I think the last version introduced vampires, and this version continued it. It wasn't (and probably isn't) part of the storyline about becoming a vampire, but certainly it could be about going and killing them. You just had bad luck (or good luck) depending upon your perspective to go somewhere where you were bitten and converted.

Personally, last game I wanted to become a vampire and eventually did. This game, I don't want to become one (at least not with my first character which is a warrior-mage type.)

The lack of character specific saves is my biggest complaint about the game so far. If that was in there, I'd probably be playing a Warrior-Mage, a pure mage, and a thief type character at various points. Instead, I'll probably play through the game with one character before starting another.

Yeah, it's starting do drive me a bit batty. I'm still persevering with three at once though.

Just for fun, I thought I'd post the builds:

The character I'm following the main quest line the most with I call a Spellstorm, almost the same as the Mage class - major skills Alteration, Conjuration, Destruction, Illusion, Mysticism, Restoration and Light Armor. Basically, I just dropped Alchemy for Light Armor - no use mixing potions while something is gnawing off your leg! (Breton, sign of the Mage)

The next I'm using for randomly exploring the world with is a Ranger, thief-type with Sneak, Marksman, Blade, Block, Light Armor, Illusion and Alchemy. Good for wandering around the landscape unseen and sneaking up on people, whapping em upside the head. Also for collecting the odd components and mixing up breakfast. (Bosmer, sign of the Thief)

Finally there's my combat character, the Paladin, Armorer, Block, Blade, Heavy Armor, Marksman, Conjuration and Restoration. Traditionally, paladins aren't supposed to used ranged weapons, but I needed *some* kind of ranged attack. Conjuration is a stretch, but I took it mainly for Turn Undead. (Altmer, sign of the Warrior - Altmer?!?! Yeah, I've done high elf paladins since the original EQ, heh).

So what all is everyone else doing?

(Edited to add race/sign cause EF27 showed me up :) )

My custom class specializes in combat. I've called it a rather unoriginal Asha'man. I'm born under the sign of the Mage as a Redguard. I have Blade, Armorer, Heavy Armor, Block, Destruction, Restoration, and Mercantile (I almost took Illusion or Mysticism instead.) I'm still level 1 and have just really started exploring, but I'm looking forward to a possible marathon session tomorrow.

Btw, for those complaining that the PC game is a 'port' of the XBox, look at Morrowind, which was released for the PC first only used a few keys on the keyboard. In addition to what Oblivion has (minus the cast key, because in Morrowind you could only cast spells without a weapon, and the keep walking forward button) you have a 'J' key for the far more crappy journal, you have a 'previous' and 'next' button for spells and weapons, and ONE more (yes, one) 'Quick Key'. Go ahead, look at the back of your Morrowind manual. I'm looking at mine. And I am quite sure they didn't make Morrowind for the XBox first.

So even with Morrowind, Bethesda didn't use a lot of the keyboard. They just don't care to do it.

I was going to pick this game up for the pc and notice you need a dvd rom player for it.

I didnt see no cd rom version of the game.

I guess i need to get a dvd player rom and than pick up the game soon. I can't wait to play it.

Yep... only available for DVD drives... or download from Direct2drive.

DVD drives are dirt cheap now. The game costs far more than what a DVD drive will cost you.

EDIT: Just checked newegg.com and DVD drives there go for about $20

Picked up Oblivion and Fight Night Round 3 for the 360 yesterday. Traded in PD: Zero and Call of Duty 2 for Oblivion and then about 6 or 7 OLD PS2 and PS1 games for FNR 3. Probably won't play Oblivion for a week or so as I'm having alot of run with FN and GRAW at the moment.

Nevertheless, it is great to hear that everyone seems to like the game on the PC, I hope the 360 version is just as great.

Not to thread jack, but I'm really starting to notice a huge graphic difference with my 360 since I got an HDTV.

Character Save Manger.

hxxp://files.filefront.com/OblivionSaveManagerzip/;4906001;;/fileinfo.html

From the description: "This save game manager lets you keep track of your save games across multiple characters."

I have it on the 360, and am having a great time with it.

My Character is a Kajiit custom class Mage/Thief born under the sign of the Tower with Security,Sneak, Light Armor, Illusion, Destruction, Alteration, and Blade as my major skills. Once I finish my Dark Brotherhood quests I think I am going to move onto the Mage guild or Main Quest line.

