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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Hints
Character Development Tips
1 of 10: Once your character is created, you'll want to start developing his skills and leveling him up.
2 of 10: You can level up and increase three attributes whenever you increase any combination of your seven major skills by a total of 10 points and then sleep somewhere in a bed.
3 of 10: Since you can only buy five points of training from skill trainers for each level-up, you should do so for some major skills and then go practice other major skills (and/or read related skill books) until you've gone up a total of 10 points and can level up. Or you can buy five points of training in minor skills and then practice major skills until you gain 10 points in them (though this will take longer).
4 of 10: Remember that you can only practice skills in authentic situations. You can't improve your Blade skill by just drawing a sword and swishing it around in the air over and over -- you have to actually be attacking a living (or undead) opponent.
5 of 10: And don't forget about attribute multipliers, which are directly related to the governing attributes of the skills you've increased since the last level-up. (See the "Increasing your Skills and Leveling Up" section of the game manual.)
6 of 10: Because gaining level-ups depends on increasing major skills, you could run into a level-up "barrier" after all of your major skills reach 100. However, there are a couple of things you can do when that happens.
7 of 10: Most of the treasure in the game (including random dungeon loot and quest rewards) is better the higher your level is, so get it up to 30 fairly soon so that you can get the best treasure everywhere you go.
8 of 10: However, note that when you level up, just about everything in the game becomes harder. Enemies get tougher, leveled locks get harder to pick, some peoples' Sneak skills go up so that it's harder to sneak by them or pickpocket them, etc. That's why it's important to frequently practice the skills that you'll use the most and to get good attribute multipliers when you level up.
9 of 10: On the other hand, you could keep practicing skills and almost never level up so that nothing gets much tougher. I've been able to do a *whole* lot of things with a mere level 1 or 2 character.
10 of 10: See the Early Development Strategy for a good compromise between leveling up at top speed and never leveling up much at all.
