You gain a level when you get ten increases in any, some or all of your Major skills. In and of itself, gaining levels doesn't do much. One of the obvious benefits is that you will gain extra Health points (1/10 of your Endurance). Another fairly obvious benefit is that you get to increase three of your attributes by one to five points each. The way the game decide how many attribute multipliers is fairly straightforward: take the number of increases for skills under any given attribute and divide by 2, dropping any fractions:

• 0 to 3 skill increases: 1 point (no multiplier)
• 4 to 5 skill increases: 2 points
• 6 to 7 skill increases: 3 points
• 8 to 9 skill increases: 4 points
• 10+ skill increases: 5 points

The upshot of all of this is that if you want to maximize the attribute multiplier, you have to be fairly careful about developing ALL of your skills. Or, to put it a bit more simply, don't forget to bring those Minor skills up, too. If you'd like to maximize your Strength multiplier, make sure that you work on all three offensive combat skills: Blade, Blunt and Hand-to-hand. It doesn't have to be done all of the time, though. For example, you can swing a sword or dagger for the first part of the game, pick up a mace or an axe later, and be Jackie Chan at another time. Once you hit 100 in any skill, you're not going to be able to develop it further and will have to use a different skill to get your multipliers.

The next problem you're going to run into is when you've got more than three attribute multipliers to choose from. You might be tempted to take the three highest, but that may not be the best route to go. So here are a few things to consider on each of your attributes:

• Strength: increases the load of goodies you can carry, the amount of damage you do when you swat something and how quickly you get fatigued. If you're constantly finding yourself over-encumbered or combat is taking an inordinately long time, you might want to start dropping points into this regardless of how big or small the multiplier is.
• Endurance: increases your Health points and your Fatigue points. I've heard compelling arguments for adding points to this at every level, even if there isn't a multiplier, but I think you'd be safer to try to maximize the multiplier by Blocking whenever possible and toting a few Repair Hammers around to develop the Armorer skill. Warrior-types will have probably taken Heavy Armor as a Major, so they will most likely see multipliers on a regular basis.
• Intelligence: The Spell-Slinger's best friend. Every point dropped into here gets you at least two more Magicka points (Birthsign bonuses apply). So boost this or carry Fortify Magicka potions when it comes time to bring out the big guns.
• Willpower: Everyone's best friend. Spell-slingers want it because increasing this attribute shortens the time that it takes for your Magicka to recharge. Everyone else wants it because it boosts your Fatigue.
• Speed: Face it, no one wants to move around Cyrodiil at a crawl. Boosting your speed lets you run faster (and swing your weapon faster?). It lets you say, "sayonara, sucker!" and mean it.
• Agility: Bow-users and melee-types want to increase this because it lets you use your bow better and avoid getting hit in the first place. It also boosts your Fatigue.
• Luck: with no skills controlled by this attibute, you're only going to be able to boost it one point at a time. Luck factors in to just about everything that you do, but its most significant impact is on the kind and amount of loot that you find, how often you break your lockpicks when you use Auto-Attempt and so forth. Directly, it helps you win money when you bet at the Arena because your Luck adds Health points to your team. It has an indirect effect on everything else. For single-task sorts of things (like running into a Very Hard lock when your Security skill is Novice), you can probably get by with leaving Luck alone and using Fortify Luck effects, but it's awfully nice to have over the long-haul.

As you gain levels, you're also going to be getting better loot (like 20 gold at first level, as compared to 745 gold at 30th level). This includes the materials of the weapons and armor.

This does not mean that these will be common at these levels (well, aside from 1st level, obviously). Even though Dwarven stuff might start appearing at about 5th level, I wasn't finding it frequently until 9th or 10th level.

The flip side of this equation, though, is that almost every hostile encounter you have is controlled by your level. And even for those that are pre-placed, your opponent's level is going to be tied to yours. So the higher your level, the more dangerous the enemies you encounter. For the most part, this isn't going to be a problem with the normal dungeon exploration and side-quest kind of stuff. But be advised that Oblivion (as in "the place behind the Oblivion Gates") becomes much more difficult at higher levels. Not impossible, mind you, but more difficult. Instead of encountering 1 or 2 critters, it might be closer to something like 5 or 6. And leveled NPCs seem to always get the +5 attribute multipliers as they go up. So if you're going to put off the Main Quest for a while, be prepared to proceed cautiously, take the proper equipment (hammers, potions, spells, etc.) and don't be surprised if you get spanked hard and often.