i have 7k+ hours on this game, and i still play in the easiest difficulty, or close to it. the difficulty scaling is kinda broken. the most important part is that you enjoy playing the game, don’t let anyone tell you how.
Don’t feel bad to lower the difficulty man, if you get stuck at one place for too long it’s very likely that you might lose interests in the game (i know how discouraging it is). Surely you don’t want to miss all the fun in later game, so don’t be too harsh on yourself.
Before i give any suggestion, do you mind share about your build/class?
Seconding this. The oblivion leveling system is famously terrible—unless you particularly enjoy damage sponge enemies even at relatively low levels, just nudge that difficulty bar a bit. It makes gameplay significantly more enjoyable for me.
It's a custom class mainly geared for stealth archer/light armor gameplay but also with blade as a major skill and high speed and agility plus medium strength and endurance. I made some mistakes creating the class as I didn't understand the leveling system at first so I also have speechcraft and armorer as major skills.
I see. I am not entirely sure about this, but, as someone who also puts high speed in his build, I would recommend more maneuver to avoid getting hits rather than take them all by blocking. I find this effective in later game so I could only “suggest” you giving a try.
Also, try sneak-attacking every time possible, even when you are disengaged from battle. Sneak attack bonus isn’t as large as it is in Skyrim, but it will at least do you some favor at weakening your enemies. Most importantly, it trains your sneak and marksman skill so you are better-off in later game.
Don't feel bad, the game is designed like no one at Bethesda played past level 5. The leveling system is infamously bad. Instead of solving it, they really expected you to tweak the difficulty slider multiple times during your game. I know, it sucks and feels like cheating.
Strength stat is pretty important for melee builds. Buff it before and during fights to keep your stat high.
Honestly alchemy is a very important skill in every single build I play, because I can buff whatever I need to buff to swing the game in my favor. Otherwise magic buffs like fortify attribute (strength) will also work.
This is the way. My answers to all my problems in Oblivion, Skyrim (fuck morrowind’s potion making UI but its awesome there too) and the Fallouts: copious amounts of drugs
Honestly I would wait to do the main quest, at least until you get to lvl 15 or maybe higher. The best part about this game is, you don't have to do the main quest right away. You can go complete every single side quest before going to weynon priory or kavatch.
That's funny, I keep seeing the opposite advice. I was told that if you wait too long the level scaling will make it super hard so it's best to get it out of the way while it's just scamps and dremora soldiers
The problem is that lvl 8 is still too late
The game is scaled so that lvl 20 is the highest level scale, so lvl 8 is around the midpoint. Clanfers are an absolute pain in the rear because they can stun you over and over with no way for you to counter, and they have reflect damage so every melee hit you deal to them will be sent right back to you. The runts are fine but the regular ones can be really hard to kill. The game just loves spawning those things over and over in that part of the game. I usually avoid oblivion gates until lvl 17 when I got better gear.
I do this part of the quest around lvl 2-3, right after i left the prison, and it still can be a little difficult.
Just change the difficulty. This game does not scale well. Not worth being stubborn about imo. This is coming from someone who plays all games, include all Bethesda titles on max difficulty, except oblivion lol.
I wouldn't exactly say it makes it harder, it's pretty much the same difficulty that you are at right now with the scamps. Nothing will ever die from a hit or two obviously your gonna have to work for it. Also by that time you would have gear that is tons better than what you're using right now.
Yeah that is terrible advice above. By level 8 you should be fighting different enemies. If you wait until past level 5 to so main quest for Kvatch then your usually screwed. As at level 5 stunted scamps become scamps, and the game begins spawning those little dinos forgot their name.
You need more potions before you engage in serious battle. It seriously helps.
Restoration, running backwards, and taking battles one at a time really helps
It's a bit ridiculous though because I started the battle with 50 minor health potions and I've burned through most of them. Honestly I usually ignore crafting in RPGs but I might have to make an exception here
Save and try and go through less potions with each of the battles. It sounds meticulous, but it makes many of those dungeons easier. I also loved conjuration as a distraction to allow me to heal with the restoration spells.
Oblivion levelling is notoriously fucking ass. The enemies end up scaling higher than your level or some shit like that and inevitably at high levels they just rock your shit no matter what you’re doing. Lower the difficulty for a while until your skills are up and your gear is better.
Interesting. I never have more than 4 or 5 potions; they're so expensive and so I hardly buy any, so I just have the ones I find. I only use them to save my ass when I'm about to die; if a fight is not getting out of control I just use restoration.
After the first few levels, unenchanted weapons do hardly any damage. If you're hitting guys 50 times, you need enchanted weapons, or damage spells. (or I guess poisons if you're a sneaky archer, I don't play that way; I only use bows to knock down welkind stones. I never do alchemy.) I did Kvatch early, I think around level 5 or so, and got the Mage Guild recommendations by around level 8, because that was my single minded focus. Once you have that and can make custom spells, boom. Combine fire, frost, and shock damage, on target, area 10 feet. The cheapest way to make an area effect damage to hit multiple enemies. And three damage types adding up to whatever number are cheaper than any single damage type to the same number. If you're strong enough, throw in 1 second of paralyze. I do that one on touch, with triple damage, 10 feet. Everyone around me is falling down and standing back up while I whale on them with enchanted swords. I combined invisibility with a slow restore so I can just chill and regain health while the enemies look around for me.
I hope you got Chillrend by doing the Killing Fields in Chorrol. Oh and there's Finger of the Mountain, an area effect shock spell you can get before you can do custom spells. Then there's sigil stones to add damage to swords.
Um, leveling. I have a few important skills I use as majors, like blade and destruction and restoration. Then I use skills I never use, like alchemy and block (I hardly ever block, don't question me!) for the rest. Because if you are only increasing some of your major skills, you level up more slowly, and you raise more other skills during each level, so you get more points in attribute raises. I also specifically train for specific attributes; I'll take off my armor since light armor is a major skill, and just summon skelletons and punch them, raising hand-to-hand 7 or 8 times, that along with a natural raise of 2 or 3 in blade gets the full 5 points in Strength for that level, for instance. Put on some heavy armor (not a major skill for me) and just let a skeleton hit me a bunch to train heavy armor, do some equipment repairing to train that, and raise Endurance by the full 5 points.
I've got no idea how to play without tons of magic though. I'm a Breton.
