Enjoyable Efficient Leveling?

[psonar]

I'm trying to figure out how I should balance efficient leveling with actually playing and enjoying the game. I've read all the material at uesp.net about The Leveling Problem, efficient leveling, under-leveling, and optimal character creation.

 

First of all, I don't plan on maxing out my character, so I'm not concerned with some of the issues of not being able to maximize all my attributes/skills at a given level, etc. If I waste a few skill points because I as having fun, or level up without all 5's, I'm not going to have a fit.

 

This is my first playthrough, so I just want to experience as much of the vanilla content as I have time for and not spend a ton of time training skills. I've thrown in bunches of graphical/UI/weather type mods, but none that change vanilla gameplay by adding items, characters, abilities, locations, or change game mechanics (besides bugfixes).

 

I know about all the other leveling mods (including the All 5's mod), but I'd really like to experience vanilla gameplay first so that I can say "I played through Oblivion" and have that actually mean something to someone else. I also want to play the game in order to form my own opinion of it, which I can't really do if I can't separate the game from the mods.

 

Here are some questions:

1. Should I just ignore efficient leveling and drop the difficulty slider as the "Leveling Problem" catches up to me?

2. Should I semi-efficiently level to 25-30, then never sleep again so that I can experience all game content without super high level enemies?

3. What happens to skill points earned after the "You should rest" message, but before sleeping? Do skill points earned after "leveling up" contribute to the attribute bonuses you receive after sleeping? Do the roll over into the next level's skill points? Are they "wasted" in the sense that they contribute nothing to attribute bonuses? I realize that "wasted" minor skill points can decrease the max possible attribute level, and wasted "major" skill points decrease your max level.

4. Are wasted skill points (those that contribute to attributes you aren't raising this level, are >10 for a given attribute, or occur after "leveling" but before "meditating") an issue at low to mid levels? If I don't care to go beyond level 30 or 40, and my character's max level is around 50, then I have 100-200 major skill points to spare

5. Should I "under-level" by playing with mostly minor skills, and only using the major skills when I've gotten enough skill points to easily 5-5-5 my attribute bonuses? I realize that doing this may mean I can't achieve 100 in all attributes because I may get 100 in all the skills for a given attribute before I've maxed that attribute.

 

Any thoughts, answers, questions, or suggestions?

[Striker879]

You could get as many 'right' answers as there are players of this game. I'm still playing my second 'guy', who even with all the mistakes I made during character creation is still dear to me. The first one was a 'accept all the default choices' Imperial who lasted until the Kvatch gate ... don't miss him a bit. My current Dunmer is saddled with a double warrior curse (birthsign and class ... try efficient leveling with that double whammy). He's level 44 with one final level-up available. Yes there was a steep hump to climb around level 15 or so. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

 

Trust me, there are plenty of people who would read that and say 'Why'd you go through all that??'. All I can say is 'Because I'm me!!'

 

Be yourself.

[Lanceor]

To be honest... I tried efficient levelling and it was so tedious and boring that I went and downloaded my first mod before I reached level 5...

 

If I were to play without mods though, I would ensure that none of the skills that I would use were major or minor skills. I'd keep a spreadsheet of what my skills are at each level, and when I've had sufficient skill increases to get the attributes I want, I'd manually train the majors and minors.

 

To me, that's the way to play the game without worrying about getting only a bunch of +1 and +2 increases.

[psonar]

Yeah, I'm playing with a Female Breton with Magic focus, Warrior Birthsign (Strength & Endurance), and Custom Class favoring Strength and Endurance with the following Major Skills:

• Armorer (End)
  
• Blunt (Str)
  
• Hand To Hand (Str)
  
• Alteration (Wil)
  
• Mysticism (Int)
  
• Light Armor (Spe)
  
• Sneak (Agi)
  

 

This gives me 1 or 2 major skills for each attribute (except Personality, because it doesn't factor into the "Leveling Problem" at all), which are all easily controllable, allowing me to avoid the 3-4 major skills for attributes I am not leveling.

 

I've got a pretty spectacular spreadsheet based on the "Oblivion Character Planner" spreadsheet I found. I've greatly updated it and overhauled the look of it drastically as well as added a Skill Tracking sheet specifically for efficient leveling which tells me how many more levels I need in which skills based on the skills I am currently raising.

 

Let me see if I can get an image of it...

http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l35/flutefreak7/StatTracker.png

 

I would love to share the full spreadsheet once I'm done with it. I'm currently updating it by taking screenshots of my stats and then typing my current skills in manually. I would absolutely love either an in-game script to dump current stats (skills and attributes, but mainly skills) to a text file, or an out-of-game script to extract current stats from the most recent save. I've looked at the Python source code for Wrye Bash, but it seems to only extract the header information from save files. I'm sure there's a solution somewhere. A more advanced version of the Skill Diary Mod would also be nice - select which attributes you're leveling and it tells you what skills remain to level those attributes, and warns you when you have only 1 or 2 major skill points before leveling!

