Hi there,

I've just bought myself a copy of Oblivion. (I run Linux and it normally takes a while before the windows emulator wine catches up with a game enough to make it properly playable, so I tend to buy games that are a couple of years old.) My first impression was that the graphics are awesome, and that someone in the production team was a bit of a grrm fan (as am I).

I've been playing it for about a week now and I've played around the main plot mostly - mainly trying to get my recommendation to the mages guild. But now I think it's all gone a bit wrong. I lost my horse quite early on - it disappeared from the stable where I'd left it, and it took me the longest time to realise that if I travelled automatically it would reappear. So I've spent a lot of time running from point A to point B.

Typically my game play will be: trying to go from Kvatch to Skingrad or somesuch as part of a mission, so I spend most of my time running through lovely rendered countryside. However after a bit of play the monsters I encountered on my way started to become more than it was trivial to deal with, so now most of my play is spent running backward firing hundreds of weak fireballs at a pursuing burning bear. (This is as I still can't afford or cast a better spell.) During this time my destruction skill will increase a couple of times and my athletics will increase as well, so I'll level up. So I'm thinking the creatures are hard but at least I'm getting better. But they are getting tougher and bigger things start appearing, so I start wandering around relentlessly casting low level magic (still all I have, but deliberately in this case to improve my skills). And the baddies keep getting tougher. Now when I kill a bandit I'm getting glass armour or enchanted elven armour, so now I can start to afford the more powerful magic spells and my sills are up to a level where I can just about cast them, so I try them out and discover that the new powerful heat blast I've been working toward now does less damage to a creature than the weak fireball did at the start! And it uses all my magica to cast. Frustrating as hell.

During this time I realised that the creature levels were tied to your own level, so it's a disadvantage to level up unless you're willing to engage in some serious power player style play.

I set out with the intention of playing in the mindset of my character but now I realise that natural play forces you into a spiral of worsening comparative stats.

I suspect that this has been commented on many times by others. I've noticed that there are mods to change the gameplay with regards to character development. I'm not wanting the game to be a push over but if you get stuck at a bady I think that going off and completing a few other quests should allow you to get past them - not make them harder (forcing you to use sneaky plays. Like paralysing them before you attack). Does anyone have a recommended mod for quality natural character play?

Sounds to me like you've run into the dreaded http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem. Some builds are more prone to this than others, specifically those with major skills that do not enhance combat ability (speechcraft comes to mind).

Anyhow, before we get into mods, there are a few suggestions I can make. First, if you have not already completed all your mages guild recommendations, I suggest doing so ASAP. This will grant you access to the Arcane University and its spellmaking and enchanting altars. You can create your own spells which will be many times superior to what you can purchase from the various guild vendors. You can also create custom enchants rather than relying on quest rewards and random drops. These alone should increase your damage output, perhaps substantially.

You also mention "so I try them out and discover that the new powerful heat blast I've been working toward now does less damage to a creature than the weak fireball did at the start!" It is worth noting that many creatures have resistances to certain elements and weaknesses to others. Notably, Daedra (which you'll encounter en masse over the course of the MQ) are resistant to fire and have a weakness to shock damage.

If worse comes to worst, you can always nudge the difficulty slider a little to the left, at least for this play through. Next time around your experience with the game will in all likelihood result in you playing a more robust character build.

Yep, indeed the leveling problem is my issue. I'm also aware that some creatures have resistance. I've had to work out a lot of that kind of thing to even get to where I am. I'm possibly overstating the relative weakness of my character I get by with sneaky play. Even a low level paralyse spell cast a lot will let you eventually take down something big, and things started improving once I started making sure I was getting a +5 in one attribute before leveling up (I've not attempted more than one though). However all that is to my mind powerplay and really not the kind of natural play I was hoping for from the game. It's one thing to repeatedly cast a low level spell to power up (a minor powerplay infraction) but to micromanage all your play so that you get maximum bonuses so that you're character development remains in sync with the monsters is just not cricket.

I thinks it's going to have to be the mods. Do you have any recommendations for the type of gameplay I've described?

Certainly there are some issues with how leveling works, however, given some things you describe, I believe your character might be able to overcome those problems. However, there are some variables that aren't mentioned in your OP, namely what your majors are. I am assuming you want to 'RP' your character or class. Another thing is perhaps definition of what is 'sneaaky, power gaming, exploitive play' as I don't think using Paralyze is any of those if your character has Illusion as a major skill, it could be assumed it is part of that character's MO. Also, your ability to make custom spells matters a lot.

