Oblivion [warning: contains some spoilers]

[Emperor Devon]

Ugh. I'm feeling nauseous...

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

*hands ED a small purple vial* Try a Cure Disease potion:D

[oldflash]

Has anyone use this mod: http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=4177

 

(mod info: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pClv45Rz9so )

[Jason Skywalker]

Anyone recommend me some good mods? I'm in need of some...

[stoffe]

Anyone recommend me some good mods? I'm in need of some...

 

These are the mods made by others that I use in my Oblivion game (in addition to a bunch I've made myself):

• Oblivion Book Jackets
  
• Ayleid Meteoric Iron Weapons
  
• Guide Books
  
• Witches' Frock
  
• Quest Award Leveling
  
• Ungarions Memoirs:The Welkynd Sword
  
• Female Imperial Dragon Cuirass
  
• BTMod GUI enhancement (parts of it)
  
• MD Natural Faces (Essential! I prefer version 0.7 though I can't find a link for it any more)
  
• Float like a Lich
  

[RedHawke]

I was just about to ressurect this thread and ask what mods do you use stoffe, to go along with your house mod.

 

 

I just emerged from the sewers... I love how the character creation process works in Oblivion.

 

Played around with sneaking near that Shady Sam or whatever, the guy that sells lockpicks and potions outside the main city wall and raised my sneak to 75. I'm still level one as Sneak isn't one of my class skills though.

 

I need some of those cool Kung-Fu Pants though. I will try to locate them first before I break down and start the construction set and place some near me.

 

 

I need something to fix my characters face as the stock textures make her skin look all pockmarked, but the way you can edit the face is quite good.

[stoffe]

I was just about to ressurect this thread and ask what mods do you use stoffe, to go along with your house mod.

 

If you use the house mod, make sure you got the latest version since I've updated it a few times. Most of the other mods I've made are fairly character/taste specific and not very useful for others (possibly with exception of the half-finished loot/common enemy balancer mod), aside from the quick Wishing Well mod I made (adds a wishing well inside the Lipsand Tarn Ayleid ruin where you can gamble gold against random rewards (or nothing at all if unlucky)).

 

I just emerged from the sewers... I love how the character creation process works in Oblivion.

 

Character creation is a game in itself; the only thing I don't like about it is that you can't save an appearance separate from your character and load later for use as base when creating new characters. That would have been useful since it takes ages to produce a face that's even remotely good-looking (at least to me).

 

Played around with sneaking near that Shady Sam or whatever, the guy that sells lockpicks and potions outside the main city wall and raised my sneak to 75. I'm still level one as Sneak isn't one of my class skills though.

 

The skills system is pretty exploitable if you want to make a powerful character. My current character had to be one of the most skilled level 1 characters ever, before reaching level 2 75% of her non-major skills were at 100. The result of making most of the major skills into skills I rarely ever really use. Makes leveling nice, slow and controlled.

 

High sneak is nice for the extra sneak attack damage, that along with Athletics and Acrobatics are some of the skills I tend to focus on boosting as soon as possible. Acrobatics in particular for those rolls. I like characters in game who are athletic and can roll and jump around.

 

I need some of those cool Kung-Fu Pants though. I will try to locate them first before I break down and start the construction set and place some near me.

 

You mean like these, or pants of this model? If the former they only exist in two places in the game as far as I know: Lying on the floor in the basement of the Bruma Fighter's Guild, and being worn by the "boss" necromancer at the bottom of the Vilverin Ayleid ruin (the one found just across the lake when you exit the prison sewers). I think Shady Sam wears a pair as well, but I'm not in the business of murdering merchants to steal their clothes. In particular since the Vilverin ones are so close at hand.

 

If it's the latter, you start out with those in the prison (I've just recolored them white and "unstained" them to fit the style of my character).

 

I need something to fix my characters face as the stock textures make her skin look all pockmarked, but the way you can edit the face is quite good.

