After playing Oblivion and following the forums on how the game plays out I discovered (as did a lot of people) that the game comes with some serious flaws in later gameplay (level 15+). Now, being honest, this are not flaws per se in Bethesda’s perspective nor that of others – but being a long time Morrowind fan which I have played through a number of times, using different characters and joining different Guilds and Houses, it seems that way to me.

The problems are three fold:

1. Levelling seriously hurts unless you do some careful planning. It doesn’t bother me right now because my balanced Mage/Fighter class was designed to allow some choices in how I level attributes. But if you are not careful you can start skipping important attribute multiple-increases (up to 5x) by diluting your skills with common-use ones like Athletics, Security or Sneak.

2. Monsters and NPCs level with you – the infamous scaling system means a Level 5 character will meet Level 5 monsters, a Level 16 character will meet Level 16 monsters, etc. It’s not that clear cut of course, but imagine levelling to 16, having lower attributes for your combat/defence Major skills due to using non-character-specialisation Major skills, and having a lot of monsters running around with supposedly rare armour types… Not good IMO. Bethesda imposed a challenge, but left out a sense of achievement. At level 20, there is no achievement – everyone else is suddenly level 20 (or less) and often with the same great equipment you spent a fortune getting hold of. Again, Morrowind or main stay RPG fans will have issues with this.

3. Items are not rare. Need glass armour? Well, you and every other monster and NPC will be swimming in Glass armour once you hit a certain level. There are no statically placed, or rewarding rare weapons and armour to be found in dungeons and ruins. Instead MANY monsters will have “rare” items at later levels, right down to those scraggly looking Bandits who hijack you when travelling through the wilderness between towns. What’s the point of searching for those rare pieces of Glass armour when everyone has them? I don’t think there’ll be a challenging foray into any House treasuries in Oblivion looking those full sets of rare Ebony and Glass items…;-).

I call these the Three Stinkers of Oblivion. It’s such a cool game, but someone along the line dumbed down the RPG element and jumped on the hack’n'slash bandwagon. Now, this is a personal perspective. When I level I want to see some creatures that were horridly difficult to defeat now cowering in fear at my passing (or at least speared up against the nearest tree by either my sword). I don’t want to find that challenging dungeon now even more challenging JUST BECAUSE I LEVELED!. AT least make it a little less obvious, and allow me a sense of power – until the next big bad Daedra cuts me into ribbons…;-)

There are smaller annoyances. The Interface is clunky – sometimes I hate consoles for how they make developers forget about using mouses and keyboards. The maps contain zero detail defining elevation or terrain type. The maps are way too small. That horrible target reticle is way too big.

Other than the above I love Oblivion by the way. :-) It’s a great game – but its the later levels of your character that seem to go pear shaped.

Now to the Modders part. Since Bethesda changed things like the above, some Modders have quickly gotten around to changing them to something else more in keeping with the RPG spirit of things. I’m just going to list four Mods I’m currently using at the moment (the rest are small things that add convenience and hardly worth mentioning). The second is an absolute must have to fix the clunky UI in some limited way.

Auryn’s Levelling Mod:

This Mod imposes a new Levelling system which offers real time calculation of Attributes. If you needed before now to concentrate efforts to obtain 5x Attribute multipliers on level up, then stick this in and worry no more. In fact you can quit worrying about leveling at all – there are now no leveling screens to click through. It also slows down levelling rates a little bit (not much – other mods can slow it down far more by directly changing skill increase rates and such). Comes in two varieties – Level according to Skill increases within your Major Skillset, or Specialised Skillset.

BTMod:

This is a big improvement. It’s a UI mod which imposes a smaller Font on text in the Inventory, Skills, Magic, etc interfaces. It’s such a huge difference to be able to view three times the number of items on a single screen with this done. It also increases the map size (it’s stupidly small by default). Also contains optional Mod files to remove the display of certain subsets of Compass markers. For those with a real need for orienteering across Cyrodil.

Iyachtu’s Monster/NPC Scaling:

Simply put – it imposes a number of Level caps on NPC’s, Monsters, etc. The idea is that the more you progress in the game, the more challenging the monsters will become, but the less likely ALL monsters will match your Level. It’s pretty specific in what it does, and most caps will not emerge until a level of above 15-20. Some caps are static – meaning advanced NPC’s will actually be powerful, not Level 1 wimps you can rub out at level 1. It may sound doubtful, but it certainly sounds better than being able to finish main quests at Level 1 by becoming a weird Breton with severe insomnia…;-)Tom Servo’s Rare Items:

Items are the last problem – why should Ebony and Glass items be so hugely common at all? Where’s the fun in locating that full set of Glass Armour and Weaponry and stealing it? Where’s Morrowinds classic habit of hiding items in hard to reach, or even find, places? The Rare Items mod removes such items from common Monsters and NPC’s and leaves them (as a rarity) on higher class monsters such as the Minotaurs, Dremora Lords, etc. Since they are rare, monsters and NPC’s will be less likely to have them available – so it also ensures that as you level reaching for that Difficulty slider is not necessary, and there is some sense of achievement when you finally get a full set of rare items.

Auryn’s mod requires you to create a new Character (there’s are alternative player levelling mods but I like this one’s sense of balance and skill/attribute capping). The rest are simple drop ins.

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