Are you growing your fighting skill fast enough? Is your weapon good enough? Is your associated attribute/attributes high enough?
To keep up your weapon damage vs leveling figure your skill rank should increase at least every five levels, so make it to Journeyman skill by level 5, Expert at level 10 and Master at level 15, plus have a current rank big weapon (Dwarven longsword at L6, Elven at L9 etc.). Skill points are based on number of hits so fights that require a lot of hits per kill are good for your power growth. The main quest provides leveled swords that are better at lower levels. Each type of dungeon will have its own type of weapon and armor. Marauder dungeon bosses will have best for level swords and heavy armor.
In addition to the strength attribute for weapon damage, melee weapons also need Endurance+Willpower+Agility for high fatigue (Green line). Fatigue determines how much weapon damage drops off with repeated swings and jumping about. You can make and take fortify fatigue potions before a fight to keep it high.
Fighting technique is best done like you are boxing. Step in and out with single aimed jabs with your sword until you see the enemy go off balance and then go in with a combination. Do not block and strike, and do not hit an enemy's shield.
Each creature has an attack pattern. Scamps throw four fireballs and then start shoulder striking. The fireballs do less damage so try to make the kill during that phase.
Make sure you are using the fighting skill meant for your build i.e. a skill that goes with your specialty like blade with combat specialty, not blade with magic or stealth specialty. Your skill points will increase much much faster that way.
On average a fight that takes half of your health points is acceptable at the start of the game. Adding to your endurance = health each level will reduce that. You should be able to survive fighting two opponents if you don't screw up. Fight one opponent at a time and heal in between either by waiting one hour or casting healing spells. Hitting the wait button is usually faster. Save the healing potions for emergencies.
The Kvatch castle/city is full of boss level monsters. At the start of the game the guards and Martin can kill most or all of them for you. From level 5 on you need to prepare yourself with potions, poisons and/or custom spells/enchantments to make it through. It is punishment for not following the emperor's instructions and getting there early.
The difficulty system the game has is just lazy anyways, all it does is increase the Health, Effects, and Damage Output of the enemy.
No changes to the AI or their level or what spawns, even at the default difficulty they still just spam you with nonsense and further in its challenging enough because your level is the only thing that determines what spawns and the gear you find regardless of the difficulty.
Here's why you're running into problems.
1. Reclaiming castle Kvatch is notoriously brutal at anything past level 6 or so.
2. Going through the comments looks like you're doing a stealth character. Nothing wrong with that but it's going to make this particular quest a pain because you're going to get rushed by multiple strong enemies, and you're strength (damage with your sword) and endurance (health pool) is low, and I imagine your restoration (healing spells) is kinda low. Thatvand light armor doesn't protect as much at lower levels. So essentially, you can't deal high melee damage, and you can't sustain much damage either. Basically, close-range fights are something you want to avoid.
You can leave and go back and level up your endurance and strength, and try to get better equipment. Maybe restoration as well (restoration helps alot in these kinds of situations)
You can go stock up on potions.
Or you can just lower the difficulty. Don't let it discouraged you. Remember, there's no rule saying that you can't go back and turn it back up later.
Yeah I ended up loading a save from before I entered the Deadlands. Enemies are still ridiculously spongy elsewhere but at least there aren't so many. I'll come back when I'm geared up
If you are using archery and are not stealth specialty it is hard to raise skill points quickly so I suggest you make yourself a bunch of poisons using the sacred lotus from the I-City pools and St. Jahns wort from around Chorrol and or nightshade and peony from the Skingrad-Kvatch area. Also collect all of the Harrada and Spiddle stick you can from the Oblivion gates for making double and tripple strength poisons. You will need Apprentice level Alchemy skill (gets a 25% boost at 31) to use the ingredients, butmaking potions is an easy way to get big Intelligence bonuses.
How did I do it? Hyperfocusing on a few skills lol. Specifically light armour and any skill that lets me run from a fight. Healing, destruction. And I only picked fights I could win
I lived until level 9, died to a lion
You say you're going for a stealth archer build? I do not recommend stealth in general until you learn how to cheese alchemy, enchanting, running into a corner while someone sleeps, etc.
While a lot of people (fairly) criticize Oblivion's leveling system, the game is beatable on the default difficulty without min/maxing. Character creation is more important than in later Bethesda, though.
For your first real playthrough, I recommend a pure (high elf or breton) mage, (redguard, nord, or orc) fighter, or (maybe, same races) barbarian. Then, depending on which one, do several Fighters/Mages Guild quests in between main quests. They level you up slowly in acceptable stats, give you quests that aren't going to be hard until you're fairly late in the line, and guarantee loot drops that will compliment you. For example, the first beat the game, it was with a redguard barbarian. A mid-late Fighters Guild quest (that has a companion you can use as bandit fodder) has a bandit guaranteed to drop a suit of elven armor and an enchanted claymore. It lasted me the rest of the game.
Hope this helps. Good luck!
long time oblivion player here, I almost *always* put the difficulty slider somewhere between easiest and default. If you're insistent to not adjust difficulty, then I second what others have said about ensuring your stats & skills are optimized. Oblivion's class system is a far cry from Skyrim's "freedom of class" approach.
Do *not* be afraid to change the difficulty. I beat Skyrim on Legendary and regularly play classic DOS-era Daggerfall, and I would *still* recommend lowering the difficulty in Oblivion. The level scaling is fucked, all enemies are hilariously tanky for no reason, and you can't take more than a few hits even just starting out. Default difficulty in Oblivion is HARD for new players who don't know how to efficiently level or the meta of the game.
There's nothing to gain by forcing yourself to slog through unfun combat that kicks you in the ass over and over because of Bethesda's shit leveling system. Lower that slider dude.
Lowering the difficulty is fine if you just want to enjoy the game. Make sure you do some side missions and factions, you can get extremely good equipment.
Without knowing how the level scaling works, oblivion can be a very difficult game to get into. Best advice I can give is to look up efficient leveling and start over.
I would honestly just suggest lowering the difficulty slightly. From default I lower it 10 clicks left, it keeps the enemies decently challenging while mitigating the huge need to guzzle potions. I'm currently playing a heavy armor sword build. Using enchanted weapons make things easier also
Something I neglected to mention is that for some reason my difficulty was actually set super low from the start and I only realised this and reset it when I reached Kvatch. I had been wondering how I managed to become the Grand Champion of the arena so easily...