 

That's what the MD Natural Faces mod is essential for, makes the face textures a lot more high resolution and natural looking. Unfortunately I think the faces looked better with v0.7 of that mod, which don't seem to be available to download any more, but even v0.95 is a vast improvement from the standard look.

[HerbieZ]

I was bored so my character joined the dark brotherhood, he is kind of extremely evil though now and is more infamous than famous which i did not want. He's still an uber assassin theif archer and i maxed out my stealth the other day. I want to create an uber knight with heavy armour and an evil sword now. Yeah maybe a magicman too.

[RedHawke]

If you use the house mod, make sure you got the latest version since I've updated it a few times. Most of the other mods I've made are fairly character/taste specific and not very useful for others (possibly with exception of the half-finished loot/common enemy balancer mod), aside from the quick Wishing Well mod I made (adds a wishing well inside the Lipsand Tarn Ayleid ruin where you can gamble gold against random rewards (or nothing at all if unlucky)).

I downloaded the house from the release thread just before I started my game so it should be current. The well sounds cool too!

 

Character creation is a game in itself; the only thing I don't like about it is that you can't save an appearance separate from your character and load later for use as base when creating new characters. That would have been useful since it takes ages to produce a face that's even remotely good-looking (at least to me).

Yeah that would have been a cool feature.

 

The skills system is pretty exploitable if you want to make a powerful character. My current character had to be one of the most skilled level 1 characters ever, before reaching level 2 75% of her non-major skills were at 100. The result of making most of the major skills into skills I rarely ever really use. Makes leveling nice, slow and controlled.

 

High sneak is nice for the extra sneak attack damage, that along with Athletics and Acrobatics are some of the skills I tend to focus on boosting as soon as possible. Acrobatics in particular for those rolls. I like characters in game who are athletic and can roll and jump around.

I took Athletics and Acrobatics as class skills, along with Blade, Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, and Marksman... I think I'm going to level like crazy.

 

Since I'm near the beginning I might have to go back and change that.

 

You mean like these, or pants of this model? If the former they only exist in two places in the game as far as I know: Lying on the floor in the basement of the Bruma Fighter's Guild, and being worn by the "boss" necromancer at the bottom of the Vilverin Ayleid ruin (the one found just across the lake when you exit the prison sewers). I think Shady Sam wears a pair as well, but I'm not in the business of murdering merchants to steal their clothes. In particular since the Vilverin ones are so close at hand.

 

If it's the latter, you start out with those in the prison (I've just recolored them white and "unstained" them to fit the style of my character).

Yeah the first ones. I'm not really in a position to whack a Necro right now. I think I'll place a pair with the CS somewhere nearby with a suitable shirt, as my current outfit is really bad.

 

That's what the MD Natural Faces mod is essential for, makes the face textures a lot more high resolution and natural looking. Unfortunately I think the faces looked better with v0.7 of that mod, which don't seem to be available to download any more, but even v0.95 is a vast improvement from the standard look.

I have the v0.8 of the mod installed. It looks better now.

[stoffe]

I took Athletics and Acrobatics as class skills, along with Blade, Destruction, Conjuration, Restoration, and Marksman... I think I'm going to level like crazy.

 

You may want to make sure you don't level up too quickly, or the game may become too difficult, since pretty much all hostile characters and most of their equipment scale in level with your character. If you keep up with your primary offensive skills you may still be able to hold your own in battle, the main problem will become quests where you rely on other NPCs, since some friendly NPCs won't level scale for some reason and will quickly become butchered in combat if you are too high level when doing those quests.

 

(And unless you use some mod that fixes the insane leveled item assignments you'll start running into common bandits, highwaymen and marauders in full deadric armor wearing daedric weapons when you reach level 20 or so, regardless of what you have yourself. I'm using one I'm making myself tweaked to my liking, but this one is pretty decent as well, I used it earlier.)

 

It may be a matter of taste, but I found the game more fun when not rushing past the lower levels too quickly.

 

Yeah the first ones. I'm not really in a position to whack a Necro right now. I think I'll place a pair with the CS somewhere nearby with a suitable shirt, as my current outfit is really bad.

