User:99stars/Efficient Underleveling

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Efficient underleveling is a combination of Efficient Leveling (getting the most from your character as it grows up) and Under Leveling (avoiding getting comparatively weaker as you gain levels), which tries to highlight the side effects of Oblivion's counterintuitive level-balancing system and to suggests ways to deal with it.

Note that this discussion does not take roleplay into account, and only considers game mechanics. This article assumes that the reader is familiar with Efficient Leveling, Under Leveling, and the general complexities of Oblivion's leveling process.

Basics[edit]

This article assumes an efficiently leveled character of medium-high level. Namely, the following assumptions are made:

1) The character's armor is Heavy (the best Reflect Damage enchantment in the game is provided by the Escutcheon of Chorrol, a heavy shield, which makes it impossible to have that enchantment and still get the Light Armor Mastery perk), and his Heavy Armor skill is 100. Alternatively (for stealth-oriented or magic-oriented characters), the character's "armor" of choice is a perfect (100%) Chameleon combo, or a high-level Shield combo, granting either perfect concealment or maximum armor during combat, while leaving the character with 100% spell effectiveness.

2) The character's weapon of choice is Blunt or Blade, and his related skill level is 100. Strength (melee weapons damage) is the first Attribute he maxed out (along with Endurance). Alternatively, his weapon of choice is a bow, with a level 100 Marksman skill; Agility (ranged weapons damage) is the first Attribute he maxed out, along with Endurance. As a third option, the character's "weapon" of choice is a top-tier set of spells and summoned creatures, for which his relevant skill level is 100, and Intelligence (Magicka) is the second Attribute he maxed out, along with Endurance.

3) The character has Alchemy at 100, with a full set of Master alchemical apparati: he uses ultra-light (0.1 each), ultra-powerful potions and poisons to take care of any problems his weapons and magic cannot deal with.

4) The character is level 25 or higher. This requires 240+ skill levels, which is consistent with fully leveling up three Major Skills (armor/illusion/alteration, melee/marksmanship/destruction, alchemy), plus six other Skills to go along with them (for a total of 24 5/5/5 Attribute increases), for a total of nine skills out of 21.

The Christmas Cake problem: Over-25 Characters[edit]

Due to the nature of leveled lists in Oblivion, once you reach level 25 the game is no longer going to give you any additional benefits. All the quest rewards are maxed out, all the equipment is available in random loot, everything that you can get has already achieved its maximum value: there is no difference in game content between level 25 and, say, level 50, or 60, or 100.

It gets worse: if the basic assumptions outlined above are true for your character, by the simple act of leveling up past 25 (no matter how efficiently) you will end up becoming less powerful than the monsters around you.

Consider: you are already dealing and absorbing maximum damage (using the best weapons/spells in the game, the best potions/poisons in the game, and the best armor/enchantments in the game), and your relevant skills are maxed out. You will not get any better at this by leveling up, since none of those values are tied to character level; any Major Skills raised from here on is not tied to those values, and will therefore not provide any improvement to your character's ability to quickly deal with creatures and NPC's - and that's assuming they remain unchanged... Which they don't.

Unlike the PC, enemies have their health points and damage calculated depending on their level, which is a function of the PC's level: this means that enemies get stronger as your character levels up. Creatures you summon will also get proportionally weaker as you level up (as they are not tied to the PC's level), making your abilities less and less useful as you grow.

This is why the level-balancing system is counterintuitive: you leveled efficiently up to this point, you maxed out all your Attributes (at level 29, requires some careful planning) and the Skills you use most frequently, but going forward you are only going to get weaker.

Master of Many Arts: Efficiently Underleveling Skills[edit]

While you have already maxed out your most important skills, you may still want to achieve level 100 in more of your Major Skills (in order to get the Mastery perks); this forces you to acquire additional levels (or gain levels and never sleep, but this article assumes that you want your character to be able to sleep if needed). How can you prevent your character from becoming weaker and weaker, while still reaching the peak in every skill and attribute?

