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Play Sound. Cover art of the Official Oblivion Game Guide. This book was taken from The Elder Scrolls series of video games or from websites created and owned by Bethesda Softworks , the copyright of which is held by Bethesda Softworks. All trademarks and registered trademarks present in the image are proprietary to Bethesda Softworks, the inclusion of which implies no affiliation with The Elder Scrolls Wiki.

The use of such images is believed to fall under the fair use doctrine of copyright law. Without being able to emphasize Destruction, though, you'll be a little bit behind offensively when compared to a Dark Elf or High Elf mage.

Defensively, however, your ability to Resist Magicka will make most spellcasting enemies a piece of cake for Breton mages. Dark Elf is an excellent race for players that want to make a character that emphasizes a mix of spellcasting and combat.

Most of their bonuses are for combat-oriented skills, including a good variety of weapon skills, with Destruction magic getting a large bonus for when you want to take your opponents down at range.

While not as physically powerful as a Nord or a Redguard, the balance between strength and magical abilities makes for a well-rounded combat character. And the Resist Fire ability is a big help against the many fire-wielding enemies in the game.

The High Elf is arguably the best pure spellcasting race, especially if you're of an offensive bent. With all of the skill bonuses save for Alchemy being focused on spellcasting skills, you're going to have a broad array of magicks boosted, including Destruction for pure offensive combat. Especially noteworthy are the special abilities on offer here; with Fortified Magicka, you'll be able to spend a lot more time casting spells as opposed to taking on enemies in combat.

If you can match yourself up with an appropriate birthsign, you can become an extremely specialized mage character, which can be interesting if you have no interest in stealth or combat gameplay. Fortified Majicka magnitude , permanent Resist Disease magnitude 75, permanent Weakness to Fire, Frost, and Shock magnitude 25, permanent.

Imperials are fairly run-of-the-mill humans, without any particularly exceptional skill bonuses or special abilities. They're the most personable of all the races, though, typically well-liked by everyone, with the gift of a golden tongue. Although talking your way through the entire game would be a difficult task, to say the least, an Imperial character is probably your best bet if you're attempting to play a character that can Persuade his or her way past characters that are reluctant to help you.

You'll probably have the ability to avoid a lot of sticky situations, or just make your trip a bit easier, with an Imperial character that focuses on Speechcraft to help out in conversations. Since you can supplement that with their built-in Voice of the Emperor ability to Charm characters once per day, which can be further supplemented by Charm spells if need be, there should be few critical characters in the game that you can't charm off their feet.

This is a more subtle skill than being able to crack everyone's head with an axe, but is still valuable nonetheless. The Khajit are well-known as a slave race, at least in the lands of Hammerfell. Freed Khajit are appreciated as thieves, with a suite of skill bonuses well-suited to assassin work, as well.

They're typically capable of running farther and jumping higher than other races, and with extra Sneaking and Security they'll be capable of infiltrating areas they're really not meant to enter. Wood Elves are usually going to be better in stealth combat than Khajit, but if you want to try a pure stealth avoidance archetype, then a Khajit might be right up your alley.

Your Eye of Fear ability will cause pesky or too-powerful enemies to run away, while Eye of Night will let you see in the dark without having to resort to torches, which attract the attention of enemies. If you're going for pure melee, then this race from the northern reaches is going to be ideal for you.

With the highest strength of any race for the women, at any rate; several classes start with 50 strength for men , you're going to be able to carry more loot and whack enemies harder than anyone else in Tamriel. Your skill bonuses are also obviously applicable to the heavy work of an armor-wielding warrior, with a bevy of fine bonuses to your core skills and some smaller bonuses to Restoration and Armorer, which come in handy when you're not in the thick of battle.

Although Orcs aren't well thought of in Tamriel the female of the species is the only female member of a race that's actually considered uglier than the male, which is reflected in the exceedingly poor Personality score , they do one thing well: fight.

With their Berserk ability, they'll be able to flip on the adrenaline once per day, allowing them to gain extra health, strength, and fatigue, at the cost of a massive agility penalty. While this only lasts for a minute or so, it'll help you take down the tough enemies that charge at you, since you'll be able to stand in one spot and go to town on them. Note, however, that they have the fewest number of skill bonuses, and don't get any extra points in Blade, so you'll be forced to skill it up yourself if you want to be handy with a sword.

