Oblivion:Character Creation

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Creating your character is the most important decision you must make during the tutorial, as it affects the entire game. The tutorial is set up to help you make some of these decisions: recommendations are provided for birthsign and class based upon how you play the first part of the tutorial. (As you are playing the tutorial for the first time, you may want to just accept those recommendations for the time being.) At the end of the tutorial, when you go to exit the sewers, you are given a final chance to review every decision that you have made about your character. You may wish to save your game permanently at this point, and then spend some time more carefully reviewing the details of your character. As long as you stay in the sewers you can continue to revise your character.

Contents 1 General Considerations 1.1 Race and Gender 1.2 Birthsign 1.3 Standard Classes 1.4 Custom Class Specialization 1.5 Custom Class Attributes 1.6 Custom Class Skills 1.6.1 Most Used Skills 1.6.2 Controllable Skills 1.6.3 Training Skills 2 Character Types 2.1 Fighter 2.2 Mage 2.3 Thief 2.4 Hybrid Types 3 Character Development 3.1 Initial Strengths 3.2 Leveling 3.3 Maximum Character Level 4 Custom Classes 4.1 Most Used Skills as Major Skills 4.2 Least Used Skills as Major Skills 4.3 One Major Skill for each Attribute 5 Character Changes during the Tutorial 6 Face Generation

[edit] General Considerations

The factors that you must decide upon are:

• Gender
  • Determines Attributes (depending upon your race)
• Race
  • Determines Attributes, skill bonuses, and special abilities (greater powers, lesser powers, constant effect characteristics)
• Birthsign
  • Provides special abilities (typically attribute bonuses or greater powers)
• Class
  • Your character's class is the single most complex decision you need to make
  • One option is to use one of the game's built-in standard classes.
  • The other option to create a custom class, in which case you need to make decisions about specialization, attributes, and major skills
• Appearance
  • While largely governed by your choices of gender and race, you can also fine-tune most aspects of your character's physical appearance. These choices have no effect upon gameplay.

The Oblivion Character Creation web page has all the basic rules of character creation implemented as an interactive web page.

There is no one "correct" way to make these decisions about your character. Your choices will be determined by your personal role-playing preferences. Some questions that may influence your choices include:

• What type of combat do you prefer?
• Do you prefer to charge into dungeons or explore more slowly and stealthily?
• Do you like or hate the lockpicking and persuasion minigames?
• Do you like to visit cities regularly for supplies and services or do you prefer to play a more self-sufficient character?
• Do you want to play without worrying about character development, or do you want to pay careful attention to every aspect of your character's training?
• Do you want a character that is strong at the start of the game or later in the game?
• How many hours do you plan to spend playing Oblivion? In other words, is it worth it to you to spend your first 10-20 hours of game play focusing on long-term character development? Or would you rather be done with playing after 10-20 hours?

Although logic may dictate some decisions, others may be based purely upon preferences about your character's appearance.

The details on this page are generally most relevant for advanced players. Many players will not need to or want to create an optimal character based on every recommendation on this page. If you find this page too long, or if you don't understand or care about some of the rationales, you can safely ignore the advice and create a character based solely upon gut instinct. New players will probably find the game more rewarding if they just quickly create a character so that they can learn their own game-play preferences (for example, to be able to answer the questions listed in the previous paragraph). Any character will be completely adequate for initial gameplay; in the worst case, you can turn down the game's difficulty slider to make up for any mistakes. The nuances discussed on this page will become most important once characters reach high levels (greater than 10-15).

[edit] Race and Gender

Race and gender are best determined simultaneously, because both factors influence the starting values of your character's Attributes.

Gender is a choice that is likely to be made based upon personal preference (how you like to roleplay, the appearance of your character). Objective considerations are how your character's attributes are modified. Female characters frequently have higher Personality or Willpower and lower Strength or Endurance (but many exceptions exist).

There are ten possible races to choose from: Altmer (or High Elf), Argonian, Bosmer (or Wood Elf), Breton, Dunmer (or Dark Elf), Imperial, Khajiit, Nord, Orc, and Redguard. Personal preference can also play an important role in this decision, since your character's race controls your character's appearance. The objective considerations are:

• Race determines your character's Attributes (also modified by gender).
• Each race/gender combination has a different height, which affects movement speed. See Race summary page.
• Race provides initial bonuses to your character's Skills (all races get a total of +45 in skill bonuses, but distributed among different skills).
• Each race has certain special abilities, which may be once-per-day greater powers, multiple-use lesser powers, and/or constant effect characteristics (e.g., resistances, weaknesses, magicka fortification, water breathing).

