System Requirements:
Minimum: Windows XP, 2 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon CPU, 512 MB of RAM, 4.6 GB of hard drive space, 8 × speed DVD-ROM drive, DirectX 9c, AGP video card with 128 MB of RAM (must be Direct3D compliant), DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card.
Recommended: 3 GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon CPU, 1 GB of RAM, 4.6 GB of hard drive space, 8 × speed DVD-ROM drive, DirectX 9c, ATI X800 series or nVidia GeForce 6800 series graphics accelerator, DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card.
My Recommendation: 4 GHz dual core CPU probably, (Oblivion will only recognise 2 cores at the most, from what I read.) 1.5 GB of RAM, 5.5 GB of (serial) hard drive space, (for Shivering Isles and extra stuff you might want,) 8 × speed DVD drive, DirectX 9c, some beefy PCI Express video card, like a nVidia 9600 GT, and the DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card.
(This review contains stuff from both the main part of Oblivion and Shivering Isles. There’s nothing from Knights Of The Nine.)
It’s probably about time that I bunged up a page on what’s my fave PC game at the moment! Even though it’s been a couple of years that I’ve been playing it.
Anyhoo, this time around you’re in Cyrodiil, on a somewhat lucky break from the clink, when the Emperor himself comes on through with his guards, using a secret escape route through your cell. But the forces of the Mythic Dawn Cult are at work. These are the Daedra worshippers of Mehrunes Dagon, and their plan is to execute the emperor in order to break the bonds of the agreement Alessia made with Akatosh in order to hold back the hordes of daedra from Oblivion. Of course if you don’t know anything of the lore of The Elder Scrolls games, then that probably makes no sense at all to you. But the deal is, the Mythic Dawn want to help bring Mehrunes Dagon into the mortal world, so he can destroy everything and start the Mythic Era all over again. Luckily though, the good guys still have a trick up their sleeve. That of Martin Septim, a somewhat unknown heir to the throne that hasn’t been killed off. And he has a few tricks up his sleeve also that help you to stop this invasion.
Voice acting is quite famous, with Patrick Stewart doing Uriel Septim, Terrence Stamp for Mankar Camoran and Sean Bean for Martin.
As usual, you’ll find all the popular guilds — the Fighters Guild, the Thieves Guild and the Mages Guild. You can even choose to join the nasty Dark Brotherhood. That’s right, those same people who King Helseth tried to get to kill you in Morrowind. Except back then you were somebody else.
There’s around
4143.98 ha (/ 41.44 square km) (or 16 square miles) of land to explore in Cyrodiil, not including all the ruins, caves, forts and mines that have underground areas, so that’s a heck of a lot of places to explore.
Apart from all the quests, the game gives you a lot of personal scope as well to do the things you want or need to do. For instance, you might want to travel to the Ayleid ruin of Elenglynn and pick Somnalius Fronds for a bit, so you can make new feather potions. Or maybe you want to work on improving your sneak skill by walking quietly around sleeping guards and hobos. These are the extra sort of things you can do for yourself in the game also, that make it that much more appealing. As with Morrowind, you’ll need to keep your gear repaired, your magical items charged and your own body healed. There are many ways to go about doing all this too. Perhaps you’ll pay for equipment repairs in the Fighters Guild, or work on improving your armoury skill by doing it yourself. You can pay for recharging items, or use Varla stones from Ayleid ruins, or maybe fill up some soul gems to do it. The 1st Oblivion gate you’ll be entering, is outside the destroyed city of Kvatch. It’s open from pretty early in the game, so being prepared to enter is a good idea. Although the enemies increase in level as you do, they can still be quite tough if you don’t have enough resources to keep yourself alive. Shutting down a gate is a matter of finding the Sigil stone keeping it open, but this isn’t just on the other side like a light switch. You’re in for some searching! Of course you can pick up some really good loot in the realm of Mehrunes Dagon. Keep your eyes out for fleshy pods and loot the corpses of defeated Dremoras also.
Unlike Morrowind, where you could pretty much acquire a house that had no one in it any longer, Oblivion offers you houses for sale in each city. This way you get safe storage, away from respawning containers, extra items to do the place up, and in Skingrad your own servant too. Initially houses will seem very expensive, and they range from the cheap 2000 gold shack in the Imperial City up to the 25000 gold, 4 level mansion in Skingrad. When you become a millionaire though, you’ll be wishing there were a few more to buy.
Picking ingredients has never been so good! How many other games actually let you walk up to a plant and take a bit off to use in a potion? And now there are all new ingredients to use! Pumpkins, tomatoes, potatoes, cheese, onions, lettuces, ham, mutton, bread, wheat, corn — heck, you could almost make your own BLT! Hmm, well not quite. As your alchemy skill increases, you will eventually get to know all 4 properties of ingredients when you hit expert level. Unlike Morrowind, plants no longer have an inventory. You simply pick one piece off as you go passed, if it actually has something you can use. If it’s been picked recently, there’ll be
no hand on the crosshair.
If your attributes have been damaged, such as Willpower, Personality or Strength for instance, you can be restored at chapels of the 9 Divines in any of the main towns, and other remote chapels also, such as Gottlesfont Priory, which is out in the wilderness, the Temple Of The Ancestor Moths and possibly Weynon Priory.
Once you find a place on the map, you can then fast travel to it again from most locations, excluding indoor areas and parts of Oblivion. This can be good early on in the game when your character has dodgy armour and not much health, but later on it’s a good idea to walk about yourself and fight creatures to gain experience and find other new locations too.