 

The Necromancer in question scales with your level, so he'll always be the same level as you no matter when you confront him.

 

But if you don't feel like braving the depths of Vilverin, and you have the house mod I made installed, I believe the majordomo (Miranda) will sell a pair of those pants as well, if I remember correctly.

[RedHawke]

You may want to make sure you don't level up too quickly, or the game may become too difficult, since pretty much all hostile characters and most of their equipment scale in level with your character. If you keep up with your primary offensive skills you may still be able to hold your own in battle, the main problem will become quests where you rely on other NPCs, since some friendly NPCs won't level scale for some reason and will quickly become butchered in combat if you are too high level when doing those quests.

What class skills would you suggest then to keep the levelling more controlled?

 

I'm shooting for a Mage type so I will be using whatever spells I have, I also want to be able to use a blade and bow.

 

As I am running and jumping everywhere (No horse) and my Athletics and Acrobatics skills are going up quite fast, I should likely drop those to non-class skills.

 

(And unless you use some mod that fixes the insane leveled item assignments you'll start running into common bandits, highwaymen and marauders in full deadric armor wearing daedric weapons when you reach level 20 or so, regardless of what you have yourself. I'm using one I'm making myself tweaked to my liking, but this one is pretty decent as well, I used it earlier.)

 

It may be a matter of taste, but I found the game more fun when not rushing past the lower levels too quickly.

I downloaded a mod to fix that item issue, but the one you linked to looks more in-depth.

 

The Necromancer in question scales with your level, so he'll always be the same level as you no matter when you confront him.

 

But if you don't feel like braving the depths of Vilverin, and you have the house mod I made installed, I believe the majordomo (Miranda) will sell a pair of those pants as well, if I remember correctly.

Good to know.

[oldflash]

After crashing oblivion few times by using some sort of tweaks programs I decided to take oblivion.ini in notepad. I found a real weird thing called "FpsClamp=0" which I set to 24 and I was surprised how the game works (excluding PC idle animation) even if I set grass distance to max. Also setting "usedrivcache" to 1 was a real improvement. So, looks like is not the game engine the problem for that great pc resources request.

 

Has anyone some hints about oblivion.ini and tweaking?

[stoffe]

What class skills would you suggest then to keep the levelling more controlled?

 

I wouldn't suggest putting the skills you use most often as major skills, since you'll level up quickly and leave all your other skills underdeveloped. Pick skills you use occasionally, or skills that can be used to quickly level up when you want to. Unless you plan to rely on summoned creatures early on Conjuration is a good "control" skill since it levels up very quickly with just a few casts. If you do plan on using summons a lot it definitely shouldn't be a major skill though.

 

I wouldn't recommend using things like Athletics, Acrobatics and Mercantile as major skills either, since you have little control over the rate you gain skill levels in those, since they are used constantly and levels up steadily. (Mercantile will level up like crazy early on, though will become much slower after a while.)

 

While it's hardly the normal way to play, my current "hyper skilled" character put things like Heavy Armor as a major skill even though she's a light armor user. So when she wants to level up she just equips a heavy armor instead and let some fairly harmless enemy/creature beat on her for a while. You gain heavy armor skill even if the armor you are wearing is broken, so you don't need to spend any gold to repair the heavy armor either. Just toss it away when done "training".

 

What skills to pick as major depends on the type of character you play and how quick you want to level up, but overall you don't want to pick major skills that increase constantly or you'll find yourself at a high level and helpless in other areas. (Some locks level up with you as well, so if you level up very quickly in combat while having low Security you'll have trouble picking many locks. Though once you get the Skeleton Key I suppose that's moot. )

 

If you want to powergame, also keep in mind that you should ideally get 10 skill ranks each in skills governed by two different attribute (strength, agility, speed etc.) Once you get 10 skill ranks i any skills governing a certain attribute, that attribute will be increased by +5 when you pick it at levelup. You can pick 3 attributes at levelup, and I'd strongly recommend always picking Luck as one of them (thus leaving 2x10 skill increases, since Luck isn't governing any skills.) Thus you should spread out your major skills a bit, since you need 10 levels gained in total of major skills in order to level up. (While non-major skills still contribute to the attribute bonus you have to get 10 major skill levels to level up, so they might as well not be wasted. )

 

(Do note that I enjoy playing "jack of all trades" characters, and the above is colored by that in order to make them "master of all" as well )

 

After crashing oblivion few times by using some sort of tweaks programs I decided to take oblivion.ini in notepad.

