Oblivion
 

Okay, so I want everybody to post up the "builds" you've tried and the results.

Like, if you build a completely melee character, how does that work out for ya? Is the pure sneaky-guy-thief character viable? What types of mage pair well with blah blah blah blah etc.

Do you have the game yet? I've seen some reviews starting to pop up during the past few hours.

Nah, I'm just getting a head start on putting the thread up.

It's not for sale 'till tomorrow.

Ima look up this game x_X.

torrentspy here i come...wish it had multiplayer :(

Wait ...didn't you hear? Pirating software makes many artists/programmers/actors starve. STOP!

This game has sereously been eating up my free time and I predict it will do so for at least a couple of weeks more. :o awesome game.

So far I've made a Breton pure mage with the mage birthsign as my first character. I joined the mages guild and am now at the rank of warlock in the arcane university. Mages really pwn this time, alot more than in morrowind. So far I am level 13 and have about 90 int and 90 willpower. The fast mana regen caused by high willpower and sticking with spells that go with your level means I rarely run out of mana. If I do I just take a restore magicka potion, which are very easy to get in oblivion either by making them with alchemy or buying them in shops.

Second and third char I made just to try out the combat and sneaking part.

redgaurd, warrior birthsign
favored combat
agility + endurance
block, blade, heavy armor, armorer, athletics, marksman, restoration.
I really like the melee combat this time, with blocking and timing counter attacks. I took restoration so I can heal myself or fortify attributes when I run out of potions. I dont have alot of mana but that doesnt matter since restoration is the only spells I have and most dont take alot of casting.

Dark elf, the thief birthsign
favored stealth
agility + speed
marksman, blade, sneak, security, athletics, illusion, light armor.
I never really liked the sneaky characters but I do enjoy this one. basic stealth skills + illusion because that really adds to the stealth part, with spells like chameleon, invisibility etc.

Only played the second and third for a couple of hours, but I beat the arena with the warrior and started in the fighters guild. And with the dark elf I just got accepted into the dark brotherhood.

So far I havent touched the main quest yet, but I'll probably start that with my mage soon.

Build-wise, I'm currently playing a Wood Elf assassin (Thief birth sign), about 6 hours into the game at level 4. The bow is by far my most efficient weapon as of now (mostly because sneak attacks do triple damage, which include shooting targets from any direction at a long range with a missile weapon).

Melee combat is possible, but not as efficient as I have relatively low HP. I'll update later when I've progressed farther into the game.

By the way, does anyone have any screenshots of your character(s) yet?

I have a 3500-3800+ Athlon 64 (It's overclocked) and 1 gig of ram but a geforce 3 ti500 video card. Do you think I can run this? Like at 1024 with low settings?

I don't think the GF3 chipset is supported. :(
I'd post my char, but I can't figure out how to SS. There's no key in the controls, and print screen doesn't work.

That's exactly my character.

WetWired, get Fraps, it should work for screenshots and videos.

As for the older GF chipset, my friend installed Oblivion on a computer with a GeForce 4, and most of the graphics are completely white, excluding the menus, some characters and a few objects. He updated his drivers with no success. Speaking of which, a friend of told me this out of the blue, although he has not backed his sources:

zajako: I wanted to play [Oblivion] too :/
zajako: I will never pay for another gforce card again
zajako: it works on all old ATI cards
zajako: but gforce paid them not to support older cards
[...]
zajako: i heard about it from a few other games out that they did it
zajako: like the matrix game
zajako: All grafix are white
zajako: cept for video and menus

---

Again, there's no backing to any of the things above, and I find it much likely that the older GF cards just have some incompability with parts of the game. Either way, couldn't there possibly be any rouge drivers to take care of this problem?

It finally happened. My video card is too old to support games. And there is no way in hell I can afford a new video card for $200+. Fuck.

Get a job, hippy.

Wow, I finally actually got the game INSTALLED. :grin:

My DVD drive seems to always hate DVDs for some reason. It's not that old either. :( Ah, well. If anyone's getting any "cyclic redundancy errors" I'll try to walk you through it, as it's a real pain to explain all hear. I went old school and blew into my DVD driver, and surprisingly this worked (but I had to copy all the contents of the DVD onto my computer). So far, no problems with it, and I'm not going to tweak the game until it causes any problems for me. My PC is fairly tweaked as it is, anwyays.

