My bad, I should have provided more details earlier. The mod does make the world more difficult, but it uses a different method than the original game to adjust the challenge. For example, the way the monsters/bandits/etc are leveled.

Original game: The level of Enemy X is 'player level+2'. So if you're level 1, 8 or 20, he will always be 2 levels higher than you.
OOO: The level of Enemy X is from level 10 to 15. So you'll obviously get slaughtered at level 1 (he being a minimum of lv10), but when you reach level 20 he will be capped at lv15 and you will be slaughtering him.

That's part of the reason why I thought that system might interested you.
Oh well, I'll just wish you luck in finding a way to bring back the fun in your game.

i'm trying to plan out a character for effecient leveling, but i cant figure out exactly how he'll perform. such as how long it'll take him to max his attributes and his skills. from my calculations, it'll take him 31 levels to max all of his attributes besides luck, but 16 levels to max all his major skills!

that cant be right....

i know about that oblivion character planner thing, but it apparently only works for firefox, which i dont have.

if anyone can tell me how to do the math right, i would really appreciate it.

and if it matters, here's the character that i have planned:

race: altmer

birthsign: the lady

focus: combat

chosen attributes: endurance and willpower (might instead take speed or intelligence)
major skills:

blade
conjuration
alteration
sneak (might replace with security)
athletics (simpler to raise than acrobatics and light armor)
armorer
illusion

My strategy for the beginning is to keep conjuring a skeleton and of course attacking it to make it attack me. That combined with simply finding a rat or mudcrab (and of course repairing my armor) will raise my endurance. I could simply rely on rats and mudcrabs to raise my endurance, which would free me to choose two different attributes to raise. But that would be a bit difficult and will inevitably result in overleveling. Which i do not want. And Besides, once i max one of the attributes that will automatically free both it's minor skills for use without penalty, and maxing it's major skill will of course free that one for constant use. So once i achieve one or both of those things for an attribute, that would make overleveling alot easier to avoid, and somewhere down the road allow me to start doing some dungeons, my first target will be the goblins rats and mudcrabs in the imperial sewers. I dont think money will be a problem, since the only place i could possibly need money is in repairing my equipment, but that can be accomplished by finding repair hammers in boxes and barrels around the imperial city. And besides that, i will undoubtedly be digging up some money in the process so i could pay for repairs every now and then.

Is this a good build? Note that i am not going to raise luck, after i max everything else i'll just use fortify luck spells if i need it. The only benefit to luck is making money off of the arena (i've read that your chances of winning are based off of your luck attribute). That could be a handy way to make some money quickly.

If i do decide i want to go for raising all attributes including luck, i would take the thief birthsign, main attributes would be endurance and luck, and my race would be an orc, redguard, or nord. My skill list would almost certainly be the same.

okay i figured out what i did wrong with my math. my character would require 51 levels to max all his major attributes:

[700-(35+30+30+25+25+25+25)]/10=
[700-195]/10=
505/10=
50.5

and to max all seven of this attributes (minus luck of course) it would take 28 levels:

(700-290)/15=
410/15=
27.33333

290=sum of all his natural attributes plus the 20 from his birthsign

And since i can continue to level as long as i have at at least on attribute lower than 100, i can level all the way up to 51 thanks to my luck attribute. how much health would that result in? i dont know, but i'd imagine it would be quite a lot, especcially considering that it'll only take my 10 levels to max my endurance.

according to my calcuations, when he maxes his endurance at level 10, he will have 270 hit points, after he maxes his level in 40 more levels, it would be 670.

i wonder if that's good? no idea.

Enemies will have extremely large health pools by 51... but their damage does not increase past level 30ish. Your damage will probably not increase past level 30ish either so all those extra levels translate directly into longer, more boring fights.

EDIT: If I recall correctly, I think increasing luck does not do anything once your skills are at/near 100.

not precisely correct, only npc monsters (enemies that are a race that you can be) and monsters involved in quests or are used as a boss are leveled. for most nonhumanoids, they dont get stronger, the game just replaces them with stronger monsters, which is why the types of enemies you come across in the game change as you level. no matter what level you are, a rat is not going to kick your ass. after the game stops introducing new monsters (at i believe level 21 or 23) then you will continue to get stronger while your opponents will remain the same.

and weapon damage is based off of your skill and it's associated attribute. obviously they dont automatically have to be maxed at 30, it can be later. the only time it's maxed is when your weapon skill is 100 and it's associated attribute is 100, and even then it's not maxed unless you repair the weapon to 125%. and of course having an enchanted weapon will mean even more damage, and from my knowledge you're never going to get to the point where every NPC you come across is carrying an enchanted weapon. only the bosses will. except for of course conjurers, alot of them will have staffs, and the necromancers in that cave all have staves and an additional one or two enchanted weapons, and a mountain of healing potions and cure poison potions.

