Oblivion :D

[Mobius]

does anyone know if the gates completly close when the main quest is done? now ive uberd up a bit i dont find them so bad. usualy get 1-2 levels per gate.

Yeah they do. I completed the main quest yesterday and all of them shut. I wanted to shut them myself but now they're all just closed. They still appear on the map as locations you can fast travel to, but the red glowing door bit isn't visible anymore. The only oblivion gates left after completing the main quest are 2 that are opened during Daedric quests.

Does anyone know why my armour breaks so quickly? I got a new set of light armour, and within about an hour it was all in need of a complete repair. I don't even get hit that often.

 

[Mobius]

Oh yeah I forgot to ask, does anyone know where I can buy a soultrap scroll? I've got no magic skill so I can't buy the spell, as my magicka is to low and I've checked every mages guild and general store, and can't find a basic soultrap scroll. I need it to make a black soul gem, for a quest...and its driving me nuts!

Oh yeah, also this

 

[CurryKnight]

I think you can buy an enchanted soul trap staff from the staves shop in the merchants part of Imperial city but that might be a bit expensive if u only want it once.

 

[PLightstar]

Last night I realised I got a major problem with this game, its the fact that you only need to do one quest to get the next rank when you are in a guild, Back in Morrowind you had to have certain skills before advancing in the ranks of a guild, but you also had tons of tasks set at each level, im begining to worry that I may run out of quests to do.

I can't do the Theives guild yet as I don't have a chamleon spell or a enough magicka for my open very hard lock spell, my secuirty skills are very weak so lockpicks are out of the question, done most of the quests in the citys, one quest im trying to find and can't find is a quest where you go inside a painting does anyone know where this is.

At the moment im leveling up quickly by exploring the countryside, found over 200 locations apparently

 

[TdC]

Just get some lockpics and have at it PL. I've gotten up to Security 30+ just by giving it a go by hand. it's not that hard to open a lock by hand once you get the feel for it. I can open hard/v hard locks by hand without breaking a sweat.

it's handy to save beforehand though

 

[TdC]

btw, I hear tell there's a sword with built in soultrap you can find. anyone got it?

 

[PLightstar]

its called Umbra nice sword, Marcus Vile deadra wants me to give it to him, but its one of the most powerful weapons in the game, so I will not give it to him.

 

[taB]

Umbra's very easy to find actually TdC, trying not to use it at the mo though as I don't want my blade skill to go up. A shame as it craps on any Blunt weapon I've found.

Spoiler

In a single level dungeon 2 minutes walk from the capital, haven't been given the quest, just found it on my wanderings. The fight's a goodie though Exact location will be on most walkthroughs for the impatient.

Great thing is that as its a quest item, it weighs nowt, which for a large sword is great.

Plightstar: Just fork out for a one off scroll if you're having troubles. Alternatively make a couple of items that boost your Alteration. Would agree with you on the more linear guild quests though.

Ben.

 

[TdC]

alllrighty then as I happen to be in

Spoiler

the capital

I'll give it a go!

taB, tried your hands at the ebony mace? imo that's a fine blunt weap, though the buggers do weigh 50 or 60 feathers o0

 

[taB]

Will see if I can find one, sounds good. Have a summoned Daedric one that does alright, a lot of Mana cost though & no extra enchantment, which I like.

My other combat tactic is to mince around, picking flowers while summoning other things to do the work for me .

Spoiler

Can't be more exact on location as am at work It's SouthWest

Spoiler

of the capital

, on the ring road. In one of those wheel (Ayelid ruin) icon areas.

Ben.

 

[TdC]

sure thing mate I'll see if I can find that sword! about the ebon mace thingy, a daedric weap will top it ofc, and summoned ones don't weigh anything which is also handy.

Spoiler

you can get lots of ebony maces (it seems it's the only thing they carry) once you start to encounter the dreaded (ooh shiver) necromancers. there's even a quest to kill some of them that gets given to you by the daedric hippy life goddess or something. iirc the location is to the north-west of Skingrad, but I'm at work so can't be sure. Once you complete that (reasonably hard, the necromincers aren't very tough but they summon lots of baddies and nasty hard-to-kill beasties like dread zombies (god I hate them, the nasty regenerating buggers) tend to hang about the necro's lairs, which is a bit of a pain tbh.
completing the quest may get you an item called the "ring of the kajitii" or somesuch. it's a +10haste +35chamelion constant effect ring, which is kinda cool, though I say *may* because I read in a book in the Capital tod that the goddess aparantly has to judge you "worthy" or you may or may not get the item. and ofc killing the necromincers gets you a cool weap per mincer to sell/keep of which in my case most were the ebon maces.

good luck!

 

[Mobius]

I managed to get the soultrap thing to work by standing still and casting a mysticism spell for about 10mins until my skill went up to 25, then I could purchase a soultrap spell, instead of trying to find a scroll.

If anyone is having problems with lockpicks etc, then do the Daedra shrine quest "Nocturnal" ... you get a skeleton key type thing, which never breaks and eliminates the need to carry lots of picks around.
I kept my umbra sword as well, its funky. I actually use Goldbrand instead tho 'cus I like the fire damage.

 

[Louster]

Just as an FYI for those on the PC version who haven't already discovered it, BTMod is really rather useful.