Ok, back to the point. I'm going Nightblade.

Just a word of warning: Nvidia FX users have been experiencing major problems. I don't recommend getting the game unless your graphics card is really, really new. Mine is a X850 XT.

What are some recommended specs for good gameplay by you guys? I might pick up this game. Or just play Zero Hour online more.

This is Zhenya, a mage that uses blades and light armor instead of distruction.

The official minimum system requirements include a 2 GHz cpu, 512 MB RAM and a 128 MB graphics' accelerator. Those just happens to be the exact specs of my Pavilion laptop, which runs the game acceptably on low settings, with maximum draw distance and actor distance (to see scenery and characters far away). I can't really enjoy the great graphics with those settings, which is a shame. Maxing all settings gives me about 1-2 FPS, and I can't even enable antialiasing and HDR lighting.

Really though, if you have a 3 GHz computer, a gig of ram and a fairly new graphics' card, you should do great.

This game can TOTALLy run on my laptop.

Off to buy it!

At 1:00 AM!

1.7 ghz Pentium M
16 MB Integrated ownage godly graphics card
512 godly 2 sticks of ram.
3.81 gb free on HD.


OOOOOH YEAH!

Looks interesting though. If i ever get another computer I'll be sure to give it a try >_<

The only bad thing about the LOD (far away distance thing) is the whole "green blob effect" on mountains (no trees). People are trying to figure out how to tweak the .ini file in order to fill it all up with trees (if it's even possible that is). It doesn't really bother me that much, and when I mess around with the .ini file I lag a lot, so oh well. I'm sure if the LOD thing looked any better the game would lag like hell.

I just went into a forest today..... :rolleyes: it looks REAL I tell you!

I don't know how anyone could actually use the auto-travel feature, really.

Rant of mine, written late at night, with some really big spoilers for a Dark Brotherhood quest. I really, really do not advice reading this unless you're done with... the fifth note, as it was by far the most enjoyable quest I've done so far. I apologize for any potential lack of consistency and weird grammar, but I'm really tired right now. Highlight to read.

