Elder Scrolls IV

[Cuddly]

I started playing this game at a friend's place, on his 360. Started with a high elf mage. Running backwards and shooting fireballs seems to be a really great tactic at level 4.

Anyway, I see that you can be good at ANYTHING in this game, which makes me hate it, since I feel compelled to run around spamming spells, jumping, and picking locks, and telling everyone jokes.

Is that a viable strategy, or should I just neglect everything but my spells? Right now, monsters are really easy to kill. Is it like FF8 where stuff levels up, or are there strong monsters and weak ones out there, lurking?

[Oregano]

The enemies scale to your level, the humanoid ones actually level up why more powerful animals and monsters start to appear. The great thing about oblivion is you don't need to concentrate on your spells or one thing to be good just do what you do and have fun, that's what I do and I haven't died once.

I would recommend buying some powerful spells, scrolls, potions and staffs though(especially if you can't fight well unarmed or with a weapon) and get protection spells if you're not in any armour.

[NikkTheTrick]

However, note that since monsters level with you, you need to have at least one form of combat leveled up. My friend went a bit too excited about training alchemy and lock picking (which he had as major skills) and he ended up with low combat abilities against powerful monsters. He felt what he made adoring fan feel at the dive rock so many times...

I mostly fight melee and I actually find monsters far more difficult than humans. Ogre strikes seem to be a lot more harmful than sword slashes...

That said, with alchemy you can take on anyone: poisons are good.

By the way, is there a mod to greatly increase damage for everything and make blocks a lot more efficient? I'd like it so that everyone (including character) goes down in 1-2 strikes that do not land on block, making combat a whole lot more exciting, careful and involve a lot more dancing around?

[DemonicAngel]

deadly reflexes, I think, is the mod your looking for.

[Hadrian_Emrys]

Nothing makes my heart swell like maxing the stealth ability during the intro. Suddenly, critters find themselves being stunlocked by a ninja archer. Blowing critters over cliffs at a range has yet to get old. :smallbiggrin:

[Inhuman Bot]

man, in TeS my charcters always have a ridiculos speed and sneek. I can get from the Imp city to bruma in 3 minutes with my best charcter! max speed woot!

[Cuddly]

Magic seems pretty good. I was thinking of doing a sword & spell hybrid. OTOH, sneaking and thieving are also really, really good.

[MeklorIlavator]

There's a mod out there(XXXXXX's Oblivion Overhaul, I believe), that changes the leveling system a bit: most monsters have a cap, but you do find certain areas that have higher level creatures. He also tweaks the Campaign, so you do want to level up to a certain degree or the monsters in the campaign will cream you.

That being said, my favorite thing to do is get to level two quickly, then d the Daedric quest for the infinite soul gem, then do all the mage guild quests until you get into the academy. One you're in, enchant a weapon with the following:
Weakness to <Energy> XX 2s
<Energy> damage XX 2s
Soul Trap 2s

This will do ridiculous amounts of damage, and with the special daedric artifact you can refill the weapon based off the enemies you kill.

[Chumbaniya]

If you want to be powerful, magic is probably your best bet. Once you get to a high level, mellee damage just doesn't seem to take people down very fast - my brother's pure mage destroyed everything very quickly where my Orc warrior with maxed strength and blunt skill and a deadric mace would still have to hack away at things for ages. However, you can become pretty much indestructible as a heavily armoured character by getting a set of daedric armour and enchanting it with magic resistance and strength/endurance boosts.

[Oregano]

I've found that Melee, Marksman and Magic seem to be fairly balanced and it usually takes four good hits to kill something, it's mostly blocking that draws fights out. You might want to check if your brother was easy mode.:smallwink:

I prefer a mix of the skill sets for my characters, a typical list of skills for my characters is:
Blades
Light Armour
Restoration
Block
Sneak
Security
Marksman
In fact I think that's my current character's list of skills.

[Chumbaniya]

I've found that Melee, Marksman and Magic seem to be fairly balanced and it usually takes four good hits to kill something, it's mostly blocking that draws fights out. You might want to check if your brother was easy mode.:smallwink:

I prefer a mix of the skill sets for my characters, a typical list of skills for my characters is:
Blades
Light Armour
Restoration
Block
Sneak
Security
Marksman
In fact I think that's my current character's list of skills.

I don't think the balance is bad, really - for the most part it's quite good, but when you get up to level 25-30 I find that the amount of damage that mellee can do is a lot more limited than the damage magic can do, because with mellee you simply increase damage as your strength and skill go up, but with magic you gain more powerful spells as your skill goes up AND they get cheaper and you get more mana so you can cast them more often. I couldn't really get a 125% repaired (max armourer skill) daedric mace to do more than about 32 damage a hit with around 120 strength and 120 blunt weapon skill (with enchants) whereas a mage could get spells doing 100 damage for 2 seconds at range.

[Oregano]

That'd be it then, I only got to level 24 before starting again and at that point both Magic and Swordplay seemed to be powerful. Wouldn't a spell that powerful take up too much mana. I prefer to use my mana for healing anyway.

[Neftren]

Combining Sword and Spell at the same time in combat isn't such a good idea. Using one to buff the other is a really good idea. Melee seems to drop off later on, but that's because mundane weapons just aren't as good. Enchant the weapon or pick up something innately enchanted and go wreak havoc.

[Chumbaniya]

Combining Sword and Spell at the same time in combat isn't such a good idea. Using one to buff the other is a really good idea. Melee seems to drop off later on, but that's because mundane weapons just aren't as good. Enchant the weapon or pick up something innately enchanted and go wreak havoc.

It's generally a bad idea to try and focus on both offensive magic and mellee combat at the same time, because when you're casting a spell you can't be swinging a sword and vice versa. One way in which I do find offensive magic useful as a mellee combatant is to create yourself a spell which deals a moderate amount of damage but over a few seconds (which makes it cheaper than dealing it all upfront) so you can start with that and then get to swinging your weapon for a few seconds, then renewing it and continuing.

However, as you say, the best use of magic for a mellee combatant is in buffs. Brewing some really good poisons and designing yourself a spell to boost your strength and weapon skill for a while helps even late-game mellee up against magic.

[Flickerdart]

Sneak + Marksman is an awesome combination. I can one-shot anything of my level.

Making a combination Mage/Thief is a pretty useless idea, since Alteration spells will unlock doors for you anyways. The only school a Thief needs is Illusion, for Chameleon.

However, if you hold down the mouse button with a bow while sneaking and then stand up, you'll continue to hold the bow "gangsta style". Unfortunately, it's not possible to add rims to your horse.

[Raroy]

Question, when using the OMOD to apply a mod, you select a button called add archive. What do you add? I can't seem to add folders. Do you add individual files?

[mentatzarkon]

I love the Elder Scrolls games, ever since I wasted half my 12th year of life playing Daggerfall :)

I have two favorite ways of playing this game. First off, make a character who specializes in long blade, heavy armor, restoration, mysticism and destruction. Unfortunately they removed mark and recall from the newest game, so you can't use them as a combat tactic, which was always a lot of fun, but this character can still more or less take any kind of enemy in any kind of combat.

Okay, the second variety is just plain cheap. You specialize in illusion and sneak. All other skills are unimportant after that. You get sneak up as a high as it will go and enchant your armor to the point where you have 100% chameleon. Now, you're totally silent and totally invisible even when you attack. Add in a high jumping skill and you are now a ninja.