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Could someone translate into dim wit for me? How does Fatigue figure into the damage formula? Is it just the proportion of the green fatigue bar or does total fatigue (Strength+Agility+Endurance+Willpower) affect damage? I assumed the former until someone proposed a low health, low strength archer build that jacked up fortify fatigue enchantments to make up for the weaknesses. I always assumed that once Marksman skill reached 25 fatigue didn't matter. Do I need to take Strength, Endurance, and Willpower to 100 to get full damage out of my bows and arrows? That doesn't seem right.

Damage = WeaponRating * ( Fatigue / MaxFatigue + 1 ) / 2 * SneakMultiplier * PowerAttackMultiplier *
OpponentArmorRating * OpponentWeaponResistance

According to the formulas on the wiki it is just the green fatigue bar. If it's full there's no effect on damage. As it empties a damage penalty is gradually applied - up to 50% when the bar is totally empty. 50/100 Fatigue has the same effect on damage as 500/1000 - a higher Fatigue just means the bar empties at a slower rate.

This person with the Fortify Fatigue stuff... I suppose if they are planning to do a mobile archer build with a lot of jumping and running around then a really low Fatigue might be a problem. They'll have visibly reduced damage and also occasionally fall over... That's all I can think of atm.

Thanks. You think you understand something until someone tells you otherwise with greater conviction.

Or not.

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fatigue#Effects

"The maximum fatigue score is the sum of your current Endurance, Strength, Agility, and Willpower. Changes to any of these attributes has an equal change in your overall maximum fatigue score; attribute increases past 100 continue to increase your fatigue."

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Fortify_Fatigue

"Fortifying your Fatigue will increase the damage you do with your attacks."

http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Magica ... vs._Absorb

"Fortify increases statistics past their usual values."

***

Damage = WeaponRating * ( Fatigue / MaxFatigue + 1 ) / 2 * SneakMultiplier * PowerAttackMultiplier *
OpponentArmorRating * OpponentWeaponResistance

The damage formula clearly has two different variables, Fatigue and MaxFatigue, so one is not the other. If my attributes are currently 100 each, then MaxFatigue would be 400. Only the attribute values affect MaxFatigue. However, your current Fatigue value might be fortified with a spell/potion/enchantment to any number. If Fatigue were fortified to 802, then your character would get twice the factor for damage determination (802 / 400 + 1) = 2. That's how it works for my characters.

Nice find! There's a secret of the game mechanic that I've never seen before. I wonder if that increase of 50.5 would break a character's weapon? I can't wait to try that out.

Ciao for now.

I just played a game high enough for testing...and tested.
Level 22
Marksman 100
Alchemy 100 w/ master equipment
Rusty Iron Bow (125%) + iron arrows =10+8 base damage
Starting Fatigue 242
Skeleton Guardian Archer = 11 shots
w/ Lt Raim. of Valor +10f = 10 shots
w/Crystal Greaves +55f = 9 shots
w/ Fortify Fat. scroll +50f = 9 shots
w/ both 105f = 8 shots
w/four potions sum 592f = 5 shots
w/ 4 potions and greeves or scroll = 5 shots
w/ 4 potions and greeves plus scroll = 4 shots

One of the potion ingredients for expert level potions (flour) is limited, but the other (Wormwood) is abundant for master level potions. The potion gives faster results than poisons and also has a long enough duration for multiple kills.

An interesting observation is that the normal fatigue doesn't affect damage inflicted. I play most of my games with 100% attributes asap (400 fatigue). For this one I only played agility to 100 and strength to ~61 (one point per level from 40 at start) and put the rest of the points into luck and personality to keep them from having an effect (total fatigue was 251). Testing against an old character showed that with both fatigue of 400 and 251 it took 4 iron arrows or 3 steel arrows (deadric bow sneak shots) to kill a Spider Deadra, and 3i and 3s for a Deadroth. However, the 251 character had access to Crystal greaves (+50) which boosted fatigue to 306. This reduced the number of iron arrows to 3 to kill a Spider Deadra. The addition of Chrystal geaves did not change the number of arrows of either type needed to kill deadroth.
Testing of fortify fatigue potions (+148) showed that three doses (+444) were needed to lower the arrow-kill count of both iron and steel to 2 for both Spider and Deadroth. Four doses (+592)did not reduce the arrow/kill any further, and it blocked the use of any more potions for the duration (which, BTW, was enough time to fight through an entire Oblivion tower).

Nice work! After more than a decade of the game being played, you have established proof of something new. I suppose that having extra fatigue is like your character on amphetamines.

It's like Popeye eating spinach.
I did some further testing, the gist of which is that fatigue fortification only boosts damage when the fatigue bar is full. Once it starts to fall, you are doing normal damage and the fortification does not seem to "super charge" the bar, meaning that the bar starts to fall as soon as you strike or jump, so Restore Fatigue potions are probably better for normal melee than fortify potions (but I did not compare to find out).

I also did some testing with a level 54 character using swords against goblin warlords and found that jacking up fatigue a huge amount has only marginal benefits in a normal melee fight. Basically, it seems to keep the fatigue bar from falliing as quickly, thus boosting damage only within norms. To summarize the test, it tookr my character who had only 63 blade skill, in the neighborhood of forty hits from Goldbrand to kill the test goblin outside of Shinbone cave. With a little over 400 fortify fatigue added (three potions whose strength was reduced from maximum a little by the character only having an expert retort) the fights took around thirty-six hits per kill. I used Goldbrand because it gave me a way to see number of hits and it killed the goblin in a timely manner. A second test (too see the effect of fortification when the fatigue bar is full) used a mundane weapon, a deadric longswords repaired to 125%. This tested effectiveness of sneak attacks. I first zonked out the goblin with a strike from a lvl 19 Hatreds Heart and then I proceeded to sneak attack do the sneak attacks. With unfortified fatigue, it consistently (2 tests) took 18 sneak hits to kill the goblin but only nine after drinking the three potions.

For full disclosure, I did some more testing on the summoned skeleton to see if fortifying agility, strength or endurance potions might increase damage on a character with 100 points in all attributes (they didn't). During the testing I consistently killed the skeleton with ten shots instead of eleven, and I don't know what variable changed. All that means for my conclusions is that the percentages come out a little more neatly.

and for some reason I could never get eleven shots on the skeleton again. Ten was the worst I could do, but that makes the numbers come out as even percentages.