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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Hints
Variations for the Highest Difficulty Setting
1 of 17: If you're playing the game on or near the highest difficulty setting, combat will be *much* harder than on the default and low settings, and some steps of the above character development process will have to be changed.
2 of 17: First, you won't be able to practice your armor and Block skills much during the Tutorial quest since even rats and dagger-wielding goblins will damage you way too quickly. You'll need to finish off every opponent as fast as you can, then heal up completely before moving on.
3 of 17: Also, you'll want to practice Sneak and Restoration even more during the Tutorial (or right after finishing it), since sneaking around undetected and healing yourself when injured are two of the most important things to be able to do well on higher difficulties. It's best to get Sneak up to at least 65 and Restoration up to at least 40.
4 of 17: When you're creating your character class, the one recommended in the Character Creation Tips will work, but you may want to think about making all of your major skills ones that you can practice outside of combat so that you can earn lots of level-ups without doing any fighting. You should still definitely make Sneak, Armorer, Athletics, and Acrobatics into major skills, but instead of Blade, Block, and Heavy Armor, you should choose Restoration and two others.
5 of 17: Other skills that can be practiced outside of combat include Destruction, Alteration, Illusion, Conjuration, Mysticism, Alchemy, Security, Mercantile, and Speechcraft. You could choose two of those to go along with the above-mentioned skills.
6 of 17: After the Tutorial is over, one of your biggest priorities should be stealing and/or buying potion ingredients and using them to increase your Alchemy skill. Once it's fairly high, you can make lots of useful potions to aid you. The most important ones in my experience are Restore Health, Damage Health, Fire/Frost/Shock Damage, Feather, and Silence. Chameleon and Night-Eye potions can also be really useful until you get constant-effect items with those effects on them, and Restore Magicka potions will be essential for anyone with the Atronach as a birthsign.
7 of 17: Then you'll want to join the Thieves Guild and sell lots of stolen goods to Ongar in Bruma so that you can afford to buy the powerful Apotheosis staff to help in combat.
8 of 17: The ultimate equalizer that'll make combats easy even on the highest difficulty setting is having a constant 100% or higher Chameleon effect on you. Therefore, your top priority after getting your Alchemy skill up and buying Apotheosis will be to gain access to an enchanting altar.
9 of 17: NOTE: If you're going the Mages Guild route, two of the recommendation quests (Skingrad and Leyawiin) require you to do quite a bit of difficult combat, so be prepared for those. Use sneaking whenever possible to avoid combat (esp. on the Leyawiin quest), and use lots of potions and poisons (and Apotheosis) when combat is unavoidable.
10 of 17: Once you have enchanting altar access, pick open the lock on the display case in the Arcane University's tower lobby so you can use the charged grand soul gems in it to immediately create two pieces of your Chameleon Clothing.
11 of 17: Also, use a spellmaking altar to create a spell you can practice your Conjuration skill with, then get it up to 100 as soon as you can.
12 of 17: Use your two pieces of Chameleon Clothing and your favorite summoned creature to help you get to Umbra in Vindasel. (The combats you encounter while getting to her room can be very hard on the highest difficulty.)
13 of 17: Once you have the Umbra sword, use it and your Chameleon stuff to soultrap necromancers right after converting several grand soul gems into black soul gems.
14 of 17: Then use the black soul gems you filled to complete your Chameleon outfit, which can make all future combats practically danger-free. They can still be very tedious, though, due to opponents taking lots of hits to kill and sometimes running around in confusion when you attack them.
15 of 17: Also, many magic-using enemies will be able to heal themselves faster than you can hurt them, even when you're doing 6x sneak-attack damage with a powerful one-handed weapon like Umbra.
16 of 17: A combined 100% Resist Magic and 100% Reflect Damage is another way to make most combats easier and less dangerous, but it's a lot harder to get the items needed for those effects than it is to make a full set of Chameleon Clothing. So it's best to make your Chameleon suit as soon as possible, then level up to where you can get the items that'll give you 100% Resist Magic and Reflect Damage.
17 of 17: If your character is a Breton, getting 100% Resist Magic will only require a single ring slot, and 100% Reflect Damage will take up the shield slot and the other two jewelry slots. It would therefore be best to make your Chameleon outfit consist of a shirt, pants, hood, wrist irons or gauntlets, and shoes. That way you can have 100% Chameleon, 100% Resist Magic, and 100% Reflect Damage all on at the same time! Talk about power! Once you've got all that, the game can be as easy or as hard as you want no matter what the difficulty setting is -- it just depends on what you're wearing.
