The Oblivion posts on Menori.com have been quite popular so I thought I’d do a short series of posts gathering some of my experiences during nearly 200 hours of play and becoming the Champion of Cyrodiil. [Note I'm going to post this on Oblivion Blog too]
The candle flame flickered as Hadaster sat at his laboratory bench. A varied assortment of herbs, flora and animal parts lay in neat piles on the bench top and the Arch-mage grabbed the pestle infront of him. “Samples first, I think” he muttered to himself. Hadaster took a bite out of a Clanfear claw. “Grim”, he frowned.
I found that ’sampling’ ingredients is a slow but good way of getting increases to your Alchemy skill. Alchemy was good to get increases in because it was one way if getting Intelligence increases upon level up. And Intelligence is the prime stat for Magicka. Always concentrate on getting your secondary stats up during the time between levelling. As a Monk, Hadaster got his Agility up very quickly but neglected things like Intelligence due to the Monk having a high proportion of Agility related stats as primaries.
Two hours had passed by the time Hadaster had finished his alchemical studies. An entire crate full of Restore Endurance potions was the output of his labour. “They’ll sell for a reasonable price”, he chuckled and smiled.
Repitition is rife in Oblivion if you want to progress. I spent ages making Restore Endurance potions because they’re quick and easy to make. You can find an abundance of Potatoes, Onions, Corn, Flour etc. and comining two of them to make a Restore Endurance potion proved to be a good way of churning out potions to get my Alchemy up. At higher levels my Endurance never dipped below about 95% unless I was hacking at creatures constantly [the battle with Mankar Camoran comes to mind, he was hard to kill]. So I sold the potions and managed to get a little Mercantile skill along the way.
Remember to keep casting spells too. The spells actually need to do something in order to qualify for an increase in their stat. Cast low level spells over and over such as light, bound dagger (cast the spell get the dagger then put the weapon away - rinse, repeat) to get increases. I used to do this while on the move. Later in the game when my speed was greater I used to run everywhere rather than ride in order to qualify for the Althletics increase. Oh, and jump everywhere too. The further you fall the better, I seemed to get better increases to Acrobatics if I hurt myself when landing. The throne rooms of most castles is a good place - jump off the balcony run back up the stairs and jump off the balcony again.
Hadaster rumaged through a chest looking for his Master Alembie. “Now where in the name of the Nine did that go?” he exclaimed. He pointed at another chest and muttered a few words of the arcane tongue. Instantly the chest lid flew open. “Ah.. not that one” he said gazing upon his old armour. The blood red of the motif on the daedric armour caused him to think back to the recent battles. Only a few months ago Cyrodiil had been under the threat of complete domination from Mehrunes Dagon, the daedric prince. Only through Hadaster’s courage and skill and the sacrifice of his friend Martin Septim, the Emperor, had complete destruction been avoided.
Armour. ‘By the Nine’ it’s important. As a Monk, Hadaster had Light Armour as a primary skill but it only became really useful when he became a Master. The additional 50% bonus to amrour class when reaching Master really makes a difference. Once Light Armour had been mastered I had Hadaster move to Heavy Armour. By that point of the game most Marauders wore daedric armour so it was relatively easy to get the key parts such as body, greaves and boots. Despite the weight the armour class is much better and more importantly it degrades slower than light armour. Getting several suits is important as you can tailor for differing tasks. I always wore a suit that was enchanted with ‘ease burden’ spells when going into Oblivion as it meant I could typically carry a lot of loot out with me. That and having as many ‘pack mule’ style scrolls as I could get and afford.
When going back to light armour - the Mehrunes’ Dagger add-on provides a good opportunity to get some really nice assassin armour (both in terms of looks and bonuses) - I found that it degrades too fast and before I know it the armour protection is pathetic. That plus the fact that the best shields in the game are heavy armour. By the final battles I had daedric armour and shields that provided 80% damage reflection. It took a serious amount of daedra to hurt me, even when prone and knocked onto the floor.
“No, that stays in there” Hadaster said and closed the lid of the chest. Those days are behind me, he thought. The land is safe. “Now where did I put that Nirnroot?” he said outloud.
[that concludes part one. This isn't a wakthrough. There are plenty of them on the Web. It's more of genuine experience and how I changed my play throughout the game and some tactics for fighting so stay alive. Watch out for part two soon.]