Oblivion Remastered: Minor and Major Skills, explained

In Oblivion Remastered, there are 21 Skills, seven of which are Major Skills assigned based on your class. Custom classes, of course, get to pick their own Major Skills. Unlike in Skyrim, Oblivion (and the Remastered version by extension) has some mechanics surrounding funneling only certain skills onto your class specialization, so picking Major Skills matters a fair bit.

In this guide, we go over the Minor vs Major Skills equation in Oblivion Remastered and how this factors into a lot of things.

Explaining the Major vs Minor Skills dichotomy in Oblivion Remastered

Major Skills tie into how you level up your character (Image via Bethesda Softworks)

If you've noticed during your class selection (or when making your own class), you get seven chosen Major Skills. The 14 other Skills are Minor, meaning they are not part of your class' core competencies. So, how do the Major ones affect gameplay? There are two big effects:

Major Skills increase faster than the rest.
Leveling Major Skills contributes more towards increasing your character level, whereas Minor Skill increases only contribute slightly.

Major Skill leveling bonus

Let's start with the first effect. You can level up Major Skill fast. For each Skill you've selected as Major, you'll only need 60% of the experience you would otherwise need to increase it by a single level.

The formula doesn't end there. Whatever Specialization your class has (Combat, Magic, or Stealth) will make the leveling of all its related Skills faster. This stacks with the leveling bonus of a Major Skill, bringing it down to 45% of the experience you would need to level a Minor Skill belonging to a non-Specialized group. For example, a Crusader class will level up the Blunt skill quite fast because it is one of Crusader's Major Skills, and a Combat skill (Crusader is a Combat class).

Note that the numbers discussed here are from the original Oblivion, so there might be some changes in Oblivion Remastered that we don't know about yet. However, the concept remains the same.

Also read: What are the best Attributes to increase?

Major Skills level you up: Boon or Bane?

In the original Oblivion, when you gain 10 cumulative levels across your Major Skills, your character level increases. In Oblivion Remastered, Minors Skills in Oblivion Remastered also contribute to your progress towards the next character level. That being said, a Major Skill moves the meter much more than a Minor Skill.

Of course, you also need to sleep to level up first, but that's not important. What's important is whether you should level up your Major Skills at all. The simple answer is yes, you don't have to be apprehensive about leveling your Major Skills at a rapid rate.

For those who did not play the original Oblivion from 2006, this might seem like a strange question. The general answer is that the original had a questionable level-scaling design — monsters and bandits ramped up super fast, and if you weren't careful, you would accidentally make the game much harder after leveling up a non-combat Major Skill too much.

To make things easier, a common strategy in the original Oblivion is to make the skills you want to scale Minor Skills. That way, you can get a very high level of Destruction (not boundlessly, some limitations are in place) without ever increasing your character level, because you are a Barbarian class.

In Oblivion Remastered, the developers have made the level scaling much more palatable, so you don't really need to do this.

In truth, the snail-paced leveling rate of Minor Skills made that exploit a necessary evil in many classes rather than a merry exploit.

Since Oblivion Remastered dials back from the erratic enemy scaling of the original, you no longer need to tiptoe around increasing Major Skills. So, if you're a Barbarian, increase your Armorer skill as much as you want for mercantile reasons.

Unlike legacy Oblivion, it shouldn't backfire on you. Bear in mind, the truth of the claim remains to be seen in practice. We'll update this article after we've done a few playthroughs to get a better sense of the new leveling curve.

Check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

Know More

Edited by Sambit Pal