That's not quite correct, either. The high-end monsters that appear after level 20ish, like minotaur lords, xivilai, and liches, are leveled, meaning that their health keeps getting stronger as you level up. There's no real advantage in Oblivion to leveling above about level 25, because those monsters will just keep getting harder and harder.

I disagree with your idea that melee is unavoidable. I am currently playing a Breton "vanilla" Mage, with the Mage birthsign, armed only with a silver unenchanted dagger (purely there for show, as it's fairly useless.) I'm playing at 75% difficulty. This character's Endurance is 30, and is unlikely to ever increase much, so at that difficulty setting, a couple of hits from a mudcrab would likely be fatal. This character relies on a combination of summoned help, shield spells, ranged destruction spells, and illusion magic, along with Alchemy for healing and buffing. And a lot of dancing, dodging, and running away.

I played one character who never fought at all. She was an Illusionist, using a combination of Command and Invisibility, and finishing off enemies from a distance with ranged magic. Hardly anything ever touched her.

i stand corrected, apparently monsters do level with you. i'm level 3 and mudcrabs are a significant challenge to me.

i was trying to effeciently level a character, again, and of course i failed, again. i caught some disease from the stupid overpowered mudcrabs that drains his strength, so now i'm encumbered, have no way to remove the disease, and the only way he'll ever be able to move again is if i drop one of the heavy items that i need to level up his skills.

no matter what the hell you do, the game is specifically designed to screw you at every turn. the whole effecient leveling thing is just [censored], ITS NOT POSSIBLE NO MATTER WHAT THE HELL YOU DO THE GAME WILL NOT LET YOU DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do not chose altmer. altmer is for people using telekinesis and an infinite mana trick with spell stacking to insta kill enemies.

breton is the class of choice for . . . everyone. 50% magicka resistance is too good to pass up, since it allows you much higher survivability against spell casters. at high enough levels you can get complete immunity from all magicka sources with a single item.

blocking is too dangerous in the early game for building endurance->hitpoints. instead, you should fix stuff with hammers (armorer). get some levels and killing ability under your belt before you go out trying to block stuff.

armor. i was lucky and found a sigil stone which allowed me to enchant some clothing (indestructible) with armor. allowing me to maintain armor class throughout prolonged engagements. unlucky? reload and try again. with max armor, you will be taking 15 out of 100 damage. NOW you can get a shield and block. you'll find that you take almost nothing in damage.

efficiently leveling, for you, may be the other way around. instead of reaching level 51, maybe try reaching level 2 permanently. so choose 7 skills you know you'll never use. then, max out everything else, enemies will stay crap, and you will 1 hit kill them. then you'll never need to bother with leveling at all.

at level 51, enemies are more dangerous since they have reached master level in everything. meaning the chance of you being disarmed, knocked down, stunned etc also increase dramatically.

the other option is spend the time exploring the game rather than fighting it. literally spend all of your time training to max your stats without enemy interaction. then go find all the high end items that make you invincible before starting the real game. you don't have to engage everything that kills you at first. the uesp has an article called 'end game optimizing'.

i do normally take breton (if i make a mage, he's a breton, if i make a rogue, he's a khajiit, though sometimes i make a dunmer, my first character ever was a dunmer battlemage). i was tired of choosing the same two races over and over so i made something different: an altmer. it's similar to a breton, but still quite different. i took khajiit alot until ppl started telling me that it wasnt such a smart idea since you can get nighteye and high agility later in the game anyway (i stopped after i discovered fingleam, last time i got that item btw i didnt have waterbreathing, i know so well where it is i just dive right to it)

i chose armorer as one of my major skills, if i wanted to rely on that to increase my endurance, my build would be screwed. i dont have the money for repair hammers, or to buy a mysticism spell (i've been relying on conjuration to level my character).