Unlike in Morrowind, with it’s mini map dealie, Oblivion now features an even better compass that displays what’s coming up ahead, and if it’s a place you’ve found before or not. You also get arrows for the direction of your current quest to help you out.
Places of interest include the impressive Ayleid ruins that vary in size from a few rooms to mutli-halled, booby trapped palaces pretty much. Also the many abandoned forts make for exciting exploring as you look for forgotten loot.
You’ll also get to go to several unique places, such as inside a painting, inside a dream, a very cold glade (Frostfire Glade), a long lost fort (Pale Pass) and Paradise.
Unlike in Morrowind, items which you’re not allowed to take or use, are now marked in red on your cursor dealie, as well as doors you’re not supposed to go into, so you know what’s what. Some containers though now respawn their contents, so you need to be wary of where you put down your loot. Your own houses have safe containers, and this includes the Duke or Duchess’ quarters in Sheogorath’s Palace. You can also safely use the well in Skingrad near the castle.
Despite all the new goodies, quite a bit of stuff was pulled out of Oblivion that was featured in Morrowind. Throwing stars, crossbows, medium armour, levitation spells, jump, sound, recall & mark, slowfall, blind, detect key, sanctuary and locking. Plus some other stuff too most likely. One major rip off in comparison is the enchanting. This was just about wasted on Oblivion, compared to how you could use it in Morrowind. Back then you could enchant just about anything in nearly any warped up way you saw fit. (I made a ring that had a constant effect summoning of a scamp!) But now the limitations bring it to the point where you’ll simply forget it’s even in the game. Like Morrowind, you still can’t enchant arrows, but you can find ones that have been, on enemies. I found that you can no longer create clothing that has an effect of restore health either.
One of the other great tricks in Morrowind was to fortify your Intelligence with a potion, which would boost your alchemy performance, in which you could crank up an even better potion of the same thing and so on, but with Oblivion, even though Alchemy comes under Intelligence, boosting it has no effect on your potions. Even fortifying your alchemy skill beyond 100 has no effect. Boo!
If you want to get even more of Oblivion, there are 2 great expansion packs you can get. The 1st is Knights Of The Nine, and the 2nd is Shivering Isles, which you really should consider checking out! You can pick it up quite cheaply now. I got mine for $29.90 on
sale. Here you’ll travel to Sheogorath’s realm of Oblivion, where things are quite zany. Surprisingly there are quite a lot of people there. There’s completely new fascinating places to see, new ingredients to collect and of course the chance to meet Sheogorath himself. You may even run into a Golden Saint named Staada that you met in Morrowind. She looks a LOT hotter now.
They say it gives you about 30 hours of extra game play, but really there is a LOT more than that in there. Maybe you’ll get that if you stick to the main quest and nothing else. But if you pick up extra quests, and pop back to Cyrodiil to drop stuff off, like in Bravil, you’ll be getting in extra hours. One thing that seemed a bit disappointing was the amount of quest related characters who end up dying before you can even finish their quest, or start it.
Graphically the game is breathtakingly amazing. Now that it’s featuring a neat type of bump mapping on all sorts of surfaces, full screen glows, some gloriously realistic trees, actual tall grasses and very spiffy reflections, you’re in for a real treat! If your computer can handle it that is. If you have a decent enough video card, you can crank things up, and see over huge distances.
The music is once again by the brilliant Jeremy Soule, who brings perfectly suited moods to every place. Where there’s fighting and action you can expect the appropriate tunes, and when you’re out by yourself exploring the vast wilderness, you really do feel alone as you take in the beautiful scenery. Go into town though, and suddenly the music feels warmer and more comforting. Be sure to try turning off the music at least once while you’re in one of the Ayleid ruins to hear the eerie yet intriguing sounds.
With the Elder Scrolls Construction Set (, which you need to get separately,) you can make your own add ons for the game too! Plus there are hundreds of mods you can get from places like The Elder Scrolls Nexus (which now requires membership to download stuff ), that will add a little more of something you want to the game. I highly recommend Phoenix T’ril’s Ayleid Sanctum, (— only 62.6 KB,) which provides you with a gorgeous home that you can access from just about anywhere at all! (Apart from the Shivering Isles.) Great for organised storage, escaping or simply relaxing. A loot collectors delight.
Quest items in the game now weigh nothing at all, so having to worry about them bogging you down while you might be doing something else, is something you can forget about.
Compared to Morrowind on the XBOX, Oblivion is very stable, although at some times you may end up with a corrupt save file. Therefore, it’s always a good idea to make backup copies of your saves and store them somewhere else, such as in a zip or rar file. You may also come across a
problem where the game freezes unexpectedly, and can only be quit by pressing your PC’s reset button. This can be a problem caused by too many save files, although apparently not everyone is affected by it. Keep your saves to about 15 or less, and back up important or favourite times in the game somewhere else, incase you want to see something again later.
You can actually run Oblivion on Windows M.E., but not particularly well. It often comes to a stand still for several seconds at times before kicking back into action, and sometimes it may unexpectedly quit as well. So that’s not really recommended. As much as I hate patches, you should really look into getting the latest one available, because there are some serious problems which can affect you, especially after several hundred hours of playing. You’ll also most likely need the Oblivion Animation Fixer, which corrects a byte in your save file that can cause stuck and seriously chunky animations.
