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Never Give Up

Today as I was attempting a quest for the Thieves Guild I ran into a little problem. I had searched everywhere I could and yet could not progress further. I even found a special hidden area and got some sweet loot. But there was this one door I couldn't open without a key and looked everywhere for the key. I eventually opened up my map to check that I had been everywhere. As I looked I saw one tunnel that I wasn't sure if I had visited or not. When I checked it seemed like I had been to it, but in the back of mind I thought that maybe this was a different tunnel. I was getting a bit pissed off at the game so I decided to just give up and search for answers online.

Turns out I was right, I hadn't been down that tunnel and it was indeed the way I needed to go. Lesson learned.

Lock Picking

I thought lock picking involved a lot of broken picks and a lot of boring guessing. That is until I talked with someone else who told me he could pick Hard locks without breaking a single pick. Impressive, I thought, but how? Well apparently there's a trick to picking locks.

It is difficult, but when picking a lock watch as the pins go up. Hit a pin and watch how fast it goes up. The faster it goes up the more chance there is that it'll clamp back down when you try to lock it in place. So keep hitting the pin up until it moves up slowly, then lock it in place. The difference in speed is very subtle, and you need good reactions otherwise you'll lock the pin too late.

Click this link for a video

I hope that helps other, it has helped me. It's a time consuming task, but you break less picks this way. If you're really impatient you could always buy 100 picks from a Fence and auto-attempt very lock you come across. 100 picks is about 600 gold.

Special thanks to X-G

Quick Tip: How-To Refresh Health

I just realized something very important today. All this time I've been sitting around using my healing spell to recharge after battles. This is very time consuming because the spell is weak and I don't have a lot of Magicka. Recently I noticed I had even less Magicka, most likely due to a change in equipment. Panic set in at first, as I knew I'd need to heal if I wanted to do anything at all. However in a flash of inspiration I discovered the solution. Waiting!

After a battle find a nice quiet spot, press T, and wait one hour. Boom, you're all set to go. :) As far as I know there's no consequences at all. Sure, you burn an hour of game time, but you'd burn that time healing yourself anyway, or just about. An hour of game time passes in 2 or 3 minutes real time.

So there you have it:
To heal, press T and wait one hour.

I don't know why I didn't think of it before.

A Roll of Film

Here are a bunch of screenshots I took on my road towards Grand Champion.


Oh, she's dead...

And another one bites the dust...
Dude, Where's My Car? ... sorry that has nothing to do with the picture.
I'm getting ready to battle the Grand Champion...

He's pretty shiny for an Orc...

Took me a little work but he went down...
Heading out of there...
All Hail Grand Champion Dragonheart!

You Can Call Me Grand Champion Dragonheart!

I've done so much today! I feel great.

First things first, I cured my Vampirism. That quest, as I said earlier, is a huge pain. For the curious you'll need 6 pieces of garlic, 5 pieces of nightshade, 2 stalks of Bloodgrass, the blood of an Argonian, some dust from a vampire, and 5 Grand Soulgems.
Garlic and Nightshade can be gotten from Mage Guilds, but you'll most likely need to travel to a bunch of them to get it. Also try the shops in the Imperial City, there's one that had four Nightshade. Bloodgrass is found in Oblivion, actually pretty easy to get it. I found the two stalks just outside the gateway. The blood of an Argonian is gotten from any Argonian using a special dagger. The dust of a vampire must be from a specific vampire. The soulgems can be found at Mage Guilds, as well as in a cave just south of the witch. More about her in a second. The cave is on the south bank of the river, a little to the east. It's right there near the shore. Though I greatly disliked that cave, so I don't suggest you go there.

During the quest (talk to a priest to start it) you'll reach a witch. She'll want the soulgems first, and then all the rest of the ingredients. I suggest collecting the soulgems, nightshade, bloodgrass, and garlic beforehand. Take all that to her, jump through all the chat, and eventually you'll get to the second part. Go through all the chat options, handing her what you've got so far and learning about the blood and vampire. She'll give you a dagger and a location on your map for the vampire.

Once you're done with that go back to her and you're basically done. You'll get a cure, a reward, and so forth.