If you can make Custom spells here are some that will overcome any type of leveling issue you have
Illusion: Command Creature/Humanoid effect = your level + 5 for 4-5 secs
Frenzy - the Touch of Rage for purchase works great on Dremora and Humans, cast on one of multiple enemies get out of the immediate area and let them soften each other up.

Destruction:
Drain Health 100 pts 1 sec - some people consider cheating, don't always use it myself but sometimes I do. for higher level enemies use weaknss to magicka 100% first
Utility/Chain Spell I- Weakness Magicka 100 for 3 secs on touch, or if under 50 weakness to shock/frost 100 for 3 secs
follow with either damage spell or drain health spell depending on your capalilities. For really easy results put a 3 sec inviso on self effect on with your weakness spell and cast the weakness spell several times before the damage spell.
That is a short tutorial on chaining and might be confusing so we can clarify if nec.

If you can use these, things should even up quite a bit....

I think if the mods didn't exist I'd have to make do with accepting that I need to power play, but hopefully there's something that meets my needs. What you're describing in terms of magic creation I'm sure would give me an advantage against the baddies but is powerplay - deliberately setting out to exploit the rules of the game for the maximum advantage against it.

I would like something that makes the development of the character a bit more fun and develop naturally through play.

The most highly rated of the leveling mods seems to be http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14065. I haven't used it myself and thus can't comment on it, but it seems to be fairly popular.

Another, and one that I have used, is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1888. It worked all right, but honestly, I find that I get better results through working with the vanilla leveling system than through the mod, though I do continue to use some of Kobu's ancillary mods.

If you choose major skills carefully, it's possible to create a build that levels up slowly and still does so with substantial increases in the significant skills. The only hitch is that the major skills must be chosen with an understanding of how the advancement system works and might end up bearing virtually no resemblance to your conception of the character.

If you go with either of the mods, you'll need (if you haven't already) to install http://obse.silverlock.org/, and I strongly recommend a mod managing tool called http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2097.

Hope some of that helps.....

nGCD is brilliant. It makes leveling smoother and more realistic. However, because your level is determined by all of your skills rather than just your majors, I'm afraid it would only exacerbate his problems rather than solve them.

Well, certainly a simple command spell custom effect considered as cheating is a strict definition of cheating and exploiting, which I think by the same logic could be applied to any of the mods. However, your game your choice. I hear Midas Magic is good for that. Another option you might consider is just tweaking some of your skills via the console, for instance doing a 'player.setav destruction 50 or 75 when you are generally lower level than would normally have that skill level would allow you to simply use one of the stock direct damage spells with a much reduced cost which would make some fights a bit more even. Such a thing could be considered to accomplish the same thing as a mod, but with less disruption of the rest of the game and your files. One of the functions of Midas Magic is too reduce magicka use per spell cost and allows greater spell casting ability, which essentially does the same thing I just described using the console.

If one is using nGCD's default configuration, this is true. But nGCD comes with an .ini file that allows the user to adjust the mod drastically. That .ini file can force the mod to behave in ways Tejon would never have dreamed possible.

However, if he wants to level using only major skills a better choice would be http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13879 which has a built-in option for this.

Another handy mod is http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14304 which allows a user to further tailor leveling according to one's tastes. Using Progress the OP could slow the leveling speed of a particular skill down to a snail's pace or even stop it altogether, if he chose to do so.

Ah....

That's part of what I didn't like so much about KCAS, so I guess it's not that surprising.

That's really mostly why I do it all through careful character building rather than mods. Through lots of anolysis and lots of trial and error, I've managed to figure out how to (more often than not at least) build a character who levels reasonably slowly and with healthy skill increases while just doing whatever it is that s/he does. But doing it that way is enormously complex and I'm still learning what works and what doesn't, and have really only gotten to a point at which I'm successful somewhat more often than I'm not.

Ah well.......

Thanks for the ideas.

I'm going to try Realistic Leveling, possibly with Progress, but I'm finding it a bit difficult with my linux system. I can't run anything that's NET 2.0. So the OBSE Launcher is out as is OBMM. I've installed OBSE but I'm not sure how to install Realistic Leveling with it without OBMM. The readme says I have to edit the ini file which is fine but I've no idea where to install it to or how to activate it. Other than running obse_loader.exe???

