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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion |OT|

Ikse

Member
I am having troubling deciding on a race/class combo at the moment. I've tried a Sorcerer for a little while, then I moved over to a Thief type class. But I just can't settle down on a combo yet.

What are some of the more favoured races and classes? I thought about a Bard type character, but I heard they aren't too great in Oblivion.
 

jlh

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild Quests were both rather average. Each had some good missions, and each had some boring missions. They're worth doing, but they can get tedious at times.

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are both great, especially the DB. Definitely the best questline over all. So well written, and nice twists along the way.
Anyone else get a sense of dismay when the guy who recruited you was strung up and had his skin pulled off?

Oh, and still wondering why my 100% Protection from Disease Ring doesn't protect against Vampirism.

Fighters Guild is so boring I'm having a hard time motivating myself to finish it but the Mage's Guild really picked up once I got to the Arcane U., it was just that those recommendation tasks from the individual guilds were mind-numbing. I'm saving the Thieves Guild for last since I figure it'll probably be fun and I'll need something fun to wash away the dullness of the FG. Dark Brotherhood is by far the best questline, I could really go for a whole game of nothing but Dark Brotherhood stuff.
Lachance's death was hard to take but the worst part was having to kill everyone in the Cheydinhal sanctuary since I really liked all of them. It just feels so empty going back there every week and not seeing my family of happy killers.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Juice said:
Have we all already discussed the patch that came out? I just booted into Oblivion for the first time in a week or so and saw it had a game update..

How's the patch?

Yep, been out for a bit now. It fixed a lot of stuff, including making the framerate WAY better in the outdoors (on the 360). It also eliminated the "Loading area" message from popping up so much (still does, just less so).

Only sucky thing really is that if you had a bugged quest that the patch fixed, then you still have to create a new character in order to successfully complete the quest, as your current character is still "bugged". Couldn't be helped from a programming point-of-view, just sucky :) I'm currently running a new character through the FG in order to get the 2nd to last achievement unlocked.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Fighter's Guild and Mage's Guild Quests were both rather average. Each had some good missions, and each had some boring missions. They're worth doing, but they can get tedious at times.

Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are both great, especially the DB. Definitely the best questline over all. So well written, and nice twists along the way.
Anyone else get a sense of dismay when the guy who recruited you was strung up and had his skin pulled off?
I actually kind of dug that, in an "eeeewwwwww" kind of way. Though,
I was annoyed that I had both the traitor's diary and his MOM'S HEAD in my inventory and the story didn't let me say, "hey guys look at these". And then on top of it I was forced to watch the traitor kill two guys in the crypt before I got control back. It was a bit of an "idiot plot", where if you just open your mouth and say something it would solve the whole thing. That's the only part of the DB questline that really bugged me. That, and killing everyone in the sanctuary. The only one I liked was that chick that kept saying, "Good luck, Brother! I hope you don't get killed!" She was cute and really nice. :(

I took a great deal of pleasure in killing that rude guy, though. Ker-smack.
 
Does anyone know how to fix damaged stats? I thought praying at an altar would heal them but they seem to be permanently damaged. If there is no fix, then that's pretty annoying, especially having my stats in the red in the menus.
 
jlh said:
Fighters Guild is so boring I'm having a hard time motivating myself to finish it but the Mage's Guild really picked up once I got to the Arcane U., it was just that those recommendation tasks from the individual guilds were mind-numbing.

I agree. The Recommendation Quests were rather boring and tedious. The Mage Guild Quest do get much better once you actually get to the Arcane University. Still, it doesn't compete with the Thieves or Dark Brotherhood.

As for the patch, I've got nothing but good things to say about it, except for the fact that it can't fix quests that are already broken. That doesn't really effect me, but for those it does, I feel for ya'!
 

GhaleonEB

Member
purnoman3000 said:
Does anyone know how to fix damaged stats? I thought praying at an altar would heal them but they seem to be permanently damaged. If there is no fix, then that's pretty annoying, especially having my stats in the red in the menus.
Did you pray at an altar inside a chapel? That should do it. Not sure what else it would take.
Kung Fu Jedi said:
I agree. The Recommendation Quests were rather boring and tedious. The Mage Guild Quest do get much better once you actually get to the Arcane University. Still, it doesn't compete with the Thieves or Dark Brotherhood.