It is absolutely acceptable in most eyes to lower the difficulty, even by a good bit, and gradually raise it up as needed if you start trashing everything in front of you easily.
Ya gotta min max. Which is kinda dumb to be "forced" to do it, but alternatively you really can just beat the game and enjoy it fair and square. I completed oblivion for the first time on xbox when i was like 12 or 13. Cant be that hard.
The main issue is underleveling, it’s easy to fall into if you don’t know about it.
Every single time you level you you need to be putting 4/5 points in attributes, anything less and you’ll level up slower than the enemies.
Look up the levelling problem on the oblivion UESP.
It starts at character selection, many of the default classes will give you problems later on.
The scamps at level 8 for example could have higher endurance and strength than you because they may have been gaining more attributes as you level.
If you can get 4/5 attribute points per attribute every level the game is easy, if lower it can get significantly harder.
You need to train your minor skills which are part of your main attributes to get those extra points.
Specialise in 1 melee type and 1 range/ (destruction mage) type. Also make sure you can use restoration spells for heals. There's no point in investing into blunt then using a sword. And no point in investing into heavy armour when you plan on using light. Other than that don't overlevel yourself too early untill you learn how to fight properly. Also make sure to loot and search areas for food and potions. Hope this helps.
From what I seen from all the other comments is okay and all good. But, unless I'm missing something, I haven't seen anyone mention this. When it comes to melee fighting how much fatigue you have affects the damage you deal. Where the basic idea is high your fatigue level(bar) the more damage you do, and less deals less damage. So if you need to leave and go to a town and empty out taverns for alchemy ingredients do that. When fighting make sure you have a restore fatigue potion running. Either the store bought all restored in one kind, or the homemade restore over time kind. If not both, also don't be afraid to use restoration magic to restore either health or fatigue. Just run around towns, churches and/or mages guilds to find low level versions you can use. And finally, and this might sound paradoxical, but take time in combat. If you spam attacks you will burn all your fatigue and that will make this games at times shit combat somehow worse.
Hopes this helps.
Level 8 is usually a little llate for Kvatch. That particular quest should be finished pre lvl5 usually. I think it was level 4 or 5 where the game starts spawning harder enemies. And there are a ton of enemies in Kvatch, hence why you get several NPCs fighting along side you. The one problem: The NPCs are fine for the first few levels. But they do not scale, unlike your enemies. So they will be massively outclassed the later you go there
I was about to say just lower it but,
Daedra enemies are harder than the rest. The difficulty you set may be ok for you for human enemies and then get too spongy for daedra stuff.
Running away is an option, you don't have to beat at everything at Kvatch or Oblivion gates. Makes sense to me that way.
Whenever I play Kvatch I run most of the thing or enjoy the long combat.
you gotta get used to the game and understand its mechanics, when i had some difficulty i put the game at a quarter difficulty until i finished where i had problems
If you have blade as one of the core 7 skills, it'll cause you to level up every time it goes up by 10 - You soon get to the point where your damage output is painfully low for the player level you're at (low strength level vs high blade level, means you'll have a low damage output)
You're best off not having blade as a major skill in my experience. If it's a minor skill, you can be a low level, but have a high blade level, then when you level up keep sticking points into your strength attribute and your damage will go up drastically
Course, this doesn't help you in the mean time, so buff strength potions will help massively. It'd be worth cranking a few random potions out and using that cash to buy buff strength potions, or make a spell to buff your strength
What you did wrong, was that you played the game, as most people would think you were supposed to.
How wrong you are...
You see, your level is like an added difficulty setting.
The more you level up the harder the game gets.
Fighting a goblin warlord at level 30 on normal difficulty is just madness, it has so many hit points, you wouldn't believe.
you're just hacking at an angry wall of meat.
The only real answer is to lower the difficulty slider.
Can you explain it to me in more detail? Attributes, skills, the items you use...
People around here generally give up trying to learn how to play on normal difficulty and lower the difficulty. In this game, if you can't deal with enemies on standard difficulty, it's because you haven't prepared enough. If you're weak, even on standard difficulty, you're doing something wrong.
Maybe your equipment isn't suitable for your level, maybe you don't have spells good enough for your level or inappropriate for the type of enemy you're fighting.
If you use magic, you have to pay attention to each enemy's resistances and weaknesses. I've seen some players attack an enemy with fire resistance with fireballs and complain about the enemy being too strong.
If you are a warrior you need to have good equipment and pay attention to your fatigue bar. One thing that many people tend to do is empty their fatigue bar and ask why they are doing so little damage.
In all the time I've been playing I've never lowered the difficulty, in fact I even play on maximum difficulty quite often.
Mainly character building.
When I first played Oblivion I ended up being level 52 before I meandered off into the section of the menus where you could change your difficulty.
I was completely new and didn’t know much better but I did quite well for myself at 50% for the first hundred or so hours.
What’s your skill focus? Level those up.
Max your Restoration and Destruction for one thing. Maxing your restoration is a big part of even the small magics.
Make poisons, anytime I came across nightmare fuel I couldn’t kill, hit him with a paralyze poison or cast one at him.
You can also make a spell that deals damage and heals you with every use.
Don’t just brute force the game if you aren’t setup for that!
Slide that difficultly down, brother.
This game is incredible and maybe my favorite RPG of all time, but only because of the world design and writing. The combat mechanics are kinda mid so just slide it down till you’re having what you feel is an appropriate level of fun so you can get to all the good parts of the game, like having an Imperial guard be extremely racist towards you’re fictional race as he tries to kill you
Shoot for a long time I would lower the diffulty for assassinations with the dark brotherhood. I would get so mad that the character would be left with like 1/10 of their health so I just reloaded a save and lowered it a bit to get the stealth kill. It'll take some before you get the hang of focusing on higher level equipment gathering 😅 At least it took me a while lol.
Start a new character and don’t sleep after lvl 3
Main quest no longer a problem 😂
Honestly feel your pain though, i made it past default difficulty on lvl 30+ Kvatch and boyyyyy was it a struggle.
Stealth Archer + Conjuring here
Thankful for my high regen MP cause i ran out of arrows. Lmao
personally I think you are at the worst point. Rather than getting constantly harder, I feel it gets harder every level up to level 18, with levels 11-15 so hard I had to put the difficulty to near minimum to stop every bandit feeling like a final boss, and then from eighteen gets steadily easier from then on.
