Is it just me, or is Oblivion much harder than Skyrim?

[StaceyPowers]

I’ve been playing Oblivion for weeks, and while I like it, I swear it is so much more challenging than Skyrim, even with the difficulty down.

-I notched the combat down quite a bit, and it is still harder than playing at Expert level on Skyrim.

-I somehow only have four lockpicks? After playing Skyrim for the same length of time, I had dozens.

-The mini-games for lockpicking and persuasion are confusing to me. In fact, I can’t figure out the latter at all, to the point where my sole mission right now is just to get entry to the mage’s college place so that I can make an uber charm spell and persuade people that way.

-Enemies in this game will chase you to the edge of Tamriel, lol. They’ll even clamber up mountains to chase you. So, running away is even difficult.

Who else finds Oblivion to be much harder than Skyrim?

@DylanC @LadyDay

[Shagger]

The problem with Oblivion and one of the major reasons why it can get really hard, especially further on in the game, is the levelling system. TL;DR, it's busted as all hell.

I'll go through how it works for those who don't know. To build your character, near the start of the game you either a chose a class or create a class with seven major skills chosen out of all the 21 available skills and two favoured attributes. The favoured attributes only start a little higher and that's it, so don't factor into how the levelling system works, but the major skills do. This is the image I found on google to show an example of a major skill list. This came from a player who has clearly completely fucked this up, and I'll explain why soon.

 

 

Major skills start higher and level faster that the other minor skills and contribute to levelling up your character, making it very tempting to make major skills as the ones that matter most to you, but this can cause issues, and again those will be explained. You simply level skills by using them. You hit the next level when you improve your major skills a combined total of 10 times. You can still raise minor skills by using them, just like major ones. All the skills, both minor and major attain to an attribute. This is the screen you see when you level up;

 

 

Here, for example, you can see the attribute "Strength" governing the Blunt, Blade and Hand-to-Hand combat skills. Each level up you can improve these attributes by a certain amount, that's where those numbers, like the 3 next to strength come in. That number can be as high as 5, and count up 1 each you improve its three governed skills, minor or major, on two occasions between them as you progress through the level. So, for example, if this player raised Blunt, Blade and Hand-to-Hand a total of 10 times or more between them, he could raise strength by 5 the next time he/she levels up. Obviously, what you want to do is level skills attaining to three different attributes 10 times each level, that way to can up raise your attribute points the maximum of 15 total each level, it's the only way to level your character efficiently. You want a pen and paper at your side and take note each time you improve a skill and note what attribute it's governed by. Seriously.

 

Now think about it, what if this player had Blunt, Blade and Hand-to-Hand all selected as major skills? He/she can only improve major skills ten times before levelling up, so he/she would have to be extremely careful to level up NONE of his/her other major skills if he/she wants to raise strength by than maximum of 5 and of course remember use skills attaining to two other attributes 10 times and none of those skills can be major skills, only minor. This will happen every time the player wants to level up strength.

 

That's why the player who picked all magic for major skills fucked up. First, with the possible exceptions of Restoration and Destruction, never pick magic as major skills in this game even if you are a mage. Those skills are very easy to level in Oblivion and you can max them out much earlier if you just leave them as minor skills. Second, he/she now has issue where it's gonna be very difficult to level Intelligence and Willpower, the two most important attributes for mage, efficiently. And of course, once you've settled on those major skills, there's no way back.

 

It's the same when people pick all the weapon skills or all the stealth skills as major. It makes levelling to improve your most important attributes a nightmare and can leave you weaker than the level of the game and's that's what dictates the strength of the enemies. I think a lot of people aren't even fully aware of how the attribute points really work and/or don't bother keep track of what skills they've improved and how many times each level and that's why they have problems. Also, don't do quests that will lead to special weapons or armour until level 25 as those items also have to level up and don't hit their max until then.

 

This is why I hate this levelling system. To make it work for you have to be so calculating and careful to the point where you could say it's hard to even enjoy the game. And Bethesda knew the fucked up as they borrowed ideas from Fallout 3 to make Skyrim's levelling system and it is much better.

 

There are other issues, like @StaceyPowers pointed out. The AI that will go to the ends of universe to kill you and mini games that take some getting used to, but it's mostly the levelling system that's the root of this game's issues

Edited June 4, 2022 by Shagger
Format didn't look right, plus I am the typo king.

[Crazycrab]

*DISCLAIMER*  I started writing this post before @Shaggerposted his, so I'll be touching opon allot of the same points on Oblivion's leveling system, but since I have some stuff to add I have decided just to finish and post as is rather than take a bunch of stuff out and re-edit. 

 

The main difference from Oblivion and Skyrim is the leveling system, it can be very unforgiving if you level your character wrong... but's it's also more expoitable and even without mods you make a character who's almost invincible if you get it right.  I'll start by addressing some of the points in you OP and then I'll a brief leveing guite that might help you.

 

8 hours ago, StaceyPowers said:

I’ve been playing Oblivion for weeks, and while I like it, I swear it is so much more challenging than Skyrim, even with the difficulty down.

-I notched the combat down quite a bit, and it is still harder than playing at Expert level on Skyrim.

 

"The combat in Oblivion is more stiff and you will definitely have more trouble with it if your used to Skyrim which, IMO, is far better."

 

-I somehow only have four lockpicks? After playing Skyrim for the same length of time, I had dozens.