(...snip...)

Has anyone some hints about oblivion.ini and tweaking?

 

Have you checked this guide? It explains a bit about what different keys in the ini file are for, among other things.

[ChAiNz.2da]

Yah, I finally tired of playing the levelling game.. it became such a hassle. I decided I'd try one of the levelling system (auto-level) mods out there and this one has really won me over.

 

Kobu's Character Advancement System:

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=199

 

Using the "Nexus" path, and the Jack-of-all-trades Slower Skill rate x2-x3 .esp this makes my character exactly how I wanted them to be the first time I ran through Oblivion. No need to worry over levelling endurance early (glitch in game where if you don't level early, you're actually penalized later on).. no need to worry if I've done this or that to get those multipliers.. etc...your abilities are levelled appropriately by skills you use (you can use preset paths or customize them to your tastes).

 

Plus it allows you to change anything at any time.. birthsigns, race, class etc. Options for levels and abilities from 1 to 255 if you want... (fun..hehehe).. blah blah blah.. it's a really good mod to sum it up

 

It's just so much more "relaxing" to play now, well.. as relaxing as it can get when plunking 20 arrows in to a damn boar because I forgot I had difficulty maxed out to test something..

[swphreak]

Perhaps I'm not into all the calculations of skills and dice rolls and other fancy RPG speak, but when I'm playing (360 version), I don't really focus on certain skills and stuff. I picked what I thought I'd use the most, and went with it. I also put Mercantile and Athletics because I'm always walking and selling things, why not get some free levelling?

 

I noticed it took me longer to get to levels this time around. First time I played, I was level 10 before I knew it. Right now I'm about lvl 5 or 6 (can't remember, Saint's Row is occupying my interest), and working my way to lvl 10 so I can get the skeleton key.

 

Has anyone ever found daedric heavy armor? The most I've found are daedric maces and hearts.

[HerbieZ]

I created a 2nd new character today. Although i may change his class because he looks kinda like a pixar creation. http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/12497upS4n/943160.jpg

[stoffe]

I created a 2nd new character today. Although i may change his class because he looks kinda like a pixar creation. http://www.pix8.net/pro/pic/12497upS4n/943160.jpg

 

You created that appearance with the standard character creator? Should be a warrior having a negative intelligence score with that kind of head, not much room for a brain.

 

Perhaps I'm not into all the calculations of skills and dice rolls and other fancy RPG speak, but when I'm playing (360 version), I don't really focus on certain skills and stuff. I picked what I thought I'd use the most, and went with it. I also put Mercantile and Athletics because I'm always walking and selling things, why not get some free levelling?

 

Unlike most games you don't really gain that much by leveling up in Oblivion, things just get tougher to beat. Biggest reason to level up at all seems to be the Deadric Shrine quests, since they are level restricted.

 

If you put skills you never use as major skills you could otherwise play as a level 1 character with 100 skill points in all the skills you use. It may be kind of boring to play that way on the item front though...

 

Has anyone ever found daedric heavy armor? The most I've found are daedric maces and hearts.

 

Unless you use a mod that tweaks the (ridiculous) standard loot table Daedric armor will become common as dirt once you are above level 20. Just enter some random Marauder-infested Fort ruin and you'll come across more Daedric armor than you can carry. Every peasant farmer or villager will carry daedric weapons as well.

[HerbieZ]

You created that appearance with the standard character creator? Should be a warrior having a negative intelligence score with that kind of head, not much room for a brain.

 

Yeah it was made with the standard editor.

