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It's been a while - quite a long while - since I last played Oblivion, so maybe I'm mistaken, but I seem to remember shooting arrows through the round hole in the gates in Ayleid ruins...? The game's not letting me do that ... the arrows just bounce back, even though I'm pretty sure I'm hitting the spot. Maybe you have to be an expert marksman (I'm only journeyman at the moment)? Maybe a mod ... did something? Maybe I'm dreaming it all up?

I don't remember ever being able to do that. Same with magic like flame spells or whatnot. I seem to remember trying in the past and not being able to do that. In fact, I seem to remember trying to shoot arrows at enemies below me when I'm on a higher level and there's a railing in front of me, and having the arrows bounce off.

Figured it out. It's the bigger, square gates with the hole in the middle you can shoot through - not the smaller, arched ones with the hole towards the top. Relieved that I'm not utterly insane.

There's very few places you can do this in the whole series (invisible walls catch a lot of arrows for me, definitely), surprised you found that one.

I often wish for a gouraud shading mode or even a vector outline, just something to revel the actual collision plane of the cover I'm trying to shoot from behind. Every game, I waste countless arrows until I figure out where to really aim so that they don't bounce off of the invisible edge that extends beyond the graphical skin of the object before me. Yes, that's a beautiful boulder, but would it kill them to have it look like the shape that it is?

I love these with the zombies on the other side in the statue ruins (level 1-5 iirc). I pluck arrows at them (1/3 damage) to build marksman skill.

I usually level grind archery in the arena, although it's kind of wasteful since you can't recover arrows. I also level up restoration at the same time though by healing them as I harm them.

Good ideas about leveling Archery! As soon as I get a new Windows PC and can play Oblivion again, I'll have to try these out, as I've mastered most of the other weapons skills and now need to focus on Archery as part of my overall character leveling.

I start out with the zombie ruins: Kemen, Ondo, and the undead statue ruins--including Vilverin, which have zombies at level 1. Then I switch to regular undead ruins, which have zombies from level 3-5? (before zombies are replaced by ghosts). You can do an in-out close up attack "dance" plucking arrows into them pretty safely, and you recover 50% of your arrows. (use a rusty iron bow to keep damage down). At high skill when trying to get 100 skill, I use the painted Trolls and the Horror of Dive Rock. You can stand on a boulder and fill the trolls with arrows until your bow breaks because the trolls rebuild health points over time. There is some danger, which makes it fun. Take several bows and 500 to 1k arrows. These are a sort of false natural play way to grind skill, and I need to hit most of these places on quests anyway so I schedule them do do the most good. With Marksman as a major skill and Stealth as a specialty, this play strategy builds marksman to 100 pretty quickly (i.e doing the collector quests and the troll quests)
If you have marksman as a minor and or a different specialty, you will need more "opportunity".
The ghosts of Benirus mannor are good (but not really natural). The arrows go through them and you need to pick up arrows after 15 shots if you want to get the arrows before they dissolve. If you leave the house and rest for an hour in the street (not the usual three days) the ghosts will regenerate and you can go back in and start over. You do need a silver or depleted magic bow to do damage and build skill.
The everscamps are sort of fun to practice on, and at max difficulty you can stand on rocks along the coast in fron to Vilverin opposite of the tutorial sewer and pluck arrows at crabs for good points.
I refuse to shoot horses and the people at Peryite shrine, but that's just me.

Interesting idea about using a rusty iron bow to help keep damage down. Naturally when using a bow as a weapon the desire will be to use a bow and arrows that do the most damage. Guess I'll have to carry two bows and two sets of arrows as long as I'm still leveling Archery.

I played a game straight once using only best-for-level mundane bows and iron/steel arrows (I don't think I used sneak shots) and it took me 2/3 of the dungeons in the game, killing everything in them, to get major+ specialty Marksman to 100 (I probably played as an orc or nord with no bonus). So you would need around 100% dungeon completion if playing more normally with plenty of sneak shots. That makes sense from a developer's perspective.

You don't reduce shots per kill very much by using better arrows and magical bows (but they are fun to use). My standard war kits are rusty+fine steel bows+silver and iron arrows >>>Frostwyrm +elven/glass/ebony bow+found Silence bow>>> Level 19 to end game = Steel arrows+Silence bow (or poisons)+two copies of Hatreds Soul (one magical shot to stun followed by sneak shots from a depleted copy). Hatreds Soul bows are about half the weight of a deadric bow, which is very nice. I will use master level fortify fatigue potions (x3) to boost arrow damage.
I find that spider deadra are much easier to deal with after silencing them. Xivilai resist the magic bow so silence poison works better on them.

Save the tribal goblin caves until after you run out of arrows from Boethia's quest (level 22) because then they will yield hundreds of steel arrows per cave.

I posted a list of all the dungeons that have zombies at level 1 in the What I did today thread. Some of them have gates you can shoot through (you do not need to shoot through the hole, btw). There are also gates like that in some vampire dungeons (Fanacas, maybe more) and the ruin near Leyawiin that has the leveled Azklan trolls.

I saw that post in the other thread. I'll definitely check out those locations for working on my Marksman skill. I was also revisiting the Imperial City Sewers for that. There are a couple of places where you can stand on your side of a waterway and shoot at goblins on the other side, because they won't go down-and-up the stairs to get to your side.