Orcs just pwn.

Alchemy can overpower the game. If you decide you would rather not do the slider, it's the next best choice. Until your armor reaches a full 85% protection, a shield potion can give you that extra protection you need and potions aren't damaged in combat like armor is. they merely time out at which point, you take more, up to a limit of four active at one time. Shield potions 'stack' so two of the same strength give double the protection for the same amount of time as one.

Enchantments can also overpower the game but it takes a lot longer to get the best pre-made items and making your own takes even longer. An absorb health enchantment on a weapon is best IMHO. For armor, fire shield, frost shield, and shock shield enchantments give you some protection from magical attack and boost the armor rating at the same time. The limit is still 85% but I've seen armor protection destroyed by enchanted weapons so it's good to have backup protection that keeps working.

Or their friends do. I just opened a door in Fort Uraska (i think it was) and this huge green monster in iron armor with a huge sword blew up in my face. Holy s**tballs Batman, that was a surprise! When I finally nailed him he had some biatch of a friend in the next room who pelted me with fireballs and left me for dead in the gutter. Thanks. Thanks a lot.

well when i did my first oblivion gate, i had managed to get three stones (on both the first attempt and the re-load) which gave me shield 8, fire resist 17, and 5 frost damage. and with my being a dunmer, my fire resistance is over 90. the fire turrets do virtually nothing to me and i can actually let those fire mines hit me without any problem.

however, the only issue i'm having is keeping my weapons charged. my shock sword in particular keeps running out infact ihad to back out of the last gate bc i couldnt kill anything with my normal sword. i went into the main tower and i had to fight a churl and a caitiff (both melee, one dropped a daedric shield which i was unable to carry). i was barely able to kill them without dying. i keep buying charged soul gems but i keep eating up the supply, i cant find any that are large enough to fill up my shock sword. and for some mysterious reason, i cant simply pay to have the thing recharged nor can i find anyone that sells a soul trap spell. i dont know what to do at this point.

and this alchemy thing is actually hurting me bc it keeps weighing me down, yeah i'm a warrior with over 300 lbs of encumbrance and i'm getting weighed down by food and plants. my alchemy equipment alone weighs like 20 something pounds.

I leave my alchemy equipment at home. At the end of every dungeon dive/outing, when my character needs to go home and rest, he goes home, puts away everything he is keeping, gets ready the group to be sold, and puts all alchemical ingredients in the cupboard in the dining room. He only makes potions once a week at home, in his workshop. He is not allowed to make them on the fly. Alas he does not have a mini-laboratory in his back pocket. Leave that crap at home. 20 pounds more loot....

i cant even afford a shack much less a house. the most money i ever had at one time was 1500, and that all got spent in keeping my enchanted swords charged. and sadly all that money came from 300 gold maces i got in an oblivion world (i mentioned that earlier), thus far i have only seen one more expensive mace and even then i dont have the space to carry it.

Well then I've got a place where you can safely store your things, until you can afford a house. There are three grain sacks in the Imperial City, just outside Palonyria's shop. These will be safe all game for you. In fact, any open-topped grain sack anywhere, will be safe for you. I obviously make a save, but nothing has ever disappeared.

What I do on the quest when playing one my weaker roleplaying characters that are rushing through the main quest, is to lure those two Orc vampires out of the cave one at a time. If you have an archer and even some really crappy poisons you can jump on the rock outside the entrance and keep shooting them, and I will also lure them over to that Oblivion gate if it is open and the vampires and daedra will fight each other, same with the bandit camp just around the corner. So sometimes I lure them through those two areas and jump up on the rock next to camp and shoot them with a ranged attack. This is all if I don't have a Command spell to use them, which it sounds like you don't.

well i just tried the vampire cave again, and succeeded without a problem. but when i got there, i noticed that instead of a claymore that work had a dwarven shield, but his sword still looked increadibly long. i got his shield, and a pair of dwarven leggings off of him, but i've noticed something strange. why is it that the dwarven leggings have the same armor rating as my steel leggings? and the dwarven shield has only 1 more point of armor than my legion shield. it appears that the armor is purely asthetic and the enchantments on them are what actually make the difference. the only problem with my enchanted armor is i cant repair it (blocking no longer damages my equipment and half of my items are enchanted, so i dont get to do much armor repairing anymore).

hahaha, you wont believe what just happened.

i was going through the imperial sewers to earn some money, and i turned one of those crank things, assuming that it would open a door i had come across earlier, but when i was running out through that tunnel, the gates started going up! and it wouldnt let me back out! so now my character is trapped forever in the sewers and there's nothing i can do about it, at least without losing all my hard-earned money.

isnt that nice? i [censored] up just one little time and i destroyed my character completely. now if i want to do the main quest, i have to start all [censored] over from the beginning

this is [censored] [censored], everytime i start doing well, something happens to stop me. mostly my computer breaks down out of nowhere or a bug destroys my game, but not something like this. i destroyed my own [censored] game by doing something stupid. why the [censored] does that crank close that gate anyway? there is no other way out of the room!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you are on PC, I'm sure you can use a console command. If you are on 360 or PS3 I dunno. I've never been permanently stuck anywhere when I've played on 360 or PC except for what seems like forever between like two rocks or something.

I just thought I would add about vampires (the original question) that they are fast, so I wonder if a Claymore is not the weapon of choice against them. Claymores are slow. i would want something faster like a short sword. A short sword enchanted with fire damage would be just the thing.

Kewl. Blessings of Stedahh upon ye!

Well, it sounds like you are on PC.
Hit the ~ key, type tcl, and presto, you can pass right through the gate. Type tcl again to walk normally again.
However on a console you are out of luck, unless you have an earlier save.

