Oblivion: Elder Scrolls IV - PC Roleplaying Game

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

be aware that you can get the game itself for cheaper. GoGamer has it for $15 and I'm pretty sure I got it for even less during one of their 48-hour madness deals (I think I got the game and one expansion for under $20). The Steam version has the 2 expansions (and I think the horse armor), but you will get a LOT of gameplay out of just the main game if you'd rather just toe the water - you can always pick up the expansions later

valid point. yeah, the steam version has the two expansions on it.

i don't know...i suppose i could find the game and expansions for cheaper. but $29.99 isn't a bad price if I get half as much gameplay out of it as people are saying, and it's also somewhat of a convienence thing, rather than ordering and having to wait.

thanks for the tip though, i'll at least run a froogle-search or something and make sure i'm not missing a great deal

[RomaGoth]

@DaddyTorgo

You can actually pick up the Oblivion GOTY edition at Walmart for $19.99. Not sure if you shop at Walmart, but they usually have decent prices for PC games.

I have never played this one, but I did play Morrowind and I must say, that was an awesome game. I beat the main quest and many of the side quests while playing it on the original Xbox. I later bought it for the PC, but never really did much with it, as the mods didn't work right and kept crashing the game.

In any case, Elder Scrolls is a fantastic set of games that are well worth the money. I may still try Oblivion out.

[DaddyTorgo]

we have a Walmart, and a Best Buy (where it also looks like it's around the same price). Maybe I'll bounce out to there tonight and try Best Buy first (since Walmart is sort of a "destination of last resort" in our family as far as shopping goes, due to their labor practices and such).

Saving $10 wouldn't be bad.

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

we have a Walmart, and a Best Buy (where it also looks like it's around the same price). Maybe I'll bounce out to there tonight and try Best Buy first (since Walmart is sort of a "destination of last resort" in our family as far as shopping goes, due to their labor practices and such).

Saving $10 wouldn't be bad.

Forgot about Best Buy. Yeah, the GOTY edition comes packaged with the main game and both expansions. Good deal IMO.

[DaddyTorgo]

yeah. maybe i'll bounce out to best buy after work and see. for fuck's sake though, i was just there on sunday (eyeing a PS3)

[DaddyTorgo]

$19.99 just now at GameStop for base game + both expansions.

it's sitting in my bag waiting to be taken home and installed

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

$19.99 just now at GameStop for base game + both expansions.

it's sitting in my bag waiting to be taken home and installed

Nice. Let us know what you think of it.

[DaddyTorgo]

installed last night and fired it up to the somber voice of Patrick Stewart as Emperor Uriel (YAY!). And then the fuckers killed him!!! Now I'm fucking pissed!!

Figured the easiest way to play at least initially was as a warrior, so i went that route.

Played from like 9-12. Poked around a little bit, but delivered the Amulet and now figure I'll go off and do a couple of the side quests from that first town.

Very much enjoying it so far. Very much!

[chesapeake]

One thing I liked about the opening of Oblivion was that it gave you all the basic tools -- magic, ranged and melee -- and let you decide how to accomplish a set of goals before you choose your class. You discover a lot about yourself as a player. I learned that I am both a coward and a thief, slaying most of my victims from the shadows without them ever knowing that death was coming.

[DaddyTorgo]

yeah - i think i'll enjoy being a sneaky archer or an assasin/thief type on later play-throughs, but this time around without knowing anything else I wanted to be a bit overpowered and well-armored.

i felt strongly compelled to deliver the amulet ASAP, but now there are some fun little side-quests I can do from that first town so maybe I'll check those out before finding the hidden-heir

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by chesapeake

I learned that I am both a coward and a thief, slaying most of my victims from the shadows without them ever knowing that death was coming.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

yeah - i think i'll enjoy being a sneaky archer or an assasin/thief type on later play-throughs, but this time around without knowing anything else I wanted to be a bit overpowered and well-armored.

FWIW ... I'm going to assume (and figure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong) that things are generally true on the console are also true on the PC. If that's the case, then remember that the game is leveled to your abilities, i.e. the higher your level the stronger the enemies you'll face at a given point.

Given my lack of experience with combat games in the past decade or so, I had to be very careful about not over leveling. I knew I'd be less capable in combat than a typical Lvl 25 whatever, so I had to manage my leveling to help create that "overpowered and well-armored" situation. Otherwise, it seemed pretty difficult to get ahead of the game in that way if you didn't pay attention to how & when you were leveling. The problem was so pronounced for me that within a very few levels I had to restart because things were pretty much hopeless for the hapless (like me). From there, playing smarter, it's become the game I call the best bang for the buck I've ever gotten.

[thesloppy]

Yeah, due to Oblivion's weird levelling/no-experience system, and the difficulty scaling, you do have to do some unconventional/unintuitive levellng if you want to be comparatively overpowered.

