A friend of mine just got Oblivion for the XBOX 360, and he is really frustrated with the standard encumbrance values, limiting his ability to carry much loot back from dungeons. Is there any easy-to-obtain strength gear available early on, or any other tips for raising his encumbrance other than pumping strength each level? He knows about efficient leveling, I'm mainly looking for anything out of the ordinary that he can do in the vanilla game.

Thanks!

feather spells are pretty cheap, and you can put them on your gear to ease the weight

Wiki says Rings and Gauntlets with Fortify Strength should start showing up at level 3 in random loot. Once you can enchant your own, you could do other items.

Enchants that fortify strength are the best bet. Feather spells are a good alternative as well.

As others have said, feather spells work well. As well as rings. Feather potions tend to run out at the most inopportune time, so I usually don't rely on potions unless it's one that I've made.
Fortify Strength Spells and Gear.
You can get the basic fortify strength spell pretty early.

Also:
The dungeon will not reset for three days. So, move all loot to the chest closest to the door. Make multiple trips if need be. Take all, becoming overencumbered. Repair as much as possible. Cast all spells and put on either rings or gear. Put all loot you can't carry in chest again. Mark location. Get out and sell gear. Don't forget to get more repair hammers. Go back to hole in ground. Grab gear. Go back to store. You/he will become insanely rich in very little time. Now, all that said, my characters only take what THEY themselves find interesting or useful. My mage, has no idea that that daedric mace is worth a lot of money; he's never touched one in his life. It's heavy and ugly, and I'm not carrying it. (I'm trying to limit my money intake these days on my characters. This is one of many options for me.)

To solve this you need access to a spell maker, make a fortify strength 100 +feather 100 for a few seconds, cast it open door, take up map and fast travel. You can even move around if you cast this spell often.
Feather potions work wonder if you are good in alchemy, think around 280 for over 10 minutes for each and they are easy to make.

Wow, Zaria, that's some good creative thinking! I have this mental picture of a character casting a 3-second spell, then picking up his huge bag of loot, walking for 2 seconds, then rinse/repeat until he gets to a merchant Thanks for the idea!

Feather is probably the best bet and don't forget that you can use the left Bumper to hold a weapon or armor in front of you until you reach the stores entrance.

I'd load up, fast travel to city and drop everything in front of the store. Or just take 1 of each thing and exploit the scroll dup glitch.

If you were being sarcastic:
Zaria is right and thats a good method getting past the encumbrance limit.
Just stack up all the stuff near the dungeon exit, once you're done pick it
all up, cast the spell, go outside, and fast travel to town to sell it.
No need to be mean. D:

If you were serious:
My bad, sorry. :whistling:

I was totally serious! I don't know anybody on this forum well enough to be sarcastic.

Well, that doesn't stop others being sarcastic here. See?

On topic:

When over encumbered, you can also just take a feather potion, then fast travel, and take another potion once you reach your destination if needed.

feather potions. can stack four potions together. alchemy is weak at the beginning but can be improved so you can carry over 1000 weight eventually.

Feather potions have the downside that if you drink 4 you can not drink any other potions, problem if you get critically wounded.
One interesting exploit, make a potion with a negative effect, damage fatigue is nice as its common and pretty harmless. Then the negative effect times out after 1-3 seconds the potion is not included in the active potion list anymore.