Elder Scrolls Oblivion review

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2006-04-02 01:21am

Hay guyz! I've defeated Mehrunes Dagon and become Champion of Cyrodiil at Level 2! Isn't that so... wrong? @_@;

Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba · Post by **Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba** » 2006-04-02 11:42am

Seggybop wrote:Hay guyz! I've defeated Mehrunes Dagon and become Champion of Cyrodiil at Level 2! Isn't that so... wrong? @_@;

Bastard. Ayleid ruins have halted my progress in the Main Quest, Mages Guild and Fighter's Guild. Goddamn places. TAKE YOUR GREAT WELKYND STONE AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!

... Well, at least I'm the Gray Fox.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2006-04-02 11:57am

I just got Oblivion. I was up until 4 AM. (I did not start playing until about midnight.

Now, be honest, how mny of yo usuave fuckers decided you were going to run around the city doing everything you can to improve your speechcraft, acrobatics, and sneaking? *Raises hand* I've been happily frolicking around....talking to people and...frolicking....did I mention frolicking? I'm positively sickeningly addicted. This game does indeed Roxxor my boxxors.

Oh, by the way, MONK FTW, BITCHES!

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-04-02 12:11pm

I've lost count of how many times I've made the plains of Oblivion my bitch.

I also think that the quests you get from rumors are the best. Right now I'm dealing with one where an entire town has turned invisible. The resolution should be fun!

Flagg · Post by **Flagg** » 2006-04-02 12:12pm

I keep getting that fucking black screen with the menu and mouse cursor still visible bug. It only happens when my vid card GPU temp gets into the high 60's range though.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-04-02 12:58pm

My speachcraft and mercentile refuse to budge, no matter how much I practice both.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-04-02 09:45pm

Ace Pace wrote:My speachcraft and mercentile refuse to budge, no matter how much I practice both.

That's odd. You're probably not doing it right.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-04-02 10:22pm

Heck, you can do speechcraft wrong and still get an increase. It's a fun little minigame, IMO.

As for Mercantile- I don't even know how to raise that skill.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-04-03 12:04am

I know how I should increase mercantile, just keep pushing better deals and using them, but if it works at all, its rising too slowly for me to notice.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-04-03 12:52am

It works for me - if you're on the best haggle setting you can get for the current disposition, personality and merc, you get increases to merc after a while. Selling a few grand worth of regular loot gets me a few levels usually: I think it goes up per 'test' (ie, deal closed) and not per septim saved. Selling things one-at-a-time and selling many cheap items is probably better than negotiating a thousand-septim saving on a magic sword. Stupid system, really.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-04-03 08:23am

Heh, yes, same carryover system, they just made it thousands apprently instead of hundreds.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2006-04-03 08:29am

Ack... I THOUGHT monk FTW, but I forgot that you need to actually PRACTICE hand to hand before you can walk around with impunity one-shotting dudes. Sheesh.

Is there a place I can go to grind my H2H skillzorz on low-level baddies?

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-04-03 08:30am

There's a Redguard in the Anvil Fighter's Guild who trains it.

Other than that... mudcrabs?

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2006-04-03 08:52am

And why is there not an unarmored skill anymore? Isn't that the whole point of being a monk? so if I walk around in a robe and sandals (As all good monks should.) then, my AC is going to be as if I were wearing a robe and a sandals. I could SWEAR that in Morrowind there is an unarmored skill, and I see it nowhere in oblivion. I mean, I swear to Christ...if I gotta be an armor-wearing monk...we gonna have problems up in here.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-04-03 09:03am

Blame Xbox 360 owners.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-04-03 09:20am

Speaking of the merchants, has anyone found an Armor/Weapons merchant and/or a dry-goods merchant that has more than 1200 gold available? I'm hauling back Daedric warhammers (worth 5K a peice), and a ton of other expensive daedric and ebony items from Oblivion, and I hate having to sell them for 1.2K; especially since with my current personality and mercantile skills I can haggle my sell price over 50%.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-04-03 09:28am

Here's what I don't get- what the fuck is it about XBox that necessitated the dumbing down of the game? No Medium Armor, No Spears, etc ... Morrowind for XBox didn't have that shit, right?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-04-03 09:30am

Uh, Q: What do people consider the best levelled monsters/bandits/items/animal mod? I despertly need one.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2006-04-03 09:31am

Vympel wrote:Here's what I don't get- what the fuck is it about XBox that necessitated the dumbing down of the game? No Medium Armor, No Spears, etc ... Morrowind for XBox didn't have that shit, right?

Nope. Xbox Morrowind was a respectable port. I suspect Modders will be hard at work fixing this game to work like it should. What do we say about the scaled MOB system? I rather like it. though it's somewhat of a surprise when, at lvl 8, I get pwned by a quest I started at lvl 2, simply because my sneak skill is 100.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-04-03 09:48am

Vympel wrote:Here's what I don't get- what the fuck is it about XBox that necessitated the dumbing down of the game? No Medium Armor, No Spears, etc ... Morrowind for XBox didn't have that shit, right?

Console gamers, generally speaking, are... inferior in most respects. Hell, that's the entire idea behind consoles themselves: Idiot-proof "der, plug game in and it done work good," gaming machines. Morrowind almost certainly did not do nearly as well as it could have on the XBox, and Bethesda (probably rightly) blamed the fact that TESIII was a high-brow, "cultured" RPG, not the Asian pseudo-RPG drek console gamers are used to.

Hence Bethesda's simplified TESIV - still reels in the hardcore fans, but manages to play to the lowest common denominator (i.e., 95% of those who would get it for XBox360, excluding of course PC gamers who can't afford an immediate hardware upgrade and such) at the same time. Naturally this irks us, but we all bought it, didn't we?

Arthur_Tuxedo · Post by **Arthur_Tuxedo** » 2006-04-03 10:14am

Still, I've noticed people blame the X360 for everything whether it fits or not. The most hated features of the game are the leveling and level scaling, which has nothing to do with "dumbing down" the game, yet people blame it on the XBox all the time. If the only problem was consolitis, and the only symptoms were the clunky inventory screen, and the removal of a few skills for the purpose of simplification, I doubt many people would complain. The game's only real major flaws seem like decisions that would have been made with or without the console port.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-04-03 10:30am

Another question: Security skill improves regardless of me actully doing it or computer dice rolling, Yes?

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2006-04-03 10:42am

Ace Pace wrote:Another question: Security skill improves regardless of me actully doing it or computer dice rolling, Yes?

Of course.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2006-04-03 11:00am

I still am not worried. I am 99.999999% certain that the modding community will have the game working properly very soon. How hard is it to take a dagger framework and extend it, slap on some new skins, tweak the stats some, and all it a spear? not hard at all. Even the animationgs for the staff could be used, so that should address the no spear problem.

As far as unarmored combat goes...could not someone simply attach a base armor value to your bare skin or a robe, and attach a skill to it when you fight with nothing on? Seems like it should involve minimal coding...

I mean, all of the things we're looking for exist in the game already, it's just for some smart guy to go in and muck about in the...code(?) to put 2+2 together and multiply by the square root of infinity squared times zero.

Alferd Packer · Post by **Alferd Packer** » 2006-04-03 11:57am

Ace Pace wrote:Another question: Security skill improves regardless of me actully doing it or computer dice rolling, Yes?

There's a real easy (15 minutes, tops) quest you can do at level 10 to get the Skelton Key, which lets you never break a lockpick, so you can spam auto-attempts until you succeed. Definitely good for us non-sneaky types. I'm too lazy to see if it's already been mentioned previously, but I'll spill the details if anyone's interested.