Overview
Information for creating powerful characters, getting them geared and cashed up instantly, and levelling them for maximum strength and enjoyment.
Choosing Your Race and Birthsign
Note: This guide assumes you have the GOTY edition of Oblivion with all official DLC.
The key to happy adventuring is good gear, and a strong character. The game provides easy early gear, but building a strong adventurer requires planning. I hope to show you that plan.
I suggest those races with good starting endurance, and a solid special power. There are three races that start with a 50 endurance, and also have excellent special powers: Nord, Orc, and Redguard. I highly suggest new players confine themselves to these three hardy choices. When experienced, the more frail races with novelty powers can be tested.
The Orc has the “Berserker” ability, and the Redguard “Adrenaline Rush”. These provide substantial burst melee power for those tough encounters. The Nord has a damage shield, and a 50-point cold blast, likewise very handy for the big single-target opponent. In fact, the Nord makes a very amusing assassin in the early game should you elect to join up with the Dark Brotherhood at level 1, which is a solid opening gambit for many reasons. One-shot snowball kills are fun!
The problem with these three races is a serious lack of magicka. That’s where your sign comes in. The min/max powergamer will always select “Thief” due to getting a 10-point boost in three stats, the most of any sign. “Warrior” is the classic choice for any of these races. However, I generally always select “Mage” or “Apprentice”, to create a nicely rounded character with enough Magicka to capture souls starting at level 1.
Your Strength and Endurance will naturally be high anyway and casting should not be neglected no matter how you play. In my opinion, “Lady”, “Thief”, “Warrior”, and “Mage” are the notable signs. The remainder are too situational or downright silly.
By way of example, my Redguard under the Mage birthsign exits the prison sewers with 50 strength and endurance, and sporting 100 health, 120 magicka, and 175 fatigue. This is a strong, healthy fighter with magicka to burn and the ability to carry a goodly amount of loot while in full heavy armor. Despite clanking around in plate with a big sword and shield, he can easily function as pure caster for a couple levels as well.
Class Selection and Levelling Effectively
If you choose any of the pre-made classes, and you play on normal or higher difficulty, you’ll very likely find the monsters getting way too strong to easily kill in very short order. Entering the Plane of Oblivion will prove frustrating and thankless. You’ll have less fun, and be more disgusted.
In order to avoid this situation, you need to play in such a way that you are sure to put 5 skill points into 3 stats every time you level, and that you can choose ahead of time which stats those three are going to be. That means you’ll need to make your own custom class. So let’s talk about how levelling works in Oblivion.
Luck controls no skills, so for our purposes you have seven stats; Strength, Endurance, Willpower, Intelligence, Speed, Agility, and Personality. You have 21 skills. Each stat is related to three of these skills, and by using those three skills you’ll improve with skillups, and earn the points you put into the stat when you level up. The maximum you can put into a stat when you level up, is 5 points.
For instance, the stat “Strength” is related to the skills Blade, Blunt, and Hand-to-Hand. To be able to put 5 points into “Strength”, I would have to earn 10 skillups in Blade, Blunt, and Hand-to-Hand before I levelled.
Any combination is fine, as long as the total skillups in those three skills was 10 or more. If I levelled up Blade ten times, I’m good. Or if I levelled up Blade five times, Blunt three times, and Hand two times, I’m good.
So what makes me level, you may ask? Well, your class assigns 7 skills as the “Major” skills, and the rest as the “Minor” skills. Whenever you gain 10 skillups in your MAJOR skills you will level. Any combination, it doesn’t matter, when there’s a total of 10 skillups in MAJOR skills you level up. The MINOR skills don’t make you level at all. You can have as many skillups in them as you like, you won’t level until you get 10 skillups in your MAJOR skills.
The problem with the pre-made classes is that the MAJOR skills they assign don’t represent all of the stats, and often you have more than one MAJOR skill for a single stat like Strength. So they will tend to jack up only one or two of your stats while neglecting others.
Also, they put the skills you’ll likely use the most as MAJOR skills, making you level very fast when you’re still weak in important stats and skills. The monsters level everytime you do, but they aren’t going to be weak in any area. Soon, your adventuring life can become miserable.
The secret is to flip the script, and make the skills you use the most be MINOR skills. Pick one
MAJOR skill for each of the primary stats using skills that you want 25 points in to start with (all MAJOR skills get set to 25), and also that you don’t plan on using a lot. You will use those on purpose after you have ten skillups in each of three MINOR skill groups, and are ready to level.
For example, when my Redguard leaves the sewers as a big fighter looking for a longsword and some steel plate, the skills he’s going to use the most are Blade, Heavy Armor, Armorer, Destruction, Restoration, Sneak and Marksman. Due to my personal playstyle, I’m also going to be using Alchemy, Mercantile, and Speechcraft quite often. I want all of those to be MINOR skills, therefore. And in my MAJOR skills, I want one for each of the seven stats.
