Starter guide

Character Creation

 * See Character Creation for more information

Oblivion offers much flexibility in character creation. You can greatly modify your character's appearance, race, birthsign, and class. Your appearance can be whatever you like, however, your race affects how well you will do with certain skills and abilities. For example, if you choose a Breton, you will have an initial magicka of 150 points unlike the initial magicka of the Imperial race, which only starts with 80 magicka points.

Class and Skills

 * See also class and skill for a list of each.

When you finally reach the point where Emperor Uriel Septim is assassinated, one of his Blades members will talk to you and he will estimate what type of class would suit your playing style best, based on your performance up until that point. You can go accordingly with what the soldier says, or you can choose one on your own. Be careful! Make sure that you choose the class that you will be happy using the whole game. For example, if you choose to be a mage, if you use a sword and keep leveling up your blade skills, it will not make you level up as a whole. So make sure that you get the exact class that you want. Customize your class to fit the skills you’d like to use. See the premade classes above if you want an effective build, or are playing for the first time, as it can be quite difficult to get the overall effect you want.

In the end of the sewers, you will get a final chance to change your appearance, race, class, and birthsign. After you confirm your choices or make any changes, you’ll be deposited outside the walls of the Imperial City.

Once you are out of the sewers, you could either go straight to your main quests or do other quests. It’s recommended that you join a guild, which have guild halls in other cities besides Imperial City.

Leveling your character

 * See Level for more information.

There are several ways you can level your stats. Go to the skill leveling tips section to get more info on how to efficiently level up your skills.

Getting items
While still in the dungeon, check out the dead bodies (if there are any) and take their items. You can never have too much money.

Combat

 * See Combat for additional information.

Is it easy to fight in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Yes. However, you must still remember a few things before going to direct combat with hard enemies.

First: You need to remember to avoid depleting your fatigue bar (the green bar on bottom of the screen). If your fatigue bar is 0, your weapon damage will decrease and there will be a chance that your character faints for a about 2-3 seconds. One way to keep your fatigue bar filled is to always walk and not to run. By running, your fatigue bar is regenerating by only 25%ish of your regular regeneration. Also, do not jump while you are fighting. Jumping eats up most of your fatigue, so refrain from jumping while in battle. You will find that as your skills increase in both Acrobatics and Athletics that your fatigue will regenerate faster as well as less of it being used.

Second: Keep blocking. Blocking is an essential point of the game. By blocking, you can decrease the opponents damage greatly and also making the opponent flinch for a short while. When an opponent flinches, you will usually be able to land one or two hits without being blocked.

Third: Keep your health high. When you are in the midst of battle, it can be easy to forget about your life bar. Always remember to keep your health points high before you fight an enemy. Also, buy healing magics that will heal you more than Minor Wound Healing. If your birthsign is "The Lord", you will have less worries about your health since Blood of the North slowly regenerates your health to 90. You can also buy or make healing potions using alchemy.

Magic

 * For more information about spells, please go to Spell section.

Magic consists mostly of all the spells and scrolls in the game.

In this game, you can also make your own spells! First, you will need to join the Mages Guild. You'll need to complete a series of recommendation quests before having access to the Praxographical Center in the Arcane University, which is located southeast of the Imperial City. This is the place where you can make your own magic for the cost of your gold. If you want more info on making spells, go to Spellcrafting.

Not only can you make your own magic in this game, but you can also make your own magical/enchanted weapons and armor! The Altar of Enchanting is located at the Chironasium. If you want to make your own enchanted gear, you will need some gold (of course), an unenchanted wearable item which you want to put new effects on, and a soul gem or Azura's Star with a soul in it. The level of the soul gem will decide how much charge your weapon is going to have. If you want more information on how to make enchanted weapons, go to Enchanting.

Sneaking

 * See also the stealth article for more information.

Things you can do while sneaking:
 * Undetected movement – The basis of stealth
 * Pickpocket and stealing
 * Sneak Damage

Undetected Movement
There are many elements that contribute to your detection: the light around you (e.g. whether you are standing near or holding a lit torch), your speed, the surrounding environment, and most importantly, the level of your sneak skill. Although not being seen is certainly the best way to avoid being detected, NPCs can still hear you moving - even though you may be in another room and are sneaking, a low sneak skill will make you easier to detect. Also, you can use the shadows of trees and buildings to hide you.

