# Two weeks to..... Oblivion **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 5, 2006, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180 "2006-03-05T21:40:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 25
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/481 "2006-04-18T20:41:09Z")
There’s loads of talk about buying new systems here. I don’t have the time to build one anymore, so I bought from Alienware. I just picked it up from FedEx in fact, and haven’t hooked it up yet. I probably shouldn’t have, but I priced similar systems today. If anyone wants to gain from my buyer’s remorse, take a look at [www.velocitymicro.com](http://www.velocitymicro.com). I found them linked to the nVidia website. I don’t know much about them, but on paper you can get the same system I just bought for about $300 less. ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/482 "2006-04-18T20:59:10Z")
> [@Dob](#): > > BTW…I just finished the Vampire Cure quest, and holy cow what a freakin pain. If you get bitten, get to a temple, or a potion, fast!! Why, in the name of the Nine Divines, would you NOT want to be a vampire in this game? It rules from Morrowind to the sea and back again. Hunter’s sight alone is just brilliant, the stat bonuses are great, and the eerie specular shift when the sun starts to come up and you haven’t fed in a while is probably the best visual effect in the game except for The world inside the painting. Man, that was bitchin. ---
**Author:** ![Dob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Dob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dob)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/483 "2006-04-18T21:53:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Why, in the name of the Nine Divines, would you NOT want to be a vampire in this game? I will miss Hunter’s Sight…that spell kicked some butt. I just got tired of the constant waiting for the sun to go down, finding someone to feed on, etc… Just got to be a pain for me. The longer your a vampire it also seems the more you have to feed. Now what would be really cool is if all the people I feed off, turn into vamps and start turning others…you could have a whole world of vamps in no time. ---
**Author:** ![Grossbottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ba8739/32.png) [@Grossbottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grossbottom)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/484 "2006-04-18T22:15:00Z")
I stayed a vampire because in the TES lore, Cyrodiil is supposed to be the heart of vampire culture in Tamriel. I figured there must be something going on there, at least as good as the Morrowind vampire clans quest lines. There wasn’t. It’s a very disappointing aspect of the game imho, and even the cure quest was a buggy mess that I had to use the console to resolve. I’m still enjoying the game, but it doesn’t have half the depth of its predecessors. ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/485 "2006-04-18T22:18:14Z")
Anybody know if the special ingredient duplicator chest you get when you become archmage can replicate nirnroots? How about daedra hearts and the other crap you have to get for the vampire cure? ---
**Author:** ![Kaboom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/34f0e0/32.png) [@Kaboom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaboom)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2006, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/486 "2006-04-18T23:10:02Z")
> [@Scupper](#): > > Anybody know if > > the special ingredient duplicator chest you get when you become archmage can replicate nirnroots? How about daedra hearts and the other crap you have to get for the vampire cure? It doesnt work with nirnroots, it worked with void salts you get from storm atronarchs (sp?) so i assume it will work with daedra hearts. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 8:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/487 "2006-04-19T08:08:09Z")
I avoided the vampirism threads in Morrowind and I’ll avoid becoming a vampire in this game, too. I don’t like the game to change my character against my will; I’ll pick and choose the strengths and weaknesses I _want_ to play, thank you. For some reason I just can’t take the vampires thing seriously. I keep thinking of what Goth programmers might look like: pasty and pudgy with huge Gollum-like eyes and dark eyeliner, maybe, with an all-black wardrobe and Gregorian chant music playing in their cubicle, saying: “And here (snort) is where you turn into a vampire and become ultra-powerful (snort) and you have to join this Eternal Clan of the Profane Soul and stalk the earth, slaying the living (snort).” Dunno, not into it. Anyway, finally got all 15 characters up to level 2. I think the most interesting characters to play so far have been my female Wood Elf agent (who is now level 3), my male Redguard barbarian, and my female Dark Elf bard. The Barbarian is a charge-in-and-take-no-prisoners melee monster, totally unlike my usual style, and the Agent is surprisingly effective as a ranged attacker. If you play multiple characters, you might try the Gave Saves Manager mod. It doesn’t alter your game saves in any way, and _you_ actually have to organize them yourself by sticking each character into its own folder. You use the mod to select which character you’ll play — the mod finds the folders — and it alters Oblivion’s gamesave directory for that session so it goes to that character’s folder only. It’s rather nice, just pulls up the character from that directory and there’s a lot less clutter. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/488 "2006-04-19T13:42:55Z")
