My Insane Ramblings on Leveling - A Guide

[@ng855]

you have my ear citizen

[@lord_fartquad9108]

Speak.

[@JuliusCaminus]

Have you heard of the high elves?

[@freefoodftw]

They say syndicates of wizards have led a boycott of Imperial goods in the land of the Altmer.

[@historyminor]

Brother, you're single-handedly rewriting the meta for oblivion!

[@HejneMiro]

what's crazy to me is that people didn't know most of this information and/or play mostly this way anyways. i was probably 12 years old when i realized fortify magicka enchantment is flat out the best, or that to level well you need to spread your major skills a bit and not go all in on a single attribute.

[@MannElite]

>Oblivion >Meta

[@Alt-c9x]

Oblivion is healing with your channel.

[@mason4519]

ur the type of content creator that oblivion has been missing

[@The_Babe]

Preach it. Imagine if this dude was around back then!

[@justrobin8155]

I'm so glad I'm not the only person who literally hasn't stopped playing thinking about Oblivion since that first taste in middle school

[@Boberto-gr7lv]

I love your experience-based insights and your liberal use of spreadsheets. Keep up the good work man

[@Kaijudomage]

The urge to play again grows

[@Noemys3]

Do it

[@Bert-og9rk]

Im tinkering with getting it to run with mods on linux now.

[@Merhaba124]

I think for this game and morrowind, the only stat you should ever bother to level efficiently is endurance. Basically any other problem caused by low stats can be solved with a spell or two. Micromanaging it all for "perfect" levels is too much stress, and isn't a productive use of the player's time.

[@leeux]

@1:12 There's also a 4th option (on PC): mod the game! That's the one I took after my first play-through and I never looked back to vanilla again. BTW: Love what you're doing, loving the videos. At some point you'll need to bite the bullet and do an on-video run from the ground up :)

[@egvhub6230]

Important Spreadsheet for work xdd. Thanks again for the video! I'm planning on my oblivion playthrough and enjoy the insight.

[@nateclark8627]

You got me back into oblivion after like 4 years thank you.

[@WastedPot]

Anytime I’m in an Oblivion phase the skills, levelling and builds keep me up at night too. Glad your busting out the spreadsheets so I don’t have to

[@KobraCasts]

Im glad Im here to watch you go through this manic episode.

[@Sepdick1]

This is much better advice than you previous "Just play the game" Oblivion requires a little more than that to be enjoyable!

[@uselessmagician3011]

Love the the topics he focuses on in Oblivion in his videos. Likeable personality, funny, informative, interesting. Good stuff.

[@Mr._Anderpson]

Exactly right. More power to anyone who punishes themselves by forcing three +5 bonuses per level, but its a tiny segment of the gamer pool who will enjoy "number go up" more than they enjoy the game. Use your head & figure out what your angle is as a player/character. Don't overload your major & minor skills with too much of any skills which favor one thing. Personality is a dump stat, always. A +3 or +4 bonus to an attribute upon level isn't bad. There should be a link to this video pinned beneath the videos which obsess over "efficient" leveling.

[@EA_SP0RTCENTER]

you and your videos are really inspirational. in various video game fandoms, there's been a couple really common misconceptions going around that i have been wanting to tackle in way like you have! i can't believe it took people this long to understand that efficient leveling doesn't mean much because most attributes aren't as powerful as people think.

[@exantiuse497]

Efficient leveling is for the OCD types that can't accept unoptimal leveling. Everyone knws if you actually want to minmax you avoid leveling in the first place

[@swollenapocrypha]

1:30 i love your content so much. this is a threat.

[@mkne2451]

I just found the channel and I'm currently doing a RP build. And this information has helped a ton. Keep it coming

[@2copy3copy4cpoy]

you've inspired me to play the game again. I played it once as a kid and once as an adult about 5 years ago, but both times I (incredibly foolishly) thought Destruction was weak. going to make a proper Mage for the first time and cast Zoltraak.

[@Prfinity]

I saw a mudcrab the other day. Horrible creatures

[@wesleysmith5275]

I don't want to talk to you! - Bye

[@JiF_cos]

I cheat by modding the game so, when I level, attributes that I've gotten a skill level up are upgraded to +5 always. That said, I appreciate your passion for the game immensely!