Graphics: Absolutely incredible. You’ll get some amazing detail if you have everything cranked up. Trees with moving shadows, the chapels, grass, just about everything really. The texture quality varies with some areas being a little bit blurry and blocky looking, while stuff like armour is deliciously superb. There’s some great particle effects and reflections, refractions and shadows as well, and the flickering of candles really highlights the bump mapping on surfaces. You’re there. 97%
Animation: Unless you have a speedy CPU and a beefy video card, you’ll spend quite a bit of time singing Won’t you take me to Chunky Town?! Seriously, you should use the recommended requirements on the box. A new PCI express type video card should be just the ticket. But other than that, there’s great character movement, swaying trees and what have you. Sometimes doors, and fire and that seems to chunk up for me, but you can fix it with a 3rd party program. 85%
Sound: Great footstep sounds on different surfaces, untouchable music and delightful ambient effects. Speech is clear, even though you get subtitles too, and the effects in battles are fantastic. 100%
Playability: You can change the controls to work pretty much how you want, but it’s the usual keyboard and mouse sorta setup. You can use the XBOX 360 control pad pretty well with it too. Of course things aren’t as playable if your computer can’t really handle it. The menu is set out well also. 92%
Lastability: Unlike some RPGs that give you barely 20 hours, Oblivion will get you into the hundreds. I played over 1000 hours (— that’s just over 41 days straight —) before going back to Morrowind on the PC, and I still have places to see. And with Shivering Isles and Knights Of The Nine, you can play even longer! One of the best RPGs I know for giving you LOTS to do. Welcome to your new virtual life. 99%
Overall: Despite all the usual Elder Scrolls bugs and stuff ups, it’s still a must have game! 94%
Tips:
• Unmarked Cave has a door you can’t open, but if you’re able to jump up the hole in the ceiling, (in another area,) you can check out the rest of the joint. Or you can cheat and levitate up using tcl on the console. My A Little More Access plug-in provides a fix for this.
• To make up black soul gems, like the necromancers, and capture the souls from people, you simply need to get empty grand soul gems, place them in one of the 4 altars at Fort Istirus, Dark Fissure, Wendelbek or Fort Linchal, on the day the light is shining on the altar. (Shade Of The Revenant.) Then cast a soul trap spell at it (— the altar that is —) for each gem you put in there.
• Before you go into Oblivion make sure you’re well stocked on healing potions, especially if you’re a low level character, and keep a couple or more weapons with you. If you wear one out and don’t find a replacement, you’ll be fighting with your bare hands. Unless of course you have good destructive spells. Take a bunch of repair hammers with you as well.
• Don’t just rush in to areas that obviously have enemies. Take your time to observe how might be the best way to take out a foe. Remember that sneak attacks do more damage, and can be most easily done with your bow, sometimes up to several shots before a baddie will notice you. Use Detect Life potions and Night-Eye to help you see things before they see you.
• When you’re at Pale Pass, look out for the well hidden Circlet Of Omnipotence.
• In the Shivering Isles, when you’re taking on Knights Of Order, the trick to shut down the obelisks is to place 3 of the Knights’ hearts into it. This causes it to overload with too much energy and shut down. Make sure you kill any Priests Of Order before you do anything, because they will re-activate the obelisk in that area. After a while you’ll be able to stock up on plenty of hearts, so that having a few with you at all times will be a bonus, should you run into another active obelisk and wish to shut it down quickly.
• Make your own potions where you can, instead of buying them. It costs a lot less, and you can improve your alchemy skill as well. Early in the game you can sell your potions off for other things you might want, because a potion is usually worth a lot more than the ingredients it’s made from. Get to know what ingredients
do what, and where to find them also.
• Once your acrobatics becomes good enough, you can get quite clever in some Ayleid ruins with traps, by jumping over dividing walls, and avoiding them all together. Usually jumping over the corner of a spike trap will get you passed it though. It can be a good idea to lure your enemies into all kinds of traps if you can.
• If you have Shivering Isles, a quick way to quench Dawnfang / Duskfang’s bloodthirst is to kill mudcrabs when you’re in Cyrodiil. Pretty obvious I suppose really.
• If you’re anti-Dark Brotherhood, you can actually take out Lucien Lachance on his 1st meeting with you. If you want to take out other members, but don’t want to be responsible for killing Rufio, you can cast a touch based Frenzy spell on him, like Ahjazda’s Paranoia for example. He will then go berserk and come after you. If you head upstairs in time, Manheim will polish him off, and it won’t be your fault.
• If you get the Ayleid Sanctum add on that I mentioned, there’s an interesting advantage to getting out of prison that this offers. Be sure to also complete the quest for Nocturnal and get the Skeleton Key. Place it in a safe spot in the Sanctum joint and be sure to have a good selection of loot in there as well, like weapons, armour and so on. When you get busted and choose to get hauled off to the clink, you can then teleport out of the gaol cell back to the Ayleid Sanctum. It’s then just a matter of collecting up the Skeleton Key and a new set of armour plus a good weapon. Teleport back, open the gate (— which will be guaranteed to work —), and then make your way outta there! Of course, even if you don’t intend to play as such a rebel, it’s fun to try out only temporarily.
• If your Dark Seducer mace icon is missing, you can get my fix for this here.
• Here’s how you can remove a NPC from a faction using the console. Basically I had a 3rd party merchant plug-in whose seller was part of the Dark Brotherhood, and when I’d been exiled, he wouldn’t serve me any more. So I decided to remove him from that faction. Anyway, to do so in this case, just open the console, click on the person, and enter: SetFactionRank 0002F872 -1 The hexadecimal number is the form ID for the Dark Brotherhood, and you’ll need to look these up from the Construction Set if it’s some other faction you want to remove a NPC from. (If you don’t already have the Construction Set, you’ll need to get it off the Internet.)
