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When I started playing Oblivion quite a while ago (XBox 360) I got to the Kvatch gate and kept getting killed, so I figured I needed to raise my character in level and come back. (I have since read that the enemies you meet here adapt to your level.)

I recently remembered that I should go back to the main quest, and am now a level 16 character. Right after entering the gate at Kvatch I run into a Daedroth and Clannfear who pretty much wipe me out each and every time.

Any suggestions on how I can approach this?

They both have a 20% weakness to shock and a 33% resistance to fire, which is quite common in various Daedra, so def try to hit them with either shock spells, or shock enchanted weapons.

If you can get or enchant a shock weapon that works over a range (like 10'), that should help too (10' seems to cover alot more than what looks like 10' to me!).

Poison your weapons, and take lots of healing potions with you.

If I were you though, I'd level once more, as you get Transcendent Sigil stones from level 17 onwards, and the Kvatch gate is the only one where you can take 3 stones, rather than the usual one. Remember to quicksave just before you take the stone, and then you can restore till you get one that you want.

When I first did the Kvatch gate, I was level 2, and the last part I just ran for it with beasties in hot pursuit. Once you take the Sigil Stone, that's the last you see of them.

In oblivion, a Magic Bow, with Magic Arrows, in Sneak Mode & Poision work wonders. It is a little more difficult inside the Towers though, since there is not much room. Just be prepared to switch to Spell or Sword when they start to rush you.

Running works too. Also add Invisibility or Chamelion.

thanks for those hints so far. I'll be leveling up to 17, and working on getting some other weapons & spells as suggested.

Gaining levels was about the worst you could do
Read up on "efficient levelling" to see what you lost. Then pull the slider or start from scratch.

("difficulty" slider in options)

clanfear have some sort of reflect enchantment on its annoying

Vook wrote:....
Read up on "efficient levelling" to see what you lost. Then pull the slider or start from scratch.....

Why do you assume that oxygenRT hasn't been getting the most out of levelling? There seem to be quite alot of people that don't use efficient levelling, but still get through the game w/o having to move the slider.

I initially tried Ob gates at alot of lower levels, and while level 2 was reasonably survivable, I found it much easier at later levels. In the end I left it till I was just in my 20's.

Other than Transcendent Sigil stones, one big advantage of doing Ob gates later: the only Clannfears I come across are summoned ones, so kill the soft squishy summoner, problem solved. I still don’t like them.

Another advantage I found was the experience gained (by me, not my char) of fighting before going into Ob, by then I had a far better chance of surviving.

Sure if you decide to play as a fighter or a mage or a battlemage, you can get far with plain normal levelling. If you try a thief, assassin, agent, or one of dozen other such professions, you soon find out you're screwed.

Vook, it seems like a lot of the "advice" that you give is tainted by discontentment. I think you should take a step back from the gaming scene and address that. You might find the game a lot more enjoyable.

All it takes is a little bit of patience, some practice and a healthy amount of ingenuity to make it through most situations. There are so many tools at your disposal, regardless of what your primary class is. Even if your primary tactic is sneak bonuses, it isn't so difficult to gain proficiency in spellcasting that it eliminates it as a viable damage resource.

So, that said, I think oxygenRT should follow weka's advice to get creative with some AoE spells, enchanted weapons and poisons. Just be patient and approach it as a strategical issue, not a game mechanics issue.

And remember to have fun, as overcoming difficult scenarios by employing different skills, weapons and custom spells and potions is largely what the developers intended.

Maybe it's your deceptive genius, maybe not... I know what I went through playing the game for the first time, when I overlevelled with stealth-based skills to level 15 or so. I'm certainly sour about these events and long period of pleasant (and difficult) gameplay didn't change that.