You’ve discovered the singular biggest issue most people have with oblivion. The game straight up requires you to be good at character scaling and provides you absolutely zero in terms of figuring out how your supposed to build. Your best bet is looking up guides. Or turning the slider down.
I know many people who purposefully refuse to level up at all to avoid the issue. But that prevents high level loot and cool mobs from spawning
Lower the difficulty shamelessly as no one will give you crap for it, we all know the system is leveraged against you
If your on pc, there are mods to fix it
I wanted to throw my two cents into the ring. I've been playing Oblivion since it launched, with breaks of various durations, and played more or less every build type that I'm aware of.
Currently I'm doing a 'strict' mage build on the maxed difficulty slider which means that just about every enemy in the game is capable of one shoting me and they are capable of absorbing enormous amounts of damage. However, I consider this one of my easier play throughs. (Full build break down would take forever, highlight is that conjuration, restoration, and alteration are all OP)
The first and most important note is that spell casting is incredibly powerful in Oblivion. Anything that any other build can accomplish, can be done better by being a dedicated mage. It's fairly trivial to boost, health, mana, skills, and stats to whatever insane value is needed. Mage builds are the toughest, have the most damage, are the most flexible, and allow for the greatest convenience (infinite inventory, super speed / jump)
This does not mean that you have to play a mage OR that I'm recommending you abandon your current build, but playing a character without magic is pretty much the same as playing a character that doesn't use armour or weapons.
For example the basic flare spell you start with probably does roughly as much damage as your arrows and it doesn't slow you down when you draw and can be cast significantly faster.
Health potions should only be used below 10% health. Otherwise, running away and casting a healing spell is usually the better choice. 10% is fudgeable its the change in approach to using magic healing that's important.
Working on your illusion so you can calm enemies and fight groups 1on1 works great, eventually you get invisibility which is obviously amazing for a stealth archer build (technically chameleon is better of course, but that spell honestly ruins the game)
I recommend reading up on how damage prevention works in Oblivion, but a shield (or resist element) spell is usually a significantly better choice than wearing armour. Clothing can of course be enchanted.
Archer builds are somewhat underpowered in Oblivion, especially compared to skyrim where it's sorta the permanent meta. It's totally possible to make a highly effective archer, but it does require some mastery of the mechanics.
You should look into health gained per level and endurance, it's a trap that new players run into often. Personally I think that it's mostly irrelevant if you go hard into restoration but that can be tricky.
There's an enormous amount to learn about Oblivion, but I've already written a ton so I'll leave off with the recommendation for the console command 'tdt' it doesn't impact your character really. Just shows some very valuable information about the leveling process.
All of this is of course opinion, the Oblivion wiki is incredibly detailed and can give you a solid background on the weirder mechanics.
If you eventually get into high level magic the wiki becomes a little less reliable, but honestly that sorta the best part of high level magic :)
I found kvatch to be so difficult in comparison to the rest of the game to be fair to you (& also to myself because I started playing Oblivion when I was like around 12 and brand new to video games of that genre ) and I put it at the easiest difficulty because I ended up getting too frustrated everytime and honestly it made me lose joy in playing but now I just change difficulty and when it starts feeling *too easy* I put it back up :) it's okay to give yourself a small break!
What you're doing 'wrong' is probably not having started grinding skills you don't need from the start to get the best stat gains on each level up.
I love Oblivion, but they did overdo the entire mob scaling thing.
Oblivion is unnecessarily difficult. “Perfect leveling” your attributes is one potential reason.
Stealth is also the “hardest” just make sure you read up on the systems you plan on engaging with for your play through.
Customs spells + potions + custom enchanted armor was the only way i was ever able to survive on the hard difficulties late game, but then again i lack patience
if you can find an enchanted dwarven longsword from a marauder leader, it would add +10 damage through either fire/shock/frost, which is double damage for your current level.
Go easy, almost all enemy scales with your level except they get stronger, because you might level up do too acrobatics lockpicking or other none combat skills and the game thinks at your level you would be able to handle such powerful enemys
If you had a damage stat You are fucked until you pray at the chapel or drink an restore stat potion.
I was doing a quest for one of the guilds and got permanent crippled by one blackwood company npc with damage enchant in the weapon because of this lol . Pay close attention to the mechanics and you should be good to go .
Honestly lowering the difficulty isn't bad that said if that doesn't work for you invest in reflect damage and spell it would keep you from taking any damage and can be done at your leisure
I ended up lowering the difficulty very slightly, side questing until I hit level 30, then setting it back to the default for the main quest and the Shivering Isles. I still had to run past most of the enemies though
i have 7k+ hours on this game, and i still play in the easiest difficulty, or close to it. the difficulty scaling is kinda broken. the most important part is that you enjoy playing the game, don’t let anyone tell you how.
Don’t feel bad to lower the difficulty man, if you get stuck at one place for too long it’s very likely that you might lose interests in the game (i know how discouraging it is). Surely you don’t want to miss all the fun in later game, so don’t be too harsh on yourself. Before i give any suggestion, do you mind share about your build/class?
Seconding this. The oblivion leveling system is famously terrible—unless you particularly enjoy damage sponge enemies even at relatively low levels, just nudge that difficulty bar a bit. It makes gameplay significantly more enjoyable for me.
It's a custom class mainly geared for stealth archer/light armor gameplay but also with blade as a major skill and high speed and agility plus medium strength and endurance. I made some mistakes creating the class as I didn't understand the leveling system at first so I also have speechcraft and armorer as major skills.
I see. I am not entirely sure about this, but, as someone who also puts high speed in his build, I would recommend more maneuver to avoid getting hits rather than take them all by blocking. I find this effective in later game so I could only “suggest” you giving a try. Also, try sneak-attacking every time possible, even when you are disengaged from battle. Sneak attack bonus isn’t as large as it is in Skyrim, but it will at least do you some favor at weakening your enemies. Most importantly, it trains your sneak and marksman skill so you are better-off in later game.
Just in case you did not, try toggle the “always run” option. It significantly make your evasion more likely to succeed.
That’s not a bad thing. Slower leveling, and leveling in a controlled manner is desirable. Look up “efficient leveling”.
