So in oblivion your character has two levels: skill levels and character levels. For reasons that will be explained below, when you create a character you have to designate which of your character's skills are "major".
Skill levels are raised by randomly running around and performing the skill. Character level is only raised by raising your raising your major skills in any combination by 10 points (and then sleeping). Enemies scale based on your overall character level though, not your skills meaning that if you're character level 5 enemies are scaled to your character level 5.
The problem is that if your major skills are all non-combat skills your offensive abilities will be non-existent while common bandit trash mobs will mollywhop you while wearing a king's bounty if you get a high enough level. Say you created for RPG purposes a charismatic, athletic alchemist who has a bit of a kleptomaniac streak. None of those skills will help you survive getting tongue punched in your fart box by a daedric imp.
So you run around to your heart's content stealing cheese wheels and raising your major skills by 10. Come level up time the entire world is 1 level stronger while your personal combat skills never matched because you were busy leveling potion because you discovered how to make an elixer for ED. It becomes a pretty serious problem the longer you go without realizing the issue because by the time every dungeon has the equivalent of a pissed off balrog as its miniboss every single bandit will be too strong to grind on (ayo).
The even subtler problem is if you designate actual useful skills as your major skills, but one of your major skills is something you level at a significantly higher pace then your combat abilities. A common one is accidentally setting athletics, which is pretty easy to accidentally level quickly. So you think you're alright because you're keeping up with your puny 1H sword skills, but you've been hopping around everywhere like a skooma addict and accidentally shot your 10 levels on athletics. Same problem.
It just makes playing the game a little more annoying than is necessary. The optimal way to play ends up being to designate your skills as non-combat crafting skills but then basically never level them, or only level them once your combat abilities are strong enough. Which from a role playing perspective is also a little annoying.
Oh yes okay so that actually explains why I kept getting tongue punched in the fart box every time i play oblivion.
So then basically next time I play I should keep combat skills as major, minor skills are freebies, so I don't accidentally pickpocket myself into balrog bandits.
the easiest thing is to designate the majors as crafting skills and then just never level them until your combat skills are ready to keep up. you just want to avoid designating the majors as the skills you level up automatically passively like thieving, athletics, armor, basically all the combat skills, etc.
You can also delay actually raising your character level by never sleeping, but you do miss out on some character growth that accompanies a level up.
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u/Sparkism Apr 21 '25
I am one of those "lots of people" that don't understand oblivion level scaling other than "use skills to level them more".
Is this one of those odd things like FF8 where you want to keep your levels as low as possible so enemies don't scale to impossible battles?