[@warywolf1729]

"You should never pick all three Personality skills unless you're an insane person." My Bard: Time to Mantle Sheogorath.

[@MannElite]

Hahaha I love that you put together this video. You are 100% insane. haha have you ever thought to yourself that what if when you die you could go into the game and play it forever?

[@MrHathaway1337]

What kind of spell should be crafted to increase an enemy's weakness to destruction magic?

[@theoldknight85]

Depends. Lets say you have a shock enchant on you weapon, you'd want to do 100% shock weakness and 100% magic weakness. That would cause 4x damage from your weapon enchant, or any subsequent shock spells. If you added shock damage to the weakness spell itself, the damage would happen before the weakness so it wouldn't be boosted. If you have low skill/magicka you can do just the shock weakness, as magicka weakness is very expensive. For duration I like to do 7 seconds, thats kinda the sweet spot for me, but you could change that for your own preference. Same with touch/target, I prefer target but it costs 50% more magicka so it is up to you.

[@creat0r84]

Cool video! Been looking to get into Oblivion and this might convince me. Would he interested to see your take on an early game build for higher difficulties. What spells you make, equipment you grab etc.

[@empty5013]

I hate bethesda and their slop products but I can't help watching these videos for some reason, maybe nostalgia for playing oblivion as a kid hahaha. Love to see the passion in these videos even if I don't love the topic. Keep it up

[@Randroth]

After watching a bunch of your videos, I am convinced that the reason why I always felt majorly underpowered in this game is that I never took advantage of weapon enchantments combined with weakness spells. So thank you for that. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I obedientely followed effecient levelling and still felt just as underpowered as before when playing as a melee character or an archer. I do actually have one question. How viable would it be to make your main damage come from Poisons instead of weapon enchatments? What I'm thinking is a character that uses Blade, Destruction and Alchemy, applies a damaging poison to his weapon, uses a Weakness to Poison + Weakness to Magicka spell as an opening and then strikes the enemy with the poisoned weapon. I am not sure how viable or fun this would be (I've never really played much with Alchemy outside of farming money and INT points), but I'm thinking it could be just a good backup option when my weapon runs out of enchatment charges and I happen to be fighting humans that I cannot soul trap. But let me know what you think, is it a good playstyle on its own, or at least as a backup option?

[@theoldknight85]

I have personally never tried a poison build. The numbers look a little low on the per second side, but high level poisons last forever, so maybe you hit them with weakness and poison them and just keep moving, having enemies following you and dying as you just keep going. I’d say it’s worth a try!

[@artcrime2999]

"there is a viable damage fatigue/hand 2 hand build" I feel so seen

[@ktosmiy9701]

About damaging skills, wouldn't Conjuration be also considered as one? Since summons don't suffer from difficulty modifiers, they can prove viable as both meatshield and source of damage

[@arcanefeline]

Suppose I'm making a spell sword kind of character. Tell me if you find this build viable: Race: Breton, Sign: Mage. Attributes: Strength (for more carry weight early on), Endurance (more health is good). Specialization: Magic Major skills: Blade Heavy Armor Armorer Destruction Restoration Illusion Alchemy Did I miss anything? Should I swap Illusion for Alteration, maybe?

[@chadwarden593]

I made a new khajit using your "smart leveling" method, (all the while taking my own liberties and twists on things) and im having alot of fun and will still make a powerful character using boosts, ive been telling everyone about your videos and how efficient leveling is a farce

[@bobbyquinn2156]

I actually like the leveling system. It makes sense to me lore-wise that enemies would be getting stronger and better equipped...nirn is being flooded with powerful equipment from Oblivion and testing the finest fighters...

[@nekrospect2940]

Are there any two handed weapons worth using in oblivion? They all seem pretty bad with the slow swing speed.

[@theoldknight85]

@@nekrospect2940 claymores swing 20% slower and have 30% more reach than longswords. Sometimes I use them, it’s really easy to hit enemies before they can hit you. The damage difference is pretty solid early game, but by endgame it’s like 2 damage more which is barely noticeable

[@TheViolinAndMore]

Best vid about skills etc.

[@A_rodis]

you have the hands of a healer

[@artcrime2999]

Just the other night I made an orc for fun just to see if I could power spike his damage to as high as I could using some of your info. I did take Heavy armor, block and armorer as my main skills, but I dont plan on actually blocking all that often.

