Picking good major skills in Oblivion?

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kelbear

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I don't know what things I should try for in Oblivion. Race is pretty clear as to what paths they excel in. Sign is pretty clean cut as well.

But when picking class, I can't figure out what major skills to pick. I remember from someone saying that athletics and acrobatics should be avoided in Morrowind since it levels you up too fast? What's the downside of leveling up too fast? I don't understand the level-up system too well, does the distribution of major skill advancements affect what attributes get raised faster at the level-up screen as well?

I took speechcraft as one of them, but since I use it on /every/ NPC just to be sure I don't miss anything, speechcraft is leveling up much faster than everything else.
 
the only downside to leveling up fast that I can see is that it makes the game too easy .... and that definitely happened to me in Morrowind
 
I wouldn't pick speechcraft/mercantile/athletics/acrobatics as major skills.
I don't know if they balanced acr and ath in Oblivion, but in Morrowind choosing those as major skills meant auto-running into a wall overnight for levels... or jumping everywhere you went.
 
lol, playing morrowind my third time through, I have athletics as one of my skills. I only leave my character running into the wall over night because in morrowind the characters run soooooo slow. The next day his running speed is bearable now. One way to avoid leveling up too fast, is to do that. my athletics went way up, and prolly prompted me to rest and level many times. but since I was asleep, I didn't level up till I played when I woke. so I leveled one time and my athletics went into the fourtys. Now, my leveling is more balanced, even when its because of my athletics goin up.

Don't know how similar it would be in Oblivion. But I prolly won't choose athletics as one of my skills in that game.
 
Hmm I made a imperial bard that looks like sean connery, I'm used to playing as the warrior type but wanted more of a challange. IMO you shouldn't let guides and such decide for you, you should just sort of go with the flow of things in this game. I'm having fun with talking to people and doing tasks ect that benefit my character.
 
mesar said:
lol, playing morrowind my third time through, I have athletics as one of my skills. I only leave my character running into the wall over night because in morrowind the characters run soooooo slow. The next day his running speed is bearable now. One way to avoid leveling up too fast, is to do that. my athletics went way up, and prolly prompted me to rest and level many times. but since I was asleep, I didn't level up till I played when I woke. so I leveled one time and my athletics went into the fourtys. Now, my leveling is more balanced, even when its because of my athletics goin up.

Don't know how similar it would be in Oblivion. But I prolly won't choose athletics as one of my skills in that game.
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In Morrowind I just used TES to mod the base walk speed for the entire world and then me and everyone else moved faster. It only took like 10 minutes to figure out without any outside help.
 
My personal Preferences:
Blade, Sneak, and Destruction.
Dark Elf Nightblade is the ultimate combination if you want a headstart this way.
 
kelbear said:
I don't know what things I should try for in Oblivion. Race is pretty clear as to what paths they excel in. Sign is pretty clean cut as well.

But when picking class, I can't figure out what major skills to pick. I remember from someone saying that athletics and acrobatics should be avoided in Morrowind since it levels you up too fast? What's the downside of leveling up too fast? I don't understand the level-up system too well, does the distribution of major skill advancements affect what attributes get raised faster at the level-up screen as well?

I took speechcraft as one of them, but since I use it on /every/ NPC just to be sure I don't miss anything, speechcraft is leveling up much faster than everything else.
Click to expand...

As you level up all the other creatures and enemies in the world level up as well. So if have a bunch of non-combat related skills and use them to power-level, which is easy to do, you may end up with lots of HP and Magika and such, but you may be completely useless in a fight because of your low combat skills. The game could actually become a long slow grind of finding weak things to practice on until you can fight well and have enough money to buy high-level gear. Even then you might not have ENOUGH combat skills to be all that effective.

So my advice is to not have more than 1 super-easy to raise non-combat skill. These skills are: Athletics, Mercantile, Armorer, Speechcraft, and Acrobatics (unless you are REALLY good at dodging with it.) If you really want 2 then try to keep them lower than your combat skills so they don't power-level you beyond your real capabilities.

BTW, Security is not on this list because although it is non-combat it is both very useful and you have to intentionally work at it to get it to a decent skill quickly. So chances are you aren't going to be getting it to 75 while everything else is at 40 still.
 
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