First, I'll say that I have FCOM installed, so I realize the game is harder than vanilla. I don't mind more difficulty/trickiness, but my character doesn't really have anything to do at the start. My journal is full of quests that are waay too hard for me at this point. I don't really have a way to progress to get to the level where I can take those on.

The only quest I did complete was Thoronir's ill-gotten wares, although I had to cheat a little to defeat the enemy when I was Lv 1.

As it is, I can only take on 1 humanoid enemy at a time, backing up the whole time and using at least one potion per fight. I've been grinding with rats and crabs and trying to lure a bandit away from the pack, but it seems like I'm just spinning my wheels and there's got to be some actual questing to do at the beginning.

I have delayed the main quest because as an RPG vet, I've learned that the "urgent" main quest should always be done after all possible sidequests. If that's wrong in this case, please let me know.

Well I'm not sure. I've never played with FCOM, only OOO. My suggestion would be to head on over to the FCOM thread in the mods forum and see if they have a FAQ section or something like that. I know OOO has a spoilers thread over there that helps with low levels, etc.

agree with OuijaU. i only have 360 oblivion so cannot be much help.

I have recently started an FCOM game (keeping levelling at 3x slower than vanilla with realistic levelling) and I started off by doing the main quest up until I met Slavian but no further, I waited until I was level 4/5 before I went into the gate. I made a big mistake of doing gates of Aesgaard at level 2, if I didn't have about 15 healing potions on top of the 30 odd others given to me throughout the quest and immense patience (I must have died 100 times) I never would have made it and I would have had to have gone back to an old save. If you have that mod installed I would recommend waiting until you are at least level 7 or 8.

Basically I have been dungeon diving (stay away from forts/ruins at early levels in FCOM is my advice) to find riches to keep and to sell to try and build myself up some gold. I have managed to buy myself a new horse and a quality armour set from the Appachi Goddess shop. Now I am overwhelmingly strong (at level 6) against the smaller troops like goblins, imps, outlaws and derzogs and a good match for the dremora's 1 on 1 although I paid top price (2600 gold which was 95% of my net money earnt in over 20 hours play) for the armour set so it was well earnt.

I am a female Nord though so I am full warrior which helped and the city of Aesgaard mod gave me a brilliant sword (nearly used up) which helped me kill some tougher enemies. What race and class are you?

I would recommend playing the main quest up until and do so within the first 10 levels. From there it is up to you, carry on the quest, join the guilds or explore and take whatever quests you can. Learn your characters strength in relation to the rest of the world and base your movements on that, I imagine FCOM in the early levels must be alot harder with some races and classes than others.

Whenever I leave the sewers, I always kill mudcrabs and wolves along Lake Rumare for about 20 minutes, and I get some loot and a fair amount of experience. I usually reach level 2 through that method, and enough money to buy some Steel armor if I'm a warrior, or some spells if I'm a mage.

You might want to try just exploring and killing creatures in the wild.

If you struggle against 1 human enemy then stay away from the Jerrall mountains and the road to Bruma as mountain lions will tear you a new one.

Thanks for the responses.

I put in a lot of hours before I made this topic, which is why it seemed strange that I was still such a weakling. I realized I had set the difficulty to 53%, which doesn't seem like all that much harder than 50%, but when I reduced it, the game seemed much easier. Almost like bringing it back to 50 overrided some mod settings that made it more difficult.

I still couldn't take on 2 enemies, but 1 human can be beaten without a potion now.

I'm going to try the main quest now.

To me that′s what Oblivion is mostly about ^_^

That's what I've been doing but eventually I'm getting bored of it, especially when I'm limited to the areas where rats and crabs are the hardest monsters around.

FCOM, to be perfectly honest, is not for everybody. It is designed to make the early levels much, much harder (as it was in Morrowind). You may have to face the possibility that FCOM simply does not suit your tastes.

The early levels of Morrowind may have been harder, but they got easier as you levelled because of lack of scaling. Kind of the point to levelling in the first place, isn't it? To get better than the baddies? I hate scaling. It's a silly idea anyway- the entire point of Elder Scrolls is to play the game the way you want to play it. Why create a game wherein I can kill main quest givers but I can't outlevel a cave rat? Boo.

If you can't out level a rat that means you're running a mod that changes them. Rats in vanilla Oblivion are not scaled. They are always level 1 creatures (Health 4, Str 20, Attack Damage 2, etc).

It's a viral myth that everything in Oblivion is scaled. Most enemies in Oblivion are leveled but not scaled, as they were in Morrowind. Mud Crabs, Wolves, Bears, Lions, Mountain Lions, Rats, Goblins, Skeletons, Clannfear, Daedroth, Minotaurs, Dremora Kynreeve and Kynmarcher and more: there is no scaling involved in any of these enemies.

You know, there is this thing called hyperbole...

I'm not against a slow strengthening curve, but my issue is that I'm stuck. Even with a slow curve, there still has to be progress.

It's getting better now, but I swear the first few levels were all non-combat fueled. Personality & Speed were all I was getting progress in.

I started replaying vanilla Oblivion last week, hence my return to the forums When I hit about level 7 I really noticed the wall- everything that had levelled with me was kicking my butt. So I started over a few days ago, chose a class I normally wouldn't so my major skills wouldn't be levelling every hour, and ran around the wilderness using first level spells, hand to hand, block, and various weapons on all the level 1 creatures. I levelled almost everything 3 or 4 times before I hit level 2. Now I can get spells/weapons my level 7 couldn't have used and I feel a little more confident in approaching my first quests.

It's been so long since playing an Elder Scrolls game, I almost forgot to take everything in, dedicate the time I need to levelling up stuff BEFORE hitting the quests, and enjoying the scenery. Plus stealing. Lots of it. Mmm, stuff.