Full details on these characteristics are provided on each individual race page; a table summarizing the attributes and skills is provided on the Race summary page.

Most of the races have a combination of attributes, skills, and special abilities that make the race naturally suited for certain character types (as detailed under Character Types).

A secondary consideration when choosing your race is that the racial powers and racial constant effects can provide access to spell effects that can then be used to create custom spells or custom enchanted items. In most cases, standard spells can be bought, providing access to the same spell effects. Some exceptions are:

• The Orc Berserk power includes a Drain Attribute (specifically, Agility) effect. This is one of only three ways to obtain access to the Drain Attribute effect.
• Several races include a constant Resist Disease effect; this is one of the few ways to obtain access to the Resist Disease effect. These races are Altmer, Argonian, Bosmer, and Redguard.
• Two races include a constant Resist Element effect; this is one of the few ways to obtain access to a Resist Element effect. These races are Dunmer (Resist Fire) and Nord (Resist Frost).
• Two races include a constant Resist Poison effect; this is one of the few ways to obtain access to the Resist Poison effect. These races are Argonian and Redguard.

Generally, the benefit conferred from access to these spell effects is not significant enough for these racial powers to be dominant factors in choosing your character's race.

[edit] Birthsign

There are thirteen possible birthsigns, each of which bestows a special ability. There are three main types of birthsigns: those that provide constant-effect Attribute bonuses; those that provide constant-effect Magicka bonuses; and, those that provide powers, which can be used once per day (in the case of greater powers) or cast multiple times per day using the character's magicka (in the case of lesser powers). The strongest bonuses are accompanied by offsetting weaknesses.

The birthsigns that provide constant effect Attribute bonuses are: Lady, Steed, Thief, and Warrior. Because you do not have to remember to use these constant-effect bonuses, they require the least effort to be made useful. They are most useful early in the game (using Efficient Leveling you can get your two most important attributes to 100 by level 15, whether or not you use a birthsign bonus). Thief is noteworthy for providing a +10 bonus to Luck; this is one of only two ways to augment your character's initial luck.

Constant-effect Magicka bonuses (in order of increasing bonus) are provided by: Mage, Apprentice, and Atronach. The higher Magicka bonuses are balanced by weaknesses, making them less conservative choices. As with the attribute bonuses, little effort is needed to take advantage of these birthsigns. The extra Magicka bonuses are useful throughout the game, even for high-level characters. It is worth noting that even the smallest Magicka bonus (Mage, +50) is equivalent to +25 Intelligence, more than the +20 Intelligence given by the Attribute signs.

The birthsigns that provide once-per-day greater powers are: Lover, Ritual, Serpent, Shadow, and Tower. These bonuses are most useful if you are likely to remember to use these powers regularly; if you always forget to take advantage of them (or are afraid to use them in case you might need them later in the day), these birthsigns are relatively ineffective. Most of the powers are most useful early in the game; later in the game, your character can generally learn spells or make potions that are at least as powerful as the greater powers. Also there are Doomstones that can be discovered and provide greater powers that in many cases can replace the birthsign bonuses.

Two birthsigns provide a lesser power; the Lord (Blood of the North) and the Ritual (Blessed Word). Lesser powers can be used as many times per day as desired, but carry with them a magicka cost (albeit a bargain one).

Another consideration with the greater/lesser powers is that these powers provide access to spell effects that can then be used to create custom spells or custom enchanted items. In most cases, standard spells can be bought, providing access to the same spell effects. Some exceptions are:

• The Tower's Tower Warden power is a Reflect Damage effect. This is the only non-Shivering Isles way to obtain access to the Reflect Damage effect (although only custom spells, not custom enchantments, are possible even then). If you have the Shivering Isles expansion it is also possible to get a reflect damage spell during the Rebuilding the Gatekeeper quest.