 

"I addressed the Lockpicking in the other thread.  To sum it up it takes practice and/or just going for the Skeleton Key"

 

-The mini-games for lockpicking and persuasion are confusing to me. In fact, I can’t figure out the latter at all, to the point where my sole mission right now is just to get entry to the mage’s college place so that I can make an uber charm spell and persuade people that way.

 

"On the note of persuasion and your strategy of getting into the Mages Guild to create a charm spell you are 100% correct.  Both the skill and its governing attribute Personality are completely pointless. That's just one of several reasons you want to into the Mages Guild ASAP, I'll talk more about this is a little bit."

 

-Enemies in this game will chase you to the edge of Tamriel, lol. They’ll even clamber up mountains to chase you. So, running away is even difficult.

 

"This is where horses come into play, even more so than in Skyrim.  The game (being from Bethesda) has a lot of issues but if you go indoors, into a town or get far enough away they will give up chasing you but it does sometimes take awhile."

 

Who else finds Oblivion to be much harder than Skyrim?

@DylanC @LadyDay

 

Now onto leveling, I'm running under the assumption of a legit playthrough with no mods or console commands to assist.

 

For starters, when creating your character you want to pick either a Breton or a High Elf as for your race and The Mage as your birth sign, even if your intention is to be a hairy, naked, club weilding, screaming Barbarian!  Any other combination is a waste becuase the spell making facility allows you to do everthing that the greater powers of the other races can do VERY easily.  So the Mage is the only one that adds a legitimate stats benefit with no drawbacks.

 

 

When picking/creating you class you might think that it's best to pick the skills you use most often as your major skills since they get a boost.  Like in Skyrim if you want to raise your smithing and sword skills quickly you pick the Warriors stone in the beginning. This however, is a beginner's trap and truth is you want to do the opposite and assemble your class with (as much as possible) skills you never/rarely use in addition to avoiding skills which can rise spontaneously like athleticism.  You also need to avoid picking all 3 governing skills for one attribute since the way to level up an attribute by the maximum step of 5 is to raise its governing skills collectively 10 times. For example, if you make your class up with Heavy Armour, Block and Armorer raising endurance by 5 will become extremely difficult since you will have to avoid raising any other major skill even once at that level.

 

When you start leveling It's important to work on endurance.  It dictates how much health you have and how much your health raises each time you level.  So the quicker you raise that Endurance to 100, the more health you will ultimately have. As you touched upon earlier the other thing you will want to do as quickly as possible is join the Mages Guild and get into the University not just to make that charm spell of 100 (which I can confirm is REALLY easy to do) but also to make training spells for all the magic skills for raising Intelligence and willpower.

 

Here are some other tips and tricks I've picked up:

 

• Light Armor is better than Heavy and that is a fact!  You can easily carry more than one set of light armor for varying situations and at Master level skills a full set of light armor will perform exactly the same as it's heavy counterpart also at Master level.
• Raise your Illusion skill to 100 ASAP, there's no point in waiting since you don't need personality and with a skill of 100 you can create a Chameleon 100% spell.  Cast that without wearing armour and you can attack, stealth kill and steal all completely undetectable, literally no one will stop you!
• Short of cash?  Without spoiling too much once you complete the Mages Guild questline you get an item that allows you to reanimate dead NPCs.  There is another questline called "Order of the Virtuous Blood", when that is completed an NPC will give 250 gold for each piece of Vampire Dust you give him.  By reanimating a dead vampire then killing it over and over you can spawn literally dozens or even hundreds of them 🤑.

 

That's about all I can think of for now, hope this helps.

Edited December 19, 2019 by Crazycrab

[The Blackangel]

10 hours ago, Crazycrab said:

The main difference from Oblivion and Skyrim is the leveling system, it can be very unforgiving if you level your character wrong... 

That comment right there threw me off for a minute. I was thinking "How the hell can you level wrong?" But as I read your post it became very clear. Being a classic gamer, the type of leveling  I'm used to is you just get stronger as you go up in levels. Nothing fancy. Out of all the games I play, the most intricate leveling I can think of off the top of my head is Zelda 2. There may be another one, but I can't think of any.

Edited December 19, 2019 by The Blackangel

[StaceyPowers]

@Crazycrab @Shagger Thank you very much for your detailed comments on all of this. The very fact I am going to have to re-read both of your posts multiple times to grok the levelling system tells me how convoluted they made it ... I screwed up levelling in Skyrim on my first playthrough but easily figured out what went wrong and how to fix it next time. And I am now almost positive I have levelled badly so far in Oblivion.

Edited December 20, 2019 by StaceyPowers

[StaceyPowers]

On 12/19/2019 at 7:20 AM, The Blackangel said:

That comment right there threw me off for a minute. I was thinking "How the hell can you level wrong?" But as I read your post it became very clear. Being a classic gamer, the type of leveling  I'm used to is you just get stronger as you go up in levels. Nothing fancy. Out of all the games I play, the most intricate leveling I can think of off the top of my head is Zelda 2. There may be another one, but I can't think of any.

I've screwed up levelling in multiple games. A simple example would be my first Skyrim playthrough, where I didn't know what skills i liked and didn't, and so, to play it safe, I was picking perks all across the skills pretty evenly. I wound up with lots of wasted perks in skills I eventually stopped using altogether. 

[LadyDay]

I'm afraid I haven't played Oblivion, so I can't really comment 🙂