Leveling guide | Other Oblivion Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Oblivion Character Levelling Guide

Submitted by: Wolfspirit

A guide to a Godlike, hmmm, perhaps Daedra Lord alike character.

First of all, it's important to understand the complete levelling process.

To level up, you must have a combination of 10 skill increases across your primary skills. At that level up, you get to increase your stats in a range of +1 to +5. In order to get +5, you need to get 10 increases in the 3 skills associated with the relevant stat at the point of level up.

Also, as you can only increase 3 of the 8 stats at level up, there is no point in training skills that produce increases above 1 for more than 3 of the stats.

The stats and their associated skill are :

Strength - Blade, Blunt & Hand to hand.
Intelligence - Conjuration, Mysticism & Alchemy.
Willpower - Destruction, Alteration & Restoration.
Agility - Security, Sneak & Marksman.
Speed - Light Armour, Acrobatics & Athletics.
Endurance - Armourer, Block & Heavy Armour.
Personality - Speechcraft, Mercantile & Illusion.
Luck - no skills.

So, in order to maintain any level of control over the levelling process, we have to decide which of the skills we have control over, or more importantly, which ones we don't have control over. Secondly, as our Endurance stat governs the amount of hit points we have and will end up with, it's necessary to increase this stat to 100 a.s.a.p. to get as many hit points as possible.

Our first stat for increase to 100 must be Endurance.

So which skills do we not have control over. Well, if you do not wish to walk everywhere, which is very tedious, then the alternative of running automatically increases Athletics. There are going to be times when you have to use jump in dungeons etc which increases Acrobatics. We must heal ourselves which means increases in Restoration. Also, either of the armour skills, light or heavy. We must have a way to kill stuff, so either destruction or one of the strength skills. Mercantile to some extent, but this can be kept to a minimum and it doesn't overly affect the ability to increase personality towards the end of the process.

From the above, the most difficult skills to control are Athletics, Acrobatics and Restoration. None of these can be primary skills as they are far too unwieldy. As they will be secondary stats, they will be contributing to the +5 for Speed and Willpower, combine this with our need to increase Endurance and we have our first 3 skill sets to increase. This means that we will be using destruction to kill everything to start with as it is a Willpower based skill.

To have control over the process, I found that it was necessary to have ONE of each of the 7 stat based skills as primary skills. So which?

To start with, Athletics and Acrobatics cannot be primary skills, so our first primary skill is Light Armour. Restoration cannot be a primary skill, Alteration is eminently controllable, but as Destruction only increases when you do damage, I decided to make Destruction the primary skill for Willpower so it's easier to increase it towards the end of the game. Finally Endurance, as we have Light Armour in the primary skills, we cannot have Heavy there as well, as this will allow us to change armour sets and control the level up. Block can be used a lot to fire low power destruction spells quickly, the more you use a skill the faster it raises. So the Endurance primary skill is Armourer.

So we have:

Armourer, Destruction and Light Armour.

For strength, just choose whichever you like, I went for Blades for Goldbrand and Umbra.

For Intelligence, I went for Mysticism. The reason for this is that Conjuration will be the intelligence increasing skill and you don't want it being limited by primary skill level up. Also, Alchemy can be used for creating gold, but its best to save the early levels if you can.

For Agility, I went for Sneak, mainly because the other 2 are a real pain to increase. By using the run into a wall in a trespassing zone, i.e. Rufio at the Inn of Ill Omen or the buxom farm girl at Whitmond Farm just outside Anvil, sneak is easy to increase and control.

For Personality, I went for Illusion, as again the other 2 are tedious to increase through normal game play or intensive training.

So our primary skills are:

Armourer, Destruction and Light Armour, Blade, Sneak, Illusion and Mysticism. So create a custom Class and chose these skills. As a matter of interest, I chose a Breton for race, mainly for extra magicka and spell resist. For birthsign, The Mage for extra magicka.

I also chose mage skills to increase these skills quicker and start them slightly higher. In order to maximize hit points, its best to start with Endurance at 55, but that means using a different race.

I'm sure there are other ways to create the primary skill list, but this seemed to me to be the optimum way to produce the best results in the shortest time.

So to training.

The first thing to do is keep a record of your skills, so you know when the combination of each 3 skills has combined to produce an increase of 10 for each stat. Remember, we need 30 skill increases per level up for Willpower, Speed and Endurance. As an example, it doesn't matter if you have (2 Light Armour(primary skill), 5 athletics, 3 acrobatics for Speed), (5 Destruction(primary skill), 2 Restoration, 3 Alteration for Willpower) and (3 Armourer(primary skill), 4 Block and 3 Heavy Armour) or any combination of those as long as each stat gets 10 increases, no more no less and that the 3 primary skills also add up to 10 which creates the level up. Note that you have to take the final increase in 1 of the primary skills which adds up to 30 for all skills and makes the primary stats add up to 10 at the same time.