The best way to move around undetected without taking in consideration of these three elements is being invisible. When you are invisible, you cannot be detected. Whether you have a light spell around you or even running and not sneaking, you cannot be detected by another person. However, invisibility is dispelled as soon as any non-passive action is made, e.g. activating items/doors/chests, hitting someone or readying a spell.

Also having a Chameleon item is a great way to go undetected. If your Chameleon points are 100% or above you won't be seen by any NPC even if you run or attack them.

Pickpocketing and Stealing
Simply put, go into sneak mode, sneak towards an NPC, and then steal their items. However, sneaking is a bit more complicated than that. Another method is to use an Invisibility spell or scroll. However, even though you are invisible, you still need to take caution. After you steal from a person, your invisible state ends. If you have a Chameleon percentage above 100% you can steal without being seen.
 * You first have to be undetected to steal from people.
 * It's easier to steal at night since the visibility at night is lower than during the day.
 * Stealing larger and heavier items makes it easier for you to get caught.

If you don't want to pickpocket, but you want something from that person you can summon a daedra which uses a long range attack. Hit the daedra three times and then run towards the back of the NPC that you want dead. When you are successful making the daedra hit the NPC, the NPC will fight the Daedra. Do this a couple of times until the person is dead. Afterwards, salvage the items from the dead person. You won't get any bounty points by doing this method. This is the hard way of getting items from another person, and is not pickpocketing.

Alternately, you can use a Frenzy spell to force the NPC to attack you first, thus you'll be "defending yourself" and won't get a bounty.

Stealing is straightforward. As long as you are not seen while in stealth mode when taking an object, the object is yours to keep and nobody will know it.

Sneak Damage
Let's continue on with Sneak Damage. You can do a Sneak Damage by sneaking on another person and then attacking them. Sneak damage greatly increases the strike that you did to that enemy.

At early levels in Sneak you will get a 2x damage bonus when attacking with a bow while undetected, and a 3x bonus when attacking with one handed melee weapons. Later, after some practice, this increases to 3x and 6x respectively. You will get a text message (default location is the top left of the screen) telling you the damage multiplier. If you attempt to sneak attack with a two handed melee weapon, you deal no extra damage.

Buying a House

 * See House for list of each city's house for sale.

After some time, once you have acquired 2,000 gold, it's recommended to buy a house for storage and a place to rest. Head to the Market District of the Imperial City and go to the Office of Imperial Commerce. Talk to the lady in the counter and speak to her about buying a house. She is going to say that she has an available house that is located at the Imperial City Waterfront. Even though this house is small and rugged, this is the perfect place to store your items and sleep. Also, since it is located in the Imperial City, the center of the country, it’s the most accessible house you can use. Benirus Manor, located in Anvil, is the cheapest manor house as it's cost is only 5,000 gold, but requires the completion of the Where Spirits Have Lease quest before it can be considered a functional house (unless you like the 'decayed grandeur' look and don't mind a few ghosts as tenants). It is also the only house that does not require separately bought furnishings and decoration. All other houses are more expensive, such as the one in Skingrad (a veritable mansion), which costs a whopping 48,200 gold. After you get this house, go to Three Brothers Trade Goods and buy the furnishings.

''Note: the Waterfront shack may not be the cheapest since it does have to be decorated and the final cost is dependent on your Mercantile skill. All houses have beds 'in the bundle' prior to buying the furnishings/decorations.''

Traveling

 * See also the Horses article for more information.

There are many ways to Travel around the world of Tamriel, and you should familiarize yourself with them as soon as possible. Fast travel is the way to go at first as its an easy way to get to all the major cities. Walking is another great way to travel when you first start as you will uncover many locations along the way that you can come back to for fast travel checkpoints or dungeon crawling. It is advised that you get a horse as soon as possible as they are faster than walking/running, and allow for the discovery of more new locations because of this increase in speed. You can either follow the main quest for the first mission Deliver the Amulet where you will receive a Paint Horse from one of Jauffre's fellow monks (Prior Maborel). This horse is of the slowest and weakest breed, but better than nothing. Alternatively you can purchase one at any stable if you have a lot of spare gold. You can also get Shadowmere, a horse that will fight for you and is relatively quick, while doing the Dark Brotherhood questline.