Oblivion Is Nigh

[filkertom]

I am gonna go frickin' berserk.

The newest installment of the Elder Scrolls game series, Oblivion, is released Monday. Those scumboys at Bethesda Softworks have been releasing teaser trailers the past couple of days, and this stupid game is gonna be phenomenal, and it isn't here yet. (I'd provide links to the trailers, but the servers are getting blasted.)

On top of everything else, while my system should run it, my graphics card (Radeon 8500LE) is not specifically listed as a "supported chipset". And I can't afford a new card now.

So you're gonna hear background grumbling until Monday.

Followed, I hope not, by a long, loud scream.

Anybody else on my FList waitin' for this one?

Comments

[andragon.livejournal.com]

You'll have to let me know if it's great.
Heck, I can't even develop a character in the last version and two expansions. I never found out what skills that I need to succeed.

Minor Strategy Spoilers for Morrowind

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Mm. Honestly, it depends on how you play, but you cannot go wrong by developing Long Blade, Short Blade, Athletics, Alteration magic, and Speechcraft. Acrobatics, Mercantile, Destruction magic, and Restoration magic are all useful. Even if you're not interested in making potions, get a small level of Alchemy (25-30%) and you'll be able to recognize the potential effects of potions and ingredients. Pick a style of armor and become expert in it -- Light Armor leaves you enough encumbrance to carry other stuff, and there are many enchanted armor sets around, but Heavy Armor does let you do the tank thang. Medium is supposed to be a compromise, but I've found that it basically sucks encumbrance while not seriously outperforming Light. If you use a shield, take Block. If you use a bow, take Marksman (and get the Area Effect Arrows mod, one of the official ones from Bethesda -- you'll be glad you did). Don't bother with Armorer or Security -- there are plenty of people to repair armor, and plenty of gimcracks that boost your lockpicking/trap disarming.

If you don't take Blunt Weapon as a specialty at the outset, you'll need to learn some before the endgame. Thankfully, this isn't that big a deal, and if you're not a mace/mattock kinda guy I recommend not worrying about it until you're deep into the main quest (you'll know). But you will want to work on your short sword skills. (Also, there's an ebony shortsword just lying around at the top of the Odai Plateua, just south of Balmora [past the egg mine]. Go out there at the first opportunity, and get a lovely freebie. If you can't find it, let me know.)

If you don't add any of the various races or birthsigns from mods, I find that playing a Dark Elf born under the sign of the Lady gives a number of useful benefits. That said, all of them have one advantage or another.

The second wave of magical quests (the ones you get from the woman in Ald-Ruhn) will result in you getting Amulets of Almsavi Intervention and Divine Intervention, which will let you instantly teleport to the nearest temple or imperial fort, respectively. Along the way you can also pick up Amulets of Mark and Recall, for setting your own temporary teleport points. Until you get those, use the spells, potions, or scrolls that cast them.

Keep yourself in healing potions. Train with healing spells, fine, but don't run out of potions.

Flin is expensive, but a much better balance than any of the other drinks that boost your stats temporarily.

Potions of Rising Force (levitate) are damn useful. The best ready source is the temple of Vivec. Buy a bunch of 'em. (If you have at least one in your inventory, you can go around to the other side of that building on that level to the Shrine to Stop the Moon, pray [and donate one potion], and you'll have a constant Levitate effect with speed of 100 for twelve game hours.)

Don't go past the Ghostgate until you're at least level ten. Preferably level fifteen. Or twenty.

Join all the guilds you can -- you should be able to do Fighter, Mage, one of the thieves', and one of the Houses. I've not found much use for joining the Imperial cult, but that's me; I understand it opens up some adventures. I know that joining the Morag Tong opens up some quests, but they're assassinations, and that's not how I play. If you can move up the ranks in a House before you get deep into the main quest, you might end up getting a stronghold built for you, which is way cool.

