Complicated question.
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1) You'll choose seven Skills that contribute to your levelup bar and leave 14 as minor skills that don't increase your level.
2) You have to increase your Stats as well as your Skills. Stats were completely abandoned for Skyrim.
3) You need to raise any combination of Major Skills ten times to levelup. This is similar to Skyrim but it is any skill in Skyrim and the number of increases is flexible.
4) Leveling isn't a simple matter of do and get better. Your skills will 'do and get better' but you need to time their increases and supplement Major Skills with Minor Skills to get better Stat Bonuses.
5) Unimportant to what I'm about to say but you can only levelup by sleeping in a bed.
6) Also unimportant, you can use Trainers much more efficiently in this game... they help to control your leveling and are much cheaper.
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Let's get started.
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Let's say you've just finished the Tutorial and you're a Level 2 without any extra Skill increases. There are two ways you can level in Oblivion. You can put +5 points on two Stats and put one point (nothing increases the number of points you can put on
Luck) on Luck OR you can put +5 points on each of three Stats leaving Luck untouched. The first method will let you max your character's Stats but the second will get you close to Maxed more quickly, though you'll have Luck only at 50.
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Either way, you'll want 10 Major Skill increases to level up AND either 10 Minor Skill increases (if you want to increase Luck) or 20 Minor Skill Increases (if you want to do it without increasing Luck).
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When you level your character, you'll be brought to the Stat Screen. What you want to see is +5 for two different Stats if you're going to put one on Luck or +5 for three different Stats if you want to raise three 'real' stats. It takes ten Skill increases
to get to that +5 for any Stat, but obviously they have to be related.... leveling your Armourer 10 times is going to increase Endurance, not Personality.
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You want to hit the +5 for all your chosen Stats to increase but you don't want to be going over that because you're effectively wasting increases that could be increasing the + you get to your Stats the next levelup. For that reason, you want to choose
the Skills you want to increase to raise your stats each level carefully. You don't something tedious and slow to increase, because you'll bore yourself, but you don't want something you can't control since you'll end up wasting levels. Athletics is a good
example of this... you can't really avoid getting it up.
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Also, all Stats apply backwards except for Endurance. The Health benefit from raising Endurance does not apply backwards. Because of this, no matter what kind of character you're after, you should definitely have Armourer, Block or Heavy Armour, I believe,
in your levelup rotation as soon as possible.
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You're a level 2, having just had a nap outside the tutorial in a bandit camp. You can easily perfect the first levelup too, but it would be nice to see the levelup process yourself and all sorts of skills will be raised in the tutorial.
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After your sleep you've had no Skills increase. That's cool, that's what you're after. Assuming you want to go +5, +5 and Luck, what you want now is to raise two separate attributes by +5, which means you need to raise a combination of the appropriate Skills
by 10. Also assuming you want to do it +5, +5 Luck, you'll want to make 10 of those 20 Skills Major Skills, so you can actually level up, and 10 Minor Skills for the other +5.
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Let's say your Heavy Armour is a Major Skill, and so is Blade. What you want to be doing is increasing your Heavy Armour by 9 points, leaving you just about to level up, then increasing a combination of Blunt and Hand to Hand by 10. That can be 10/0, 5/5
or 9/1, it doesn't matter, so long as you increase those Skills by 10 before you increase a Major Skill by 10 total, or another 1 since you've already done 9. You can't use Blade, since you'll only hit +4 Endurance, which is OK.... and +1 (which is standard)
Strength, along with +1 Luck, which is what you're after.
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If you successfully do the Heavy Armour and Blunt/Hand to Hand, what you'll end up with is this:
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Strength: +5.
Intelligence.
Willpower.
Speed.
Personality.
Endurance: +5.
Agility.
Luck.
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You then want to select Strength, Endurance and Luck for the three selections you get to make, because getting +5 is the maximum while +1 is pointless, except for Luck which you can never raise beyond 1 at a time.
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Every Skill obviously dictates the increase of a different Attribute. For the purpose of ideal leveling, what you then want is a decent split between the Skills that raise different Attributes.
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You do not want a premade Class at all, you want a Custom Class.
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Secondly, you do not want a class that looks like this:
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Heavy Armour.
Block.
Armourer.
Blade.
Hand to Hand.
Blunt.
Speech.
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This is bad for several reasons. 1, you cannot raise Strength (Blade, Hand to Hand and Blunt) or Endurance (Heavy Armour, Block and Armourer) with any flexibility... if you want to raise this Attribute the Skill HAS to contribute to a levelup. There are
a few problems with doing this though I can't adequately explain them at the moment.
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You want a more varied class, something like this:
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Blade (Strength).
Block (Endurance)
Light Armour (Speed)
Marksman (Agility)
Illusion (Personality)
Destruction (Willpower)
Alchemy (Intelligence).