If you choose to be an Orc, you'll pay the price, literally; merchants will charge you more than they will other characters. Another of the melee-oriented races, Redguards are designed for combat and nothing but. While an Armorer boost would probably be preferred over the Athletics skill bonus that they get, the rest of the skills here are welcome for fighters.

The Adrenaline Rush ability will give you a huge edge in difficult fights, with no apparent drawbacks, and while resisting poison and disease isn't all that sexy, it'll help you avoid the ill effects of eating Alchemy ingredients while attempting to raise your score.

Wood Elves are among the most skilled stealth warriors in all of Tamriel, and their skill bonuses show it. With huge bonuses to Sneak and Marksman, you'll be creeping up on enemies and felling them from the shadows with your ranged weapons like an assassin.

With another large bonus to Alchemy, you'll also be able to supplement your ranged attacks with deadly poisons. Add in some Illusion magic to make yourself invisible, and you'll be one of the deadliest soldiers in the land, of a sort; when it comes to a straight fight, you'll have some problems. Taking double damage from spellcasters and magical monsters will make this a painful birthsign to be born under, but the extra Magicka will definitely come in handy throughout the game.

Generally characters like this will be taking one of the magicka-boosting birthsigns instead of something like this, however. Almost anyone can take advantage of extra Magicka, though, especially since it can be difficult to raise your Magicka if you intend to focus on weapon or thief skills. The bonus to Luck will have a large impact on all of your actions, making this a no-brainer for stealthy characters. With it, you'll gain a huge, hyoooge boost to your starting magicka, and will be able to absorb incoming spells and convert their damage into more magicka for yourself.

The drawback? You don't actually regenerate any magicka on your own, forcing you to actually rely on getting hit by spells in the hopes that you'll absorb them. Oddly enough, the lack of magicka regeneration will probably make you more hesitant to let loose with spells; you'll never know if the cave you're in is going to be populated with nothing but trolls, making it impossible for you to get your magicka back.

Needless to say, you're probably going to be sucking down plenty of Restore Magicka potions when you choose this birthsign. That said, with a little effort, this can be quite a powerful sign to choose. Even melee-oriented characters can take advantage of the extra magicka abilities, using their higher magic reserves to cast situational spells that would otherwise be too expensive for them, like Cure Disease, while taking advantage of the spell absorption to help mitigate incoming damage.

The heal spell here is always going to be worthwhile, since it is in fact a spell and not a once-per-day ability. It's a very efficient spell, as well, in terms of magicka cost 50 versus health gained Compare to something like Heal Minor Wounds, which will usually cost 14 magicka for an eight-point heal.

Still, though, mage characters are likely going to be able to just cast something they buy in a store, while fighters and thieves will likely be able to make or buy plenty of Healing or Restore Health potions.

Benefit: Paralyze once a day for 10 seconds at a cost of Fatigue Paralyzation is one of the strongest combat abilities you can gain in Oblivion, since it'll completely eliminate your target from the fight for the duration of the effect. Most humanoid enemies will fall to the ground when paralyzed, allowing you to deal extra damage to them with melee weapons, or just take advantage of their incapacitation to book a hasty retreat.

The large fatigue penalty will make it easier for your enemies to knock you down, however, so this is best used when you and your target are going one-on-one. This is probably best for fighter characters, who can capitalize on the paralyzation with a flurry of blows. Benefit: Restore Health once per day; Turn Undead spell An instant health restoration is going to eliminate the need for many characters to actually rest during lengthy sojourns into Oblivion, or will give them an out during fights with boss-level enemies.

The Turn Undead ability is more specific, and will probably be of most use to thief and spellcasting characters that can't handle the Skeleton Heroes when they start popping up.

It works all the way up to level 25 undead, which means that it'll be handy through most of the game, but then again, it won't actually kill any enemies for you, just make them run away. All of these effects can be replicated with potions and poisons, and the poison on your enemy won't be putting a dent in their health by the time you reach the upper teen levels.

We've gotten through most of the game without ever casting Dispel or Cure Poison on ourselves, so you should probably steer clear of this birthsign. Benefit: Can turn invisible for 60 seconds once per day. Plainly useful for all character types, but mostly intended for use in the Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood quests.

