Oblivion Remastered has taken some well-judged steps to fix the original's wonky skill and attribute system, but it's still a very strange, unbalanced experience. Nublivion's middle, "Adept" difficulty just feels too easy, while a single step up to "Expert" makes fighting even a basic bandit a life or death slog. Now I know why: The behind-the-scenes math is bonkers.
Modder IxionXVII's "Difficulty Slider Fixed" mod is a blessed solution with a ton of options to customize Oblivion Remastered's difficulty to your liking, but the author also helpfully lays out what the different difficulties actually change in the game, and it's immediately apparent why vanilla Nublivion's Expert setting felt so awful to me.
The settings apply a flat multiplier to the damage you deal and receive. Adept is just 1x/1x for each, which makes sense. One notch up to Expert, though, causes a huge jump to how much damage you take, while it turns even legendary Daedric weapons into foam cosplay toys. Here's a chart of the default numbers from IxionXVII:
- Novice: x0.167 damage received, x6.0 dealt
- Apprentice: x0.286 received, x3.5 dealt
- Adept: x1.0 received, x1.0 dealt
- Expert: x3.5 received, x0.286 dealt
- Master: x6.0 received, x0.167 dealt
As you can see, there's a huge gulf between each difficulty setting, and I'd imagine part of the problem was contorting the original game's very granular slider (adjustable in 1% increments no less!) into five distinct tiers to more or less match the ones in Skyrim.
Now, I love a challenge in games, and ill-advisedly do take a bit of pride in playing on higher difficulty settings, but that default Expert setting is just torture, while Adept feels a little frictionless. IxionVII's "2.0" version of the mod at the "Master" difficulty setting, with x2.0 damage taken and x0.5 dealt, hits a real sweet spot for me.
I've never felt The Elder Scrolls has had fantastic combat in any of its entries, but these games are greater than the sum of their parts, offering an immersive fantasy second life like nothing else. I just need that combat and stealth to be good enough to bolster dozens of hours worth of Ayleid ruin clearing and Dark Brotherhood questing. This newly adjusted difficulty provides enough friction to keep things interesting, without making me miserable.
So give Difficulty Slider Fixed a shot if you haven't found your difficulty goldilocks point in Oblivion Remastered. I think it's a perfect pairing with OneTrueRy's loot auto-leveling mod and Ismttt's sneak attack damage buff.
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