• To make a quest item into a non-quest item, so that you can drop it / sell it, (assuming you no longer need it,) enter the following into the console: SetQuestObject 00022BA8 0, replacing the hexadecimal number with the Form ID number of the item specified in the Construction Set. In this case, this is the Blade Of Woe. (Items will then gain weight too.)
• One of many items, which still have quest status after their quest is complete, is an interesting note from the blind moth priests regarding the Grey Cowl Of Nocturnal. You may find it at the Temple Of The Ancestor Moths, near the exit to the outside well. To remove its quest status, open the console and type in: SetQuestObject 00014740 0
• Here’s a bit of a SPOILER, so look away, if you don’t want to know. If you haven’t done the quest to cure yourself of vampirism (like me), you may not know that there’s a secret passage up by the castle in Skingrad. You probably do know that the count there’s a vampire, because you speak to him when you’re getting extra guards to defend Bruma in the main quest. Anyway, his wife is also a vampire, but she’s even more ashamed of it, and pretty much just wants to die. She quit eating and eventually went into a coma. Well, this secret place is where she’s resting. You’re not supposed to get in there, due to a wall blocking the passage, but it is possible to get in without cheating. (By that, I mean using the console.) Enter the courtyard of the castle, and the passage is on the east side. (I think.) You’ll normally just see a stone wall. Go up the stairs on this right side, and jump up onto the roof. It’s a good idea to sneak, so you don’t accidentally slip off. Then make your way to the very edge. You should see the passage in the nothingness beyond, so line yourself up and drop on down. You’ll land on top of the rocky tunnel, on the wrong side. But if you creep towards the door, you can reach it. It isn’t locked or anything like that, so you can just go on in. Once inside, you’ll pretty much only find the countess, and you can’t do much with her, but it’s worth a look if you like to explore hidden places. You’ll probably need to choose to fast travel to get back anywhere again though.
• The Mages’ Guild in Bruma gets destroyed of course, in the Mages’ Guild quest, and one of the spells you can no longer buy as a result, is the Summon Dremora Lord one. What I did, was add it to another spell seller. Specifically Borissean at the Praxographical Centre at the Arcane University. He also sells a Summon Xivilai spell, so it seemed he’d be appropriate. To add this spell to his collection, just open the console, click on him, and type in: “AddSpell 0003C413”. He’ll then be able sell it to you. If you just want to be a bit more cheaty and add it to yourself for free, enter: “Player.AddSpell 0003C413” instead. One thing you should know though, is that you need to be a Master of Conjuration to cast this.
• I dunno how useful this one is, but I used a trick in Sedor to get to the higher level above the entrance area. You just jump on the gate, and then quickly try to “activate” / use the bench on the higher level. Obviously when you stand back up, you’ll be on the higher section. You could do this anywhere this occurs really, if that wasn’t a no-brainer already.
• If the hidden sliding wall pieces don’t open on later visits to Miscarcand, at the end of the Morimath section, try saving, quitting & then reloading. They should be open then. (This trick can work in other places too.) Be sure to jump to the surrounding corner sections in the area with the Great Welkynd Stone for an extra chest.
• If you’ve only just started playing Oblivion for the 1st time ever, one good tip is to avoid trying to use stools through prison gates. Because when you stand back up, you’ll be on the wrong side, and locked up.
• If you’re looking for a bit of an edge, Chameleon is one of the best effects in the game to go unnoticed. If you can get it to 100% or more, you will be completely undetected. You can use a combination of enchanted clothing, potions and spells if you wish. This is useful to sneak up and hit enemies to do more damage as well. Any Reflect Spell or Reflect Damage effects you have going are also useful in bringing down enemies faster. Also make use of paralysis on your enemies. Shots from a bow can be particularly good to get the upper hand, and if you’re lucky, you may come across a staff in the game that does a brief paralyse over a large area. This is good if you’re surrounded. Enemies will then collapse, and it’s then a good time to pick-pocket them!
• An Oblivion gate may open somewhere north-west of Ceyatatar, about half-way to Fort Wooden Hand. If not, you’ll still find some Blood Grass growing out of a grassy rock there, which seems quite strange, if no gate is present. If you want to locate it, the co-ordinates are approximately: X: -35747.14, Y: 38725.2 & Z: 6091.48
• I’ve noticed in recent times that various objects which are added by ESP files may vanish permanently from your game, if you drop them outside, and leave them there. They seem to be safe in interior zones, like houses, and shops, but not in the wilderness — including the Shivering Isles. I’ve had all kinds of things just vanish, while testing this oddity. Potions, clothing, and miscellaneous items particularly.
• I should do some separate location guides, shouldn’t I? Anyway, here are some tips for getting through the Ayleid ruin of Elenglynn. The outside region of this place is so pretty and peaceful. It’s one of my favourite locations. But the inside can be a bit terrifying your first time. It’s a 1 zone joint, but it does have some nasty traps. So shut yours & listen up! Firstly, once you get down the stairs, there’s a single swinging blade trap. Although the Construction Set shows 2 of them! But only 1 of them may actually work, it seems. If you have a Frost Ring, equip that next. There are a whole bunch of black “evil stones” (as the Construction Set seems to call them), which will glow red and fire frost spells at you. Despite having Varla Stone Cages above them, there is no way to drop them and disable these traps. If you have 100% frost resistance, you can just ignore them then. One less worry! A sliding spike trap also runs along the walkway across the water. If you’re skilled enough, you can just jump off the surface (of the water), or use a water walking spell. The joint can have a few undead creatures and necromancers, so arrows enchanted with a Silence spell may be helpful. There’s a room with a gate which closes itself when you approach that region, which can seem spooky, and this spot has more frost firing traps. The other room is where the necromancers do their wicked deeds, and is a trap-free zone, pretty much. When fighting the enemies, use the corners of the main hall to gain safety and attack from a distance, and also consider summoning creatures too.