If you're willing to forego those questlines until you're level 10, then the Ring of Khajiiti will make this birthsign mostly redundant, since it will offer up a permanent Chameleon ability. If at any point you need true invisibility, that can be supplied through potions or spells.

Still, a decent choice for any character that prefers bypassing their problems instead of hitting them in the face. Speed makes you go faster; it has a marginal at best effect on how you play the game, besides letting you get around more quickly. It affects the skills of Acrobatics, Athletics, and Light Armor, of which only Light Armor will really be worth taking the time to upgrade, and then only for stealthy characters.

There are much better birthsigns available to you. This might let you get into the boss-level chests that you spot in your travels, but eventually you'll start running into Hard or Very Hard locks, and there's nothing that's going to help you get past them outside of Alteration spells or a high Security skill.

The Skeleton Key will also make the lock-opening skill pretty much obsolete. The Reflect Damage ability is a bit too passive for our tastes; not only is it a fairly meager effect, but you'll eventually start finding rings and amulets that offer more powerful Reflect Damage effects on a permanent basis. All the things a growing warrior needs. This is a safe choice for battle-oriented characters, or anyone who wants more health and the ability to carry a bit more loot. There are numerous different skills in Oblivion, all of which you can dabble in or specialize in as is your wont.

We're going to leave the character creation aspects of choosing skills aside for now and focus on simply describing the skills and how they affect the game, but suffice to say that you can and probably will want to try your hand at numerous different skills through the course of a game, unless you're role-playing a warrior with a huge disdain for magic, or something like that. Note that your character has a proficiency number for each skill, with a higher number indicating that your character is more talented in that particular skill.

To increase your skill's proficiency, you have to use it over and over again; you can cast repeated healing spells on yourself to increase your Restoration skill, or make a billion potions to increase your Alchemy skill.

Each skill also has a rank associated with it, which indicates a different level of power, which in turn lets you unlock new abilities related to that power. For the purposes of organizational clarity, we'll repeat the game manual's classification of skills into Combat, Magic, and Stealth, but these are pretty fuzzy terms. The main area where this taxonomy comes into play is in character creation, where you choose a class that has a "focus" in one of these areas; that area's skills will get an immediate ten point bonus to their starting numbers and will rank up a bit more quickly than other skills will.

Again, though, you aren't constrained in your choice of skills, and if you're a Combat specialist that wants to use Alchemy to make potions and Illusion magic to light up dank dungeons, then you'll be free to do so. Also note that there are special NPCs in the game world that you can pay for training. Each character will accept a certain amount of gold to increase your skill's rating by one point. Training is expensive , however, and can only be purchased five times per level. We've noted the general locations of each of these trainers underneath their specific skills.

The low-level trainers will train you between ranks one and 40; the mid-level trainers work between 40 and 70; and the high-level trainers work from 70 to The high-level trainers will usually require you to perform a quest of some sort before they'll agree to train you, however. Armorer is more or less a critical skill for every character to learn, unless you're playing a hard-core pacifist character that attempts to never kill anything, or a nudist character that runs around and beats up everything with his or her fists.

Almost every other character, though, will use some kind of armor or weapon, or will take damage from enemy blows, and that results in equipment that gets broken or worn over time. With the Armorer skill, you can use repair hammers to repair your equipment in the middle of a dungeon, or out in a field, or anywhere else it might be convenient, provided that you actually have the hammers to use.

Early on in the game, the 20 gold or so per hammer will be a big goldsink for you, but they're pretty much necessary. It's important to keep your equipment in tip-top shape, because as it takes damage, it also loses efficacy.

So you'll want to stop and pause frequently to repair your armor. Just letting people hit you will be the easiest way to flex your Armorer muscles, but you can also repair your enemy's equipment. This isn't a difficult thing to do, luckily; if you're a warrior, just bind a repair hammer to one of your hotkeys and pull it up whenever it's convenient.

From there, it's just a matter of pressing a button over and over until all of your equipment is repaired. Until you get to Apprentice level, you're going to be breaking hammers like a madman, but after you do hit Apprentice, you should be able to complete most dungeon jaunts with five-ten hammers and not have to worry too much about running out. If you set Armorer as a Minor Skill, you'll probably want to train yourself up to level 50 to gain the ability to repair magical items, if you don't manage to get there through normal use of the skill.

