Elder Scrolls: Oblivion?

[goofyballer]

For those of you that have been playing for awhile, I'm curious: what do you think about the difficulty?

I'm a level 20 custom thief, with majors in Blade/Light Armor/Sneak/Security/Speechcraft/Acrobatics/Athletics. I feel like the game is getting really hard. I think 95% of the areas in the game are level-based - meaning places where I went before that used to have mudcrabs and rats now have Daedroths and Storm Atronachs. In a couple places I've seen Spider Daedra and Land Dreughs, both of which made me run away in fear. These areas felt easier when my character sucked than they do now.

I think the biggest problem my character has is that he sucks at magic. I have decent equipment, but basically my attack plan tends to be hack away with my Elven Longsword, step back and cast some [censored] fireball spell I have (5 pts for 3 secs on target), repeat - against tough enemies, like Daedroths, Clannfears, and even some higher level Dremora, I get PWNED with this. I have a staff I got from being in the Mage's Guild which does 60 pts of shock damage per hit, and I bust that out when I'm in a jam, but it costs 2.4k gold to recharge the damn thing, which really starts adding up if I use it more than sparingly. I have about 10k gold and would be happy to spend a chunk of it training my magic skills to maybe apprentice level, but oh wait, you can only do 5 training sessions per level, and I'm now leveling up somewhat infrequently.

Whereas I used to think the game was easy when I was pwning mudcrabs and rats left and right, I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to beat it without turning down the difficulty, which I refuse to do because I'm convinced it's for girly men. Thoughts?

[Freudian]

As a thief I think it is a good idea to use the bow a lot, the more damage you can do before melee the better. You also get the sneak bonus when using a bow and not when using fireball.

As for textures and trees being bland at a great distance. It is either that or fogging. There is not a computer around outside NASA that would be able to render that draw distance in high detail.

[madnak]

I'm having the opposite experience. When I started my character I was extremely weak and wouldn't have been able to kill a mud crab if I couldn't dodge its attacks. Now I'm able to hold my own against anything.

My first advantage was raising my speed and endurance to 100 immediately. Both started at 35 (Breton but I made them my main skills) so that's level 14. That means from then on you get 20 hp per level, which is nice. Speed is also amazing in this game since you can dodge.

Second, I got heavy armor to 100 as I was working on endurance. Heavy armor is very nice and at master level it doesn't encumber you at all. The advantage of no encumbrance is overwhelming. It also makes light armor inferior, unfortunately for you.

Blade is good, blade or blunt should be high because damage output matters. I got my hand-to-hand up to level 60, and it's useless! Try to avoid it. Haven't tried marksman yet.

Learn restoration. Using the minor healing spell you can constantly regenerate hit points. If you do get into trouble, you can use your high athletics/acrobatics to get away and heal. Destruction isn't worth much as far as I can tell. Weapons are much better, forget destruction. If you do use destruction, use damage attribute. If it's anything like Morrowind, that will really do some harm. Try damage strength and damage speed. I haven't gotten into enchanting yet, but I think mysticism

Raise spell skills by casting over and over again. Save your five points for valuable skills, magic is easy to grind (particularly up to level 50 or so). Hard skills to raise include athletics, attack skills, mercantile (maybe, mine is going up extremely slowly where it shot up quickly in MW), and particularly high-level skills. You only have five points to spend, so make sure to get the best bang and raise skills that are level 80 or higher. Any skill is easy to raise to apprentice level without training.

METER YOUR LEVELING. In the first place, you won't be able to get your attributes +5 at level unless you raise a relevant skill by 10 points. Since you have a lot of passive skills tagged, you'll really need to work those minor skills. I am very anal about how I do levels, which is why I'm getting ungodly. I very carefully choose which skills to raise when, and how to raise them, to get maximum benefit to my statistics. As you go up in level the enemies scale, so you want to get as much out of each level as possible. Try to get three attributes ten skill gains each for a +15 to your attributes each level. Or do as I do, get two +5s and throw +1 into luck. Luck takes a long time to pay off, though. You really want strength, speed, and endurance for combat preparation. Then agility, which is important but not that important. My agility is still 30 actually, and I don't get knocked down too often. I get staggered a lot, but I can always recover in time.