As for the patch, I've got nothing but good things to say about it, except for the fact that it can't fix quests that are already broken. That doesn't really effect me, but for those it does, I feel for ya'!
To be fair, the game makes it clear that you are some peon while trying to get into the Mage's Guild, and everyone gives you those shit jobs as a result. But that's a level of realism I could have done without. :lol One of the first DB quests is better than any of the recommendation quests (dropping the stuffed head on old guy FTW!).
 
GhaleonEB said:
To be fair, the game makes it clear that you are some peon while trying to get into the Mage's Guild, and everyone gives you those shit jobs as a result. But that's a level of realism I could have done without. :lol One of the first DB quests is better than any of the recommendation quests (dropping the stuffed head on old guy FTW!).

Yeah, I know they were trying to make us feel like a peon, and doing a good job of it. :D But, the quests tended to be simple fetch quests which got pretty old.

That DB quest with dropping the head on the guy was awesome. I loved the variety of those quests, and nice twists that went along with the story.
 

shedt

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
I agree. The Recommendation Quests were rather boring and tedious. The Mage Guild Quest do get much better once you actually get to the Arcane University. Still, it doesn't compete with the Thieves or Dark Brotherhood.

As for the patch, I've got nothing but good things to say about it, except for the fact that it can't fix quests that are already broken. That doesn't really effect me, but for those it does, I feel for ya'!


first post on gaf

Oblivion is my favorite game so far. The Mage's guild quests did get wayyy better IMHO after you get to the university. Really fun, and the item and stuff you get for finishing the guild is really nice.
 
I prayed at an altar in a chapel, still didn't do anything. I have over 100 hours and my stats have never been permanently damaged before. I checked and it's not any items doing it. It typically happens when I fight a Lich or a Wraith and they cast some spell that drains a stat temporarily but it ends up damaging it. This happens when i'm still in a fight so I don't even have a chance to drink a cure disease spell before my stats are damaged if that's what causes it.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Yeah, I know they were trying to make us feel like a peon, and doing a good job of it. :D But, the quests tended to be simple fetch quests which got pretty old.

That DB quest with dropping the head on the guy was awesome. I loved the variety of those quests, and nice twists that went along with the story.
One thing the DB quests really tapped into was the bonuses - extra incentives if you fulfilled the quest a certain (more difficult) way. Those helped to make the quests that much more fun. Sure you, COULD just run in and kill the guy, but dropping the stuffed head was waaaay more fun. And then they add in all the chatter about it, like the dispatch sent out by the Black Horse Currier and some of the town folk mentioning it. Overall it just felt better thought-out, as well as better written.

The Mage's Guild is definately getting better. I'm just learning about
Black Soul Gems
, which means I can hopefully wrap up that shrine quest I've had open for over 100 hours soon. :lol
 

shedt

Member
purnoman3000 said:
I prayed at an altar in a chapel, still didn't do anything. I have over 100 hours and my stats have never been permanently damaged before. I checked and it's not any items doing it. It typically happens when I fight a Lich or a Wraith and they cast some spell that drains a stat temporarily but it ends up damaging it. This happens when i'm still in a fight so I don't even have a chance to drink a cure disease spell before my stats are damaged if that's what causes it.


what stats are these? have you tried using potions that heal stats? that sounds pretty crappy. I have to say everytime i have negative stats i just go to a church and use the alter and i'm fine.
 
Yeah, I used to do that, go to a church, pray at an altar, damaged stats gone. For some reason, that's not the case anymore. I haven't changed my equipment in awhile so it can't be that. It's strange.
 

Nerevar

they call me "Man Gravy".
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Yeah, I know they were trying to make us feel like a peon, and doing a good job of it. :D But, the quests tended to be simple fetch quests which got pretty old.

they were all better than gathering ****ing flowers for an hour for your first quest.

Yeah, I used to do that, go to a church, pray at an altar, damaged stats gone. For some reason, that's not the case anymore. I haven't changed my equipment in awhile so it can't be that. It's strange.

did you make sure the "bolt" that comes out of the altar actually hit you? I've had several instances where I went to pray but the bolt that came out missed me and I didn't have my stats cured. It's annoying.
 
shedt said:
first post on gaf

Oblivion is my favorite game so far. The Mage's guild quests did get wayyy better IMHO after you get to the university. Really fun, and the item and stuff you get for finishing the guild is really nice.

