I'm bored...

[OblivionDuruza]

There is a lot of opportunity to collect things in Oblivion, looting, finding, buying unique items, armours, weapons, etc. is one idea that is sure to burn time, and might lead to many a fun encounter along the way. Why not turn Rosethorn Manor into a museum of sorts?

I assume you've checked out the Shivering Isles, but if not, that's at least 20 hours worth of entertainment value right there, it's truly an awesome DLC expansion.

Another thing I would consider, is starting a new character. If you're getting too powerful, than fights wont have the same thrill and adrenaline rush as they did before, and maybe increasing the difficulty or starting over is a choice to be considered. That, and there's always Mods if you're on PC. Maybe something like OOO?

[OblivionDuruza]

Weak Scoz, you can't play an ES game on a console! (I joke of course, I actually first played Oblivion on PS3, as my first TES experience) Check out Shivering Isles then, it's a heap of fun, and slightly more challenging than vanilla Oblivion. SI is worth doing twice, just while we're on the point, to experience both sides of its branching Main Quest, even if they are fairly similar.

Spoiler:

Edit: Typo fix

[H8Ball]

Try doing a forum search for my old posts about mini-games I've invented. Some of them are a lot of fun, and a welcome change to revive the game if you're bored.

At high Level, you can "swat" most enemies with a few blows and take little damage. You can exploit your "superman" status by exploring without fear and learning the finer points of the game mechanics by roleplaying a retired adventurer who's bored and looking for "hobbies" to pass the time. Some good hobbies are...

Mad Scientist: Go on a "nature ramble" to find the best locations for picking your favourite Alchemy ingredients. Set up an "Alchemy lab" (mine is in Rosethorn Hall basement in Skingrad), spend your time brewing multi-effect potions and poisons, and testing them in the field.

Research Mage: Buy up ALL spells in the game and visit ALL stones to learn ALL possible spell effects. Experiment with Spellmaking to create powerful multi-effect spells, and test them in the field.

Big Game Soul Safari: Buy up empty Grand Soul Gems and a Soul Trap spell or enchanted weapon, go out hunting for Grand Souls, then experiment with Enchanting to create the perfect super-suit and weapon to fit your roleplaying style. Keep the successes and sell the failures. You can always go dungeon delving to loot more unenchanted items to enchant.

Arms Collector: Go dungeon delving to collect at least one example of every weapon and piece of armour. Although to be honest a 100% complete collection isn't possible unless you aim to get EVERY possible type of weapon/armour as you level up (Fur/Iron, Leather/Steel, all the way up to Glass/Daedric). The hardest to collect are Dremora items, as you have to keep clearing Oblivion Worlds, NOT taking the Sigil Stone then leaving them to respawn after 3 days.

Should keep you busy for a while, eh?

Of course, even these get boring after a while. The only way to go is to start a new game, to re-experience the roleplaying and character-building all over again while making different decisions. The freedom of choice means there are more decision paths you can ever experience in your lifetime, in fact orders of magnitude more than the estimated number of atoms in the universe (10^80 I believe, that's a 1 followed by 80 zeroes).

[Siken]

Efficient Leveling is Oblivion killer, it just distract you from real game play.
Wen you focus on wrong things like making your self to strong and then go into the game like that you gonna be bored.
If you don't go and actually play and try to beat enemy in creative way you wont get fun in game.
As someone once said, more is less and less is more, simple and effective..
You must to learn to look at the distance, people know to say he's so blinded he cant see the forest from the trees.

But if you are really bored why don't you try some weird big Mod like Nehrim or who knows what there is to be found now.

[OneGear]

I started a new character to finish everything I could at level 1. Jacked the dificulty up to at ~80%.

Totally worth it. Changes the game from a hack 'N slash dungeon crawler to a strategy game.

Magic and physical attacks are nerfed so it takes 12 iron arrows to kill a mudcrab when you get out of the starting sewer.

Summoned creatures are apparently not nerfed, because a skeleton can tear up most enemies. A scamp will literally light them up, his attacks are slower but seem more powerful.

Poisons also seem unaffected by the difficulty nerfing. I make a lot of kills with Sneak poison arrows, simply waiting for the target to expire before advancing.