It felt so good to be human again! I could bask in the sun all I wanted; it was bliss. But no rest for the weary! I immediately hit my quest book and saw the quest for the Arena. Ahhh, the Arena! My favorite place. The Arena is a thrilling place. If you have the means I highly recommend it. It's so choice.
I battled, battled, and then battled some more. It's so exhilarating! The physics of melee combat in Oblivion is amazing.
Eventually I made my way up the ranks to Champion. From there you can only do one thing, fight the Grand Champion. Compared to the battle to become Champion he was a push over. Not easy, but easier than the Champion battle. Mainly because I do bad with more than one opponent. Anyway, the Grand Champion hits really hard against your shield, and even more so on your flesh. Don't ever let him get you with your guard down or he'll tear you to pieces.
Once the Grand Champion was defeat I could do my victory dance. It was amazing! You get a lot of good stuff for that battle, and you feel like you're on the top of the world! I won't spoil it for you, just go do it yourself and see what all happens :)
One note though, you can still battle in the Arena after becoming Grand Champion. It's not the same, but if you're an Arenaholic then you can still get your fix.

Screenshots coming soon!

Dreams

As a vampire you get lots of dreams. I've captured a few of them for you to enjoy.

If you'd rather encounter them in the game, don't read these! They'll ruin the surprise.

Vampires Are More Than Irritating

Here's the problem. Being a Vampire is all around bad for me. It just doesn't fit in with my schedule! Unless you want to spend half the game sucking blood, you're going to have to avoid the sun. Sunlight is from roughly 6am to 8pm. Stores are open from around roughly 8am to 8pm. See the problem? Plus, at the latest stage of Vamprisim very little people talk to you.

So I finally figured out how to get a cure. However, the cure is worse than the disease. It's a grueling quest that starts when you talk to a priest. There will be an option to ask the priest about a cure and your begins. It involves collecting a lot of semi-rare items. So far it's sucked up two gaming sessions from me and I'm still not done.

In the meantime I keep picking up more quests, and my log is getting bigger and bigger. Not fun.

I highly suggest everyone avoid the vampire disease. It may look like truck loads of fun, but it isn't.

Happy Vampire Hunting!

Vampires Kind of Suck

Being a vampire is really starting to irritate me. It's cool to have boosts in a bunch of stats. You wouldn't believe how far I can jump when I'm a full vampire! But that comes at the cost of everyone hating you. When you're a full vampire people notice and stop talking to you, which means I can't do my quests. And to add to that I'm turning into a vampire quicker, it seems, so after feeding I'm back to wearing sun lotion the next time I try to sleep.

I still haven't figured out a way to cure this thing. Maybe I'll stop at a book store or two.

Good news is I found places to buy lock picks. Finally I can break into houses and get my food!

I am a Thief

Shadow hide you

Today, along with doing quests and exploring this Vampirism thing I became a thief. I was on the Waterfront of the Imperial City when I saw three figures in a garden. Actually it was just a bush, but they call it a garden. It's not far from where you end up after fast traveling there, near the shacks. They'll be there around midnight.

So I ran into these people. At first they wouldn't have much to do with me, but with one of my vampire skills I made the leader tell me about Grey Wolf. That's why I was interested in the first place, since I figured I could find Grey Wolf and get an awesome reward. But he didn't say much other than confirm that he is real. However a new option came up to "Join the Thieves Guild". I decided to click that and before I knew it I was on a race! I won't spoil it for you by describing what that is.

Anyway, I ended up in the Thieves Guild and figured "Why not?" I didn't really intend to do it, but I was there so I gave it a try. I broke into a house, stole some stuff, sold it, and so forth. It's kind of fun, plus I can feed on people while I'm in there stealing their stuff.
You get to go on specific quests, so it's not just running around stealing stuff on your own.

I have yet to find a place to buy lock picks. I occasionally find one or two for sale, but nothing permanent. It's a pain, because most houses are protected by at least an Average lock, which takes either a lot of quick reloading, or a lot of picks.

So that's how I became a thief. I hope it doesn't have a bad effect on the end of the game, but from what I've seen so far in this game everything you do has an effect. Oh well! That's part of the fun! I also hope that I can eventually set up a shop and sell all my stolen goods. The game says you can buy a shop if you have Expert Merchantile. So we'll see.

How I Do Melee

I figured that if I described how I do battle in Oblivion others might benefit. So here's how I do it right now.

I'm a melee fighter. I wear heavy armor, a one-handed sword, and a shield. That's about it. I have two spells on standby: One that damages my opponent at a distance, and another which heals myself.

After three or so days of playing I've come up with a nice tactic. In most cases when an enemy begins charging at me I take out my sword and then put up my shield. After he does his first hit on me I put down the shield and slash twice. Immediately I put the shield back up. You can easily do this by:
Hold right click -> Wait -> Undo right-click -> double left click -> hold right click
That means that right after you double click you hold the right button. Don't wait for your attacks to go through, the game will still do them and then proceed to block.

