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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion |OT|

Vark

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Oblivion has hit the big time! :) Pretty cool. That has to give you guys a nice sense of accomplishment seeing your work on tv or in a movie like that. :) Someone at ER must be a fan!

If only it was 10 years ago and the show was still relevant... so close!
 
Vark said:
If only it was 10 years ago and the show was still relevant... so close!

:lol So true! Now if we can just get one of the Desperate Houswives to play Oblvion! ;)

*Daydreams of Eva Longoria playing Oblivion*

Uh...I'll be back in a bit... :D
 
Ok, I watched my friend play this, and whats the big deal on the games visuals?
Looks like a suped up Xbox game to be honest. Guy still moves like in Morrowind, animations are stiff, and last-genish.
Whats the deal?
 

PhatSaqs

Banned
tsp_gatmog said:
Ok, I watched my friend play this, and whats the big deal on the games visuals?
Looks like a suped up Xbox game to be honest. Guy still moves like in Morrowind, animations are stiff, and last-genish.
Whats the deal?
- When did animation become generation specific?
- Did you notice the physics at all?
- The graphics overall are a huge step up from Morrowind.
 
tsp_gatmog said:
Ok, I watched my friend play this, and whats the big deal on the games visuals?
Looks like a suped up Xbox game to be honest. Guy still moves like in Morrowind, animations are stiff, and last-genish.
Whats the deal?

Maybe you need to look at Morrowind again to compare. There is a huge difference between the two. Animation looks fine to me, especially when you consider everything that is going on under the hood with this game. The AI, quests, graphics, and so much more are all huge steps up over Morrowind. And I loved Morrowind.
 

LakeEarth

Member
tsp_gatmog said:
Ok, I watched my friend play this, and whats the big deal on the games visuals?
Looks like a suped up Xbox game to be honest. Guy still moves like in Morrowind, animations are stiff, and last-genish.
Whats the deal?
Get glasses.
 

Nerevar

they call me "Man Gravy".
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Maybe you need to look at Morrowind again to compare. There is a huge difference between the two. Animation looks fine to me, especially when you consider everything that is going on under the hood with this game. The AI, quests, graphics, and so much more are all huge steps up over Morrowind. And I loved Morrowind.

seriously. Just look at the difference between a mudcrab between the two games. One looks like a block with claws, one looks like a crab. HUGE difference.

And you're ALWAYS going to have a graphical step-down for open-ended games like Oblivion. It's not going to look all pretty and touched-up as a linear, controlled-environment game.
 

Xenon

Member
GhaleonEB said:
I do hope that 360 patch comes out soon.


Any word on what this is going to fix. My game has become almost unplayable. The commands seem to lag now(For instance I press X to draw my weapon and it takes like 4 seconds for the game to respond) What used to be quick load pauses now are way too long. The game also has been locking up on me. I can't remember a single session where it has not locked up since I started having problems. =( I guess I was lucky because up until my 120th hour I had only one problem. I have tried the "A" button thing with no luck.

MS needs to add a defrag or chkdsk to their system tools.
 
Xenon: Have you also cleared some stuff out of your inventory? Some people have reported that clearing out extra keys, notes, etc. can cause things to work better, you may want to give it a shot.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Xenon said:
Any word on what this is going to fix. My game has become almost unplayable. The commands seem to lag now(For instance I press X to draw my weapon and it takes like 4 seconds for the game to respond) What used to be quick load pauses now are way too long. The game also has been locking up on me. I can't remember a single session where it has not locked up since I started having problems. =( I guess I was lucky because up until my 120th hour I had only one problem. I have tried the "A" button thing with no luck.

MS needs to add a defrag or chkdsk to their system tools.
I'm going through something similar. People say lots of quests are bugged, but I've only seen one so far. But my performance, mainly outdoors, is getting really, really bad. It used to be that grass and ground textures would fade in up close; no biggie. Now actual landscape objects - trees, rocks, houses, fences - come in 10 feet from me at times. I NEVER used to see draw-in while in towns, and now I can't see accross one without seeing people, signs, trees, etc. fading in.

