Oblivion

[brkl]

That's the correct quest all right. Thanks!

[Trithemius]

For the first, like, five minutes, then there's those trolls.

Those damn trolls are suprisingly badass!

[Moosferatu]

Duncan, I'm guessing you probably already know by now, but it's physically impossible to turn-in the Grey Fox.

I am the Grey Fox.

[Duncan]

whaaat? Like, from the beginning? Lame.

[Moosferatu]

whaaat? Like, from the beginning? Lame.

No, not from the beginning. It's more of a Princess Bride type of deal, but this has nothing to do with why you can't turn him in.

[Duncan]

No, not from the beginning. It's more of a Princess Bride type of deal, but this has nothing to do with why you can't turn him in.

Oh, so who's the Grey Fox from the beginning? I just finished the main quest and now can't be bothered to go through the thieves guild stuff

[Moosferatu]

Do you remember that guy who hangs around in Anvil's castle? The one whose name is "Stranger"? He's the Grey Fox. Since you're not going to do the quest I'll give you the whole story. Some 300 years ago one of the guildmasters of the thieves guild stole Nocturnal's cowl, but she put a curse on it. The curse makes the wearer completely lost to history. Who he was before can no longer be remembered by anyone. This is why it's impossible to turn him in. It turns out that the current Grey Fox isn't the original Grey Fox, but was actually the husband of the countess of Anvil. After you steal one of the elderscrolls to help free him of his curse the cowl (+25 sneak, 200 feather, and 100+ detect life) passes on to you.

[Duncan]

Oh man that actually sounds really cool. I remember seeing the Stranger in the palace and having no clue what he was doing there. I thought he was going to try and kill the countess or something. That he's her husband makes sense and is awesome. I love those long-term character payoffs in Oblivion. I still think it's a little weird that after how the Grey Fox vs. Hieronymous Lex thing was built up so early in the game that there's no Imperial Legion quest to arrest the Grey Fox. Anyway, thanks!!

[miffy495]

USING SPOILER TAGS MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A SPY!!!!

[David]

I really like this game so far, but I had been kind of confused/disappointed with the interaction with NPCs until a day or two ago. I finally figured out the speechcraft wheel (I had to look in the instruction booklet, pah), and now I love it. I wish there was some way to have more topics to discuss with each character, though. Speechcrafting and bribes don't seem all that worth it if there are only 2 topics to discuss, though I guess they've got a lot of filespace dedicated to speech files as it is.

[Simon]

I spent my first long afternoon with Oblivion yesterday. Did the first batch of stuff I was meant to and then explored a bit and side-quested. I'm thoroughly impressed.

My last Elder Scrollsing was Daggerfall, which I enjoyed up to a point (the point of realising just how homogenous the world outside the main questing was), but the polish here is something else. It's probably less sprawling, but that means it can be properly designed, so it's rewarding and interesting to wander from the story. Not fast-travelling sometimes between places throws up cool stuff to see and do, which surprised me.

It's interesting the amount of people who have been going nuts waiting for what is essentially a traditional PC-style RPG. It's the graphics that have done it, but it turns out this is clearly not just a pretty face. I should know, it looks ugly on my computer. My ageing ATI card has been called out of retirement for one last mission, wheezing every time we crest a hill and complaining 'I'm gettin' too old for this shit' when more than a few enemies appear on screen. And I get jealous of people who can see it with everything turned up. But it's still a lot of fun. Even if I can't work out how to change my character's stupid haircut.

Time will tell, but so far, so

One criticism: the map that came in the box is crap. No-one has ever made a map as good as Ultima VII's exciting cloth map, but this one looks boring and hardly shows anything.

[Oath]

One criticism: the map that came in the box is crap. No-one has ever made a map as good as Ultima VII's exciting cloth map, but this one looks boring and hardly shows anything.

The map that came with the Morrowind Collector's Edition was very nice though. Even though it was on paper it was nicely drawn and coloured and even featured small X's for some special equipment locations.

[Kosh]

Anyone know how to repair houses and or decorate the houses in oblivion?

My best guess is that i need to buy from a person there or something.. and i need help how to configure the game to take pictures?

Can someone help??

[schepton]

I am going to get Oblivion, I just don't know for which platform yet, and could use some help.

My PC:

P4 2.66 GHZ

2 Gigs of Ram

ATI 9600 xt 128 MB video card

or.....xbox 360.

I've seen very mixed opinions of both sides, I've heard that there are some serious slowdown issues with the 360 version. But I won't mind playing it with low detail settings on my PC.

[Moosferatu]

If you already own a 360 I'd probably get it for that as it'll look much much better. The downside being the controls and limited mod capabilities.

[Roderick]

I'm playing it with very low settings on my PC, and I silently wished I could play it in full glory. I usually don't care much for graphics, but in Oblivion's case it really is such a part of the game, that the absence of gorgeous vistas hurts the experience.

[Karimi]

The best place to rob in the Imperial city for me was a shop called "Mystic" something. They sell scrolls and gems. Only cause I get to recharge my weapon for free now (Stole a bunch of soul gems)

I think the reason the loot sucks is cause the loot is scaled to your character's level.