[REDJOHNNYMIKE]

Anyone ever get bored with the whole questing thing and just mess around?

 

My character is currently banned from drinking "Dew of the Mountain" stimulant potions in several towns after a few of my roof running escapades:D

I highly suggest roof running in Bravil, it's just so fun. Too bad the town isn't bigger.

Having 146 in acrobatics makes you feel like Neo in open field battles:D

 

note: If you want a sizeable increase in your maneuverability you should boost acrobatics and speed. A high speed really helps your jumping.

[RedHawke]

Ok thanks stoffe I'll go back and re assign my skills... what I'm looking for is someone who can hold off levelling until I get my 'other' skills up then level like crazy when I am ready.

 

I like to play the jack of all trades types too.

 

Luckily I am the type that creates a ton of saves, so back to the sewers I go! Hi-ho hi-ho!

[stoffe]

Ok thanks stoffe I'll go back and re assign my skills... what I'm looking for is someone who can hold off levelling until I get my 'other' skills up then level like crazy when I am ready.

 

Spells that target yourself allows you to train any magic-related skills quickly (since unlike Morrowind it's not enough to just cast magic to increase the related skill, it has to actually hit something. Your own character is a valid target though.) You can do that with pretty much any spell school, even destruction if you make a cheap spell that do 1 damage to yourself.

 

Conjuration is the school that levels up fastest of them all, you don't need very many castings for it to increase, and since you don't have to wait until your current summon "expires" you can train with some cheap summon spell like Summon Scamp or Summon Skeleton to increase that quickly when you want. Which type of spells you'd want to hold off using actively until later in the game depends on your playing style, and what magic effects you rely on items to provide rather than spells.

 

Using the Armor type (Heavy/Light) that you don't plan on using normally as a major skill can also be used as a good control skill. If you plan to be a light armor wearer, donning a (heavy) suit of Iron armor and parking yourself where some relatively harmless opponent can hit you when you want to level up can make you go up quickly as well, since your armor skill increases every time they hit you when you wear that type of armor. It doesn't matter if your armor is broken and provides no defense, the skill still increases if you are hit while wearing it.

 

Skills I prefer not to use as major skills:

• Mercantile - You will be selling a lot of things throughout the game which you don't really want to actively avoid, and particularily early on this will cause you to level up like crazy (though the mercantile progression slows down considerably at higher skill levels).
   
   
  
• Sneak - Whenever I'm in a ruin, cave or basically any hostile indoors location I'm sneaking. As long as you move while in sneak mode and remain undetected your sneak skill increases. Thus this skill goes up fairly quick to me, and I want it to go up fairly quick since I want the higher sneak attack damage bonuses ASAP.
   
   
  
• Athletics - I run everywhere, so this skill in increasing steadily. While it is somewhat slow in gaining skill levels you can't control when it happens unless you walk all the time. I also prefer getting this high as early as possible, so it's better to have as a minor skill.
   
   
  
• Acrobatics - Same here, I jump often, and want this high as soon as possible to get those nice avoidance rolls. I like characters who can do nice acrobatic moves, and that's as acrobatic as it gets in Oblivion. Plus being able to jump high is very useful for avoiding enemies and exploring the mountains.
   
   
  
• Alchemy - Making potions can be very useful, and your alchemy skill increases fairly quickly when you do. Self-made potions are usually more powerful than anything you can buy, and cheaper to make since you can collect the ingredients yourself. Self-made poisons can be quite deadly as well.
  

[oldflash]

Thanks for tips stoffe.

[Astrotoy7]

Finally having a proper go at this game since I completed my SLI setup...Oooo the prettiness

 

Going to have to pour over previous pages of this thread for the nice stuff

 

mtfbwya

[RedHawke]

Ok! Thanks for the tips stoffe.

[oldflash]

This is nice. Mud-crabs advances in skill when they attack. I put light armor on my pc, get 3 mud-crabs and stay under attack to get some points on armor skill. After 5 min I was need to kill that creatures because the heal spell has become too week to compensate damage.