Veugaroth

There is only one video that comes to my mind reading this thread George Carlin on education (Life Is Worth Losing - HBO - 2004). NOTE: I'm not american and I can tell you this isn't a problem in USA only. We are basically on the same boat, to me it just looks like USA got the shortest straw.

I concur, currently I'm closing to the end of Divinity 2 campaign for the first time and a crash is probably one of the last things I didn't experience.

Yes, +5 per level to single attribute is maximum, so don't overlevel your skills. Basically one thing I've learned after I finished oblivion for the third time was the fact going for a heavy armor/armorer/warrior type character from the beginning will make it much easier for him to change into other class later like mage or even a rogue/assassin. It's simply because of how Endurance affects health. Characters which started as mages or rogues have it much harder to switch to a warrior at high levels. There are only two attributes I've always had problems with and those were Agility and Speed. Heavy armor increases only if you get hit by a melee or ranged physical attack without blocking (unless you block unarmed) and it also depends on which part of your body is hit. It won't increase if you get hit on a part not covered by armor, so it's best to wear a full set. Magicka regen rate is a bit tricky part, hard for me to explain, you may want to read more here http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Willpower. In short, it seems the best way is to increase Intelligence so that your magicka pool is 75+2*willpower and focus on fortifying magicka once willpower reaches 100.

Spell effects are available at spellmaking and enchanting altars only if you have a spell or power with desired effect which you can actually cast. This only includes the mastery in the particular magic school, not if you have enough magicka for it. Ghostwalk for example requires Expert Illusion, so you won't see invisibility effect in the list unless you train it to 75 or get a lower mastery spell like Deathly Visage or Shadow Shape which requires Journeyman Illusion (50).

As you wrote you are endurance/willpower based I assume you are going to wear heavy armor. I made it through Oblivion three times as heavy tank/warrior style character with restoration as one of the major skills. All of them could be classified as crusader, paladin or templar. It was mostly restoration that pushed my willpower up, but I had to spam a low level alternation spell from time to time simply because restoration would not be able to get it to 100 by itself. Having low magicka may be a real pain later in levels simply because you will need/want strong burst spells or long duration self buffs/heals over time. And those will drain your magicka bar very fast, even when you will be a master in the particular magic school. My advice is to carry any weapon you are familiar with. Use restoration for healing, fortify skills and restoration of damaged attributes, alternation for damage shields. You also have an option to use conjuration for bound items. Choosing a race with better magicka modifier may help as well as choosing a birthsign with such modifier, but I never really felt a need to do so on my characters. Unlike endurance and health, magicka is simply recalculated each level up as 2*Intelligence*AnyRace/BirthsignModifier, so it won't matter too much when you start to increase intelligence, but it still stands - the sooner, the better. Simply train conjuration and/or mysticism so you get at least 10 points in any combination of those two for +5 intelligence per level (you can even keep them as minor skills). Other notes: - if you are skilled enough in use of armor, you probably won't need to worry about spell effectiveness, I never got bellow 95% even in heavy armor - fortify skill spells and enchantments are generally better than fortify attribute - you will probably want to use heal over time spells most of the time, so you can focus more on actual combat, but keep a burst heal spell just in case of an "oh ^*(#@ !!" moment - alternation and shield spells, just keep in mind shield simply adds to your existing armor value and can't get it higher than the 85% maximum, but you can still use elemental shields This is probably all I can think about right now.

This is roughly the same way I think it should work - gradual increment of stats along with the use of skills they govern. As it was pointed before, it had no logic to be forced to spam skills (often minor) just to get the +5 stat on the next level up. Endurance suffered the most from this. If it worked like Intelligence it would be one huge step better. I still think stats should stay where they are, just change the way they develop as mentioned above. The other thing is reduction of the number of skills, which does not sound as a good idea.

Can be found here UESP wiki - Weapon Damage. For weapons. This depends on how you prefer to attack your enemy (in order of effectiveness from best to worst): a) Sneak criticals? Long Sword, dagger. b) Stagger opponent to death? Dagger. c) Direct assault? Claymore, long sword. Generally the armor value you see in the inventory shows the direct % damage reduction. So an armor with armor rating of 6 will reduce 6% of physical damage taken. The type of armor is heavily influenced by the skill heavy/light armor. Wearing heavy orcish armor may not give you a lot of advantage if you don't have at least 75 (or 100) heavy armor skill where it's only half weight (0 weight). Otherwise your speed will be reduced by a lot compared to light armor. Heavy armor leans more towards endurance while light armor towards agility. NOTE: Damage reduction is capped at 85%.

Sheogorath - totally outshines the bad voice acting in Bethesda games.

Yes, you have to kill the Balrog. Read the book "Prime Morpholit" on one of the shelves in Midas Magic shop or buy it from Midas directly. It will give you a quest that leads to a dungeon where Balrog acts as final boss and guardian.

Midas Balrog for sure. I had to retreat two times before I figured out how to kill him. He is really tough and fast but thanks Xilver he also invented the Spirit Hammer and Frost Fang which, unfortunately, took away the epic part. It still took almost ten minutes to cut him down even when he couldn't retaliate. Too bad there are no other epic fights I can recall. Deadly Reflexes makes them too fast. Yesterday I cleared out the Mythic Dawn shrine in under 15 minutes (took roughly 30~60 in vanilla). With DR, Spirit Hammer and Berzerk I was like a lightning bolt, most of the members were not fast enough to even bound their armor.

Just for info: Oblivion Wiki - damage calculation Skill has higher factor on damage than stat, but as it was already stated 100 skill+100 stat+125% repair is the maximum possible damage.