The main concept is: max out your Major Skills as early as possible. That is achieved by picking Major Skills that are both Specialized and have a Racial bonus: in vanilla Oblivion, this will make your level max out at around 49, still a very high level. We will see soon how to reduce this very large number to something more manageable.

Which skills should you make Major Skills in order to underlevel efficiently? That really depends on your race: you may want to use the Oblivion Character Planner to help you decide.

One thing is certain: you definitely want Security as a Major Skill.

There are two reasons for that:

First, the Skeleton Key: a non-leveled quest reward that can be obtained at level 10, and provides you with a 40 points Security bonus, implemented as an Ability, whenever you hold it in your inventory. That means you will stop leveling 4 levels earlier by simply holding this amazing artifact in your inventory.

Second: an Unlock spell of sufficient magnitude perfectly replaces Security (with one exception: an Unlock spell cannot open underwater doors), leaving you with a Major Skill that you never have to level up.

This will allow you to gain every useful Mastery perk and still have a character that is (up to) 7.5 levels lower than it would be otherwise. You still need to be level 40 to overmax two skills at level 200 (see below for details about overmaxing), but you could also simply decide that you don't really need 200 points of Athletics and stop much earlier than that.

At this point, all of the character's Major Skills are maxed out at level 45, or 41/42 if you leave Security at 25. That is still a fairly high level... Can we go any lower?

Possibly.

Completing Origin of the Gray Prince grants an Ability bonus of +3 to three Skills (though one of them is Athletics, which you cannot have as a Major Skill if you want to overmax it), and the Blade bonus overlaps with the Whodunit? reward of +2 to Blade, which brings us to +5, or another half-level.

Considering the +2 to Security, also from the Whodunit? reward, you should be able to lower your maximum level to about 43 (or 41/40 if you leave Security at its natural level).

In order to achieve that, your character must become an Arena gladiator, as well as a Dark Brotherhood murderer.

Vampires get a minimum Ability bonus of +5 to a number of skills; this can easily mean another level, if a couple or more of them are Major Skills. That brings your maximum level to 42 (39 if you leave Security at its minimum). Much higher bonuses (up to +20) are possible at higher levels of Vampirism, but that significantly restricts your ability to travel and act during the day; if you do decide to max out your Vampirism, however, you will be able to significantly lower your level limit, while still having all the Mastery perks.

Evidently, in order to achieve that, your character has to become (and remain, since the bonuses wear off if the character is cured), a Vampire.

Can we get any lower than that?

Vanilla Oblivion does not offer any more Abilites that can raise your skills, but the GOTY edition includes the Knights of the Nine plugin. The Sword of the Crusader, obtained during the KotN quest line, gives you a +10 to Blade, implemented as an Ability, while you are wielding it. If you have a natural Blade skill of 90, you will receive the Blade Mastery perk when wielding the Sword of the Crusader. This brings us to a maximum level of around 41 (for 25% Vampirism), or 38 when not leveling Security. At 100% Vampirism, that could be as low as 36-33.

Now, in order to gain all the above both benefits, your character has to become, and remain, a Knight of the Nine, a high-ranking murdered for the Dark Brotherhood and a Vampire.

All at the same time.

This is why this article does not talk about roleplay issues.

Overall, by squeezing the most out of every single hint above (i.e., by using all of the skills that get some kind of bonus above as Major ones, and getting the highest Vampire bonuses possible), you can probably max every skill as low as level 31.

That needs additional verification, however (it may be off by a level or two), and you will find that, by doing so, you will have trouble overmaxing your Attributes with the Oghma Infinium (due to the additional skill bonuses bumping up your level), as well as fully overmaxing (or just overmaxing period) Athletics and Acrobatics (if you take them as Major Skills you will not be able to raise them above 100, as you would gain additional levels).

