Hi everyone! My first play through Oblivion after about 1,000 hours or so in Skyrim (my only other ES game experience) and was hooked as soon as I heard the theme music, even more so after a thunderstorm. I love being in the heart of the Empire before things get really pear shaped, getting a little lesson in lore, etc. I got a kick out of speaking with an Altmer and hearing about the Summerset Isles starting to get a little chaotic was very cool knowing what was to come.

Anyway I'm playing a custom character, really just a spell sword/crusader hybrid I guess, blade/heavy/block/destruction/resto. The leveling is of course something to get used to, I'm level two and was able to go +3/+3/+2 in strength endurance, and willpower. I'm trying not to worry about it and just enjoy the game. Any advice is of course welcomed,thanks!

My advice is just to play and have fun. I wouldn't try to over-think things too much. Do whatever feels right to you at the moment. Enjoy the scenery. Enjoy your character. Enjoy the music: I think it's some of the most gorgeous music ever composed for a video game.

I would say don't worry too much about bonus numbers at level-up. Some may disagree, but my opinion is that these numbers aren't going to make or break your character. As a matter of fact, I've modded a few of my games to always get +1 bonuses and I've never run into a problem with it.

Keep us posted on your progress. Let us know how you're liking the game. If you have any questions at all about anything one of us is sure to have the answer.

Absolutely, just play and have fun. Do what seems right for you, do and see whatever and wherever you want, and don't worry about the numbers. Think a lot of us are quite envious, wishing we could go back to our first time...

Play and have fun.

Whoops. Ninja'd

Just kidding. It's true though. During my first playthroughs, I didn't know Beth had their own forums (silly me), which was good in a way, because in my vacuum, I was able to completely avoid spoilers. That first month or so, I was in gaming heaven, until I got into the teens with leveling. I had some problems with the way the game leveled upwards, and if you have these same problems, I can give you advice in the future. Not the leveling system itself (the numbers), but the world itself. You'll see what I mean. Maybe it won't bother you, but if it does, there are ways to address this.

Now that I've addressed the things that bothered me, Oblivion ranks somewhere in my Top 10, easily. What platform are you on, by the way? PS3? Xbox or PC?

THanks for the responses! I'm on a PC.

Congrats! I just started playing Oblivion a couple days ago after hundreds of hours in Skyrim and I've been enjoying it a lot. The quests seem a lot more varied and interesting.

Only level 6 so not much advice. You can get up to a +5 in an attribute upon level up. I've gotten lucky a couple times but more often I'm shooting for 3s or taking a couple 2s. You can work the system to go for all 5s but on default difficulty I understand it's not essential.

Endurance is always useful to raise, especially early on. It affects the health you get at each level.

I hear speed gets ridiculous if your raise it all the way.

Not sure if this is spoilerish or not so click only if you don't mind a very small spoiler.

As others have said, just play and enjoy. Spellswords are great in this game, you shouldn't have to worry much about levelling. If you do find yourself dying, rethink your tactics. Also, keep your weapons and armor repaired! You'll run into two factions that weren't in Skyrim, Mages Guild and Fighters Guild. Should be pretty obvious what they do. The Mages Guild is the only way to get access to one of Oblivion's best features: spellcrafting.

The other one being exploring

Yeah, have fun! Like Renee I was glad I didn麓t know about these forums when I first started to play, but I麓m glad I found them later Oh, and not to scare you off, but if you plan on playing a single character for more than about 300-400 hours, you might wanna check out the A-bomb fix. The A-bomb is an animation bug that affects fire, spell effects and moving doors. The fix takes care of that for another 300-400 hours. Since you are on PC and therefore have access to mods etc I figured I could tell you about this even if you麓ve just started to play. You麓re not gonna experience it for a long time, but whatev. It can麓t all be flowers and butterflies...

Happy gaming!

As Akylas has hinted above, there's a point in the game where it starts throwing enemies at you that you might not be prepared for, in the sense that some builds may not be able to harm them at all. Others may start to reflect damage from weapons or spells. It pays to have a Plan B at all times.

Skyrim doesn't have any immunities that I can recall, but Oblivion does. So if your weapon doesn't work, use another, rather than try to hit harder!

Other differences that are important - weapon and armour degradation, spell-making, over-encumbered = stuck, and there's more I forget.

How are you getting on with the E/space flip? And F/R?

