First of all, I just recently bought Oblivion on Steam because I needed something to fill up the gap from some other... disappointing releases this year (one to be specific).

I must say that while it was hard to at first get into and I felt thrown out in this huge world with not a single clue what to do and a bunch of dlc quests in my log... All of this gave me a bit panic. After about 10 hours of gameplay I was completely obsessed with it!

Negatives:

UI feels horrible.
Combat, probably the worst area of Oblivion.
Odd performance issues at points.
Leveling is to me very confusing still.

Positives:

-Landscapes (moded) looks awesome (they did before mod too, but better after )
-Weapons & Armors are great! Not to fantastic (read world of warcraft lvl 70+ gear) but still not to down to earth, perfect mix
-Dungeons are not to repeated, eventhough textures etc might be
-Cities are just very nice
-How guards react on your actions
-Combat, it is a love/hate relationship.. sometimes I hate the very core of it.. but I still love the possibilities it brings.. weird? :S
-Guilds (even the arena minigame is just filled with awesome).
-Days/Nights, Sleeping, Waiting... this brings the game to an entirely new level
-Weather changes
-Interaction with objects.
Even small things like someone has actually spent time to place 3 coins, a letter and a letter opener at a desk, where as at another place something else is placed. Very much detail work like this just makes it all seem so... real

Even if all of these "faults" I sit as glued to the screen and enjoy the sense of living in the world, travel the roads, explore the dungeons and completely "immerse(?)" in to the game. Love it!

It does not seem to be an end in sight after 34 hours of gameplay and I love it. But since this seems to be a game where I am going to give all in on the character I am playing (RP!) I now wish to create "my character" or maybe keep the one I am currently playing.

You see I am a person who loves to complete as much as possible and I am worried I will miss out on stuff if I continue this characters build.

I love to play melee characters and my current char is a Warrior born under Warrior with some other sign (can't remember at the moment). What I have recently noticed is that I just completed 100 points in Endurance and I am 97 points in to strength.

I use no magic really so far and I have the "standard warrior class" picked.

Most of skillups I get is in Restoration, Athletics (jumping?), Blunt, Block and Heavy Armor.

What is max level? After what I've read you level up when you increase skills such as Blunt and Block, but this stuff governs Endurance and Strength. So when I am 100 on Endurance and Strength, will I stop level up then? Should I have built my "heavy melee fighter" differently? The more I read the more I get confused so I figured I ask my question related to my "hello forum" post.

Also... I have already managed to get about 40 mods from the community, fixing unique landscapes, bugs, graphics, streamlining, etc ... Just wow and thanks a lot all of those hard working rpg-nerds out there

Thanks

P.S Did I say I loveded Oblivion?

Well thanks is all I have to say to that. Modders never get enough credit from people and the last paragraph there just sums it up for me.

You say you've got 34 hours in now and your still loving the fact that you haven't completed the main quest yes? I can tell you that if you want to put the hours in then the game just gets more rewarding. There is of course endless amounts of things that you can do rangeing from the Guilds, to dungeon diving, exploring lost ruins, Arena and loads of other things to do. I myself have two characters that I play quite heavily and I think between the two of them I'm at well over 600 hours. OB is great for anyone that is interested in RP'ing and if you have come from a history of WoW and Guild Wars then yes you will be let down by the combat system, but the advantages for the RP out weigh that. I RP both of my characters, Arch-Mage Sabarel Tatheth (425 Hours roughly) & Euisa Tatheth (175 Hours roughly) and neither of them has completed the main quest yet or even all of the guilds. I've chosen to not do certain guilds with both of them or to not advance to far in each guild, whereas you could choose to do all teh guilds and still have loads to do. I think there is somewhere around 100+ free quests throughout the whole game so there is always more to do.

If you really feel that you want to start again to get the most out of a pure RP character then I say do it. You won't miss out on anything really starting again, ok so you may do some of the quests again that you have already done but the thing I like most is that nothing ever really happens twice, unless you make it. I would suggest trying out various different characters until you find one that most fits your style. Try a Stealth based character along with a Magic based character, or even try a mix of both. Don't forget that if you are not happy with any of the preset classes then you can make your own. Try also mixing up some of the classes with different races, each race best suits a different style but sometimes you can have more fun playing a race that doesn't go with that class. I've known people play Breton and Altmer Warriors and Orc and Imperial Mages.

Yes I agree the UI can be horrible at times but I've just started using a mod that removes it and all you can see is two bars at the bottom for Health and Magicka. The leveling system is something that you get used to after a period of time. I'll explain it simply for you though. You have 7 Major skills after you leave the Sewers that are the main skills of your Class. Whenever you get ten skill increases across these skills you gain a level. There are ways to limit your level and also increase certain stats over each other and ways of getting the most out of each level but I say just play how you want and you will find your own style.

