Elder Scrolls: Oblivion -- Your character class

[Zhell]

Hey to all those out there who have played Oblivion, or who are playing oblivion. I just picked up this game recently and it has blown me away, visually, audibly, and experienc-wise. The character I made was done hastily and with no understanding of how certain skills would play out later on, so before I get much further I think I will reroll a more well-rounded character.

What sort of archetype (fighter, stealth, mage) did you find interesting? What sort of accompanying magic did you find useful? What armor/weapon type did you find to be the coolest (a very important factor ^.^) and of course what race? I wanna hear what the community played with and what they thought!

I made an imperial warrior because I love dudes in heavy armor with sword 'n board in hand to get into a bit of the rough and tumble. In morrowind i played a bosmer thief-type character and that was a lot of fun. One must admit the joy that comes from a good pickpocket/robbery/assasination!

[Bargad]

My Argonian Archer was alot of fun, especially when I started playing the Dark Brotherhood Quests.

Never can beat an arrow through the back...

[XShrike]

First what system are you playing on? As if you are on the PC there are number of mods that make the interface better, and IMO the game better.

It really doesn't matter what you characters is, as you get the option to change your race, class, and birth sign just as you are leaving the sewers.

I like playing as a Breton, Spellsword. I have always like using magic but, the unmodded spells seem to lack power. Being a Spellsword I can also fight. What I generally do is open with range spells and then go into melee once they close the distance.

I have found gathering making potions is an easy way to make money at first. Just gather everything you come across and make the potions later.

[Zhell]

I'm playing on the 360, I don't have a PC to game on here at school. I love how everything said by everyone is pre recorded and NPCs chat when they bump into each other on the streets.

What guilds did you join? Is joining the Blades any fun, or do you recommend the other guilds?

[Rowhin]

I played a sneaky archer. I had a lot of fun sneaking through areas to find a good point to lose some shots at my enemies.
Already played a sneaky type in Morrowind, too.

[XShrike]

There isn't any restrictions, I think, on what guilds you can join. There were in Morrowind as you had to be a certain level in certain skills to make it to the next rank. The guilds in Oblivion just seem to require you to complete different tasks.

I don't think there is a way to not join the Blades. Unless you ignore the main quest chain.

One tip that can make locking picking easier. There is a Deadric shrine,I think it is Noctrunal's Shire, along the eastern road north of Leyawiin. I don't remember the level requirement, it was either 4 or 10, or what offering you need to get her attention. When you find the shire they will tell you. I think it was a really common item. Anyway, she will give you a quest to get an item back for her. You will need some kind of stealth to do this. Sneak, invisible, and/or chameleon at high enough levels will work. Once completed you will get the "Skeleton Key". This is an unbreakable lockpick that adds +40 to your security skill. I think another shire gives you a ring with a high level chameleon constant effect that can help in this quest but, I can't remember which Deadric Lord gives it to you.

[Dreadon]

I say play what ever class you want it does not matter that much in the long run. because as you level up the skills you use the most get better, making the character you like easyer to attain. As for my self i played a combat assasin, sneak in and backstab them to death.

[XShrike]

I remembered another tip. The first stat you need to max out is fatigue.

The amount of health you gain each level is determined by your fatigue level. You level up rather fast at first and it slows down as you reach higher levels. A problem with this is the game doesn't retroactively adjust your health from past levels with your new fatigue. So, if you didn't start getting your fatigue up until later you are going to have little health and had difficulty playing the game.

I ran into this problem my first time through and made certain parts of the game impossible unless you dropped the difficulty to zero. I play on the PC and a mod fixed this mechanic ater.

[Pandemonium]

If your not going to level up the stat which gives you mana first, choose to be born under a sign to give you mana. You have to join the blades to beat the game, and you can be in any guild you want with. You might want to hold onto beating the game until you can get your Armor making skill to 100. Collect lots of sigils and use them for lots of things. I remember on my char i had armor with 100% chameleon affect. I could do anything and no one would see me. Being a Marksman with Sneak is probally the easiest way to beat the game. I used a Heavy Armor glitch and a Sneak glitch on my first playthrough. I turned my difficulty all the way to the left and let people in the arena beat on me till their weapons broke. I had heavy armor so this gave me fatigue for lots of health, then i used a sneak glitch where I taped my analog stick to one direction behind Rufio, the man involed in the quest to get into the Dark Brotherhood. To get this quest kill someone, and sleep somewhere secure like an inn. Don't buy a horse, but you get a black horse in the Dark Brotherhood quest.