[@ThomasWarhammer]

Obviously theres something to be said about players engaging with a game's systems, but those systems should probably also meet player expectations, and reasonably allow them to roleplay as classical character archetypes, especially in an RPG. Destruction shouldn't be the solution to spongey enemies; you shouldn't be forced to dabble with magic if you want to roleplay a warrior and not have a miserable time; at that point you're more of a spellblade. Picking heavy armour, block, and armourer would make sense on its face for someone who wanted to roleplay a martial character, but as you say that will cause the player to level too quickly; that shouldn't happen. Obviously the game cannot possibly cater to every imaginable niche playstyle, like a 'Cheesemonger' who battles their foes with wheels of parmesan.. .. But it should probably be balanced in such a way that you aren't screwing yourself over by not powergaming and picking stuff that seemingly makes sense based on the archetype you want to roleplay as. That's what I feel like people are *really* talking about when they discuss Oblivion's leveling and difficulty, they just don't possess the knowledge to express it. If the game offers players a hand to hand skill, and even features a premade monk class that uses said skill, then it should be a viable.

[@bronysaiyan5236]

Its not exactly the fast leveling picking armorer heavy armor and block its the fact those are all endurance skills so thatd be the only attribute getting bonuses

[@cupcaketyrantdar2483]

This. There's no excusing it, the game's level up system fucking sucks. If I want to be a WARRIOR why the hell do I need to start throwing fireballs? If you're solely looking to play with a game system with various caveats etc. then great, but if you want to play an RPG and be able to RP and not feel like you're just nerfing yourself into the ground then Oblivion ain't it. Which is a shame because the game has so much to offer ...

[@theoldknight85]

You don’t have to be a spell blade. Watch my “paladin” video. You could use weakness on weapon enchants. You could use powerful poisons. The game has many interconnected systems, and if you aren’t interested in playing the game to become more powerful, then this game isn’t for you. Skyrim isn’t for me, because without thinking or learning I became an unkillable god who one shots everything. If that is your preferred game, that is fine, but it doesn’t make this system objectively bad.

[@runakovacs4759]

@@theoldknight85 I can go and play Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder Wrath of Righteous sticking cleanly to my character archetype, only recruiting alignment-aligned party members, possibly even clear a run without ever using spellcasting outside of a healer. You expect a roleplaying game to prioritize and reward roleplaying rather than meta/powergaming. if a roleplaying game requires power/metagaming, that's bad game design. Morrowind is janky, but it's perfectly viable to make a bosmer using archery and play organically. It's perfectly viable to make a nord/redguard/orc using melee weapons and play organically. Both times only joining factions and accessing resources that make sense for your character's abilities and backstory. It's more jank to play a mage (destruction sucks, mysticism rocks) but still perfectly viable with altmer/breton with pure organic play. Look at the best ACTION roleplaying game from oblivion's time (action, so looking aside of isometric RPGs with parties) - Gothic 1 and Gothic 2. Gothic 1: You start the game as a pitiful weakling of a fresh inmate. You can follow the story as it unfolds, allocating level up points as it makes sense and pivoting as the story offers new options and still be a viable character making solely in-character choices. Only magic might suffer if you do this and access its unlock too late - not having enough level ups to learn the strongest of most broken spells - but still excellent as a main style due to summoning spells and utility spells. This imo though is a fair trade off since getting full mage mastery is entirely balanced upon giving up power early game (and magic is presented as an option even early game - just need to work for it, hard as it might be while tutors for melee skills are abundant) for being completely broken (see: turn the skies themselves into fireballs to devastat eentire battlefields and summon armies of undead) late game. It's a neat and logical trade off you paid multiple hours of suffering and creative problem solving for. Gothic 2 is less extreme in its magic and offers it even in the early game, but follows the trend of mages having limited access to tutors while needing to complete significant challenges to prove themselves worthy of those tutors. You can make the challenges easier by spending prolonger time and opportunity with trainers, or you can save your resources to focus magic. It's also been made more viable to not full-commit and still learn master-tier magic just not all of them. Melee/ranged playthrus are doable without any of this kind of decision making though and give you builds that are viable and acquired purely through following roleplay threads. There's never a moment in either game that you're forced to use powergaming/metagaming to succeed and neither game is considered easy. Both games are full of knowledge checks in fact that massively change the challenge of a given trial - knowledge checks that can be derived from proper information gather and deduction and in-character logic. Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 (Die nacht raben) are games action RPGs should aspire to emulate, albeit with a bit less euroJank(TM).

