So this is my first time attempting +5, +5, +5 leveling.

It is taking a bit of discipline and some long breaks between questing, but so far I'm at Lvl 7 and haven't missed any +5s.

The problem is I am starting to realize how difficult grinding out +5,+5,+5 is going to be a later levels. Many of the minors I use to grind out levels are approaching or are at 50. so earning levels is getting slower and slower. I'm finding that many of my majors are very restricted is use in attempts to only pump certain attributes. (focusing on AGI, INT,END).

Though I attempted to set my majors up properly, I'm really starting to see the wholes in my build and just how careful you have to be when setting up a +5,+5,+5 character.

Any tips for grinding out the levels? Is there a point when +5,+5,+5 leveling become just too much?. If it is this hard now, I could only imagine things at later levels.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Efficient_Leveling a page with some useful tips.

My tip would be to switch to nGCD leveling.


This 5/5/1 type of grinding almost ruined the game for me some years ago.

Funny I was just sort of thinking about this, I think the fewer skills in Oblivion make a lot of players panic to get their stats as high as possible since there are less skills for the stat bonus'.
I wouldn't recommend a 5+5+5 level up, it might cut your total max level down at some point if you max your stats out as fast as possible. That could make you lose out on getting a maximum amount of hitpoints and fatigue,
Not to mention it takes forever to train skills that way.
I don't mind training magic skills that way cause they are fairly quick and really requires no effort.

If you're really set on it unless your role playing (just want the stats/level) I'd set the difficulty slider to the easiest setting. (Cutting corners already might as well cut one more right?)

I did the 5/5/5 stuff couple of times. it felt good for some time, than i realised how much time i had spent NOT enjoying the game and sent that whole damn philosophy to oblivion.

The main thing is to have a target set of skill levels that you enjoy playing at, and only use this strategy to get there, and no further. Which means that you should have played without it a few times to be able to consider what you need and what you don't. By all means max out the skill you enjoy using so that you get all its perks (and don't have to think about it again) but also consider what you don't use and can ignore completely. If you're obsessed by infinite wealth, max out Mercantile, but if you already own the only house you want to live in, ignore it.

You're likely to find that 5/5/5 gives way to 5/5/1 and eventually to not leveling up any more, because you can't get any better for the game-play you're enjoying, and what's the point of making the enemies stronger? Especially as that's not a more challenging fight, so much as a longer one because of the extra hit points to erode. Both sides max out their offense/defense around the 20's and all that increases after that is health, and therefore the time taken to reduce it to zero.

This is one of the other reasons for making preferred skills minors, so that they don't force up your level. It helps you level efficiently, but it also lets you stop leveling when you wish to, because you've maxed out the majors you use, and the others never change.

at 5/5/1 it seems like I can actually enjoy playing and a little less grinding. Thanks for diminishing return info.



Still learning how to set my majors properly. One day I'll get

Thanks for the feed back everyone it has been helpful. Honestly I'm probably gonna stop chasing the levels and just start enjoying the game world.

It is important to set the skills you always use as minors. By doing that it slows down the leveling as well as giving you the control to get the +5.
I have no trouble role playing my Dark Elf, because I am only using the skills that suits the character without fear of leveling up. It never feels like grinding.
Just make sure you keep track of what your minor skills are doing, do not let them get out of hand.

My Blade-Mage wants to level up Int, End and Strength.
All I have to do is keep an eye on my Alchemy, Conjuration, Armorer, Block, Blade and Blunt. (With the exception of blade, I have set all these to minors.)

I normally choose one major skill from each of the seven attributes, which gives me a good balance when you do have to lift the major skills.

Training is very important when leveling.
It should be easy to get 5/5/3 on any build. Just put 5 points of training into the third skill and it is suddenly now +3. Presto!

I really want to set up a character like that, where you don't have to feel like your grinding out the levels so damn much.

And I guess that mean setting the majority of majors to minors. Like I said still trying to wrap my head around some of this stuff.

Sometimes I don't know if I love or hate this leveling system.

On one hand I love it because it is very in depth and I love the basis of "you want to use a skill, you will have to train yourself." So many modern RPGs have such a dumbed down character creation / leveling system that I get really bored.

On the other hand, optimizing your character can be very un-fun and time consuming when I just want to get out there, explore, and enjoy the world. And having to do thing like setting your majors as minors seems a bit strange, like you are rewarded more for setting up your character in the completely opposite way the game suggests. I'm sure many of you veterans have reached this conclusion long, long ago.

I guess I like it more than hate it cause why else would I keep coming back.

I understand completely what you are saying, it is crazy that the game penalizes you for taking the skills that you want to use.
And the fact that every single one of the pre-defined classes in the tutorial dungeon make you level fast, is just more of an insult from the developers.

There are on three ways around it. Ignore the system and play the game any way that you like (and pay the penalty at level up), master the efficient system (which is easy once you get the hang of it), or use Mods.

Elder scrolls is a game series that I want to play for hundreds of hours, I do not want to level up every 2 hours. Unfortunately the designers build the game for the mass market appeal....

Hopefully Skyrim will have completely overhauled it. :bowdown:

Spend some time over at uesp and learn the system. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Efficient_Leveling

Rather than looking at it as "setting your majors to minor," one way to do this is to create an "ordinary person" rather than a "hero." Imagine if one of the ordinary people you meet on the street in the Imperial City was in your character's situation. What kind of skills would a merchant or a farmer have? You might be starting with something like Speechcraft, Mercantile, Armorer, Security, Athletics, Restoration, and Hand-to-hand. Those are skills that an ordinary person might have.