Oh, and btw, Umbra is the best sword in the game. I'm think you can get it by following the road of imperial city south, until you find a place on the map called Vin Daisel or something like that. Umbra has automatic soultrap on hit, and this mixed with Azura's stone, are too very valuble items. Azura's stone is soulstone with unlimited uses. You can use the combination to enchant other items, and then refill Umbra's usage.

[Dustandpolos]

I always had serious problems with the heavy melee types I generally favour in these games. I've completed the main quest with a nord heavy & blunt before, I have similar sword-wielding, but I have never, ever managed to disarm an opponant or get any of the other high-mastery effects to work which seriously damages my offensive capability.

I assume Xshrike meant endurance when he said fatigue; fatigue is a bar like health or mana which is also affected by endurance. Fatigue is also a major problem for melee classes; running doesn't diminish fatigue (only slow regeneration), shooting doesn't diminish fatigue unless you're a novice, spellcasting doesn't diminish fatigue. Melee fighters, however, often find themselves doing a fraction of their initial damage after the first couple of swings because it takes a hit every swing based on the weapon's weight, and all good weapons weigh tons. Best to have potions or some magic effect to rapidly regenerate fatigue through the battle if you're planning on slugging it out up close.

As such I'd say stealth/magic pure or hybrids are the most effective; I mean, why rely on a sword and risk close combat when you can deal vast amounts of fiery death from a distance with no diminishing returns, or sneak-attack with a bow from a spot where the enemy won't see you no matter how often you shoot them for 3x damage?

[Mythnojutsu]

Yeah, I had tons of fun playing as a stealth/archer/assassin type, with a bit of magic for convenience. I played a Khajit and the night vision as a racial was awesome for sniping with a bow in dark caves and dungeons. Plus cat/beast people are just cool imo.

[Ralzar]

God, the Oblivion character system... how I hated that. The easiest way to build a character is to avoid using your skills. Becasue if you use your skills, you level up too fast, get fewer character points to distribute and ultimately get poorer and poorer as you level up.

[Grimfell Gromgear]

God, the Oblivion character system... how I hated that. The easiest way to build a character is to avoid using your skills. Becasue if you use your skills, you level up too fast, get fewer character points to distribute and ultimately get poorer and poorer as you level up.

Right, the correct way to play the game is to do something really stupid like make your main skill 'acrobatics'. Then be sure to never jump, level up all your minor skills (which are really what you're going to be using), and then when they've capped for your current level you jump a whole lot to level up.

It's such a terribley broken system, and what's worse it doesn't help you at all since the enemies just scale up in level with you instead of by area or quest making the whole idea of leveling pointless.

[Graven]

Actually, I really liked the system, and the second character I made absolutely fitted my playstyle. The first... well, whatever :)

I'm not going to go into detail about the system, just tell you the things that helped me most. Illusion magic - absolute must-have, if only for the charm skills, makes the game way much easier, stealth - there is a certain bug you can use to max it. When you start the dark brotherhood questline, you have to kill a dude in an inn. He never wakes up. Go stealth, press autorun, face a wall and leave him there. Grats on maxing stealth. Btw stealth and the invisibility spell go together so well, it's just nice. Blade weapons ( or whatever it was called ) and armorer. I played a dark elf, so the world of oblivion itself wasn't much pain, everything there shoots fire, it's annoying even. Acrobatics is cool too, if just for jumping aroung like an idiot, btw in most dungeons you can jump to places where most opponents can't reach you, so it's cool.

The only problem I had with oblivion was how exploitable that game was. I've mentioned some of the ways to do that, but there are so many more... it's just painful :)

Edit : I read Dust's post, well, I had to go melee in the arena quest series, just died like once, and the problem wasn't the fatigue, it was the ork with the two-hand hammer, he crushed me massively. What I did ( and I guess most melees, too, but nevertheless ) use a shield, as soon as you block a strike, hit the opponent once, or twice if you can, then go blocking again. It worked really well, with an occasional healing spell/potion.

[Dracallo]

I loved the way they picked a "class" based on your playing style in the begining of the game. I ended playing a Empirial Char with a custom class. I was stealth based. Sneak, Lockpick and Jump were my two most used skills. My char also dabbled in magic and swords.

[Nezumiiro Kitsune]

The shrine of nocturnal demands you be level 10, and she is one of the only daedric shines that don't ask for anything in return for the quest they set out for you. the only other shrine I can remember not asking for anything was Peryite, but his quest is not for beginners. Nocturnal requests that you retrieve her eye, which for the life of me and can only say looks like a giant glowy space land mine.

