The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Chat Thread

This is mostly useful for newer players, or people who hate reading the manual, or fps zealots come to slay every living thing in Cyrodill, but I figured there might be a few useful tidbits in here

Character building:

If you're doing a custom class, don't pick and choose your Major skills out of some vague conception of 'how to owninate Oblivion'. Any combination of skills, race, and birthsign can finish the game - though it may be harder for some than others :P

Leveling up occurs when your Major, not your Minor skills increase. For this reason, you should choose Major skills that are near what you want to DO in the game. This is true in broad strokes for Combat/Magic/Stealth skills (ie, if you want to fight stuff, pick Combat skills), but it's important that you pick skills that are directly inline with what you enjoy doing.

If you love questing, talking to NPCs, and towns, you should have Speechcraft, if you just want to bash things, you should have combat oriented skills - but keep in mind that if you pick say, Blade, Hand to Hand AND Blunt, all three must be increased to gain levels. It may be wiser to simply pick one and use the two extra skills to flesh out your character (Athletics and Acrobatics are both useful for a combat character, so is Stealth, so is Armorer, and so on).

This also applies to magic skills - while my character is a pure Mage (all six schools + Alchemy), it is far from necessary that you load up your character with multiple schools of magic. Usually one or two is enough for most characters to get just the spells that really complement their abilities.

For example, Illusion is absolutely fantastic for any sort of Thief or Assassin type character - Calm monster stops a monster from attacking you COMPLETELY - you know what that means. Back up and shoot him in the head with another poisoned arrow, or move behind him and hit him with a power attack while he stares blissfully into space. On top of that, Illusion contains Chameleon (enhancing your stealth) and Night Eye (allowing you to sneak up on enemies in pure darkness without giving away your location with a torch or a light spell).

Look over the example spell types in the manual and pick the school or schools that have powers that supplement your other abilites, or fill holes in your character. For example, many players may take Restoration to heal, except you can get the same effect with Alchemy, which also gives you money making via sold potions, buff potions, and poisons for your weapons (a damage poison critical hit from a distance is lethal, and fatigue draining in melee is always fun against tough melee foes)

Choose your Race and your Birthsign to aggressively enhance your abilities. My Mage is a Breton under the Mage birth sign, and he's sitting at 300 Magicka at 17th level (and higher power spells take even more Magicka than that just to cast once!). The game seems to be built with some flex to sponge up some of your powergaming in terms of character building, not to mention enchanted gear later on, so be careful about spreading your bonuses over many areas that may not support your primary skills.

The stats you gain on levelup are determined by the abilities you used during the course of gaining that level - including your minor skills. So if you want to up your Endurance, make use of Armorer, Heavy Armor, and Block, even if they aren't your major skills.

Luck has no tied attribute, so if you want to raise it, make a commitment to raising it every level, and choose a starting character type that has boosted Luck.

Combat and gear:

Your Fatigue regenerates faster if you are walking than running (until your Athletics gets VERY high, which can take bloody forever if it's not a Major skill).

You move slower with a weapon out (sheath that weapon if you're running like a girl as a Marksman or Mage!), and slower still while blocking.

Larger weapons do a better job of breaking through a persons guard, as do power hits. Shields do a better job of blocking than parrying.

Fighting in the dark sucks - either use a one hander and a torch, or preferably, get a Light spell from the Illusion school. They are short duration at low levels of power (ie, your average sword swinging brute with no Illusion skill), but you don't need much time to beat people down in melee. Once they're down you can go back to sneaking around in the dark, or using a torch to see. Light spells are for combat, Night Eye is for sneaking...

Enchanted weapons (or staves for that matter) drain their charges on hit. For this reason, fewer hits for a kill is preferable - that means power hits if possible, though you need good Fatigue (max and regen) to do this.

To recharge your enchanted weapons, you need to either take them to a Mage's Guild representative and pay and arm and a leg, or acquire Soul Gems (usually sold at Mage's Guilds, though you can find them in other places) and fill them with souls. To trap a soul, acquire the Soul Trap skill from the school of Mysticism and cast it on a foe just before they die. It can be used by even players with a low Mysticism skill. The power level of a trapped soul determines how many enchantment points are restored to a weapon.

Enchanted armor never uses up enchantment points, and still works even while broken

You cannot repair enchanted gear until your Armorer skill reaches Journeyman level - which can take a looong time if you don't have Armorer as a major skill.

Magic:

To perform Spellmaking and Enchanting, you need to join the Mage's Guild and run errands for them for awhile until they're willing to grant you access to these specialized services, located at the Imperial Arcane Repository Of Weedy Casters, just southeast outside the Imperial City.

If you're playing a pure caster, get Conjuration, end of story. The summoned allies are immensely power, and take the heat off of you, giving you the time to nuke away. Not to mention you get some nice conjured gear for tough fights...

Destruction combat magic does not harmonize well with melee combat - you can either cast a damaging spell, or take multiple melee swings in the same time span - Destruction's armor and weapon destroying, and resistance draining for enchanted weapons are somewhat more useful. Restoration's drain life touch spells fit in a bit more comfortably, as do Illusion's Calm and Paralyze.

Increasing the damage of direct damage spells becomes increasingly more expensive - sometimes as much as three or four times the cost in Magicka to cast a spell that only does twice as much damage. For this reason, pick up the drain resistance spells and use them before unloading with expensive damaging spells to get more bang per point of Magicka. A cheaper spell that fits within your Magicka limit and regen rate is the one you should be using as your bread and butter damage spell.

Alteration is useful for physical defense, Mysticism for magical defense. Both have useful utility spells. Restoration has buffs and defensive spells, as well as nice drains.

Detect Life, from the Mysticism school is awesome for stealthy characters, as it allows you to spot living things through walls, before you move into line of sight - this lets you move around in dungeons fast, then sneak when you know a target is coming up. It also lets you spot invisible or camoflaged enemies...