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

[Murgos]

It's a transparent mod of glass armor with the chainmail and leather bits cut out.

It's called Cenobyte armor and it's by a french girl named Aleanne and you can find it on TESSource (along with four or five other colors and a chainmail bikini mod all by the same person).

The belly button tattoo is my own work but has some issues that I have to resolve before I give it out.

[Xanthippe]

What mods are essential?  What mods are not essential but great to have?

Please, hold my hand. I'm afraid to mod it, for fear of breaking something.

[Wolf]

Ok, so I picked this up last friday, mainly to test my new rig that I assembled on Saturday. I've never played an elder scrolls game, so I'm basically a noob. I played some 10 hours on Saturday and sunday, and didn't know what the hell was going on (game system wise). Today I read through some of that thread (up to page 10) and was like "Houston we have a problem". At least now I know why I was having a hard time killing stuff. Ok, time to read the manual. I read through some of the manual and that left me confused. I was a bit more enlightened, but still confused. So I decided to ask a  colleague that has the prima guide for it to skim through, I read everything they had to say about the character creation and development (plus some other stuff I was interested in). Damn. Still confused. I got home and phoned a buddy that's an elder scrolls geek. We spoke for 40 minutes. I think I'm getting the hang of it. I'm rerolling tonight (I'll play around with the char creation again. Maybe I can get something decently looking...) hopefully I won't gimp myself again.

Oh, my point. The system in this game is retarded and very badly explained in all the official stuff. That is all.

[Yegolev]

I have not put any mods on Oblivion, but from experience with Morrowind, you'll not break much other than possibly invalidating some saves when turning mods on and off, depending on the mod.  I get the impression that TESIV mods are supposed to be even more reliable, but I haven't really looked into it.  I think you'd want a mod activated for the lifespan of a character, anyway.  Oblivion doesn't (to me) require modding the way Morrowind did, but that's all opinion.

[Xanthippe]

Ok, so I picked this up last friday, mainly to test my new rig that I assembled on Saturday. I've never played an elder scrolls game, so I'm basically a noob. I played some 10 hours on Saturday and sunday, and didn't know what the hell was going on (game system wise). Today I read through some of that thread (up to page 10) and was like "Houston we have a problem". At least now I know why I was having a hard time killing stuff. Ok, time to read the manual. I read through some of the manual and that left me confused. I was a bit more enlightened, but still confused. So I decided to ask a  colleague that has the prima guide for it to skim through, I read everything they had to say about the character creation and development (plus some other stuff I was interested in). Damn. Still confused. I got home and phoned a buddy that's an elder scrolls geek. We spoke for 40 minutes. I think I'm getting the hang of it. I'm rerolling tonight (I'll play around with the char creation again. Maybe I can get something decently looking...) hopefully I won't gimp myself again.

Oh, my point. The system in this game is retarded and very badly explained in all the official stuff. That is all.

I'm in the same boat.  I have the Prima guide, but I still don't really understand how levelling works.  I get the mechanics of seeing the dealie that says I can level, then I get to pick which stats to boost, but I don't understand things like:

How many levels are there?  Is there a level cap?  When do I stop levelling?  What makes me have a +5 to Int option one time, and a +2 another?  The highest a stat can go is 100, right?

If I can level until all my stats are 100, then I'm fine with playing my now level 7.  But if there's some limit to levels, then I want to reroll.

Last time I could raise Personality by 3, everything else by 2.  Not a problem if I can level until all stats are 100, but it is a problem if I can only level X number of times.

[Wolf]

Ok so I just spent a ton of time tweaking every little detail of my char's face. I was content. Not happy, but content. So I name her Gussa, evil viking from hell. I get ingame, pause and think to myself... hmmm... that's not really what I made. But ok, I'll live with it. It's not that bad. I zoom out. WHAT-THE-HELL. AMAGAD the attack of the tiny-headed aliens.

I obviously suck at that. But I'm stubborn. It's possible to make a decent looking Nord. Ok, I'll check back again when I'm done with my next atrocity.

[Miasma]

You level up after ten of your major attributes increase, therefore you can keep leveling until all seven majors are at 100.  Since your major attributes are affected by race and astrological sign it will be a bit different for everyone but for most people you can probably get up to level forty something.  Most everything scales to your level so you can complete the main quest at level two if you like.

The multipliers are based on what major and minor skill ups you got.  For example, strength is based on blade, blunt and hand-to-hand.  In order to get a good multiplier one of those should have been chosen as a major.  The more skill ups you get with those the higher your strength multiplier will be.  Increases in major stats will have a larger impact on the multiplier but if you get too many you will level before you have time to build up the minor stats.

The only thing I would worry about in your build is endurance, you don't have any major skills for it.  Hitpoints are given every level and are fixed so you should focus on endurance until it is maxed, increasing your endurance at level 40 won't give you many hitpoints.  You don't have to worry as much about mana because that is just two times whatever your int is so you can raise that whenever.

There is a levelling mod that was posted somewhere in this thread and people seemed to like it.