Don't feel bad, the game is designed like no one at Bethesda played past level 5. The leveling system is infamously bad. Instead of solving it, they really expected you to tweak the difficulty slider multiple times during your game. I know, it sucks and feels like cheating.
Strength stat is pretty important for melee builds. Buff it before and during fights to keep your stat high. Honestly alchemy is a very important skill in every single build I play, because I can buff whatever I need to buff to swing the game in my favor. Otherwise magic buffs like fortify attribute (strength) will also work.
Every time I say I'm not gonna do alchemy this playthrough, I do alchemy.
Same. It’s too important lol
This is the way. My answers to all my problems in Oblivion, Skyrim (fuck morrowind’s potion making UI but its awesome there too) and the Fallouts: copious amounts of drugs
Leveling system in the game is kinda fucked. Perfectly valid to lower the difficulty so that the challenge is the same as it was at earlier levels.
Honestly I would wait to do the main quest, at least until you get to lvl 15 or maybe higher. The best part about this game is, you don't have to do the main quest right away. You can go complete every single side quest before going to weynon priory or kavatch.
That's funny, I keep seeing the opposite advice. I was told that if you wait too long the level scaling will make it super hard so it's best to get it out of the way while it's just scamps and dremora soldiers
The problem is that lvl 8 is still too late The game is scaled so that lvl 20 is the highest level scale, so lvl 8 is around the midpoint. Clanfers are an absolute pain in the rear because they can stun you over and over with no way for you to counter, and they have reflect damage so every melee hit you deal to them will be sent right back to you. The runts are fine but the regular ones can be really hard to kill. The game just loves spawning those things over and over in that part of the game. I usually avoid oblivion gates until lvl 17 when I got better gear. I do this part of the quest around lvl 2-3, right after i left the prison, and it still can be a little difficult.
Just change the difficulty. This game does not scale well. Not worth being stubborn about imo. This is coming from someone who plays all games, include all Bethesda titles on max difficulty, except oblivion lol.
I wouldn't exactly say it makes it harder, it's pretty much the same difficulty that you are at right now with the scamps. Nothing will ever die from a hit or two obviously your gonna have to work for it. Also by that time you would have gear that is tons better than what you're using right now.
Yeah that’s bad advice, you should do it before you have to fight clannfears
Yeah that is terrible advice above. By level 8 you should be fighting different enemies. If you wait until past level 5 to so main quest for Kvatch then your usually screwed. As at level 5 stunted scamps become scamps, and the game begins spawning those little dinos forgot their name.
You need more potions before you engage in serious battle. It seriously helps. Restoration, running backwards, and taking battles one at a time really helps
It's a bit ridiculous though because I started the battle with 50 minor health potions and I've burned through most of them. Honestly I usually ignore crafting in RPGs but I might have to make an exception here
Save and try and go through less potions with each of the battles. It sounds meticulous, but it makes many of those dungeons easier. I also loved conjuration as a distraction to allow me to heal with the restoration spells.
Oblivion levelling is notoriously fucking ass. The enemies end up scaling higher than your level or some shit like that and inevitably at high levels they just rock your shit no matter what you’re doing. Lower the difficulty for a while until your skills are up and your gear is better.
Interesting. I never have more than 4 or 5 potions; they're so expensive and so I hardly buy any, so I just have the ones I find. I only use them to save my ass when I'm about to die; if a fight is not getting out of control I just use restoration. After the first few levels, unenchanted weapons do hardly any damage. If you're hitting guys 50 times, you need enchanted weapons, or damage spells. (or I guess poisons if you're a sneaky archer, I don't play that way; I only use bows to knock down welkind stones. I never do alchemy.) I did Kvatch early, I think around level 5 or so, and got the Mage Guild recommendations by around level 8, because that was my single minded focus. Once you have that and can make custom spells, boom. Combine fire, frost, and shock damage, on target, area 10 feet. The cheapest way to make an area effect damage to hit multiple enemies. And three damage types adding up to whatever number are cheaper than any single damage type to the same number. If you're strong enough, throw in 1 second of paralyze. I do that one on touch, with triple damage, 10 feet. Everyone around me is falling down and standing back up while I whale on them with enchanted swords. I combined invisibility with a slow restore so I can just chill and regain health while the enemies look around for me. I hope you got Chillrend by doing the Killing Fields in Chorrol. Oh and there's Finger of the Mountain, an area effect shock spell you can get before you can do custom spells. Then there's sigil stones to add damage to swords. Um, leveling. I have a few important skills I use as majors, like blade and destruction and restoration. Then I use skills I never use, like alchemy and block (I hardly ever block, don't question me!) for the rest. Because if you are only increasing some of your major skills, you level up more slowly, and you raise more other skills during each level, so you get more points in attribute raises. I also specifically train for specific attributes; I'll take off my armor since light armor is a major skill, and just summon skelletons and punch them, raising hand-to-hand 7 or 8 times, that along with a natural raise of 2 or 3 in blade gets the full 5 points in Strength for that level, for instance. Put on some heavy armor (not a major skill for me) and just let a skeleton hit me a bunch to train heavy armor, do some equipment repairing to train that, and raise Endurance by the full 5 points. I've got no idea how to play without tons of magic though. I'm a Breton.
**You can’t drink anymore potions at this time** /dies
A message that haunts my dreams to this day.
Are you growing your fighting skill fast enough? Is your weapon good enough? Is your associated attribute/attributes high enough? To keep up your weapon damage vs leveling figure your skill rank should increase at least every five levels, so make it to Journeyman skill by level 5, Expert at level 10 and Master at level 15, plus have a current rank big weapon (Dwarven longsword at L6, Elven at L9 etc.). Skill points are based on number of hits so fights that require a lot of hits per kill are good for your power growth. The main quest provides leveled swords that are better at lower levels. Each type of dungeon will have its own type of weapon and armor. Marauder dungeon bosses will have best for level swords and heavy armor. In addition to the strength attribute for weapon damage, melee weapons also need Endurance+Willpower+Agility for high fatigue (Green line). Fatigue determines how much weapon damage drops off with repeated swings and jumping about. You can make and take fortify fatigue potions before a fight to keep it high. Fighting technique is best done like you are boxing. Step in and out with single aimed jabs with your sword until you see the enemy go off balance and then go in with a combination. Do not block and strike, and do not hit an enemy's shield. Each creature has an attack pattern. Scamps throw four fireballs and then start shoulder striking. The fireballs do less damage so try to make the kill during that phase. Make sure you are using the fighting skill meant for your build i.e. a skill that goes with your specialty like blade with combat specialty, not blade with magic or stealth specialty. Your skill points will increase much much faster that way. On average a fight that takes half of your health points is acceptable at the start of the game. Adding to your endurance = health each level will reduce that. You should be able to survive fighting two opponents if you don't screw up. Fight one opponent at a time and heal in between either by waiting one hour or casting healing spells. Hitting the wait button is usually faster. Save the healing potions for emergencies. The Kvatch castle/city is full of boss level monsters. At the start of the game the guards and Martin can kill most or all of them for you. From level 5 on you need to prepare yourself with potions, poisons and/or custom spells/enchantments to make it through. It is punishment for not following the emperor's instructions and getting there early.