the reason my newest character failed is bc of a disease, again. i was doing the main quest once (with a juggernaut character wearing the knights of the nine armor, and i was doing very very well) but then he caught vampirism, i still dont know how he became a vampire even though i removed the disease. anyway while trying to cure it, i ended up getting to 100% vampirism just trying to find that stupid [censored] (i mean witch) only to find it's virtually impossible to gather her little trinkets. so he was 100% vampire, meaning if he went into a city to drink blood the gaurds would automatically attack him, he'd be forced to kill them, then he would accumulate a huge bounty and lose the stupid armor and weapons i was relying on. end up in jail or having to avoid the cities for the rest of his life. and my sister's friend wonders why i'm so hesitant to break the law in the game...he just slaughters ppl left and right and somehow gets away with it (and it's not a hack, he has the xbox version).

wait a minute, what do you mean 'quit fighting and just play the game'???? this is an rpg, fighting stuff is how you play the game! the only non combat thing you can do is overlevel yourself with alchemy, and i've fallen into that trap enough times already. imagine the problems you have when you dont raise your endurance or a single combat skill at all for 10 or 20 levels, everything just slaughters you and you cant so much as harm anything. it's like playing in reverse god mode.

If you hate the game so much, why not stop playing?

Or play differently.

I use the majors as minors way of levelling (using three major skills, sometimes using one other and ignoring the rest) to cap my level.

Research, seriously. The game isn't impossible. Yes, it can get very hard when your level is in the teens, but that's what the difficulty slider/alchemy/levelling up a minor skill (combat oriented) is for...

I'd suggest that you're making this too hard for yourself. For every problem that the game throws at you, there are several solutions.

Right out of the sewer, one of the two alchemy shops in the IC always sells some mandrake root for something like 2 septims. Just eat mandrake root to instantly cure any disease. You can also pick the stuff for free on the roadside outside of Anvil and Bravil.

There are several ways of making money in the game without the risk of combat. Alchemy is the most obvious: Just go around harvesting stuff, brew potions from it, and sell them to Sinderion in Skingrad (or any other merchant, but Sinderion will probably give you a better price.) Join the mages guild, even if you're not going to do any of the quests, and you have access to all kinds of free alchemy equipment, books, and other stuff that you can turn around and sell. Same with the fighters guild; join up and then sell all the weapons and things that are lying around in the guild halls. Then invest the money you earned into training Armorer, which helps your endurance. (This kind of activity isn't really needed at normal difficulty, but is almost essential if you're playing at high difficulty.)

Alchemy is your best friend.

There are two skills in the game which must be raised to 50 before they become useful. Armorer needs that level so you can repair enchanted items. Illusion needs that level so you can cast Invisibility, Chameleon, and Paralyze. Those are the only skills that my characters ever pay to train up.

You want to level as slowly as possible in this game. The idea of trying to advance quickly to get the "best" version of leveled items is a self-defeating notion, because your own character's skills are far more important than the enchanted junk he's wearing. The last time I finished the Main Quest, it was with a Nord wearing plain leather armor and using no weapon more potent than a silver claymore. If you're really concerned about having the "best" version of an artifact, there's a mod that levels all quest-reward items along with your character.

I made sure to try maxing my altmer apprentice's endurance ASAP on normal difficulty but liches and magic casting 'bosses' still tend to 2 shot kill me. I am only playing on normal difficulty and could not imagine trying to do it on the highest. I think level 30ish is the sweet spot and low 30's at max if you want to fight the high level enemies constantly without having the 'grind' feel.

i've played around with illusion (when i was doing the dark brotherhood), didnt find much use of it. casting invisibility automatically alerts everyone around you, and you cant get away bc they'll just automatically cluster around you until the invisibility wears off, they even stare right at you! i've also tried using stuff like demoralize an calm and frenzy, i've never once got them to do anything. i dont really understand why everyone is so obsessed with it, the only useful thing i've ever found in it is chameleon, which i do try to attain as much as soon as possible, though i've never succeeded. the closest i've ever come is making a weak little chameleon potion. it gave like 17% chameleon for 10 seconds or something like that.

so basically even if my character is as perfect and powerful as it can be, the game will still be completely futile? how nice. like i said, no matter what you do you're screwed.

How is it then that many members of this forum (including myself) use illusion magic to great effect?

