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

[Miasma]

1 - My horse just tripped on a stone and died.  What.  the.  fuck.
2 - I have become a vampire for no reason whatsoever.

I had no idea that could happen to your horse, and were you serious about the cougar guy having sex with his wife?  If you sleep in dangerous places like outdoors or in dungeons there is apparently a chance that you will get bitten by a vampire.  I hate the vampire stuff, I would just reload from the autosave that happens before you sleep.

I'm gimped with both my lvl 17 chars :(

Having two level 17 chars already probably means you were playing in an odd way, like you took alchemy and were cranking out potions or something so you only got increases to your INT.  Not that I'm trying to blame you, you should be able to play however you want without accidentally gimping yourself, it's the game's fault.  In that case I wouldn't re-roll, it's the game's bad mechanics so I would feel justified using a cheat code to inflate my attributes.

When it says you can level can you just continue to use other skills to even things out before you actually level? I was thinking maybe you can get a level just doing alchemy, but ignore the message to go rest and work on other stuff. Perhaps you just have to keep watch on your skills to determine if you are actually ready to level or not. Especially now that we know that if you level too fast, certain quests are going to eat you alive if your skills are lacking.

I'm only lvl 3 on my highest character, so I'll probably start trying to work it this way. That is if I can ever find an hour to actually play again. Real life...such a bother.

In Morrowind yes, after you got your level up notice you could still work on your minor skills and they would help your multipliers, not in Oblivion though.  Once you get your level up you are locked in for multipliers.

[El Gallo]

The problem is particularly bad for mages, which is why most of the people saying "play naturally" aren't pure/nearly-pure mages.  A lot of mages have all int/wil major skills.  So they level quickly and get shitty modifiers in their two main attributes, and very few modifiers at all in their other attributes.  If you start with high magic scores, you can max them out before you max out your int/wil, which means you'll never be able to max out those attributes.  Fighters and thieves are much less likely to have all their major skills in the same couple attributes.

In Morrowind yes, after you got your level up notice you could still work on your minor skills and they would help your multipliers, not in Oblivion though.  Once you get your level up you are locked in for multipliers.

If I continue to gain skills after getting the "go to sleep" message but before I actually sleep and level up, do those skill-ups count for my next level-up modifiers or are they lost?

[Sairon]

I'm gimped with both my lvl 17 chars :(

Having two level 17 chars already probably means you were playing in an odd way, like you took alchemy and were cranking out potions or something so you only got increases to your INT.  Not that I'm trying to blame you, you should be able to play however you want without accidentally gimping yourself, it's the game's fault.  In that case I wouldn't re-roll, it's the game's bad mechanics so I would feel justified using a cheat code to inflate my attributes.

Naa, have block, armorer, heavy armor, athletics, acrobatics etc. All warrior skills. A lot of the skills increases naturaly without me using them. Weapon skills increases insanely fast as well for some reason, especialy with 1h. I don't quest much and mostly run around and kill stuff. With my mage I must admit I abused some, spamm summon of rank 1 skellie while I'm travelling, sometimes when I summoned him and killed him with rank 1 fireballs to lvl destruction. At this point I didn't know how the system really worked.

[Khaldun]

Hm. I'm still not paying much attention to the levelling mechanics, and we'll see what that comes to--I'm playing a sneak, blade, security, destruction, summoning, speechcraft, and something else main skills character. I admit I haven't seen an End multiplier level-up yet, but I'm also only level 3 as I'm messing around exploring for the most part. In Morrowind, I have to say that I didn't pay much attention to levelling either, but that was because I enchanted a first-class weapon with lifestealing really early in the game, which basically let me mow down almost everything.

A couple of things that really impress me:

1) Traps implementation. None of this "turn on 'search', make a roll, disable the trap" thing--the traps are built into the environment, and the solution to the traps is built into the environment. (don't step on them, jump over them, etc.)
2) Quests outside the main storyline. Even the ones which are basically long-standing RPG conventions have some nice little plotting twists to them. The one with the gutless old dad in Chorrol who sends you to help his sons defend against goblins, for example.
3) The dungeon designs. We've come a long way since Daggerfall: each one of these places feels interestingly different in layout.

