The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Useful Tips and Tricks

This is just a guide on various tips and tricks I learned from playing thousands of hours over the last decade and a half.

Beginners Guide with Tips and Tricks

All credit goes to Praetor Invicta!

Basic Leveling for Noobs

So leveling in this game is based off of leveling up 10 of your “major” skills. Keep this in mind… Now here is where most people fail to pay attention… Every skill is governed by an “Attribute”, each time you level an skill, it helps you increase the attribute once you level up.

• When you level up, you can only choose 3 attributes to level.
• Every 1-4 skill increases will give you a +2 towards that attribute on the level up.
• Every 5-7 gives a +3.
• Every 8-9 gives +4.
• 10 or more gives the max of a +5 bonus towards that attribute.

Essentially with all this in mind, your going to want to typically try to level not just the skills within your class, but the skills that will level the attributes you need the most.

Keep this in mind when you making your starting class. Your going to want to avoid picking a purebred class like mage if you only play in that style since you will be leveling to fast and focused to make the most of those bonuses.

Another few notes:

• Luck does not have any skills it governs, but has a hidden effect that will boost all skill points by a tiny bit without displaying that effect in your stats.
• Luck is a good option if you don’t have enough bonuses to take advantage of due to rapid leveling.
• Always remember to train 5 times at each level because that is the max per level.
• Use training on skills you don’t use to make the most out of attribute bonuses.
• It is unwise to level before training 5 times.
• Try to count your skill increases and figure out what your bonuses will be on your next level up.
• Plan for your max level to land around level 40-50 depending on your starting skill levels from racials and such.
• Remember that your class “type” (Combat, Stealth or Magic) will effect how quickly those types of skills will level.
• Magic skills are the easiest to level since you can cast those on yourself and they count towards leveling them.
• Destruction magic can be easily leveled after gaining access to custom spells where you can create a disintegrate armor on SELF that will help level both your armorer skill and destruction.
• Hold off on reading skill books (usually 25 gold value or more) until your a high level (at least level 20).
• Daedric items are the highest tier items in the game for basic armors and weapons. Glass is the highest light armor. These spawn in at level 20 and will be the last time you will get a new tier of weapon. Considering that you cant improve the weapons like you can in TES 5 Skyrim, your going to have to keep in mind that leveling past this point will make the game more difficult unless your character has the stats to compensate for the lack of newer level gear… so level 40 is going to be nearly impossible to play on normal difficulty with a poorly made character.

Making Easy Money

The Good Loot

Outside of Cheydinhal at the end of the road heading North-East out of the city, there is Fort Farragut. Coming from the road and facing the front of the fort, there is a big tree that is hollowed out on a side that will reveal a trap door to the end of the dungeon. If you cant find it just go through the fort normally. At the end of that dungeon, there is a barrel with a very hard lock on it, so bring plenty of lockpicks and save your game before attempting. It takes some practice, but listen to the tumblers and watch the movements carefully to get that lock open. Inside you will find several poisoned apples that will respawn after a few days. You should be able to sell them for a little less then 2k gold, each time you do this run (every 3 or so “in game” days).

The Best Merchant

The best merchant that you can haggle with to get the best prices is “Nilphas Omellian”. He is located within the Imperial City’s market district’s “The Merchants Inn” and he buys items in value up to 2k gold and he is only an apprentice trader, making him a good option to sell items to. He is only there if you have the “Fighter’s Stronghold” DLC.

Trying to Get that Meta Build

• Do quests late game and focus dungeons early. The reason for this is that the quest rewards are leveled to you, so you may want to put off these quests so you can get the highest level version of that reward item that is possible. You can use a quest item leveler mod if you wish, but for vanilla its best to hold off on the quests that give the items you want for that final build of your character.
• Obsessively manage to try to get a +5 attribute bonus on every level up. If you want to get 100 in everything, you can do so by picking the “Thief” birthsign and choosing luck on every levelup while getting +5 bonuses every time on the other 2. It is difficult and uncomfortable to attempt this, but it is doable.
• The Ring of Perfection, Mirror Shield, Sorcerer’s Ring, Ring of the Iron Fist and the Ring of Vitality are a few high level randomly found enchanted items that you can find that you’ll want to hold onto for your build. They are all incredibly powerful.

Good Mods to Consider

Morroblivion

This mod is a fantastic port of TES 3 Morrowind into Oblivion where you can play both games with the same character. This opens up so many possibilities of character design with the new items and gear you can get as well as the spells and abilities. The mod was ported rather then made from scratch, so its the same game you remember TES 3 Morrowind being… except it has an Oblivion skin on it graphically with TES 4 Oblvion’s RPG and combat system as well. Point is that its true to the original. The mod is located on the TES Renewal site for Morroblivion.

Oblivion Reloaded

Great for a good graphical enhancement and not to difficult to install. Its settings can be modified in game and its generally rather stable if installed right. The mod can be found on its own site or on Nexus.

Unmentionable Adult Mods

I cannot really say to much about this, but TES 5 Skyrim is rather famous for it and TES 4 Oblivion, while not as famous does have these as well and located on the same unmentionable site. Softer Adult mods are however located on Nexus Mods but game changing and adult gameplay overhaul mods are going to be located on the unmentionable and highly controversial site… Same as TES 5 Skyrim. You will need to find that on your own pal.