And, if you end up specializing in Light Armor, you can get a few nice pieces of Glass Armor on a body in one of the first few rooms on the lower level of the Falasmaryon stronghold, which is a ways north and then a bit west of Maar Gan. I mention this because it's reasonably low risk/reasonably high reward.

Re: Minor Strategy Spoilers for Morrowind

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

When I was using the standard leveling system (I've got a mod installed now that bumps stats/helath/magicka directly from skill gains and occasionally updates your level behind the scenes, since it now has no purpose other than determining how powerful of monsters/treasure you encounter), I always kept athletics and acrobatics out of my major/minor skills because they increase quickly and I didn't want to level that fast. My usual most-heavily-used skills tend to be light armor, marksman, long blade, block, sneak, and speechcraft. Other than the ready availablity of a free ebony shortsword (which I've never stumbled across...), is there any other reason why you rate short blade so highly?

Heavy armor skill has an additional benefit in that it is one of the three skills (along with spear and... umm... I forget the third) which helps improve your endurance, which then boosts your rate of health increase when you level. Too bad the armor itself weighs so much...

For birthsign, the Lady's bonuses had me for quite a while, but lately I'm preferring Atronach. I tend to not do a whole lot of spellcasting anyhow and the 50% spell immunity can come in very handy. I switch around between races depending on the character I want to play, but I seem to end up with Nord or Dunmer most often.

I've sunk hundreds of hours into Morrowind and never gotten through more than the first three or four quests of the main storyline, and I don't think I've ever gotten a character much above level 20... I'm always either restarting to try out a new combination of skills or else finding a new mod that looks really cool, so I just have to try it out, even if that means starting over again from the beginning. (Don't ask how many mods I have installed... Even with the ones that are turned off moved into a separate directory to be deleted, there are far more there than I care to count.)

Passing Ghostgate at low level isn't that bad, provided that you just run to the Ghostfence shrine, donate your soul gem, and run right back out. But, then I have no idea what it's like beyond the shrine; that's all I've ever done in there...

I can't really comment on most of the rest of your tips, since my game is modded to Oblivion and back, so I don't really know how the official game plays in some of those areas. (e.g., I just sell potions off because I prefer to use enchanted items instead, but I have mods which increase enchanting capacities of items to better match what found items can do; I have no idea whether relying on enchanting is feasible in the unmodded game.)

Re: Minor Strategy Spoilers for Morrowind

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Understood. I find that, with mods like Giants, I like levelling faster (although apparently I'm one of those who never exploited the system as some people do, so honestly I never thought I levelled particularly fast). Some of those monsters will kick your ever-lovin' ass.

One of the two special magic weapons you need to finish the game is a Short Blade.

You can do much the same as Heavy Armor just by shlepping a lot of stuff back from dungeons.... ;)

I've beaten the game twice, and started a third time, with substantial mod list changes every time (although certain things, e.g., Giants, Better Bodies, etc., are constant). I think I've got about 150 mods right now, although one of 'em has a glitch somewhere that messes up a few quests. If I figure out which one it is, I'll post it somewhere, but the nature of the glitch is that, when you've got a companion, the answers for telling them to stay put or follow you are switched... and, in at least one escort job (the one to the dock in Sadrith Mora), it doesn't realize that you've completed the quest.

Highest level I got to was 33.

Sure you can rely on enchanting. It's just that the materials, and your abilities (or those of who you hire), can only manage so much. I find that about a dozen particular potions really help in quantity, and everything else is gravy. But one of my very favorite items was necessary because of the Lights mod, which makes the lighting much more realistic (i.e., dark) and makes dungeons and such much more challenging... and, with a Soul Gem with a Golden Saint, I enchanted an Exquisite shirt with a permanent 30-point Night Eye spell. (I consider that one of my finest role-playing moments -- I could've uninstalled the stupid mod, or found other cheats or workarounds [there was a mod that basically just handed you a 50-pt. Night Eye ring that I tried and then dumped], but damn I felt successful when I had that shirt made for me.)

Run to the shrine and then leave? Aw, man, you have no idea of the coolness and danger awaiting you inside the Ghostfence....