Now you suddenly find yourself in the middle of danger, and you have to take up skills that you never practiced before, just to survive. It's hard at first, but you eventually get enough skill to be the Champion of Cyrodiil. And the best part of playing a character that way is that you never have to think about leveling at all, because you're going to be training blade, armor, and marksman, etc., in the process of actually surviving.

All you have to do is make sure that your specialization is Combat if you're going to eventually be a warrior type, or Magic for a mage type, etc. That way, those "minor" skills will advance a bit faster.

That's a great way to look at actually. Like your character is a normal person, they are put in certain situations and suddenly they have to train different skills to survive.

They should put that one in the game booklet :biggrin:

In this game more than many others hind sight is always 20/20. Seems like I'm always playing the should, woulda, coulda, with builds. But I guess you learn new stuff every time you build a character.

I'm really enjoying this one though. Just had to close an oblivion gate with 30 Str and 10 Blunt using a mace cause I didn't want to lvl my marksman skill. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pick locks for 30 minutes to lvl my security skill . :happy:

If you're not enjoying getting +5's just don't do it! It's really not necessary. But if you want to:

END/AGI/INT is a good trio to start with. Marksman should be a major skill, security and sneak both minors. Heavy armor should be a minor skill, as well as Armorer. Block can be in majors. Alchemy and Conjuration should be minor skills. Run Conjuration up to 25 asap. Use your bow to kill things and level Marksman. Repair all armor and as soon as you qualify for a level up train Armorer 5 points. This will go toward the next level; you should have enough END governed skill ups at lvl 1 to get the +5 without using your training points. Keep doing this each level until Armorer hits at least 50. After that you can put your training points into Marksman.

Between sneak, security and marksman raises getting +5 to AGI shouldn't be a problem, but if you need extra credit just train Sneak as needed. You should not need to train Security until you get the skel key at which time training it becomes trivial.

INT raises come from levelling Conjuration and/oir Alchemy.

Mara

I always used to play Majors as Minors and grind out my max attribute gains. I've made the switch to OOO + MMM and I am finding that it is a very different experience. For one thing, it seems to be more important to be higher level than to have higher stats. I think I'm liking that, though it is honestly hard for me to tell because I still am in the vanilla leveling mindset.

All majors should be skills that (a) you can control and (B) you do not normally use.

Security should be major, not Marksman or Sneak, unless you never use a bow and never sneak, of course.

I always level efficiently but I use 5/5/1. I always play games to maximize resources and conserve whatever is there no matter what the game is. For a role playing game, it is even more natural to do so because it emulates real life (i.e., you don't normally go around in real life wasting resources needlessly... unless you are extremely wealthy, perhaps, and even then such behavior will come back to haunt you sooner or later).

In my view, developing the character is the entire enjoyment of role playing games (plus an excellent story, of course, or I wouldn't play). Oblivion is kind of weak on the story, but I simply start characters and develop them in various ways in order to anolyze the game elements, or at least the elements that matter to me for my role playing purposes. Wandering around the world killing monsters that spawn repeatedly is tedious for me, not fun. If I want to do that, I'll play an MMO. After 2500 hours in Guild Wars, I don't see the appeal of MMOs unless you want a glorified chat room; MMOs need much better story writing, that's all.

Focus on Endurance first (Heavy Armor major so you control it) plus Speed (Light Armor major for control) and Luck (if you do 5/5/1). The other attribute I normally focus on first is Willpower (because I use magic a quite a bit as an archer, or exclusively as a mage-type character) or Personality (if I choose a mage-type that uses Illusion, which is where I currently tend to go). Agility can wait because it is so easy to level (Sneak as a minor gives you an enormous pool for leveling Agility, so you won't need much from one of the other two skills). Strength can wait (unless you are playing melee characters).

One important point: some skills level much more easily than others even at high levels and regardless of specialization. Athletics slows down very quickly, for example, which is why it is so important to develop Speed while Athletics is low ( below 25-50). Same with Armorer; it's much better to use Armorer for Endurance while it is low because it slows down do much later.

Thanks again for the great tips everyone. I know alot of this stuff is in the wiki, but getting the info from people who've done is has been very helpful.

I think I'm finally getting a handle on it, just getting into a leveling routine made things alot easier, even with my slightly faulty build.

I feel my biggest mistake was using 2 majors linked to one attribute. I used sneak and marksman, and armorer and block. So I've done ALOT of lockpicking and getting beat up in heavy armor.

Trying to lvl security has actually been kind of fun, picking alot of locks other characters never bothered with.

Most people do want to lift endurance right from the start, so it is good to have the control of armorer and/or block as minors. I wouldnt worry though, if you are enjoying the time spent leveling, and are getting close to where you want to go, who cares!! Enjoyment must come first.

Keep in mind that you can always use an alteration spell to open a lock as well.
Sometimes it is handy to slow down your security, depending on the speed that your sneak is leveling.

Getting the Skeleton Key also helps control leveling Security

I pretty much made the same discovery.

Never knew you could do this. Honestly, after reading the tips it seems boring and no fun. I'd much rather randomly do what I do and get the levels I get rather than maxing out at a low level.

Interesting read though.

Depends on what is fun for each player. For me, running around and killing stuff is repetitive and boring, but the development process (i.e., planning careful development of skills) is what makes the game worth playing.

To each their own.