LEVELING QUESTION

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:19 pm

When you level up, and that symbol appears at the bottom, all of your skills continue to increase while using them as normal if you don't rest, right? This is something i've never entirely understood....

Vook · Post by **Vook** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 4:27 pm

They do, but they don't count towards incerase of attributes on current level.
That is, say, Alchemy is your minor, Sneak is Major. You bump Alchemy by 8, Sneak by 10, then Alchemy by another 3, then go to sleep. You get +5 Agility from Sneak but only +4 Intelligence from Alchemy increased by 8 before you gained a level with 10th point of Sneak. The other 3 points count towards next level.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:50 pm

ohhh, ok, that makes perfect sense, thanks a lot

AnimaMortis · Post by **AnimaMortis** » Sat Jun 24, 2006 6:47 pm

However, i encountered a bug with the Oghma Infinium, making all the attribute point modifiers count towards first level up (i got two)
THAT MADE ME MISS FIVE BLOODY WILLPOWER POINTS! AAARGHH!

Kogo · Post by **Kogo** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 1:29 am

I just dont get it. Is there a formula for leveling smart? as in getting more points to raise if doing that Vook mentions? btw Vook what does bump mean? (English is not my main language)

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 5:22 am

'Bump' refers to 'bumping up' or increasing.

Gruntler · Post by **Gruntler** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 6:32 am

Kogo wrote:I just dont get it. Is there a formula for leveling smart? as in getting more points to raise if doing that Vook mentions? btw Vook what does bump mean? (English is not my main language)

Check out the best practices on the uesp site http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Best_Practices

GrayMouser · Post by **GrayMouser** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 7:36 pm

The bottom line is that leveling in this game is friggin tedious. What a major pain in the arse it is that I need to track the number of points here and there and not 'work' on some skill on the last point of the 10 points needed, etc. MAJOR FRIGGIN PAIN!! It's the one drawback of this game...

My opinion,
GM

PS My second character is F____K on account of the leveling quirks.

GenghisJohn · Post by **GenghisJohn** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 8:20 pm

GrayMouser wrote:The bottom line is that leveling in this game is friggin tedious. What a major pain in the arse it is that I need to track the number of points here and there and not 'work' on some skill on the last point of the 10 points needed, etc. MAJOR FRIGGIN PAIN!! It's the one drawback of this game...

My opinion,
GM

PS My second character is F____K on account of the leveling quirks.

I agree. That's why I don't pay attention to it at all.

Smart decisions in practicing skills and playing style seem about 5 times more important than munchkin-ing your ability points.

ScamIam · Post by **ScamIam** » Thu Jul 06, 2006 10:47 pm

I decided to get it over with.

2" hex bolt, just the right size and weight to hold down a key.

Went up 19 levels of conjuration while I changed the blades on my lawnmower.

Sneak mode + autorun + sleeping mage = 10 levels of sneak while I finish up the weedwhacking.

Seems a bit churlish at first, but you get used to it.
The game is designed so that it makes more sense to adventure in your bedroom than to go out in a cave.

By going up to higher levels I get better treasure and spend less time clicking "yes, I want to sell one iron helmet" at the local trader.

These tedious and unnecesary confirmation screens are the worst part of the game for me.
at very least the cursor should appear over the confirmation button so you don't have to physically move the mouse each time one of these screens pops up.

Vook · Post by **Vook** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:52 am

I think you missed the point. You might have gained x5 Agility. Gain 7-8 levels that way and the cruelty of Oblivion levelled enemy system will hit you with full strength. Yeah, will-o-the-wisp against what is essentially level 1 character with decent sneak and agility and thanks to that is called "level 8".

ScamIam · Post by **ScamIam** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 2:22 pm

I'm getting bored of that Character anyway, and plan to start again.

Mostly I wanted to see what effect being higher level had on my ability to make spells and weapons.

Is it possible to make a sword that casts paralyze on contact?

GrayMouser · Post by **GrayMouser** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 3:44 pm

ScamIam wrote:Sneak mode + autorun + sleeping mage = 10 levels of sneak while I finish up the weedwhacking.

Hmmm, sneak and autorun seem reasonable but what is 'sleeping mage?' Is that a spell?

BTW, I did the same trick on my character (a mage) to get his destruction, alteration, and conjuration up to 75 each. Having done it, I am not sure I would recommend it...

GM

weka · Post by **weka** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 4:07 pm

I think ScamIam means "next to" a sleeping mage.

If you just sneak in an empty room it doesn't appear to improve your sneak skill. You need someone to fail to witness your sneaking.

ScamIam · Post by **ScamIam** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:47 pm

Yes, Weka is right, sneak when someone is sleeping in the bed.
Hit autorun and come back in a little while.

GreyMouser, I think I get what you mean about not recommending this: my 25th magnitude 100 foot radius frenzy spell doesn't affect a lot of the guards now that I'm 30th level. The mage scholars are immune to it too.

