Hello all, I'd welcome opinions on the following. I've played a fair bit on Oblivion on PS3 now and I'm quite comfortable with this type of game (for example it is very similar to fallout in a lot of ways) and I'm a long time gamer. I've read so many good reviews of Oblivion that I've been dying to try it for ages. It's had some great moments so far but....and its a big but.....

I'm considering giving up on this one (first time ever!) as, even though I've now reached level 12 and put 47 1/2 hours in, the gameplay seems to be as follows:

1. Meet a monster (any monster, even a teeny weeny one).
2. Barely survive the fight.
3. Spend aaaaaaaages using spells to recharge health and waiting aaages for mana to recharge (I only have 160HP and using remedy spell).
4. Take a few steps along the road/through the wilderness/round the next corner of the dungeon
5. Repeat.

I can quite easily still get killed by anything, even a skeleton or grummite, or skinless hound etc. especially if I don't take a few pot shots with the bow first at X3 or get X6 for a sneak melee attack.

I've used alot of potions but then using potions slows the game down even more, constantly stopping to poison weapons, recharge health and mana etc etc.

I've got reasonable heavy armour (mix of Dwarven and manic ore with a few rings, pendants etc giving me extra protection eg ring of steelskin 13%).

It just seems so tedious, there's no flow to the experience. Am I missing something here? I'm in the shivering isles, have I come here too early or something? (Thing is the portal to get here appeared very early on in the game so it seemed like a bit of a hint to go there).

Happy to provide any more details if this helps. Happy also to be directed to previous posts but I've done a fair bit searching and didn't find any about this.

Thanks to any who read and reply! Looking forward to any advice which can rekindle my interest in this game.
Dom.

Have you tried to adjust the difficulty slider? that can make a difference! Just press start and go to options, I'm sure its on the PS3.

Well that's certainly possible. Most people don't do Shivering Isles until they've completed the main quest and KOTN. What you're describing certainly isn't typical of the regular world, sometimes you can travel for hours and not run into any creature at all. Another possibility is that you haven't been leveling properly and are too weak for your level. Default Oblivion has a convoluted leveling system, and if you don't do it right, then you can end up being pawned by the opponents you meet later on. If you were playing on a PC I'd recommend that you get a leveling mod to avoid using the absurdness that Bethesda put in place. But since you're on a console, that's not an option. Instead I'd suggest you do some research into the game's leveling system in order to avoid some of the problems you seem to be encountering.

It sounds like your game leveled up too fast. Like perhaps you chose a bunch of Majors that you use alot? And now you've got a game full of creatures that are way too strong while your skills aren't up-to-par in comparison.

This is how one of my earliest games was. I got sick of it after awhile and started a new game with Major skills that don't get used as often. This ensures the game will level up at a slower pace, while your skills (your Minor skills, that is) can give you the boost you'll need to survive and start enjoying the game more. And don't worry, you won't start overkilling everything! I still find Oblivion quite challenging with my "rarely used Majors" policy.

...or as someone else mentioned, if you don't wanna start a new character you can always mess with the difficulty slider. :shrug:

HTH

What's your character like? What are your tactics like? Might be something that can be overcome easily enough by tweaking your approach to things a little.

I level as the game intended... no problems here. Been playing since release. What are you? What are your majors, birthsign etc. How do you do battle? What are you doing right now? Are you blocking efficiently? Heavy armor skill will certainly help with your Endurance, and consequently your health. Are you repairing your items diligently? The Armorer skill also contributes to Endurance.... which, see above. Potions at about Journeyman level and higher, start to become insanely effective. I have potions that are better than anything the game can offer. And poisons. Poisons are good. Are you training your skills? More info needed.

EDIT: Perhaps a roleplay is in order. My current mage has not done the main quest. He is level 50. He goes to the Shivering Isles every two weeks to collect alchemy ingredients and madness ore. I mostly explore. My other character is a level 21 Ronin. He will not do bad deeds. Be creative!

My solution would be to start over, pick 4 majors that your definitly going to use and use the other 3 as fillers. By doing that you will get to around lv 28-30 as your max LV, if your not at LV 30 then raise 1 of the 3 fillers up 10 to 20 points to get to LV 30.

Also certain skills are bad as majors. Alchemy is bad as a major, Alteration is bad as a major, Athletics is really bad as a major.