[edit] Standard Classes

The game comes with twenty-one predefined standard classes, which provide a quick way for players to set up a character. One will be suggested for you during the tutorial. Unlike in previous chapters of The Elder Scrolls, this will be determined by what skills you have used up to that point, rather than a series of questions. Some of the classes focus on a single one of the three specializations; other classes combine elements from two or more specializations. Therefore, it should be possible to find a class to cover most standard styles of game play.

However, none of the standard classes are ideal. For example, there are actually no classes that exactly match the prototype character types presented below for fighters or thieves. Players interested in Efficient Leveling or otherwise controlling their character's development will not find any suitable standard classes. Custom classes are necessary to provide complete control over the character creation process.

There are 5460 different character combinations without making a custom class. So remember, no pressure, for there is a character combination for everybody's needs.

[edit] Custom Class Specialization

There are three schools of skills: Combat, Magic, and Stealth. Each school has seven associated skills; when you select a school to be your class' specialization, all seven skills receive an initial +5 level bonus. These skills also increase more rapidly than other skills.

[edit] Custom Class Attributes

Two attributes can be chosen as custom class attributes; these attributes each receive an initial +5 bonus.

In general, these attribute bonuses are most useful early in the game; a +5 bonus to two or three attributes is possible each time you level up, if you level efficiently, so the initial custom class attribute bonus can be considered equivalent to an initial one level bonus. The maximum value of any attribute is 100, regardless of whether it received any initial bonuses.

Two attributes, however, do behave slightly differently:

• Luck can only be increased by +1 each level, so an initial +5 bonus in luck is more comparable to a five-level bonus than a one-level bonus. Also, luck is a particularly useful attribute early in the game, so investing in a luck bonus can be very advantageous, especially to well-rounded characters
• Endurance determines your total Health: base health is two times endurance; in addition, each time you level up, your health increases by an amount dependent upon your endurance. The health bonus each time you level is not retroactively increased if you later increase your endurance. Therefore, increasing your endurance early on is important in giving your character the maximum possible health.

One attribute that in general should not be chosen for your class attribute is Personality. Personality is a particularly weak attribute. Of the three skills it governs, two provide no benefit in combat or survival (Mercantile and Speechcraft) and the third (Illusion) is not improved in any way by increased personality. Only those who plan on roleplaying their character with a strong personality should pick this.

[edit] Custom Class Skills

The most important part of creating a custom class is choosing the seven major skills. These major skills start out at values of 25 instead of 5 (before any racial or specialization bonuses). Major skills also increase more rapidly than other skills (the most rapid advancement is in skills that are both major skills and in the class specialization).

The other aspect of major skills is that advances in major skills determine when your character's level increases. Whenever your major skills have improved by a total of 10 points, your character levels up. This one feature singlehandedly makes character creation difficult: depending upon whether you like to level up quickly or whether you prefer to control your character's level, your custom class will be fundamentally different.

A secondary consideration is that starting spells are made available for any magical skill that is chosen to be a major skill. These spells are summarized on the individual skill pages, and also are noted on the Spells page. These spells are in all cases standard spells that can be bought from spell vendors. However, being given them for free saves some money and bother in tracking down spells before you can even start training the skill.

[edit] Most Used Skills

The first step in deciding which skills should be major skills is determining which skills your character is likely to use the most often. (Whether the most-used skills should be major skills or minor skills depends upon your style of play, as discussed in Custom Classes, but in either case identifying the most-used skills is a necessary step). The most-used skills will largely be determined by what overall type of character you choose to play. Some suggestions on sets of skills are provided in the next section.

Oblivion does not restrict what skills any character can use. Any character can develop any skill to 100 given enough time and effort. Therefore, selecting your character's most-used skills does not imply that the other skills will not or cannot be used. However, the strongest characters will start by focusing on a few skills and developing those skills the most rapidly. For example, a character with 100 in one combat skill (e.g., Blade) will be a much more powerful opponent than one that has developed five different combat skills equally, since each will only have skill levels of 50 at the same point in the game.

Every character should select at least one primary skill in each of the following categories:

• Offense: Blade, Blunt, Destruction, Hand to Hand, Marksman
• Defense: Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Block, or Alteration.
  • You might be able to get away with using Conjuration/Illusion spells to use summoned creatures as scapegoats and hide using invisibility, or dodge attacks using Athletics/Acrobatics in lieu of a "real" defense skill, if you're up for a challenge.