• If you have a shock spell that can push corpses around, or take off, you can use this on paralysed enemies too. Paralyse your enemy once, and then just keep shooting the shock spell at them, and they'll flip about, but won’t be able to get up. In caves for instance, you may be able to keep it going long enough to kill them, so long as your magicka replenishes faster than what your spell uses.
• I toggled a few characters’ essential status. Here are the form IDs for a bunch of them:
Mazoga (The Orc) — 00085969
Hassiri — 0001FDCE
M’aiq The Liar — 000C47EC
Tamika — 000294CC
Davide Surilie — 000294BF
Gaston Surilie — 000294C0
Vandorallen Trebatius — 00028FB7
Uuras (The Shepherd) — 00028E84
Nanette Don — 00012D41 (from the Shivering Isles)
To set somebody to essential, in the console enter: SetEssential FormID 1. Use 0 to make them not essential. This should work on creatures too. You can look up the form IDs in the Construction Set, if you have it. Some characters should remain essential until all the quests they’re involved in are over with.
Potion & Poison Sub Tips:
Here’s some ways to make useful potions & poisons. Most of these will assume you know all 4 ingredient properties (— so Expert level).
(* — Shivering Isles required.)
• To make up a feather potion, you can use a combination of Flax and Sacred Lotus Seeds before you know all 4 properties without a negative effect. After that you can use Lady’s Mantle / Somnalius Fronds with Flax / Sacred Lotus. Venison works too.
• For Detect Life, use rat meat with tomatoes, onion, pumpkins or bread. Mixing tomatoes with bread will give you an added bonus of restore fatigue. *Screaming Maw and *Hound Tooth ingredients are good as well.
• Radishes and Blood Grass works okay I think for Chameleon. When your skill gets good enough, you can use Blood Grass on its own.
• Use a *Water Root Pod Pit and Dragon’s Tongue to do a restore health, resist fire and fire shield potion all in one.
• You can use Wisp Stalk Caps, Monkshood Root Pulp and Scales to do a poison that will damage Intelligence, Willpower & Health.
• Milk Thistle Seeds with Frost Salts & Fennel Seeds will do Frost Damage & Paralyze.
• * For a real home brewed mega potion, mix up some Flax Seeds, Lady’s Mantle Leaves, Screaming Maw and Tomato. (You’ll probably need to be an Expert.) What you’ll get is Feather, Restore Health, Detect Life and Shield effects. Great for a nasty dungeon crawl.
• Mix Bog Beacon Asco Caps with Flax Seeds to do Restore Magicka + Shield.
• * Use Screaming Maw, Venison & Lady’s Mantle Leaves to do Chameleon, Restore Health & Feather all @ once.
• * Even better, is the combination of Alocasia Fruit, Screaming Maw, an Onion & a Wisp Core. You’ll get a potion with 5 positive effects! Chameleon, Light, Detect Life, Restore Fatigue and Restore Health.
• Most ingredients weigh from about 0.1 up to 0.5 weight units, but some can go up to 2 or even 5. You can carry as much garlic as you need, however because it weighs nothing. It can sometimes work out to reduce your load by making potions out of heavy ingredients where the bottle will weigh less in the end.
• Stolen ingredients can be sold off when converted to potions too.
Construction Set Tips:
• Don’t use teleporting doors between parts of the same cell where you’ll have NPCs travelling. The doors should always point to a new cell, or the NPCs can get stuck. I had this issue myself, and now know to avoid it. The same can probably be said about creatures as well.
• If traders aren’t showing certain spells for you to purchase, consider that you may’ve already bought that spell before. They won’t sell you spells you already have.
• Clothing / armour items will not show in containers if they’re not marked as playable.
• To link a path grid node to an activator, like a gate, hidden wall, etc., have the path grid turned on, then select the node you want to be switched on & off, and press R. A dialogue box will come up and it will allow you to choose the reference that controls that path node. A magenta / purple looking node on a line will join to the path node you chose. This way NPCs and creatures can’t try to pass a blocked path.
• NPCs have an option called “No Low Level Processing.” This means that if this tick box is enabled, they won’t do their AI package activities while you’re not around. This is fine for baddies in a dungeon that don’t go anywhere, but other NPCs with routines of travelling to other places need to have low level processing or they may even just vanish. This was an issue with the bosses in my 1st 2 Inner Depths: Oblivion plug-ins, so if you have the Construction Set, it can be wise to fix this if you’re going to use these 2 plug-ins of mine. (Just for the bosses.) I may fix it myself when I have time. Secondly, characters in levelled lists should not have low level processing. The C.S. will warn you about it too, and if you have the tick box disabled, you can’t add NPCs or creatures to levelled lists to begin with. So be warned.
With the “Can Corpse Check” tick box enabled, this means that they’ll reach down and check a corpse, whether they killed it or somebody else did. Usually guards do this.
• If you want NPCs to even walk through water, you’ll need to have an AI package which allows swimming. Keep in mind that if a change occurs at a certain time, such as switching from a travel or wander package to eat, for instance, it will need to allow swimming as well, if the NPC is still in a region containing water. Otherwise, they may freeze at the water’s edge and wonder how to continue, if they’re not permitted to cross.
• To get information on the used textures on the landscape, open the landscape editing dealie (by pressing H), then with the render view active, press I to see the information about what your cursor’s over. You should not delete the top level texture, or the area can turn black.