Some things that don't impress me:

1) Speechcraft mini-game. Yes, ok, I see why you need a mini-game of some kind, but this one is a really bad implementation. It's annoying the FIRST time you do it, let alone the 10,000th time. Just a really bad idea that runs against the immersiveness of much of the rest of the design.
2) The sparseness of the world in terms of habitation. I understand exactly why it's this way, given the richly interactive and graphics-intensive nature of the design, but even the largest cities feel roughly like a village in terms of the numbers of sentients in them. The whole gameworld feels uninhabited. In a way, I feel like Oblivion would be much better if it was set in a far-frontier province where the low habitation of settled communities actually fit the setting.


Other stuff:

I've read this thread and others and I still don't really get (or maybe it's just that I don't enjoy) the lockpick minigame. I'll give it another go tonight.

Is there a way to heal a horse? Restoration spell? I have the freebie horse from the priory and for some reason wolves always go for him and not me. My five-year old daughter's character also has this problem and she's really obsessing about the horse--frankly i think the character could die and if she got to play the horse instead she'd be cool with that.

What do you do with the crystals you can rip off out of high elf ruins? I've got a sack full of them but I'm scared to sell them. I'm trying not to read general threads in various forums where there might be other information that spoils the game, as this is one of the few where I really want to see if I can learn by doing and exploring. But I'm not above trying to cut to the chase when something isn't intuitive, as in this case.

[Miasma]

If I continue to gain skills after getting the "go to sleep" message but before I actually sleep and level up, do those skill-ups count for my next level-up modifiers or are they lost?

I think I remember reading in the manual that major skill ups still count for level-ups so I would imagine that the minor ones should still count for modifiers but I don't know for sure.  Since the modifiers get locked in each level-up they should be able to keep track of what they were.

Naa, have block, armorer, heavy armor, athletics, acrobatics etc. All warrior skills. A lot of the skills increases naturaly without me using them. Weapon skills increases insanely fast as well for some reason, especialy with 1h. I don't quest much and mostly run around and kill stuff. With my mage I must admit I abused some, spamm summon of rank 1 skellie while I'm travelling, sometimes when I summoned him and killed him with rank 1 fireballs to lvl destruction. At this point I didn't know how the system really worked.

Well that's just absurd of the game then, you should be able to choose those skills and be a good warrior without the leveling system gimping you.  I guess the steadily increasing number of complaints on the official boards are more than just noise.  You should not need to min/max to be viable at higher levels and yet it looks like you might have to.

[Miasma]

1) Speechcraft mini-game. Yes, ok, I see why you need a mini-game of some kind, but this one is a really bad implementation. It's annoying the FIRST time you do it, let alone the 10,000th time. Just a really bad idea that runs against the immersiveness of much of the rest of the design.

I've only had to use the speachcraft game about five times in order to advance a quest, you don't have to use it on everyone you run across.  You can also just bribe them to get the same result.

I've read this thread and others and I still don't really get (or maybe it's just that I don't enjoy) the lockpick minigame. I'll give it another go tonight.

I'm not terribly good at lockpicking either but the key is to wait for a certain sound, I actually do better at it with my eyes closed.  Each tumbler will either make a "tink" noise or a "scratch tink" noise, if you hear the latter you have more time to click the mouse button.

Is there a way to heal a horse? Restoration spell? I have the freebie horse from the priory and for some reason wolves always go for him and not me. My five-year old daughter's character also has this problem and she's really obsessing about the horse--frankly i think the character could die and if she got to play the horse instead she'd be cool with that.

There is a heal other spell but you need some more INT for mana to buy/use it, I don't know if it would work on a horse.

What do you do with the crystals you can rip off out of high elf ruins? I've got a sack full of them but I'm scared to sell them. I'm trying not to read general threads in various forums where there might be other information that spoils the game, as this is one of the few where I really want to see if I can learn by doing and exploring. But I'm not above trying to cut to the chase when something isn't intuitive, as in this case.

