The 'What You Did in Oblivion Today' thread

[Alarra]

We have one for Skyrim, but not Oblivion, and surely there's others out there still playing it.


Today in my game, Brielle discovered a phony vampire hunter and went through an old Akaviri fort in order to find an amulet. I also switched her from Kvatch and mithril gear to glass armor.

[Pancake]

Finnan, a sneaky bosmer, single-handedly closed the Kvatch Oblivion Gate. He didn't know how those poor chaps could survive without him, a heroic deeds indeed. Later he escorted couple of wastrels to nearby camp. He wondered when would be a good time to ask for commissions. But then he figured, he had a better shot stealing from greedy Master-in-Mercantile Kvatch Merchant.

[Mauin]

Telanis Rundil the blind Dunmer closed three Oblivion Gates (all between Kvatch and Anvil), then decided to roam the coast looking for those funny plants called Nirnroot. She stopped outside Garlas Malatar and, from there, will probably seek out more Oblivion Gates.

[cybrxkhan]

For the past couple of days on my crappy old laptop I started a new playthrough as a female Argonian, a battlemage who uses claymores and magic. I used the alternate start mod, so it was really fun starting as dirt poor with no money, so I had to rumage garbage and trash cans (i.e. crates and barrels) to look for things to sell just so I could get enough money to buy a claymore. I am thinking of only doing the fighters guild questline and some of the mages guild for this character.

[Linkuya]

Read the book given to him by a person called Mora.

[skullclutter]

I'm still working on my first playthrough. I'm late to the party, I know.

Been working my way around visiting shrines for Knights of the Nine and taking care of a few sidequests along the way.
Took care of the lady with the Staff of the Everscamp - since I'd already done Shivering Isles, I saw this as 'taking my stuff back'.
Also started on the quests for Mazoga the Orc

[Mauin]

I was bored earlier so I decided to start a new character... A Dunmer Vampire by the name of...
Blasts, I have to check again.
Kyrana Ralthis.

It took me about an hour to get her appearance complete (and even then I'm not happy with it, though she's a Vampire so it really doesn't matter), and then after that, another 30-40 minutes to get the leveling done right.
After that? I immediately went to the Imperial City, murdered some random family, and joined the Dark Brotherhood.

Gotta make sure one of my mods (Whispered Warning; allows you to save some of the original sanctuary members during a certain Dark Brotherhood quest) works with my current setup. Besides, I felt like doing another nasty Vampire and figured I'd do one for Oblivion since Vulom has the "nasty Vampire" role occupied for Skyrim.

[Daemos Avetorii]

My Argonian, Greemus just became the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood. He killed many foes and earned much money.

[dzio]

So I'm giving Oblivion another chance, maybe this time I'll actually play it through, instead of getting frustrated with leveling problems.

I made a Khajiit thief/assassin and all-around bad girl called S'kirra. I was debating going to Vilverin, like I usually do, and then I thought: I'm a cat. There's a whole bunch of nasty, cold water between me and that ruin, and behind me there's a huge, beautiful city, full of houses with cheap locks. So I went on a little crime spree, got pockets full of gold, gems and jewelery (I don't steal heavy and unwieldy stuff) and scouted out the sewers to find entrances to all Market District shops. And then I went looking for the Thieves Guild, and joined in. Now I'm on my way to Chorrol, because that Dragon Amulet is burning a hole in my pocket and I want to get rid of it as soon as possible.

Oh, and on my way there I ran into a Dunmer lady called Dralora Athram who was fighting some mudcrabs under the bridge. Not very lucky for her, since there was no one around and I had a sharp knife. Now I've got a nifty amulet, and the mudcrabs have dinner.

Got a visit from a certain Speaker the next night, when I was hiding from a nasty storm in a ruined fort. Now I need a plan, because that's three questlines and I have no idea what to do next.

[skullclutter]

I spent a session running around collecting all the useless junk I could find. I'm trying to bury the corpse of an NPC in her bedroom.

[cybrxkhan]

So I'm giving Oblivion another chance, maybe this time I'll actually play it through, instead of getting frustrated with leveling problems.

If you play on PC you could use one of the levelling mods. There's actually quite a number of them that are relatively uninstrusive and simple if you don't want a big honking mod that changes a gazillion things like me, the one I use is Galerion's which has a sytem vaguely similar to Skyrim's levelling system.

[dzio]

I did try some out a while ago and it didn't really improve things by much, so I'm sticking to vanilla for now. Anyway, I always try to complete a playthrough of the vanilla game before adding any mods, so that's what I'm doing now.

Oh, and I made another character, because I want to explore Mages Guild questline too and it wouldn't work for S'kirra. So, a Redguard Spellsword with a badass claymore and wearing heavy armor. So far it's working great, I'm roleplaying her as hating necromancy and very law-abiding (to the point where she won't use lockpicks, backstab anyone or try to manipulate people into liking her more via Speechcraft mini-game). And it's surprisingly easy to deal with even relatively strong enemies that give S'kirra some serious problems from time to time. That huge sword may have something to do with that.

[skullclutter]

So it turns out the NPC I wanted to bury is essential, so I found a nice open spot in her dining room and made myself a halo of junk, dropping each item one by one. Back to business - I'm working on the pilgrimage for Knights of the Nine.

[bewing]

Just a few days ago I got into the Arcane University. I spent lots of lovely time making spells, enchanting all my armor with Fire Shield, making a waterwalking ring (I like waterwalking for traveling to Bravil and Leyawiin), and making 4 superweapons. So today I was running around testing it all out. Oh what terrible carnage the mudcrab world sufferred today.