My Own Plug-Ins:
• Talos Plaza Manor. This plug-in adds a house to the north-west corner of the Talos Plaza District in the Imperial City, which you can purchase for a bit over 10 000 Septims from Thoronir @ the Copious Coinpurse in the Market District. You’ll also spot 3 flyers which mention the house is for sale. You can just take the ones from the front door, when you move in. Special features include a travelling ring to teleport you to 5 various Ayleid ruins, some enchanted gauntlets, a remote access chest (— like having magical portable storage —) and a restorative crystal cluster. The house has named containers, which are all safe to use, plus respawning food & drinks containers in the basement, which are marked as such. There’s also a bonus sub-basement. You must have Shivering Isles installed & the latest official patch. No other script extenders or 3rd party add-ons are required.
Any other plug-ins you may have that affect this portion of the Talos Plaza may conflict with my plug-in. Always check for such issues before adding this permanently to your save games.
(There’s a very minor bug with the ring script timing method in this plug-in, in that it won’t work as intended. You’re welcome to re-write it, but it’s not something which will make much of a noticeable difference anyway. The delay was only for the sound effect, but because it’s played in your menu, you’ll hear it before you close it anyhow.)
Do not use the teleporting ring while riding a horse. The game will crash if you do. Also, don’t drop it outside & leave it. Scripted items, and certain others from 3rd party plug-ins have a nasty habit of vanishing when dropped in outside locations with this game. Also, don’t use any of my teleporting items from within Mehrunes Dagon’s realms of Oblivion. I think this may cause problems too.
See below for the Umbacano cabinet fix file as well.
Download size: 30.2 KB
Check out the sample screen shots.
• Houses Collection. This plug-in adds 4 houses to Cyrodiil and also one to the Shivering Isles. Each house has instant teleportation functionality, to take you to far away places, plus a return item as well, to get you back home with a snap of your fingers. (Which you shouldn’t use from a horse. Plus you can’t teleport between Nirn & the Shivering Isles.) Also make use of remote access chests, like my Talos Plaza Manor, and enjoy the great views from each location.
This plug-in is not compatible with Knights Of The Nine, because Pearl House is in the same location as Garlas Malatar.
See below for the Umbacano cabinet fix file as well.
This is 1.6 MB.
See some sample pictures.
• A Little More Access. After you get into the Imperial Palace for the Thieves’ Guild main quest, this plug-in then allows you back in there again later. It also adds a key for a door in Unmarked Cave, which had none.
This one’s just 6.71 KB.
• Inner Depths: Oblivion 1. This is like my Inner Depths plug-ins for Morrowind. Travel to the north-west of Hermaeus Mora’s shrine, and find a new fort in that region where nothing else was. Once inside, you can head to 10 main new areas underground, and a special reward is waiting for you at the end, which you can make use of for the rest of your game playing. There are 84 new NPCs, plus Hungers and Flesh Atronachs from the Shivering Isles. So you will need this installed too, plus its latest official patch.
I also want to add, that I did the enemies to get mostly harder as you progress. Especially the people. So for low level players, this will seem really tough, but for those of you who’ve levelled up to like level 30 or so, this will be easier. I wanted all that levelling up to make you feel like you’d actually got something out of it, rather than just making all the enemies the same as you. You may find high level loot from lower levels, like 10 or so, so if you think that’s a bit unlike how Oblivion does things normally, you might want to wait until you’re in your higher levels before trying this.
1.49 MB is the download size.
See some sample images.
• Cyrodiilic Outposts. Add 10 varied Imperial Legion outposts to your game. Most are in remote locations, but a few are in more common areas. Get a few extra, new books, plus one from my Bosmer Companion plug-in for Morrowind. See guards on patrol, all of who are unique, facially, and trade with a variety of merchants. You can rest up at each location and even store your stuff there. A rough map is included in the archive, so you can see where each place is, and this should help you to determine if it might conflict with other plug-ins you have. The Read Me file also explains what regions are affected.
(I hope nobody downloaded this too early on, as I fixed a mistake on the 1st day it was uploaded, to set a merchant container I forgot about.)
Download size: 809 KB
• Inner Depths: Oblivion 2. After doing Inner Depths: Oblivion 1 in 2021, I thought I might take a crack @ a 2nd plug-in of a similar style. This time, the location’s on the east side of Cyrodiil, down the hill from the Ayleid ruin of Hame. I’ve put the map marker as a village, or whatever they call it. A settlement. I felt this was appropriate for a castle, even though it’s taken over by criminals. You could change it to a “Fort Ruin” marker before you start, if you have the Construction Set.
There are 10 main zones, but it’s really more, because some are split into 2, and there are some minor extra rooms. The initial castle has about 7 areas.
Unlike my previous Inner Depths plug-in for Oblivion, the NPCs now have routines where they change locations and also sit down for a meal. 6 of them are fixed, but there are 100 randomly picked ones. (10 races × 2 sexes × 5 groups.) The enemies are easy to begin with, and they get harder towards the end. The loot should also improve as well.
I like my plug-ins to have some level of replay value where possible, so your end reward isn’t just a chest of great goodies. This time, I have the Daedric Cube, which works a bit like the Horadric Cube in Diablo 2. At least slightly. Oblivion has 3 qualities
of gems (— as in diamonds, pearls, rubies, sapphires, topazes and emeralds —), so this cube can upgrade them. Flawless ones can then be used nearby, in the Gem Conversion Depository. By including a Daedric Token, you can transform the pair into a set of 25 enchanted arrows, with a decent amount of oomph. The Daedric Cube can also convert Grand Soul Gems and a Daedric Token into a Black Soul Gem, so you don’t have to wait so long for the Shade Of The Revenant at the 4 other locations. (It doesn’t convert soul gems into better ones though.) The script is flexible enough to convert gems and grand soul gems at the same time, and newly made normal level gems won’t be upgraded to flawless ones, until you press the button a 2nd time, in case you don’t want to go that far.