If you're really desperate to increase your Armorer rating, head into Bandit-infested dungeons, and pick up all of the armor and weapons that they drop when you kill your foes. Keep on doing this until you become overencumbered, then repair everything that pops up in your repair menu and drop anything that isn't valuable enough to keep carrying.

Mastery Level Ability Novice Cannot repair magical items. Apprentice Still can't repair magical items, but hammers last twice as long. Journeyman Can repair magical items.

This adds damage to weapons and protection to armor. Master Never breaks hammers, so you can get by with only one hammer. The harsh truth is that very, very few players of Oblivion are going to be hyped up about the ability to pump up their Athletics score. Although it has some subtle benefits for your character, the ability to run and swim faster just isn't necessarily all that sexy.

Although you do regenerate fatigue more quickly when you increase your Athletics, that alone isn't going to be worth specializing in the skill, especially since it's pretty much always increasing just from running around and swimming. It'll go up on its own fairly naturally as you play the game. Master Running doesn't reduce fatigue regeneration. Ah, the blade. This is pretty much the classic fantasy role-playing skill, allowing you to use bladed weapons of all makes and models.

Although, not really; note that axes are for some reason considered to be Blunt weapons. Increasing your Blade skill lets you deal more damage with bladed weapons. Pretty simple! Note that warrior characters should only pick ONE of the three weapons-related skills as a Major Skill, for reasons that we make clear in our chapter on levelling up. Apprentice Standing Power Attack becomes available; hold down button while standing still. Journeyman Left and Right Power Attacks available; hold down attack button while moving left or right.

Chance to disarm your opponent. Grab their weapon immediately, or they'll just pick it up again! Expert Backward Power Attack, chance to knockdown enemy. Master Forward Power Attack, chance to paralyze enemy.

Block will help you survive against bruising melee opponents. The Block ability determines your character's proficiency in the art of shielding him or herself from blows. Anything can be used to block, whether it's a bow held sideways across the body, the short end of a warhammer, a shield, or even your bare hands, but the shield is definitely the emphasis here.

Shields are generally the most well-armored piece of equipment you can own, and can deflect much more damage than other types of blockable items. The abilities here also emphasize the ability to block with shields. Although characters with two-handed weapons are still technically able to block, if you're focusing on defensive measures, then there's nothing like a good shield at your side.

Mastery Level Ability Novice Blocking drains fatigue, take full damage when blocking with only your hands. Apprentice Blocking no longer drains fatigue. Journeyman Weapons and shields no longer take damage when blocking, enemies occasionally recoil when striking your hands when blocking in hand-to-hand combat. Expert Can perform a knockback counterattack with shield only, giving chance to stagger the enemy. Master Knockback counterattacks have a further chance to disarm the opponent. The always amusingly-named Blunt skill is a favorite of Redman and Method Man, as well as mace-wielding warriors everywhere.

Blunt weapons are typically more effective on skeletons than blades, for what it's worth, but deciding between the two is still a mostly personal preference.

Even though you should only pick one as a Major Skill, though, you can and should still attempt to use the other type of weapon as often as possible, to increase your Strength bonus at level-ups.

Hand to hand combat is the domain of a relatively small number of martial artists in Cyrodiil, but it can still be a powerful tool in the hands of those skilled in it. Or it can just be about running around and punching dudes in the face. Your choice. The main difference between Hand to Hand combat and the other two weapons styles Blade and Blunt is that Hand to Hand also deals damage to an opponent's Fatigue, as well as their health, meaning that you'll occasionally be able to knock your opponent right the hell out and pound on them while they're lying on the ground which never gets old.

You can help this process along by poisoning them with a Fatigue-draining arrow or a Drain Fatigue or Damage Fatigue spell. In trade, you'll probably lose a bit of maximum damage when compared to a real weapons skill, and of course you won't ever be able to enchant your fists with a Sigil Stone or something like that for extra power. Expert Backward Power Attack, chance to knockdown enemy, has a chance to perform a knockback attack while blocking.

