3/22/06 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC, X360)

[Shockeye]

Me thinks they should police their forums better.

Heh, that link is getting pounded right now.

I'm sure it was someone from Starforce who posted it.

[Dren]

I haven't found the orc vampire yet, but I find some of the summon scrolls come in handy now and again with tough fights.

Heh, this bitch two shotted a summoned daedroth. She was just mean.  Fortunately, that's the only time where I've been completely overwhelmed in combat.

Yeah, that's the cave I was talking about.  Yes, I was summoning daedrothes left and right with no success.  I was casting shield 30% on myself too!  I'm glad to hear other people are having trouble with those vamps.  Damn they hit hard.

Yes, the mountain lion outside that place sucked too.  I could not get agro off myself for anything.  I totally forgot about the calm spell though.  Duh.

I also forgot about the difficulty slider.  I'm feeling exceptionally dull at the moment.  I still think I'm going to start over.  Putting all my eggs into the magic basket just doesn't feel as cool as I thought it would now.

[Glazius]

Ok, I completely ran into the wall of disparity between levels and skills and stats last night with my pure mage.  I'm getting two-shotted by the vampires now with all their uber equipment.  I'm starting over with a more planned out template to keep my stats/skills more balanced throughout leveling.

Normally this would make me not want to play the game.  This one is so good, I'm actually looking forward to it.

I'm so screwed.

Heh, was that in the quest to get the Daedric artifact?  For some reason the two orc vampires with 2 handed weapons were goddamn near impossible to beat even getting in 6x sneak shots and breaking their weapons.  Not enough room in the cave to kite them either.  Three to four shots to take me down.  Yeesh.

I had to turn down the difficulty for that one.  I've been gradually turning it back up as the only things that give me trouble are brutish melee chars.

Things should go a bit smoother as I've finally found out what those stupid sigil stones are for.  Hooray for free enchants.

Anyone figure out how to repent your sins?  Being the thieves guild's master makes the altars not like me and I can't seem to find the herbs to make a restore willpower potion.

Eat some primrose leaves, or brew 'em up if you're a master alchemist.

--GF

[Glazius]

Speaking of damage reflection, anyone know where to find cheap damage/spell reflection spells for purchase? I can only find the uber ones that require Expert/Master to cast.

Buy the uber ones, get access to the friggin' Arcane University already, and use the altar of spellmaking to roll your own.

--GF

[Bunk]

The problem is, you can only use effects in Spellmaking and Enchant that you can cast. So if your only reflection spell requires 75 skill to cast, you can't make a reflection spell unless you have 75 skill.

[Yoru]

The problem is, you can only use effects in Spellmaking and Enchant that you can cast. So if your only reflection spell requires 75 skill to cast, you can't make a reflection spell unless you have 75 skill.

Bingo. I have access to the arcane university. I've used the spellmaking and enchanting altars. I have custom spells for hauling loot, running away from things, healing, killing and pretty much anything else I can find a castable effect for. The problem is finding castable reflect-spell, chameleon and invisibility spells. I can find the uber ones, but I'd rather not sit around for 4 hours practice-casting Starlight just to use them.

My suit of light elven armor protects as well as a full suit of ebony due to all the +9% shield enchants on it (+9 AC per piece). Vampires are chumps for me due to my enchanted ebony bow Charface, which sets them on fire with every arrow. Vampires hate fire. With the Master Sneak 3x damage/ignore armor bonus, it's never taken me more than 4 arrows to down even the toughest vampire I've come across up to level 17.

And for the real nasties, I have Arrows of Embers saved up, which do an additional 5 fire damage per hit.

[Sairon]

Don't recall where I got them but I got some pretty bad ass arrows. 65 fire dmg in 15 feet area, got a whole bunch of them. Needles to say they ended things fast, to bad I ran out of them :(.

[Bunk]

I started with Illusion spec'd, so once it hit 50 I was able to enchant Chameleon. Permanent 34% Chameleon = love. If I'm not in direct sunlight, I can stand 5 feet in front of people and remain hidden. Backstabbing in the front is fun.

Also, its cool that having chameleon always up means I can see through my shield when I'm blocking.

[Signe]

Fixed my crashing problem.  It was a bad bit of RAM.  No more crashing.  A freeze once in a great while set at ultra high quality.  Unfortunately, I've lost the will to play it now.

[NiX]

You should apologize to Oblivion!

[Yoru]

I needed to get on with stuff, so I made myself a nice suit of armor with a cumulative chameleon over 100%. Blasted through the remainder of the main quest. I'd finished the mage guild, thieves' guild and fighers' guild lines, as well as all the sub-20 Daedric quests, bought most of the houses, etc.

Most of the parts were a lot of fun; the part involving talking to all the towns? Not so much.

[Signe]

You should apologize to Oblivion!

I should kick your ass, that's what I should do!  Lucky for you, I'm nice!

[Tebonas]

I'm level 40 now and think I should start with the main quest. I had that feeling in Morrowind as well. Never finished the damn main quest, had too much fun doing other things until it was too late and my ADD struck.

[schild]

You should apologize to Oblivion!

I should kick your ass, that's what I should do! Lucky for you, I'm nice!