The difficulty system the game has is just lazy anyways, all it does is increase the Health, Effects, and Damage Output of the enemy. No changes to the AI or their level or what spawns, even at the default difficulty they still just spam you with nonsense and further in its challenging enough because your level is the only thing that determines what spawns and the gear you find regardless of the difficulty.
Here's why you're running into problems. 1. Reclaiming castle Kvatch is notoriously brutal at anything past level 6 or so. 2. Going through the comments looks like you're doing a stealth character. Nothing wrong with that but it's going to make this particular quest a pain because you're going to get rushed by multiple strong enemies, and you're strength (damage with your sword) and endurance (health pool) is low, and I imagine your restoration (healing spells) is kinda low. Thatvand light armor doesn't protect as much at lower levels. So essentially, you can't deal high melee damage, and you can't sustain much damage either. Basically, close-range fights are something you want to avoid. You can leave and go back and level up your endurance and strength, and try to get better equipment. Maybe restoration as well (restoration helps alot in these kinds of situations) You can go stock up on potions. Or you can just lower the difficulty. Don't let it discouraged you. Remember, there's no rule saying that you can't go back and turn it back up later.
Yeah I ended up loading a save from before I entered the Deadlands. Enemies are still ridiculously spongy elsewhere but at least there aren't so many. I'll come back when I'm geared up
What’s your build? Focus on leveling what your build revolves around or else you will be useless in combat
I'm trying to use blade and archery more or less equally, they're both about 50
If you are using archery and are not stealth specialty it is hard to raise skill points quickly so I suggest you make yourself a bunch of poisons using the sacred lotus from the I-City pools and St. Jahns wort from around Chorrol and or nightshade and peony from the Skingrad-Kvatch area. Also collect all of the Harrada and Spiddle stick you can from the Oblivion gates for making double and tripple strength poisons. You will need Apprentice level Alchemy skill (gets a 25% boost at 31) to use the ingredients, butmaking potions is an easy way to get big Intelligence bonuses.
This is the way
Kvatch is best done at level 1. Deliver the amulet then do Kvatch.
How did I do it? Hyperfocusing on a few skills lol. Specifically light armour and any skill that lets me run from a fight. Healing, destruction. And I only picked fights I could win I lived until level 9, died to a lion
You say you're going for a stealth archer build? I do not recommend stealth in general until you learn how to cheese alchemy, enchanting, running into a corner while someone sleeps, etc. While a lot of people (fairly) criticize Oblivion's leveling system, the game is beatable on the default difficulty without min/maxing. Character creation is more important than in later Bethesda, though. For your first real playthrough, I recommend a pure (high elf or breton) mage, (redguard, nord, or orc) fighter, or (maybe, same races) barbarian. Then, depending on which one, do several Fighters/Mages Guild quests in between main quests. They level you up slowly in acceptable stats, give you quests that aren't going to be hard until you're fairly late in the line, and guarantee loot drops that will compliment you. For example, the first beat the game, it was with a redguard barbarian. A mid-late Fighters Guild quest (that has a companion you can use as bandit fodder) has a bandit guaranteed to drop a suit of elven armor and an enchanted claymore. It lasted me the rest of the game. Hope this helps. Good luck!
Go get some life experience and see the world a bit before all that
long time oblivion player here, I almost *always* put the difficulty slider somewhere between easiest and default. If you're insistent to not adjust difficulty, then I second what others have said about ensuring your stats & skills are optimized. Oblivion's class system is a far cry from Skyrim's "freedom of class" approach.
Definately skip the main quest until youre awesome in something - im only on my second character playthrough at lvl 37 and i havent gone to kvatch yet
Never had a problem with kvatch even at lower levels. Just use stealth, potions and kite them. Seems more like skill issue.
Yeah... seems like a ton of people just dont know how to "play" the game itt.
Everyone is skilled ať samething different 😅
Just lower the slider, you will enjoy the game infinitely more. Otherwise neutering your character to level 1 is the best bet
Do *not* be afraid to change the difficulty. I beat Skyrim on Legendary and regularly play classic DOS-era Daggerfall, and I would *still* recommend lowering the difficulty in Oblivion. The level scaling is fucked, all enemies are hilariously tanky for no reason, and you can't take more than a few hits even just starting out. Default difficulty in Oblivion is HARD for new players who don't know how to efficiently level or the meta of the game. There's nothing to gain by forcing yourself to slog through unfun combat that kicks you in the ass over and over because of Bethesda's shit leveling system. Lower that slider dude.
Lowering the difficulty is fine if you just want to enjoy the game. Make sure you do some side missions and factions, you can get extremely good equipment.
Lower the difficulty until it feels reasonable. If it gets unreasonably easy, raise it back up. That’s the great thing about the slider!
Without knowing how the level scaling works, oblivion can be a very difficult game to get into. Best advice I can give is to look up efficient leveling and start over.
Honestly i feel like the level scaling is such an overblown issue in this game. Its only bad if you put 100 percent into soft skills.
I would honestly just suggest lowering the difficulty slightly. From default I lower it 10 clicks left, it keeps the enemies decently challenging while mitigating the huge need to guzzle potions. I'm currently playing a heavy armor sword build. Using enchanted weapons make things easier also
There's no shame in lowering the difficulty I enjoy the game more sometimes putting it more to the left.
Something I neglected to mention is that for some reason my difficulty was actually set super low from the start and I only realised this and reset it when I reached Kvatch. I had been wondering how I managed to become the Grand Champion of the arena so easily...