It's often worth having more than one skill available in each category. For example, choosing both Blade and Marksman allows both melee combat and ranged attacks. Alteration's Shield spells are very useful to supplement light or heavy armor.

There are some other game abilities where there are two different skills that can be used to provide that ability; it is worthwhile to choose which skill your character will rely on.

• Opening locks: lockpicking or Open spells (Alteration) can both be used
  • If you (the player, not the character) are good at the lockpicking mini-game, it is possible to open even Very Hard locks from the start of the game
  • Open spells do not require mastery of any mini-games, but the level of lock you can open is strictly controlled by your Alteration skill.
  • Open spells do not work underwater, so being able to fall back on lockpicking is necessary in a small number of cases
• Increasing NPC Disposition: Speechcraft or Charm spells (Illusion) can both be used
  • Speechcraft is overall a less useful option: the maximum disposition available via speechcraft is limited. There are no additional benefits to developing speechcraft as a skill
  • There are many other useful effects available via Illusion, so developing this skill has many additional benefits
  • By making custom spells, very powerful 2 second duration Charm spells can be created, even if your Illusion skill is still weak.

[edit] Controllable Skills

Another factor in selecting skills is whether or not it is easy to control when and where your character uses a skill. In particular if you are interested in efficient leveling, it is important to not accidentally level up because your character is forced to use a skill.

Some skills that you typically can not control the use of are:

• Acrobatics: You gain acrobatics experience particularly quickly if you fall down a slope or need to jump down a level.
• Athletics: Athletics experience is gained whenever you run, so it tends to go up continuously.
• Restoration: Even for characters who don't rely upon spells for healing, there can be times when you really need to cast a restore health spell.

Skills that are not used in combat (in other words, that you will not need to count on for character survival) are typically easier to control. For most characters, easy to control skills will include:

• Hand to Hand (if not being used as primary form of combat)
• Alchemy
• Alteration
• Mysticism
• Mercantile

Also one of Light Armor and Heavy Armor (whichever one is not going to be used as the primary armor type) will be easy to control. Block can even be considered easy to control, because if necessary you can always opt to fight without blocking.

[edit] Training Skills

If you plan to use training to increase skills (although remember that at most 5 skill training sessions can be used per level), you may also want to take into account how easy it is to obtain training in various skills. The Trainers page lists who the trainers are for each skill; note that some of the trainers have bugs that limits their availability. For training past skill level 70, only one master trainer is available in each skill, and a miniquest must be completed (some of which are more taxing than others).

[edit] Character Types

Corresponding to the three specializations, there are three prototypes for character roleplaying: fighter, mage, and thief. The most important difference between these three character types is the style of combat, but there are also some secondary differences generally associated with each of these characters. This section provides some guidelines on key characteristics of each of these prototypes, and recommendations for the races, birthsigns, and classes that are best aligned with each one. These recommendations are intended primarily as guidelines for players starting out; as you play the game you are likely to develop personal preferences that differ from these guidelines.

However, you do not need to choose a character that strictly falls into one of these three categories. Most people will want to create a hybrid character that combines aspects of the various prototypes.

[edit] Fighter

The fighter relies upon melee combat to attack enemies, and prefers to charge into face-to-face combat. The fighter expects to receive a lot of damage in combat, and relies upon high health, full armor, and blocking skills to survive the damage

Races

All three of the following races provide: good combat-related greater powers; good Strength and Endurance; and, many combat-related skill bonuses.

• Nord: Frost Damage and Shield are good but conservative greater powers.
• Orc: Berserk is an aggressive greater power, with great bonuses but also some drawbacks.
• Redguard: Adrenaline Rush provides multiple bonuses without any drawbacks.

Birthsigns

• Warrior: +10 Strength and +10 Endurance are useful to any fighter.
• Lover: Lover's Kiss provides a very useful paralyze ability.
• Atronach: The 50% Spell Absorption effect basically renders impotent half the spells cast against you. Very handy when rushing towards Mages to break their frail bodies. The stunted magicka isn't as major of an impediment as it is on any more magically inclined class.
• Lord: Provides a powerful healing spell, which can be used multiple times; very useful in combat situations. If you're not handy with magic, it will take a very long time before you have the ability to cast an equivalent healing spell.