 

I also found on UESPwiki that skills earned after being told to "meditate" but before sleeping count towards the next level's attribute bonuses, so major skill points cannot be "wasted" in terms of leveling, only in terms of attribute bonuses. Good to know!

[Dalter]

I've played through Oblivion several times, vanilla and modded, can't count it. The first times without looking for effect leveling, then the other way (where i made sheets too^^), but for my taste it ist not soo much fun to count how much attributpluses at levelup i will get. So all my latest chars i only "look" for endurance (most i dont look for it, it works also without counting and if a level only gives 4 to end i will not cry) what is easy if heavy armor or block is a major skill, very easy if both are. One of the two 5Point bonus at the later char-generation i give always to end. Also for good endurance is the bithsign "The Lady" or the "Warrior" (Desciptions of them ingame are wrong (but maybe only in the german version, dont know)) but not good for magic.

 

For more mana only apprentice or mage are good. (Many spells in Oblivion cost very much mana so even with the racebonus of breton or highelf you will never can cast them, if you want cast much or all spells you must take a good magic race + a magic birthsign. I don't like this on Oblivion, dont like the must of taking breton or highelf and these birhsigns, so i edited the lady birthsigh with the nice endurancebonus in the constructionset and added an manabonus^^ could be named as cheating, i dont care.

 

Beside this, i take no skills as major which raise to fast (alchemie, merchantile, armorer (very very fast at the beginning and slow later!)) or the skills arcrobatics, athletics.

 

Some would not advice to major two armor-skills or two weapon-skills, maybe they are right, but sometimes i do it. Often both armorskills for leveling with heavy armor at the beginning to endurance to 100 and change then to light armor. Mixed armorwearing can be done but leveling is slow then and on lower levels it goes on your armour class when wearing two armortypes.

 

Last char (bloodelf (mod)) was with majorskills: Heavy armor, Block, Destruction, Mysticism, Alteration, Sneak, Blade. For the next char (darkelf) i wanted to create a new and more cheaty (and so less "leveling-looking") custombirthsign but it doesnt work for now^^ For the skills i take then maybe the same as with the bloodelf because it was very smooth and constant leveling. (After Endurance at 100 it gives often only 2 or 3 to the other attributes but i dont care then anymore, only for the high(er) healthpoints it's important to raise fast your endurance, for the other attributs you get no benefits for faster raising.)

Edited November 3, 2011 by Dalter

[Lodur9000]

Personally the only balance that works for me is 0% Efficient Levelling, 100% 'just play the game'. I used to go out of my way to level efficiently in Morrowind and it just ended up boring me. I didn't even bother at all in Oblivion. For me the number-counting, with its the strategically timed book-reading and training sessions, is just too 'gamey', it detracts from immersion and story flow.

 

I don't mind the game getting hard. Unless I went and did something boneheaded like take Speechcraft as one of my 7 Skills and then raised it 100 times in a row, I don't see the game getting too hard. So I just take things as they come.

 

I use a mod that calculates Health on current Endurance so I can raise Endurance any time without losing out on the Health benefits of pumping it early.

[Kiyasumeni]

"I know about all the other leveling mods (including the All 5's mod), but I'd really like to experience vanilla gameplay first so that I can say "I played through Oblivion" and have that actually mean something to someone else. I also want to play the game in order to form my own opinion of it, which I can't really do if I can't separate the game from the mods."

 

Based on this, 100% you should play through without efficiency. Just have fun, I know i did for two entire years on a console without any skill micromanagement.

[DarthVue]

I've thought about this too, But it depends if you're going for a leveled set or armor and/or weapon, Is it alright then to level-up?

[Lodur9000]

Only you can answer that. There's no universal objective answer, only a personal one for each player.

[NoCoinsDraninus]

Personally I find that getting immersed in the role playing aspect of this game is nigh on impossible when attempting to "level efficiently".

 

I've played through several characters at this point, having done both role playing based characters and one, lone "power character" who was perfectly leveled to the Nth degree. That was the playthrough I enjoyed the least. Of course I think there are ways to somewhat make the efficient leveling process more enjoyable, for me it still takes away from the organic role playing experience too much to make it worth it. This post probably doesn't help you much with your issue other then to just give the suggestion of not worrying about efficient leveling if you really want to enjyo the game to the fullest. Just my opinion.

Edited April 14, 2013 by NoCoinsDraninus