In The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, there are eight primary attributes you can increase: Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality, and Luck. Each attribute affects different aspects of your character's performance and stats.
Attributes and Their Effects
- Strength : Increases melee damage, maximum fatigue (stamina), carrying capacity (encumbrance), and slightly improves health
- Intelligence : Increases your maximum magicka (mana pool)
- Willpower : Improves magicka regeneration rate, maximum fatigue, and magic resistance
- Agility : Boosts damage with ranged weapons (bows), increases fatigue and chance to avoid stagger
- Speed : Increases movement speed and jump length
- Endurance : Greatly increases maximum health, health gained per level, and health regeneration
- Personality : Affects NPC disposition, better merchant prices, and how NPCs react to you
- Luck : Influences all skills when above 50, affects gambling and pickpocket success
How to Increase Attributes
- When you level up, you can choose three attributes to increase by 1 to 5 points each. To get the maximum (+5) increase in an attribute, you must have increased any of the three skills governed by that attribute by a total of 10 points during that level
- Your race, gender, birthsign, and class choices at character creation affect your starting attribute values and bonuses
- Special items and effects can also boost attributes temporarily or permanently, such as the Oghma Infinium (which grants +10 to two attributes) and becoming a vampire (which boosts Speed, Strength, and Willpower)
Recommended Attributes to Increase
The best attributes to increase depend on your character build:
- Melee fighters : Focus on Strength and Endurance for damage and survivability
- Archers : Prioritize Agility and Speed for ranged damage and mobility, plus some Endurance
- Mages : Increase Intelligence for magicka pool, Willpower for magicka regeneration, and Speed for kiting enemies
- Thieves/rogues : Luck helps with pickpocketing and lockpicking success
- For general play, Luck is often leveled first due to its broad skill benefits, followed by Speed, Strength, Endurance, and then other attributes as per your playstyle
In summary, choose attributes to increase based on your character's combat style and the benefits you want, focusing on those that enhance your main skills to maximize level-up bonuses