Now that I'm about to start my third game I feel myself coming around to what Vook has been saying all along; leveling works against you.

Playing the game without leveling has its own problems though, especially when you are a high elf that starts with 30 strength. The only way to raise it is to level.

This time I am going to max out illusion at a very early level and become Nyarlethotep, the crawling chaos, travelling from town to town with death and madness strewn in my wake.

GrayMouser · Post by **GrayMouser** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 6:58 pm

ScamIam wrote:This time I am going to max out illusion at a very early level and become Nyarlethotep, the crawling chaos, travelling from town to town with death and madness strewn in my wake.

That's just it. If you max out illusion, you will never ever want to sleep in a bead again because I think that you will get the 'level' symbol over and over again and your stats will suck going up. And BTW, there are several quests that require you to sleep! Ack...

I decided that even though my character is screwed with leveling, I am just going to see what happens. I might be weak in many ways, but let 'em try to resist 100 points of shock.

GM

ScamIam · Post by **ScamIam** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 7:10 pm

Hi GreyMouser.

I plan to take illusion as a minor skill.
That way I can max it out without gaining any levels.

I am going to do the same thing for whichever skill gives you the paralyze spell (I think it's mysticism), since that has proven to be awesomely useful.

The lesson about paralysis was tought to me by daedra spiderlets on my first foray into Kvatch. I could have laid out the whole hoard except that I kept turning green and falling down.

GrayMouser · Post by **GrayMouser** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 9:07 pm

ScamIam wrote:I plan to take illusion as a minor skill.
That way I can max it out without gaining any levels.

Oh yeah, so that's something else that's quite silly. If I understand it correctly, if you want to be a real bad ass mage, choose non-mage skills as your major skills. So a thief-like character with minor mage skills (like destruction and alteration) makes a better mage than a true mage character with thief-like minor skills, right?

What's wrong with that picture?

GM

SupidSeep · Post by **SupidSeep** » Fri Jul 07, 2006 10:38 pm

GrayMouser wrote:
ScamIam wrote:I plan to take illusion as a minor skill.
That way I can max it out without gaining any levels.
Oh yeah, so that's something else that's quite silly. If I understand it correctly, if you want to be a real bad ass mage, choose non-mage skills as your major skills. So a thief-like character with minor mage skills (like destruction and alteration) makes a better mage than a true mage character with thief-like minor skills, right?

What's wrong with that picture?

GM

That picture is not as you see it. The thief doesn't actually make a better mage than the mage, but the thief doesn't level up from using mage skills. The mage does.

The thing here is, hostile encounters in Oblivion scale up in difficulty with increasing levels. So the thief who didn't level up when increasing his mage skills, will still encounter low-level challenges while the mage, who will have gained levels by increasing his mage skills, has to face off against progressively tougher enemies.

This creates the illusion of the thief being a better 'mage' than the mage. In truth, given similar amount of gaming and skill use, the mage's mage skills will be far better on raw numbers, but because he is facing tougher enemies, it 'feels' as if the mage is a 'worse' mage than the thief.

Some people take advantage of such loopholes to 'dumb-down' their enemies by limiting their rate of leveling while pumping up their 'minor' skills. It gives a similar effect to lowering the difficulty setting since they face easier challenges compared to their character's actual capabilities.

To each his own, Oblivion is not a MMORPG. They have the freedom to play it the way they want. It is up to you whether to follow their example. I don't.

Cnjr Mahro On You · Post by **Cnjr Mahro On You** » Sun Jul 09, 2006 7:44 pm

Why do you guys make leveling so difficult if anything you should make it easy, make a custom character choose Alteration Conjuration Destruction Illusion Mysticism and Speechcraft and one more as major skills so alls you need to do is buy spells go to a bed cast the spell continually rest for an hour when your magika is drained and keep doing, all the talk of a theive being better then a mage is stupid what diffrence does it make when the stats are all master any way? ..... And for speechcraft just sit there and continually talk to a person .... easy levels, i've been playing for 2 weeks and my character is level 50 with the main story line done , had to make a new character because the theives guild quests were glitched to hell

ScamIam · Post by **ScamIam** » Mon Jul 10, 2006 2:06 pm

I have come to enjoy messing with the NPC's heads.

Frenzy and command are loads of fun, and even calm can be pretty comical when it freezes a pack of angry guards into statues. Another good one is paralyze, especially if someone is near water, or the top of a staircase.

If you want to have the most fun with these spells you need to get illusion up to 100% at a low level, since the best command or frenzy spell affects up to 25th level characters.

As you get higher in levels the spells will affect fewer people.

I am on my third game and have no idea what the main quest line is.
It was the same way with Morrowind; I played it for easily 100 hours without ever finishing the game, or even caring that it could be finished.
Since I am playing with a "no essential characters" mod, I guess the odds are pretty slim of finishing this game either.