I think the welkynd[sp?] stones either restore your mana or will recharge magical items, I forget which.  There are also more expensive stones which will recharge all of your items, I think they are called varla stones.

[Signe]

And yet, they allegedly programmed for it.  Maybe I'm confusing the term "supported"... maybe it really means "we assume it works."  It IS an rpg, after all.  Maybe they arr peed that they tested my card.  Fair enough.

[Ironwood]

The Lockpicking noises on my rig are quiet as all hell, even though the other noises are fine.  I can't turn them up without all the other noises being LOUD.

Arg.

[Stormwaltz]

1 - My horse just tripped on a stone and died.  What.  the.  fuck.
2 - I have become a vampire for no reason whatsoever.

My coworkers want to know if you can bite the horse and make it a vampire too.

[Bunk]

I'm just playing without worrying too much about the leveling system. I have started practising armor repair in order to improve my end some, but I don't do it too much. The fact is, the game will give you a charcter molded after how you play. Yes you will be somewhat gimpy if you only ever use your 7 major skills, but its not impossible. Lets look at my character for example:

A thief/assassin type with speechcraft and illusion. At 14th level I have 82 Agil and about 72 Speed just from normal play. My personality is around 60. It would be higher, but I've started ignoring it to get my strength and endurance up a little. My Intelligence is in the mid 50's because I dabble in Alchemy for poisons, and use some other magic schools (though not very well). I'll never have tank level strength or endurance, and in the later game if I try tanking tough monsters I'll probably die.

How shocking, the sneaky thief can't tank!

If you want to min/max, go ahead. Its not really necessary though. Just pick a few skills out side of your majors and work them a little each level. Don't be in a rush to reach each next level as fast as you possibly can and you'll work out fine. The difficulty slider is your friend in the later game if stuff gets too tough.

Yes, my endurance and hitpoints are gimpy. Doesn't really matter when I can shoot an Orc Warrior Vampire with a single arrow from hiding and just wait for him to die from the fire damage poison I put on it.

[Ironwood]

1 - My horse just tripped on a stone and died.  What.  the.  fuck.
2 - I have become a vampire for no reason whatsoever.

My coworkers want to know if you can bite the horse and make it a vampire too.

Laugh it up.  But that horse meant the world to me.  Me and GENERIC_HORSE_NO02 were the bestest of buds.

There's a growing contingent of posters on the official forums complaining of premature vampiric syndrome.  I'm not sure if we're ALL retards or whether it's a bug in either the contagion or the presentation of the contagion information.  Either way, I now have to find 5 fucking grand soul gems.

And I keep getting a really bad case of sunburn...

[Sky]

As a Knight, I do have to say the speechcraft system sucks. Nice idea, shoddy implementation. Seems I'm always getting shafted with enough bad responses that I can only raise things a tiny bit...and what's with the countdown timer. I often end up with a lot lower reputation with characters than I started with, because the minigame shafted me. Small quibble, but as it's one of my Knight skills, it bugs me from an rp perspective.

I still think it's one of the best games I've ever played. All gripes are exceedingly small and quickly forgotten.

And people complaining on forums? Lolinternet, you know better :)

[Khaldun]

1 - My horse just tripped on a stone and died.  What.  the.  fuck.
2 - I have become a vampire for no reason whatsoever.

My coworkers want to know if you can bite the horse and make it a vampire too.

Laugh it up.  But that horse meant the world to me.  Me and GENERIC_HORSE_NO02 were the bestest of buds.

Seriously, you guys have no idea how much trouble I'm in if my five-year old's horse croaks. Between that and keeping her away from quests where you might run into a cougar guy having sex with his wife, this is turning out to be a complicated and delicate game to play with one's child watching and telling me what to do.  But this game is easily fascinating her more than any other she's ever seen, and I largely share the fascination. (Which is also a pain, because she's making me play her character more than mine...)  The game can definitely be forgiven more of its sins than some, since it is otherwise so ambitious.

