An Elder Scrolls: Oblivion thead

squiffy · 23 Apr 2006 at 11:50

Does Oblivion have a primary and secondary weapon selection? ie 1) Sword and shield 2) Bow and arrows. It'll be easier in a fight - couple of ranged attacks and quickly change to sword.

oh I'm stuck at Kvatch, I've closed the gate, captain asked me to get gate key (gone back to Church) went back and need to go to guard/gate house. I'm just walking around and can't find where to go. :confused:

Sweetloaf · 23 Apr 2006 at 11:55

squiffy said:
Does Oblivion have a primary and secondary weapon selection? ie 1) Sword and shield 2) Bow and arrows. It'll be easier in a fight - couple of ranged attacks and quickly change to sword.

In the inventory screen, hold down a key 1-7 (or maybe 1-8) then click on the weapon/item/spell that you wish to link to this key!

Matmulder · 23 Apr 2006 at 11:59

Review time, from me. No spoilers, so safe to read.

I've played through the main campaign as my Wood Elf Marksman/Assasin/Thief, done all the guild lines, many, many quests (as many as I could find) and explored many-a-dungeon. I should make it clear that I love my RPG games - from Baldurs Gate through to the simplier Diablo.

But right now, having completed TES:O, I feel a little empty. I don't feel like saying "Wow, that was awesome, I'm gonna start again". I feel a little "meh". In fact, I can't see my playing through it again.

I think it comes down to the unsatisfactory nature of the levelling system, making quests and dungeon crawling feel a little hollow. The dungeons feel slightly repetative, there's very rarely any decent rewards, and I'm not going to find any real suprises due to the monster scaling. The same goes for quests. All you get is a few gold, and occasionally some decent items.

My main reason for completing the quests were purely for fun - which they were, the first time around. But most of the time all I got was gold...great, I'll add it to the pile of 50,000 I've already got with nothing to spend it on except the odd house. And yes, the Dark Brotherhood quests were fun, as were the Theives Guild. The main quest line was decent enough - the ending was certainly impressive, but I almost didn't get there as towards the end it became a real chore repeating yourself again and again for one part...I don't want to spoil it.

No memorable characters either, no one who stood out, all the NPC's were very 1-dimensional. The Radient AI was decent though, but mainly for comic reasons

On the upside, it had the most awesome world I'd ever seen - from the superb weather effects, to the day/night cycle and the landscape and views. Truely awesome.

Combat was frantic and fun, and worked well. Speechcraft part was poor, and the fact that even with security at level 10 I could get into any lock felt a little stupid.

I don't want to talk too much, this was meant to be an quick review, but overall, for me, it'll give it 85%. The levelling system cripples it for me - I had no feeling of power, no reason to explore that dungeon a little more, or no reason to go out picking fights on random creatures, and the quests lose their main incentive.

I'd be interested to hear other people's views, now its been out a while...

Meridian · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:07

I agree about most of that. I've been playing from the beginning with a leveling mod which fixes the levels of most NPCs. For instance, the final fight in the Arena is against someone at level 30, rather than the default which is your level plus 6. So no more "Grand Master at level 1" stuff. The downside is that all the soldiers are no longer leveled as well, so if you do the main quest at too high a level the monsters (which are still leveled) will kill your soldier helpers (who aren't) pretty quickly. Didn't dtop me doing the MQ at level 23, but I wouldn't try it at level 70.

BTW, I've also discovered that some very interesting loot starts spawning at level 100...

M

Simaster14 · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:15

Matmulder said:
Review time, from me. No spoilers, so safe to read.

I'd have to agree with almost everything you said. Despite the facts saying Oblivion is bigger than Morrowind, it just didn't feel it. I guess this is a lot to do with fast travel, and despite this I still use. If someone said just not to use it, or to remove it, I'd say no to both. I found travelling in MW a pain, and fast travel is a saviour in OB, but it still feels smaller despite fast travel.

The length of quest lines were too short for me, and although I haven't finished the MQ yet, I am very close, just have to close more gates. Adding gates as ways of lengthening a quest line just doesn't work, because it is very repetitive and boring after a while.

I had forgotten about the levelling system in TES games, and how creatures level with you. In some way this is good, because you can do a lot of the game at lower levels, but after having played WoW (I know I shouldn't even compare it to a game like OB) I think I prefer having creatures with set levels, and you have to level to be able to kill them. I would feel more satisfaction after killing a particularly hard boss at the end of a dungeon/ruin than simply clearing one with relative ease. I also think it is far to easy to get very good gear in OB, by the time I was level 20-23 I was getting daedric already, and considering you can get to level 40-50 I think this is far to low. The fact that there aren't too many unique items you can get for doing hard quests or killing hard bosses is also a bit of a let down. Then again I guess this is me comparing it to WoW.

The graphics with this game are definitely a highlight, it's just a shame that you need a top of the range to run it at the best quality reasonably well, whereas with most games released at the moment I can play them with high graphics settings on my PC that was top of the range just short of a year ago.

Despite these bad points I would still rate it a very good game, simply because it is, but I am a little disappointed and think it could have been a lot better.

Simaster14 · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:16

Meridian said:
but I wouldn't try it at level 70.

BTW, I've also discovered that some very interesting loot starts spawning at level 100..

Level 70? Level 100? Is this part of the mod you are using because I thought the max was around 50! And also, what sort of loot?

Rebelius · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:22

haha, I recon the character I have now will max at around 52. I'm lvl 41 just now and already all my stats are at 100 except luck which is 76.

level 100 would take a lot of grind and jail time to reach.

WatchTower · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:25

Do you get the death on site if you break to many laws like you did in Morrowind? I've not been evil enought to find out yet.