Welcome to GAF! You're among friends in this thread! :)

Yeah, the Mage Guild got better as it went along. It just started off on a very slow note. The quests made sense as the progressed, and the spells and items you collected along the way were nice too.
 

Jonnyram

Member
I just finished the Mage's Guild questline. I thought it got a little OTT at the end, but it was still quite satisfying,
though somewhat dull that EVERYONE turned necro, pretty much. It was so obvious in that dungeon with Caranya, I thought about just killing everyone on the way in instead of waiting for the obvious to happen.

In the main questline I've just closed Bruma gate with the guards and suffered from some of the retarded AI shit that you guys mentioned earlier. "Oh look there's an imp at the bottom of that cliff, let's jump into the lava!" Needless to say, only the captain made it to the sigil stone.

I've got my house in Bruma, which was a bit of a mistake
considering what happened to the Mage's Guild there
and I've been kitting it out with furniture, and have some questions about that... Is there any max storage space for any one container? Is there a convenient way to place books on shelves (levitation is kind of long-winded)? Is there a way to stop the levitation spell before it runs out, without jumping?

Level 9 but my Illusion skill is about level 90 now :)
Most other magic is around 50.
 

raYne

Member
Jonnyram said:
Is there any max storage space for any one container?
Nope. However, if you fill one up too much it'll start to slow down the access time from when you press "open" to when it actually does. And of course there's the scrolling annoyance of having a lot of stuff in one place.

Is there a way to stop the levitation spell before it runs out, without jumping?
L trigger pulls things towards.
R pushes things away.
L then R throws stuff.
L + R ends the spell.

It's a lot easier to place stuff by just grabbing it normally, so I'd use that instead of TK.
 
GhaleonEB said:
I actually kind of dug that, in an "eeeewwwwww" kind of way. Though,
I was annoyed that I had both the traitor's diary and his MOM'S HEAD in my inventory and the story didn't let me say, "hey guys look at these".

If you drop the head in front of him he will become nervous and distracted. Doesn't affect the quest progression, unfortunately.
 
I'm sure this bas been brought up before, but where is the best place to sell weapons/armor? I have tons of stuff to sell but nobody seems to be able to give anywhere near what I should be able to get from them. Is there anywhere with a 2000-3000 dollar ceiling on selling stuff?
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
WHOAguitarninja said:
I'm sure this bas been brought up before, but where is the best place to sell weapons/armor? I have tons of stuff to sell but nobody seems to be able to give anywhere near what I should be able to get from them. Is there anywhere with a 2000-3000 dollar ceiling on selling stuff?

Unfortunately, no. 1200 seems to be the unaltered max (weapon shop in Anvil, for instance) but I think there might bet a 1500 max default merchant? Not sure, I used the Anvil guy.

Anyway, with Master in Mercantile you can "invest" 500 gold max into a single merchant, giving it a +500 limit for each transaction. Unfortunately, you just lose a ton of money no matter what selling high-end weapons/armor. However, you get SO many tons of the stuff at higher levels, this becomes a non-issue. I had 500k+ gold by level 25 or so and stopped selling stuff. I'm now level 45 and have 50k+.
 

SteveMeister

Hang out with Steve.
raYne said:
Nope. However, if you fill one up too much it'll start to slow down the access time from when you press "open" to when it actually does. And of course there's the scrolling annoyance of having a lot of stuff in one place.


L trigger pulls things towards.
R pushes things away.
L then R throws stuff.
L + R ends the spell.

It's a lot easier to place stuff by just grabbing it normally, so I'd use that instead of TK.

Speaking of telekinesis, here's a challenging metagame to try. Use TK to pick up a pumpkin, throw it up in the air, and try to hit it with an arrow. If you can hit a strawberry in this manner, you are truly talented :)
 

raYne

Member
Jonnyram said:
What do you mean by "grabbing it normally"? I didn't know there is a way to do that!
Are you serious? Just look at an item, if you're in hands reach put the crosshair over it and hold the left bumper to grasp it.

You can grab anything you can pick up, including people.


SteveMeister said:
Speaking of telekinesis, here's a challenging metagame to try. Use TK to pick up a pumpkin, throw it up in the air, and try to hit it with an arrow. If you can hit a strawberry in this manner, you are truly talented:)
That sounds like a challenge!

*rubs hands together*
 

Jonnyram

Member
raYne said:
Are you serious? Just look at an item, if you're in hands reach put the crosshair over it and hold the left bumper to grasp it.

