I’ve only been to Imperial Market and Skingrad (and the land between), and am just now exploring Bruma. I’m trying to do the Mage recommendation quests which take me to all the cities, but each time I come to a new city I want to explore it and spend time there. I’m not getting too far in the recommendation quests, but I’m loving the freedom to explore.
I did the Unfriendly Competition quest in Imperial City last night, and realize how bad a fighter I really am (and how much more of the city I still need to explore). The Prima guide says this one part is pretty easy, but I spent 3 real-life hours last night, redoing the same 30 seconds of getting killed, as two people ganged up on me in tight quarters. That’s a long time of concentrated adrenaline frustration. Even my summoned creatures couldn’t handle the two guys. I ended up using about 5 potions and a summons to survive it. (In battle, the Tab key is my friend, I’ve come to learn).
I’ve only done two miscellaneous quests in all the hours I’ve played. There’s so much content to explore in this game! 
I don’t plan to try all the guilds or the whole map with this character. He’s mage/stealth/blade, but seems to have become a magey-wimp. Later I look forward to having a pure thief character, maybe even try the Dark Brotherhood (if I have the stones for it). And I obviously need to spend time on a combat character so I can play all my other characters better.
I was about ready to put Oblivion on the shelf when I installed Oscuro’s Oblivion mod. Wow, MAJOR difference. I’m playing through again and loving it twice as much as I did the first time, I actually regret my first playthrough now. It’s amazing what a few tweaks can do.
When any of you go to make a new character, I strongly recommend it.
Believe me the Dark Brotherhood isn’t for the faint of heart. Starts out how you’d expect it to (go there kill him) but then it takes a right turn.
One of the quests about midway through involves killing ALL of your former friends at the guild. Cutting down the very people that called you ‘brother’ and ‘family’ only moments ago nearly made me stop my advancement in the guild. The vampire leader of that little group was my favorite NPC up to that point and had an open offer to become a vampire like him any time I pleased. Sneaking up behind him with a sword… 
Near the very end of the guild quests there’s also a very gruesome body hung from a ceiling while all the other guild members stand around bragging about how artistic the death was and how beautiful the cuts were.
Grossbottom, can you explain how the mod changed your game experience so dramatically? Why were you ready to shelf the game and what was better after the mod? And by the way, your name cracks me up every time I see it.
Darkhold, guess I’m too faint-hearted for that. You sicko!
Heh I didn’t write the quest. Though I have to admire that for the first time in any game where you can be an assassin they really did make you do bad things to people. I really had to stop and wonder what I was doing in that guild and if I should just go on other quests instead.
If you’re squeamish you should stay away from the Arena as well. Or at least don’t do the Grey Lord’s quests then challenge him for championship
He doesn’t like what he finds out if you do his quest so he’ll go into the arena and just beg you to kill him while he stands there. You have no choice but to murder him. Which is actually how I got my first murder and was approached by the Dark Brotherhood to begin with
Money is never really an issue with the Alchemy skill.
- Steal or buy every reagent you see.
- Brew them into potions.
- Sell them.
This also makes combat a lot easier. Make sure to brew a good many DoT (damage over time) potions and HoT (healing over time) potions. Hotkey them. You swipe a guy once with Damage Health and just run around avoiding him. If he’s particularly tough, get him with Damage Health, then with Fire Damage, and if he’s really bad-ass give him a dose of Frost or Shock damage to boot.
A couple questions for the alchemists here:
My alchemist is expert level when in the Tower with the bonus, but I’m still using apprentice level equipment.
- where, specifically, do I get journeyman or expert alchemal equipment?
- when do I get to make single-ingredient potions?
After a lot more searches I found answers to my own questions. Single-ingredient potions can be made at 100 Alchemy. Advanced alchemy equipment can be purchased or found in necromancer or conjurer dungeons. When the show up in loot or shops depends on character level, not alchemy level, between 12 and 20.
I’m having a hard time shooting Bambi. Especially when it turns out to be a fawn, or when it’s partially wounded and runs. I follow it to the ends of the earth to finish it off so it won’t suffer. This, from a 20-year vegetarian.
