Can you play the game as intended?

[Claudius]

Has anyone tried to play the game as intended?

1.No mods giving +5 attributes. Or other mods affecting balance.
2.No planning out leveling minors to get +5 (which is too tedious).
3.No using minor skills and not leveling up majors giving you an up hand.
4.No other tactics like the first three that are beyond straight class play.

In other words use your major skills most often with the consequence that you level up. Is this possible or is it too much reloads? I am thinking it would be fun, but when I first tried this (having also inexperience with the game) it was too hard.

One thing I think of is that you really couldn't have alchemy as a major. Because the way I play that skill goes to 100 just from making gold off pots.

Also I would think a mage would level fast in conjuration and slow in destruction/restoration for example. I don't have the patience to train by hitting cccc and I think thats cheese anyhow.

[AvatarOfLight]

The game is "intended" to played however you want

That's what the Elder Scrolls series is all about

[Belthan]

I've played it both ways (pure roleplaying with no decisions whatsoever based on stats or numbers, vs. brutal min-maxing where my sole objective was to get all my attributes to 100 or above). So yes, you can play successfully without paying attention to stats. If you take alchemy as a major and use it a lot, you'll level up fast and mostly get bonuses to INT, but if you're a roleplaying purist that shouldn't matter much. You're also right that conjuration and illusion tend to increase faster than destruction/restoration. You just need to adjust your tactics to rely more on your strong skills and minimize your vulnerability to your weak skills (e.g. if your conjurer has low proficiency with armor, you should always have bound armor and bound weapon spells ready in case you get cornered). If you still get your head handed to you in a basket, you can try lowering the difficulty setting in the options menu a bit.

[Deadalready]

I am playing the game as intended and I'm finding questing ridiculously hard. I'm barely surviving fights one on ones fights with goblin berserkers only to find them replaced by even tougher goblin chieftains.

[Gobatcha]

The first time I attempted this game I had to tap out pretty quickly. I wanted a dark elf that was good at everything and found out the hard way that it doesn't work that way. The monsters were growing in level with me and I wasn't good enough at any one thing to kill them fast enough. I decided to restart and I tuned my character. I played to my character's strengths and my preferred playing style and had a blast.

[Claudius]

Deadalready, I'm using a mod called franseca's that adds a lot of realism to the game and extra items and creatures. Various realisms from economy to weapon properties to plant regrowth to leveling.

One thing it changes (and most changes are modular meaning you can do them or not) is to make you level slower (1 separate package) and make 12 skill increases a level up rather than 10.

The first thing makes it so you can actually have some experiences at each level rather than racing through.

The second means you have 20% more skill points for a creature at your level. It also means more attributes get built up by more levels gained in each attribute skill.

The game is still challenging. For example there is a chance of a randomly harder than level fight. You can always run away and the good thing is that the treasure of that harder fight is correspondingly leveled up

Theres more variety in apponents. At high level instead of 50% chance of monster X and 50% monster Y it adds smaller chances of weaker monsters in greater number.

Another example (and this is a huge and very FUN mod) each enemy is given a combat style so that each wolf does not behave exactly the same (or bandit or goblin). More variety.

Check the sticky with mods and look for fransecas. Its hosted at file planet.

Personally I think bethesda should hire her. She made the game much better.

[Naffnuff]

This levelling system was actually a deal-breaker for me. As much as I enjoyed this game, I found that playing as a thief, I had to be constantly focused on powerplaying, making notes of my progress in all minor skills, etc. It ruined a great deal of the experience, but I knew that if I didn't get my endurance and strength up a.s.a.p., I'd get more of a house cat than a Kajiit burglar. My first character just basically laid down and died as soon as someone so much as looked at her.

I never use mods until I've beat a game once, in order to see it through. But in this case I may have to reconsider, because this is just no fun.

[Claudius]

What I like about the mod is the content it adds but it actually makes the game more realistic while improving balance. An example of the former is that dwarven weapons are durable while mithril, light fast, and (relative to obsidian etc) flimsy. A dagger strikes fast whereas a battleaxe is slow and hits HARD.

And I like that (so far) I can just play the game and I don't have to think to many out of character things like "oh better not level up yet" or "I need a x5 modifier in str about now"

At the same time i can see the rationale for playing a game modless at first go.

[Naffnuff]

Sounds interesting. Where can I find it? When I google on "francesca's" I find many things, though very few of them are related to gaming, if you know what I mean.

[Baldursgate Fan]

Originally Posted by Naffnuff

Sounds interesting. Where can I find it? When I google on "francesca's" I find many things, though very few of them are related to gaming, if you know what I mean.

No I don't know what you mean.

Ten essential Oblivion mods - Planet Elder Scrolls

[Claudius]

You can find a link to fransescas.

Look in the sticky that lists mods. It is several down and includes a partial description of the mod.

[wordta]

my first character i made it a ranger and had a blast, majors included sneak and lockpicking (range duh), so i could sneak around, get into places where i could snipe ppl and not be detected, and you dont need to worry about endurance cuz if you dont mind looking around you can find spots where ppl cant hit you and u can just let arrows rip, + its cool to see arrows sticking out of ppl

[Vigilante]

I've never heard of any of these mods(making npcs have different fighting styles). I've noticed it depends on their weapon in hand. And there's a mod to have +5 in everything all the time? That's awesome but cheap. I hate having to level up thru mionrs that'd cheat make it so much more fun.

As for playability yea its doable. Its difficult at the beginning but at 20+ the unmodded oblivion is a cakewalk. I didn't know what power leveling was, but I did it and vs leved 30 brown bears with wimpy flare sucked, but you live and learn I'm now 43 and treat those same bears as soul gems with that same charactor. I learned how to kill them with flare until I leveled up far enough to buy the next spell.

I didn't know what I was doing but it was fun and now I make planned levels and weapon chioces. As long as you have the player mod you can conquer anything before you.

[SupaCat]

I've played the entire game with a dark Elf and it was REALLY hard...I leveled up to much because I had all my skills i used as main skill. I bought 33 potions and after I returned from the main quest I had 0 potions and 223 gold, I COULDN't Repair my Equip. The game is way to stupid with the level system. What is the point of leveling if you don't really get stronger than a stupid goblin

[Vigilante]

what's this about not bein stronger than a goblin? Goblin warlords maybe will be a slight detour if that. Enchanted weapons and clothes would be able to help you out against those goblins if your havin trouble fyi