[Ironwood]

No, I understand perfectly.  My wife has always loved the alchemy in Elder Scrolls.  EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER I take always has Alchemy as one of the mains so she can 'play potion' every 30 minutes, regardless of herbs.

Suffice to say, Oblivion is a wet dream as far as potions are concerned.  Poisons and foodstuffs in the mix.  I am already approaching master in Alchemy before any other skill.

;)

[WayAbvPar]

Hah!  I just received a freebie copy in the mail.  Now I have 3 copies of a game that annoys me.  Nice.  I was hoping it was the incense I ordered but NOOOO... it's Oblivion knocking at my door.   

At least Righ was able to play for almost an hour an a half at a time with no crashing.  I can't be bothered until they patch the thing.

What vid card are you using Signe? If its a 6600/6800 you may want to try the beta driver I mention a few posts back. I was crashing every hour or two until I made that update.

I have a GF7800 GT.  I tried the 84.25 version that were alledgedly optimised for Oblivion but my crashing became even worse so I went back to the latest regular drivers.  The beta driver before the 84.25 made no difference.  I'm also using Coolbits 2.

NOOOOOOOOO! Don't tell me you are having trouble with that card! I just dropped $300+ on this; it should be here tomorrow. If it doesn't work with Oblivion I may go on a shooting spree.

[Murgos]

The 7800 and 7900 (aren't we creeping up on ATI's naming system here?  This is going to get even more confusing in two generations...) are both reporting problems on the official boards, as Sky says 'lolinternets', and it could all be coincidence because in those same threads are people saying "my 7X00 works great!"

So, as usual, YMMV.

My X1600 Pro is on the van headed for delivery, I'll report on the trials and tribulations of installation and graphical changes this evening.

[Nazrat]

My 6800GS was out of stock so my 7800GS is on the truck for delivery today.  It better work.

[Fargull]

Seriously, you guys have no idea how much trouble I'm in if my five-year old's horse croaks. Between that and keeping her away from quests where you might run into a cougar guy having sex with his wife, this is turning out to be a complicated and delicate game to play with one's child watching and telling me what to do.  But this game is easily fascinating her more than any other she's ever seen, and I largely share the fascination. (Which is also a pain, because she's making me play her character more than mine...)  The game can definitely be forgiven more of its sins than some, since it is otherwise so ambitious.

Khaldun,

My son (who is five) really really enjoys playing the game with me also.  I am finding I have to go the straight and narrow.  We have went through the character creation part like five times since he kept wanting to change how the character looks.  I have to play almost the whole time in third person (which is driving me crazy).  Our current contender for no restart is a glarishingly purple lizard knight.  I am so goody two shoes that I keep looking for the Canadians to draft me.

[Modern Angel]

I was fine for a very, very long time. Now I'm getting freeze ups every time I go into an interior area that neccessitate a hard reboot. Curious. May go back to an older save and see if it's the same.

[Fargull]

My X1600 Pro is on the van headed for delivery, I'll report on the trials and tribulations of installation and graphical changes this evening.

Murgos,

My X1600 Pro is almost flawless.  Was easy to get it up and rolling.  I have noticed two graphical glitches that seemed to be tied directly to shadowing, but have not found a work around.   Fortunately they really only plague me with extremely distant objects (and only about 1 in 20) and in one part of the build your character cave complex (which because of my son) I have seen way to much of...

I have the same shadow/geography issues with WOW (which is now running flawless with everything maxed to the hilt).

[murdoc]

Tried to show off the 360 to the wife using this game and her only comment was 'Why do you stop moving all the time?'

Thinking I'll return the game and try another copy as I can't walk around outside without getting weird lag-like symptoms. This isn't the 'loading...' message, but actually stops in movement. Some fights I had I didn't see any of the action, just kept slamming my cast button and when everything started moving again, the bandit or wolf or whatever dies...

Frustrating. Will try putting the 360 flat instead of upright on it's side and see if that helps any.