[Polysorbate80]

The hard-core minmaxers seem to do it a little differently, I think it goes something like:

Put one skill affecting each stat into primary, but make sure they're all skills that you won't use by accident--i.e., alchemy, armorer, etc.  That way you can control exactly when and how you level.  Next, make sure you work other minor skills enough to get yourself good stat multipliers, and work a point in each major skill until you're a point from levelling.  Save, go train up a point in a major to level, rest, and see what multipliers you got...if the ones you want weren't +5, reload, work some more minors, save, rinse/repeat.

Sounds incredibly un-fun, IMO.

What's worked for me is the levelling mod + minor cheating at creation.  Pick a race you like based on appearance/special abilities, use the console to re-work your starting stats into something appropriate for the kind of character you want (don't just inflate them all, that takes the fun out of it), and let the level mod take care of your stats.  The only potential problem is if you like to practice a lot of irrelevant skills all the time like I do, such as jumping all the time or constantly casting spells while running.  You'll get in trouble if you level too much from those junk skills.

Oh, and it will let your stats go over 100.  My endurance was 150-ish last time I looked.

[Lantyssa]

It looks like glass with transparent alpha textures (the pauldrons and chain bits) and the green changed to the bluish-silver.

[Murgos]

It looks like glass with transparent alpha textures (the pauldrons and chain bits) and the green changed to the bluish-silver.

Yes, pretty much.

[Xanthippe]

Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way.

It's not a mmog, so I don't have to worry about my final character, it's just the thing I play when I play?  It's the journey, not the destination, etc etc?

I'm going to continue to muddle with my alchemist blade mage who likes to sneak around and see what happens.  Seems there is so much to do I will do it on multiple characters, right?

[Dren]

My latest go at creating a character that doesn't level at light speed has done well I think.  I made those slow to increase skills like athletism, acrobatics, heavy armor, blocking, blade, etc. my major skills.  I use my character as I normally would and it seems to be a good balance.  I'm leveling slowly, but it seems to keep pace with the storylines, etc.  At each level up I get a chance to increase all stats at least +2 and most often +3.  

Don't make any of your spellcasting abilities your majors unless you plan to level too fast.  Those go up crazy fast anyway, so they work quite well as minor skills.  You can practice them running from one place to the next so their easy enough to increase as you need.

When I made my pure mage, I would have two levels to get coming back from each expedition into a dungeon just from casting so many spells.  It was crazy.  My biggest screwup there was that I didn't do any armor skills so I was extremely soft and squishy.  Yes, you can use the difficulty slider, but I still feel like that is cheating.  I try to use it very sparingly and when I do it is just a tweak here and there.

I set it too low the other day and was one shotting everything.  The game got unfun really quick that way.  Plus, you'll fall way behind in leveling doing that as you won't be using your killing skills enough so nothing will increase.  There definitely is a balance there.  Just have to tweak to find it.

[Yegolev]

I learned to stop worrying about that stuff and love the journey.  Or the bomb.  Anyway, if it turns out that my little lizard hits a roadblock because he spends all of his time picking flowers and brewing potions instead of murdering things, so be it.  But with the right materials, he can definitely get the job done.  He's kinda like a pro athlete that gets hopped up on drugs before the big game.  If he sucks too much, though, I'll just roll up another one.

[Xanthippe]

What exactly does this levelling mod do? 

[Wolf]

Murgos, do you have any mods for the models of the face/body? Your toon just looks awesome, and mine just don't look the same way once in game. They got some sort of wrinckles, even if I make them the youngest possible.

[Murgos]

I started to have a tough time in combat around level 17 without having really thought about my character other that to wear whatever the best armor I could find was.  So I made some enchanted stuff with + str and started using magic weapons with + damage and soul trapping things for recharges, upgraded some spells (healing for example) and was fine.

There are ups and downs and the system is a little quirky but it works pretty well.

edit: Wolf, I am using a custom skin texture because thats how I got the tattoo on there but I haven't done anything for the face or wrinkles or any smoothing on the body itself.  I am using 2xAA and HDR at 1280x1024 so that might be some of the difference.

[Wolf]

I'm running the same specs, the only difference is I can't turn HDR on. I got a mod called "Natural Faces" which fixed it a bit. But it's still far from the same:
At Char Creation and In game.


At least most of the wrincles are gone. I'm playing this one ffs. Or I'll have to make a Male Orc, you can't go wrong with these.

Ok, last question. How do i turn the camera around ingame (not on the pause button). The way you did to take those pretty, pretty shots.

[Sky]

I'll upload a full picture tomorrow, but for now I switched my avatar to my Imperial from Oblivion.

Stupid new machine having to remember all my passwords and logins and hobgoblins.

To get vanity shots, hold down the middle mouse button (scroll wheel button) and rotate.

[Wolf]

Damn. It was from the fucking pause. She looks normal when I turn the camera around. FFS. At least now I'm the fucking master of char creation.

Here's to an evening lost.

edit:
Actually the thing that changed it was Natural Faces - this baby increases the resolution of the face textures for most of the races. I booted up my first char and she looked somewhat pret... normal. This mod is reaaaally nice.