Your new avatar is horrible.

[Ironwood]

That's an old avatar.

[Trippy]

I should kick your ass, that's what I should do! Lucky for you, I'm nice!

Your new avatar is horrible.

I agree bring back the chocolate bunnies.

[Signe]

You are all mean to me.  I'll get you back.

[Ironwood]

Oh God, it's Harvey.

[Yegolev]

I was going to decry that avatar, because it truly hurts my eyes, but then I noticed it was yours.  As you were.

[Tebonas]

That bunny from gay hell will haunt me in my dreams, if I can even sleep tonight. But it made me look up decry and I got a skill increase in Foreign Language (English), so it all works out at the end.

[Trippy]

You are all mean to me.  I'll get you back.

It's a good thing I'm running Opera and can selectively turn off avatar images.

[bhodikhan]

Hey. My avatar has an 'instant' message for you.

[Signe]

SIGNE! SIGGGGNNNEEEEEEEEE! SSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Why is Nix's signature screaming my name?

Anyway, I did come here to post something for a reason.  I can't remember what it is now because Nix's signature is making me nervous.

[Phred]

This game is so full of bugs and crappy code, it's hardly worth the bother.  Bethesda is defintiely going for the Buggiest Game Award previously held by that other game they made.  They've got that market cornered and have broadened it to include the 360!  Go them! 

Maybe God just hates you. Not a single crash or noticible bug here.

Nice.  So me and what appears to be thousands of people can't run this game because God hates us?  Sorry... didn't mean to ruffle your fanboi feathers, but this game appears to be very dicey for a lot of people.

The game has a real problem on ATI cards for one. You have to either run without AA or disable the refraction shader or it slows to single digit frame rates whenever you get near an oblivon gate or an npc with the chameleon spell on. Also, if you watch a lot of avi's and have a codec pack installed, like the k-lite codec pack, the game may try to use a different mp3 codec and ctd a lot. Both these happened to me and since I fixed them it's been almost entirely bug free.

[Fabricated]

There's supposedly a patch in the works for the PC version...but also the Xbox 360 version!

Full:
Bethesda's Pete Hines recently shared the company's plans for updating The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

"We are working on a patch/update for both the PC and Xbox 360," Hines said, saying that the company is working to finish it "as fast as we can."

Aside from some localization isues, Hines shared no details on what issues the patches would fix, or whether or not the framerate inconsistencies or lengthy load times would be on the list.

Hines also announced that the next two downloads for Oblivion -- two new buildings called "The Wizards Tower" and "The Orrery" -- will cost just 150 points on Xbox 360 ($1.50) and $1.89 on the PC. The company came under some criticism for charging $2.00 for a new set of horse armor last week.

Finally, ATi has released an unofficial patch for Oblivion. The patch allows both anti-aliasing and High Dynamic Range (HDR) lighting effects to be enabled at the same time, a feature that is currently only available on the Xbox 360 version.

Micropayments are the devil. I enjoy being nickeled and dimed to the point where I end up paying more for less content than I would have gotten in a full-fledged expansion.

Also, 360 game patch. Hah.

[Murgos]

And the conspiracy theorists gain a little more fuel for thier fire on why there is no .nif exporter for the construction set.

I personally think it would be stupid to try and stifle competition among the modders and bethsofts mini-content packs.  Good, and yes free, work from the modders will only drive the demand for mods up, this includes the pay-to-play stuff from BethSoft.

There is another theory, that BethSoft is with holding the exporter due to the fact that many of the player made mods will include adult content and they don't want to attract attention from that quarter until the game is established and off the radar.

[Bunk]

Some of the smaller forum modding groups are already reporting some breakthroughs with the models. Basically importing new models in game without collision detection, simply using newer versions of the tools they used in Morrowind.

[Murgos]

Yeah, it's the collision detection and Havok Physics that are the major cockblock (almost certain that when one is solved so is the other).  There are people out there doing thier thing, as soon as someone figures out the proper parameters (and there are some talented people working on it) there will be a flood of new stuff.

I don't really buy the conspiracy stuff, I think it's more an issue of time (games been out less than a month, natch) and licensing issues.

[Yegolev]

ATi would look really stupid if the GPU in the X360 was theirs.

[Murgos]

Why is that then?

I didn't realize that all ATI GPU's were identical.

[Yegolev]

Maybe it is Bethesda or MS that look stupid.  Or me.  I am going to get more coffee and read the release again.

[Murgos]

There is an interview somewhere (google is your friend) talking with the guy who wrote the driver for ATI allowing the AA and HDR simultainiously and what he did to make that happen, maybe you should read that instead.

[schild]

The email I just got marks the 13th email (ALL FROM DIFFERENT PEOPLE or at least different email addresses) I've gotten on how to finish quests. It's getting silly. If you emailed me and didn't register for the forums, fucking do it and ask here. I am NOT the Nintendo Hint Line, as much as I wanted to be when I was 7.

[Yoru]

Dude, didn't you watch The Wizard? Nintendo Hint Line gets all the chicks.

[Threash]

I finished the dark brotherhood storyline and now im bummed...  why do i feel bad.  This must be a really good game.  God damnit.