Master Forward Power Attack, chance to paralyze enemy, has a chance to disarm opponent after a knockback attack while blocking. Like with Armorer, boosting your Heavy Armor skill means getting hit a lot. The only way to increase your Heavy Armor skill is to get hit by something while wearing it, so this is a skill that will naturally increase as you engage in firefights. Since you'll likely want to get this as high as possible to take advantage of the added defense, this is a good selection as a Major Skill for most warriors.

It'll still go up fairly slowly, but if you want it to increase, you can always let a Mud Crab or Rat hit away at you while using a low-level Restoration skill to restore your health. Apprentice Heavy armor degrades at a normal rate. Expert Equipped heavy armor only counts as half its normal weight for the purpose of encumbrance. Master Equipped heavy armor weighs nothing for the purpose of encumbrance. Note that Magical skills don't really have set benefits or extra powers based on your Mastery Level.

Instead, the ability to use new and more powerful spells is dictated by your Master Level. When you're a Novice in Alteration, for instance, you might be able to cast a spell that lets you open Very Easy locks; you'll have to rank up to Apprentice before you can cast a spell that opens Easy locks.

Almost everyone can use magic for simple effects, but although you can definitely increase your skill in a school of magic by simply casting low-level spells over and over again, the higher-level spells will eventually become prohibitively expensive for anyone but magic specialists, since most warriors and stealth characters probably won't have been heavily investing in Intelligence, which is required to obtain enough magicka to actually cast the high-level spells.

Note that much of this information is repeated in our Alchemy Tips chapter. Refer to that for even more information. First off, alchemy should never be a Major Skill, unless you plan to use it solely for the purpose of levelling up, and never intend to actually make potions. The reason for this is that you simply level up too quickly if you actually use Alchemy a lot; you're going to wind up with a lot of ingredients if you pick up whatever you find in your travels, and if you save them up and use a bunch of them at one go, then you can often gain four or five points in alchemy in one sitting, which can cause you to level up before you've managed to gain any points in your primary attributes.

This warning can be tempered somewhat for character. Weynon Priory has a good set of novice alchemy equipment, if you can find a quiet time to lift it. We'll explain the reasoning behind this shortly, but first, a description of what Alchemy is Of course, increasing your skill level will also make your potions more effective: they'll have bigger effects that last longer, and so on and so forth.

Mastery Level Ability Novice Sees only one alchemical properties of an ingredient. Apprentice Sees only two alchemical properties of an ingredient.

Journeyman Sees only three alchemical properties of an ingredient. Expert Sees all four alchemical properties of an ingredient. Master Can make potions with only one ingredient. Alchemy is essentially the art of taking ingredients and making them into potions of various effects.

In order to perform alchemy, you'll need, at a bare minimum, a mortar and pestle which counts as one item and two ingredients which have the same alchemical effect. That'll net you a potion, although it might not be a very good one. If you want to make better potions, you'll want to add more equipment, including an alembic, a calcinator, and a retort.

Although it's possible to make a potion with any combination of these equipment pieces the mortar and pestle is always required, however , it's not too difficult to acquire all of them, and having them all while you make your potions will definitely improve their quality. Unfortunately they can be cumbersome to lug around, with a full set weighing around twenty pounds, so if you intend to partake of alchemical goodness, you'll want to buy a house early on with a storage unit so you can store your equipment there and use it when you've collected a bunch of ingredients.

Speaking of ingredients, there are a lot of them. A LOT of them. As you wander around Cyrodiil's beautiful landscapes, you'll find plenty of plants and mushrooms lining the roads or located under the trees.

If you look at these ingredients, you'll see a hand icon indicating that you can interact with them; if you do, you'll usually pick up some kind of ingredient from it. Sometimes you'll be told that you can't find anything when searching a plant; your chance at being successful depends on the plant, apparently.

Ingredients grow back a few days after you search a plant, so you don't have to worry about deforesting Cyrodiil and running out of ingredients. Other sources for ingredients are creatures and shops. Many creatures will drop ingredients, such as rat meat from rats, bonemeal from skeletons, and daedra hearts from dead Daedra.

