Okay, what do I need to get that +5?"

haha, you wont believe what happened. i read on another topic here that if you stand outside of that room with baurus fighting the endless wave of assassins, his armor and weapons will eventually break and he'll be fighting naked! well i tried it, got massacred within a few seconds, and had to start all over from an autosave, which apparently is right before you ambush that goblin. i wasnt too happy about that.

in any case, i'm about to do the bruma recommendation, i'm lvl 2, and i'm gonna see if i cant keep my endurance increasing. btw, i've noticed that your heavy armor doesn't increase when you're blocking with a shield. guess that's meant to prevent you from being able to lvl two endurance skills at the same time...

I said in the above post you should block while unarmed, you'll get both points that way. :rock:

Well, your armor increases when you take hits, and your block increases when you block hits. So if you want to increase both, mix up your style a bit: don't spend all your time playing rope-a-dope behind your shield, but cover up at the right time to frustrate your enemy's power attacks.

It's also a good idea to use a bow or a long-reach weapon like a claymore to administer punishment while retreating. Even if you use short-range weapons, you can dash in, get in a power attack or a few good blows, then back up before you get hit back too hard. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

And skills are where it's at. It's more important to get big increases in important skills than to get big multipliers on attributes that have much less effect. That's something the advocates of efficient leveling often overlook. For example, just 1 point of skill at Blade, Blunt, or Hand-to-Hand will increase the damage you do to your enemies by about the same as 3 points of Strength. The only attribute it's really important to raise early is Endurance. Otherwise concentrate on the skills that keep you alive and make roadkill of your enemies.

Dogs, given skills are more valuable than attributes in that way, what do you think of Luck (which modifies them)? Is it worth taking that point?

Luck is valuable, and if you find yourself leveling up without good multipliers on other valuable attributes, it's worth taking that point of Luck. Say you level up and find yourself being offered a bunch of x2's (or even x3's on attributes that are useless to you, such as Willpower for an Atronach-born character). That point of Luck is 0.4 points of skill on all your unmaxed skills.

You could use efficient leveling, but I find that it gets into the way of roleplaying, because it makes you act unnaturally in order to get those 5x multipliers. What you could do instead is use partial underleveling.

Let's clear up the semantics first. Both efficient leveling and underleveling are based on the concept of being stronger than your level indicates. There are two ways in which you can do this. You can aim for higher attributes (efficient leveling) or for higher skills (underleveling). So with efficient leveling you either improve three attributes by 5 points every level or increase two attributes by 5 and then put the last point into Luck. And with underleveling you avoid leveling up and develop your minor skills instead of your major ones so you might end up with a level 1 character that is a Master of Destruction.

Now of course it feels silly to pick the warrior class if you want to play a mage, so people came up with partial underleveling. With this you select 2-5 major skills that you will be using and 2-5 major skills that you won't be using, depending on how much you wish to level up. I consider the basic variant to be 4 used majors and 3 unused ones as this usually allows your character to reach level 30 and get all the best possible leveled rewards.

For a partially underleveled mage I would suggest one of the following two setups.

Variant 1

Race: Breton
Birthsign: Mage
Specialization: Magic
Favored attributes: Endurance and Luck

Major skills:
1) Destruction
2) Restoration
3) Illusion
4) Mercantile or Armorer
5) Mysticism
6) Blade, Blunt, or Hand-to-hand (whichever you dislike the most)
7) Marksman

Skills 1-4 you use and they contribute to your leveling, skills 5-7 you don't use and that keeps your level lower. The choice between Armorer and Mercantile depends on whether you want to be a pure mage or more of a battlemage. As a battlemage you'll be using weapons and possibly armor so it's handy to get Armorer to 50 as soon as possible in order to get the ability to repair magic equipment. As a pure mage you don't need that quite as much and it makes sense to start with a higher Mercantile instead.

Variant 2

Race: Altmer
Birthsign: Atronach
Specialization: Magic
Favored attributes: Endurance and Luck

Major skills:
1) Destruction
2) Restoration
3) Illusion
4) Mysticism
5) Blade/Blunt/Hand-to-hand/Light Armor
6) Blade/Blunt/Hand-to-hand/Light Armor
7) Marksman

You again use skills 1-4 and avoid using skills 5-7. Mysticism has been promoted to a used skill in this build because of the Telekinesis trick. In short, if you have Spell Absorption and you cast Telekinesis, you either have a chance to absorb the spell or you absorb a percentage of it equal to your Spell Absorption magnitude. I'm not quite sure which of the two is true, but once you've brought your Spell Absorption to 100% it doesn't matter because either way you always absorb 100% of the spell. Right, now the trick is that the amount of Magicka you absorb depends on the basic unmodified cost of the spell you absorbed, while the casting cost is reduced by your Mysticism skill.

Let's illustrate this with an example. If your Mysticism skill is 75% you cast Mysticism spells at half cost. So if you then cast a Telekinesis spell that has a base cost of 60 Magicka it will only cost you 30 Magicka to cast it. However, if you absorb 100% of the spell that will increase your magicka by the full 60. So if you have a high Myticism skill, Telekinesis becomes a sort of "Restore Magicka" for characters with high Spell Absorption.