You're using 6x sneak attacks which is a good starting point, the stealth system needs you to stay in shadows and not move afterwards however..
( at least thats how I seem to avoid detection after the first hit ).
Poison/ potions, enchantments and magic are the big hitters in oblivion, learn to use them, at first don't worry about roleplay too much learn the systems tricks first.
Then focus, what you need by the sounds of it are one or all of these armour / clothes with a shield enchantment, detect life enchantment.
Chameleon spell / enchantment, command at level spells 4 secs or a summoned clanfear.

In the mean time..


Even people who have played for years and maxed out characters sometimes move the difficulty down, and if I was coming from FO3 this is the advice I would want someone to give me.

Ah didn't notice that you were a sneak character. Illusion is your friend hopefully if Illusion isn't a major then do one of two things. Spam Starlight, or use a charm spell on a random guild mate. Do that until you get to journeyman then you can use invisibility spells and stick it to those overpowering enemies that you had trouble with.

What is everyone's fascination with getting illusion to 50? You get access to calm, frenzy, command, and demoralize before 50. Don't need no stinkin' invisibility.

I truly sympathize.

My earliest characters had the same problem with the vanilla game. They died very quickly. I quit for a while but the awesomeness of the game engine drew me back.

What saved later characters was when I began to roleplay. For me, that means seeing life from my character's point of view. I quickly discovered they really didn't want to die and preferred to avoid a fight they might lose. They learned where to train and how to train and what to train. They learned to use anything and everything that could possibly keep them alive. All of this takes time and therein lies the key. You must take the time,

My current character, Angel, was rolled as a child prodigy Mage. I used the console to resize her to child size. It has proven more than once to give her disadvantages not suffered by normal characters. For the first week of her escape from prison, she hung around the Marketplace, terrified, and pilfering from the barrels as she tried to decided what to do. She sold everything except the clothes on her back and an Iron dagger to buy her novice alchemy set and the ingredients to make her first potions and poisons. With a shield potion that roughly equaled leather armor and some poisons, she left the Imperial City traveling by foot.

Today, Angel spends most of her time traveling in the forests and mountains, living peacefully with the wilderness creatures she once slaughtered by the hundreds. She still kills Necromancers, Daedra, and Vampires on contact. Despite the fact she has never worn armor, carried a shield, or become proficient with a weapon, she has never been killed (I play dead-is-dead) in 235 hours of gameplay (plus some hours that got lost when a mod trashed the save files)'

I said all of that to say this; take your time. The game will always be there, ready to pick up where you left off. It's ok to read the UESPwiki and learn a few tricks of the trade. Develop your character and let their will, along with divine providence determine the direction your character's foot prints will leave in the sand.

Chameleon & Paralyze

Wow, thanks for all the replies! I didn't know that you could remain stealth after the first hit- cool!

I will feel a bit of a wuss for reducing the difficulty setting but I think that is what I'll do for now.

I think alot of the problem is that I've come to this game with a fps mentality. I'm going to save it for when I feel patient enough to really appreciate its depth and take my time with it. At other times when I feel like I want to run around blasting things to bits I'll pick something else!

I'll also take some time reading these forums about levelling, major and minor skills etc as I think that would help.

The suggestions as to roleplaying are good too. If it was real life and I went someplace where I was getting "killed" (lets say really badly wounded) by badass creatures every few seconds I would probably go somewhere else a bit calmer and train up for a while!

Thanks again!

Don't worry too much about efficient leveling. Best saved for your second or third play, if you are going to go that route. Because if you don't fully understand the mechanics, you will screw up, and the game will be ruined for you. Yes, Oblivion is not a FPS, it's a RPG with minor FPS elements. You can however, go on a kill em all spree, in this game. Things will start to get brutal as you level up. I personally worked on my battle skills when I was just starting this game. Don't go in flailing your weapon. Block and swing and block and dodge and swing.... think of it like a dance. There are pauses mid-battle. We've all turned down the difficulty slider at some point in our Oblivion careers. No shame in it. When you get better at battling, you might want to turn the slider up.... I find that the game is most fun if I am about to die. Makes me be creative in the use of my resources. Look carefully, the game gives you many opportunities to find resources that will help you kick ass.