You can't address inventory capacity or magicka pool by simply levelling up so you are forced to emply other solutions.

Throwaway magic weapons become your prized possessions. Weightless quest weapons are gold. Weightless and enchanted become your "big guns" instead of "nice but meh."

I really like this new game I'm playing, where you only do more damage by exercising the skill. I used to carry 200 arrows minimum just walking the shores for nirnroot. Porcupining crabs is a pastime when it takes 12 arrows to kill one. On the other hand, now that it only takes 7 I feel I've made a lot of progress. I can always sleep to get better gear, but I've got the whole main quest in front of me yet. I've cut it down to 40 arrows, but still pick up everyone I find. Dollar a piece, you know.

And while money is tight at first, you can get a free house by getting Black Brugo. After that money ceases to be a huge issue - a Milkrock run can net you ~2,000, and the best non-magic armor and weapons are free from the Stones, and weightless to boot.

[H8Ball]

That's the way! Change the playing field, change the rules, then figure out a winning strategy for the new gameplay style. It can give a completely different "feel" to the game, and you discover ways to accomplish goals that you never thought of before.

The number of possible ways you can do things in Oblivion (create a starting character, use preferred skills, order of attribute bonuses, order you do Quest lines in, decisions you make, etc) is SUCH a high number that it WAY exceeds the estimated number of atoms in the universe (about 10^80, a 1 followed by 80 zeroes).

Just the choices you make to create a new character multiply up to a HUGE number of possibilities...

Races: 10 choices
Specialisation: Combat, Magic or Stealth... 3 choices
Birthsign: 12 choices
Favoured Attributes: 2 out of 8... 8*7 = 56 choices
Major Skills: 7 out of 21... 21*20*19*18*17*16*15 = 586,051,200 choices

Multiply all those choices together and you have a total of 10*3*12*56*586,051,200 = 11,815,792,192,000 (roughly 11.8 TRILLION) possible starting characters. There's about 40 hours of gameplay if you do Quest-related stuff ONLY. This means to experience every possible character play-through would take about 11.8*40 = 472 trillion hours, or about 54 billion years. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old!

You simply won't live long enough to experience a miniscule fraction of the possibilities Oblivion has to offer. Fact of life.

[Evil-i]

...This means to experience every possible character play-through would take about 11.8*40 = 472 trillion hours, or about 54 billion years. The universe is only 13.7 billion years old!

You simply won't live long enough to experience a miniscule fraction of the possibilities Oblivion has to offer. Fact of life.

Too bad the ABomb Bug limits the useful life of Oblivion's gaming universe to about 250-300 hours. At least on consoles.

[OneGear]

That's not an issue because exploring the range of choices requires starting new characters, eliminating the bug as a factor.

[OneGear]

Uh, whats the Abomb glitch?

...

Accumulated error in your savegame can cause slow-down issues with animations. Only non-fixable on consoles. Only occurs after an inordinate amount of playtime and saves on a single character. If you played for a month straight, 24/7 with no breaks, you may or may not run into it.

There are tools to fix it on the PC. You could theoretically fix it on the 360 by copying your save game to your pc and using one of the tools, maybe.

Since the solution on a console is "start a new character," it's not an issue regarding exploring all the possible combinations of character race, attributes, and skills.

I've not experienced it myself but the longest I played one character exclusively was 4 months (not 24/7 ).

[ParanoidAndroid]

I started a new character to finish everything I could at level 1. Jacked the dificulty up to at ~80%.

Totally worth it. Changes the game from a hack 'N slash dungeon crawler to a strategy game.

Magic and physical attacks are nerfed so it takes 12 iron arrows to kill a mudcrab when you get out of the starting sewer.

Summoned creatures are apparently not nerfed, because a skeleton can tear up most enemies. A scamp will literally light them up, his attacks are slower but seem more powerful.

Poisons also seem unaffected by the difficulty nerfing. I make a lot of kills with Sneak poison arrows, simply waiting for the target to expire before advancing.

You can't address inventory capacity or magicka pool by simply levelling up so you are forced to emply other solutions.

