sorry to not have posted in so long.  I have continued to play Oblivion most every day.  I finished the main quest yesterday.  My play time was around 64 hours I think, though I bet the main quest could be done in 20-30.

It was a good quest.  I wish there had been a little more to it at the end, but that’s always the way.  On the bright side, I feel very free in the world of Tamriel now that I don’t have the whole Oblivion crisis hanging over my head.  I am now the Champion of Cyrodil, the Champion of the Arena, and climbing fast in the guild mage ranks.  My next goal is to infiltrate the dark brotherhood (assasins guild) and whipe them out.

I am level 32 now.  The monsters haven’t changed much since level 20 or so, which has been a little disapointing, but oh well. 

I have become a major cheater.  I just got tired of shopping for potions, scrolls, soul gems, arrows, and other useful items between every adventure.  I use a fantastic (and fun) duplication glitch.  It’s fun, because it works in surprising ways sometimes.  Equip your bow with any type of arrow, draw it back, then hit B to go into your inventory while the bow is drawn.  Select a different set of arrows by pressing A.  Press A on the arrows again to get the "you can’t do this while attacking" (or something) message.  Then select any item in your inventory and hit X to drop it.

Here’s what happens:

Sometimes it won’t leave your inventory, but it still drops on the ground, meaning if you pick the one up off the ground, you’ve got two.  Sometimes two or three of the item will drop.  Often, one of the item will drop, but when it hits the ground, it will burst and multiply into hundreds of that item.  I find this entertaining.  I like to decorate my houses sometimes like this.  My place in the imperial city has a mountain of flaming sigil stones in it.

It can be a little scary to see something multiply like that.  The first time I did it was with a scroll, and the growing pile of scrolls that resulted seemed for a minute like it was going to overwhealm the world.  I was worried for a while that I would end up messing up a saved game that way or something, but no problems yet and I’ve been doing it for a while.

So with the dup glitch for replacing potions, scrolls, arrows, and soul gems, and with my mastery of the armorer skill (1 hammer needed to repair anything and it never breaks), I can now adventure for as long as I want and only return to towns when I feel like it.

I’m supposed to get a set of new armor for finishing the main quest, but i have yet to see it.  It better not be heavy armor.  There’s a real lack of light armor in this game.  No one sells any good light armor, and a light armor helmet is impossible to find.  I found my mithril help at level 10 or something and I have specifically searched for a new light armor helment ever since.  I have yet to see anything better than mithril and those are rare indeed.  I’ve cleared out maybe 15 caves full of glass armor wearing bandits, but none had helmets.  Kind of annoying…

I’m half tempted to fire up Oblivion again to try it. I tried playing a week ago to complete the main quest but I became bored quickly running around the oblivion plain trying to find the right route and waiting to heal.

I did however milk the vampire quest glitch as I found out if you talk to the count after you devamp he gives you $5000 vs $500. I snuck in his castle, broke locks and went just to chat to him so I could recharge my magical weapons. While looking for someone to charge my weapons found a maid for my pimped out house that has swords and shit in the cases.  I was rather stoked on the maid she’d greet me when I entered and would fetch me a beer or food but she doesn’t do anything else like clean or set table which ultimately disappointed me. I must be a weirdo but I find character inaction the most enthralling part of games like these. So during that two hour session I got bored quick fast and in a hurry.

I don’t think I’ll be playing Oblivion really ever again nor able to handle any RPGs for a long while. As mentioned, its a great game but the fact it has so much that you often feel like you’re just sampling of what-could-be.

I’ve been playing Oblivion to death lately and am absolutely loving it.

Some tips for you all though:

When you’ve hit level 10, do the quest for the Daedra Nocturnal.  Her shrine is along the road to the northeast of Leyawin.  It’s a piss-easy quest and grants you an unbreakable lockpick!

Also, for those of you playing the game on a HD-equipped 360, the game does (or at least should) load a fair bit quicker as it uses the HD to cache data like Morrowind did on the old Xbox.  The downside is that there seems to be a fragementing problem which causes loading to slow dramatically and a whole lot of other problems.  So if you’re having any issues with the game, reset the console and hold down the ‘A’ button whilst the game is loading.  You can let go of the button after the first Bethseda logo.  Doing this forces the game to delete and reinstall it’s data cache on the HD, which believe me sorts out all sorts of problems.

I picked up the game again, and started playing the Assassins Guild stuff. Its by far hands down the most entertaining part of the game. You get in a few good sneak kills and you’re not really much in dungeons too much.

You also get good loot for doing quests well. There was a misison where I had to eliminate a bunch of people stuck in a house, six total. The key was to befriend them and cast suspecion on others and no one can witness a murder. I killed two characters rather quickly and the characters started pointing fingers but I noticed two were suspecting each other so I offed the other two until there was me, and two characters left. I didn’t even have to kill one of them as one character was dead convinced it was the other guy and I finished off the last guy no problem. Its a well developed quest as the fact you’re forced to learn about them all their thoughts on one another and kinda makes you feel bad about killing them all.  You get some pretty cool rewards.

Resurrecting this thread.