Nah, you're just getting used to game mechanics. Won't be long you'll have it set above the default cause the game feels too easy.

Alleystria is exactly right. The game can seem quite tough for new or casual players. With time and dedication to it however, Oblivion becomes easy enough that most of us start specializing our characters to restrict what they can do.

If you don't want the hassle of really getting deeply into the game, then just bump that difficulty slider down some until it delivers the challenge you want - that's what the slider is there for.

I try to set that slider for "believability." I start to lose "immersion" in the game if the difficulty is too high or too low.

I suspect that a lot of players buy into the "movie" style of a sword fight, where two guys dance around each other for several minutes, leaping off the furniture. Real melee combat is fast and brutal. Light armor does not protect against blunts or heavy swords; that's not what it was invented for. And nobody is going to swing a twenty-pound heavy weapon fifty times while dancing around in a sixty-pound suit. Not you, and not the silly bandit or troll that runs up to you on the road. If a claymore was that inefficient, nobody would carry one around.

A two-handed longsword is easily capable of taking off a head with one swipe. A wolf is not going to bite through steel.

I try to set my slider so that combat occurs in a way that's consistent with the character. I might turn the slider down if my character is a heavily armored knight with a claymore, and I'll definitely turn it up for an unarmored monk-type hand-to-hand character, or for an unarmed mage. It's simply obvious that a sword is going to do a lot more damage than a fist, but the game mechanics don't reflect that difference adequately, in my opinion.

You're lvl 12 with 160 health? My lvl 12 Breton has 249 health. Looks like you've never raised Endurance? That means your guy has minimal health and is barely surviving combat. That's pretty much what you'd expect, isn't it? You're "glass" but not much of a cannon. It's doable if you can beef up your damage and stealth capabilities. (See Acadian/Buffy ).

Look over your hot key layout and see if you can improve that. The less often you have to pause the game, the better. Oblvion's interface is, well, antiquated, by any modern standard.

The most efficient healing spell in the game is Minor Heal. It'll also help build your Restoration skill. Alchemy can work well for restoring health after combat. Or you can use the homebrew Restore Magicka potions so you don't have to wait around to regain your magicka.

Orcish armor should be dropping at your level.

Mara

Heh, at level 20 with an endurance of 30, Buffy is very proud of her whopping 117 hitpoints.

Glass: Three hits from a minotaur lord or brown bear would kill her.

Cannon: One prep spell and one poisoned arrow from her will kill a minotaur lord or brown bear though - often from 200 feet away.

Not for the feint of heart.

That's what we were talking about as far as getting to the point where you restrict your character. At level 20, my character has base endurance, base strength, won't use melee weapons or big destruction spells, has an armor rating of about. . . 6. Lol. My goodness, she is good with a bow and illusion though.

If you like melee, then you definitely have to slow down your pace of leveling and have a good Blade, End, Str ratio compared to your level. A lot of good advice has been provided already.

However, a different observation I would make is that a Skinned Hound should never be able to touch you in melee unless it sneaks up behind you. Once you learn the timing of their attacks, and distance then you can avoid their attacks while hitting them with a standard longsword, especially with a claymore. Same goes with any zombies, and lots of creatures. If you are a sword fighter you can carry a two hander and with skill and practice you can kill a whole lot of stuff without getting hit much, even bears in the woods. Then with some other opponents a sword and shield is better, like humanoids, goblins and mountain lions for instance. (Although I have killed mountain lions without getting hit much while backpedalling with a claymore).

It is quite possible your current character is toast, unless you take some extreme measures to improve that might decrease the fun of actually just picking up a game and playing. It might be a good idea to start over.

I found Fallout 3 to me more difficult and tedious then Oblivion. Having to relie on food and drinkable slowed down the gameplay for me. Having to treat injuries was really annoying especially head injuries when I ran out of stimpacks. It was also annoying that enemies had rocket launchers that can kill u fast even on very easy. Oblivions leveling is easier than fallout but it becomes much harder to get up to 40s and 50s. If you find Oblivion difficult then lower the difficulty, I was playing on the easiest difficulty for years and now I'm playing on medium to hard. I can't believe your finding oblivion harder than fallout. In fallout once you run out of ammo and provisions your basically screwed. At least in oblivion you can survive without even carrying provisions or weapons.