By the way I'm not asking for linux help just a bit of advice on manually installing mods.

(edit) OK think I've got it. I just needed to extract Realistic Leveling into the Oblivion folder and edit RealisticLeveling.ini to set the default settings.

OK, I'm trying a combination of Realistic Leveling with Francesco's Leveled Creatures/Items Mod.

Francesco's sounds like exactly the thing I was looking for - i.e. leveling up means leveling up and you can't attempt parts of the game until you have. I'm hoping Realistic Leveling will be a better leveling system to complement that.

Will let you know how it goes.

Glad to hear you've found something to your liking that will hopefully make the game work for you. Good luck.

I remember trying both nGCD and Realistic Leveling, and ended up preferring the latter.

Darn! I don't think they're working together or I don't have them set up right. I played it a bit last night with them both set up. I was running OBSE and Realistic Leveling seems to be loaded (it says patched at the command prompt where I launch it) and I'm fairly sure Francesco's Leveled Creatures/Items is loaded as the in game behavior suggest it - a turbo charged Zombie in the first dungeon in the ruins across the water after you exit the sewers that after turning into a porcupine from a safe spot I ended up in I just had to leg it to get away. But when I leveled up it made me sleep but I've set my RealisticLeveling.ini to "3 = verbose levelup, levelups will show the levelup menu" - i.e. no sleeping required.

Does anyone know if these are compatible? Or how to get them to play together?

(edit) I do have Francesco's slower skills enabled, would this be conflicting?

I sounds like you have the operating mode set to 4. Check your .ini again. You do not need to do anything to the .ini if you do not want to sleep to level up. If you changed the operating mode to anything other than default it is no longer 3 because the mod is set to 3 by default. Personally, I set my .ini to 2: "silent levelup, levelup silently with no notification".

All character leveling mods work just fine with all overhaul mods. The two sets of mods do entirely different things.

I could see a potential conflict with Progress, but not with RL.

Yep realistic leveling is definitely not working. I got a choose your levels screen and that's not part of RL. Can anyone give me advice on installing RL by hand (also OBSE which I think is installed correctly but I can't be sure). I also don't know how to install the RL menu.

Thanks for your help.

(edit) Also my settings in the RealisticLeveling.ini were definitely set to 3.

Just unzip it into your Oblivion/Data directory. You should have the .esp and .ini files in the Data directory, and the menu file in Data/menus. That's it as far as installation goes.

As for OBSE, you are using obse_loader to launch the game, right? Do you have any other OBSE mods that might tell you whether or not OBSE is working?

Have you tried

sqv aaRealisticLeveling

from the in-game console?

Yes I've tried

sqv aaRealisticLeveling

I don't have it infront of me this second so I can't put the prasing exactly but it was a very basic message saying that it couldn't be found for the Quest or somesuch.

Definitely not installed.

Which folder do the RL files need to go in? Oblivion, Oblivion\Data, or Oblivion\Data\OBSE\Plugins?

(edit) Oh! and yes I am running oblivion with the obse_launcher.exe in the Oblivion folder.

Oblivion/Data

It's not as bad as it seems. My characters do not power level and being typically mage types, they level up very fast because of the early boost from alchemy which then hits 100% by the late teens and has no further effect on leveling.

The trick is versatility and not relying on just one thing (such as a destruction spell) to save you. For a mage, you need to use magical shields for protection, a summoned assistant to take some of the heat, poison on a dagger for close-in fighting and potions to restore health, restore magicka and boost your magical shield protection.

I play dead is dead and of my last three characters, Severus Snape lasted over 700 hours before dying in an epic battle he could have won except for a vow, Sarrah, over 500 hours before dying in a lava flow, and Angel over 200 hour before retiring from the game. As the game progresses, use enchantments and the more advanced magical skills such as paralysis and command spells. Angel never wore armor or carried a shield. At level 39, with nothing but her potions, poisons, and spells, (no enchantments) she had almost god-like power.

Alleystria, thanks got it now.

Tried Oblivion\Data without success and on a hunch tried extracting the mod to both Oblivion and Oblivion\Data. Suppose it must need some of the files in each - no idea which though.

P.S. Love the avatar - I did find myself using the word cricket unexpectedly earlier - I blame the visage of Hugh.