@dzio: I've restarted vanilla a dozen times because I didn't like how my characters were leveling. Let me make a suggestion from what I've learned (this is only if you are not trying to roleplay a "pure mage"). Try a character with a customized class: combat specialty, majors: Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Mysticism, Restoration, Security and Acrobatics. Ignore what happens in mercantile -- just sell anything you want, anytime you want.

This allows you to stay at any level almost indefinitely (by using weapons for all your fighting). And then when you want to level up, you can easily do it just by blasting away with magic for a little while. And you can still control the skills delicately enough to do +5/+5/+5 leveling with "good efficiency" (but not perfect). (Note: you may want to avoid armor for awhile in some levels, to keep from accidentally leveling up that skill.)

[philfredobob]

Killed Seridur and joined the Order of the Virtuous Blood. went up a couple of levels and explored Fort Magia.

next time i get on i'm going to leave the vicinity of the Imperial City. I'm level 24 and i haven't been to any other city yet.... sheesh, increasing the difficulty on Oblivion really makes you level up fast.

[philfredobob]

went up a bunch of levels, this character has gotten really tough, and i haven't had to do any incredibly difficult levelling. i have gotten about one +5 for each level on one attribute each time, with the others having +3 or +2 and my guy turned out fine. i don't know what people complain about.


explored around chorrol, finished the quest in castle chorrol.

[dzio]

@bewing - damn, sorry for the lack of reply, missed that post somehow. Anyway, your suggestion is probably a nice way of dealing with the leveling problem, but this is something I'm never going to do. If I ever find a game where this kind of plan is the only way to success, I'm putting it down and never playing again. It's called "roleplaying" for a reason and I'm not going to make colour-coded spreadsheets, even if they are the most efficient way of figuring things out.

[rpbraley868]

Did something today ive never been able to accomplish since i first bought Oblivion when it came out. I finished the battle for Kvatch without losing a single Kvatch soldier or any of the 3 legion guys that come to help!
(Of course i dont know if the mods i used made it easier. OOO, Oblivion XP and Supreme Magicka)

[Mauin]

Telanis Rundil explored the area between Cheydinhal and Leyawiin. Mysteriously only found one Oblivion Gate.
She did, in the absence of any Gates, clear out a few Ayleid Ruins. And other assorted dungeons.

[Mr.Argonian]

Today I returned to the world of Oblivion after a six month break. I recreated my female Bosmer druid, and have spent the last five hours getting immersed back into Cyrodiil. It's even funner than I remember.

[Mauin]

Telanis Rundil continued with her search for another Oblivion Gate. Didn't find any, though I only played for 40 minutes. I've only cleared 19 of them, and if what the wiki says is correct, then there should be another 6 hiding somewhere (I'm only on the Path of Dawn; not going any further until I find and close as many Gates as possible). I just haven't found them yet.

Other than that, she did clear out several dungeons of Necromancers (one of them including Lost Boy Caverns).

I also went through my Oblivion folder and deleted any unnecessary textures and meshes, and then optimized any remaining textures.
I was looking at the sky folder and found that it came to around 150MB. After the initial WTF moment subsided, I dug through it and found that the textures were far larger than they should be. File size, not texture size. They were 1k textures, but they were each around 5MB. Not required. So I went through and resaved them as DXT5 or DXT1 compression where needed. Reduced the size from the 150MB it was before down to a mere 30MB. With no apparent loss of quality.

Tested it briefly in-game and found that it gave me several fps back. Not much (Oblivion usually runs around 40-60fps anyway), but it's nice. Shouldn't use up too much memory now.

[philfredobob]

Finished the anvil docks fighters guild quest, and explored around Anvil county.

in one cave, ''Smoke Hole Cave'' I think it was, I had one of the toughest fights I have ever had in Oblivion. there were 4 Nether Liches, 3 with destruction staffs and one with a Silence staff, and a skeleton hero with a bow, all in the same room. I died loads against them, in the end, I was saved by the staffs of my enemies, I took one, and killed the other with it, then took his and used it when I ran out of charge. the most annoying was the fact that each one had his own summon chasing me too, so I had three skeletons and a headless zombie chasing after me, and a skeleton guardian for the archer, which makes for a total of 10 guys chasing me about

[Mauin]

Telanis Rundil explored most of Blackwood. In the process, she managed to find and close another three Oblivion Gates, bringing the total up to 22. Just leaves three more for now.

She's going to continue exploring until she finds those last Gates... Well, she'll really continue exploring until I've discovered every location. I'm just glad I can see where everything is (thanks to a mod). Makes navigation slightly easier. Also glad that she's got 100 speed. That makes things faster. Much faster.
The only problem is that, at level 51 (all skills and most attributes at 100), she can't keep her feet on the ground. In hilly terrain, I keep falling through the air. I have no idea how many times she has come close to dying because she keeps trying to fly. Slightly annoying.

[philfredobob]

Closed the first Oblivion Gate, and retook the city of Kvatch with Savlian Matius

this time, I actually managed to keep people alive, however one of them died on the attack on the castle, but at least the female redguard survived.

what's funny is, the only reason she survived is because she just randomly chose to run away. she sprinted out the castle and right back to the chapel.

so now I've got martin with me. i'm going to take him up to cloud ruler temple, then i'll put the main quest on hold for a while.

[skullclutter]

Took care of the Skooma den close to Leyawiin, then started heading towards the next shrine for Knights of the Nine. Found an oblivion gate along the way so I'll take care of that next session before continuing.