Recently, I was sent off on a quest to assassinate five members of the same family heritage. As usual, I never questioned my superiors with any "whys" when they gave me direct orders. I was just an efficient tool guided by their mischievous minds. At first, I visited an old lady (a member of the family), who mistook me for someone else who would supposedly help her run errands. The old lady handed me a shopping list, expecting me to be nice enough to deliver gifts to everyone in her family. With a smile on her face, she paid me 100 gold to set everything up for her. Indeed I would carry her wish out, and I started off by delivering a poisoned arrow into the front of her skull. Her dog apparently found my action offensive, so I had to put it down too. The first name on the list led me to a dark cave, guarded by Timber Wolves. Deep inside the cave, I found a girl who slept on a bedroll, guarded by an additional army of Timber Wolves. She looked like she was in her mid 20's, pretty girl. Let's just say the CSI's of Oblivion will have a hard time identifying her using dental records, should they ever find her. It didn't take me long to find the girl's sister, who looked like she was roughly the same age. The big difference was that she was wearing a rather heavy-looking armor with an even heavier-looking sword complementing it. She was employed as a city guard, until I riddled her chest and arms full of steel arrows. Of course, mutilating a city guard in public is by most people considered to be... legally inappropriate, so I got a 1000 gold bounty on my head, and had aggravated city guards coming my way. I suppose my little act of having confronted my target beforehand to sadistically threaten her life, may have had something to do with the bounty. She managed to cry out for help, so I suppose the guards wanted to heroically save her life. Unfortunately for the girl, I won the trials of speed, and had officially become an infamous villain as of now. After the sword-loving city guards had chased me out of the city, I hurled myself into a nearby river to lose my followers. Halfway across the river, I spotted a bowman in the distance, firing projectiles at an even more distant, moving target. As an Assassin proficient in the art of "Running Really Fast", I tracked the bowman down, who turned out to be another city guard on the loose. The target in question was a deer fleeing for its life. The guard apparently did not even care (or did not know) that I was an escaping murderer, so I joined up on the city guard's side in a fairly lengthy chase for deer meat. After the deer was slain, I stood back and watched the city guard approach the dead deer suspiciously with his bow firmly gripped. He eventually looted the corpse for meat. Seconds after, he must have gotten second thoughts about his choice of hunting partner, as he ran up to me and angrily shouted that I had violated the law and would have to pay the fine of 1000 gold or be sent to prison. I blatantly refused, and killed him where he stood. I looted the deer meat from the guard's corpse, crushed it in my mortar along with some spices and had it magically turn into a potion of moderate power. At least my bounty had not been increased from my latest murder of a city guard, as there were no witnesses this time. Next up on the list was a family member who spent his days at a secluded inn in the forest. A guard waited at the counter, but I managed to evade him as I snuck up toward the room of my victim. Apparently my stealthiness had failed yet again, as my target screamed for help the very instant I opened his door. The previously seen armor-clad guard rushed to my location with heavy footsteps, which eventually resulted in another dead target and a slain guard who provided a new, shiny armor for my collection. Unfortunately my bounty had gone up to over 2000 gold as a direct result of this, which was at the time more than I was carrying around. No turning back now; would I be apprehended again, I would either be sent off to jail for perhaps many years, or I would have to run away from the fairly skilled guards well capable of dealing with me if in greater numbers than one. My final target was located in the Imperial capital city, home of, you guessed it, city guards. I was shorly after my arrival cornered by four guards who charged at me all at once. They covered the entire width of the road I walked, and I had no desire to be arrested again. To my left and right were walls preventing me to escape, but I knew I would have to get past the guards somehow. A wide staircase elevated the road a bit, which turned out to solve my problem. I climbed the staircase, waited a moment for the guards to start climbing it as well, and then I ran toward the guards and jumped over their heads. The staircase had given me the little extra elevation I needed to acrobatically get past them. A swift escape followed, and I managed to get into the house of my target. Unfortunately I did not know whether the target of my mission resided in the basement or on the upper floor of the building. A guard followed me inside, so I decided to run upstairs, hoping that it was the right choice of paths. My luck really wasn't with me on that day. The upper floor was the home of a pissed off mage, perchance a necromancer, with a body guard. The mage started casting very destructive attack spells upon me, just before not one, but THREE of the city guards appeared on the floor I had just entered. With the mage almost killing me with a single spell and the three guards ready to hack and slash me into tiny dices of meat, I surrendered to them and was sent to the prison of the Empire as I could not pay my hefty fine. Of course, in Oblivion, you get to sneak a single lockpick with you into your prison cell (don't ask me