Battles usually continue like that. Enemy smacks me, I smack back, etc. Since the enemy just attacked his shield isn't up which leaves him open for my double slash.

Something to note: Once you've found your fighting style, stick with it. Your character will automatically get better at what you do. If you move a lot, you'll gain speed. If you slash a lot, you'll get better at that.
At first I could not do a double slash, but with time my slashes became faster allowing me to hit more.

Now there's some more to note, and this is the tricky part. When I'm battling I move and circle a lot. I don't just attack right at the front of my enemy. When I strike I side step to whichever side my enemy's weapon is on. In other words, the unprotected part. The other side is the shield, and you really don't want to be attacking the shield. If I'm lucky I can get up behind my enemy and slash three or four times instead of twice. But be careful! The worst thing you can do is to leave yourself open. While it's important to defeat your enemy quickly it's far more important to keep your shield up when your enemy strikes. If your shield is down you'll get smacked right in the face, taking both damage and kinetic force. You'll get pushed back, stumble, and then you'll be subject to another open attack. Play it safe!

While fighting in the arena I've sometimes taken out melee fighters in a matter of seconds because they were so slow. I'd block their attack, dodge to the side and get behind them for some juicy back attacks.

Another note: If you don't know, the longer you hold the left mouse button the more powerful your attack, but the longer it takes. Doing a quick tap is a slash, holding it down is a big lunge. I never lunge because it takes too much time and thus leaves me open to attack. My enemy's are usually quicker than that and can block the attack.
There are times to use it though. If you've just made your enemy stagger back then you can use that opportunity to do a big attack.

And that's about it. The more you do it, the better you and your character get. Sometimes I'll get into the "zone" and can really lay the smack down on my enemies. With perfectly timed shots I can get in the maximum number of slashes. This was especially important when I was battling some undead skeletons. Those guys were fast! At first I could only do a single slash. It was just a back-and-forth battle, but that wasn't going to do because I was taking too much damage and thus had to wait around healing myself for far too long. But with careful timing and movements I was able to get the upper hand and beat these suckers. Sometimes I even got in some special attacks! So, keep at it, and you'll eventually get the hang of this.


There are millions of ways to do battle. You could go two handed with this same technique. Just block with the sword and do one big attack. You could focus entirely on movement and attempt to dodge your enemy's attacks. That is possible, I was doing it against some big, slow ogres in Pale Pass.

A final note: Training is good. Lots of time in the Arena is both fun and increases your battling skills. Just try to keep your equipment in shape.

Shadow Puppets!

I Want To Suck Your Blood

In a previous post I talked about becoming a vampire. Today I explored the ways of Vampirism a little more. First things first, what does it do to you? It makes your eyes red, for one. I have yet to see my eyes change back, so I assume they're red forever.

Second, you have a lot of crazy dreams. Whenever you wait or sleep there is a chance of having a dream. So far I've read four different dreams, one was the one that apparently turned me into a vampire (or was the result of).

Third: With time your Vampirism increases. If you go to the spell info and hit the last tab you'll see a list of all Active Effects. At the top is listed Vampirism and then below that you'll see many, many other effects that are a result of Vampirism. Lots of good stuff! Resistance, agility, etc. The greater your Vampirism, the greater the bonuses.

Fourth: Along with Vampirism your aversion to the sun will increase. So with those bonuses come a price. As they increase you burn more severely in sunlight, and thus you'll have to avoid the sun. Death is not instant, it takes time, in case you didn't infer that.

Fifth: Now this is what being a vampire is all about, the ability to feed. So far I've only been able to feed on people who are asleep. There's this special vampire ability that charms people, but it doesn't seem to let me feed on them. So wait until someone is asleep and hover your mouse over them. The mouse will be different than normal, kind of like a U shape. If you then proceed to USE you'll get the option to Feed or Talk/Pickpocket. Here's the important part, after you have fed you return to being more human. You no longer burn in the sun, and your Vampirism bonuses drop down.

Note that feeding once won't end it, Vampirism will rise with time, apparently whenever you sleep.

In other news I have yet to find any books in the game that detail vampires, let alone one that describes a cure. So for now I'm stuck as a vampire. It's not so bad.

Oh, and I haven't seen any of my victims turn into vampires, though I don't keep very good tabs on them. Plus, how would one know? Maybe I'll check their eyes later.