[Khaldun]

My daughter is the same way: no stealing, no murdering. Though she's a bloodthirsty lootwhore when we get attacked by bandits or goblins. "Did you remember to loot that body, Dad?" "Don't forget to get that ratmeat, Dad!" Also she is scared of the Oblivion gates, though mostly for reasons of self-preservation. ("I am not strong enough for that, Dad! I am not going in there!")

Though there is one thing she wanted me to steal early on.

A horse. The problem with a stolen horse, it turns out, is that the damn thing will not stay in one place when you get off of it. If you park it in a stable or corral, any NPC nearby will scream about theft when you come back to get the stolen horse even if the NPC didn't scream thief when you arrived. You pretty much have to go for serial horse-theft and of course horse-theft is a gateway drug to all out thievery.

So my daughter settled for the freebie horse from the priory, which we have now christened Fatbottom.

She's getting interested in a house now too and I know what THAT means in the longer haul. We're going to be levelling up in Interior Decorating, since she won't let me sell stuff like pretty clothes, jewels, inkwells, paints and so on. Plus we'll be able to make postmodern sculptures with fifty pounds of putrifying rat-meat: we're collecting the damn stuff. Armor and weapons I'm free to sell at will, thankfully.

[Khaldun]

Also, some experimenting with avatar looks this morning, and I've come to an interesting conclusion.

You can make some of the most breathtakingly ugly avatars in the history of computer and console gaming. I mean, wow, the uglies I pulled off with Tiger Woods PS2 and stuff are nothing by comparison.

But making really nice looking avatars, especially female ones, is pretty damn tough. Almost everyone looks like they have a skin disease and fetal alcohol syndrome. It absolutely CANNOT be done with high elves, from what I can see. It's easiest with Bretons, of the humans. Khajits are always kind of neat looking, as are Argonians. You can make kind of nice-looking dunmers if you really really work at it. The problem is that most of the really nice-looking avatars look almost exactly the same--it's nearly impossible to make someone look both interestingly distinctive and attractive.

One thing I'm wondering: is there facial hair? Am I missing this option somehow? If so, bummer: I always like to make at least one guy with a mustache and/or beard.

[Ironwood]

There is Facial Hair.  If you thought you were ugly now, well, hell, Goodluck.

[Yoru]

There's facial hair; my Redguard had sliders for 7 different beard areas. As far as I can tell, there's no polygon-based facial hair at all, just texture modifications. The beard settings basically turn the appropriate patch of skin towards your hair color. I was trying to give myself a wicked five o'clock shadow for that 'been out in the wilderness without a razor so I shaved with a longsword' look.

It ended up looking like I've been in a pie-eating contest, chowing down on shoe-polish pastries.

[Bunk]

As a Knight, I do have to say the speechcraft system sucks. Nice idea, shoddy implementation. Seems I'm always getting shafted with enough bad responses that I can only raise things a tiny bit...and what's with the countdown timer. I often end up with a lot lower reputation with characters than I started with, because the minigame shafted me. Small quibble, but as it's one of my Knight skills, it bugs me from an rp perspective.

I still think it's one of the best games I've ever played. All gripes are exceedingly small and quickly forgotten.

And people complaining on forums? Lolinternet, you know better :)

I actually got quite good at the conversation game, especially once I had access to the rotate button. I hardly use it at all now though. Once I got in to the University I just made a spell that charms the target and buffs my personality at the same time for 15 secs. Makes everybody love me :)

Big thanks to the tips on lockpick, I can unlock hard chests without more than one or two breaks now.

[Khaldun]

Ok, I knew about the shading facial hair. I was just hoping there would be poly facial hair too, for long beards and such. Bummer.

I don't find the speechcraft minigame hard: once you get the hang of it, you can almost always improve your standing with an NPC. It's just annoying in its design.

[Morfiend]

I think part of the problem with the complexion of the characters is that the dungeon room they make you create your character in has wierd tourch lighting, so you try and make him look normal, and when the character gets out in the world, the real light makes him look ill. I actually managed to come up with one decent Briton and a decent Dark Elf. My first character ended up looking like he had jaundace.

[Fabricated]

This is why I wasn't too worried about the leveling system or any weird UI problems, because the modding community for Morrowind is huge and they're raring to get at Oblivion.