So for my example Redguard, my MAJOR skills are; “Block (Endurance)”, “Hand-to-Hand (Strength)”, “Alteration (Willpower)”, “Mysticism (Intelligence)”, “Illusion (Personality)”, “Light Armor (Speed)”, and “Security (Agility)”. Skills I won’t use enough to accidentally get 10 skillups in.
In this case, I chose Mysticism over Conjuration for my MAJOR Intelligence skill, because I wanted it to start at 25 (all MAJOR skills start at 25), so I can cast Soul Trap immediately. Soul Trap requires 25 minimum. I chose “Security” because I like to sneak and shoot my bow a lot more than I need to pick locks, and those are the three Agility skills. I chose Alteration because a certain quest requires 25 in it. You will come up with your own, personalized strategy that fits your playstyle.
If I want to put 5 points into Strength, Endurance, and Intelligence next time I level it is now simple. I get 10 skillups in the MINOR skills of Blade/Blunt (Strength), and I get 10 more skillups in the skills of Armorer/Heavy Armor (Endurance), and I get 10 more skillups in the skills of Alchemy/Conjuration (Intelligence). Now just start Hand-to-Hand (Strength) for a while, cast some Detect Life which is Mysticism (Intelligence), use the Shield a bunch more which is Block (Endurance), pick a few locks which is Security (Agility) … all MAJOR skills … until I level.
You’ll need to keep notes, of course, and track your character’s advancement every so often. But it’s not really hard, and the chances of accidentally levelling with too few skillups is very small. I just give him a check every couple hours of play.
Note: The Major and Minor skills are actually in different pools when it comes to calculating skill points. Thus if you get five skillups in a Strength Major skill, and five skillups in the Strength Minor skills and level, you’ll only get four points. Two goes into five two times for the Major, and two goes into five two times for the Minors. So use even numbers when you split skillups between the pools!
Gearing Up and Getting Some Starting Cash
If you’re a murderer, you can be inducted into the Dark Brotherhood right away, and they will basically flood you with great gear assuming you’re into light armor and such. I typically avoid being a murderer, though, and I don’t regard light armor as viable in this game over the long haul. I mention this route only because it’s the most obvious, and it’s the built-in “gimme gimme gimme some lootz right now! Oh, and that really fast black horsey too!!” avenue.
Personally horses are a big hassle to me, and I never get one, so the Brotherhood doesn’t much float my boat. Horses in Oblivion are like a curse, you stable it but then you fast-travel and bing .. there he is. If you have six horses, well, it’s a mess. Plus the Brotherhood storyline always breaks my heart and makes me cry a little, and that smarts. Murderers shouldn’t have a heart.
For the rest of us, we just need to make the rounds of the DLC for starting cash and a full set of steel plate. Just head up and deliver the amulet to Jaufre in Weynon Priory, stop in Chorrol and sell off your jailbreak loot, then continue up to the Fighter’s Stronghold and kill the bandits. You can fast-travel to Weynon Priory and Chorrol immediately upon exiting the sewers, but you’ll have to walk from Chorrol to the Fighter’s Stronghold. It’s only a short way up the road, and there’s a pond on the left as you approach it with your very first Nirnroot right there for the picking.
If you’re lazy and weak, you’ll end up with two fellow knights dead who wear steel plate that you can loot. If you’re motivated and strong, there will be one, since you’ll have saved the other from dying with your brilliant fighting skills. Then there’s all the dead bandits with their cruddy iron plate and street clothes. Take what you need, ferry the rest to Chorrol for cash.
You should now be in full steel plate with a silver axe, and a steel bow and arrows you got from Jaufre. You did ask him for assistance, right? If you’re a good fighter, you’ll be missing your helmet. After I sell off all the gear, I generally head to the Market in the capital city and buy a steel longsword and helmet from the lady weapon vendor, completing my preferred kit.
Keep the silver axe for any magical creatures you may encounter before you get something
enchanted to hit them with. Stop in at the mage guild in Chorrol, and buy the Soul Trap spell.
Now fast-travel to the Vile Lair for a random magical item and a magic dagger you can sell, put on display in your castle, or throw money at like a leaky sailboat keeping charged. These are in the shrine area. You can go to the Wizard’s Tower and Thieves Den for kicks, but they don’t offer much but another Nirnroot and some really heavy cutlasses that don’t sell for much. When you’re rich and powerful, these places will have more value.
You are now fully outfitted, and ready to find your destiny, in two hours or less! I suggest you don’t pursue the main storyline any further for a long, long time and just explore, pillage caves and ruins, and do side quests. Keeps the region tidier. Save up six grand, and get candles for the spell and enchanting altars at the Wizard’s Keep.
I hope you’ve found this guide helpful, and have fun storming the castle!