Also, since your Attributes max out naturally at around level 30, if you want to raise them above 100 (see overmaxing below) you will need to gain a few levels above that. Finally, level 40 is the minimum required to have both Acrobatics and Athletics at 200.

Efficiently Underleveling Attributes[edit]

While underleveling efficiently, you should always raise your Attributes with the 5/5/5 strategy, so that the only Attribute left undermaxed when you reach maximum level is Luck.

At this point, you may be wondering: But... don't I want to max out my luck? It's so hard to level up, it must have outstanding implications on gameplay.

After careful consideration, and based on the experience of an improperly overmaxed level 60+ character, my answer is: No, you don't, and no, it doesn't.

Consider: Luck 100 starts to become less useful when your Skill levels raise above 80, becoming completely useless once you reach 100. Now, the goal of this article is to explain how to reach a natural 100 in each and every skill your character is going to use, thereby making Luck perfectly meaningless. In short: as long as your Luck is at least 50, you don't need it any higher.

The 50 levels you do not spend raising Luck may now be used to gain 250 points in other Attributes, which allows you to overmax your character much sooner.

Overmaxing your character[edit]

In the text above, there are several mentions of "overmaxing" your character. In the context of Oblivion, "overmaxing" means raising a Skill or Attribute above level 100.

In vanilla Oblivion, you have the ability to overmax all of your skills (through Training), as well as two Attributes (through the Oghma Infinium); the Shivering Isles expansion adds the ability to overmax all the other Attributes as well (through the Addiction quest).

Overmaxing your skills is actually very easy, but only two skills will grant you any actual benefits when raised above 100: those skills are Athletics and Acrobatics.

You must not choose either as a Major skill if you want to overmax them, otherwise you will gain additional levels (up to 30 additional levels can be gained this way); as explained above, this seems like a good thing, but it actually only makes you comparatively weaker.

Overmaxing Skills[edit]

Skill can be raised up to 200 without incurring in significant risks (such as, accidentally breaking the game engine). In order to perfectly overmax your Athletics and Acrobatics skills (i.e., in order to bring them to 200 in the least possible amount of levels), you must first max out one of the two, at character level 1, without using any training.

In order to max out Acrobatics (and I suggest you do this first, for overmaxing Athletics takes a vast amount of time) you need to find yourself a low ceiling and start hitting the jump button. Do so for a few hours, until you are informed that you are a Master of Acrobatics.

You can jump about 4-5 times a second if you are hitting your head on a ceiling that forces you to land immediately. If you run and jump at the same time, you will also get an Athletics gain while you level up your Acrobatics. It is advisable that you start with Acrobatics and get your Athletics as high as possible while you level it: it is going to take a long, long, long time to raise your Athletics to its maximum.

In order to max out Athletics you need to swim in a corner (PC users can hit Q and leave the computer on for a few days. Seriously: a non-Major Athletics is going to take literal days to max to 100).

Once you hit 95, I suggest you find as many Athletics books as possible and read them... That will save you a few hours of savegame time (which is important for the ABomb bug).

Once you have Acrobatics (or, if you are feeling particularly masochistic, Athletics) at 100, you need to gain the Drain Skill effect (available through Doomstones), as well as the ability to create custom spells (this requires access to the Arcane University, see the Mages Guild and Spellmaking pages).

Note that you need to do this before you sleep to level up for the first time: if you achieve enough Major Skill points to gain a level before you complete the Mages Guild recommendation quests, do not sleep until you finish all the quests.

IMPORTANT: one of the Recommendation quests requires you to sleep! Complete that first!

Once you have access to an altar of spellmaking, create a custom Drain Skill (Acrobatics or Athletics: the one you maxed out already) 100 points on Self for 3 seconds, and find a trainer in that skill.

Remove any armor you may be wearing (to guarantee 100% spell effectiveness), cast the spell on yourself and talk to the trainer: you will be able to train 5 levels of the skill, as if you really had a skill level of 0. Level up once, and repeat the drain/train procedure. Keep leveling up and training until your skill reaches a base value of 200.