[miffy495]

With the end of exams in sight (Thursday!!! Woooo!) I'm looking for a way to kill off the summer months while awaiting second-year-of-university-panic. I've only ever been able to get into a couple of RPGs though. KOTOR (both) sucked me in really well as did Fallout and NWN, but I never really got why people were so into stuff like Baldur's Gate. I've also never played an RPG in the first person, which I understand is the case with Oblivion. You think this'll be worth my money or not? And I fully understand that asking on a thread devoted to the game may not bring me the most unbiased opinions, but I didn't really feel like starting another thread, so there you have it.

[Roderick]

Well, at the moment I think far more fondly of Morrowind than Oblivion. Morrowind has more depth to dig into, and Oblivion suffers from some very strange choices of design. I think the biggest mishap is that unlike other RPG's, you start out really powerful, but as the game progresses and you level up, you get weaker and weaker, because the enemy goes up in strength as well, exponentially so. This kind of destroys the whole thing why I am so in love with RPG's in the first place; namely that I can become an all-powerful godlike hero. And as such, I really don't have any incentive to level up, or even invest much time into my character. Why should I, he's only getting weaker and weaker with every level I gain

[loonyboi]

Well, at the moment I think far more fondly of Morrowind than Oblivion. Morrowind has more depth to dig into, and Oblivion suffers from some very strange choices of design. I think the biggest mishap is that unlike other RPG's, you start out really powerful, but as the game progresses and you level up, you get weaker and weaker, because the enemy goes up in strength as well, exponentially so. This kind of destroys the whole thing why I am so in love with RPG's in the first place; namely that I can become an all-powerful godlike hero. And as such, I really don't have any incentive to level up, or even invest much time into my character. Why should I, he's only getting weaker and weaker with every level I gain

What class/character are you playing?

If you concentrate on your major skills, you should be sufficiently powerful in no time. Just be smart about it -- if you're a knight, don't waste effort with magic, if you're a mage, don't bother with heavy armor, etc.

Having said that, you *can* change your mind and concentrate on minor skills, but understand that it's going to be an uphill battle for a while until you get those leveled up to a decent number.

[David]

Rodi: Don't level up until you can take advantage of attribute multipliers. I'm pretty sure Morrowind worked the same way in this regard. It's a waste to level up without making sure your stats are improving enough prior to the level. The enemies will get harder, and you need to make sure you're ready to face them. My character struggled a lot in the lower levels of play--unlike yours, apparently--but is rounding out nicely after some very conservative use of leveling.

[Roderick]

But isn't it still defeating exactly the freedom of the game and the reason why I like to level and like RPG's? What if you're someone who has all his major skills in stuff like mercantile and speechcraft instead of fighting skills? That means you can't play the game properly!

I understand why they wanted to do this, because from a game design perspective it makes sense to make the game easy in the beginning and hard at the end. But RPG's just don't work like that, and it takes ALL the fun out of playing it and becoming stronger. Of course you could manage everything and powerplay to get the most out of the system, but that's not how I like to play a game. I don't want to be bothered in this case by strategically picking stats and multipliers and stuff. I just want to play, start out as a loser and at the end of the game be a god who can blast everything away with the flick of his hand. That's what I like in RPG's. Surely it's not too arcane a concept that I don't like to play a game if playing means that I get weaker and weaker as I progress?

[Moosferatu]

There really isn't any difference between your major and minor skills other than your major skills start higher and they control when you level. You want your major skills to all be combat related even if you plan on using mercantilism and speechcraft more. This way the difficulty of your opponents will be related to the increase of your own combat abilities. For example, speechcraft wasn't one of my major skills, but I used it on just about everyone I came across and now it's one of my highest skills. If it had been one of my major skills I would have been screwed because my level would have increased way too much without my combat abilities also increasing. I don't think the fact that you have to make your major skills combat related (preferably based on similar attributes) detracts anything from the game seeing as there really is no difference between major and minor skills. Alternatively, you could just install one of the many mods that reconfigures the level tables.

[loonyboi]

But isn't it still defeating exactly the freedom of the game and the reason why I like to level and like RPG's? What if you're someone who has all his major skills in stuff like mercantile and speechcraft instead of fighting skills? That means you can't play the game properly!

Sure you can. Just don't plan on doing a lot of combat.

I don't understand why someone would wait to level up. In my experience (83 hours on character #1, 5 so far on #2), the game is balanced perfectly.

Character #1 was a knight, so I carried around a big sword and a ton of heavy armor. After a while I started using more destruction magic (a minor skill) so I used a lot of that and leveled it up.

Character #2 is an assasin/thief, so my major skills are sneak, marksman, blade, block, alchemy and so on. These are the exact skills I use, so why wouldn't I want to level up with them?

[Moosferatu]

I could be wrong, but I don't believe it changes anything if you wait to level. I think all of the skills that you increase after you are able to level go toward your next level. The point though is to increase as many skills as you can of the same attribute before leveling so that the attribute increase is greater upon leveling.