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Like the title says, newby question alert!

I have this game on the PS3, and my file currently has 85 hours.

What is the A bomb , adn how do you get it?

The Abomb makes animations slow and makes doors not open I think
It occurs after many hours of playing (I think 100+)

From another forum:

You'll definitely know it when it affects your game. Suddenly, EVERYTHING animated will go extremely slowly. For example, a door may take 30 seconds to close, or a torch's flame might appear nearly frozen.

The Abomb is inevitable no matter which version of the game you're playing, but you do have a good amount of time before you have to worry about it. On the PC it'll typically hit between 200 and 250 hours, while on the PS3 and Xbox it can take 400 hours or more. The amount of time seems to be linked to your FPS - and since the PS3 and Xbox versions run on lower frames per second, they usually take longer to get Abomb.

this was the 2nd time for me, both were at different times, I believe first time i got. it was at about 180 hrs of play, and this one lasted to over 570 hrs

if im reading this right,

Ravenhawks final stats of life,\

Level 31
Day 567
570-31-48 (assuming this is hrs/mins/secs)

but a big difference from the 1st one, in the first one i didn't create new save points, just overridden them, use 2 save points, in case i needed to jump back.

on the 2nd one, created new saves each time. and just deleted when i got to many.

I've encountered the A bomb twice in my time, but strangely those characters got it after only 200 hours. My main is on 612 hours 43 minutes, day 1028, and hasn't got it yet. Though I suspect it's coming soon.

And what do you do when it hits you?

You mutate into a hideous ghoul.

Well, that partly happened to me, because the A bomb hit and I went and played Fallout 3. Other than that, you can use the A bomb cleaner in Wrye Bash on the PC or just start again on the console.

you just start over from fresh, delete all files and auto saves. (if on a PS3), PC has fixes for it.

That's good. I feared it was uncurable.

Whoa! First time i've heard of this!

Scared

I've heard of it before but have never encountered it myself - which makes me even more scared.

Yep. Just use an application called OAF (Oblivion Abomb Fixer) to take care of it. Or if you feel so inclined you can hex-edit your game save...it's a single byte that's responsible for the Abomb.

If you can hex-edit savegames to cure it, is it not then possible to do the same for a PS3 save?

Yes, most likely, since you can back up your save to portable media and edit it on your computer. Try here viewtopic.php?f=6&t=17872

3rd party software IS available for PC to extract saves from the Xbox 360 "ecrypted container" file format and convert to PC Oblivion's .ess save file format. You can then easily fix Abomb. However, I've found no mention of any similar software for PS3 and no mention of any software that can convert the .ess file back to 360 or PS3 format again. You'll just have to try Googling for it, or searching console-specific Oblivion forums.

Hope this helps.

This glitch affects the GOTY version of the game?

It affects EVERY version of the game, sadly.

I had an 800+ hour first account on the xbox and I never encountered anything even like that. I had a couple of places in the game where I couldn't go at certain points without the game freezing. But if I just reloaded the area it sorted itself out usually.

That's a different, and less well documented, bug that you're describing there. Oblivion can sometimes corrupt save games in such a way that cells are effectively nuked, i.e. you can't enter them or even go close to them without the game freezing. One of the most common locations for a nuked cell is Sheogorath's Palace, for some reason, though I've only ever had problems with a couple of random Ayleid ruins.

As far as I'm aware there's no way to predict when or where you'll end up with a nuked cell. But it seems that minimizing how often you use Autosaves, and always saving a new file instead of overwriting an old one, can help prevent the problem. I have 530 hours on my current character and have managed to stave off both the Abomb and the nuked cell bug.

Edit: This may or may not be related, but it seems like the less you use Fast Travel the less you have the "nuked cell" bug too.

*raises hand meekly* I have a newbie question, too. I think I'm dealing with something similar, but I'm not sure...instead of everything slowing down, it's done the opposite and sped up. Could that be related to this? Sorry if this is in fact, in no way related to the topic. I don't mean to be stupid.

@Rose of Sithis: Since Abomb only causes animation slowdown/freeze, a "speed-up" problem is unrelated to this thread. Please start a new thread (so we don't confuse this one) and I'll try to help you there.