Throwaway magic weapons become your prized possessions. Weightless quest weapons are gold. Weightless and enchanted become your "big guns" instead of "nice but meh."

I really like this new game I'm playing, where you only do more damage by exercising the skill. I used to carry 200 arrows minimum just walking the shores for nirnroot. Porcupining crabs is a pastime when it takes 12 arrows to kill one. On the other hand, now that it only takes 7 I feel I've made a lot of progress. I can always sleep to get better gear, but I've got the whole main quest in front of me yet. I've cut it down to 40 arrows, but still pick up everyone I find. Dollar a piece, you know.

And while money is tight at first, you can get a free house by getting Black Brugo. After that money ceases to be a huge issue - a Milkrock run can net you ~2,000, and the best non-magic armor and weapons are free from the Stones, and weightless to boot.

This sounds like a great idea. I once played the game on 100% difficulty and at level 40 mudcrabs still took a long time to take down, while any magic attack could easily one shot my altmer apprentice (I know a bad combination). But as cool as it sounds when I start a new character I will use FCOM or OOO to crank up the difficulty and create a whole new game experience.

[OneGear]

It's working great. I was afraid it would be stupid boring after a while at lvl 1, but it's not. Enchant some armor with +Strength for inventory. Enchant some things with Luck, as it gives a (un)healthy bump to weapon damage. A summoned scamp is really all the extra muscle you usually need. Alchemy gets a workout so you don't need to make it a major skill. Poison is your friend, and Oblivion planes supply your most potent combo poisons - spiddal sticks, harrada and steel-blue entoloma knock down anything in seconds. Overkill for anything but dremora, really. Throw in milk thistle for paralyze and it's almost too easy. Almost.

You won't be buying houses left and right unless you like farming, but your skills develop and enemies become opportunities to grind Restoration instead of deadly encounters.

[11Justin93]

Too bad the ABomb Bug limits the useful life of Oblivion's gaming universe to about 250-300 hours. At least on consoles.

I've got 300+ hours in Oblivion for the 360 and I have yet to experience any problems with it. Maybe I just got lucky. Is it a common problem?

[WillieMakeit]

You could always play a completely different game. There's nothing wrong at all with playing something else when it starts to drag like that.

[Pandamatak]

So I plugged in Oblivion today (first time in months) and I instantly realized why I stopped all together. It was so boooorring!!!! I already completed the main quest and the fighters guild and the mages guild. What else is there to do? I am probably going to try and just explore and stuff like that. My guy is pretty much the strongest. I just killed Umbra, and that was one of the very few "close" fights. What else is there to do?

Get Bananasplit's better cities mod (Qarl 3 if your computer can handle it), Francesco's overhaul, better leveled lists, and OOO.

Play the game again, and it will be a lot more fun.

[MaKo]

If you are familiar with game mechanics, I would recommend you to make one character to play with hardest difficulty settings. It changes the basic rules, and after that you have new fascinating tools for your other characters as well. For me, it teached how to efficiently use poisons, conjured creatures, commanding, and custom spells in general. At first it can feel ridiculously hard, as you don't yet have all the tools you need to survive, but later it is not much harder as regular difficulty (excepting that you are not using "exploits" like Chameleon Suit). There are some instructions in Wiki for hardest difficulty characters:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:The_H ... tegy_Guide

In general, changing strategies at higher levels (e.g. from warrior to archer, or something like that) and at the same time giving up some of the most powerful gears (e.g. high damage reflection, high magic resistance and such) usually gives new sights to the game.

[pajeroking]

I created a character. Normal difficulty. I used efficient leveling method.Until i reach max lvl and all attr=100(lvl 52) i loot dungeons.After that i start selling ALL stuff that i have. i don't know how much money i'll earn. Then i'll start mixing and trying all kinds of builds enchantments and so on. Next step: completing all side quests. Collecting all unique items, buying all houses. Completing the main story line. Right now i reached lvl 20. Still long way to go.And i'm not bored at all.

[Dark Spark]

Dive into every hole. Leave nothing alive.

[Poohunter]

Do all the Daedric quests. Clear out every single cave/ayleid ruin you come across.

Mass murder

[Ripcage]

Mass murder

Yes...