[Wolf]

Can someone explain to me how the official mods work? The horse armor and this oresomthing or the other? What's stoping someone from releasing them and me from just dwonloading them as a regular mod and activating them the way I do with a normal mod?

[Reg]

I have Restoration as one of my major skills. I'm glad I did it because it levels very, very slowly if you only use it when you actually need healing.

[Dren]

Enchanting is a good point too.  I use it whenever possible.  It makes up for any problems you have with your character and makes encounters much easier.  I almost have all my items enchanted now and have no problems.  Right now I'm heavy on STR just so I can lug items from dungeons to the shops to sell.  Daddy needs cash for more enchants!

Enchants on weapons are almost as bad as a cheat code.  You just have to keep buying charges is all. (enchant on arrow, bow, and sneak shot for 3x = insta dead)

[Miasma]

I recently discovered the joy of invisibility (not the same as chameleon), I have just enough skill in illusion and willpower that I can keep casting it every thirty seconds without running out of mana.  Nothing sees through invis, you can cast it in the middle of a fight and everyone just stops.  I can run through entire caves without fighting anything, just to see what's in there.

It's great since I've done all the main quests and am now just exploring.

[Murgos]

Can someone explain to me how the official mods work? The horse armor and this oresomthing or the other? What's stoping someone from releasing them and me from just dwonloading them as a regular mod and activating them the way I do with a normal mod?

The EULA.  So, in other words nothing physical is stopping anyone from doing that and I happen to know that it is fairly easy to find someone hosting it.  I am not going to pirate the official mods, I don't agree with this penny ante style they are following so I just won't use the official stuff.  My hope is that when the do a large release (like an official expansion) they will include the smaller bits and pieces, until then I will support the mod community.

[Sky]

I haven't used any mods at all yet, I didn't mod MW, either, though I did chop up MW in the editor a little (remove cliff racers, +stamina amulet). Just got to play for about an hour last night for the first time in almost a week. Level 9 Knight, still. This game will last me months, heh.

[Bunk]

It's a transparent mod of glass armor with the chainmail and leather bits cut out.

It's called Cenobyte armor and it's by a french girl named Aleanne and you can find it on TESSource (along with four or five other colors and a chainmail bikini mod all by the same person).

The belly button tattoo is my own work but has some issues that I have to resolve before I give it out.

Aleanne is a regular member over at these forums: http://canadianice.ufrealms.net/forum2/index.php. Good forum to find actual modders, and not be swamped by the Vault like spam of the official forums.

[Xanthippe]

Thank you, Bunk.  I've been wondering if anyone had some good leads on forums.  I cannot bear to wade through the mess on the official boards.

[Xanthippe]

I have a real newbie question.

What's with all the cloth?

Is stealing from guilds I'm a member of not stealing?

If I clean out everything from a guild and sell it, will it ever come back?  All that alchemy stuff, for example.

[Lantyssa]

What's with all the cloth?

Is stealing from guilds I'm a member of not stealing?

If I clean out everything from a guild and sell it, will it ever come back?  All that alchemy stuff, for example.

Flavor.

If you do not get the red hand of naughtiness, you can do with it what you will.

I do not think it comes back, however I was never interested in the five septims I could get by doing that much work.

[Miasma]

Once you are a member of a guild everything is at your disposal, but cleaning them out won't make you much money.  I think that only the items inside of containers like barrels and chests will regenerate eventually.  Selling shovels and wheat isn't very lucrative though.

Oh, and if you bother to pick the locks on the display cases you will find out they are just replica glass/ebony :-(.

[Dren]

I take food and herbs and soul gems from the mage guilds regularly.  I make potions and sell for gold and use the gems to enchant.  Just be sure you notice if you get the red hand or not.  Some things are on display for the potions shop and you can't take them without going to jail.

Cloth is mainly worthless.  Look for expensive bottles of wine.  Some of them net you a nice profit.

You could steal stuff if you want.  You just need to be sure to get into the thieves guild so you can use their fences.  They are the only ones that will buy stolen stuff.

[Bunk]

The stuff in the guilds on the shelves will come back eventually. My first character made money by taking all the alchemy appartus and selling it back to them on a regular basis. Cheesy, yes, but it works.

[Xanthippe]

I found this regarding levelling, and how it works, which explained what's going on.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Character_Creation

Sounds kind of whacked to me in terms of design.

Does anyone play using levelling mods, and if so, which/why, if not, why not?

Question number 2, what good is an uber do-everything character and why would a person want one over having 3 or 4 different good but not uber characters?

TIA

[Morfiend]

Does anyone play using levelling mods, and if so, which/why, if not, why not?

Quite a few of us use Balors Leveling Mod - Vehen Edition. The problem being there are still a few bugs left in the program, and he seems to have dropped off the face of the internet. You can find links to it a few pages back. I believe the latest version is 1.1c

[Lantyssa]

I am trying the dz Smooth Leveling mod myself, and it seems to work fairly well, although my character just hit level 5.  (It requires a new character unlike Balor's.)  dz's has four options to control leveling: 10 major, 20 major, 30 of any or 60 of any.