The framerate outside is a disaster, now. I swear the "Loading" text is on perpetually now, and it just jumps around constantly. I actually run from most enemies now while outdoors since it's nearly impossible to fight them with the game contantly loading stuff up and chugging.

I hold "A" every time the game boots but I swear that does not do anything. Does the game keep a cumulative archive of all the stuff you kill outdoors? I went swimming in a lake yesterday and found some dead crabs and fish that I killed the last time I was there. Which was a couple of days ago (both in game and in reality). Neat, but if that kind of overhead is killing the performance, then drop it like it's hot.

I don't have any issues in dungeons, which is where I spend a good chunk of time anyways. But traveling outdoors used to be enjoyable just because it was so pretty. Now it's just an ugly mess. I REALLY hope some kind of patch cleans up this degredation over time.
 

Xenon

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Xenon: Have you also cleared some stuff out of your inventory? Some people have reported that clearing out extra keys, notes, etc. can cause things to work better, you may want to give it a shot.


Yeah, I have removed all keys. Sold off a lot of my potions. I even tried creating a new game but it still seems to be lagging. Not as bad but its still there. I click on a chest and it pauses before bringing up the pick mini game.

This has to be some kind of file system problem. Anyone have a clue on how the 360 handle fragmentation? The one thing I have been doing lately is downloading and deleting a lot of movies and demos. I think I may try deleting everything I can off the drive to see if it helps. I just want to finish the second mission on Lost Planet first. =)
 

gsarjeant

Member
GhaleonEB said:
I hold "A" every time the game boots but I swear that does not do anything. Does the game keep a cumulative archive of all the stuff you kill outdoors? I went swimming in a lake yesterday and found some dead crabs and fish that I killed the last time I was there. Which was a couple of days ago (both in game and in reality). Neat, but if that kind of overhead is killing the performance, then drop it like it's hot.

I'm not sure when you're holding "A", but for me, it hasn't seemed to work until the contoller light goes solid on boot. If I hold it right from when I turn the power on, I get no change. But if I wait for the 360 to recognize the controller, it seems to work.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
LakeEarth said:
Try deleting some of your old saves. It did the trick for me, I think. Might've just fixed itself.
I've started doing that as of yesterday. I realized I was on save 300 something and had not saved over very many. :lol

I deleted ~50 of them yesterday, I'll do a similar number each night. Hope that helps.
 

raYne

Member
GhaleonEB said:
I've started doing that as of yesterday. I realized I was on save 300 something and had not saved over very many. :lol

I deleted ~50 of them yesterday, I'll do a similar number each night. Hope that helps.
Almost 300 seperate saves? Tell me you're joking...

I can't see the need for more than 3 or so. I personally have 1 main save, 1 auto save and that's it.
 

firex

Member
seriously, 300 saves?

I have 1 save for a character (I actually use this as my main save), auto-save (obvious) and quicksave. that gives me something like 5 save files total. I just wish you could title save files, but it's not too bad since it will tell you the name of your character. oh, and a few pages back people talked about character names... my Argonian assassin is named Caliban. mostly because I stage managed a production of The Tempest around the time I made this character.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Vyse The Legend said:
Just got the new EGM and they have the scoop on the next three DLC add-ons.

The first was mentioned earlier by 1up: Dunbarrow Haven, the thieves cave. Cool Feature, it says, is Your own personal gang of thieves.

The second is Dragonfire Castle. Cool feature is a taxidermist who makes stuffed trophies for you.

The third is Deepscorn Hollow. Cool feature is A venomous garden that grows only items with negative effects (poisons galore).

Oh, and the rumor mill says a full-fledged expansion is coming in the Fall. :)

The quantity of stuff I won't be able to get is increasing (MS... Take2/2K Games get it sorted OUT!)... :(.
 

Citizen K

Member
Kinda near the end of the main story. Big spoilers ahead but I have a question.