Meridias shrine is the one where you get the ring of the Khajiit (works with all races). She asks you for a piece of an undead creature, then for you to slay a tomb full of Necromancers.

My chars are as thus, I'll state down there general worth of playing along with the quick stats;

Nord - Created Class: Daemonhunter - LVL 29 - My first character, and ended up being a stealth/blade combat class. Was fun, and definitely powerful.
Rating: 9/10

High Elf - Created Class: High Seer -Lvl 20? (been a while) - Magic classes are ALOT of entertainment if you put the effort in. Spells look frikkin awesome, just disappearing and unleashing hell on your enemies is hilarious, and petrifying people halfway up stairs never gets old. Can be a tough start.
Rating: 8/10

Orc - Created Class: Wolf Ranger - Lvl 8 - Warrior with a huge hammer. Got bored, seeing as I'd played my nord to death. In the right hands could be interesting, but I didn't have the heart to put in much effort.
Rating: 4/10

Khajiit - Created Class: no idea - Lvl 11? - Deleted by accident. Renegade, suicidal, maniac class basically. Trained on fully fledged legionaries from level 1. Good for taking caves.
Rating: 7/10

Dark Elf - Created Class: Excecutioner - Lvl:?? 10 maybe - To replace my khajiit, and bloody awesome. Primary a dark brotherhood orientated character. Alot of fun to play. Like the Khajiit kill everyone without mercy, but this time without getting caught.
Rating: 8/10

Imperial - Created Class: Mad Monk - Lvl: ?? hell knows - RPing. All nighter project with a friend. Testing out alchemy and hand to hand combat. 1 thing to say, Alchemy, should have taken it from he beginning and trained hard. Its good money, very good money.
Rating: 9/10


Played on PS3 so all characters are on an unmodded game.

[Graven]

Oh, the daedric shrines... I just have one advice, visit the one of Boethia, it requires lvl 20, a daedric heart as a gift, but offers the best sword in-game. The event itself is a combat with 20 or so opponents in the world of oblivion, each opponent after the other. One of the first opponents carries ( or at least carried ) about 200 health and mana potions, which was quite useful. Plus, goldbrand was definitely worth it.

Oh, and visit Sheogorath's, the madness is... duh. And if you're stealth or have lockpicking go to Nocturnal's shrine, lvl 10 - non-breakable lockpick. The end of having to carry about like 50000 lockpicks to open anything.

[Zhell]

So essentially, all the skills you plan on using should not be your major skills, and the ones that are rubbish in combat (acrobatic, alchemy) should be majors? What a strange system. What would be a good build for a stealth class?

[Dagoth]

Oblivion has the most retarded leveling system I´ve ever seen. You have to do the opposite of what the game tells you to be able to stand a chance, because if you don´t when you are level 20 or so, your character will be terribly gimped, and every goblin you come across will be some sort of buffed-up fully equiped war demigod.

Whoever designed that system should be shot in the face.

[Ralzar]

Oblivion has the most retarded leveling system I´ve ever seen. You have to do the opposite of what the game tells you to be able to stand a chance, because if you don´t when you are level 20 or so, your character will be terribly gimped, and every goblin you come across will be some sort of buffed-up fully equiped war demigod.

Whoever designed that system should be shot in the face.

Yeah, that was pretty much my experience with my first character. Then I started over and abused the system (since this seemed to be how the game was supposed to be played...). That character then ran into the opposite problem. I was so overpowered there was no effort in fights. I just ran in, clicked attack and stuff died.

[silex]

The actual system of you become stronger in what you use is pretty solid - it's been a defining characteristic of the entire series, really. I never played Arena but even old Daggerfall from the early 90s had that system and it was pretty solid and addicting.

World scaling itself isn't necessarilly bad, I think - it's how Oblivion did their world scaling. They based it all off of level, when it's your skills that actually determine the strength of your character.

I played an Archer. Made the mistake of picking "too good" of primary skills and leveled far too quickly, outpacing my combat skills and making my char very underpowered.

[XShrike]

The scaling pissed me off. I felt almost no sense of accomplishment getting a full set of Deadric armor because fing highway bandits would start being decked out in the stuff. Not to mention you never felt as powerful as you did in Morrowind.

