It's a sign of a good game that you can play it enjoyably at both extremes. I have run characters that got into the 50's and maxed out a lot of skills, and also played ones who did everything before hitting 20.

One current character uses no weapons and no armor (mage of course) and so never advances in the associated skills. Because I made some of them majors, her overall level didn't rise too fast and the "restriction" of not using armor or weapons was not getting her killed all the time. She'd probably have stayed at a low level forever if I hadn't decided that I wanted to allow the higher-level creatures into the game for the variety. The low 20's is a comfortable area where no quests are locked out, all the possible opponents have appeared, and even the Goblin Warlords will still succumb in a finite time.

Acadian's formula of three majors to use gets you to peak at around the right level, but I'd cut back to 3 "nevers" and allow one "maybe" to let you adjust more easily. In my case the inclusion of Armorer as a major lets me repair loot whenever I want to her to level up a bit faster, even if she's not using the stuff. Not needing to repair enchanted equipment means the actual level doesn't mean anything. She uses her Alchemy, Restoration and Mercantile, all of which benefit from the start level of 25+ in reaching useful perks earlier, or are slow to increase, or both!

My earlier characters that reached higher levels did so by following the same kind of path to the 20's and then switching their focus. E.g. I ran one mage that started in heavy armor with a sword and shield and didn't start using magic for offense until he'd maxed out endurance and strength, and enchanted clothing to replace his armor.

I will never truly be done with a character because There are always dungeons to loot and forts to investigate I have played this game for almost 4 years and I still haven't found all the places in the game even after beating it 6 times. So I will go back to a character and run around looking for new places and still find them on one of my characters I have 176hrs on him. Plus when I am leveled up so high I can turn the difficulty meter almost all the way up to make caves and forts and ruins more challenging for me. This game will never get boring to me I just wish my console offered more for the game then I could make use of them features instead of just the same ole KOTN and SI.

You, me, and maybe Acadian need to start a club. I mean I leveled slowly before by doing the same thing with my majors, which is what lead to this thread, but now. Now I have all the skills taking about twice as long to level via mods, and 15 instead of 10 increases to majors to level up. (Which, incidentally, creates a level cap in the low 30s.) I recommend it, btw. You can be sloppier about choosing majors, and even get by on one of the pre-made classes.

When I look at leveled lists, 20 is about where it all stops. That's part of why I'm so surprised that people don't think of levels 11-20 as the last, most easily neglected half of the game. Also why I asked if overhauls are the cause.



Everyone plays that much when they first get Oblivion. Though that's nearly a level an hour! And I've never thought of it as cheating when I leveled conjuration by summoning a skeleton, then blunt by hitting it three times, then block by standing there waiting for the summon spell to end, then restoration to get ready for the next skeleton. If I moved it from the streets of Bruma in broad daylight into a private/guild training room, I could call it RP!

Though if I spam a skill when I'm at 80% of a level, it's not normally a major in order to level up soon. It's normally a minor in order to try and secure a stat bonus I'm worried I haven't earned yet. I think you guys are wrong about restoration, btw. You're just using it wrong. Real restoration users constantly spam a heal spell, in order to get full bars in the laziest and cheapest possible way. That includes each time you run down a steep hill and lose 3 HP to gravity, and when your health bar is nearly empty after a fight and you need a good four repetitions to fill it back up. That's a lot more casting than a destruction user casting their strongest spell once per enemy and never in the city, or an alteration user finding a locked chest every couple minutes. If you're using it that way, restoration levels just fine.



I think you have summed up the topic best of all.

Speaking of capping one's level, I like to do that as well. Here is some of the data I look at when considering where to cap:

17: Top alchemy gear and sigils
19: Top leveled Hatred's Soul
20: Daedric weapons, Daedric/Glass armor, all quests, almost all monsters
22: Xivilai
23: Perfect amber/madness (SI), gloom wraiths
25: Lots of top-leveled quest rewards.
26: Liches
30: Everything, including all remaining top-leveled quest rewards.

Since I don't care about leveled quest items, the choice for me is normally 20 or 23 depending on if I want P Amber/Madness. For Buffy, the choice was 20. She's a daedric bow kinda girl.

I'm usually done with my characters when they hit the 20-25 level mark. I try to save the main quest until later so I can get the best sigil stones. I just usually do a bunch of guilds and random quests before that to kinda screw around. Then I go and have fun in the Isles, go on a muderous rampage and finish.

Apparently I was wrong about leveled lists, and the game does keep adding some stuff up to level 30. That helps explain thing a bit.

5. If i did the math correctly the max for this character would be 54. Propably done before level 25. Plan is to go Main quest > Mages guild > knights > Isles. nGCD, Progress and Fran's to mitigate the leveling issues. And Quest Award Leveler to do quests when i want to :hehe:

I'm in the group who generally cap a character at about 20. I don't see anything very interesting beyond that level, and my characters have usually accomplished what they're going to at that level. Usually well before that level. Then they usually retire, and their save files are archived. Some of them hang around, and I play them occasionally for fun, but don't go for advancement (and sometimes we don't even save at the end of the session.)

My characters never "do everything." My characters are usually oriented to one or two areas of the game, and often they ignore all the major quest lines. I usually alternate among three or four different characters at a time. My present main character is a level 10 alchemist who has done not a single quest from any of the major lines, but is close to finishing the Nirnroot thing. She also has a very thoroughly explored map. She probably won't go much higher.

My alternate characters are at level 1 and level 7; the level 7 one has just started the Thieves Guild, and will probably hang around to near level 20. The level 1 character is an unusual dead-is-not-quite-dead experimental character, who will probably be reincarnating at level 1 quite frequently.

I had one character, when I first started playing Oblivion, who finished the MQ, Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, KOTN, Arena, and Shivering Isles, all before reaching level 4! That was my one "do everything" character, and it was extremely difficult for me to come up with good reasons for her to be involved with all those factions. I could never come up with any excuse for her to become involved with the Thieves Guild or DB, and I realized from that character that neither high level nor vast accomplishments were necessary to have fun in the game.

Nowadays I use a leveling mod that removes leveling from my attention (but keeps track in the background.) So I don't even think about it, until somebody asks.

Klawed Flaw the current Klawed Flaw is level 35 right now. He's not planning to stop leveling.

My main character is somewhere in the late 40's (level-wise).

But I'm going to stop leveling him at around 50, mostly because that's where they hit the level cap anyway.

Oblivion gets pretty boring when you are about level 20-29.

You and I clearly look at things from completely different angles.