You realise demoralize, calm, frenzy and command are all level dependant? If your spell isn't a high enough level it'll do sod all.

yeah, i was using a level 25 frenzy spell on a bunch of level 15 goblins, all it did was make every goblin in the entire cave come and attack me (lucky for me, i still hadnt realized the thing was set to god mode). i had like 10 goblins lying in a pile in one room. it was rediculous

like i said, i've already fallen into the alchemy trap several times, and had to abandon the character bc he was like lvl 20 with the hit pionts and combat skills of a level 1. and i know from my own experiences that most illusion spells are worthless. and i know full well what that difficulty slider does, and i've learned more than 10 times now that effecient leveling simply is not possible. did you know sites that tell you how to survive at the highest difficulty (which i am not doing, i was hoping it would give me some advise that helps tremondously at higher settings, and thus would be particularly helpful at lower settings) tells you that you have to effeciently level or you'll never survive? and now you're telling me the opposite, that effecient leveling is self-destructive. from my experience,

OK, bit of a tidy up. A good thread so far, perhaps someone should cool down and stop accusing other members of lying and lay off the name calling. OK?

Frenzy makes the target of the spell attack whatever is nearest. In that case, it appears it was you.
Command is better for this. Especially when cast from a hiding place.
I assure you, Illusion isn't worthless. It's one of the most powerful skills in the game if used correctly. My Healer uses it a hell of a lot, and she has no problems. Except when she gets surprised, but y'know.
Cast Invisibility, go into sneak mode and move slowly away from the enemies. Or cast it further away from them.

The alchemy trap? Don't take it as a major. If you leave it as a minor skill, you can use it as much as you want and you won't level up. You can be master of Alchemy at level one, if you so wish.

You said you're playing a rogue type character? Sneak! Get your sneak up to level 20 in the first room of the tutorial (sneaking against a wall), and then sneak through the rest. Leave it as a minor, and you'll be at level 25 sneak by the end. After that, it's plain sailing.

Efficient levelling is ONE way of doing it. Like I said. I, personally, take three major skills I'm going to use, and ignore the rest. This caps my level at around level 20, so that enemies don't get ridiculously high hit points. Of course, I need to efficiently level so I can get my attributes to 100 by the time I reach my ultimate level.
Efficient levelling is NOT impossible, I assure you. You just need to make sure you leave at least one skill governing each attribute (it's best leaving two) as a minor skill, so you can train them to get a +5 bonus to the attributes upon level up.

Edit: Thanks, Rohugh.

I suspect the goblins attacked you after casting a frenzy spell at them simply because you hit them with a spell and drew their attention. Frenzy only works on NPCs. (http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Frenzy) . Even vs NPCs it will cause them to simply attack the closest target (sometimes you).

I agree completely with Count Lauriel that Command Creature or Command Humanoid is generally much more effective. The magnitude (accounting for spell effectiveness) must be high enough to account for the target's level, but the duration only has to be long enough to get the fight started. Cast the spell to start a fight and disappear. Repeat until only one wounded survivor remains. Snipe him off.

Possibilities? My character plays on normal difficulty and does not cheat. She is all about optimizing bow + illusion and does fine. We don't approach her play from a perspective of 'you can't'; rather from a perspective of solving challenges one at a time based on the wealth of experience available here on the forum and at UESP wiki. Your mileage may vary of course, but I am certainly not alone in fielding a successful character with many intentional limitations or gimps designed into them.

In my opinion, Frenzy is more useful for getting non-hostile NPCs to go aggressive, than it is for dealing with multiple enemies. Command is the Illusionist's tool for hitting groups of enemies from the shadows. Cast it from a distance, while sneaking, and then immediately cast invisibility and back away from where the fight is happening.

if all think you're so [censored] smart and perfect and aryan? then explain this one:

i was doing the tutorial level, with a dunmer, i went to push the logs down and you know what? they didnt budge! then one of the goblins ran up the hill (a first for me) and one-shot me with his dagger, full health, 80 hit points, one-shot by a [censored] goblin with a dagger.

considering the game proudly features aryans and shows blacks as being an incompetant and superstitious race seperate from the rest of humanity, obivously they're all white supremists, which would certainly go a long way in explaining the idiocy in this game.

I don't know why the logs didn't work for your dunmer. Some kind of one-off glitch, maybe. It's possible that you were also hit by an arrow or two from the other goblin.

I don't know anything about the rest of your post. I feel the races in the Elder Scrolls games are pretty well balanced. I've played all of them, and they all have strengths and weaknesses.

After a moderator advice a few posts ago it seems it was ignored. The topic is now closed.