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I feel dumb spouting off about weapons and spells that work for me at the default setting not knowing if my stuff will stand up at higher difficulty levels. Most of my custom stuff contain Drain Health, and they kill for me up to level 42 at the default setting (I stopped there at 100s across board xcpt for luck--to start a new player). But if everyone is playing with the slider all the way up and drain health 100% doesn't cut it there, I'll keep my mouth shut untill I get the stones to move the slider up.

i never raise the difficulty in Oblivion because efficient leveling and that hump in the mid-teens when will-o-the-wisps and mountain lions turn up, and the relatively low damage of bows, all add up to enough of a challenge for me.

i s'pose i might if i go godlike with a character, and get beyond all that, but that's yet to happen.

I play on the lowest difficulty because I'm sick of my 3x bow damage sneak attack headshots not killing things in one hit.

DUDE I SHOT YOU IN THE EFING HEAD, DROP DEAD ALREADY!!!!

On one hand, playing like that feels realistic because of course something is going to die when you shoot it in the head or slash it once or twice with a sword. On the other hand, it feels cheap because it doesn't go both ways. Enemies die in 1-2 hits, I can take 20 hits before I even notice.

Now if I could play with the slider on both the lowest and the highest setting simultaneously, that would be neat. I'd get the satisfaction of my sneak attacks actually being worth a damn and melee combat would be an actual challenge.

I very seldom, if ever adjust the difficulty from the default. I just adjust the tactics and the way any particuler character handles a fight.

For instance, I have a character who I'm just letting the chips fall where they may when the level-up icon appears. He is horrible in a toe to toe grudge match. Because of this he has become very skilled in the judicial use of poisons and the art of darting in, getting in a quick slash or stab and getting out of range again.

Another character, who I've efficiently leveled from day one, enjoys leaving most of his enchanted gear at home and exploring in just his hunstsman clothes and playing fisticuffs with most baddies. For some reason ogres have become his favorite target for fistfights.

These two characters have the exact same build with the exception of birthsign. Both are fun and challenging to play. The differing tactics make the first one playable and able to stay alive; and it makes it a challenge for the second one.

I played most of the game with the slider mostly in the middle but slightly leaning towards the higher difficulty end. Fights take ages on highest difficulty.

For boss fights (Jyggalag, Mankar Camoran, things like that) I raised the bar to full. However, the fight with Mankar Camoran proved to be near impossible to win at top difficulty with my battlemage character, as Mankar reflects almost everything you throw at him and heals himself to full health as by the time you get his health down to near death, and you'd probably need poisons or something to kill him, so I had to accept my shame and lower the difficulty once more to beat him.

The fighting is not the fun part of the game, so I just leave it at default -- OK, so I'm godlike. So what? I'm having fun. BOOM!

I play at max difficulty right from the start of the tutorial. My character is now maxed out at 49th level, so I fight opponents based on that level. I also play Dead-is-Dead (if my character dies, then I start over with a new character from the beginning). As Aesir mentioned, my character adventures with no gear other than some unenchanted clothes. If you want to be a melee type, then just use a good poison. Otherwise, magic rules!

I started on default difficulty, nudged it down a little when things started to get a little more frustrating than was fun, and nudged it back up again around the time I had enchanted gear enough to make things a little too easy.

I play at the default in Oblivion. Leveling and difficulty settings aren't exactly great in Oblivion. But I did do a playthrough of it once with the slider set to maximum from the start. It was really difficult but I managed to finish the main quest, never went above level 2 with that character.