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

I have the collector's edition pre-ordered, and have been downloading the teasers (and boy do they tease) as they come out. I am looking forward to this game SO much.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

I'm still delving into Morrowind, so I'm not going to drop all that for Oblivion.

Also, I have a laptop, and my top-of-the-line laptop video is never supported at first pass, the bastards.

[unclelumpy.livejournal.com]

Elder Scrolls? Smeg!

I pre-ordered my copy of Suikoden V!

Best... Console... RPG... Series... Ever!

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

I've spent the last few months waiting for an official release date, but, now that it draws near, I'm not sure whether I'll jump on it or not. The screenies are beautiful and I really want to see the new AI system in action. And I'm very curious to see what they've done with the combat system this time around; I've been thinking lately about combat systems that make you actually pay attention to your opponent (instead of just mindlessly mashing the same few keys until he's dead), and the articles I've read make it sound like Bethesda's tried to implement something like that in Oblivion. But, OTOH, there's a part of me that thinks I should quit screwing around with mods and actually finish Morrowind's main quest before going on to Oblivion.

Also, since I'm such a mod junkie in Morrowind, there's the question of whether to wait for some good mods to start coming out (so I can enjoy their goodness from the start) or make a point of getting and playing it right away (because that's the only way I'm likely to ever play the unmodded game). Decisions, decisions...

I haven't really looked at the system requirements, but I expect Oblivion to provide an excuse to upgrade regardless. I just hope that it's a bit less prone to crashing than Morrowind and Daggerfall were.

Waiting...with some caveats...

[lizard-sf.livejournal.com]

I was hopelessly hooked on Arena and Daggerfall...Morrowind was less enthralling, as the endless muddy browns were a real turnoff, as was the problematic NPC AI. (For ghu's sake, people, look at how Ultima V, a game running on a SIXTY FOUR KILOBYTE APPLE II did it!). Oblivion, however, is drawing me in...I'm probably going to end up buying it, even though it will cut into my WoW time. The last CRPG I really got grabbed by was Wizardy 8, though...damn shame Sir-Tech went belly-up. I remember...

Cough. Sputter. Ahem. I'm doing "rambling old man" again, aren't I? Foo.

Re: Waiting...with some caveats...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

There are a number of excellent texture replacements that will brighten the heck out of Morrowind. I use, among others, Spring (most wood and foliage retexured), Imperial Castle Retexturing, Joyful MW Creature Pack (brighter colors on about a dozen common critters), Blighted Animals (animals with Blight Disease are a nasty grey -- very helpful and adds to verisimilitude), Mixed Signposts (good-looking signs in both English and Daedric), Roads to Heaven (road retexturing -- this one makes a big diff), and More Trees and Foliage with the extra texture set.

Also highly recommended for improving the look and feel of the world are Giants, The Wilderness Mod 2.0, Better Bodies 2.2, the Astarsis head replacements, and a few choice clothes/armor mods such as Blackheart Armor, Blue Glass, and such. There are more for female characters than male, and most of 'em need Better Bodies these days (which is fine, 'cause it's a great mod). (If you play female characters, I do not recommend Qarl's Goth Attire mods, as they are not written well and will screw up all your dialogue.)

Re: Waiting...with some caveats...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Also Flora Glow (which makes some of the mushrooms phosphorescent -- way cool effect) and Illuminated Windows.

Re: Waiting...with some caveats...

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And I really should emphasize that there are a lot of different styles of retexturing mods, some going for bright and fanciful, others even darker and nastier than the default ones. Just search through "landscape" at Planet Elder Scrolls. (Don't search "texture", because every mod with a new texture -- including all of the magic items -- will show up. Not helpful.)

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

After playing World of Warcraft, I just can't get into an RPG game where I can't play with friends. Sure, they look good and such, but why play solitare when you could be having fun with friends online? The game I'm really eager to get is Spore. I can't wait to create my own critters and civilizations.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-262774490184348066&q=spore

[nomaddervish.livejournal.com]

I tend towards the opposite... I have a hard time getting into any RPG where I can't have a lasting effect on the world around me and, unfortunately, that tends to rule out MMOs pretty fast. (Sure, the guy who gave me the quest to slay the dragon may recognize my deeds, but if I go back there, the dragon will be alive and waiting to be slain again.)