Okay, hopefully someone can help me out.  I’m pretty far along and I think I’ve stumbled across a glitch, which I hope isn’t the case… anyway, I’m the Dark Brotherhood Listener, a Thieves Guild Prowler, a Virtuous Blood Brother, and a Fighters Guild Apprentice.  Up to level 24, and I was going along completing the Theives Guild missions when something happened and I can’t advance in the TG any futher… which is as follows:

As a TG member, I went overboard and fenced around 18 grand in stolen swag.  So came the time when I had to go to S’krivva for jobs.  I did this by talking to her and selecting "Contract Job" or whatever the option is.  She wound up assigning me a job (which I can’t remember what it is, the Independent Thievery Quest Log didn’t record the conversation).  So to milk additional information out of her I selected "Contract Job" again, and then she says she has no further commission jobs for me but that the Gray Fox might be contacting me soon.  And quoted from the quest log: "However, the Gray Fox may be contacting me soon.  Until then I sell more stolen property to the guild fences.  I’ll need at least 600 gold worth of stolen goods to get his attention.  I should see what kinds of prices I can get from the new fence, Orrin."

Obviously, 18,000 gold is a tad more than 600.  However, attempting to barter with the guy, I get this: "I can’t help you until you advance futher in the guild.  You can use one of the other fences, like Ongar in Bruma."

My quest log doesn’t get updated when talking to him, saying I should go find other folk to talk to like Orrin suggests.  It keeps telling me I need to visit Orrin.

So, now I have no record of the task S’krivva gave me and Orrin’s being a dick.  And the guy in Anvil in that dumpy house who I suspect is the Gray Fox is being a dick too.

So, I’m going to check out GameFaqs, but in the off chance someone knows something about this, I’d be greatly appreciative.  I’d hate to have my TG career flushed down the toilet because of a bug.

Gracias!

About 3 hours into Oblivion, though I admit for the first 2 I had no fucking clue how to do ANYTHING.

Question, where/how I do I get more/better spells?

People in the mages guilds have spells for sale.  People in chapels often also have some spells for sale, though mainly Restoration school spells.

If you’re a mage and looking for quests other than the main quest, get yourself started on the mage guild quests.  Being a member lets you enchant items and create your own spells.

Gorilla, S’krivva’s task is not recorded under "independent thievery", it should have its own section.

Right now I’m 50 hours into it and have completed all of the Thieve’s Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Fighter’s Guild quests. Unlike y’all I went with a beast of a Nord totally focused on heavy combat. After maxing out my strength, endurance, heavy armor, and blade I take no damage. Now I just raid dungeons and end up making around 5000 gold for each dungeon since everyone wears Daedric armor.

Has anyone else done the quests involving Mazoga the Orc? I’m on the part where you have to ambush the bandit captain, but he’s not there when it says he’ll be.

[quote author=“Thanatos”]Gorilla, S’krivva’s task is not recorded under "independent thievery", it should have its own section.

Right now I’m 50 hours into it and have completed all of the Thieve’s Guild, Dark Brotherhood, and Fighter’s Guild quests. Unlike y’all I went with a beast of a Nord totally focused on heavy combat. After maxing out my strength, endurance, heavy armor, and blade I take no damage. Now I just raid dungeons and end up making around 5000 gold for each dungeon since everyone wears Daedric armor.

Has anyone else done the quests involving Mazoga the Orc? I’m on the part where you have to ambush the bandit captain, but he’s not there when it says he’ll be.

Whoo, I’ll check it out!  Thanks Thanatos!  I started a new game, but I made this character for the main plot of the game.  Guess I’m going back to my old one!

Quick question, where can I get more lock-picks?
Thanks to the lock-pick hint video thing that lists the correct sound, I’m alright at it. But at the same time, I only have 2 picks, and keep having to load the game up again each time I break both of them.

Edit: Nevermind - Bought some at the dark brotherhood sanctuary.

[quote author=“Xaphon”]Quick question, where can I get more lock-picks?
Thanks to the lock-pick hint video thing that lists the correct sound, I’m alright at it. But at the same time, I only have 2 picks, and keep having to load the game up again each time I break both of them.

Edit: Nevermind - Bought some at the dark brotherhood sanctuary.

I don’t go so much by the sound of the tumbler as much as the speed of the tumbler.  Once I start on one I look for when it accends the slowest then lock it in.  Every tumbler has a slow cycle.  This might take a little extra time, but you make it up in saved lockpicks.

You can actually lock in a tumbler at any speed, it just depends on how quickly you can hit the A button in that little "sweet spot" between when the tumbler hits the mid-way point and before it gets to the top.  But finding the cycle in which the tumbler slows down makes it much easier.

Thanatos, you were right.  I was able to get past that mission and now I’m waiting for Grey Fox to come see me again.  Thanks again!

Its been months since I’ve played and it only a week or two before my brother moves out and takes the 360 with him. I’d of liked to play one of the expansions…. anyone play those?

Expansions?

Yay! I finally beat the main quest at 60 hours. The only reward you get for saving the entire world is a set of freaking armor that’s not even as good as what I have now. Lame Betheseda, REALLY lame.

I’ve beaten all the guilds except for the Mages, but I don’t think I’ll try those since I haven’t improved my intelligence or willpower.

The downloadable content aren’t really expansions.  They’re extra little missions that aren’t all that great.  A true expansion should be an additional guild added to the game or some massive string of missions.

Armor for beating the game does sound lame.  God forbid I mention this, but why not some sort of conjuring spell like FF7’s Knights of the Round to kick ass… or maxed out stats… something rather than just "armor". Whoo.

It’s still more addicting than crack though… and one hell of a game.