I got a Master Calcinator from a “Punished” (one of the Oblivion containers, the ones that look kind of like a huge heart hanging from hooks) on Saturday. So you can find them in leveled random loot as well, I think.
I’m having a good time doing Oblivion Gate runs, and I highly recommend them. You need to have a fair amount of carrying capacity free to pick up all the stuff, but you get a bunch of valuable stuff to sell and best of all you get a Sigil Stone. I really like being able to make my own enchanted items without any cost or hassle. Even the ones I don’t want to use myself, I use on ordinary stuff I find to jack up its selling price.
The funniest one I have made so far is a helmet that gives me +12 Willpower. It is called, of course, the Tinfoil Hat.
Oblivion’s got some poor design theory in it, the worst is the way the world levels up with you. The monsters, the loot…as you get more powerful, the world matches you, and is thus always ‘challenging’. But this makes levelling pointless in the first place, because why bother? You’ll never really feel powerful in a game world where minotaurs suddenly roam every road and and bandits dress most improbably in full suits of glass armor. It’s Elder Scrolls: Minotaur Invasion, rather senseless and certainly not very immersive. And in a world where a limited number of tilesets means that there are really only about a dozen different dungeons, the utter transparency bored the crap out of me. Yay, another Ayleid ruin over the hill with enemies guaranteed to be 80-90% as powerful as I am. Yawn.
Oscuro’s mod changes this and other things, some examples of the little tweaks:
- Less on the fly matching to your level, sometimes you’ll have good fights, sometimes you’ll slaughter everything, sometimes you’ll retreat in pathetic defeat. You feel small in a larger world.
- NPC factions are more fleshed out, necromancers and vampires in particular.
- NPC spellcasters seem to fight better and smarter.
- Houses is worth stealing but not at all unbalanced.
- Loot is modified, there shouldn’t be any more villagers running around with glass swords (I hope), NPC bosses are better equiped, guarded rooms seem to have a better chance of some decent loot than just calipers.
- Old enemies will still appear as you level, so it shouldn’t be like all of a sudden all wolves are extinct because you’re level 16. New ones will appear as well.
- Daedric quests start later, so no more level six characters running around with legendary artifacts of great power.
- Optional mod included that slows skill gain and levelling.
- Just better AI all around.
- Lots more, all done very subtly and without any main quest killers that I’ve found.
The only drawback is that you kind of need to start a new game. Totally worth it though, I think. I lurves it.
Well then I’ll keep it. 
I know what you mean, brightpenny[/. The very first deer I shot ran off, and I never did find it. I don’t know if I’ve attacked another one since then; I just felt so bad about it.
Just finished the main quest now…wow. Anyway it was a big pain but there was a good payoff. Certainly gave me ‘the whole damn world is blowing up’ impression that so many fantasy games fail on delivering. It seems to be a good idea to do them one right after another so there’s a feeling of momentum going. I certainly felt that if I didn’t keep going the world would end which ran counter to the whole “I’ll get back to it after I finish off some more side quests” that I’d felt up to that point.
I was certainly amused when I talked to a guard briefly afterwards and as I walked away he said “It was an honor to speak to you!” Finally you save the world and get the street cred you deserve.
FWIW, the beta patch is out. It fixes some problems folks have talked about here (several mage quests). I haven’t installed it yet (I’ll wait for release).
Get the patch but watch for mod conflicts. The patch is good, it seems to have unlocked alot of dialogue, though that could be my imagination. The mage’s guild members talk about something other than Archmage Traven now, at least. I know it also stabilized and made a bit more orderly the quest in Hackdirt.
It might have been because I screwed around with my ini file before patching, but I got some graphics glitches when I tried to overlay the patch onto Oblivion/BTMod/Oscuro. I copied my savegames and uninstalled, reinstalled, patched, then modded. Worked fine with my old saves when I tossed them back in.
I read once that if you delete your user .ini file, then run the launcher, it will create a fresh new .ini file for you. Is that what you were trying to accomplish with the uninstall/reinstall?
I look forward to the final release of the patch, since the FX card I have on my other computer will be better supported.