Standard Classes

• Warrior: The archetypical fighter class
• Barbarian
• Crusader
• Knight

Attributes

• Strength: Maximize damage dealt with melee weapons. Provide enough Encumbrance to be able to carry a full suit of heavy armor.
• Endurance: Maximize Health so you can survive enemy attacks. Also improves Fatigue

Skills

• Blade or Blunt: Choose one of these two to be your primary weapon for attack. Most characters will only need to specialize in one.
• Heavy Armor: A full suit of heavy armor provides the maximum armor rating and also provides the most durable armor (it will break down less quickly during combat, and therefore provide the maximum armor rating for longer).
• Block: Extra defense.
• Armorer: Your weapons and armor will sustain major damage; being able to repair them in the field is vital.
• Restoration: Even with armor and blocking, you will be taking a lot of damage. You might as well put to use what Magicka you have to heal yourself.

[edit] Mage

The mage relies upon magical attacks. Because armor negatively affects spell efficiency, the archetypical mage will not wear any armor. Instead, the mage will try to avoid the center of combat, use decoys to detract attention, and generally avoid taking any damage.

Races

• Breton: enhanced Magicka; good Intelligence and Willpower; good magical skill bonuses.
• Altmer: enhanced Magicka; good Intelligence and Willpower; good magical skill bonuses. Compared to the Breton, Altmer has better Magicka balanced by more weaknesses, making it the less conservative choice.
• Dunmer: summon ghost greater power; moderate Intelligence; some magical skill bonuses. Not the best choice for a pure mage, but can be good for more well-rounded mages.
• Argonian: Female Argonians start off with good Intelligence and both genders have a bonus in some of the magic skills such as Mysticism(+5) and Illusion(+5).

Birthsigns

• Mage: +50 Magicka. Without any negatives, this is the most conservative choice for a mage.
• Apprentice: +100 Magicka, balanced by 100% Weakness to Magic. This is a more aggressive choice for a mage. Best paired with the Breton race, to reduce some of the weakness to magic.
• Atronach: +150 Magicka and 50% Spell Absorption, balanced by Stunted Magicka. An Atronach character can be very powerful, but it requires many specialized strategies to be effective.

Standard Classes

• Mage: The archetypal mage class
• Battlemage
• Sorcerer
• Witchhunter
• Spellsword

Attributes

• Intelligence: Maximize Magicka, enabling more powerful spells and more back-to-back spells.
• Willpower: Maximize Magicka regeneration rate, enabling more spells to be cast in a short period of time.

Skills

• Destruction: The primary attack skill for a mage.
• Conjuration: Summon monsters to distract your enemies, deal additional harm, and prevent them from attacking you.
• Alteration: Shield spells provide a replacement for armor; open spells and feather spells are also valuable to compensate for mage weaknesses.
• Illusion: An often overlooked school, illusion provides many alternatives to direct attack upon enemies.
• Mysticism: Spell Absorption and Reflect Spell are alternative ways to replace armor

[edit] Thief

The thief relies upon sneak attacks and avoids face-to-face combat as much as possible. Sniping from hidden corners, often using a poisoned bow, is a primary means of attack.

Races

• Bosmer: good Agility; great stealth skill bonuses.
• Khajiit: unlimited Night-Eye; good Agility; good stealth skill bonuses.
• Argonian: male Argonians start out with good Agility and Speed; they have a good initial Security bonus.
• Dunmer: good Speed, bonuses in Light Armor, Marksman, and Blade are useful for thieves.

Birthsigns

• Thief: +10 Agility is very useful for thieves; the +10 Luck and +10 Speed are added attractions.
• Shadow: Invisibility greater power.
• Steed: Extra speed is highly useful.

Standard Classes

• Thief: The archetypical thief class.
• Acrobat
• Agent
• Assassin
• Monk

Attributes

• Agility: Maximize damage from bow and arrow; maximize your ability to sneak and lockpick
• Speed: Makes it easier to keep out of melee range when attacking with a bow and arrow, also good for diving in quickly with melee attacks and then getting out of range before your enemy can retaliate.

