Oblivion: The Level Up Problem

Recently, I've been addicted to Oblivion. But, as I've leveled up, I noticed the game has gotten harder and Harder, that zombies take many hits and spells to kill, and atronachs do major damage. But then i found out the problem.... The level up system. In Oblivion, you need to increase your skills to level up rather than gaining XP to seven of your major skills. So running a lot would increase your athletics. So anyway, I guess i had been leveling up the wrong skills and stuff and now i noticed that my character sucks because enemies level up as you do. SO if youre getting crappy level ups, while everyone else is getting good ones, then youve just thrown 35 hours of your life away and have to start over. Now, I have to keep a log of my skill increases. So anyone who has OBlvion, if it gets too hard, you have to start over. THere is no way you will dig yourself out of this hole.

So if you spend alot of time knitting, your knitting skill goes up, but then your enemies fire breathing skill goes up?

exactly...if you played morrowind you would notice the same thing...if you focue on speechcraft and mercantile to level up, you should stay out of the dungeons, because your physical skills and attributes suffer, wheras those of the monsters you're facing increase.

just lvl up in the sewers. Or join the dark brotherhood

Doesn't it tell you that stuff in the tutorial? You level up your major skills to level up, and when you take a nap and get to choose what base attributes to increase, some of them will say "+3" or something, because you've used that skill a lot. Which is why you should level that up. :p

And there is a way to get around that problem, if you've somehow missed such a basic function of the game: turn the difficulty down in the Options menu. :p

This is why I prefer the PC versions; you can get mods that fix such issues. In Morrowind/Oblivion, you could end up with a nigh-useless character who can admittedly run the Hux away really fast, or you could become so overpowered it's almost exploiting.

Ive noticed that Marksmanship is the suck unless combined with Sneak. Wasted too many arrows because they just don't do enough damage. Spells seem the way to go damage wise but then your defense suffers unless you wear heavy armor. But then you are always overburdened and its hard to make money without cheating...

It's definately a give and take scenario with no matter what character you make. My final decision was a Stealth Character focusing on Agility and Speed with Marksman, Light Armor, Stealth, Security, Blade, Acrobatics and Athletics with the Theif sign. I usually choose STR, AGI and SPD on each of my level ups. That seems to be a pretty much perfect setup...but no matter what I do short of turning the difficulty down things seem really really hard.

NOTE!!!: Turning down your difficulty makes the game easier but also makes it harder to level! The easier stuff is the kill the fewer times it takes you to swing a sword or shoot an arrow therefore lessening your increases in each ability.

I just turned down the difficulty level, checked out the scenery, and leveled as I went. 160 hours later I must be doing something right. :)