The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Character Build-up & Development Guide

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| [CBDG05]                  CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT                        |
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The best starting character is worthless if you don't level him up 
correctly. And the game punishes you severely for not doing so. If you 
don't plan ahead a little, you will not be able to play beyond medium 
difficulty, and if you seriously screw up, even medium may get impossible. 

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| Level-Up Game Mechanics |
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So lets take a look how a level up works: As soon as you have gained 10 
skill points in any combination of major skills, you will get a level 
up. Upon level up, you gain 1/10th of your endurance in Health and can 
select 3 attributes to be increased. Sounds easy ? Well there is a catch: 
Skills are tied to attributes, and for every 2 skill points tied to a 
certain attribute you get a better increase for this attribute on 
level up. The maximum increase is +5. 

An example: 

Your mage has gained 3 Points Mysticism, 5 Points Restoration & 1 Point 
Alchemy - all those skills are tied to Intelligence. So if you pick 
Intelligence on level up, you will get a 5 points boost instead a one 
point boost. If you had 5 Points Restoration,, 1 Point Alchemy and 
4 Points Destruction, you would get Intelligence x3 and Willpower x2. 

It does not matter whether the skills are major or minor, all increases 
add to the stat increase modification. You probably know where this 
leads: For every level, use a combination of minor and major skill 
points that give you a +5 increase to two attributes - Luck is not tied 
to a skill, so if will go up one point per level. You could also just 
leave luck at 55 and try to get three +5 increases. And don't get any 
other skill points which will not contribute to those attibutes. 

Obviously, this is horrible. Forget immersion, forget normal exploring, 
just say "I will be God, and this is necessary". Well... Or don't.  
I recommend to get one of the many level-up mods that give you x5 for 
any skill gain since the last level. You still gain your levels 
honestly, so i consider this to be a fix. If you consider it cheating, 
say "i will be God, so this is necessarily fun. It is... really !". 


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| Character Development |
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I will assume you got your +5 increases in one way or another. But 
its still a good idea to keep focused, At level 14, you can have 
60 in every attribute (and Luck 68). Or you can have 100 Endurance 
and 100 in your main attribute: Strength for melee fighters, 
Agility for archers, Intelligence for mages. The first character 
will be lost on hard, and difficult on medium, the second will be 
easy on medium, and sometimes challenging in hard. 

|||| So, first rule of fight club |||| 
Maximize Endurance first ! Endurance = Health, and Health you 
need. The only stat that does not work retroactive. 

|||| Second rule |||||
Maximize Endurance first ! And focus on it. Its really important 
to have enough health to stay alive in a hard 6 vs 1 battle on 
maximum difficulty. It still won't be enough health, but 
less health is suicide. 

|||| Third rule ||||
Maximize one important attribute ! - And I'm not talking about
Personality. The attribute tied to your damage dealing skill should 
be max. For melee, that's Strength, for Archery Agility, for 
Magic Intelligence or a mix of Willpower and Intelligence. 

|||| Forth rule ||||
Some focus on the damage dealing Skill is important. You don't 
need to hurry as much, and maxing out is not the prime goal, 
but your prime damage dealer should be in the upper seventies 
rather sooner than later. 

|||| fifth rule ||||
Don't forget your minor support skills. 


After you got a decent prime damage skill, your further skill 
development is really up to you. You are safe now.  

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| Training Skills     |
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Learning by doing - and learning more by doing more, or how 
you train specific skills outside normal combat. 

Spellcasting Skills: 
Most schools have training cantrips, cheap spells you can 
cast onto yourself while running to the next town / quest. 
Illusion has Light, Alteration has Protect, Mysticism has
Minor Life Detection. Conjuration and Destruction are best
trained together: Summon Skeleton and blast it away with 
Flare. 

Alchemy: 
Create some endurance potions made of common food - its 
lying around everywhere. 

Fighting Skills: 
Hit your summoned Skeleton for Hand to Hand, Blade, Blunt and 
Marksman, let it hit you for Light and Heavy Armour, and block 
its attacks for Block. 

Armourer: 
Repair everything, repair hammers are cheap and you gain 
skillpoints fast. 
 
Security: 
Other than picking locks ? No idea, tell me if you know more !

Sneak: 
Go into a room with a person inside, go to a corner of the room, 
sneak. If you keep walking (even if you just walk against the 
wall), your Sneak skill will rise. 

 -----Stephen(vitamin dew) writes:------ 
 At the bottom you give training tips. Another good, maybe even 
 better, way to raise sneak is to finish the arena and get youre 
 fan. Then tele to a cave and go inside, he will appear infront of 
 you and you can just sneak and pick pocket for as long as you want.

 Another way to do it, but I dont know if it works right away or if 
 you need a few levels. You can sit infront of a bed at an outside 
 camp(Kvatch) and just pick pocket him to his face and sleep after 
 each level.
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Athletics: 
Swimming raises this one fast, far faster than running which 
you do all the time anyway. 

Acrobatics: 
Jumping around, especially this way: 

 ------Brett Johnson writes------
 hey for acrobatics i found it really easy to get ur head close to 
 the top of a wall by jumping on places like a shelf in the cloud 
 ruler temple armory...
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Another very good way:   

 ------Chris Raine writes------
 Great guide! Here's a faster way to train acrobatics: Find a 
 place  to fall just enough to take damage without getting killed 
 (I used  one of the terrace walls in Bruma because stairs are so 
 accessible). Jump off, groan with pain, heal yourself while 
 running back up the stairs, jump again. Taking damage from falls 
 does much more acrobatics training than just jumping. 
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Speechcraft: 
Play the persuasion mini game with everyone. 
 
 ------NightStik writes------
 In order to quickly train the Speechcraft skill, what you should 
 do is talk to someone about whom you don't care (say a guard) 
 and go to the Persuade option. Every time just click the smallest 
 wedge on each block as it goes around the circle. The disposition 
 will eventually hit zero, but your speechcraft will continue to 
 raise when you do this.
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Mercantile
Buying/selling stuff. But how you sell is important, too: 

 ------Ender writes------
 OK, so Mercantile raises by how many transactions you do with the 
 other person, Not by how much you've earned or how many things 
 you sell. So, a good way to raise Mercantile and Alchemy at the 
 same time is:
 Grab all the food you find
 Make Restore Fatiuge potions
 Sell the Restore Fatiuge potions one at a time
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There are also trainers who charge money for increasing your 
skill - might be interesting for high Athletics and Security. You 
will need a recommendation from the medium trainers to train with 
master (70+) trainers, who normally also want you to complete a 
quest. 

 ------Aerenel writes------
 Each new level still only has 5 points. So to get important skills 
 up to a perk fast, such as HA to reduce weight, armorer to repair 
 magic items, alchemy to make better potions, etc, it is technically 
 best to use all 5 trains starting at level one and never failing.  
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I think he has a point. Lvl 10+ money is abundant, and high skill level 
training without a teacher gets slow. On low levels, getting the money 
uses far more time than some rats gnawing on your boots for a minute.