15 characters?! But… why? ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/489 "2006-04-19T14:40:46Z")
I’d like to follow some npc’s to check out the radiant AI feature, but every time I try they just stop moving. I tried it with sneak with the same result. Do I need to get my sneak skill up before I can follow an npc? ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/490 "2006-04-19T18:04:53Z")
Why 15 characters? Well, that’s my _modus operandus_ for most any RPG, to make one of everything to see how it works. (And if it works. I was suspicious of the Agent and the Pilgrim particularly.) In Morrowind I found I created a character that had its major skills only as the things I liked to do, and I found it didn’t make me change my playstyle. I wasn’t playing to the character’s strengths, I was playing to mine, and it didn’t keep me engaged. With very different characters and stats, I’m forced to play differently. My Orc Crusader doesn’t have the Illusion skills, or the Magicka, to callously spend on illusionary light or night-eye effects, and he doesn’t sneak worth a damn in heavy armor, so he charges in and ignores most physical falling-mace and shooting-arrow traps. He’s got enough Health, and (as a Crusader) a few simple Restoration spells, that he can recover from a spiked barrel to the face even while fighting three Marauders at once. (Barely. That fight was a little dicey.) This is in contrast to my unarmored Wood Elf Agent, who doesn’t have the Health to survive the traps, but has the capacity to see and avoid them — and avoid a pitched battle — and with good Mercantile skills, she can still make a good profit on the loot she hauls back. In fact, she can carry as much free weight as my Orc because she’s not encumbered by armor, and she makes more money doing it. My High Elf sorcerer has almost no real carrying capacity to spare, so can’t use a bow and arrow to set off traps remotely. Instead, he conjures Skeletons in the path of the trap. And since he doesn’t dare let anything get too close, Skeletons are useful to keep the bad guys at arms’ length while he prepares some helpful spells from behind. Playing different people makes me change my strategies. I find it refreshing. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Mbossa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@Mbossa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mbossa)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/491 "2006-04-19T19:10:18Z")
> [@rpinrd](#): > > Another one to watch out for is the one where an Aragonian shopkeeper wants you to go to a town to rescue her daughter. If you do the quest, the shopkeeper gives you something to boost your mercantile (its a book or maybe just an insta-boost, I can’t remember. It is NOT an article of clothing that could be removed). Ever since, my mercantile has been frozen and I can’t get it to go up no matter how much I buy and sell. Ahh, so _that’s_ the reason. I’ve been wondering why my mercantile was locked… Late yesterday, it fixed itself. The lock doesn’t prevent you from raising your mercantile through training; just through practice. As I’ve been levelling up, I’ve been buying as much mercantile training as I can from Seed-Neeus (the very same Argonian who locked it in the first place). Once I reached the maximum level I could train with her (around 70), she pointed me to Palonirya (the Divine Elegance shopkeeper in the Imperial City) for further training. After that, it started going up on its own again 🙂 Looks like Seed-Neeus has been pulling off the ol’ lock-their-mercantile-and-make-em-depend-on-your-training scam on us poor unsuspecting rubes. Oldest trick in the book… ---
**Author:** ![Scupper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/492 "2006-04-19T21:23:01Z")
I think I’m pretty much done with this game already. I’ll probably play with it for a while, but only while I’m waiting for NWN2 or Half-Life 2: Chapter 1 (winner of the “Strangest Game Name Since the Abortive ‘Ultima Worlds Online: Origin’” award) to come out. I’ve done all the Mages and Thieves Guild quests and I’m not interested in being a drop-box assassin for the Dark Brotherhood anymore (“Purification” was kind of an interesting scenario, but left me feeling pretty well done with them). Particularly since you couldn’t even choose to tell your assassin “family” members about Lechance’s orders to execute them. Maybe I’ll bite the bullet and actually finish the main quest line, or run through the Fighters’ Guild quest line, but I don’t really feel like it. My feeling is that the game is just too damn linear. Some of the missions are cool, but everyone tells you EXACTLY what to do. You’d really have to be an idiot to have any problems with almost any quests in this game at all, with the possible exception of the Order of the Virtuous Blood – I mean, seriously, that note you were supposed to find in the guy’s house was the size of a postage stamp and on top of a cluttered table. Even the ones that don’t have waypoint markers for you to go to on your map are literally peppered with pop up dialogues saying “Now I’ve reached the rock that looks like a dragon claw. I should turn left and walk until I see a statue of a guy.” or “Now I’ve killed the bandit guy. I should go talk to the guy who gave me the mission in the first place.” Yes, I know that BTMod and others can disable the map markers to make the game “harder,” but the fact is that the quests rely on those markers a lot more than they do on actually giving you the information. You can’t always review dialogue to hear what people told you, and the quest journal entries are often so vague that, without the map markers, you’d be at a complete loss as to where to go. It doesn’t really qualify as an “open” game in my book. Even though you can take quests whenever you want (pretty much), the quests themselves are completely linear, with almost no input from the player at all. Most of the dialogue options boil down to: Here’s the truth. Here’s me saying “screw you” as a prelude to combat. [Say Nothing] Environment-wise, it’s got a lot of very pretty landscapes, but the world seems small (much smaller than Morrowind–I don’t buy any of the arguments to the contrary) and the dungeons, forts and the Oblivion gates, in particular, are incredibly repetitive. Maybe I’ll just go bouncing around the landscape with the Boots of Springheel Jak for a while. ---