I actually have seen the A-bomb on PC much earlier than I did on consoles. I believe it showed up before 200 hours in one of my games. But it's no biggie. Easy to get rid of on PC.

Other differences that are important - weapon and armour degradation, spell-making, over-encumbered = stuck, and there's more I forget.

How are you getting on with the E/space flip? And F/R?

Sorry I haven't figured out how to quote馃槴 I flipped those back! I was going nuts:) the weapon armor degradation reminded me of Diablo.

I've been playing Diablo a bit lately and the trip to a merchant for repairs after hitting a dungeon is familiar.

A question for experienced players. Are there attributes a new player is likely to regret leveling or not leveling? I think I've read references to the importance of endurance, and on the other end a let's play I started mentioned if you pump up speed it get's ridiculous.

Eeeh.. I guess Luck isn麓t all too important, in fact I think there is a bug involved with that attribute. Speed is pretty nifty and I don麓t consider it ridiculous at 100. Or maybe I麓m just so used to it now

Agility is one of my faves cause it decreases the chance of getting staggered, but to each his own and all

The guy in the LP was under the impression he'd be outrunning horses if he went too high with it. I've been afraid to raise it since I started.

Reduced stagger sounds great. I spend a decent chunk of my melee battles being staggered (often from stupidly attacking when they have their shield raised).

The only attribute I've ever "regretted" levelling was luck. It does make some changes to the game that I don't care for. Unless I'm specifically roleplaying a lucky character, I always leave it at 50.

As for the rest, it's really up to what you want your character to be. If you want to cast the most powerful spells you need to max intelligence. But skill level is always always always more important than attribute value. If you want to get better at something, use the skill or pay for training.

Esoteric stuff follows:

There was a lot, I mean a LOT, of investigation into the A-bomb over the years over in the mods forum. It's definitely tied to frame rate. So consoles will consistently encounter it after a certain number of hours since they're frame-rate is consistent. PC's frame rates are all over the place, but nowadays most computers will have significantly higher frame rates and will encounter the bug earlier. Also some mods like Oblivion Stutter Remover tamper with the frame rate and so the counter that's associated with the A-bomb doesn't increment as high as it normally would. This caused quite a bit of confusion since many of us have encountered A-bomb symptoms when we're as low as 20% of where we would normally be to start seeing symptoms. But they definitely resolved by applying the A-bomb fix. Anyway with WryeBash you just have to right-click on your save and hit "Apply A-bomb fix" or whatever and it goes away. Simple.

I hate tl;dr's but here you go anyway: A-bomb is directly related to fps.

Acrobatics is the one that can get ridiculous. You can end up being able to leap up onto rooftops. But I doubt you'd regret that unless you neglected another in its place. You'll soon know what's useful to your specific character, and what isn't.

I've had characters that needed to spar with skellies to play catch-up on skills they wanted to raise, but since that's an option, don't worry about it.

I've never raised speed unless forced to do so in the later stages of leveling up. My characters are all sneaky archers and prefer to take their time.

I've fixed the A-Bomb nine times on my main character and the hours between each ranged between 292 and 522 hours. Some of the longer hour runs were done with V. Sync turned off as a test and the fps was in the hundreds but that didn't seem to have any affect on the re-occurrence of the A-Bomb. That's just my observation.

so this A-bomb is a graphic glitch?

I'm really enjoying the change of scenery in Cyrodill and finally experiencing what I kept hearing about as soon as I got Skyrim - "It's a great game, but man, Oblivion - that was special." Morrow ins as well. I guess I'll be playing ES in reverse... Thanks for being so welcoming!

Yep. Animation Bomb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTrz6j_MkT8 an example of what it looks like in full onset, but sometimes it can actually start with some more sporadic freezing and glitching before it gets to that point. Super easy to fix on PC; game-breaking on console, for the most part.

That's interesting. Explains why I saw it happen earlier in my PC games than on PS3.

Don't worry about tl;dr, I'm always eager to learn.

AS somebody said above, I had a game which I leveled up that character's Luck long ago, and I regretted that. Made some aspects of the game too easy. Other than this, no. I prefer having my games level upwards slowly (by placing Major skills that don't get used, or don't get used very often) so I've never had to worry much about my character's skills not matching up with the game.

I've never pushed Speed too far. I'm not interested in seeing my character outrun some horses.