Dear guys, I need an opinion.

When I first played Oblivion, I had no OOO installed and I took my character to level 18.
Then I had the chance to know OOO and I decided to install it and to continue my game in an "Oscuro version", with the same character.
Obviously, the first thing I needed to do was updating (thanks to Wrye Bash) NPC levels.
I did it.
I started to really enjoy exploring dungeons... Enemies were quite difficult at the beginning, but then, when my character reached level 25, everything became different: now I can kill bandits, ogres, minotaurs, ghosts, trolls, wizards, arena warriors, wolves, imps, vampires... without any difficulty!
This fact frustrates me a little: I miss the old hard battles, where I risked to die and I needed to think to complicate strategies for defeating monsters.
The strange thing is that my character has recently and suddenly become a super hero!

What do you think: will I encounter stronger enemies, or is it normal that everything is easy for a 25 level hero?

I ask this because I updated (with the command "update NPC levels") my saved game more than once, so I am worried that this caused the problem.
On the other hand, there's to notice that when I played a "difficult Oscuro", I had already made these multiple updates.

However, considering what "Update NPC level does", I think that repeating the updating process could be stupid, useless, but not dangerous.

Install Martigen's Monster Mod or switch to FCOM. It'll make your game a lot harder.

Download mods that add questlines, and are designed for high level characters. Since OOO reduces HP, it will be 1-3 levels harder than it would otherwise seem. I am quite sure there are many that recommend LV20+ characters.

Me, I just bump up the game difficulty slider by one setting everytime I feel the game is getting easy. 59-60 is all I can take in my FCOM++ setup. And then, a balrog from MMM (or an ancient gargoyle comes up), and I regret bumping that difficulty slider up

Yup, FCOM + custom quests/adventures/dungeons. There are a LOT. And, as the above poster said, FCOM will make them 2x-3x harder. It can be tiring to install FCOM and then look through countless custom dungeons with mixed comments saying "it works!" and "it svcks its so bugged!", but at the end it is worth it. From the top of my head I can recommend you the following mods that will add either fun or difficult dungeons:

Origin of the Mages Guild + The Elder Council + The Necromancer + KvatchRising (or Kvatch Rebuilt) --->These need the CURP pack to work

These are quests/dungeons : Lost Spires, Adense Epic Dungeon, Blackrock Mountain, Integration-The Stranded Light, Glenvar Castle, Scarlet Monastery, Ivellon, The Dragon Citadel, The Tower of the Lich King, Gates to Aeesgard (part 1 and 2 ---> horror mod, epic)

Those are just some I can throw out of the top of my head, fully functional, hard, epic, etc. Look for the many websites that offer mods for Oblivion and look under categories such as adventures, quests, dungeons, castles/forts (sometimes they come with quests). Hope it helps.

Also put your difficulty slider to the max (sarcasm)

OOO is best played from the start, with a new char from Lvl 1. As most enemies are level capped, much of the game will be easier if you add it when you have reached Lvl 18. You still will have challenging OOO dungeons and bosses, but bandits, for example, will be easier by definition as they are level capped in OOO but levels with the player in vanilla. I'd recommend starting a new char if you want the "full OOO experience". If not, focus on quest lines as the difficulty in those are upped in OOO, plus it has its own quest lines that are quite challenging. In short, by Lvl 25 your char is so powerful that the enemies that provided a challenge at Lvl 1 are easy - so you'll have an easy time with bandits and have to find challenge elsewhere, facing OOO added enemy factions and bosses.

Yes, you should update NPC levels if adding OOO to an ongoing game. Doing so many times won't hurt anything but it won't help you with your issue either.

avoid these in order to avoid compatibility issues.

the others he listed are all awesome though.

FallenWizard, blaster3, anithinks, jcapgamer1394, Arkngt, thank you very very much for your kind help!

One month ago I installed a lot of mods and programs for Oblivion. This made me lose a lot of time and was very stressing. Now everything is fine and well tested, except the fact that the game is easy: I am sure that installing FCOM would be very difficult and needs a re-installation. I am not in the right mood for this kind of things and I am also sure that the more mods you install, the higher is the risk of negatively altering the game experience.
On the other hand, I ask: has Oscuro decided to eliminate every challenge for level 25+ characters when he created the mod? Can a 25+ level character find 25+ level monsters, or is this static world full of level 16 enemies and lacking in level 25+ creatures?

The problem related to quests is that they end, and I would like to find in dungeons difficult enemies for a lifetime, having a game that is challenging for a 50 level character too.