Skills

• Sneak: The primary skill for avoiding combat, getting sneak attack bonuses, and generally being undetected.
• Marksman: Generally the primary combat skill for thieves, allowing targets to be killed from a distance.
• Blade: You probably won't be able to get by on just Marksman in some cases, particularly with faster opponents and in close quarters, so it's good to have a melee attack handy. Short blades, such as daggers, are very fast, and melee receive a better sneak attack bonus than a bow.
• Alchemy: Create powerful poisons to increase the potency of your attacks.
• Light Armor: Light armor is the traditional armor type for thieves. However, the primary disadvantage of heavy armor is its weight (heavy boots are also a disadvantage for low-level sneaking); if your character is strong enough, heavy armor can also be a good choice.
• Security: Break into houses and other places with loot. (Alteration, providing Open spells, can be considered as an alternative).

[edit] Hybrid Types

Most characters will not fall strictly into one of the above three archetypes. In some cases a few skills from one specialization will be added amongst another, but a more extensive merging of different specializations can be done.

Rather than expend Magicka by using spells to directly attack an opponent, you can cast spells to augment your melee-fighting skills in a variety of ways.

• Restoration spells can absorb a Bandit's skill in Blunt, for example, which simultaneously enhances your own mace damage while weakening theirs.
• Destruction spells can make an opponent more vulnerable to elemental or poisoned attacks delivered by an enchanted melee weapon, shortening the melee battle. The defining principle is to use your magic skills to make your 'good' melee skills even greater, rather than switching back-and-forth between two merely 'good' specializations.

A mage who makes himself more resilient through the use of Armor and Endurance can stand toe-to-toe with an enemy and deliver spells cast at Touch range instead of a standoff distance. Spells that are Cast on Touch rather than Cast on Target are more Magicka-efficient.

• A spell of similar power can be cast more often in one barrage, since it drains less Magicka per cast,
• Or you can use a more powerful touch spell at the same Magicka cost of a ranged spell.
• The additional defense afforded by a shield requires such a player to wield a one-handed weapon, even if they do not intend to use that weapon as a primary method of attack. As a result, such a weapon can be used to increase the effectiveness of the mage's magical attack, by being enchanted with something like Absorb Magicka or Weakness to Magic. Again, the player uses the skills of one specialization to make the skills and powers of another specialization even greater, rather than having two independent specializations compete for your attention.

[edit] Character Development

Your character creation choices will have an influence throughout the entire game. This section summarizes some of the different points in the game at which your initial character creation will make a difference.

[edit] Initial Strengths

Your character creation choices obviously have an immediate effect upon the starting values of your character's skills. Skills that you choose as a major skill will start at Apprentice level (with any apprentice level mastery perks) instead of Novice level. Your ability to perform those skills will be noticeably better. By combining racial bonuses and specialization bonuses, it is possible to start some major skills at 40, so relatively little training will be necessary to reach Journeyman level and acquire the Journeyman level mastery perk

[edit] Leveling

As you use your major skills, those skills will improve and contribute towards leveling up your character. If you choose major skills that you use a lot, your character will increase rapidly in level. On the other hand, if you choose major skills that you rarely use (or can control the use of), your character will increase more slowly in level. This choice between fast leveling and slow leveling represents a choice between two fundamentally different ways of playing the game.

[edit] Maximum Character Level

There is a maximum character level which is directly determined by the initial values of your major skills. Once your major skills all reach 100, you reach your final level; no more increases are possible (with the exception of some rare exploits, such as the skill bonuses conferred by the Oghma Infinium). A calculator to determine your character's maximum level is available at OblivionCC.

To maximize your character's final level, you want to avoid any initial skill bonuses to your major skills: make sure that all specialization skills are minor skills, and make sure that racial bonuses all apply to minor skills. In other words, make your major skills all start with a value of 25 (you can actually allow one of the seven major skills to start at 30 without decreasing your maximum level). In that case, your character's maximum level will be 53. At the other extreme, if all skill bonuses are applied to your major skills, your character's maximum level will be 45.

Some ways to increase your character's maximum level include:

• Going to jail and losing skill points in major skills (one in three or lower chance) allows your character to train those skills again and gain extra levels.
• Get quest skill bonuses "quest reward" skill point bonuses when your skill is already at 100. The reward will make your skill go over 100; although this has no effect in most formulas (e.g., damage calculation), you will get extra "level" points. For instance, with the Oghma Infinium, you can get up to 3 (!) extra levelups, if you choose skills that are all major skills.