As a bonus, there’s also an Ayleid item you can drop off, and teleport back to. Due to oddities in the game, you should only drop it off in interior zones, as it will be deleted if you leave it outside. Plus, there are 2 “cheaty” staffs, which you may or may not wish to use. One’s a fun one to put a bounty on a NPC, and the other can resurrect the dead. They aren’t pushed upon you — if you find them, you can choose whether or not to take them.
I’d recommend being in your 20s of levels to tackle this, although the initial enemies start out at around level 7. They can have any non-magic armour, and a lower level kind of weapon. The final enemies are around level 40, but as conjurers, they don’t all have armour.
You’ll need Shivering Isles installed and the latest official patch. No script extenders or any other 3rd party add ons are required.
Depending on how you play, you could probably get 2 or so hours out of this. Especially if you like to explore everything. But if you run for it, you can get to the end pretty quickly, I guess.
There’s a minor glitch with this plug-in. At the start of Relegated Catacombs, (— the area with the necromancers —) there’s a floating pillar, which took me a while to notice. Just open your console dealie, click on the pillar and type in: SetPos Z -400, then press Enter of course, and that will fix it.
• Also, if you have the Construction Set, you may want to set all my boss characters to have low level processing as well. (In other words, turn that tick box off.)
Download size: 502 KB
See some sample images.
• Ayleid Mansion. If you fancy something a bit more grand than my previous house plug-ins, this might be a good choice. It isn’t quite the size of a palace, but it is pretty roomy all the same. Located by a waterfall on the Orange Road, you get a great view to the Imperial City, and Bruma is just over the hill to the north-east. In fact you can use the place as a way of getting up there. The interior distance is pretty close to being the same height as the exterior region, since I measured it out. The mansion has 2 shops, 2 stairways, 4 nice spots to sit outside, a staff room, indoor pool, transportation room, throne room, garden nursery, dining room, a large gallery, master bedroom with 2 guest beds, a cleaning woman and an entertainer. Make use of a returning amulet to instantly get you back home (apart from the Shivering Isles), and a remote access Ayleid cask. Shivering Isles is required, because I used quite a few things from that too.
You’ll need at least 39 000 gold pieces to buy the key, but compared with the house prices in the game, I think it’s pretty reasonable for what you get.
UPDATE: I’ve updated the fancy window mesh for this plug-in since it was 1st uploaded.
Download size: 509.4 KB
See some sample pictures.
• Mesh Fix Pack.
Corrects a few mesh problems and one associated texture as well. Fixes include: Corrected strawberries on the plant, so they’re no longer inside-out, mask smoothing on an Ayleid gate, and meshes in Mankar Camoran’s Paradise, the fort basin transparency issue on the spouts, plus a collision fix for a garden bed. You get to choose what you want to use, and reverting back to the original files should simply be a matter of deleting mine, assuming you have Oblivion set to use its own archives normally. (The BSA ones.)
Download size: 1.4 MB
• Castle Riches. It’s time to up the loot levels in the castles of Cyrodiil. Now you’ll have a better reason to go back, rather than opening very hard locked chests, and only getting the likes of 1 lockpick and a scythe. You’ll now find over a dozen new gems in 2 levels of quality, including amethysts, black pearls, rose quartz, Jeremejevite, spinel and heliodor. Find silver, gold and rhodium bars, 3 unique staffs, an enchanted set of armour, 3 types of Dwemer artifacts, 4 extra types of booze, 4 vases & a pitcher, jewelled eggs and of course a rich fence to sell the stuff off to!
As this plug-in adds goodies to the Imperial Palace, I highly recommend my A Little More Access plug-in, above, which will let you back in there after the Thieves’ Guild main quest.
UPDATE: There have been several meshes in this plug-in which have been updated since the original. This is to improve the look of the texturing. (Something to do with the normals in the NIF files.)
Download size: 2.69 MB
See some sample pictures.
• Inner Depths: Oblivion 3
Head east from Anvil to that little island on the map, and make your way into the sprawling ruin of Anda Veamath. Tackle bandits, marauders, pirates and smugglers, as they fight amongst themselves. There are 80 new, randomly picked NPCs, and they’re arranged into 4 level ranges, so you get the easy ones 1st. Pick up great loot, including 10 new items, then discover the secrets too. Rewards this time are a soul gem upgrading and making chest, plus a long term magicka boost.
Download size: 2.51 MB
See sample images here.
• Wandering N.P.C.s
You’re not the only hero / adventurer going around Cyrodiil with this. Now there are 23 more folks exploring places. There’s a main selection of 20 individual respawning NPCs who go to various places around Cyrodiil, and they have a schedule based on weekends, Morndas, Middas & Fredas, and another routine on Tirdas & Turdas. Over to the west, are a group of 3 explorers who all go ’round together to a different location on each day of the week, plus there are 4 wandering peddlers on the main roads, and 4 shop keepers in the faction’s various rooms. Once you meet with all the main 20 adventurers, you’ll be added to the Heroes Club faction too, and this gives you the benefits of legally acquiring their collected goods. If you kill any of the shop keepers though, you will be expelled forever.
This was initially aimed at being a kind of visual addition to the game, so you could see other people doing stuff, but I found it neat to go with some of the adventurers into places and fight along side of them. So with that said, there’s also an accompanying PDF file, which you can print out that has the NPCs’ schedules.