Spoiler

Your level is tied to the advancement of your primary skills (the ones you chose at the beginning when you advanced your character), and nothing else, so going up in those skills will advance your level. The catch is that ALL of your opponents abilities AND equipment are scaled based your level as well. If you think you want to be a combat class, you may have put all your points into combat skills, and as a result the more you're in combat, the more your level raises.......but unless you are upgrading your equipment at the same time, you've actually made the game more difficult, because your and your opponents combat skills have both increased with your level, but your equipment has not, while your opponents are suddenly wearing improved armor and weapons.

The 'trick' to becoming an overpowered character is actually to make sure none of your primary skills are combat skills. You will start out underpowered and it will take you more work to advance your combat skills...but as your combat skills advance it WON'T cause you to go up levels, and so neither will your opponents, and their combat skills and equipment will remain well below yours.

[DaddyTorgo]

i thought there was a patch or a mod that fixed that though?

[thesloppy]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

i thought there was a patch or a mod that fixed that though?

There is a bunch of mods that address the level scaling, but it's definitely not something that necessarily needs fixing. The trade off is that once you apply a mod, and leveling is no longer scaled, you are limited in where you can go, by the strength of your opposition, whereas when everything is scaled you can go pretty much anywhere you want in the entire world because nothing is going to be entirely outside of your capabilities.

For whatever it's worth, since play mostly on the 360, I don't even have the choice of messing with the scaling, and I DO play a character with combat skills as primary skills, and it's not any sort of problem to play the game the way it was intended, and with proper equipment I'm still able to overpower most of my opponents. I don't want to give you the impression that it's any "less fun" to play the vanilla game, it's just harder to make yourself completely overpowered relative to the riff-raff.

[Draft Dodger]

I play a combat guy and haven't run into too many issues with the leveling.

[DaddyTorgo]

sounds good - i think i will prolly start looking at mods and such this weekend and just mess with the vanilla game till then.

[JAG]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

i thought there was a patch or a mod that fixed that though?

You won't lack for mods to alter the game to be however you want it to be. Enough people didn't enjoy the level system that there are mods for increasing levels by spending gold, by XP (to make it more like a traditional RPG), or a number of options if you rather keep the level gain being tied to skill advances but not have to do something counter-intuitive with your major skill choices.

There are a few large mods that change the level scaling system for monsters as well if that's your preference.

[DaddyTorgo]

i will need to read thru this whole thread of course, but is there like a central repository for mods and such on the interwebs?

[samifan24]

Has anyone played with a character that had the Sign of the Atronach whereby they were unable to regenerate magicka but absorbed 50% of all spells cast on them?

I picked that sign and am only level 2 and am thinking of starting over. It's nearly impossible to regenerate magicka because I'm fighting people and creatures that don't use magic.

[DaddyTorgo]

that's obnoxious sami - seems like it'd be cool later on but difficult early on when you're fighting all sorts of lower-level things

[samifan24]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

that's obnoxious sami - seems like it'd be cool later on but difficult early on when you're feeting all sorts of lower-level things

Which sign did you play with?

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

i will need to read thru this whole thread of course, but is there like a central repository for mods and such on the interwebs?

Planet Elder Scrolls - Maps, News, Oblivion, Cheats, Downloads

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by samifan24

Which sign did you play with?

Ummm...shit. the warrior-one.

i didn't try to get too cute with my character creation this first time around. wanted to keep it simple.

[DaddyTorgo]

Originally Posted by RomaGoth

Planet Elder Scrolls - Maps, News, Oblivion, Cheats, Downloads

thnx!

[RomaGoth]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Ummm...shit. the warrior-one.

i didn't try to get too cute with my character creation this first time around. wanted to keep it simple.

In Morrowind I stayed away from the magicka signs, never found them useful in the least.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Originally Posted by Draft Dodger

I play a combat guy and haven't run into too many issues with the leveling.

Yeah, I imagine a person's real-life skill set & gamer style heavily influences how difficult they find certain aspects.

I can't emphasize enough how little time I had spent on shooters/combat/et al games in many years (shit, prior to Fallout 3 and then Oblivion remember the last time I shot/killed anything consistently since Duck Hunt). I just pointed out the leveling thing since he mentioned wanted to be overpowered & overarmored and it made me think about the problems I ran into (or worked pretty hard to avoid running into).

[Lonnie]

I have tried leveling both ways. And doing the efficient leveling thing is so time consuming tracking my skill gains that I don't enjoy the game as much. So now I just play it like it is and if I run into something that I can't handle I just turn the difficulty down a few notches to get past that part. I've been able to enjoy the story and quests much more without having to worry about raising blunt another level before alchemy because I won't get the optimum skill gain.

My current playthrough is a warrior with the warrior sign and I have made it through all the fighter's guild quests and halfway through the mage guild quests. I haven't even started the main quests except for delivering the amulet.