Morrowind/Oblivion Difficulty Settings

[Pentium]

As you know, Morrowind and Oblivion are (in)famous for their horrendous difficulty sliders that can even be adjusted during the game (that's not so terrible, many games allow players to adjust difficulty mid-game) and cover as much as 200 different values in (patched) Morrowind. I don't know the series all that well tbh and have long forgotten a lot, so my question is, based on your experience, how would you recommend to adjust the difficulty of each and why for the best experience in vanilla versions (for a newcomer), at the beginning or mid-game. I hear that some people progressively rise the difficulty as the game starts to be far too easy etc.

 

[Hobo Elf]

If you want a challenge from TES3 you're going to have to set some handicaps. After a certain point nothing in the game can challenge you no matter how high you'd go in the difficulty slider.

 

[Butter]

If you're going to bother playing Oblivion, there are mods that adjust the difficulty far better than the slider does. The same is probably true of Morrowind.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The difficulty sliders primarily, if not exclusively, affect damage dealt and received by the player, and it's utterly pointless to change them from "normal". Oblivion, of course, has level scaling that was terribly implemented, but the solution is to install a mod that removes the level scaling for monsters, NPCs, and items, rather than altering the difficulty. Assuming you would even deign to play Oblivion in the first place.

 

[DraQ]

Morrowind:
All the way to the right.
It will be tough in the beginning but Morrowind is highly breakable even if you avoid metagaming and cheese, so it will last longer, and not touching the slider mid-game makes for more consistent experience (it's not adjustable for "make your own difficulty curve" reasons, it's to allow you to tune your difficulty without doing it blind).

Oblivion:
Trick question, do not play.

 

[Funposter]

For Morrowind I like +25 or +50, but it also depends on what mods are installed etc. There probably is an argument that +100 is necessary for vanilla just to extend the amount of time it takes for the player to pass the power threshold and break the game. It also depends on questions over builds etc. since playing something like pure Mage or trying to do a stealth build just sucks.

For vanilla Oblivion, I think it's 100% a question of what feels right. Unless the player is powergaming, the level scaling will fuck them in the ass at some point during the mid-game once Mountain Lions start spawning, and enemies arguably just soak up too much damage. Adjust as needed tbh.

 

[Shadenuat]

+100 mor is world of oneshots, until you reach high levels; tuning game like this will just make you avoid combat or fair combat. +25-50 is ok due to enemies being underwhelming in main game, and can even be lowered in addons. on +50 bloodmoon enemies 2-shot non-exploited characters.
better way is install mod that stops mages spam burden only (lol), ban restoration school and limit amount of potions you can gulp. Granted it is all still pointless due to enemy ai being broken and the stunlock system it's just not a game that can be fixed.