**Author:** ![Jayrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Jayrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jayrot)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2006, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/493 "2006-04-21T16:44:24Z")
Oblivion fans – you may be interested in this week’s edition of the PC Gamer Podcast. It’s a weekly podcast run by the guys at PC Gamer magazine. In addition to the usual chit-chat and game news, they have some pretty neat guest interviews with people such as Sid Meier, someone from Lucasarts, etc. This week, it’s the executive producer of Oblivion. Some interesting stuff in there. The interview starts about 20min in, FYI. [www.pcgamerpodcast.com](http://www.pcgamerpodcast.com) It’s free, natch. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 8:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/494 "2006-04-22T20:34:27Z")
Help please? I’m trying to do my first Mages Recommendation quest in Skingrad. I go to the cave and the zombies just massacre me. I’ve tried it half a dozen times, and while I can beat one occasionally, pausing for Restore Health and Magica potions, they’re incredibly tough. When two gang up on me, I’m just dead in moments. I recently raided a goblin cave and found the goblins to be at an appropriate level for me, but I gained two levels following that. Is there a chance that the zombies and I are mismatched because I levelled too fast in a non-combat skill (Illusion - casting Starlight in the goblin cave)? I’m only level 6 now. Were the zombies in the first Recommendation quest super-hard for you too? Or am I gimped for good? ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/495 "2006-04-22T20:45:10Z")
You’ve got the guide; have you been trying fire on the zombies, or what? Using any protection spells, armor? For all I know your strategy is to throw fruit at 'em. What’re your skills, what’re your strategies? ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/496 "2006-04-22T20:52:58Z")
I’m using light armor, fire spells, and my sword. I’m a dark elf mage with blade skills and sneak. ---
**Author:** ![Fish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bc8723/32.png) [@Fish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fish)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/497 "2006-04-22T21:06:46Z")
Are you still using Flare or have you upgraded to a bigger fire spell? I haven’t been in that mission so I don’t know how easy it is to separate the zombies and fight only one at a time… what’s the layout? Huh. Wish I could be more help. I’ll take my mage through that ASAP, when I get home, see what’s up. Are you averse to moving the difficulty slider down to get past 'em? I don’t know what else specific to suggest from here. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/498 "2006-04-22T21:11:38Z")
I’m using the spell given to me with the quest, plus flare and the fire bolt, but the latter uses up too much mana for the small amount of damage it seems to do. I guess I wanted to know whether it’s just me, or if others have had the same experience. Changing the difficulty won’t help me in future quests unless I leave it turned down, and I’d prefer not to. Thanks for trying. ---
**Author:** ![Kaboom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/34f0e0/32.png) [@Kaboom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaboom)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/499 "2006-04-22T21:21:13Z")
> [@Scupper](#): > > I think I’m pretty much done with this game already. I’ll probably play with it for a while, but only while I’m waiting for NWN2 or Half-Life 2: Chapter 1 (winner of the “Strangest Game Name Since the Abortive ‘Ultima Worlds Online: Origin’” award) to come out. > > I’ve done all the Mages and Thieves Guild quests and I’m not interested in being a drop-box assassin for the Dark Brotherhood anymore (“Purification” was kind of an interesting scenario, but left me feeling pretty well done with them). Particularly since you couldn’t even choose to tell your assassin “family” members about Lechance’s orders to execute them. Stick with the Dark Brotherhood quest line, the drop-box kills actually lead to something. **Brightpenny** : how are you with a bow an arrow? zombies might be tough but they are quite slow, you can usually just run around and pin cushion them if you find a nice open area, or even a long tunnel. ---
**Author:** ![wonderlust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonderlust/32/7237_2.png) [@wonderlust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonderlust)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180/500 "2006-04-22T21:40:42Z")
I’m trying that. Still getting slaughtered in a few hits. Moving around a lot in first person is really disorienting to me, but I don’t have a crosshair in third person. Maybe I need to try the third person crosshair mod. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180.md?page=24) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/two-weeks-to-oblivion/347180.md?page=26)