On the other hand, you may reach an earlier maximum level if you are able to get all eight attributes to 100 before reaching the skill-based maximum level. Once your attributes are all maximized, no more level-ups will occur. On the PC, a workaround is to use the Console to decrease one of your attributes, for example by entering modpca personality -1. If you can anticipate that this is going to occur, a more general workaround is to avoid +5 attribute bonuses on the last couple attributes that need to be increased (e.g., Personality).

For many players, the character's maximum level will not be a significant factor. Level 45 is easily high enough to maximize all the leveled lists used in the game; leveled lists top out in the mid-20's. Also, a level 45 maxed-out character is almost as strong as a level 53 maxed-out character; the main differences will be total Health and potentially the character's Luck attribute. In short, there are only inconsequential benefits associated with being able to increase your character's maximum level from 45 to 53.

[edit] Custom Classes

[edit] Most Used Skills as Major Skills

The most obvious way to set up a custom class is to set the major skills to be your character's most used skills. This is how the developers intended classes to be designed, based on the descriptions of the standard classes. The official game guide also proposes custom classes based on this assumption.

There are several advantages to choosing major skills that are frequently used:

• Those skills start at apprentice level, and can even be nearly at journeyman level
• Your character will rapidly gain experience in those skills, and will quickly acquire access to the higher skill perks
• Your character will level up more rapidly, gaining access to higher health, better equipment, more gold, and all the other bonuses that come with leveling
• Leveling up occurs without any special effort

The major disadvantage of this approach is that the character may level too quickly, especially if the bulk of your major skills do not directly improve your combat skills. Since monsters and enemies get harder as your level increases, custom classes that improve non-combat skills may find that monsters begin to outpace their characters. For example, a character with an ever-increasing Blade and Heavy Armor skill will have little problem with stronger monsters, but a character with an ever-increasing alchemy and sneak skill will inevitably find monsters who require stronger combat skills than they have.

[edit] Least Used Skills as Major Skills

In order to stay stronger than the monsters, it is necessary to level slowly; this is accomplished by intentionally picking major skills that are infrequently used.

Although that means that your character's key survival skills all start at novice level, your character is free to work on improving those skills without it causing your character to level up. In other words, with a bit of effort, your character can improve those skills to journeyman level while still remaining at level 1. Thus, by making some sacrifices at the start of the game (such as a weaker character and putting more effort to initial training), you can end up with an ultimately much stronger character. This strategy only makes sense if you are sure that you are going to spend more than 10-20 hours playing Oblivion.

By leveling slowly your character also maximizes opportunities to obtain the best available equipment.

It is also recommended to choose as major skills ones that can be controlled; this prevents your character from accidentally leveling up when leveling up is not desired.

[edit] One Major Skill for each Attribute

Another strategy used to design a custom class is to choose one and only one major skill that is governed by each of the seven attributes (other than luck, which governs no skills). This enables maximum control over the attribute bonuses that you gain each level.

Some compromises need to be made between this strategy and Least Used Skills as Major Skills. Many characters will have three most used skills that are all governed by the same attribute. For example, fighters are likely to rely on all three endurance skills (armorer, block, and heavy armor). Mages are likely to rely on all three willpower skills (alteration, destruction, and restoration).

• One option is to choose the least important of the three skills and make that a major skill. That one skill is likely to dictate when your character levels up, at least for the first few turns, but leveling will still be relatively slow and controllable.
• Another option is to keep all the most used skills as minor skills, and instead choose two major skills associated with an unimportant attribute (such as personality).
  • The disadvantage in this case is that it may be difficult to get +5 attribute bonuses for the doubled-up attribute.
  • For example, if both mercantile and speechcraft are chosen as major skills, getting +5 bonuses in personality will frequently require that all 10 skill increases for a given level are in mercantile and speechcraft alone.
  • However, since +5 bonuses in personality are not really needed, any shortfalls in bonuses will probably not have any detrimental effect on your character's development.

[edit] Character Changes during the Tutorial

There are some interesting details about how character changes are implemented during the tutorial. In particular, changes in character class can have some unexpected side-effects.