I just finished the great gate part of the main quest. When I left the gate, poor old juaffre was dead! Was this supposed to happen or did it happen cos I was too slow. I kept a save right after entering the great gate so I tried reloading and ran through it again quickly but he was still dead when I closed the gate. Now I'm thinking he actually died during the big battle BEFORE i entered the great gate (and i didnt notice he died because it was chaos and I just ran to the great gate quickly). I have a save before that battle too (with jauffre obviously alive) so I could do that pre great gate battle again making sure he survives. So I guess what I want to know is happened in your game? Is he supposed to die? If not I'll probably do it agian cos I'm nice like that.
 
Citizen K said:
Kinda near the end of the main story. Big spoilers ahead but I have a question.

I just finished the great gate part of the main quest. When I left the gate, poor old juaffre was dead! Was this supposed to happen or did it happen cos I was too slow. I kept a save right after entering the great gate so I tried reloading and ran through it again quickly but he was still dead when I closed the gate. Now I'm thinking he actually died during the big battle BEFORE i entered the great gate (and i didnt notice he died because it was chaos and I just ran to the great gate quickly). I have a save before that battle too (with jauffre obviously alive) so I could do that pre great gate battle again making sure he survives. So I guess what I want to know is happened in your game? Is he supposed to die? If not I'll probably do it agian cos I'm nice like that.

I'll try not to spoil the rest of the game, but Jauffre doesn't play an essential part for the rest of the main quest, so it doesn't really matter if he survives or not. Like you, however, I was playing as a nice guy and disn't want to see him die. It's a bitch trying to keep him alive because he keeps engaging enemies without stopping to heal himself for some reason. I had to redo the Great Gate several times until he survived. I think the trick is to make sure he isn't engaged with an enemy at the same time you enter the gate.
 
I'm not gonna read the entire thread, but has anyone encountered a bug with the Adharji's Heirloom quest?

So I think I'm doing everything right, and I go sneak into her bedroom while she's sleeping, unlock the jewelry box and uh... there's a magic ring, but no "quest" ring. I grab everything, and the green marker still points to the jewelry box. I check the countess, and she doesn't have anything on her. This seems like a pretty big bug. Is there any way to avoid it? I have a save point right berfore when I started the quest. Should I just try doing it differently or something?

Thanks for any help.
 
Yeah, she is in bed... right next to the count. I actually just googled it and seems like that this IS a bug. I guess I just have to try doing it another way. :/
 

RevenantKioku

PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS PEINS oh god i am drowning in them
:lol :lol
What the fuck is this? I'm in the Skooma Den and these guys are just standing there taking a drink even two seconds even when talking. Then I shoot arrows into the face of the one chick sitting in the chair and it doesn't recognize a single hit! Then I shoot fireballs and they stand up saying "Don't make me attack you!" while I fling balls of flame into their face until they fall down.
10/10!
 

GhaleonEB

Member
So I'm noticing that there are houses for sale in every town. What can you do with them? I bought that one
haunted
manner, got the 'problem' fixed, and now it just sits there. What can I do with it? Any point in having more than one?

Also, I noticed in the stats page "shops invested in". How do I do that?

I'm up to 40k in gold and looking to throw it around.
 

Nerevar

they call me "Man Gravy".
GhaleonEB said:
So I'm noticing that there are houses for sale in every town. What can you do with them? I bought that one
haunted
manner, got the 'problem' fixed, and now it just sits there. What can I do with it? Any point in having more than one?

Also, I noticed in the stats page "shops invested in". How do I do that?

I'm up to 40k in gold and looking to throw it around.

when you buy a house, you can store stuff there. IIRC every house also has a quest associated with it, so if you want to go for all quests completed you need to buy them all. That's really about all they're useful for.

RE: investing, when you become either expert / master (I forget which) you can "invest" gold in a shop to increase the maximum gold that shopkeeper has (500 I think, I've never gotten that high). Basically, you give them money and that raises the maximum amount they'll pay for an item, so that item you were trying to sell for 1500, but could only get 1200 for before you invested, you can now sell for the full amount. That sort of thing.
 

gsarjeant

Member
Nerevar said:
RE: investing, when you become either expert / master (I forget which) you can "invest" gold in a shop to increase the maximum gold that shopkeeper has (500 I think, I've never gotten that high). Basically, you give them money and that raises the maximum amount they'll pay for an item, so that item you were trying to sell for 1500, but could only get 1200 for before you invested, you can now sell for the full amount. That sort of thing.