Block helps more than you'd think. This is partially an action game, so spamming attacks won't help too much. Learn how to use your power attacks. Learn how to dodge slow attacks from the enemy, and block quick attacks. Identify openings in the enemy's defense, and exploit them. If you knock the enemy down or stun him, hit him with everything you have. It's an excellent opportunity to really wail on him.

Use enchanted weapons with reasonable enchantments. I'm using unenchanted weapons because I'm a cheapskate and I haven't gotten around to unlocking the Arcane University yet, so I can't advise you too confidently. But paralyze was unbeatable in Morrowind, try that. Consider damage statistic if it's not too hard. And I assume the University is worth getting into, you'll have to do quests at all the mages guilds first. In Morrowind soul trap / enchantment was very powerful.

If all else fails, get cheap. Jump on a big rock. Run toward the city guards. Knock them off ledges or into water. Sometimes just going into the water will save you. Be careful to save before entering closed battles such as the arena battles. Avoid monsters that are too strong for you, and pick on the weak ones. You might take up alchemy if you need more money.

And, in the very very worst case, there's always the difficulty slider. Good luck!

[ilya]

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For those of you that have been playing for awhile, I'm curious: what do you think about the difficulty?

I'm a level 20 custom thief, with majors in Blade/Light Armor/Sneak/Security/Speechcraft/Acrobatics/Athletics. I feel like the game is getting really hard. I think 95% of the areas in the game are level-based - meaning places where I went before that used to have mudcrabs and rats now have Daedroths and Storm Atronachs. In a couple places I've seen Spider Daedra and Land Dreughs, both of which made me run away in fear. These areas felt easier when my character sucked than they do now.

I think the biggest problem my character has is that he sucks at magic. I have decent equipment, but basically my attack plan tends to be hack away with my Elven Longsword, step back and cast some [censored] fireball spell I have (5 pts for 3 secs on target), repeat - against tough enemies, like Daedroths, Clannfears, and even some higher level Dremora, I get PWNED with this. I have a staff I got from being in the Mage's Guild which does 60 pts of shock damage per hit, and I bust that out when I'm in a jam, but it costs 2.4k gold to recharge the damn thing, which really starts adding up if I use it more than sparingly. I have about 10k gold and would be happy to spend a chunk of it training my magic skills to maybe apprentice level, but oh wait, you can only do 5 training sessions per level, and I'm now leveling up somewhat infrequently.

Whereas I used to think the game was easy when I was pwning mudcrabs and rats left and right, I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to beat it without turning down the difficulty, which I refuse to do because I'm convinced it's for girly men. Thoughts?

[/ QUOTE ]

Make an exploit build, choosing for major skills only skills you won't ever use or need. That way you will never level up unless you choose to. This will allow you to control the difficulty without moving the difficulty slider & thereby making the NPCs dumber.

Other options include

a, running away
b, improving your strategies (think about spells, combinations of potions, use sneak and marksman to pwn from a safe distance, etc)

[ilya]

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As for textures and trees being bland at a great distance. It is either that or fogging. There is not a computer around outside NASA that would be able to render that draw distance in high detail.

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I would greatly prefer fogging.

[New001]

I'm on roughly hour 24 of a long session... Doubtful I'll play any poker for at least the rest of this month.

Really fun. Really addicting. Morrowind + 1000. I hate the long loading screens though. It also lags sometimes on the 360. Other than that, I'm really liking it.

[ilya]

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It also crashes sometimes on the 360.

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FYP [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[New001]

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It also crashes sometimes on the 360.

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FYP [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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Yeah, I think it's happened 3-4 times to me in the last 4 days. Sometimes though, if it's on a load screen, giving it 10 minutes or so will let it do its thing and it's good.

[ilya]

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It also crashes sometimes on the 360.

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FYP [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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Yeah, I think it's happened 3-4 times to me in the last 4 days. Sometimes though, if it's on a load screen, giving it 10 minutes or so will let it do its thing and it's good.

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I think yours crashes in a different way then. My game will sometimes just stop working as I'm walking around the game world. The guide interface pops up on the right and says that the console can't read the disc and needs to restart. Usually before this happens the disc drive gets louder and makes horrible screeching noises.

[New001]

Yeah, that's not what mine does. It may have crashed once in the wilderness, but every other time at least was either during the fast travel load screen or just a normal load screen.

My copy of Morrowind did exactly what you're describing though on the regular Xbox. I never found out why.