[@bronysaiyan5236]

@@theoldknight85 tbf skyrims character anything is really bad. Imo the war crime skyrim did was remove spell casting with 2h or SnB

[@maxwellhill4754]

True but you should try to get endurance to 100 first since you get more hp that way

[@wobbuffet8357]

First thing I did when I changed from playing Oblivion on the Xbox 360 to PC.. download mod to make all stat ups +5 so my OCD and time is saved lol.

[@artcrime2999]

I will say you do undercut agility a bit. Agility and willpower also contribute to your fatigue, so later you may want to perk that up too for the extra damage

[@KetchPhraz]

I've never really had a problem with the leveling in Oblivion so much as leveled quest rewards. It discourages you from doing quests until you're a higher level to get better gear that will still be useful late game. Yes I know there's mods that will retroactively upgrade them to your current level, but I'd prefer if they were just balanced better from the beginning.

[@b-KvazaR]

I honestly believe that people have such a bad opinion about oblivion's leveling, because most of the players were dumb kids at the time and just couldn't figure it out, so they think it's all bad. Years later they returned to the game and that opinion persists simply because "well I already know it's dumb, so let me install a mod or give up when I face some challenge or level perfectly (and drop the game after 10 hrs, because it's a fucking miserable experience)". I was not a smart kid, I remember having trouble with the golden claw puzzle in skyrim, but for some reason I don't remember having problems in oblivion. I remember thinking that bandits in glass and daedric is dumb, but I don't remember it being difficult

[@b-KvazaR]

Or maybe it's because I've always gravitated towards magic and it harded to fuck up a mage than a melee fighter if you don't know what you're doing

[@memescoper]

i have a character that has athletics, blade, security, sneak, alchemy, light armor, and illusion as major skills. I only use those (+block and armorer). Usually only get +2 or maybe +3 on level up. I'm still not running into enemies that are too difficult at lvl 16. We will see when im lvl 25 how it goes. I do feel that a good sneak skill with a high blade skill is underrated.

[@Terror_Official]

Even though I don't think you should permanently stay there, I do highly recommend spending as much time as possible between levels 15-17; they provide in my opinion the most vastly different array of enemy types and some fairly efficient loot is within the bracket. Get too high and you start seeing the same old creatures; same with staying too low.

[@derrickbonsell]

I play OOO so if I want to use a skill I just take it. Attributes can be buffed.

[@AtlasSoftworksUK]

I don't understand why not to have 3 Endurance skills, wouldn't your Endurance modifier be really high on level up?

[@theoldknight85]

a level up is caused by gaining 10 skills in major skills. You still want to USE all your endurance skills, but if you pick all 3 as majors it will be difficult to level any other major skills as well as those ones and still get a good modifier.' It can be done but it is far more tedious in my opinion and requires more micro-managing to get even decent attribute bonuses

[@eliwoodnguyen1505]

Come on oblivion It deserves much more than just a meme game🥳🥳

[@BananaGatorProds]

Finally someone with the same take as me. The constant discussion about minmaxxing in these games has always made no sense to me. These games arent remotely challenging enough to warrant it. By no means is it a good system but I feel like people refuse to discuss it in good faith.

[@wesleysmith5275]

Boom this 100%. Intellectually dishonest people who only ever played skyrim in the first place

[@bronysaiyan5236]

Fr tho light and heavy have the same armor rating when both are at 100. That 50% armor increase when in all light armor equals heavy armor armor rating

[@ktosmiy9701]

Yeah, but long it takes to raise light armour all the way into 100? Heavy armour gives more armour for majority of the game and any problems with encumbrance can be nullified with feather spell

[@trucid2]

One thing to ask yourself is what you want to get out of the game? Are you trying to make the best most OP character possible, or are you just there to have fun? The gamenis easy enough on normal difficulty even with the most messed up character. And even if you want to max out your character, there is plenty of leeway. You don't need to squeeze out every attribute point early on. You can sort of keep an eye onbyour attributes and see whether you're on track and play accordingly.