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. It's hard to get excited about a quest to "save the kingdom" when you know you can ignore it and nothing will happen. I've read that some MMOs in the works now are trying to solve that, it will be interesting to see how they do it. But for me right now, it's all about getting together with friends and making new ones in the game.

[izzyryu.livejournal.com]

My processor is too slow. If you need me, I'll be the one weeping quietly in the corner.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't think I'm on YOUR friendslist (the other way around) but I will definitely be getting it. It's not top on the list, though - I need to find a copy of Planescape: Torment first. Old, but I never played it.

But this one is like Morrowind. But better. And it has Captain Pic...er...Patrick Stewart. Huzzah!

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

You might be able to find Planescape: Torment in the cheapies at either Best Buy or CompUSA (not on their web sites, though). Ten bucks. I'm serious. Alternatively, you absolutely can get it from Amazon or eBay for less than twenty.

[allandaros.livejournal.com]

This is true. For a while, they were selling it at the Best Buy store near my house...at the time when I knew not the greatness of the game. I'll be checking back there soon.

Count Me In

[ixias.livejournal.com]

Already on order using up my b-day and holiday gift certificates for Amazon. I'm expecting serious decreases in personal productivity!

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

I promised frostmuffin the Oblivion game for Christmas, before I learned that its release was delayed until 2006. She is a Morrowwind addict, but wants to play new adventures.

However, she has to get a computer that can run Oblivion before the game will do her any good. A friend is currently working on that.

Erin Schram

[james-rayner.livejournal.com]

I cant.

As much as I want to try it, to see if it improved upon the insanely slow start of Morrowind (Which I never seem to be able to get that far in without dying horrible deaths quickly. Leveling seems to take forever, even when I go out of my way to do things. Is there a mod to help this one along?) Im afraid my 50 bucks for this month has another mistress.

I know thou will wishest to slay me when I say Kingdom Hearts 2.

I may love PC Games, but console games tug at my heartstrings like nothing else in the world. For this month at least, Morrowind will have to wait for the likes of Sora, Donald, and Goofy and Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow (Which ought to be bloody hilarious.) to seep into my mind. Besides, I wanna see what happens -next-.

Oh, and as a side note _ Can someone give me an actual LIST of mods and links to them for morrowind that owuld be recommended? I got Better Bodies, but I dont really know what to look for in good mods. Something that would help with levelling might make my life easier.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

No problem with Kingdom Hearts 2. From what I understand, the first one was scoffed at by everyone... until they played it.

I put some hints up above as to how I get myself going in MW. From what I can tell, most people actually find leveling up in MW too easy -- they get a little extra gold early, and train up a few levels before they do much adventuring at all. Scoping out all the crates in the street in Balmora is good for that -- they're all filled with crap you can sell, some of which is actually valuable. There are lots of folks in Balmora especially that can train you, and the three Blades trainers in town are a great place to start.

Also, go to the bookshops in Balmora and Vivec and just look at the books -- don't take them, just put your cursor over them and hit the space bar to read them. A number of them, especially at Jobasha's shop in the Foreign Quarter in Vivec, are magical, and will increase a skill just by looking at them. (Taking them is considered theft by the game, and the guards will come after you.)

You might also want to check out a few of the articles at this page (http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Tipsandtricks.List&game=3).

I haven't got time this morning to come up with a conprehensive list of mods, but I'll be happy to work on it later (once I'm down in Cinci for MillenniCon) and post it tonight or tomorrow.

[james-rayner.livejournal.com]

I suppose the most fun I ever had with the game so far were the scrolls of Icaran Flight. ^_^ 1 Million Jump WHEEE!...wait, how am I gonna get down....OHSHI-! *Splat*