Hello, I am a bit of a Oblivion newbie. I have played Morrowind before (but on the PC and at a lower difficulty with a few stats-related cheats), so I sort of know how to play an ES game.

However, Oblivion requires more first-person view and I am only okay at FPS games. I have the GOTY edition on XBox360.

I have enjoyed the first few levels, but I want to lower the difficulty slider to really low difficulty, so I can explore the world without the fear of dying.

The two questions I have are: 1) What does the slider effect?

Does it make you stay at level one, or does it allow you to level up but do more damage to enemies?
Do loot and soul gems, etc, get affected by this? If they do, how? Is the Shivering Isles quest affected as well?

and
2) Can you aim spells and melee weapons in third-person?

Thank you,
and I am sorry if these questions sound dumb?

The difficulty slider effects how much damage you do and how much damage your enemies do, and nothing else, as far as I know.

I'm pretty sure you can aim spells and weapons in third person, because people do play in third person. Someone who plays in third person can probably help you out with that, I've personally never really gotten the hang of it.

Troyatz is correct about the slider. That is all it does. If someone tries to tell you it makes you level up faster or slower, they mean due to indirect consequences. For example, if you have the slider on difficult, you will have to hit more with your blade to kill things, indirectly causeing your blade to level up faster. The difficulty slider doesn't care if you are in Cyrodiil or the Shivering Isles.

Aiming in third person is more difficult, especially with ranged spells and arrows. I use the DarN dark User Interface mod which allows one to display crosshairs in third person. That helps a lot and with practice, long range bow shots are possible in thrid person. Although I use third person quite a bit, I tend to switch to first person for fighting. If you really want to use third person alot, there are a few other mods that can help. I use 'Chase Camera' mod, for example, which helps eliminate the changing distance 'rubber band' type effect when in third person.

There are indeed players who use almost exclusively third person that can probably provide more tips.

Difficulty slider's been discussed.
I play probably 75% of the time in third person, usually snapping to first person view, when I'm about to fire an arrow. Although, it is certainly EPIC when you start taking down enemies in third person with a bow. I aim at the chest mass.... Last night, as a matter of fact, I took down a charging Minotaur Lord in third-person view, with my trusty bow and three well-placed arrows.
For my characters that DO wade into battle, I used third person view exclusively in combat. I can see what's going on around me, and more importantly, I find it easier to time my blade swings and blocks.

Ah, thank you, all of you! =) Oh, yes, it would make sense to use your blade more on difficult levels which thus causes to you level up faster. Huh. I didn't think about that.

Ooh, Acardian, I would love to do mods like I did in Morrowind, but my laptoc cannot handle any games (let alone Oblivion!), so I cannot mod. =(

But it is good to know I can do third-person in the first place, since I did it all of the time back when I had Morrowind. =)



Oh, so for things that require more aiming like bow and arrows or magic spells, first-person is more effective, but third-person can be used for melee weapons?

I don't mind first person too, too much. In fact, I play shooters quite a bit (on easy or normal modes), both first-person ones (Call of Duty games, Halo: Reach, Borderlands) and third-person ones (Uncharted 3, Infamous, Mass Effect 2, Gears of War). I prefer third person shooters, though. I LOVED playing Morrowind in third-person, so I can see the whole surroundings and farther enemies a bit better.

However with Oblivion, It's just that I get panicky whenever I see the undead (zombies/ghosts/etc) so up close, and then I don't bother aiming with my fireball, lol! XD

There's not really any huge need to touch the difficulty slider in the vanilla game.

The world levels only as you do, so you will never find an enemy that you cannot take down.

Awesome, thank you everyone! =)

I am playing the Shivering Isles expansion pack right now and just defeated the gatekeeper, yay! =D

A little late to the explanation but just to clarify for you --- the slider as noted only effects damage done and damage taken -- the scale is far left (easiest setting) you do 6x damage and take 1\6 normal damage -- Middle of scale 1x given 1x taken --- far right (hardest setting) you give 1\6 normal damage and take 6x damage !

Ah, okay. I see that is why people have trouble on the hard mode with the hardcoe mods and Dead is Dead scenarios. =) Thank you for clarifying!