where it's kept). I had no intentions to do my time, so I swiftly broke out of my cell. On my way out, I spotted a guard slowly striding toward me, and the narrow prison corridors would not easily let me escape from his watching eyes. I really did not want to be seen; clearly an escaped prisoner who has had all equipment but a single lockpick confiscated would have a hard time combating a heavily armed prison guard. I jetted toward a nearby cell, which was locked, so I used the lockpick to break into the cell, and closed the bar-covered door behind me. Amazingly, the guard walked right past me, toward my original cell. He stopped at the end of the long corridor where my cell was located, but did not seem to find it alarming that I was missing from my cell. I sauntered over to the bedroll in the new cell of my choosing and decided to nap for a few hours; not because I was tired, but because the guard scared the crap out of me. Maybe hiding inside the bedroll for a few hours would make me invisible? When I woke up, the guard was gone. I guess Sithis had made my unholy wish of invisibility come to pass. I opened up the unlocked cell door, and silently snuck toward the exit. Unfortunately, another guard spotted me on my route to freedom, and alarmed others of my escape. I swiftly grabbed my confiscated equipment from a nearby chest and threw myself down into the prison sewers, eventually finding my way out of the city with no-one or nothing following me but a fetid gift from the sewage water I strode through. I had eluded death or possibly years of imprisonment, but did not want to rest or rejoice until my real task was complete. I needed to get into the basement of my target's home. The second attempt was initially fairly similar to my first. Guards chased me as I ran across the city streets, and civilians quickly evaded me like the plague. Inside the house, I entered the basement, a cramped wine storage facility, to find the final target of my contract. Two of the guards almost instantly followed me downstairs. The target, Matthias, had a body guard just like the mage two floors above, which summed the fight up to a total of four heavily armed melee fighters attacking me simultaneously. Matthias was the ONLY one I desired to kill so my bounty would not go up any higher, so no area damage attacks seemed particularly tempting. But it got worse. After a while of having jumped around, having tried to slash the right person with a magically enhanced dagger, an additional three guards suddenly entered the basement. Initially, the three newcomers bolted arrows at me, but shortly after changed their minds and lunged at me with their blades drawn instead. SEVEN melee fighters versus one assassin in a very cramped space was not quite what I was designed for. After getting the painful sensation of sharp steel cutting through my flesh an innumerable amount of times, along with the bitter taste of half an army's worth of healing potions poured down my throat, I managed to liquidate Matthias with many steel arrows directed into his thick armor. His body guard must not have been very pleased when I escaped the scene, barely alive but pumped with adrenaline and a large grin on my face. My reward for the assassinations was rather pleasing, but I was still around 500 gold short from paying my bounty of some 2400 gold. To be able to walk the streets of the cities again like a free person was one of my main goals, so I took another contract. This one appeared a lot easier, as it only involved the murder of one person; a "master of unarmed combat". Finding his location was not very hard, a house inside one of the large cities, but the guards still hunted me even though it was late at night. Inside the house, I found my target: a Khajiit with a large, catlike face and a bare-chested, muscular, human body, sleeping on a bedroll in his training room. Sandbags were suspended from the ceiling, so I figured they could possibly be nice to hide behind, should I be unsuccessful in instantly killing him as he slept on his bed. The pestering guards would, as expected, not leave me alone, and the Khajiit woke up in the tumult as two of them entered the room. The exact reason why he awoke is unclear; maybe the guards sounded like they inflicted minor earthquakes on the wood plank floor of the room with their heavy metallic boots? Either way, the Khajiit amazingly decided to attack the city guards, killing both of them off after a fairly short while of fighting. It was fairly impressive of him to to punch two heavily armored guards so hard with his hands that they died after only a few blows. Even more amazingly, he went right back to sleep after he was done killing them both, even though he most certainly spotted me, the assassin set out to kill him, right next to him. He even knew I was there to try to end his life. Confident bastard. I woke the Khajiit up as he returned to his sweet dreams after his killings, which resulted in him giving me a vexed remark about the fact that I was in his room. I threatened his life with a catchy, sadistic phrase pertaining to the will of the Dark Brotherhood, which apparently only pissed him off moderately. Moments after, he delivered a hit so hard with his fists that I flew across the entire room, having my head bang into the wooden wall. Other than his initial, impressive demonstration of physical prowess, the Khajiit turned out not to be very strategic, and kept running straight at me to attempt to punch me in the face. While the fight was lengthy, I could fairly easily evade his brutish attacks and riddle his body full of around 30 arrows before he fell lifelessly to the ground. I was rewarded 500 gold for the fight, and paid off my bounty shortly after. And so, I can once more walk the lands like a free assassin. :)