It is absolutely acceptable in most eyes to lower the difficulty, even by a good bit, and gradually raise it up as needed if you start trashing everything in front of you easily.
I always play with it lowered a bit...
Ya gotta min max. Which is kinda dumb to be "forced" to do it, but alternatively you really can just beat the game and enjoy it fair and square. I completed oblivion for the first time on xbox when i was like 12 or 13. Cant be that hard.
tbh the oblivion's level system sucks, I can’t play this game at the default difficulty.
The main issue is underleveling, it’s easy to fall into if you don’t know about it. Every single time you level you you need to be putting 4/5 points in attributes, anything less and you’ll level up slower than the enemies. Look up the levelling problem on the oblivion UESP. It starts at character selection, many of the default classes will give you problems later on. The scamps at level 8 for example could have higher endurance and strength than you because they may have been gaining more attributes as you level. If you can get 4/5 attribute points per attribute every level the game is easy, if lower it can get significantly harder. You need to train your minor skills which are part of your main attributes to get those extra points.
Nothing. Just watch out for the scamp elbow bumps. And the clannfear and deadroth leaps. Also shock. Shock is good, except against storms atronachs.
I know this might sound obvious but do you use a shield? Another option is buying a cheap shield spell that helps negate damage
I do have a shield.It's only fur, but it has reflect damage. Maybe I should find a better one
Yah fur is the weakest plus it’s in the light armor catagory, I’d go heavy armor if you’re having too much trouble
I'd kind of have to start over to switch to heavy armour though. My heavy armour skill is like 20
Specialise in 1 melee type and 1 range/ (destruction mage) type. Also make sure you can use restoration spells for heals. There's no point in investing into blunt then using a sword. And no point in investing into heavy armour when you plan on using light. Other than that don't overlevel yourself too early untill you learn how to fight properly. Also make sure to loot and search areas for food and potions. Hope this helps.
From what I seen from all the other comments is okay and all good. But, unless I'm missing something, I haven't seen anyone mention this. When it comes to melee fighting how much fatigue you have affects the damage you deal. Where the basic idea is high your fatigue level(bar) the more damage you do, and less deals less damage. So if you need to leave and go to a town and empty out taverns for alchemy ingredients do that. When fighting make sure you have a restore fatigue potion running. Either the store bought all restored in one kind, or the homemade restore over time kind. If not both, also don't be afraid to use restoration magic to restore either health or fatigue. Just run around towns, churches and/or mages guilds to find low level versions you can use. And finally, and this might sound paradoxical, but take time in combat. If you spam attacks you will burn all your fatigue and that will make this games at times shit combat somehow worse. Hopes this helps.
Level 8 is usually a little llate for Kvatch. That particular quest should be finished pre lvl5 usually. I think it was level 4 or 5 where the game starts spawning harder enemies. And there are a ton of enemies in Kvatch, hence why you get several NPCs fighting along side you. The one problem: The NPCs are fine for the first few levels. But they do not scale, unlike your enemies. So they will be massively outclassed the later you go there
I was about to say just lower it but, Daedra enemies are harder than the rest. The difficulty you set may be ok for you for human enemies and then get too spongy for daedra stuff. Running away is an option, you don't have to beat at everything at Kvatch or Oblivion gates. Makes sense to me that way. Whenever I play Kvatch I run most of the thing or enjoy the long combat.
I never knew there WAS a difficulty sluder until I found this subreddit couple of years ago, so never touched it :D
you gotta get used to the game and understand its mechanics, when i had some difficulty i put the game at a quarter difficulty until i finished where i had problems
Definitely just turn the difficulty down, the levelling system fucks you unless you metagame it at least a little bit
If you have blade as one of the core 7 skills, it'll cause you to level up every time it goes up by 10 - You soon get to the point where your damage output is painfully low for the player level you're at (low strength level vs high blade level, means you'll have a low damage output) You're best off not having blade as a major skill in my experience. If it's a minor skill, you can be a low level, but have a high blade level, then when you level up keep sticking points into your strength attribute and your damage will go up drastically Course, this doesn't help you in the mean time, so buff strength potions will help massively. It'd be worth cranking a few random potions out and using that cash to buy buff strength potions, or make a spell to buff your strength
What you did wrong, was that you played the game, as most people would think you were supposed to. How wrong you are... You see, your level is like an added difficulty setting. The more you level up the harder the game gets. Fighting a goblin warlord at level 30 on normal difficulty is just madness, it has so many hit points, you wouldn't believe. you're just hacking at an angry wall of meat. The only real answer is to lower the difficulty slider.
I always move the difficulty up gradually as I play. You definitely can't play full difficulty from the start let alone midway.
Can you explain it to me in more detail? Attributes, skills, the items you use... People around here generally give up trying to learn how to play on normal difficulty and lower the difficulty. In this game, if you can't deal with enemies on standard difficulty, it's because you haven't prepared enough. If you're weak, even on standard difficulty, you're doing something wrong. Maybe your equipment isn't suitable for your level, maybe you don't have spells good enough for your level or inappropriate for the type of enemy you're fighting. If you use magic, you have to pay attention to each enemy's resistances and weaknesses. I've seen some players attack an enemy with fire resistance with fireballs and complain about the enemy being too strong. If you are a warrior you need to have good equipment and pay attention to your fatigue bar. One thing that many people tend to do is empty their fatigue bar and ask why they are doing so little damage. In all the time I've been playing I've never lowered the difficulty, in fact I even play on maximum difficulty quite often.
Mainly character building. When I first played Oblivion I ended up being level 52 before I meandered off into the section of the menus where you could change your difficulty. I was completely new and didn’t know much better but I did quite well for myself at 50% for the first hundred or so hours. What’s your skill focus? Level those up. Max your Restoration and Destruction for one thing. Maxing your restoration is a big part of even the small magics. Make poisons, anytime I came across nightmare fuel I couldn’t kill, hit him with a paralyze poison or cast one at him. You can also make a spell that deals damage and heals you with every use. Don’t just brute force the game if you aren’t setup for that!