I don't care that you could essential become a god in Morrowind, you earned it. That is why I love Francesco's leveled creatures-items mod. This is from the mods description:

This mod changes nearly all creatures lists to make only a part of them leveling up with you. Even if you will still find very strong stuff at high levels you will often (for example) find normal skeletons and zombies in dungeons, wolves and rats in the wilderness and so on.. not every bandit will level up with you but some of them will stop at about level 10-20.. I also changed most leveled items lists, in the vanilla game at say level 20 you used to find only high level armors and weapons and low-mid stuff nearly disappeared from the game, now it will be much harder to find high level equipment, and low-mid level one will still be common at high levels (you can also decide between two loot types.. the normal one and an hardcore version built for those that want high level equipment to be super rare)

One of the strengths of this mod is it's modular nature…every part of the mod is optional and you are able to customize it to your taste during the installation.

The optional parts cover many things like guards (in the original game all guards used to keep leveling up with you, so no matter how strong you were they were always a bit stronger than you. Using this part of the mod, while some guards still level up with you, many of them will stop at about levels 15-25. Stronger guards will usually defend more important places/people), weapons/armors vendors (in the vanilla game you used to find chainmail/dwarven mithril/orcish armors and weapons in creatures/npcs loot before seeing their appearance in shops, this made armor/weapons shops nearly useless after reaching level 6-7, now you will find those stuff in shops many levels before but at increased prices), bosses (a small chance to find stronger bosses with names and personalized combat styles and loot), more enemies (more creatures/npcs in dungeons, available in two variants.. a normal one and an hardcore variant for those who seek very big fights) houses/dungeons chests (improved loot, more interesting and diverse and often more rewarding but still balanced), quests (tweaked main and guilds quests to make late quests harder for inexperienced characters, forcing to level up so you can't become master of the fighters guild at lvl 8), arena (later fights will be much harder for weak chars so you can't win it with a low lvl character) and much more (read the full readme for a complete list with detailed info).
There also an items add-on which adds a ton of new top quality user made weapons and armors to my loot lists and creatures add-on adding many quality user made creatures to spawn lists.

[The Death Knight]

So far, I'm a Breton with a customised class I called "Avenger". The image it picked for me is the Knight one (which I was happy about :cool:).

The Avenger class has the following for major skills (please excuse if I get a lot of stuff wrong, haven't played the game in a while):
Blade
Heavy Armour
Destruction Magic
Athletics (Jumping)
Conjuration (Shouldn't have put this, I should've put the Running one)
Healing

Favoured stats were Endurance and Willpower.

The character's birthsign is The Warrior.

So basically, he's an offensive knight who fights in melee's rather aggressively, using a combination of swords and destructive magic.

[Graven]

Just one thing ... why does everyone say that the skills you plan on using should not be main? Because you gain level too fast and get reduced attribute bonuses?

Well... dunno if my game was bugged or something, but you only gain level when you sleep. If you have used the main skills enough to gain level, but don't want to, don't sleep? It worked pretty well with me.

[Dagoth]

Just one thing ... why does everyone say that the skills you plan on using should not be main? Because you gain level too fast and get reduced attribute bonuses?

Well... dunno if my game was bugged or something, but you only gain level when you sleep. If you have used the main skills enough to gain level, but don't want to, don't sleep? It worked pretty well with me.

Because when you get the little icon saying that you will level up if you sleep, the stat bonuses you will receive when you actually level up are blocked, even if you then go and get all skills to maximum before sleeping you will get stats.

Of course you can always not sleep, thus remaining at low level, which actually makes the game easier.

The system sucks.

[Serai]

I was a Woodelf Thief under the Thief moon. So stealth class.. I must say, i think its more exciting because it keeps you on your toes... Course I used predominately run+shoot with bow just because thats what I always am. I still think the bow kinda sucked against melee weapons in comparison just because melee was so easy...all you had to do was whack away- ranged you had to actually aim which takes some practice, and it seems you can never do damage as fast.

[Bhazrak]

I'd never play vanilla oblivion again, atleast willingly. Didn't have the 'gimped' character problem in it, even though I didn't bother to min/max everything. Mine actually became a powerhouse by the late teens due to his build, which was kind of sad. But the core game has so many bad design elements, that I would only play it again if I only had a console at hand.

[Katnap_Devikat]

I have been playing since it came out and like the argonian, mainly for the poison resist cause im kinda careless when it comes to dungeon diving.

[Gorlak]

My char ( one of many) was Breton and his class was a mix of monk mage and warlock. Birghtsign - atronach.

The scheme was simple. Fight with fist, without armor and absorb as much magicka as possible (more than 100%) . About lvl 15 he was unstopable killing and self healing machine with maxed destruction spells.

[Thargan]

I hate being 'stealthy' and I just don't like the magic system in Oblivion. Too many tedious spells that really didn't do much.