During the tutorial, the game fundamentally keeps track of how many experience points you have gained in each skill, not how many skill levels you gain. When you change your class (either when Baurus asks you to select a class, or at the end of the sewers), the game recalculates how many actual skill levels that experience corresponds to (counting up from the skill's base value, taking into account whether it is a specialization and/or a major skill). For example, you could increase blade 9 points, from 5 to 14, during the tutorial. But if you then select a class where blade is a major skill, that can become just a 3-point skill increase, and you end up with blade=28. Therefore, there is no inherent advantage from training skills during the tutorial; the amount of work necessary to improve skills is identical to that required after the tutorial is complete.

If you have gained enough experience to advance to apprentice, journeyman, or even higher skill levels during the tutorial, all of the skill advancement screens will be shown each time you change your character, as the game recalculates all of your skill levels. It is possible to lose skill perks in the process (especially if you train skills extensively late in the tutorial), but it is also possible to gain extra skill perks.

For those who like to squeeze every possible advantage from the game, there are some interesting possibilities at the end of the tutorial. Before leaving the sewers, you can change your race, birthsign, and class as many times as you like. Each time you make a change, the game recalculates all of your skill levels. (This can in turn affect whether or not you are ready to level up, and all of the attribute bonuses that appear when you level up.)

One possibility is training Conjuration. Many characters will primarily want to use conjuration to summon creatures. However, starting at novice level, no summon spells are available. So you have to waste your valuable gold on a spell like Bound Dagger, just so you can practice it and reach apprentice level. Another option is to train conjuration while still in the sewers. Change your character to a high elf apprentice (to max out your magicka), and choose a class with conjuration (e.g., Sorcerer). You will now have a Summon Skeleton spell available. Chain-cast that spell until you have gained 15-20 skill points, ignoring the level-up message that occurs. Now change your character back to your desired configuration. The Summon Skeleton spell does unfortunately disappear. But your character will now be apprentice level in conjuration, so you can immediately start using summon spells. Also (unless you trained other skills) the level-up icon will disappear.

[edit] Face Generation

Making a face that one is happy with can be a daunting task. This is primarily due to illumination issues in the game world at the two instances where you are normally able to edit facial features. Features such as skin tone (texture) and hair color can be difficult to see clearly in poor lighting and may look unappealing in better lighting.

After the introductory movie, you are afforded the opportunity to edit the facial features under somewhat neutral lighting conditions. The second instance, where you may repeat the procedure before finally exiting the first dungeon, is troubled by lighting . The face is severely overexposed making it difficult to judge the appearance of your character (Remember to unequip your torch).

One solution is to examine the face in the inventory screen for a more neutral look. Another solution, for an unmodified version of Oblivion, is to save the game before exiting the sewers, note your character's appearance in neutral daylight outside and re-load and modify the features as needed.

One thing that exacerbates the issue is the lack of feedback on the sliders, which leads to excessive trial and error. When interacting with the sliders, avoid moving the texture-related sliders to extremes, as this may cause unintentional changes to other facial features. These feature changes will not revert as the sliders are returned to less extreme positions, so use care when adjusting the sliders.

Additionally, for PC users, there is a mod that enables numerical feedback on the sliders, thereby allowing for accurate, repeatable testing. This is helpful because the sliders typically range from +1000 to -1000, and it is impractical to count each increment in direction. Knowing the precise location of a slider is important when re-creating the facial features after re-loading the game.

Furthermore, to save time constantly saving and re-loading, (1) save outside the sewers, face the sewer entrance (2) bring up the console and type showracemenu to enable the race screen. The benefit is that is allows examination of the character's face in a neutral illumination setting.

A tip for avoiding the "blotchy" effect that is common when creating a character: If you edit the forehead shape to be tilted all the way forward then modify the Tone of the skin, as soon as you move the slider the face will appear to snap into a nice smooth texture without the blotchiness. After that you can modify the forehead to your desired tilt. Wrinkles may show based on the age slider so set as young as possible for the smoothest skin. Sometimes the forehead tilt and tone change don't smooth out the character if you RESET the character appearance, this usually makes it work, although the blotchiness may reappear when you load a saved game.

Further, for PC users, there are several mods that offer the ability to import faces from a savegame (for example Wrye Bash) should one be inclined to adhere to a particular face of one's alter ego.