Since you need to gain 100 levels in the skill, you will need to train it 20 times (at levels 1 thru 20).

While you do that, you will also want to naturally raise the other skill to 100. Once you are done training Acrobatics (or Athletics) it is time to train Athletics (or Acrobatics, respectively).

This will take another 20 levels. At this point you are quickly approaching level 40, which means you are about done leveling everything else, and your Attributes are all at 100 - except for Luck, but as explained above we don't care about luck.

Overmaxing Attributes[edit]

As soon you hit 100 in all the Attributes you want to overmax, it is a good time to actually do it. Leveling up with increased Endurance will grant you an additional point per level; since the effect is not applied retroactively, it is best to overmax Endurance as soon as possible. However, you must raise all Attributes at the same time (you only get one shot at overmaxing them), so you must wait until they are all at level 100 before proceeding.

Attributes you definitely want to overmax (level up past level 100):

Endurance (for additional Health) Strength (for carrying capacity) Intelligence (for maximum Magicka)

Attributes you may want to overmax:

Agility (for higher Fatigue scores and lowering your chance of being staggered) Willpower (for faster Magicka regain, non-Atronach characters only) Speed (even if you have 200 Athletics)

Attributes you do not want to overmax:

Luck (Of course)

The absolute maximums for your attributes (Oblivion GOTY edition), not considering Vampirism bonuses, are as follows:

Endurance: 110 Speed, Willpower: 120 Strength, Intelligence, Agility: 125

Additionally, any one Attribute may be raised by another 5 points at the end of the Knights of the Nine quest line. You are free to change which attribute gets that bonus at any time, and as many times as you want, so do not worry too much about that.

Overmaxing Attributes is more complicated than overmaxing skills, as it entails having your Attributes drained by an Ability. A Drain/Damage Attribute effect will not do, and there is only one Ability in the whole game that allows you to do that: Felldew Addiction, from the Shivering Isles quest Addiction.

The important thing to remember is that this effect only happens during that one quest: once you complete it, there is no way to be affected by a Drain Attribute Ability ever again, so you must raise all your Attributes before completing the quest.

You will need five levels to raise all six Attributes by the maximum amount, but if you only raised Strength, Endurance and Intelligence you could be done in as few as three levels.

This means a difference, once you max out your level, of up to 2 Health points, due to your Endurance being 10 points lower during those two level-ups. If you care about those 2 points, only max out three Attributes and complete the quest, otherwise max everything (except Luck) and then complete the quest.

Remember, you must sleep and gain those levels before completing the quest: the reason why your Attributes will end up higher at the end of the quest is that, Felldew Addiction being implemented as an Ability, the game considers your Attributes as if their base value really were lower than 100. Once the Ability is removed, the base value is raised by as many points as the Ability was draining: since the cap only applies when you level up, you retain the extra points you gained.

The procedure is fairly straightforward: follow the Shivering Isles main questline until Addiction, and let yourself get afflicted with Ruinous Felldew Withdrawal; level up twice, rising your Endurance (and two other Attributes) by 10 points (each); raise all the other attributes you care about up to their maximum values (ignore Luck, you don't need it); complete the quest and get cured of Felldew Addiction: your Attributes will be permanently raised above 100.

Felldew Addiction only grants you 10 to 15 points per Attribute.

To raise your Attributes even more you will need the Oghma Infinium.

The problem with the Oghma Infinium, other than getting it, is that it also raises three of your skills. If these are Major Skills, you will be forced to level up as soon as you sleep, even if they were already at 100.

To counter that, you have to keep all the Major Skills that are going to be raised below 90, or make sure that all the skills that get a boost are Minor Skills.

The two most useful Paths are Steel and Spirit: Steel arises your Speed and maximum carrying capacity, Spirit raises your maximum Magicka and Magicka regeneration. Raising Agility and Speed seems like the least useful path, but this is a decision you will have to make for your character...