The only characters I played with were a Nord Warrior (customized) and a Redguard Monk (customized, I did all hand-to-hand).

[Wild]

I played Mystic Elf Thief who i chose because they look impressive like final fantasy characters.Loved the sneaking part and had great fun robbing poor people of their gold.
Was using a bow as a weapon and liked the style of the combat.Also had an alchemy and made some of the most powerful poisons in the game that made sneak+poisoned arrow ruin enemy health very quickly.

Now this post made me think to try some other class too cause the game was quite fun.

[Noli me Tangere]

Didn't like Oblivion enough to be able to say. Now, Morrowind I went with house Telvanni. This should tell you everything you need to know about my Morrowind character, as I didn't really commit to a specific archetype, tending to mix it up, though there was definitly magic.

I tended to mix magic (destruction, but.. in the end, I liked to perfect them all) with some of the more physical and stealthy abilities, though, I stayed away from anything too warrior-ish. I likes my daggers. <_<

Also, Dunmer ftw.

I went with the serpent birthsign, mostly because picking one of the more magic-centric birthsigns was just too obvious and easy, especially the Atronach if you practiced your alchemy.

[Festo]

i have beat the game over 100 times (same with every other RPG that has come out in the passed 10 years)

you cant call it oblivon anymore i have so many mods its not funny

but one of my fav builds to go is sword n board nord Oo with destro magic using mainly frost attacks

its fun

[KGBmarinac]

You remember the witch king from Lotr?
Know an evil wizard?
Know the dark elves?

Combine those 3 things and you got my char, evil guy :)

I als got a bosmer assassin, have robbed bruma for 10x times and bought a house for that money in bruma.. oh the irony

[Duty]

I had a Breton with a customized class: Defender. His main skills were as follows:

Restoration
Block
Blade
Alteration
Heavy Armor
Alchemy
Armorer

Birthsign: Atronach
Level I stopped At: about 35

Basically I got into the Mage's Guild, enchanted all my heavy armor with "Armor" spells from the alteration line, so I had 85% armor, enchanted/found the rest with magic absorb to go with the Atronach, until I had 100%, then used restoration/alchemy to constantly keep HoTs going on me. Later I had the idea of leveling conjuration, I summoned wraiths that I would hit 3 times and they would constantly replenish my magic b/c they only cast spells and triggered my magic absorb.

I turned the difficulty all the way up when it was getting easy, and at higher difficulties nearly all the monsters have damage return (they do damage back to you when hit) which ignores absorb and armor. If I paced myself and kept my HoTs/Wraiths going, I was indestructible even on max difficulty, although at the higher levels I still had a few close calls.


I never got too into Oblivion, I'm too much a power gamer and that interferes with truly enjoying such a game. I guess I should just stick to MMOs. :)

Btw: Mod the game, especially the whacky leveling. I chose major skills under a modded Oblivion, and it felt so much funner to be able to play the first 20 levels as the class I wanted the character to be, instead of rolling with the 7 toughest ones to level up and make your character feel like crap at the beginning.

[Specter]

Most fun combo's:

llusion, sneak and blade. Get up close, plant a knife. Mix with alchemy for added effects. Use alteration for defense and opening locks, and some utility spells.
Mysticism for detection (and teleports from a mod), dispelling can be handy too.
finish up with light armor to add a bit of defense.
spec: magic.
i played this with a Dark Elf born under the Mage.
tip: being a vampire enhances this class's skills.
This one joined the DB and the thieves guild, but was mostly an assassin. nothing beats the DB qs. Also joined the mages guild. He didnt like necro's for his own inscrutable reasons.

Heavy offense: conjuration, destruction and blunt. Uses 2-handers. Crush the enemy under an unrelenting wave of summoned creatures, fireballs and weapon swings.
Mix with some defense, heavy armor and restoration, to stay alive.
Finish up with armorer to keep gear in top condition. (at late levels repairs become very expensive)
last slot optional, i think i picked alteration. block could be nice here too.
spec: magic
played this with a Breton born under the Mage.
EVIL. so dam evil that he finished the main quest so he could conquer Cyrodiil himself. Wouldve been a necromancer if there only was a good necro mod out there.
still have to finish servant of the dawn mod with him, hes gonna use the organisation to serve his own interests. :evil:

of course, since my game is by now heavily modded, you could have a totally different experience with these builds, but i liked them a lot.
recommended mods: Mighty Magick (only skills and races), Martigen's Monster Mod, Francesco's, Supreme Magicka, Modular Oblivion Enhanced.
I of course use many more mods, but these are the most important.