This journey amongs the mods has teached me something: if the original programmers have created bandits with daedric armors, it is not an uncalculated random decision, and modders have the presumption of judging valuable things like mistakes because a lot of them don't consider the entire puzzle (that instead is well known from the original programmers).

If you want the same challenge regardless of your level then the vanilla game is certainly the way to go. You will always meet enemies who are adequate for your level, but you will never feel weak or strong, no matter whether you are level 1 or level 50 (although chances are you will feel stronger at level 1 than at level 50). Of course they knew what they were doing when they made the leveled lists and thus made it possible for bandits to wear Daedric armor at a certain player level. But was it a good decision? In my opinion and in the opinion of most players it was one of the worst decisions ever made in game development. Where is the point in leveling up if nothing changes? If you are never a weak rookie adventurer? Never a powerful hero? You always stay the same, only the look and level of the enemies changes as you level up. If you like it that way, go for it.

The game wasn't made with level 50 characters in mind. And I guess OOO wasn't made for that either. The highest leveled lists in the vanilla game stop at level 20 (the ones that spawn Daedric equipment). So level 25 would be more or less the max level before you run out of challenges. I don't use OOO, but I use my own tweaked version of Fran's. At level 25 my characters are very powerful heroes who rarely meet challenging enemies. The solution to the problem is that you simply need to level up slower if you want a long game. I use Oblivion XP and it takes dozens of hours to reach level 20. At level 1 I get owned by almost all enemies except for mud crabs and rats maybe (in the vanilla game I can kill any enemy I meet without a problem...eh...right). At level 10 I can stand my ground against a lot of enemies, but I still have to be very careful where I go and what I do (in the vanilla game enemies are neither too weak nor too strong for me). At level 20 I'm pretty powerful, but I still meet a good amount of enemies who are strong or even too strong (in the vanilla game enemies are neither too weak nor too strong for me...*yawn*). Only at level 25, when I have some of the best equipment available and when I have maxed out most of my important skills and attributes the game slowly becomes boring due to lack of challenge (in the vanilla game enemies are neither too weak nor too strong for me...*snore*). That is in my opinion how it should be.

A game has to end somewhere, if you want challenge no matter what your level is then you end up with a silly system like it is in vanilla Oblivion. Of course, since it's a singleplayer game, if you like it that way, then play it that way.

EDIT: Of course you could simply adjust the difficulty, but that feels too artificial to me. If an enemy was strong when I was level 10 and weak when I was level 20 then I don't want it to be strong again when I'm level 25 only because of the difficulty slider. It's also a bit pointless to go beyond level 25 if all your important skills/attributes are maxed and you have the best equipment anyway.

OOO's main feature is to vastly reduce the amount of level scaling in Oblivion, and make the world more static. A consequence of this is that the game becomes harder at the lower levels, but easier when you pass level 20 or so, and from there just becomes easier and easier because enemies don't level up (as much) as you do.

I fully agree - to me a game stops being fun when it is no longer challenging. However, there are a few ways to do something about it. The easiest (but least immersive IMHO), is to adjust the difficulty slider.

The probably second easiest is to download and install a very small mod I created to counter exactly this problem, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=26409. What the mod does, is simply to use a completely different formula to calculate the player's health - a formula that is dependent of your level and nothing else, and where you have a few configuration parameters - starting health at level 1, amount of health increase per level and finally a maximum health cap. By setting up those, your character stays the same, but just with much less health (depending on the settings of course). This makes your high level character stay strong, but vulnerable.

Another very good solution, that may be used instead of Level Based Health, or together with it, is http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1101269-relz-phitts-phighting-phixes/ which has many options, most (all) of them made to make combat more difficult for the player.


Agreed. Oblivion's level scaling has taken a lot of attacks, but it is there for a good reason (though not a reason everyone agrees with).

Phitt, TheNiceOne, your posts are fantastic: clear and deep!

I find your mod, TheNiceOne, really really interesting... but before considering it, I would like to ask:

What does increasing the difficulty slider modify? Does it reduce the power of your attacks, make the monsters' hits stronger, or both? In your opinion, can this procedure alter Oscuro's world or not? I don't think so.

A higher setting could solve the problem for this reason:
It wouldn't affect Oscuro, making the world more difficult at the same time.

What do you think?

I have just tried to defeat an enemy with a higher setting of the difficulty slider: the challenge seems increased for me, but not for my companion Sonia.

You're right on all counts. Without any mods to specifically effect the difficulty slider, it increases your damage taken and decreases your damage output, by up to 6 times (at max you take six times the damage and do one-sixth the damage you do if the slider is at zero).

It has no effect on any actors but you, including companions, and to my knowledge nothing currently available can change that.

