Revisiting Oblivion

This is still my favorite Bethesda game. Newer ones do have improvements in various places, but I like the looks of this one best. Mostly because of inside the Oblivion Gates was so radically different. And the normal terrain wasn't snow. I hate snow.

So I re-acquired it on Steam last year. Decided I would play it without using Chameleon at all, and on much higher difficulty.

Well, the decision to not use Chameleon went by the wayside. The higher difficulty level pretty much killed the possibility of avoiding it.

I'd also forgotten the need to craft a character design better. So I picked a standard flavor, which resulted in most of my major skills being ones I don't care about, and skills I *do* care about aren't helping me level up.

I remembered the need to run Sneak to 100 during the training tunnels, and I invented a new (for me) approach to boosting various magic skills (you have to get into the University, but once you do you can craft a micro-spell that takes 2 magicka per cast and then lean on the "cast" key until you hit 100. Can run around at the same time, but I think that before I do this ever again I'm going to make myself a small weighted gadget that will sit next to the keyboard and do the "leaning" for me; it's a thing that will take several hours, and I don't want to sit there the entire time.

So for that to work interesting for you, you also need to pay for training 5 times each level, to maximize the speed at which you can level up. You do this because at the bottom loot and gear are really uninteresting.

On easy mode, you won't see glass armor until level 10. On "hard', not until you pass 20.

So I'm a weakling character, at Level 23 I have 225 Health; the only way I can take on an opponent is with Chameleon > 100%. So I had to get into Unseen University to craft spells and enchant armor. With Chameleon > 100% you are, to all intents and purposes, permanently invisible. This is, of course, an unfair advantage, and the game becomes less interesting overall. You can't be attacked, you WON'T be attacked, because nothing can see you to do it.

At this difficulty level, opponents are significantly stronger than you, 2-3 hits and you are dead.

(In Morrowind the ability to levitate/fly was similarly "cheating", because only those attack birds could come after you. It may have been that chameleon was equally bad, I never even tried it as I didn't know what it was.)

But when you don't ever have to fight, then you're really going around collecting loot. The best loot is found inside Gates.

If I decide to go through this again, I'm going to try harder to remember how to create my character up front, and avoid Chameleon. And probably play at a lower difficulty.