"Max" level is typically unlikely to be reached, even with what some consider to be too-fast leveling in Oblivion. You gain a level for every ten ranks gained in any of your major skills; how much "room" for leveling you have in this way varies with your choices during character creation, i.e. what your major skills started at and how much room they have to improve. There are some ways to exceed this max, but it's not generally necessary unless you've just gotta have more levels. If you max out all your attributes it also puts a stop to leveling.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling explains leveling in detail (and the rest of the site is also good for general gameplay info), but I'll also give it simply. You have major and minor skills, and every time you gain 10 skill ranks in major skills (these 10 don't have to be from one skill, they can be spread out and usually will be in normal gameplay) you gain a level. At level up you can raise three attributes, and how much you raised them depends on the skills used between levels. For example, if you level up with ten ranks in Armorer, you'll be able to raise your Endurance a lot. To raise other attributes more, you increase the skills tied to them. If your strength and endurance are 100, you will not be raising them higher, but you CAN keep leveling. However, if your major skills include more strength/endurance-based skills, they won't be helping your attributes. To have better options when you level up, you'll need to increase other skills on the side. Minor skills do not count toward raising your level, but they DO count toward the attribute bonuses.

I can understand where you're coming from, but if possible try not to apply that attitude to Oblivion. Elder Scrolls game work much better if you're not trying to complete them. In fact, you can never truly complete them, because they don't have a formal ending. So it tends to be better if you just aproach them as a brand new world to explore.

That said, you can complete all quests in the game with any character. You will not miss out on any content if you keep playing your warrior.



There is no set max level. You stop leveling when all your attributes are 100, but since you can increase your stats by as little as 3 points per level or as much as 15 points per level that could be anywhere between level 40 and level 157.

Level itself is not all that important, it's the skills and attributes that matter. And skills matter much more than attributes. The only thing level actually does is determine what content gets generated by leveled lists. That is what sort of creatures you get to fight and what sort of loot you can find. That and it determines the stats of scaled creatures and NPCs. The maximum level which is beneficial is 30. That's where all the loot lists top out. If you go any higher than 30 you get no new content, only enemies get stronger.

In short, you get no benefits from leveling beyond level 30.



When an attribute reaches 100 you can still keep increasing the skills it governs. It's separate.

I'll try to explain leveling as simply as possible.

You have 7 major skills and 14 minor skills. Whenever you increase a major skill you get 1 point for leveling. When you have 10 points for leveling you level up. When you level up you get to increase your attributes based on how much you used skills that are governed by that attribute since the last time you level up. If you got 10 increases in skills governed by an attribute you get to increase it by 5 points, which is the highest possible increase. Only major skills count towards leveling up, but both major and minor skills count toward higher attribute multipliers.

If an attribute reaches 100 you can no longer increase it, but you can still keep increasing the skills it governs. If all your attributes reach 100 you can't level up anymore, but you can still keep increasing skills.



That depends on how obsessed you are with power gaming. But your current character should be fine.

My advice is not to worry too much about the leveling. It's a mess of a system, but you generally get decent results if you just play the game and do whatever you want. And if it really bothers you there are plenty of mods for it.



Yes, you did.

Thanks, all of you for your replies. They have been very helpful in trying to understand the leveling and as I see it now my current warrior seem to be in an ok state then. My worries was that I suddenly would hit a brickwall where I can't continue due to building my character stupid in the beginning.

My history of games sure include World of Warcraft for 5 years. But there it was the ability to forever build "your char", I made odd dungeons and some raids but it was never my main focus and I was in it mostly for the RP and Exploring, something they left out completely in their latest expansion reshaping wow into a moneygrab raiding machine. But I love games such as Dragon Age:Origins, Diablo, Sacred, Zelda.. little bit more light weight RPGs where I do not need to number crunch everything, the closest that I've played to Oblivion is probably Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga... probably because it is built with the same engine as Oblivion (if I recall correct). Divinity II made the combat better imo, a little bit more entered around third person melee combat than Oblivion. But it falls short in all other aspects.

Oblivion was very boring at first, very confusing etc but god when it opens up to you it is this... huge world with no ending. The reason I was worried was because I went all out melee (just like I normally do) thinking that the game will end in say 40-50 hours like most RPG's of the 2003+ I've played does. They normally end when you have shaped the perfect character... I thought this would be the case with Oblivion but was wrong, so now I do not wish to start missing out for neglecting the magical part of the game or other aspect. It seems though as my worries are nothing to worry about ^^

And yes... I've found the main story to be one of the more boring parts of this game and have only done to the point where I have collected the 4 books to learn about the deadric cult. Was around then I learned that it is not always good to fast travel and what this game really has to offer. Since then I have done a lot of things questing, dungeon crawling, decorated my keep, become grand champion of the arena, gotten arrested by mistake (seriously, compared to most games I've played where you can just grab everything you find in boxes around the cities.. I was so amazed when getting arrested for stealing an apple ^^)

One of my favorite quests so far is the sailor and panthers and ghosts (don't want to post spoilers) ... it was just somehow amazing. I love that every little sidequest seems to have a good story to back it up.. even if it is a kill X or get Y .. they do it with style.

I hope Skyrim becomes just like Oblivion but better =) (although some people seem to be more Morrowind fans than Oblivion fans... can't speak for that as I have never played Morrowind)

Now... you guys have to excuse me, but I am going to continue playing my character in this wonderful gem of a game.