My next character will probably be a fighter. Since I don't plan on doing any fighters guild quests with this guy.

FWIW, Gamespot gave the Xbox 360 version a 9.6 and called it one of the best RPG's ever made. That is the highest score of any game in at least a year (Civ4 got a 9.4 which is the next highest in the last year.)

You guys playing it in 3rd or 1st person?

I killed one at level 1 on the 360 as part of a sidequest in the Imperial Arena. Didn't realize they had bounties available.

3rd person is just for show... you can't really play that way.

Woot... hit Level 6 :b:. Now I have to decide if I want to do the quest I'm thinking of because it requires me to go to jail... and when I come out agility takes a hit, leading to me not being able to wear a magical ring. Argh! Decisions, decisions.

I usually play in 3rd person while moving around, but I switch to 1st person for combat. Although occasionally I'll fight in 3rd person too, especially when there are a lot of targets/friendlies about.

Just made level 5, back from my first trip to the plane of oblivion - what a creepy place.

So many quests, so little time...

What quest requires you to go to jail? I've not seen one that you can't do without avioding jail time in some way.

I can you tell what time of day or night is it? Could be useful to find out when shops are open or for vampires when the sun is coming up. If they don't have some way to tell this like in Morrowind I guess there will be a mod for it very soon.

I don't know if there is a visible clock that I've seen but, I hit the wait button and it shows the time, I then just cancel out. Used that method when I had to wait until 11:00 PM one night when this Ho's were wantin to rob me.. I instead killed all da' bitches..

You can also view the time under the map/quest tab

this direct2drive has been going all night :( yaaaaaarg

I've just been playing one character, a hybrid mage/warrior, so far. I might try starting a couple more characters and running three games at once.


I don't have the game handy, but would it be possible to hit the "R" key to switch to third person, zoom back on the view, then save? In theory, I'm thinking that would give you a saved game with a picture of your character as the save thumbnail.

There's a quest in the Nord town where the guy won't talk to you about his hidden gold unless you get yourself thrown in jail, where he is. Couple of cool quests in that town (Bruma, just looked it up).

anybody getting the Prima Official Game Guide?

http://www.primagames.com/strategy/book/7430/

Simple question but I can't figure out how to use the basic "heal minor wounds" spell/ power . It seems to be greyed out?

Yes, going out to third person view will put your character in the thumbnail... It also lists the char name, level, location, time in the info box anyway. What's really annoying though is that there is no way to *name* or otherwise comment the save games, it's all "Save Game 342532". Pfegh. They should have just copied KOTOR 2, where you could page through your characters and it would list the saves for each one. And you could name the damn saves yourself.

Stupid interface tricks like that are why I think a 96 for this game is inflated. Sure, it delivers lots of fun moments, but it also delivers quite a few "WTF were they thinking (or not thinking)" moments.

Galaril: Do you have enough Magicka to cast it? That's the only thing I've seen that causes me to be unable to cast. Of course I always get an annoying message about not enough Magicka...

The grey line should mean it's your active power.

I know on the 360, you'd tap the right bumper to use it. I don't know what the PC would do to cast a spell.

Oh, the "Cast" key on the PC is the "C" key.

You can also hotkey spells and weapons by going into your inventory, click and hold a number (1-8) and left click. You will see a seperate pad come on your screen showing your 8 hotkey slots.

This won't cast your spells, but it will make it your active spell (or weapon).

Bumping this question to see if anyone knows the answer yet. :D I really, really hate using kb and mouse for rpgs. :D

Well, there aren't any options for gamepad use in the software itself. I suppose if you had the driver software to program the gamepad to emulate keystrokes, mouse buttons, et al., it's possible. Sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth though.

Thanks guys that was correct cast "c". I have got to say this game is DEEP! I have spent the last five days of game world time and have been just wandering around in the Colivian Highlands and jerrall mountains. I have found some very interesting places. And the snow in the upper mountains is really cool. This game gives a great feeling of altitude as year ascend up the mountains. I am alittle scared of heights and felt a slight feeling of anxiety when I would turn around and look down.lol.

People have been saying great things about this and it's only $12 on Amazon. I think I'm going to pick it up.

I have options for a gamepad, maybe because I have one plugged in? I have not tried it out though.

If anybody is having trouble finding it in a store and wants to buy it send me a PM, it doesn't work on my computer.

My brain is fried. After playing it on the 360, I decided the game was just too freakin good and I had to have it on my laptop for when I'm traveling. I'll trade in the 360 version at some point.

