Summary
- Oblivion Remastered maintains its unpopular levelled looting system.
- An impassioned modder has created a mod that removes levelled looting, allowing you access to the most powerful versions of items at any level.
- Oblivion has items that are not levelled, such as Umbra and Goldbrand.
Following its sudden release on Tuesday, Oblivion Remastered has proven a massive hit among players. Virtuos has maintained the essence of the original Oblivion while improving upon its visuals, movement and certain systems that were unpopular with players even nineteen years ago, such as the strange levelling system.
However, one unpopular feature from Oblivion remains in Oblivion Remastered: levelled loot. In the original release of Oblivion, Bethesda didn’t want players to find powerful gear until they were at an appropriate level.
As a result, both gear and enemies in Oblivion scale with the player’s level. In other words, you won’t randomly find glass gear, the strongest light armour in the game, until your character is at least level 20. However, random enemies will now also be wearing glass armour, regardless of the lore-breaking implications of roving bandits having expensive armour.
Oblivion’s Least Popular Feature
This system isn’t inherently bad. However, it has one aspect that players vehemently dislike. Unique quest reward items are also levelled, meaning you can potentially deprive yourself of powerful loot by completing a quest too early. A classic example of this is the Blade of Woe, the dagger given to the player by Lucian Lahance at the beginning of the Dark Brotherhood quest line.
From levels 1-4, the Blade of Woe is an ineffective weapon, only damaging health, willpower and stamina for 5 points and demoralising enemies up to level two. However, if received at level 30 or beyond, the Blade of Woe instead does 35 points of damage to the aforementioned resources, and demoralises enemies up to level ten. It’s the difference between a very powerful weapon, and a useless pointy piece of metal.
This isn’t the case for every unique weapon in the game; the two most powerful one-handed weapons in the game, Umbra and 
Goldbrand
, do not scale and can be found in their most powerful states at level one.
Umbra is a popular target for “cheesing” at the beginning of the game. The character Umbra (named after the sword) can be found in the ruin Vindasel, which is the first thing you see after exiting the Imperial City Sewers. Although Umbra is involved in Clavicus Vile’s quest, which is technically locked to characters level 20 and over, you can actually fight and kill Umbra at any level. It’s a difficult fight, but if you emerge victorious, you can potentially have one of the best weapons in the game at level one.
However, fret not, a modder named Trainwiz, impassioned by how much they hate the levelled loot system, has created Unlevelled Item Rewards (nice spot, PC Gamer). This makes every quest reward the best possible version of that item, i.e. the game assumes you’re level 30 even when you’re not when pulling from the levelled loot table.
“Despite Todd’s unbreakable promise that the levelling system in Oblivion has been fixed, this is sadly, not the case,” the mod’s description reads. “When I learned that quest rewards still pull from a levelled pool like some sort of troglodyte moron game made for idiots, I was overcome with an impossible incomprehensible fury. I blacked out, but when I awoke, this mod suddenly existed…”
I don’t think making every quest reward a level 30+ item is the most elegant solution, but it’s certainly the easiest to implement. There’s potential for a mod that 
Scales
quest items in your inventory as you level, but that likely requires a scripting feature that currently isn’t in Oblivion.
For now, enjoy your non-woeful Blade of Woe.