What's already said. I'd say that most players will have challenges for +25 chars with OOO. Not with Bandits, Wolves and such (but do you really want Lvl 50 Wolves?), but with OOO's added enemy factions, bosses and buffed vanilla parts. Have you done dungeons with the Guardians of Oblivion, with OOO bosses etc.? There are plenty of those. I just did Charcoal Cave with a Lvl 25 char and she was torn to pieces really quickly the first time she tried the boss section. Lord Volmyr should be a challenge for most Lvl 25 chars. Etc.

Guardians of Oblivion, Amazons and the Bosmer ranger dungeons (the ones near Anvil) will all keep you interested at level 25.

But....

Why not start a new character? I've fallen into the trap before of unconsciously assuming ome mod install= 1 character, but there's no reason why it should. You don't have a abandon your superhero permanently providing you keep an appropriate save, but playing OOO at level 1 will give a new and refreshing perspective on the game, OOO, and surviivability in general.

Just out of curiosity, what kind of equipment do you use? If you have high magic resistance, or high reflect damage/spell, the game will be too easy. I'm not telling you how to play but just try playing without reflect damage/spell (which are broken in my opinion), and try to limit yourself to resist magic 20/30% and spell absorption at 50 (the bonus given by the Atronach birthsign). If you want a different experience, try using passive defense, like shield and absorption spells, instead of aggressive defense, like reflect damage/spell. You'll see that even lower level mages and bandits can become dangerous if you face them in packs. OOO is all about stats and skill level, so going naked against a bandit when you're level 25 should result in your winning, since you'll more than likely have better stats and skills than him.

Like Arkgnt said, try poking around Anvil and visit Nornalhorst and Dasek Moor and you'll see that the game can be challenging, even for lvl 25+ characters.

I hope I'm not being too patronizing! Enjoy OOO

I had to Read the Oscuro's Readme,the harder quests are found by reading the notices in the towns posted near gates, or by accidentally finding them during exploration.
I have lost many characters by accidently entering ruins and dungeons that have been changed by OOO.

These do not have compatibility issues and ive played them with fcom there r even patches for them . Get them they r a must have in my opinion really fun.

If you want to ramp up the difficulty level, just use http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10925. My character is level 23 and consistently gets owned by vanilla opponents. I'm playing through the Kvatch part of the quest now and fighting 6-10 daedra at once is well nigh impossible. (Might partly be because I'm a generalist, which isn't good for fighting swarms.) Although I don't often play without it, I find the difficulty between vanilla and a game with RF to be about twice as challenging.

With RF you have to limit your gear to what you can realistically carry and still fight: wearing the best heavy armor and carrying the best weapons means massive fatigue burn unless you have a massive Strength score; consequently, you'll be out of steam within moments of entering combat and your attacks will suffer, you'll end up tripping or being knocked down, which is basically instant death in a swarm of high level opponents. It's really quite challenging, even with vanilla creatures, so there has never been any need for me to increase spawn counts. As it is, I have to use all of my ingenuity and skill to survive encounters with multiple opponents. Gone are the days of carrying around arsenals of weapons, staffs, potions, alchemy equipment, etc., for 'just in case' scenarios. With RF, you can really only carry what you need and little else.

The great thing about RF is that it affects your opponents, too, so you can use fatigue burn on your opponents to your advantage: I routinely enervate bandits in heavy armor to reduce them to their knees so that I can dispatch them quickly. (Unfortunately, that only really works on heavily equipped opponents.) If you use companions, they'll be affected as well. This makes using companions much less of a 'cheat'.

RF is my one 'must have' mod, and the only one that is guaranteed to be in my LO every time.

Sorry for the lack of info in my last post I wasn't able to write more.

About the first couple of mods I recommended you, they are epic. There are a lot of compatibility patches for use with FCOM, Better Cities, etc. I personally like the Kvatch Rising, it is really immersive, and the Origins of the Mage Guild. Those will NOT give you super hard enemies, but it will give you a lot of added gameplay hours. Origins of the Mage guild is the only one that needs the compatibility patch to work with FCOM, it is the file FCOM_OMG.esp, and other mods that conflict with this mod will have the compatibility patches included in them. Always look for compatibility patches in the mods you download. I also suggest Armamentarium, hundreds of new items, makes looting more fun.

Good idea the Fatigue mod posted above, also, there are ways to increase spawn rate, more mobs at the same time to PAWN!

EDIT: I should also add to the list the following leveling systems: nGCD and Progress. makes leveling harder, plus the brand new Skill Decay (requires obse v0020 beta 4!) so that as you level, your skills will decrease over time and you'll need to train them to keep them up. Let's put it like this, if you use this 3 combined, and the difficulty slide to the max, if at the beginning of the game, any of the daedric warriors attacking the emperor touches you, you are insta death.