You can grab anything you can pick up, including people.
Ah! I guess that's how you're supposed to hide dead bodies! :) Yes, I'm surprised I didn't look into this earlier.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
raYne said:
Are you serious? Just look at an item, if you're in hands reach put the crosshair over it and hold the left bumper to grasp it.

You can grab anything you can pick up, including people.
Hey, I didn't know that until a good 60 hours into the game. :lol I have a tendancy to toss bandits off the side of bridges or cliffs now. :)

I just did a Mage's Guild quest where I was trying to rescue
a mage under cover in an Alyid ruin filled with necromancers. There's one battlemage left behind. He runs up to me, tells me to follow him. Sure, no problem. He takes off, I run after. He runs right into one of those traps that rams the floor up into some spikes on the ceiling. I saw it as soon as we entered into the room, but no, he sprints right onto it. I stand there and watch him lift up - ker-scrunch! Quest updated, last dude is dead.
Is this supposed to happen? I'm way past that now but I'm curious if there was any benefit to trying to (somehow) keeping him alive.
 

Dice

Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I'm 5 hours in, never played Morrowind or anything like this. It's pretty amazing. I have a Barbarian Nord with the Theif sign.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
Dice said:
I'm 5 hours in, never played Morrowind or anything like this. It's pretty amazing. I have a Barbarian Nord with the Theif sign.
I was overwhelmed the first time I went to the Imperial City. I though I'd seen the whole city, when it was just one section. I literally freaked out.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
I just want to say that this game is frickin' phenomenal (though it makes me ache for a new King's Field), but removing vampire is a damn bitch!
 

GhaleonEB

Member
John Harker said:
I just want to say that this game is frickin' phenomenal (though it makes me ache for a new King's Field), but removing vampire is a damn bitch!
Don't get kicked out of the Mage's Guild! Whatever you do!
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
GhaleonEB said:
Don't get kicked out of the Mage's Guild! Whatever you do!

You mean because of the nightshade you need? Do you know how long it took me to figure that out? hahaha
 

raYne

Member
GhaleonEB said:
Hey, I didn't know that until a good 60 hours into the game. :lol I have a tendancy to toss bandits off the side of bridges or cliffs now. :)
:lol I only wish you could use TK on people/animals etc (make it happen in the sequel Bethesda!). I'd have great fun with that little gem.

Hell if they made mastery a requirement before you'd be able to, I'd raise to that level asap!
 

Mejilan

Running off of Custom Firmware
John Harker said:
I just want to say that this game is frickin' phenomenal (though it makes me ache for a new King's Field), but removing vampire is a damn bitch!

Oblivion's awesome, but it ain't no DQ8!
(j/k) ;p
 

GreekWolf

Member
Man, I'm still in shock by how improved the 360's frame-rate is after that patch. I spent a couple of hours just running around the countryside and enjoying the great outdoors. I think I'll be spending a lot more time walking from town to town now, instead of warping everywhere on the map.
 

John Harker

Definitely doesn't make things up as he goes along.
Mejilan said:
Oblivion's awesome, but it ain't no DQ8!
(j/k) ;p

Oh jeeze, you just bitched me out in the other thread and I leave peacefully, and here you go and pull one of theseeeeeeeee on me, eh?

Ha, just kidding.

Do we have any other King's Field fans here that play this game and wish for another KF? (Not the upcoming PSP knockoffs?) Though this game is by far and away more massive and immersive, I'll always have a softspot for KF.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
purnoman3000 said:
Anyone know of a quick or easy way to boost your hand to hand skill without fighting enemies?
There's a few people that will train you at hand to hand. Though, you level the first few notches so fast I'd bring it up a bit first. Go beat up some mudcrabs.
 
Put me down as another King's Field fan. I loved the game back in the day on the PS1. So immersive for it's time. I'm even considering re-buying the PS1 versions for the PSP when the emulation/dowload thingy gets working. All that said, King's Field is no Oblivion! :D

Looks like we're getting some new GAFfers into this thread. Welcome one and all to the Oblivion lovefest! Join us on our march to 10,000 posts! :D
 
GreekWolf said:
Man, I'm still in shock by how improved the 360's frame-rate is after that patch. I spent a couple of hours just running around the countryside and enjoying the great outdoors. I think I'll be spending a lot more time walking from town to town now, instead of warping everywhere on the map.