Remember that Athletics and Acrobatics will increase very fast to start with, so don't overdo it and get more than 10 increases. Remember that if any stat has more than 10 increases across all 3 skills at level up your just making it harder for yourself later on as skills get progressively harder to increase. So it's best to fast travel to Weynon Priory, then double back down the road to the Imperial City and find Fort Ash. Fort Ash is your friend, there is a rat to the left of the first T junction and this is ideal for block, both the armours, I wore a combination of light and heavy to start with, and restoration. Another more interesting and somewhat productive way to increase athletics and acrobatics is to start on the Nirnroot quest, this a reasonably safe scenario as most of the time you will only be fighting mud crabs as Nirnroot only grows next to water, its best to just dispatch the mud crabs with destruction as they hurt at low levels. The area around Leyawiin is the capital of Nirnroot growth. Also, when you see rock formation near the shoreline, always spin around and check around the rocks, as Nirnroot love to grow in crevices etc next to the rocks.

This combination gives you access to the first 3 skill stats and only those. Continue to increase by whatever means, I did the regional mage quests etc. Just try to limit any use of any skill other than the first 3 stat based skill sets or you just make it harder later. Once athletics and acrobatics start to increase a bit, it's easier to use a skill trainer for 1 or both of these. You can also use castle Skingrad for Acrobatics, just run up the stairs and leap over the banister, when you take fall damage, acrobatics increases quickly.

So once you have 10 combined skill points for 2 of the stats, go ahead and increase a primary skill in the 3rd group that makes 10 skill points for that stat as well as combining to make 10 primary skill increases, this means that if you have done it perfectly, then you will be increasing either Destruction, Armourer or Light Armour by 1 which also gives 10 for that skill set you just increased and these 3 skills (Destruction, Armourer or Light Armour) also add up to 10 at the same time which levels you. Now rest and take your +5's for Willpower, Speed and Endurance. Now make a note of your new skill numbers and increase all 3 sets by 10 again. Continue to rinse and repeat.

If you started as a Breton and chose Willpower as a primary stat, then by level 9 Willpower will be at 100.

Remember that you can now use Restoration and Alteration to your heart's content without having to keep an eye on their numbers, but be aware that Destruction contributes to level up still.

At this point I started to work on Strength. Mainly because you are starting to see better items dropping from mobs and you want to carry these back to the shops for cash. Also, Blade, Blunt and Hand to Hand works nicely with the endurance skill set and you can increase both easily. By this time, Athletics and Acrobatics are becoming a real pain to increase, so NPC skill train them and increase light armour to pick up any balance. Rinse and repeat till endurance and speed hit 100.

Now it starts to gets easy, start working on Intelligence and Agility in combination with Strength. Only use conjuration to increase intelligence to start with and go all the way to 100 in blocks of 10 per level by spamming spells. Use marksman to start with for Agility, once it starts to rise a bit, NPC skill train marksman with Pinarus Inventius in Anvil and use the running into a wall method to increase sneak. Pick up Security as and when. As soon as I got lvl 10, I did Nocturnes quest for the security key. Strength will max out next. Once this does, start working on Personality with Agility and Intelligence, use speechcraft on any NPC, just click the quadrants as quickly as possible, don't worry about what happens to the disposition, just increase speechcraft to the desired level in combination with illusion and mercantile in blocks of 10. You can sort the NPC's disposition out later if you need to.

Continue with this until all stats are at 100.

Once all are at 100, start increasing your primary skills to 100 if they are not there already, train any of the secondary skills at a skill trainer, restoration and mercantile are good ones to get to 100, never train a primary skills at an NPC skill trainer as it's a waste of resources. As a Breton, I did the primary quest up to Baurus' excursion into the sewers to join the Mythic Dawn fairly early after completing all stats to 100 because Manco Cameron's son drop a mundane ring with 50 magic resist. With 100 resist, you are completely immune to all magical effects including those from staves. I also went from Oblivion gate to Oblivion gate to get Transcendant Stones with fortify 50 magicka using the save game, check the stone, continue or reload as required.

With this method, I finished up with the following character:

Race : Breton
Birthsign : The Mage
Class : Whatever you want to call your custom class.
Level : 51
Health : 665 (blue number, no artificial increases)
Magicka : 524 (green number, 4 enhanced armour items with fortify 50 magicka from transcendent stones) Also using daedric boots with 105 feather and the Escutcheon of Chorrol, so could add another 100 magicka if I wanted to replace these 2 with fortify magicka items.
Fatigue : 450 (blue number, no artificial increases)

Resist Magic 100%
Reflect Damage 47%

Strength : 120 - green
Intelligence : 112 - green
Willpower : 118 - green
Agility : 102 - green
Speed : 100 - blue
Endurance : 110 - green
Personality : 98 - red (scales of pitiless justice)
Luck : 76 - blue

Armourer : 100
Blade : 105
Destruction : 110
Illusion : 100
Mysticism : 100
Light Armour : 100
Sneak : 100

Obviously a lot of these secondary skills can still be increased, but with every quest complete and the ability to take out the entire imperial legion in the imperial city in 1 game day at 75% on the difficulty slider, I think I will leave them for the expansion. I had as many as 15 imperial guards attacking me at any time during the test, the most important thing is to make the archers change to melee, or you are hardly ever on your feet!

Athletics : 63
Block : 71
Blunt : 55
Hand to hand : 60
Heavy Armour : 100
Alchemy : 33
Alteration : 100
Conjuration : 110
Restoration : 110
Acrobatics : 74
Marksman : 73
Mercantile : 100
Security : 76
Speechcraft : 36

These figures do not include being a Vampire and were achieved without using any cheats whatsoever.

Anyway, hope you find this of some use. It certainly makes for some seriously heated battles with large numbers of mobs which is a lot of fun :)