Yes, it's 500 gold, accessible at Expert. This is another thing that you can access with magic if you like. If you have access to the Arcane University, you can make yourself a fortify Mercantile spell that boosts your Mercantile skill to (or beyond) 75, depending on your Restoration skill. I just kicked mine up to 100. Give it a 3 second duration and cast it on yourself before you talk to a merchant, and you'll be able to invest in the store.

I can't imagine how long it would take to get Mercantile to 75 the real way.
 

firex

Member
Normally I'd be against a mod like this, but for the PC version I use a faster mercantile leveling mod. It's still slow, but it's reasonable. After something like 60 hours (I think) of playtime on my argonian assassin I'm in the 50s for mercantile with that mod. And that's with lots of selling, and even doing as many transactions as possible (as that seems to be how you skillup mercantile, though lately I've just gone to selling as much at once as I can).

Of course, I also use a mod that adds more gold to bigger merchants (i.e. the more famous the merchant/wealthier their location, the more money they have) so you can actually sell items for their value. It doesn't unbalance the game any really either... it just allows me to buy houses/train skills.
 

ElyrionX

Member
I just read through some of the earlier pages of this thread and I read that storing stuff in containers you don't own will cause the stuff to disappear. Is that really true?

I've been using the drawers in the Arcane University's Mage Quarters to store the stuff that I don't wish to carry around. I haven't played the game for about two weeks and today I booted up the game and couldn't find some heavy armour that I had stored in what I presumed to be the Arcane Uni's Mage Quarters. Now, it is possible though unlikely that I had shifted my stuff around and stored them in some other drawer in the other Mage Guild premises, so I'm wondering if those things are gone forever.

Does this mean that I would have to buy my own place if I need a permanent and reliable place to stash all my loot?
 

firex

Member
yes, yes, yes. I hope I don't come across as a dick for saying it like that, it's just I've actually been following this topic, and that question comes up a lot. If you want to store stuff, get your own house. It's the only safe way. People will check and take things from public places all the time.
 

ElyrionX

Member
firex said:
yes, yes, yes. I hope I don't come across as a dick for saying it like that, it's just I've actually been following this topic, and that question comes up a lot. If you want to store stuff, get your own house. It's the only safe way. People will check and take things from public places all the time.

Ok, thanks for the info. The cheapest house I can purchase would be the one in the Imperial City, right? It costs 2,000 gold right? If I become the Archmage of the Mage Guild, will the Archmage's room count as my room as well and allow me to store my items safely there?
 

firex

Member
you have to buy a house, really, cause even guildmaster's rooms aren't safe. people can and will take stuff out of the archmage's room and so on, at least in my experience.
 

bengraven

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Yeah, I usually start casting fireballs at them when they are on their way out. Havok physics FTW!

Speaking of which - I took someone's advice from earlier in the thread and began wreaking havok (haha) for fun with fireballs. I toss a Weak Fireball (blast radius of 5') at book shelves whenever possible. The Mage's Guilds are usually packed with them, in rooms with no one around. I had a pile of 200-300 books in one corner. Nailing that with a big fireball was spectacular.

Oh awesome, you took my advice! Did you get any spillage? Sometimes just a small nudge to books even outside the spell's radius is enough to cause them to spill like dominos. I also started using fireballs (I've been using the weak Fireball spell you get in the beginning of the Mage's Guild quest) to knock people into water. Like on bridges in Oblivion, I'll shoot Dremoras into the lava!