Anyhow, so after giving up on my first fuck-around stealth character, I went back to the drawing board and became somewhat anal about getting the most out of the system. I'm now a Breton custom class with pretty arbitrary major skills and sign of the apprentice, and will have maxed my endurance by level 15, strength by 18 and aim to have maxed them all by the mid 20s. I spent the first 8 or so levels being an insane control-freak over skillups to ensure I always had 3 +5s and nothing else, but after that I got bored with it and started getting a bit more relaxed. Even with pretty nice attributes at this point, my skills are still painfully low in general, with only 3 journeyman and the rest apprentice - this is partially due to the fact that my major skills aren't necessarily the ones I use most, but are just there to ensure I could control when and how I level. It's a bit dumb but I'm getting much more out of it than I had been - with my first character still having only 30 endurance at level 14, I was pretty fucked.

I think I've sunk some 50 hours into this game already (including my previous character) and I've yet to make much progress on the main quest, having mostly just fucked around with clearing out dungeons and doing a few sidequests and stuff. I think I'll have to try and get through the main quest first before buckling down to exam revision.

 

[TdC]

Holy shit Louster! I'm l21 iirc and only have one expert and 4 journeyman skills. rest is all apprentice or novice! str and end still not maxed out, though tbh I didn't concentrate on doing that stuff.

 

[taB]

Progress & Setback!

Went on a quest given by a farmgirl & ended up with an Ebony Mace (1 pt less damage than summoned Daedric), but with +13 Shock on it so using that at the mo

On the flipside, went back to my Arch-Mage quarters and found that all my gubbins had been replaced with a frilly shirt! My DB armour, and a full set of Ebony, along with lots of other things I've collected so far have disappeared. Looks like I'm going back a few saves tonight

Shirt looks nice though.

I did the same as you really Louster, started with an Assassin styley guy, but have switched to a more magic focused Breton. As enemies level with you, it makes sense to maximise your leveling up I reckon.

Ben.

 

[TdC]

wow. rocks and sucks dude

btw, if I read the internetweb correctly...the only place you can leave stuff so it won't get, erm, misplaced, is your own house.

 

[taB]

Yeah, silly me

What was I thinking, it's not like I'm the boss and it's my room or anything!

Oh well, will have a look at a previous save & decide whether to backtrack or not tonight. The other option would be to CHEAT! and drop the items back in via the construction set, but I don't think I want to do that.

Ben.

 

[Louster]

I'm not totally magic-focused, exactly, I just figured that the 150 magicka bonus from Breton/Apprentice was really useful in the long run and more than compensated the initially low endurance etcetera.

Edit - also, yeah, that was my thinking behind trying to get ideal stat bonuses as well (enemies levelling with you, I mean), but it's such a pain having to control all your skills. My philosophy at this point is mainly just to get near to levelling, save, level up quickly (via alchemy - I've collected a huge hoard of random ingredients and can gain lots of levels with it pretty fast) to see which attributes are the highest, pick a couple, reload and max them before levelling. It's much less of a pain than meticulously controlling and recording every single skill increase in order to fit into some overall plan.

 

[Louster]

One thing I'm curious about, and which I haven't got enough skill increases to see for myself yet - does the magicka cost of a spell go down as your skill level in that field increases? Only I noticed the 'enemies explode' spell for sale someplace I forget, and it had, at that point, an associated magicka cost per cast of 1023. Insane.

 

[TdC]

tbh I am a bit curious about that myself Louster. I mean, like with Alchemy when you use higher level kit your potions get better no? Why shouldn't you get more efficient at spell-casting as you progress?

I've also seen spells that cost silly-magica to cast (though mind you I only have ~140 myself as a fighter) and tbh it could be a rating relative to your char's level.

we could set up a test where we all go to the same mage and check out a spell., posting it's value here.

 

[Deacan]

The spell costs do go down as your skill increases.

Just make sure you have the correct rank before trying to cast spells, a spell that does 70 damage, you would need to be a expert to cast it at a decent mana cost (75 skill)

 

[TdC]

cheers Deacan ooh I just hit dectruction-journeyman yesterday! fear my fireballs of 20dmg doom!!!1

 

[taB]

Skill number can have a major effect on this. Even if you have enough Magicka, Lich summoning requires 100 Conjuration skill just to buy IIRC. With most spells, its good just to buy the cheapy one & make the most powerful version you can (or want).

 

[Deacan]

Anyone like to share any cool spells they have made?

 

[taB]

Have one that summons full Daedric armour inc shield by putting all the bound spells into one. Lasts 2 minutes (max length). Cost approx 170 magicka. Called: Tanktasticarmourification Spell. At my current armour skill level (bout 30/40) I get 35 armour points from this.

The strange thing I have found is that some summoned armour pieces are classed as light and others heavy, when it all weighs nothing.

Ben.

 

[TdC]

funny that they're not the same. I bet you've found a bug

 

[tris-]

wimps summoning your own armour. be a man. wear and repair it your self

 

[TdC]

I prefer my armor moist and redolant of the warm corpse I took it off of

 

[taB]

No arguments with the wimp bit

At some point it will be better to switch to armour with enchantments on, but at the mo the extra loot I can carry is far more beneficial.

My whole travelling inv at the mo weighs about 40 & thats just keys and soul Gems

 

[PLightstar]

I got a decent feather spell that gives me nearly 200 extra weight for 2 minutes excellent little spell espically when looting Ruins and the such.