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A dreary prison cell. One surprise visit from Emperor Uriel Septim VII. An unexpected bestowment of royal jewelry, and a rather daunting mission: "to close shut the jaws of Oblivion" – that's how The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered begins. Before long, you're sent to the city of Kvatch, which, due to a freshly opened Oblivion Gate, has been overrun by demons.
Sounds like an unfortunate yet thrilling situation, doesn't it? As someone who survived the Siege of Kvatch in both the original Oblivion and the Remastered version, early game and late game, I can tell you that this part of your Cyrodiillian adventure can either be the most exciting or dullest, easiest or hardest, thing you'll ever do in this game – and it all depends on character levelling.
Cursed Kvatch
My earliest memory of Kvatch is not a happy one. In fact, it's a rather embarrassing part of my first time in Cyrodiil. With my early-game character, undeterred by the sight of a town in smithereens, I headed towards the ominous Oblivion Gate. All that stood between me and the surviving Kvatchians was a measly Scamp or two, so what could possibly go wrong? Well, long story short, the scampy fellows flattened me.
A bit surprised, I tried again and again, but same story; my attacks hardly chipped away at the enemy's HP, whereas they could easily kill me. As dying to misshapen minions is only fun for so long, I looked into Oblivion's levelling system and realised that the issue was, quite literally, skill-based. No, my character level certainly wasn't too low for the Siege of Kvatch, but some of my skill levels certainly were, and it took a long time to fix it.
As I discovered, you could only level your character by levelling your major skills, which you'd chosen during character creation. Once you'd gained enough major skill improvements, sleeping in a bed would level you up – even without improving any minor skills. On top of that, the Attribute Points (stat points) received upon levelling up were based on the major skills you had leveled. For example, Security, Sneak, and Marksman would belong to the 'Governing Attribute' Agility, which meant you would have to level those three skills to improve your Agility stat.
While this only scratches the surface of Oblivion's overly complex levelling system, it's enough to realize what went wrong during my first Siege of Kvatch. You see, during the tutorial, I thought I had discovered a brilliant exploit when I continuously improved my Sneak skill by loitering behind an unsuspecting Goblin. I also engaged in way too many alchemical experiments while ignoring all skills governed by Endurance, which happened to be Oblivion's most important Attribute as it provides an extra HP boost per character level gained.
In many games, such disregard for efficient levelling doesn't pose much of an issue. Just become a bit overlevelled and you'll be fine. But that doesn't work in Oblivion, because enemy difficulty scales with character level. Imagine a player walking into Kvatch with a ridiculously high Sneak skill, neglected minor skills, terribly low HP, and a bunch of useless potions… Suddenly, those deadly Scamps make sense.
A sleepy siege
Imagine my surprise when I – again – didn't pay attention to levelling in my first Oblivion Remastered playthrough, only to find my second Siege of Kvatch rather… uneventful. I was fully prepared to fight those Scamps to the death and give it my all, but it merely required my 15%. One or two well-aimed arrows and down they went.
The Remastered version has made significant changes to Oblivion's levelling system. Although the difficulty scaling remains the same, the Governing Attributes and Endurance-based HP bonus are removed in favour of free Attribute Point allocation, and all skills, including minor ones, now contribute to character levelling. It is, in other words, much harder to screw up your character build as royally as I did all those years ago.
I should be happy, right? But although I consider this a win for the less statistically inclined Oblivion player, I couldn't help but feel that this Siege of Kvatch left me more unsatisfied than the first one. When I saw others commemorating their magnificent Kvatch battles online, I realized I still wasn't handling Oblivion's levelling system correctly.
To understand the phenomenon of the vastly-different-Kvatches, there's something you should know about Oblivion's difficulty scaling, which hasn't been changed. Rather than just making enemies harder to defeat as you level up, the enemy type changes. So, if you try to save Kvatch in early-game, you'd be met by measly Scamps, but if you were to ignore the whole thing until mid- to late-game… Well, I had to see that for myself.
In my second Oblivion Remastered playthrough, I purposely avoided Kvatch until I was level 36, and I can tell you that it was, without exaggeration, glorious. Monstrosities of all shapes and sizes came pouring out of that Oblivion Gate as soon as I approached. Daedroth, Spider Daedra, Storm Atronachs, Xivilai… These were proper demons, befitting an event of catastrophic proportions.
Of course, I did die quite a few times before the title of 'Hero of Kvatch' was bestowed upon me (as did all the nearby soldiers – oops!), but dying to an onslaught of Daedric forces feels much better than dying to a Scamp. In the original Oblivion, it certainly wouldn't have been possible to clear Kvatch at such a high level without meticulously planning my levelling progress, which is why I now consider this the best part of the Remastered version - apart from that gorgeous visual upgrade.
As unlocking the best version of the Siege of Kvatch still requires a good deal of patience (you don't need character level 36 though, 20+ will do), when and how to become the Hero of Kvatch is up to you. But if you want to get a truly unforgettable experience… You know what to do.