I made this so it didn’t use any references from Shivering Isles, but I’m not sure if that means it will still work without it, since I made it with it installed. You may have to test it, if you don’t have it, and let me know.
Download size: 273 KB
See a bunch of sample images.
• JMK’s Gold Deposit Vault
Now you can put some of your gold down for whatever reason you may have. The vault is located in the Palace District of the Imperial City, so it’s nice and central. You simply need to find a nearby key to get in, plus you can lock up again when you leave. A script will even prevent you from locking the place if you don’t have the key. So you can’t leave it in the vault.
I did this plug-in because I noticed minor fluctuations in how much gold I was getting when selling, and even picking it up from containers, once I’d passed about 16 000 000 pieces. Some of you may not even have that much, so this issue may not affect many people. I don’t know what the cause is either, nor could I find anything mentioned about it elsewhere on the Web. Anyway, dropping back to a lower amount of gold in my inventory seemed to fix the problem, so I made this plug-in to store my excess gold. It seems to work well, but try it out 1st before you erase any old save games and screw things up. That said, I have tested it, and I didn’t see any issues.
I won’t bother with any screen shots. It’s just a well type entry to a small, underground crypt, that’s reasonably well lit, with 5 chests. (Scripts will handle the gold transactions.)
Download size: 11.5 KB
• Madhouse Outposts
Like my Cyrodiilic Outposts plug-in, this one adds 8 new buildings to the Shivering
Isles. There are 4 Mania locations and 4 Dementia joints. Now you can take a breather while you’re out in the wilderness, instead of wishing you were back in New Sheoth, or the inn at The Fringe. You also have the chance to trade your items, and purchase a few new things. Bigger locations like Ursayne and Lustful House give you your own private space to sleep, while the others require you to share with the local guards. Each location has at least 4 guards that work in shifts, so there are about 2 at a time on patrol outside, while the others eat and snooze. Xetherarn has 6 guards. All the Golden Saints and Dark Seducers have unique faces, but I tried to make them all look pretty good. Plus there are a small amount of dudes too; not just females. You’ll also find teleportation buttons to send you to the other locations from the 1 you’re at. These are not doors though, so don’t worry about this screwing with your fast travel timing. There are plenty of unique items to collect as well, so keep your eyes peeled. A map is included in the RAR file, of where the new places are located.
Download size: 1.5 MB
See 9 sample images.
• Mystical Garden / Tree Grove
Head to the eastern side of the Great Forest, west of the Imperial City, and north of Ceyatatar, to find the Mystical Garden. It’s halfway between Haynote Cave & Breakneck Cave. At night time, the place is a-glow with crystals, light beams and little twinkles. Sleep outside on those warm, summer nights, up on the elevated walkways between the trees. You’ll find outdoor storage, shelves and even a small dining area for 2. When the weather turns bad, head for the tree house and get nice and cosy.
Keep your eyes peeled for the respawning coffer of goodies and the magical “panel” which will let you access a reliquary remotely, from anywhere at all.
(This started off being called Tree Grove, because it was a bit experimental. Its location in the game is Mystical Garden. I wanted to make some elevated pathways between the trees, with outdoor tables, somewhere to sleep and so forth, and it progressed from there.)
Download size: 109.7 KB
See 4 sample pictures.
• Gem Mines
Make your way to 10 mines containing rubies, emeralds, sapphires, topazes and diamonds. There are 2 of each, and one has a bonus gem type as well, of the same “family” of one of the other ones. 2 of the locations have miners and guards, and the rest are like the other mines you’d find in the game, with various foes. There are also a couple of bonus zones to check out (within the mines) for extra goodies. An image showing the mines’ locations is included.
Now you can top up your supply of gems for other plug-ins that may require them, or just to make a bit more money.
Download size: 865.4 KB
See a bunch of sample images.
• Oblivion Ingredients HTML File
Get this guide to all the ingredients in Oblivion + Shivering Isles & my own plug-ins that introduced new ones. Now you can rapidly search for effects and find which ingredients have them.
Download size: 649 KB
• Umbacano Manor cabinet fix
This alternative NIF file will correct the door collision on the cabinet that Umbacano has for his Ayleid statues, as I use it in my house plug-ins as well. Without the fix, you can’t put items on the shelves, because the game keeps the collision of the doors in the closed position. I initially thought I would have to recreate the collision from scratch for the cabinet, but it’s actually correct. It was just a few settings that needed changing. This should be considered experimental, and if I find other issues with it, I will try to update it, but for now it seems to be correct.
Download size: 72.2 KB
Interesting Notes:
• A lot of the plants in Cyrodiil are actually real plants as well. There are some obvious sounding real ones like peonies, flax, bergamot, ginseng, morning glory and mandrake, but some of the not so well known ones like alkanet, monkshood, vipers bugloss, wormwood, lady’s mantle and pitcher plants are all real plants too.
• Spriggans are also the name for Knockers in Cornish lore, which are said to be impish like beings.
• In the Thieves Guild main quest, you’ll find out about the Boots Of Springheel Jak. In 1904 there was an apparent sighting of a Sping Heeled Jack in England, supposedly some attacker who could leap quite high.
• In Culver City in America (in California), there’s a place called Farragut Drive, and in the game there’s also Fort Farragut, so perhaps they took some inspiration from reality. Maybe not from there specifically, but whatever the street was named after.
• If you kill somebody while they’re paralysed, their corpse may go rigid, like they have instant rigour-mortis. I had somebody who died with their hands still in the position of gripping their sword, and even moving them had no effect of making their arms go limp.