Or you could just use Goldbrand.....

i am on the computer here, and that did fix my problem. thanks. now to buy that soul trap spell and find some more daedric artifacts!

Flax Seeds + Potatoes = Shield

Make lots of them. Also, for the tough fights:

Arrowroot + Elf Cup Caps = Fortify Strength

Those two are generally all I need.

Good luck.

~ Dani ~

well i'm more than strong enough now to survive without potions, i dont even bother with alchemy anymore. but now my problem is i'm a vampire, and i cant [censored] cure it. i cant repair my enchanted weapons so i cant kill anything and that's exactly what i need to do to cure this thing, and besides that if i try to fast-travel i'll probably die. not to mention at this point if i enter a city i'll be instantly attacked.

i [censored] give up. everything's [censored] conspiring to destroy my character.

oh, did i mention that my horse got killed too? a scamp chased it off while i was trying to kill it to save the stupid horse, but sadly both the horse and the scamp run much much faster than i could. how nice.

Oh man thats bad luck, My latest characters very weak to frost and has a massive bounty on her head, and infamy at 110+.
At the momment she's just finished escorting Martin and every time combat pops up he lobs a almost instant death cold spell right at her, plus with a lot of legonaires patroling the road..
He turns hostile towards me on sight, she spends more time swearing and cusing at martin while bashing his face in, for revenge, then actually going anywhere.

It did lead to this though...
http://i1098.photobucket.com/albums/g376/Indep/Oblivion2010-10-0814-57-57-96.jpg

A random deer defending Anna, pwning Martin chasing him off only to be followed by Jauffre... True heros if you ask me.

There actually is a way to cure it, try talking to Raminus Polus at the Arcane University I believe. And if you don't want to get attacked I believe you need to feed regularly, best bet is beggars at night. If you are on PC, just use a console command if it pisses you off that much. Get Shadowmere to solve the horse problem.

i've actually comtemplated attempted to do an effeciently leveled character again. i tried it once before, but gave it bc i leveled one skill too much while trying to keep goblins from killing me.

my original strategy was leveling using conjuration. i'd summon a skeleton and have it beat on me (normally using destruction i believe to encourage it to do this) to raise my heavy armor block or armorer. i could then use alchemy and mysticism to raise my intelligence (since i tended to level conjuration while using it to level my endurance) and then use alteration (a tiny shield spell) to raise my willpower. i hadnt planned on what to do after i had maxed those three attributes, but i had assumed that once i maxed them then i would be pretty much free to use them all i want as long as i didnt level myself doing it (infact, i could effectively use only minor skills to level my attributes and then use one of my majors to raise my level assuming that major wouldn't increase my attribute any higher anyway).

but i would like to raise luck this time, but i'm not sure how to do that. i want to level endurance but how can i do that without leveling at least two other skills? if i rely on conjuration then i have to use a combat skill to make it attack me to raise my endurance, but the only other way to do it is to find a weak enemy somewhere and let it bash on me as long as possible (or as long as i need it). but then the issue is how to stop the attack? i have to use a combat skill to kill the rat/crab/goblin/animal, but then i cant level anything else. i guess i'll just have to level will or strength with my endurance to start with (not like i cant increase my intelligence afterwards anyway) and besides, my luck will max out long before my other skills based on my calculations (if i have the thief birthsign and luck as a major attribute, this will mean that i will have to gain 35 levels to max out luck, but that will only give me time to level my other attributes by 175 total, and from my calculations i need to increase my attributes by 445 to achieve this, assuming of course i take the thief birthsign and factoring in the +10 to attributes from my class, btw this will take a total of 89 attribute increases, minus the two from the first 35 levels i will have 19 attribute increases left, which will take at least 7 levels, so i will have to gain 42 levels at least to max all my attributes, so i'll be level 43 by the time i'm done, but technically i wont be done since if i want to max my health i'll have to level up to 53 before i max all my skills, assuming i design my character so he only has 25 in each of his major skills)

this will be a huge mess....

Umm I'm not gonna read all that gabloody gook stuff but you can't get more than +1 luck bonus without using some type of mod. If you don't want to go through all of that complicated leveling stuff and are on PC, just download an attribute bonus mod, mine gives me +5 as long as I level up in an attribute related skill that level.

i did factor in the fact that i can only increase luck by 1 every level (most of my post involves dealing with this issue)

and i dont want to gain any infamy or do anything evil with my character, i wanted him to be a pure can-do-nothing-wrong hero, and now he's a vampire who has to assault ppl just to survive. so joining the dark brotherhood is sorta out of the question, and besides, becoming a 75% vampire has ruined my character's appearance (he was a pure black dunmer but now he's a really pale blue and looks like he's 100)

edit: i have actually comtemplated doing a character that does the thieves guild and/or dark brotherhood quest chain, but i cant force myself to do something evil like that anymore. i used to be an outright evil despicable person (in real life) but over the past few years i've turned my thinking around and even though i did try the dark brotherhood before, i quit it after i had a near-death experience (not that i went to the afterlife, i just had an experience where i thought i was going to die and that changed me quite alot) and now i cant contemplate being a murderer. i have nothing against killing bandits and goblins and stuff that's of course homicidal (or at least criminal) already, but i dont like killing innocent ppl whom most of the time are defenseless.

I agree with RainmanMP, that just sounds way too complicated (and not very fun) xBlackWolfx. You can play your game however you want, of course, but I wouldn't worry about all those numbers personally, so much.

If you're considering an "efficient" (5/5/1) Luck build, this thread has some things you might want to know:

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119234-the-level-that-never-comes/page__p__16451738__fromsearch__1&#entry16451738

Mara