As already answered by others, it reduces your attacks and increases the attacks of everyone else, including summons and companions. So increasing the difficulty slider has the negative effect of drawing out fights a lot more (since your attacks make much less damage), while keeping your summon and companions as powerful as before (or even more powerful).

It certainly works, but with the drawbacks I mention, but whether those matters is of course subjective.

If you use Deadly Reflex, the 250% damage and timed block options make combat really deadly.

Thank you very much for your accurate information.



Yes, you are right: infact I have fought against the boss of Skyrim bandits and it has been a really hard challenge. The problem is that, after completing all Oscuro's challenges, my game will be over (when my ambition would have been continuing to explore difficult dungeons for a lifetime).



Yes, a new character would be a good idea, but the problem is that I'd like to continue finding new places and new challenges with my Argonian: restarting Oblivion would mean doing the same quests for a second time.
There are a lot of things that I could do, but my character's strenght is arrived at maximum while the level of my exploration is not still at maximum! This is the main reason of my frustration.



Thank you, Dazu, for your post. It would be difficult to tell you the exact equipment, but I can say that I have a great one (however, not spell reflecting skills/objects). My problem is that my character kills enemies with 4 blade hits (a Daedroth, for example, dies with 5 hits)!



I hope that Oscuro has created dungeons (not quests, because they end) with 25 level enemies, so that I can go there and enjoy myself for a lifetime.



Thank you for your suggestions



The problem is that I use Oscuro, that is quite different from Vanilla, and Vanilla has very challenging monsters. Thank you for your suggestions, but I think that even with a lot of fatigue, my character still kills enemies with four hits.



Thank you for your suggestions but, as written before, I don't want to install FCOM at the moment. However, I'll read this post again for future reference. Thank you again!



Thanks.



Mhm... I've read about it, but there are things that don't convince me.

If you install Realistic Fatigue with the hardest settings, people say that they struggle even with monsters of vanilla Oblivion. Use Duke's Archery and Duke's Magic Combat mods, if you wanna have more fun while fighting.

But since you want to play for a lifetime (add me to the list!) the way to go is downloading custom adventures and quests. There are even some of these dungeons that if you use OOO or FCOM their difficulty is even more ramped up. There are many, many challenges for high level characters, you just have to find the right ones. Try using deadly reflex and unnecessary violence. The thing with these two mods is, that besides giving you new moves, it also gives those moves to the NPCs. Therefore, fighting will become more difficult (try shooting an arrow at them and see them dodge it 5 times and you'll see what I'm talking about )

My recommendation would be to start a new character with FCOM, and a lot of other good mods out there. But since you don't want to use FCOM (you could use MMM or Frans too), download dungeons! There are many of them: lengthy, involving, challenging, brutal! Happy gaming.

Edit: Oh yeah, forgot one thing. If you decide to get Deadly Reflex, don't go for the beta version 6 yet, go for version 5 since it's the stable release.

My point was that he already have. The added OOO enemy factions should be a challenge for Lvl +25 chars. And they will always be there. But at the same time your wish for enemies that will "last for a lifetime" goes against the vision of OOO and sounds more like vanilla really, where enemies will level with the player. In short, perhaps vanilla plus other additions as recommended in this thread (Phitt's Phighting Phixes etc.) would be more fitting for what you're looking for.

Guys, thank you very much for your help. What jcapgamer1394 has written sounds really interesting. And really precious is Arkngt's information about Oscuro's dungeons and Vanilla Oblivion.

But I have found that a great solution for what I am searching for is increasing the difficulty of the game just by moving the slider inside the option menu. This kind of solution is really balanced, because:

1) It doesn't alter Oscuro's world: the relationship, in terms of strenght, among monsters.
2) It doesn't alter game dynamics.
3) It forces you to develop more skills and to use more potions, spells and so on, for winning battles. The game becomes more strategical, because, if you can't kill a bandit with three hits, you'll have to consider the use of spells, evocated monsters, etc.
4) It makes me desire to be more powerful and to level up.
5) It makes the end of my game very distant, as it should be: infact I have a lot of quests to do and a lot of dungeons to discover.

The only problem is that I really like to have a companion with me, and this companion remains very powerful when I increase the difficulty of the game. So, if I become less powerful, my friend can still kill a lot of monsters with one-two hits.

So, I ask you: is there a way (a mod or something) that permits me to decrease my companion's level.?

Thank you for your kind help.

:)