There's a lot of great things I'm noticing in this game. Some are kind of small and obvious, but I usually expect developers to take a shortcut. For example, wood is almost always wood and stone is stone, metal is metal. Obviously, right? But what I mean by that is that if you shoot an arrow at a stone well, the arrow bounces off. But if you aim higher to the wood frame holding up the bucket (or the bucket itself), it sticks in. It also sticks into signs, wooden fences, etc. I've been experimenting, seeing if they implemented proper arrow collision and they have for the most part; my only problem is that wooden doors are treated like stone and arrows bounce off. Like I said, a small thing and kind of a "duh" concept, but to me it's impressive.

My only problem is you can't get back arrows you shoot into dead bodies. You get back some or all of the arrows you shoot into enemies, but if you fire an arrow into their dead body (to play around with physics like I'm doing), you can't get it back. Also, why can't I move around Sigil Stones? I want to put my doubles in my display cases, but they fall and can't be moved; they make a great flaming sound, though, as if they're going to burn through the floor.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
bengraven said:
There's a lot of great things I'm noticing in this game. Some are kind of small and obvious, but I usually expect developers to take a shortcut. For example, wood is almost always wood and stone is stone, metal is metal. Obviously, right? But what I mean by that is that if you shoot an arrow at a stone well, the arrow bounces off. But if you aim higher to the wood frame holding up the bucket (or the bucket itself), it sticks in. It also sticks into signs, wooden fences, etc. I've been experimenting, seeing if they implemented proper arrow collision and they have for the most part; my only problem is that wooden doors are treated like stone and arrows bounce off. Like I said, a small thing and kind of a "duh" concept, but to me it's impressive.
I also took someone else's suggestion and used the scales I found in someone's house. There were weight stones next to it, so I took them and put them on the scales. And they worked, tipping over to the heavier side. I even balanced them using a combination of stones. It blew my mind total. Lots of details like you said; for some reason the scales thing impressed me as much as anything I've found in the game, since it's indicitive of the detail and accuracy of the physics.

BTW - I think deleting some of my saves helped. I went from about 350 to 4, and the chugging is way down. The draw-in still sucks, and is worse than I remember, but the framerate is good again which makes it more enjoyable. I didn't even realize that it was creating a new file with all those Autosaves; I usually saved over my last slot when I saved manually. I just never tried scrolling down on the list. It took an hour to delete them all. :(
 

bengraven

Member
ElyrionX said:
Ok, thanks for the info. The cheapest house I can purchase would be the one in the Imperial City, right? It costs 2,000 gold right? If I become the Archmage of the Mage Guild, will the Archmage's room count as my room as well and allow me to store my items safely there?

Yes, it can, and you can enchant and make spells right from your room.

My advice, though? If you want a very large, beautiful house right now? Do the "Where Spirits Roam" quest in Anvil. You have to buy the house there for only 5000 septims, which is 3000 more than the Imperial Waterway house, but so hundreds of times better. You won't find a better deal in the entire game and won't find a bigger and better house in the game until you start spending tens of thousands of gold. Sure, there is a quest involved, but it's fantastic and the rewards are perfect!
bring silver weapons

Just trust me. The only houses that are better than Benarius Manor are Arborwatch in Chorrol and your house in Skingrad, both of which are ~20-25000 gold if I remember correctly. AND you don't have to pay to furnish it; once the quest is finished, all furnishings appear. Experience points, free furnishing, big, beautiful house for very little gold = FTW. So like I said: best deal.
 

bengraven

Member
GhaleonEB said:
I also took someone else's suggestion and used the scales I found in someone's house. There were weight stones next to it, so I took them and put them on the scales. And they worked, tipping over to the heavier side. I even balanced them using a combination of stones. It blew my mind total. Lots of details like you said; for some reason the scales thing impressed me as much as anything I've found in the game, since it's indicitive of the detail and accuracy of the physics.

BTW - I think deleting some of my saves helped. I went from about 350 to 4, and the chugging is way down. The draw-in still sucks, and is worse than I remember, but the framerate is good again which makes it more enjoyable. I didn't even realize that it was creating a new file with all those Autosaves; I usually saved over my last slot when I saved manually. I just never tried scrolling down on the list. It took an hour to delete them all. :(

Yeah, the scales are something I noticed as well. It may be a lot of small things, but the attention to detail is great. I haven't put anything but weights on the scales, though, because I always end up tipping them over from the weight.