The problem is that no amount of patience would make that early game fun anymore. If winning a fight against a bandit takes 15 potions of restore health, if a troll mauls you to death after 8th reload from save and retry, and the only way to avoid it is to take a detour followed by a mad escape from several timber wolves, each of them capable of killing you in 3 bites, you can easily see it would likely take many, many hours of boring nerfing - fighting mudcrabs, running to safety of the city whenever a stronger enemy appears, to get anywhere back near possible to play. I was bitter because I spent almost all my money on best potions and equipment available, used them all up in hopeless fights in Oblivion, and went out with a handful of worthless junk. I was bitter because 3s after my last save I was attacked by two bandits. I replayed the save about 8 times but didn't manage to save the horse - whenever I was close to saving the horse, a troll would show up from nowhere, and the bandits would become moot...
I tried really, really hard to make the game playable again, but I failed. It was way too late for a magic path - a fort full of maruders in black march required for a recommendation quest wasn't something possible anymore. And raising blade skill would require fighting. Mudcrabs and rats dying from 2 hits, not much of a training, and anything else forcing me to flee, killing me in 3 hits. And pretty much ignoring arrow damage.

Later I replayed the game, installing Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. Right at the start the game became madly difficult. I barely made it through the tutorial cave. I ran out of arrows (80 or so) fighting two bandits. I was forced to retreat from a fort, a ruin or such several times. But I knew I can come back later and finish my business. The rewards were worth the effort. And I always could find enough enemies matching my skill and making it possible to level up efficiently. I could finally sneak around an enemy in shadows. I could get to gradually bleed the maruders for the recommendation quest. I made 4 roundtrips to Leyawiin and back, to resupply arrows, potions, sell loot, rest - without having the enemy respawned before I finished. That single quest took me more than a day of playing. Each battle would last half a hour, luring the enemy, poisoning, running, using weak invisiblity potion to hide, sneak-attacking one enemy 5-6 times, using up 40 arrows on one guy, getting disarmed 4 times in one melee battle, wielding next weapon each time. It was deadly difficult but it was one of the best pieces I ever played. It was great. Because I knew I stand a chance, because effort gave me a victory. Unlike in the former case - when beating the enemy wouldn't give me anything, just more equally hard enemies and no perspectives of improvement.

Know what's great for blade skills? Zombies. Slash, slash, dodge the painfully slow attack, repeat.

Vook, I will concede the fact that I have never played exclusively in a thief-like role, so I feel comfortable admiting that I may not have had the same degree of frustration that you experienced.

However, the main thrust of my point was that, unless true role-playing is your thing, you should feel free to use other skills and abilities to complement the main skills for your class. And, once it became apparent that your auxiliary skills weren't up to par, focus on raising them and their governing attributes. That should solve the problem.

If it seems too difficult to raise a certain skill, take Zavrith's advice and find the right monster to practice on. It makes all the difference. Also make sure to save often so that you don't get into a frustrating situation that seems impossible to overcome.

I don't know about you guys, but through my experience and my ways of playing, my thief characters are far, far deadlier than my straight mage or fighter characters.

Surprised?

Take a look at this little strategy I posted on the cyrodiil forums:

...My Ebony bow does 24 damage. My daedric arrows do 15.

I have four enchantments on the bow:
Fire Damage 7 pts for 3 seconds
Frost Damage 7 pts for 3 seconds
Shock Damage 6 pts for 3 seconds
Soul trap for 3 seconds on strike

A plain hit from this enchanted bow does
109 damage.

I also have many enchanted arrows. I have twenty that do an extra 20 fire damage.

So, using the enchanted arrows instead, I do
129 damage

Now, let's say I do a sneak attack. That tripples the base damage (Not enchantments, sadly). I then do
197 damage

But if I holster my bow before my arrow hits its target. I get the sneak multiplier for melee, which is 6x! That bumps my deadliness to
314 damage

Now, I can also use a poison on top of that! My favourite poison does:
-Fire Damage 8 pts for 32 Seconds
-Damage Health 6 pts for 26 Seconds
-Shock Damage 8 pts for 31 seconds
-Burden 38 pts for 151 Seconds

This poison does 660 damage total (With Expert equipment and a Master Mortar and Pestle)

So, if I do all of these things and use this poison, a single shot from my bow will do
974 Damage!