Anyway, I install the game. I start the tutorial mode and work my way through. But something is off. The graphics just don't look quite right. Everything is kind of grayed out with a washed color.

Fire looks strange.

So I start playing with my video settings. I make things darker, still no luck.

Then it hits me. I'm don't need a torch. I'm seeing in the dark. Ummmmm, DUH!!!! I picked that damned Tiger race where you could see in the dark. Gee, I wonder why things look different in the freakin sewers.

A perfect case of an ID-10-T error.

Offhand, does anyone know of a free demo for this game? It says my computer ain't gonna run it, but so did Civ4, AOE3 and about 4 other games that all ran. Howver, I do have a couple games sitting around that won't run, and I'm not really up on the idea of burning $50 and then realizing I need to burn another $180 (though I should anyway)

Level 6... getting to the fun part. Lots of minor skills about to break the 25 barrier, major skills getting on towards 50. Finally finished the first series of mage quests to gain access to the Arcane University, so I can do magic item creation and spell creation now. Everything's pretty expensive though, so it looks like I'll need gooooold, lots of gooooold.

Also found an oblivion gate just randomly out in the wilderness... Dunno whether to venture in or not. Might be time to switch chars for a bit while I ponder :)

Hmmm.. guess I became a Vampire randomly. Kinda cool to have the extra abilities and also the ability to feed at night but, unfortunately.. can't be out in the sun.

Hope there is a way to cure Vampirism... I'd like to enjoy the sun at some point.

I've found two Oblivion gates out in the wilderness... did them both. They actually aren't all that hard. Just take a long time. I have these sigils, and I can use them to make my weapons super cool (enchant them), but I wonder if I should hold on to them (ie, being a quest item... but I guess if it was a quest item, I couldn't do it with them... dunno). Besides, I haven't gotten the cool weaponry (daedric and stuff). Probably be a waste on my Akaviri Katana or Silver Longsword.

There are references to the Xbox controller in the Oblivion.esm (under gameplay/settings) so I am sure it would work, just have to find a way to enable it as a menu item so you can configure it. I'm not much of a mod creator but maybe there is a way to mod this into the menu?

You could use something like pinnacle game profiler (pinnaclegameprofiler.com) but it's not free.

I haven't quite got up to the level to experience the problem yet (I'm only level 7 or so) but people on other forums are complaining that higher level items are very common once you start getting to level 15-20 - anyone experience this yet?

Supposedly Daedric armor, glass armor ect, stuff that is normally 'rare' is on every single bandit, and everything else once you start getting higher due to the
game's level scaling.

I have no interest in picking up a 5k armor set everytime I kill a bandit.

If this is the case I'm thinking on holding off playing any longer until some sort of patch or mod is released - people are working on some things to isolate the problem from what I've read though...

dola

and if this is a legit issue, I feel for the people who bought the 360 version since it really can't be altered on the Xbox.

Well you don't have to pick up the high armor set that the bandit drops ;).

Deattribution

Was Morrowwind level scaling better? What was different between morrowind and oblivion level scaling?

Yeah I know, I'd just prefer for not everyone to magically have the game's most expensive armor just because I hit level 20.


And I have no idea jb, I never got far enough into Morrowind to say. I bought it at release and just never had the time to get into it. Oblivion seems a bit more casual from what I can tell compared to Morrowind, the fast travel and directional arrow on the compass (and your map) to your quest location help immensely.

I don't believe you can become a Vampire randomly, but if you get into a fight with a Vampire you run the risk of contracting the disease that leads to Vampirism (can't be arsed to remember the name at the moment). I've contracted it twice while fighting vamps, just go to a church and get it healed.

You're right.. I forgot that I fought Vampires.

Love the weather in Oblivion.. thunderstorms are fantastic.

I had a graphics options question.. What is the basic differnce between the texture sizez small, medium and large? Will having it set to large textures improve performance and small tetxures is for better quality graphics?

opposite. Larger textures are better quality, smaller textures will improve performance.

Got home early today. Played for a few hours besides playing this weekend. The physics engine just amazes me. I nailed a Goblin with a long sword as we were fighting near a cliff, the goblin fell backwards, and realistically bounced down the cliff!

I'm still only level 6, so hopefully I don't have to worry about the item scaling issue too much. I actually found Morrowind's initial balance of level and fights much worse than in Oblivion.