[@eprimchad2576]

The way i lvl is i just pick some cool major skills and alchemy as 1 of them, then i dupe a bunch of stinkhorns and other stuff and make potions til i have 100 alchemy, then level up to get good gear. The game isnt hard you dont need to watch your leveling you can just play.

[@pattozebass9767]

Were you the guy who made the huge post on r/oblivion debunking efficient levelling?

[@theoldknight85]

Nope, I haven’t been on Reddit for a bit

[@pattozebass9767]

I reckon they for sure saw some of your videos and decided to spread your information then. Im hoping more people find your content and you can get monetized!

[@OblivionHowtoPlay]

I started to write out my comments, but ultimately I have so many things to say that I'm going to create a whole video in response. I'll tag you when it's published

[@tomaszpawlik5091]

efficent leveling doesn't have to be miserable, you can plan your playthrough in a way that lets you gain +5s through organic play. I wouldnt reccomend it for n00bies but its a choice for those that like planning in videogames

[@mazdrpan4099]

K so if you wanna play warrior in Oblivion, enchant 20 points of chosen elemental damage, 100% weakness to magic, 100% weakness to ele dmg type you chose. Weakness to magic amplifies not only the dmg but also the effects of ele weakness so if you set duration to 3-5 sec each hit will be increasingly more damaging. It can do hundreds or thousands of damage. If you wanna play mage make 100% weakness to magic, 100% weakness to whichever elemental dmg of the staff you chose at the end of mage guild entrance quest. Pick up the staff at lvl 15 for 80 dmg staff. You can add paralyze for 1 sec to this spell as well if you want it to be super easy. Just get access to mages guild university and done. Nothing else matters. You can do whatever with the rest of gear, spells, skills. These two things will carry you to the end of the game.

[@AvengerAtIlipa]

Wouldn't it be better to have some "useless skills" as majors? Armorer is great, but maybe i don't want to accidentally overlevel myself by repairing my equipment (just as an example). You could focus on leveling each major skill to 100 one at a time (max Blade, then Heavy Armor, then Destruction, etc). If you have a major skill at 100, you're basically free to use it whenever you want without worry of messing up your level progression. I'm not talking about efficient leveling, but from experience, I'd much rather have my "max level" be closer to 25 than to 40 in this game, given the frankly ridiculous way enemies scale in terms of hp and damage.

[@bronysaiyan5236]

You're forgetting 1 crucial detail. Most of us are fucking idiots amd love the pain and torture of maxing agility as a wood elf

[@calinative1986]

If WE'RE new to this channel?!

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

My method: "Just play the damn game" mostly worked fine. I don't see any issues. If people want to level perfectly or whatever, well doing anything perfectly is a pain in the *****, that's not unique to Oblivion.

[@nonifuji1566]

He didnt say be optimal, he is just detailing the systems of the game

[@theoroderick782]

Well this finally clicked for me Yeah this sounds much better than efficient leveling But you kinda contradict yourself by putting Hand to hand in the first column, I will consider that a slight oversight

[@theoldknight85]

Haha true, but if you are doing a punching build you’re going to want it as a major

[@HatchAngel]

"How to be cool" - By making this video, duh

[@karpai5427]

Again. this leveling system sucks. I don't care about it anymore. Next time I play, I'll just cheat myself max level and stats. Just because of how endurance by itself only adds stamina and nothing else. At least in Fallout 4 it actually increases your health. I don't understand why it never worked like this in the first place. Saying that this is dnd is not an excuse.

[@theoldknight85]

Endurance adds 2 health per point, and 10% of your endurance is added to your health each levelup, rounded down.

[@Ephraim225]

END adds health AND fatigue in Oblivion.

[@karpai5427]

@@theoldknight85 Really? that's cool. thank you.

[@bronysaiyan5236]

I had a lvl 40ish nord that ended up with over 600 health cuz he got 100 endurance at like level 10ish lmfao

[@dazubel]

My lv195 breton has 5600 health

[@latincristo]

Honestly you got decent content, now if it just wasn't packaged with your demeanor. Shame I love diving into numbers in games

[@theoldknight85]

Ouch.

[@calinative1986]

What a lvl 1 comment

[@bronysaiyan5236]

​@@theoldknight85hes clearly a wood elf main