Shops, such as The Finest Ingredient in the Imperial Market District, will also sell ingredients, sometimes rare ones. You can also find huge amounts of normal food which acts as a good low-level ingredient for practicing alchemy , such as wheat, bread, fruit, and rice, throughout every city and town in Cyrodiil, especially in storehouses and people's basements.

Pick up all of this that you can, make a bunch of potions to increase your Alchemy skill, then sell all of the potions; you win in every way imaginable.

Tip : Note that you can increase your Alchemy skill by simply eating the ingredients that you pick up. You'll gain whatever the first effect they have is, and obviously the item will be consumed. This is a good way to make space in your bag if you're about to go overweight, but is less efficient at increasing your skill than making potions is.

In your travels, you're going to be picking up a lot of ingredients; check your encumbrance every so often. When you're about to stop moving because you have so much stuff in your bag, head back to your house and indulge in a little alchemy to convert everything into potions, then sell off the potions you don't actually want or need. In order to increase your Alchemy skill, you'll want to make as many potions as you possibly can.

At low levels of skill, the easiest potions to make are Restore Fatigue potions. Almost every kind of household food, such as onions, bread, lettuce, and so on, will have Restore Fatigue as their first property, allowing you to loot kitchens all across town and convert your proceeds into Restore Fatigue potions. They won't be particularly good potions, but they'll definitely help increase your skill, and you'll be making so many of them that you'll gain a good amount of money from selling them.

Multiple ingredients means multiple potion effects! Note that all ingredients that you find will have more than one alchemical property. As you increase your skill in Alchemy, you'll be able to see more of the hidden properties of your potions. At low levels of Alchemy skill, your ingredients basically only have the properties that you can see, so if you want to be able to use a more diverse array of ingredients in your potions, you'll have to rank yourself up, but doing so will help ensure that you'll be able to make the kinds of potions that you want with the ingredients that you actually have.

Unlocking more effects will also allow you to use more ingredients in your poisons, adding multiple effects that occur simultaneously. Note that a lot of ingredients actually have negative effects, such as Damage Health always popular. Making a potion with a negative effect actually turns it into a poison which appear in your inventory as green bottles instead of the purplish color of potions.

Poisons can't be ingested, so they can't really hurt you. Instead, they can be activated in your inventory and applied to a weapon, allowing you to spread the love to the next enemy you hit, giving you a bit more oomph when facing off against boss-level enemies.

If he's not sleeping on his little cot, come back after 7 PM. Alteration spells aren't really going to make you stop and say "Wow! With Alteration, you'll be able to temporarily carry more items and heavier items, gain more armor, breathe water or walk across the surface of water, or temporarily gain protection from fire, frost, or electrical attacks.

Two of the more notable spell classifications are Burden, which adds to your target's encumbrance temporarily which can in effect paralyze them and prevent them from moving if you over-encumber them and Open, which opens locks of various difficulties based on your proficiency in Alteration.

Like we said, not very exciting. Useful, perhaps, but just like no one ever says they want to grow up and be a lab assistant, it's unlikely that an Alteration-focused character archetype is going to be very exciting to play as. Conjuration is the art of summoning powerful equipment to supplement your battle abilities, summoning creatures to fight for you, and controlling the undead to prevent them from attacking you.

Bound item spells, when cast, cause Daedric armor and items to spring into being, automatically equipped and usable. The Mythic Dawn cultists you see in the game make constant use of these spells, and you see what it does for their abilities in combat. The more skilled you become at Conjuration, the better the items that you'll be able to summon. Likewise, the more skilled you are, the better the creatures that you'll be able to bind to your cause.

While summoning Scamps and Skeletons isn't likely to get your Conjurer homeboys all that excited, the ability to eventually summon in Dremora Lords should cause most of your enemies to shake in their boots. Also note that you can use these summoned creatures as Soul Trap victims, giving you an unlimited and easy supply of souls. Lastly, the undead powers will let you strike fear in the hearts of undead enemies, making them likely to run away and leave you alone for a little while, as you either make your escape or prepare for their return.

When most people think of combat mages, Destruction is the school that comes to mind. It doesn't focus on opening locks or lighting up dank dungeons; it's all about causing harm to your enemies. As such, it'll be a mainstay of most pure mages, as their primary tool for dealing damage. Even if you don't cast Destruction magic, you can expect to see a lot of it come your way through the course of the game. Most of the Destruction spells are fairly straightforward.