Fx-Overlord · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:26

I agree, that how the loot was managed was a bit of a disappointed. I would rather have to fight a really hard boss and get the chance of getting some good loot from a specific list (like WoW

), rather than picking up some good loot from a bandit!! I, like many others, have picked up some amazing loot from just random dungeons rather than completing quests or killing bosses.

I would also have liked more variety in the quests. I find that too many of the quests are combat based, and would have liked more puzzle type quests, and definately more ways in which to do a quest, in which the way i act determines how the quest and the future plays out. I know that there are some that fall into this category but for the most part, the quests are pretty linear. Also, give me more chat options than 3.

I'm neither upset or happy about the levelling system. I can see advantages and disadvantages to both the system, and am satisfied playing it the way it is.

Hector · 23 Apr 2006 at 12:44

Last Kronin said:
Thanks for that little tutorial hector, only problem is i cant seem to add my .dds(texture) file keep getting an invalid directory message.

i now know what causes this.. i tried to have one folder to keep all my modded meshes in (both armour and weapons) but it won't have it. weapon meshes have to be in the meshes/weapons folder, armour in armor. same goes with the icon, they had to be in textures/menus/icons. although they could be in sub folders, i.e. meshes/weapons/myweapons

so it seem's an 'invalid directory' means the item your trying to link in CS is not in the correct base folder.

Meridian · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:03

Simaster14 said:
Level 70? Level 100? Is this part of the mod you are using because I thought the max was around 50! And also, what sort of loot?

The game has no level cap for the character, but for reasons of gameplay I think you'd struggle to get past level 70. Pick a character where most of the Majors are never used or hard to level and you'll be stuck about level 35.

Now Simaster14 says he has daedric armour - but I bet that doesn't include a daedric shield because they don't spawn until you are level 75 if I understand the CS correctly. At level 100 a load of heavily enchanted daedric shields become available.

M

Hector · 23 Apr 2006 at 13:56

LL0NPCArmorHeavyShieldLvl100, sounds like level 100 but double click it and see. it caps out at level 20.

leveled item/Dark09SkeletonArrow100, mean 100% chance of a drop. his top level loot item is: LL0LootArrow6Glass75 - 20(10), means 75% chance he'll drop 10 arrows at level 20.. if he dont drop this item (as it's 75%) then he 'will' drop a lesser arrow from his list.

now look at LL0LootArmor0MagicHeavy6Daedric100 :eek:

edit: they all seem to have chance "0", so god knows where they set the %??
i know the % is true though because if you give an npc a blah25 he won't often have the item, if you give him a blah100 he'll always have it.. you can preview the results of random loot drops within cs.. every now and then you'll find a 'preview calulated results' button, you can set the expected player level and click that button to see what would/could be dropped.

edit2: lol

silly me, chance none "0" mean's 100% every time. so 25 means 25% won't drop! 75% will drop.

Simaster14 · 23 Apr 2006 at 14:54

Meridian said:
The game has no level cap for the character, but for reasons of gameplay I think you'd struggle to get past level 70. Pick a character where most of the Majors are never used or hard to level and you'll be stuck about level 35.

Now Simaster14 says he has daedric armour - but I bet that doesn't include a daedric shield because they don't spawn until you are level 75 if I understand the CS correctly. At level 100 a load of heavily enchanted daedric shields become available.

I don't wear daedric armour myself, but I've had it drop which I've sold on, and I'm pretty sure I've had a shield drop at some point (level 27 at the moment now, just used 20-23 as an example), it may have been from an orc that I helped get revenge, but died on a later quest (that small guild - stallion something) so I looted her stuff, and I'm pretty sure she had a daedric shield.

Rebelius · 23 Apr 2006 at 15:25

Meridian said:
The game has no level cap for the character, but for reasons of gameplay I think you'd struggle to get past level 70. Pick a character where most of the Majors are never used or hard to level and you'll be stuck about level 35.

there is no level cap as such but there's a cap for major skills.

the major skills cap at 100 and start at 25 at the absolute lowest. not sure if it's possible to have all 7 at 25 due to starsign and race benefits.

anyway, say you could, each one of your major skills can go up 75 levels before it maxes out. so that's 525 major skill level ups. And every 10 major skill level ups, you get a proper level up.

so the most level ups possible is 52 which would make you a level 53

It is possible to get the character level higher by going to jail for long periods and losing major skill levels. However, this is just a number, your character wont actually get any better at the skills. only increased hp.

edit: just went on a giant kill spree - got my bounty up to 50000, went to jail and only lost 2 major skills. it would take a long time to get to level 60 this way, never mind 100.

VeNT · 23 Apr 2006 at 16:24

max level is 255 (trust me)

ok I've now feced over 4k worth of stuff, I'm running out of things to nick! Its still not given me the "I've reached my target and should wait for a message" box tho, is this a bug?

squiffy · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:37

Can you heal allies?

Richdog · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:40

squiffy said:
Can you heal allies?

Yup, but only if you create the spell I think.

Rebelius · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:45

VeNT said:
max level is 255 (trust me)

but could you actually get there without just typing "player.setlevel 255" in the console?

and would you want to? You'd be exactly the same as a level 50character but with 2000 extra hp. and the drops and enemies don't seem to change after level 30 or something anyway.

Nieldo · 23 Apr 2006 at 18:55

*Curses the lvl system in Oblivion*

squiffy · 23 Apr 2006 at 20:50

Bit stuck on "Brush of Death" I've used turps with my sword, but it only lasts for one strike, it takes three applications to kill a troll. But their are roughly 5 or six trolls.