I've been playing the game on a p4 2.5 ghz 1024mb ram, geforce 6600GT on medium setting but without shadows just fine, with little to no slowdowns in fps.

It seems I've just completed the dark brotherhood quest line. To be honest I've been enjoying the mages guild quest line more.

Spoilers in response to Chrusers story:

With the family killings, I didnt like what happened when I killed the older man and his gaurd in the inn way out in the forest. I dont see how the gaurds in the imperial city would know I killed a gaurd way out in some deserted place... Because, like you, I was immediatley confronted upon entering the imperial city. That really annoyed me. But other than that its a nice quest. Also if you enter a house make sure you are undetected (sneaking with transparent eye to show you are not seen) Otherwise gaurds will always know you got in and will come after you.

i have never played any of the old morrowind games, but i want a new game to play and everybody says this is good, would you still suggest it to me?

If your computer can handle it.

Do it again but kill all the guards that come at you :p

yea my computer basically have the minimum requirements except i have 1gb of ram and 2.1ghz, but thats also the reason why i'm not sure if i should get it since it wouldn't run really smooth on my computer

What kind of videocard and what kind of processor?



hmm I've started the main quest with a lvl 13 warrior. And if there's one thing I noticed its that its a lot more difficult for warriors this time. At little over default difficulty I didnt really have alot of trouble in Kvatch with my mage, but with my warrior who is roughly at the same level my mage was (a little less even), is getting my ass kicked alot. Blocking wont help even though its at 60 or so with full fatigue. Those clannfears really hit hard and alot of the times I get staggered back leaving me all open and ready to be killed, especially when they come from 4 different directions after the npc's lured them all together and then died. :( The game seems to be getting increasingly more difficult as you gain levels. Kind of the opposite as it was in Morrowind. I kind of like it this way. :)

So I made a new character because I got tired of being slow and sneaky.

He's a bash-stuff-guy. I played through the coliseum until I got to the spellsword and got pwned, so I decided to go off and do other stuff to level up a bit.

Random 'dungeons' are fun. I got a pwn-ass ice-sword that I plan on using in the arena. I got trapped on the 3rd level of some broken-down castle thingy and had to reload from a previous save.

Oh, and I'm a vampire now. KERPWN!

Though it's not as kerpwn as it should be... All I get is hunter's sight and cool eyes. (And apparantly, I can bite people's necks too somehow.) I'm gonna jump on the mod, when somebody makes it, that makes vampires more realistic. Like in Morrowind, there was a mod that I used that gave vampires a boost in str and dex, gave them a levitate ability, and made them take damage in the sunlight.

From what I understand vampires become more powerfull as each day passes up to 4 days after. Then they get invisibility and some other stuff.

They also get a boost in some stats/skills +5 and each night without feeding results in a more vampiric look and another +5 in those stats/skills. But there's also a weakness to fire and the sun damage increasing each night you dont feed. However If you keep feeding every night you will not get these effects (but you do get the invisibility and charm etc.). Feeding is done by biting someone who is asleep in their bed.

Thats what I read before oblivion came out from the official guide, I dont know if anything has been changed because I havent been a vampire yet, but I dont think so?

AMD Athlon XP 2700
Radeon 9600 pro

Um, in Morrowind, vampires naturally got stat boosts and took damage in sunlight, though no levitate. Of course, it seems that levitation is banned in the world of Oblivion...

WW, do you have any spells that boost speed or jumping significantly? I designed a few spells, one of which would give you 100 acrobatics for a few seconds, but it didn't really take me that much higher than usual when jumping, as my acrobatics are currently 76. I believe they cap at 100 even with spells.

Ya I figured that out yesterday. It's not per day, though.... Or at least there's some sort of anti-sleep,sleep,sleep coding, because I can't enter a dungeon and sleep right to vamp lvl 4.

Was there a delay in it, or was it minimal? Because I never noticed any sunlight damage in Mwind. *shrug*

As for the str and dex boost, lawl at me. I didn't even notice the 5 boost you get when you become a vampire in Bloodmoon, and I did it 2 days ago.

Sunlight damage in Morrowind was up to 5dps, depending on the weather. If it was overcast or ash storming, you'd take closer to 1dps; you should have noticed it, because there was that annoying red effect arround the screen IIRC. The str boost was like 30, though it depends on which clan you join.

Hm.. I'm a Mage Guild member in the Dark Brotherhood! A not so pleasant combination. :haha:

By the way, AA and HDR don't work together. Neither do AA and Bloom, but they don't tell you that. Try disabling AA with bloom and you'll be able to see the sun, but some things will appear more jaggedy (like the water). I really don't want to disable bloom but I don't like the jagged look. Oh well.

Btw, check this out

Press ~

then type setfog 1000 80000

well mess around with the numbers for a bit. Try and fog the game up if your GFX card is old and maybe that'll help, or you can follow an ini tweak guide to see what'll work.

Well I certainly notice the sun damage in Oblivion. At vamp-stage 4, it totally kerpwns me.

Argh, I just wish I could see the sun in Oblivion. :haha:

With Anti-Aliasing on with Bloom, the sun is blurred out basically. I'm not sure if this is the same way with HDR, though.


The Radiant AI is awesome, IMO. What do you all think about the level scaling? I think it's alright.

I think fuck you guys for having video cards that can run the game.

Seconded.

16mb should be all that I need for ANy game.