As the archetypal mage power, you'll be able to use fire, frost, and shock magic to deal damage to your enemies, making sure to match up your spells with their weaknesses. Zombies take extra damage from fire magic, for instance, while a Flame Atronach will obviously take more damage from frost spells.

If you're up against a boss or tough enemy, you can supplement your attack spells with a Weakness spell, which will increase their vulnerability to a certain kind of elemental damage for a short time.

In addition, you can also attempt to drain an attribute of an enemy, which will cause it to steadily deteriorate over a set amount of time, or attempt to disintegrate their weapons or armor. If you want to become a combat magician, then you might not want to have Destruction as a Major Skill, simply because you'll be using it so often that you may wind up levelling up more quickly than you'd like.

Note that if you want to quickly train your Destruction spell, but can't find any enemies to cast your spells on, you can use the spell creation device in the Arcane Academy after you become a member of the Mages Guild to create a low-level Destruction spell that hurts yourself when cast. If you make something that damages you for one point of health each time it's cast, you should be able to easily cast it over and over to improve your skill without having to engage enemies in combat.

The effects of Illusion magic are too numerous to describe in detail here, but for that reason, they're going to be useful to almost every type of character. Stealthy attackers will enjoy the ability to cast Night Eye on themselves to see in the dark, while straight-ahead warriors will opt for the more obvious Light effect to light up dark dungeon corridors without having to constantly bring up a torch.

These effects are so obviously useful that characters probably shouldn't have Illusion magic as a Major Skill; you're going to use them a lot.

For pure mages, though, the primary benefits of Illusion are those that allow you to manipulate your enemies into not attacking you, whether through paralysis or simply by charming them to the point that they just don't really want to harm you. You can even go so far as to cause your enemies to fight for you with properly advanced magicks. Beyond enemy manipulation and the effects listed above, though, you'll also be able to cause yourself to turn Invisible with Illusion magic, which will help you sneak past enemies that you don't wish or are unable to fight.

The Chameleon effect is also quite handy. The difference between Invisibility and Chameleon is mostly that Invisibility ends if you happen to attack or use an object, whereas Chameleon does not. Chameleon offers less than total concealment, though.

Mysticism, like Alteration, isn't necessarily a very exciting branch of magic, although it is going to be something that almost every character will have to dabble in, if only for the sake of casting Soul Trap. First, though, a word on the other effects of Mysticism. Among other effects, Mysticism controls the ability to dispel magical effects either harmful effects cast on yourself, or beneficial effects cast on your enemy , and the ability to either reflect harmful spells back to your enemy or absorb them as pure Magicka.

The Telekinesis effect will let you manipulate remote objects; this would be a bit more exciting if it let you pick up a head of lettuce and beat someone to death with it. Cyrodiil, due to its proximity to all of the other provinces of Tamriel, is a varied land with the geography being swampy marsh-lands, snowy mountains, and mountainous forests and green fields. The game begins in a prison cell in the Imperial City.

Oblivion takes place in Cyrodiil, the province in the center of Tamriel. The player is able to choose from 10 races at the beginning of the game. The player can customize them in many ways, including age, appearance, complexion, and even eye color for certain races.

The player can be a warrior, mage, thief stealth , or any combination of the three. Cyrodiil has many wild animals, fabulous beasts and lawless bandits for the player to the fight.

There are wolves and bears , but also goblins and minotaurs , and many other creatures throughout the world. The player is able to participate in combat with these enemies with a blade or blunt weapons, hand to hand, using magic , or a bow and arrow. The player can also equip many types of armor which increase the player's defense, or stick to clothing , or wear nothing at all.

When given access to the Arcane University the player can also enchant his or her armor and weapons or use Frostcrag Spire if the DLC has been purchased , which depending on the strength of the soul given, gives a certain strength enchantment. The player can also make his or her own spells in a similar fashion.

The player has complete control over how they want to play the game. The player also picks a birthsign and a class , with 7 major skills , and 14 minor skills, totaling to 21 skills, which fall under Combat, Magic, or Stealth:. In order to level up , the player must increase major skills a total of 10 times, in any order. The player can level up his or her minor skills through repeated use.