Playing at hardest difficulty

[Vicius]

When I first ever started the game a few days ago, before even making my character, I went to options to adjust video settings, and saw the difficulty slider in gameplay options. I usually like to start off at hardest difficulty in every single game I play, because that way I'm forced to learn how to play faster, and get good at it fairly early, too.

Oblivion surprised me, though, because as a first day player (eventhough I already played Morrowind before), I was having trouble even getting through the tutorial. Of course, not knowing that unlike in Morrowind, waiting even just 1 hour heals your character fully, really made things even more difficult.
I considered myself a good player in Morrowind, even when playing at the hardest difficulty, but Oblivion is truly proving to be quite a challenge!

Even at level 30, with full Daedric armor and some pretty neat weapons like Goldbrand, I have trouble fighting a Timber Wolf, let alone NPCs, in close combat (with "Trouble", I mean killing it without having to heal, or cast invisibility/hide to take a breather). Of course, with a bit of luck I can manage to kill it without healing or hiding in the middle of the fight, but that doesn't happen often.

I see people complaining that Oblivion is too easy. Well, they should try setting the difficulty in the slider completely to the "hard" side, and try to say that again, because it seems like everything else but you had it's skills, health and damage multiplied by 5 or so at this difficulty.

I have basically found four easy (eventhough sometimes tedious) ways for killing things at hard difficulty:
1) Eventhough my character was meant to be a warrior, I maxed out his sneaking skill, which along with a few other items that help sneaking make things quite easy most of the times. I guess this is more of an AI problem, not sure if the enemies' behaviuour was supposed to be like this, but whenever possible, I sneak behind the enemy, equip a fast attack-speed weapon like a dagger, and stab them from behind. Normally, they won't detect me, still after the attack, so I just keep stabbing them while sneaking until they die. They also go down pretty fast like this, due to the damage multiplier you get for sneaking. About 10-20 stabs normally do the trick for enemies, with a Daedric dagger (that deals 19 or 20 damage my maxxed out Blades and Strength).

2)Tactic number 1 won't always work, because there are monsters and NPC's that will always detect you after the first stab, no matter what, so in those cases, I cast Shadow Shape (invisiblity for 30 secs) and hide until they leave combat mode (normally happens after 20 seconds or so). When that happens, I stab them again, and hide again. Rince and repeat until the enemy dies. Sometimes this can get quite boring, but it's the only way I found.

3)For enemies without ranged attacks, on which 1 doesn't work either, but I'm too fed up to do number 2, I just look for a place they can't reach, and either equip a melee weapon with a nice reach, or pelt them with arrows or ranged spells. Can get a bit boring, too, if the enemy regenerates.
The other day I took about 45 minutes to take down a dread zombie this way. At least I got plenty of skills (and a sore wrist).

4)Whenever there's a trap nearby, like in elven ruins, or a magma pool in oblivion, I drag the enemies near it, cast Shadow Shape near it, and wait while the trap or magma slowly kills them, while they frantically look for me. Pretty funny to watch sometimes. This came in handy in those particular daedric quest involving tough NPC's.

And there's always number 5)Taking the enemy to a friendly NPC, but even for my cowardly methods, that's too much cowardice, lol.

Face-to-face combat (even when I disarm armed opponents) is right out, unless I have plenty (and I mean plenty) of potions and filled up soul gems to recharge my weapon during the fight, which in the end costs far more then what I get back in loot. Getting into combat with more then one opponent is just plain suicide, no matter how many potions and gems. Getting through some of the arena fights was quite tricky.


So, I was wondering if there's anybody else who's playing at hardest difficulty out there. And if somebody does, I'd be curious to know your combat technique(s).

[Gobatcha]

Sneak - kill - sneak...

I use an Orc warrior type with the blunt skill. I sneak anytime I'm in a hole and I train sneak whenever I can so my sneak skill ramps up quickly. Sidebar: Oblivion's sneak is a vast improvement from MW since you don't have to hold the button the whole time anymore. Anyhow, I like to sneak along and strike the first enemy with my best bow for the 3x damage. Try to hit them as many times as possible before they find me. When they do I just stand up and crack them with my axe and defend with my shield. Keep restoration spell/potion on the quick key. Often I can nail an enemy next to another enemy and the second enemy won't bother to assist his pal. This most often happens if his pal dies with one shot (rare with the difficulty pegged).