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This will give you the greatest flexibility in your leveling, barring personal preferences such as disliking Marksman and so on. With the above class, if you want to raise Endurance and Strength, for example, you can raise Block 5 times, for half a levelup,
Blunt and Hand to Hand 10 times, for no levelup credit, and then finish with Block by another 5 points.
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That's ideal, since you'll have +0, +0, +0, +0, +0, +0, +5, +5 and a +0 (which just means +1... it doesn't say +1, it doesn't give a plus figure at all if you're only getting one point) for Luck, which is flawless.
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Also, having some Skills that govern each Attribute as both Major and Minor Skills means you can make up for your mistakes.
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If you do +5 Block, for example, then somehow accidentally raise Illusion by 4 points, you can't use another Major Skill to raise Block because you'll end up with 6 increases before you levelup, giving you a +3, which is sub-par. You'll want to complete
this levelup by going +5 Block, +4 Illusion, +5 Speech, +4 Heavy Armour and finally finishing it up with a +1 increase to Block.
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With that, you'll have +10 to Endurance Skills, giving you a +5 bonus at the levelup screen, and +10 to Personality Skills, giving you a +5 to Personality at the levelup screen, with a spare selection for Luck.
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In this example you changed from Strength to Personality to avoid wasting Skill increases, which is fine. The only Attribute you don't want to be doing this to is Endurance, since you want your Endurance, and therefore your Health, as high as possible as
soon as possible. The same example would apply if you had a few Minor Skill points in another Skill, for example. You patched the problem at hand but lost a few Skill increases... that's fine. You don't need all of them, you'll have some spare and can waste
those. Also, remember that it isn't a matter of life or death and that going back to fix a mistake will take hours of playtime, unless you're doing it on a second playthrough with the most efficient leveling methods out there... but that's not what you want
in a first playthrough.
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You'll also have to choose a Race and Birthsign.
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With regards to the Birthsigns, there are only a few that are worth choosing. Anything that increases Stats, such as the Warrior, is weak, with one exception. This is only furthered because of the leveling system above.
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Most powers, such as the ones The Tower will give you, can only be used daily and this is annoying. Most powers can also be obtained as Spells, which are infinitely more useful, unless the power is a Lesser Power (less powerful but can be recasted).
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This having been said, the ones that are most useful are The Mage, The Apprentice, The Thief and The Atronach.
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The Mage gives you +50 Magicka with no penalty, which is nice because you'll be able to create spells to use all your Magicka, so more is always better, and no penalty is nice.
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The Apprentice gives you +100, but doubles Magicka damage that you take.... not very good for high difficulties or if you can't strafe the incoming Magic but a great boost.
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The Atronach gives you +150... which is insane, but you don't regenerate it. That's.... a big pity. You have 50% chance to absorb incoming spells, however, which is nice. You could further augment this absorb later on, which will keep your Magicka high and
provide serious damage nullification, but I personally dislike this one.
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The Thief increases your Luck by 10 points... least noticeable of these stones but it will decrease the levels you need to raise your luck to full by 10. It would take you until level 50 (your maximum natural level, roughly) but this means it'll only take
40.
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Of these my favourite is probably the Apprentice but like I say, that's up to you and another may prove your style. The Mage is a safer bet while the Atronach changes a Mage's style drastically, along with reducing the danger a Mage poses.
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Lastly, you'll need to build a Custom Class.
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Like I already said, you'll want a combination of Skills to allow for efficient leveling (check the manual for the classification of each Skill, but bear in mind that the original Oblivion's manual, at least, mistakenly calls Block an Agility Skills where
it's actually an Endurance Skill.
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You'll also get to choose a +5 (I believe it says +10, but this is also incorrect in game) bonus to two Attributes. The obvious choices here are Luck and Endurance, but you may substitute one or the other for something like Intelligence, if you prefer being
a Mage. Luck because it lowers the levels needed to max it and Endurance because you need it as early as possible.
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Other than that, you'll need to choose a Specialisation to increase faster than the others. There are Skills that raise much slower than the others, such as Athletics and Marksman, but your choice is not overly important since you'll be after most Skills.
I'd suggest going for the School that you will want to specialise in regardless of leveling: either Combat, Magic or Stealth.
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I'd say lastly, but I already did. I'll ignore that. You'll need, obviously, a Race.
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There are some races that are OK. Orcs, Nords and Regduards. The better, more powerful races are the Breton and the High Elf, with the Breton probably coming out on top. The Argonians deserve a mention too, with Disease and Poison immunity, I believe it
is.
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The Breton's 50% Magic Resistance destroys the Nord and Dark Elf's Frost and Fire resistance respectively, along with being great for any class, while the High Elf gets extra Magicka and that's always a good thing.
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This one is up to you, don't be afraid to choose what you want regardless of its abilities.
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Overall, take what I've laid out or not, doesn't bother me, just make sure you have a good time with it. It's a great game you could enjoy a lot, but you will have to remember that it isn't Skyrim and it is many years older, so some things won't be as good.
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There are enough good things about it, however, for it to have its own appeal, which is nice : )