Tales from the Crypt

It's time for my first story! I'm so excited, are you excited? I'm excited.

Let this story be a testament to how wonderfully designed Oblivion is. It is truly a step forward in gameplay.

My character is named Morrog, he does a lot of melee combat, with a bit of lock picking, healing, jogging, long walks on the beach... He's also a good dreamer. One night I walked into the Merchant's Inn, purchased a room for 20 gold, and went to bed for 12 hours. When I awoke Oblivion presented me with a message saying I had had a dream. Can you imagine my surprise? Morrog dreamed of being bitten by a vampire, and awoke with a fright. I shrugged it off as just a neat feature of the game at first.

Later I had another dream. Morrog had an undying thirst for blood. He came upon a pool of water, but it was not water at all! It was a pool of steaming, warm blood. He tried to drink only to realize his mouth had been sown shut! Morrog awakes with a fright.

It is at this point that I realize something odd about Morrog. His eyes, which were once brown, are now bright red. I also realize, shortly afterwards, that as the sun rises Morrog begins to smoke and lose health. It wasn't hard to put two and two together and get eight, but it was hard to figure out it's really four. Besides that, after much thought I concluded that I, Morrog, was a vampire!

Call Me Count Morgula!



Conflicting emotions arise in me. A ghost in my mind tells me of the amazing work the designers did on this game. Another wonders how I became a vampire. Yet another tells me I must find a way to cure myself. A demon tells me to go feed. A final ghost tells me to burn my house down...
I suspect that somehow, during an excursion in a vampire den, I had become infected. I don't recall being bitten in that den. In fact I'm sure I did a great job of blocking all chances to bite my neck! Or maybe someone got into my room late at night and had bitten me, turning me into a vampire?
If the latter, I'm even more amazed at this game. It's these little surprises that really turn me on about a game. It's such a unique experience. Oblivion is big enough as it is, and with these unique experiences I might dare to say Oblivion will consume my life for a good ten years.

Now I need to figure out which ghost I'm going to listen to. I've already tested out my feeding ability. It wasn't easy, I had to wait until the right time to break into someone's house, sneak in, and take a shot at that tasty neck. Surprisingly I no longer burn in the sun after I've fed. Quite nice. Still, I figure I'd better cure myself at some point unless being a vampire gives me bonuses beyond red eyes. I'll have to read the books at that vampire hunter guild and hope one of them speaks of a cure.

Does this game just keep getting more awesome, or is just me?

Defragment Your Installation

Greetings Friend

Oblivion has a fetish for harddrives. Being the game that it is, it loads a lot of data off the drive and into RAM on-the-fly. As you're walking around the game quite a few things are loaded that don't pull up a loading screen. As such your harddrive (and RAM) need to be in fighting condition.

Download Contig from Sysinterals and use it to defragment your Oblivion folder. It's free, and a wonderful tool. Do this to check how fragmented the folder is:
contig.exe -a -s "D:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\*"
And then defragment:
contig.exe -s "D:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\*"

My folder was at 43 frags/file, and contig reduced it to 1. I say the calls for a level up!

Get The nVidia Driver

Greet The New Day

I have an nVidia GeForce 6600GT, PCI-E in my computer. It used to be the "stuff" and I could run anything on it with max settings. Then Oblivion came along, pointed at its private parts, and laughed. This calls for drastic measures!

If you're playing Oblivion, or planning to play it, please upgrade your drivers. That's usually a given unless you're like me and your card was able to KO any game with its hands tied behind its board. But wait! Oblivion calls for even more drastic measures than just a simple driver update. The wonderful folks at nVidia actually put out a driver specifically designed for Oblivion. No less than 2 days after the game came out. But its in beta, and I had a hard time finding it, so let me help you out and post the link:

Windows XP/2000 32-bit - ForceWare 84.25

It smoothed my game up a bit, especially during battles.

Welcome to Oblivaholic

Welcome to Oblivaholic, and let me explain what this fine place is. Only a few long days ago I got Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a great game by Bethesda. In fact it is so good that I decided to make a blog about it. I'm not much for blogging, but Oblivion called me to do it.

So I will be writing here about my adventures in Oblivion. It will be a mixture of many thoughts related to Oblivion; everything from when I took that guy's arm and used it to beat a beggar with it, and that time I realized marrying Oblivion would cost too much money.

I hope you enjoy my stories. If you do, that's totally awesome. If you don't, then make sure you have a Hard lock on your house... (it's an Oblivion joke).