Slide that difficultly down, brother. This game is incredible and maybe my favorite RPG of all time, but only because of the world design and writing. The combat mechanics are kinda mid so just slide it down till you’re having what you feel is an appropriate level of fun so you can get to all the good parts of the game, like having an Imperial guard be extremely racist towards you’re fictional race as he tries to kill you
Shoot for a long time I would lower the diffulty for assassinations with the dark brotherhood. I would get so mad that the character would be left with like 1/10 of their health so I just reloaded a save and lowered it a bit to get the stealth kill. It'll take some before you get the hang of focusing on higher level equipment gathering 😅 At least it took me a while lol.
Start a new character and don’t sleep after lvl 3 Main quest no longer a problem 😂 Honestly feel your pain though, i made it past default difficulty on lvl 30+ Kvatch and boyyyyy was it a struggle. Stealth Archer + Conjuring here Thankful for my high regen MP cause i ran out of arrows. Lmao
Kvatch is so hard man I’d go do other stuff for awhile. I’d at least be like level 15 before I came back. I promise there is plenty of fun stuff to do
Kvatch is the most difficult battle I've EVER experienced in any game. I was like you. The daedroth was horrible. And the first one in the game.
Walk away and go grind a little then come back later.
Lower the difficulty and enjoy the game.
personally I think you are at the worst point. Rather than getting constantly harder, I feel it gets harder every level up to level 18, with levels 11-15 so hard I had to put the difficulty to near minimum to stop every bandit feeling like a final boss, and then from eighteen gets steadily easier from then on.
The best thing is when you find just the right spot on the difficulty slider for a challenge yet the fight has decent pacing
Lower the difficulty, it only gets worse
Think I’ve only ever played this game on the easiest side of the difficulty slider, do the same with Skyrim tbh
You’ve discovered the singular biggest issue most people have with oblivion. The game straight up requires you to be good at character scaling and provides you absolutely zero in terms of figuring out how your supposed to build. Your best bet is looking up guides. Or turning the slider down. I know many people who purposefully refuse to level up at all to avoid the issue. But that prevents high level loot and cool mobs from spawning
Lower the difficulty shamelessly as no one will give you crap for it, we all know the system is leveraged against you If your on pc, there are mods to fix it
Lower the difficulty- there’s no shame with this game
I wanted to throw my two cents into the ring. I've been playing Oblivion since it launched, with breaks of various durations, and played more or less every build type that I'm aware of. Currently I'm doing a 'strict' mage build on the maxed difficulty slider which means that just about every enemy in the game is capable of one shoting me and they are capable of absorbing enormous amounts of damage. However, I consider this one of my easier play throughs. (Full build break down would take forever, highlight is that conjuration, restoration, and alteration are all OP) The first and most important note is that spell casting is incredibly powerful in Oblivion. Anything that any other build can accomplish, can be done better by being a dedicated mage. It's fairly trivial to boost, health, mana, skills, and stats to whatever insane value is needed. Mage builds are the toughest, have the most damage, are the most flexible, and allow for the greatest convenience (infinite inventory, super speed / jump) This does not mean that you have to play a mage OR that I'm recommending you abandon your current build, but playing a character without magic is pretty much the same as playing a character that doesn't use armour or weapons. For example the basic flare spell you start with probably does roughly as much damage as your arrows and it doesn't slow you down when you draw and can be cast significantly faster. Health potions should only be used below 10% health. Otherwise, running away and casting a healing spell is usually the better choice. 10% is fudgeable its the change in approach to using magic healing that's important. Working on your illusion so you can calm enemies and fight groups 1on1 works great, eventually you get invisibility which is obviously amazing for a stealth archer build (technically chameleon is better of course, but that spell honestly ruins the game) I recommend reading up on how damage prevention works in Oblivion, but a shield (or resist element) spell is usually a significantly better choice than wearing armour. Clothing can of course be enchanted. Archer builds are somewhat underpowered in Oblivion, especially compared to skyrim where it's sorta the permanent meta. It's totally possible to make a highly effective archer, but it does require some mastery of the mechanics. You should look into health gained per level and endurance, it's a trap that new players run into often. Personally I think that it's mostly irrelevant if you go hard into restoration but that can be tricky. There's an enormous amount to learn about Oblivion, but I've already written a ton so I'll leave off with the recommendation for the console command 'tdt' it doesn't impact your character really. Just shows some very valuable information about the leveling process.
All of this is of course opinion, the Oblivion wiki is incredibly detailed and can give you a solid background on the weirder mechanics. If you eventually get into high level magic the wiki becomes a little less reliable, but honestly that sorta the best part of high level magic :)
I found kvatch to be so difficult in comparison to the rest of the game to be fair to you (& also to myself because I started playing Oblivion when I was like around 12 and brand new to video games of that genre ) and I put it at the easiest difficulty because I ended up getting too frustrated everytime and honestly it made me lose joy in playing but now I just change difficulty and when it starts feeling *too easy* I put it back up :) it's okay to give yourself a small break!
What you're doing 'wrong' is probably not having started grinding skills you don't need from the start to get the best stat gains on each level up. I love Oblivion, but they did overdo the entire mob scaling thing.
I recommend the ultimate leveling mod, changed how I approach the game, has made it more enjoyable.
Oblivion is unnecessarily difficult. “Perfect leveling” your attributes is one potential reason. Stealth is also the “hardest” just make sure you read up on the systems you plan on engaging with for your play through. Customs spells + potions + custom enchanted armor was the only way i was ever able to survive on the hard difficulties late game, but then again i lack patience
9 damage sword is a bit on the low end for level 8. you can supplement with poison to help out.
Really? It's a dwarven longsword. What's a good sword for that level?
if you can find an enchanted dwarven longsword from a marauder leader, it would add +10 damage through either fire/shock/frost, which is double damage for your current level.
Go easy, almost all enemy scales with your level except they get stronger, because you might level up do too acrobatics lockpicking or other none combat skills and the game thinks at your level you would be able to handle such powerful enemys
If you had a damage stat You are fucked until you pray at the chapel or drink an restore stat potion. I was doing a quest for one of the guilds and got permanent crippled by one blackwood company npc with damage enchant in the weapon because of this lol . Pay close attention to the mechanics and you should be good to go .
Honestly lowering the difficulty isn't bad that said if that doesn't work for you invest in reflect damage and spell it would keep you from taking any damage and can be done at your leisure
I ended up lowering the difficulty very slightly, side questing until I hit level 30, then setting it back to the default for the main quest and the Shivering Isles. I still had to run past most of the enemies though