Yeah, it's greatly improved. Considering one of the few knocks on the game at release was that it's framerate wasn't stable, consider how well it would have been reviewed had this patch been in the initial release.

It also says alot about whe we can expect out of the 360 in the future, as clearly Bethesda has learned enough about the system now to code a more efficient game.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Looks like we're getting some new GAFfers into this thread. Welcome one and all to the Oblivion lovefest! Join us on our march to 10,000 posts! :D

Onward Oblivion soldiers!

I fired up a new character over the weekend, a female Breton that's using the default "Mage" build. I wanted to see what a pure caster would be like... man is the game different! She is really making me want to experience much of the game all over again, something I didn't think would happen this soon. I only made her so I could do the FG stuff again to finally get my last achievement that I should have gotten months ago.

I had my wife make the character herself. She spent like an hour manipulating all the sliders, and ended up with a decent looking Breton. I'll have to post a pic if I can remember to take one.
 
What type of character was your orginal character? Pure fighter? If so, a Pure Caster will indeed play alot different. That's one of the cool things about the Elder Scrolls games. How much different they play depending on your character.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
What type of character was your orginal character? Pure fighter? If so, a Pure Caster will indeed play alot different. That's one of the cool things about the Elder Scrolls games. How much different they play depending on your character.

My original is a hybrid, here are his 7 main skills:

Blades
Heavy Armor
Armorer
Block
Restoration
Destruction
Alchemy
 
Big Nate said:
My original is a hybrid, here are his 7 main skills:

Blades
Heavy Armor
Armorer
Block
Restoration
Destruction
Alchemy

Ahh..so more like a Battlemage. Did you rely more on your Blade skill and Heavy Armor, and less on spell use?

BTW, my character was a hybrid "Adventurer" as well. My skills were:

Blades
Light Armor
Marksman
Destruction
Conjuration
Athletics
Sneak

A nice mix of stealth, spells, and melee. Worked out well for me, but a pure caster would be very different.
 

Diseased Yak

Gold Member
Kung Fu Jedi said:
Ahh..so more like a Battlemage. Did you rely more on your Blade skill and Heavy Armor, and less on spell use?

BTW, my character was a hybrid "Adventurer" as well. My skills were:

Blades
Light Armor
Marksman
Destruction
Conjuration
Athletics
Sneak

A nice mix of stealth, spells, and melee. Worked out well for me, but a pure caster would be very different.

I did indeed rely more on my Blads/Heavy Armor combo more than anything, particularly after I got Umbra/Goldbrand. I would always at least throw one Wizard's Fury cast into the mix, though.

Course, after hitting the high 30's/low 40's I stripped all my armor off, put on some black robes and a hood, and ran around with no armor to speak of, shooting arrows. I'm still doing that, actually. Finding it way more fun to rely only on Shield spells/potions and fight either with my bow or my hands.
 

Nerevar

they call me "Man Gravy".
raYne said:
Nope. However, if you fill one up too much it'll start to slow down the access time from when you press "open" to when it actually does. And of course there's the scrolling annoyance of having a lot of stuff in one place.

well, there is a bug of some sorts that prevents you from seeing everything in a chest if you put too much stuff in. It will still be in the chest, and you'll get it if you "take all" (X button) or if you remove some other stuff you'll be able to see it, but it is in the game, and it is annoying.
 
Nerevar said:
well, there is a bug of some sorts that prevents you from seeing everything in a chest if you put too much stuff in. It will still be in the chest, and you'll get it if you "take all" (X button) or if you remove some other stuff you'll be able to see it, but it is in the game, and it is annoying.

Yeah, they should have allowed you to buy chests and add them to your place outside of the sets of furniture that you outfitted the house with. More storage space is a good thing, but then the whole house is a storage place, so I've set some things around like trophies.
 

raYne

Member
Nerevar said:
well, there is a bug of some sorts that prevents you from seeing everything in a chest if you put too much stuff in. It will still be in the chest, and you'll get it if you "take all" (X button) or if you remove some other stuff you'll be able to see it, but it is in the game, and it is annoying.
*shrugs* I've never had that happen. Then again, I don't fill one cabinet with everything just because of the slowdown, so I probably never will.

I have individual lockers for weapons, armor, alchemey tools/ingredients, regular clothes/jewels etc. I also sell all duplicates in my collection just to make everything streamlined and keep things efficient.
 
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