And I'm only level 20! I love my bow.

By the way, I'll share the secret: my poison is made of Steel blue entoloma cap, Ectoplasm, Fly Amanita cap and Spiddal stick. If your alchemy skill is above 75, mix some up and you'll have the most deadly poison possible in the game(I think).

If this oxygen fellow were to use this strategy, he'd be able to kill ANY creature at ANY level with one shot. And If he enchanted his clothes to fortify Marksman and Agility both to 100, he could deal out this kind of damage as early as level 10! (Minus the Ebony and daedric equipment, of course)

This is why I started over...I was great and all, but just too damn easy.

PLUS

Take a look at The "Hardest Difficulty Strategy Guide" Here at uesp. It looks like a Thief or Thief/mage character is the only type of character that could handle the hardest difficulty with no stress.

Nice insight, Drewsky.

.
974 Damage!

And I'm only level 20! I love my bow.
.

I bet you were getting 5/5/1 or 5/5/5 efficient levelling with all these 20 levels. What if you were gaining 2/2/1 or 2/2/2? And you were carefully avoiding overlevelling? Taking care to gain at least 30 skill points per level? And got adequate equipment every 2-3 levels, not keeping your level 1 leather junk?

That level 13 or so I dumped was gained in one day of gameplay. One level in tutorial, about 3 on my way to Chorrol and then to Skingrad, then 3 long days playing the "paranoia" quest and training all kinds of thieving skills, gaining almost 10 levels.

A carefully levelled and precisely crafted thief character can be good.
A haphazardly (over)levelled fighter or mage can still be usable.
Overlevelled thief is unplayable.

You can nicely play a good thief character by carefully rising the essential parameters from the beginning, but if you make many mistakes early, they are very hard to undo. The best way then is to start from scratch.

I bet you were getting 5/5/1 or 5/5/5 efficient levelling with all these 20 levels.

On some of the levelups, I managed to get my 5/5/5, yes. But it's not at all necessary.

All you need to repeat my method is:
1. clothing that fortifies marksman
2. sneak skill that is at least at apprentice-level, and
3. expert-level alchemy(easy)

And you were carefully avoiding overlevelling?

It's not that hard to avoid over-levelling, really. Just make sure the bulk of your most-used skills are NOT your major skills.

For this character, I did NOT have alchemy, marksman, sneak, security, etc as my major skills. That would have been suicide. (I bet that's what you did, vook. Isn't it? That's the only explanation.)

If you do it this way, it's a very easy and mindless process to avoid over-levelling.

And.....the game becomes fun!

Exactly.
You can play a great thief quite carelessly if you picked, say, barbarian as your class. Or a battlemage. Or a wizard. NOT a thief/assassin/agent.

Drewsky wrote:....
But if I holster my bow before my arrow hits its target. I get the sneak multiplier for melee, which is 6x! .....

Now that is a v. nice trick to know about!! Thanks for sharing that Drewsky!

Do you actually get the "6x sneak attack" message, or do you still get the "3x" message, but twice as much damage done? I just wanted to chk how I'd know it was def working for me.

Yeah, it says "6x damage". You'll even be able to pull off those shots indoors sometimes, but you need at least 40ft of space between you and the enemy.

Since I've discovered this though, I've become very good at my long-range shooting, let me tell you!

*Release the arrow
*Put bow away, put up my fists
*wait...
*count to 4
*wait some more...
*Then, BLAMO. I see a little corpse bounce in the distance. "You have captured a soul!"
*Empty Azura's star into my bow (via hotkey 6) and continue scanning the distant hills.

U can try summoning creatures like a few scamps with different summon scamp spells. try to make different summon scamp spells with the altar of spellaking so you can summon many.
Scamps are good because the fireballs and that some of the creatures are weak to fire.
if you don't have good enough conjuration skill then you can practice with for example a bound dagger spell or something like that.