Smoove Leveling:
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Dz%27s_Smooth_Leveling_Mod

Time Mod:
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/OblivionTime

No more teleporting/psychic guards:
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/No_Psychic_Guards

Lighter Alchemy Ingredients:
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Lighter_Alchemy_Ingredients

Improved UI and No Quest Markers (if you don't want them):
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Improved_UI_%26_No_Quest_Markers

Sneak Icon moved next to Compass (thank you!):
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Sneak_Icon_Mover

Stolen Horses don't wander off:
http://www.tescreens.be/oblivionmodwiki/index.php/Horses_Stay_Put_%28No_Wandering%29

[Kail]

I'm years away from being able to afford a computer that will run this, so this is mostly an academic question (and possibly a biased one at that), but from what everyone's saying, I'm not seeing where this game is much better than Morrowind.  As far as I can tell, here's what I'm seeing people say:

World: Open world with static quests, like Morrowind.  Probably the game's biggest strength.

Control: Bad, like Morrowind.  There are minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking now, though, which sounds interesting.

Graphics: Better than Morrowind, but character models (still) have issues.

Stability: Bad, like Morrowind.  Performance issues on a lot of systems, crashes, unrecoverable saves (?!), et cetera.

Mechanics: Less exploitable than Morrowind, the same or possibly worse skill/levelling system as Morrowind.

Naturally, though, bad features get more press than good.  I assume there's something I'm missing here, or else everyone wouldn't be gushing about it; can someone enlighten me?

[Bunk]

The quests feel way more involded, its not all fedex stuff, some of them actually take some thought. The NPC AI is annoying to some, but its far more interesting than the talking statues of Morrowind. The NPCs are ugly, but not Fugly like Morrowind. Also, they are all voiced over. The voices used get repeated a lot for generic NPCs but its still better than Morrowind.

Most of the major game play changes addressed a lot of the easy Morrowind Exploits that would tend to ruin the game for you.

If you just disliked little things about Morrowind, but enjoyed it overall, you'll like Oblivion. If you hated Morrowind, you'll hate this.

[Calantus]

About the cost of spells, their magika costs are related to the magic school they belong in. So if you see a fireball spell costing hundreds when you have 30 skill, it'll cost a whole lot less by the time you're 80 skill.

Also if you want a strong character without too much min/maxing just make sure you don't have any non-combat skills you use often in your majors. I personally don't see the problem with a thief putting sneak in minor for example as all it really does is start the skill off lower and make it slower to raise, your majors don't need to define you. Also, never ever ever put athletics or acrobatics (or alchemy o_O) as majors, that's just asking for trouble. If I was playing a knight and not min/maxing to hell and back I'd probably go something like...

Blade
Heavy Armor
Block
Restoration

... as my actual use majors, then fill up the rest with crap I never use. This way every level up I have is filled with skills that will actually make me fight better. If I wanted to min/max more I'd probably take out block and resto as well.

[Morfiend]

Is it true your skills are capped by your attributes?

So that you need 100 in STR to get 100 in Blade? I havent read that this is the way it is, and it could have just been coincedence that my str was 51 and my blade skill was at 51, and wouldnt seem to go up any more.

If so, thats going to make all the people who spread out their stuff very upset at laster levels, when they cant level with their usless skills as majors, cause they picked skills that are not related to their main attributes.

[Sairon]

A good technique which I use, and probably a lot of others as well, is to just hit T and rest for 1 hour when you need to heal. If you get a message saying enemies are nearby just backtrack a couple of seconds and it usualy works fine. Another technique which I use if I've quicksaved in a battle which turned out to be to rough, is to pull the mobs to a zoneing. Then just zone and wait a few seconds, the mobs will zone after. However they're affected by some magic zone lag for the first couple of seconds, use these seconds to take a couple of swings on them, then simply zone back in, rince and repeat. The last zone you were in gets cached so it's all instant action.

[Ironwood]

Also, they are all voiced over.

Boromir, Wonder Woman, Zod and Jean Luc Picard.

Strange.