A mage/Spellsword character's early life is going to be harsh no matter what. You just lack the HP and good array of spells at this point in the game. Ten levels later and access to the arcane university things are totaly different. Good thing too as at levels 9-12 you can snag sigil stones that provide 25% shock/frost sheilds. No 25% fire sheild at this level but still perfect for enchanting street clothes to Daedric Armor quality, and above, long before such armor shows up in the game. Just make sure you have some shock/frost damage spells before looking for these stones, both targeted and touch based. The Flare spell is nearly useless in these places.



That was her starting point. Currently at level 14 and pretty much the "Goddess of Cyrodiil" able to start wars with town guards and win. Maybe in 15 levels the NPCs will catch up and can have a real chance of killer her. Right now they just can't get through her 85DR, "4pt, 25 second" restoration spell and a poition doing close to the same thing.

The leveling as I went was anything but efficient. Alot of levels of only +2-3 gains so don't sweat the whole "Efficient Leveling" myth. It more imporant to have good equipment, potions and a wide array spells to use.

Do the Order of Virtuous Blooc quest - don't kill Roland - listen to what he has to say. You'll never need to be short of money again. If you need repair hammers go dumpster diving around the IC marketplace - you should turn up half a dozen, plus a few lockpicks. Using auto-attempt will break fewer lockpicks than playing the mini game if you're a klutz at it. If you're really low on lockpicks save first and try again. You can open even hard locks with reasonable breakage this way. Very hard locks are best left until you either get Alteration to 75 or the skeleton key. Hint re the skel key: The shrine is visible on your hud from one of the marked roads on the map.

If you don't efficiently level anything else get +5's to Endurance during the early levels. Since you like to wear heavy armor it shouldn't be that hard. Just repair it yourself after every fight. I usually train an Endurance skill after getting a level up but before sleeping to get it. That way the points go to the following level. The only equipment you need to buy is spells, lockpicks and repair hammers. The rest is free for the taking.

Btw the minor heal spell you start with is the most efficient heal spell in the game except maybe for the Lord's birthsign. Yes, healing is magicka expensive and more so for an atronach. You're better off with Mage birthsign (way superior to Lady) until you're more comfortable with the game. Breton is a good choice for survivability despite the low starting endurance but any of the beefier races should do well. If you have KOTN do that early - wear the armor as soon as you get Armorer to 50. The weapons aren't too shabby either.

I'm currently running a Redguard Atronach, a "tank". He was a lot of "work" since I'm levelling only his Endurance skills in majors and built his Blade skill (and STR) as a minor. But he's unstoppable at lvl 8. He's not a spellcaster, although he's dabbled enough to get his magic skills to apprentice and Conjuration higher using his skeleton as a sparring partner. Captures only "evil" daedra souls to fuel his magic weapon. He occasionally uses a restore magicka potion deep in dungeons - the only spell he normally casts is the starter heal spell - beneficial spells are "holy" and therefore acceptable to him. He once used a Welkynd stone. But normally he visits a Wayshrine to refill or maybe an ayleid well.

Mara

If you're running on PC, try using a leveling mod like Progress. It includes an .ini file, in which you can change the rates of leveling for each particular skill. I cranked my heavy armor and armorer skills up just a tad (not to the point of cheating, as altogether skills level 4x slower, but just to let me spend less time training, more time playing).

haha, you wont even believe what happened to me now.

i was doing the bruma recommenation quest and i was talking to valmori, i cast the scroll on him but do you know what happened? he [censored] dodged it. so i went and wasted most of my goal in buying a charm spell, only to find out that it isnt powerful enough to work, or let me guess, the game is programmed to only allow you to progress in the quest if you use that specific scroll? and i cant raise his 'disposition' any higher, how cute. i cant complete one stupid little quest bc of an idiot programmer, so i cant join the mages guild ever, i cant create custom spells, and i cant enchant anything. whose idea was it to make it so you couldnt do anything unless you went through an absurdly long bug-filled quest line?????

this game is nothing but [censored], its almost nothing but bugs and whoever designed the game oblviously hadnt the faintest idea what the hell they were doing. the fact that the game even runs astounds me.

why the hell am i even playing it? it was only fun the first few minutes, after that its nothing but worthless [censored].

http://bbsimg.ngfiles.com/1/8735000/ngbbs445656af17e6f.jpg I bothered to type that whole thing about efficient leveling, and you flame! :cookie:

There are other ways to raise his disposition, you'll just have to wait a bit. Fame raises disposition from doing other quests. If you have 25 Illusion skill you can cast Beguiling Touch yourself.

It's not bugged, and the developers definitely aren't clueless jackasses.

Oh, and I think you mean Bravil.


^ Here's whatcha do. And http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Bravil_Recommendation before you go throwing the game across the room and calling its developers stupid.

i did buy beguiling influence, and it didnt raise his disposition enough. and i was planning on stealing the staff anyway, i hate having to pay 200 gold for it so i decided to draw on my experiences in the thieves guild and dark brotherhood to just steal it. (i quit trying the thieves guild bc the things they ask you to get exponentially absurd, and i hit a snag with the dark brotherhood when i got to the point where you have to murder the entire sanctuary)

Sounds like you need to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Quests more often :slap:

Keep in mind that while it's an RPG, there's still quite a bit of strategy behind the scenes. Once you get used to the TES system you figure out ways to get things cleared right up.

Yeah, some of the quests are a little flat-footed if you're not in the right situation. But that doesn't mean they're bugged. It probably means your character just can't handle them.

This seems to be well beyond the mandate of the OP's original question, so I am closing it for disorderly discussion.