One problem I've had, though, is that collision detection is off on the big bookshelves. I tried putting all my leftover potions on the second story shelves at the top of the steps in my Skingrad house, but the lower left sides of the shelves have no collision detection on them. My potions just fall straight through the wood.

I think I know where you guys are coming from on the save files, though, and I'll try to cut down to only a few. Really, I only need one or two open. I don't mind, though I keep freezing at load times much like the last time I played (I'm crossing my finger that it autosaved for me the last time I entered a certain house).
 

Archaix

Drunky McMurder
bengraven said:
Yes, it can, and you can enchant and make spells right from your room.

My advice, though? If you want a very large, beautiful house right now? Do the "Where Spirits Roam" quest in Anvil. You have to buy the house there for only 5000 septims, which is 3000 more than the Imperial Waterway house, but so hundreds of times better. You won't find a better deal in the entire game and won't find a bigger and better house in the game until you start spending tens of thousands of gold. Sure, there is a quest involved, but it's fantastic and the rewards are perfect!
bring silver weapons

Just trust me. The only houses that are better than Benarius Manor are Arborwatch in Chorrol and your house in Skingrad, both of which are ~20-25000 gold if I remember correctly. AND you don't have to pay to furnish it; once the quest is finished, all furnishings appear. Experience points, free furnishing, big, beautiful house for very little gold = FTW. So like I said: best deal.


Plus, by the time you buy all the furnishings for your outhouse in the Imperial City, you've spent closer to 5,000 anyway. I bought that house and the storage containers just because it's in the middle of the world and easiest to stop by on the way somewhere else, though.
 

ElyrionX

Member
bengraven said:
Yes, it can, and you can enchant and make spells right from your room.

My advice, though? If you want a very large, beautiful house right now? Do the "Where Spirits Roam" quest in Anvil. You have to buy the house there for only 5000 septims, which is 3000 more than the Imperial Waterway house, but so hundreds of times better. You won't find a better deal in the entire game and won't find a bigger and better house in the game until you start spending tens of thousands of gold. Sure, there is a quest involved, but it's fantastic and the rewards are perfect!
bring silver weapons

Just trust me. The only houses that are better than Benarius Manor are Arborwatch in Chorrol and your house in Skingrad, both of which are ~20-25000 gold if I remember correctly. AND you don't have to pay to furnish it; once the quest is finished, all furnishings appear. Experience points, free furnishing, big, beautiful house for very little gold = FTW. So like I said: best deal.

Well, it sounds good except for the fact that I'm only level 6 and have like 100 gold left after spending on the Imperial City house and buying the storage furniture for it. And I have never held more than 2500 gold at any point in time.

What's the fastest way to gain gold legitimately in the game? Don't suggest alchemy because that is one of my major skills and I sort of screwed myself over when I chose Alteration, Destruction and Restoration (all Willpower-related) for my major skills. This means that when levelling up, I have to spend all ten major skill levels on any of the three aforementioned skills in order to obtain a +5 for my Willpower when leveling. So for now, I've held off levelling alchemy until I have maxed out my Willpower.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
ElyrionX said:
What's the fastest way to gain gold legitimately in the game?
Dungeons/caves/ruins. Leave with as little in your inventory as possible. For every goblin/mage/bandit etc. you kill, take their two most valuable items. You'll leave fully loaded and with a couple thousand worth of gold every time. Not to mention all the actual loot in them.
 
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Maybe you need to look at Morrowind again to compare. There is a huge difference between the two. Animation looks fine to me, especially when you consider everything that is going on under the hood with this game. The AI, quests, graphics, and so much more are all huge steps up over Morrowind. And I loved Morrowind.

when walking into a new area, shit stutters like a mad man. sometimes pauses for 2 seconds.

btw, it's on a non hdtv, which might have something to do with it.
jump animations are laughable.
looks great in some areas, but pitiful in others. lighting is top notch.
 
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