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[est]

AMD 2500, 1 gig, Radeon 9700 pro, etc

you just described my rig, except that I run a 9800.  You should have no trouble playing this game at around 800x600 - 1024x768 so long as you turn the detail down a little & use no AA.


also, so I guess I just restarted as a Bretonian all-rounder character because I got sick of both my magic-heavy and my non-magical characters.  I always do this, btw.  I try things out, then settle on a character that does a little bit of everything

So now my new dude is a Thievery-specialised Breton, born under the sign of the Thief.  Favoured attributes are Strength and Endurance (for the +5 bonuses) and Primary skills are Alteration, Athletics, Blade, Light Armour, Marksman, Restoration & Sneak.  With this setup my attributes are something like 45 STR, 50 INT & WIL, 40 AGI & SPD, 35 END, 60 LUCK, 40 PER.  So I'm every bit the all-rounder that I want my character to be.  Was shooting for a jack-of-all-trades kind of knockabout rogue adventurer.

Modus operandi is sneak-attacking with my bow, or with my blade if I can get close enough.  I wear light armour & tend to try to dance about and avoid being hit (rather than blocking), using spells mainly for their utility, not as offense.  I still learn and carry Destruction spells though, in case I run into any beasties that can't be hit by my normal weaponry.

Am running with a bunch of the mods I mentioned above as well as a mod that removes all the starting quick-travel points.  Having a lot of fun so far, but I think that I am still going to try to merge two of the mods I want to use at the moment.  I'm using the steel weapons mod, but the "Faster Arrows" mod makes all bows fire arrows universally quicker.  I'm looking at trying to scale each bow so that rusty iron bows are lacklustre & the higher quality bows shoot their arrows faster.

[JJMitchell]

I finally got Oblivion to run on my laptop by using the 3danalyse tool the boards are always talking about.  It actually runs just as well if not a bit better than my PC does.  The only issue I have is that water is purple but I can ignore that if I can play Oblivion wherever I go.  Sure it may not look as pretty but I don't have a rig that will run it pretty yet.

I made a custom character, going for ranged attacks and summoning.  So my primary skills are basically all mage except illusion and throw in marksman.  

Didn't make it must past the sewers since it was late, will update with anything interesting I find.

[nihilist]

My last save game? I crash whenever I try to walk out the door of the house I'm in.

The one prior?  Is like a whole goddamn quest behind.

Fuck.

[Trollstormur]

Oblivion is too easy to powergame in. Here's a quick guide to complete invulnerability.

requirements:
any rank in the Mage's Guild
6,500 gold.
5 Grand Soul gems with Grand Souls in them. Alternatively, 5 Black Soul Gems with human's souls. humans are easier to soultrap than actual grand soul monsters. (either requires a soultrap spell)
5 items of any quality that you are able to wear all at once. I chose a cowl, shoes, two rings and a necklace.
1 chameleon spell of any level.


simply take all the items to the chironasum in the Arcane University in Imperial City, and enchant them one at a time with 20% chameleon. When all worn at once, it makes you invisible regardless of any action you make. you can kill guard after guard and they might stop you, but they can't do a thing if you resist arrest.

makes the game too easy, but it's a fun way to cheat without... you know, entering codes.

[est]

See, that's just silly/annoying.  I understand what you're talking about, too, because the 20% chameleon enchants aren't all that expensive to make either.

I had to laugh the other day when I saw a forum thread something along the lines of "this game isn't challenging now" and a dude outlining the same thing you just said.  My immediate reaction was "well uh, how about you take the fucking things off?"

Morrowind & Oblivion are fantasy-setting sandbox games for the most part.  Enchanting a bunch of stuff so that you're invincible is pretty much the equivalent of using pathing problems to avoid police, or using the horse-racing money exploit in GTA. You can do it, but the game gets pretty boring afterwards.  

Every game that has such a wide range of possibility will have little things you can do seemingly legally that break the game.  I mean, hell, you can leave your character casting the same spell over and over again or swimming into a wall for ages in order to skill up.  This is completely legal, but is it fun?

[Smiley]

Having not played any of the elder scrolls titles before, I made some stupid mistakes when building my character (choosing all physical attributes, with nothing relevant to magic), and not focusing on leveling up my alchemy or any magic till I was already twenty hours into the game. Now that I know a little bit about it, I might have to replay the game if I ever finish the current one.

That being said, I'm 41 hours into the game and I've gotten to the point where I absolutely cannot load my saved game on the 360 anymore, I'm going to try clearing out the HD cache this afternoon and hope to god it isn't one of these overheating/freezing issues I keep hearing about.

[Okamikyodai]

PC Oblivion plays like a dream.

Honestly one of the best RPG's I've played in many years.

I need to get a better graphics card but even with the graphics level at low it still is a great game and wonderful visuals.

[Sarcasmorator]

I keep getting distracted. I got sidetracked for five hours before remembering to go see the priest about Martin, then for another eight hours before I got around to Kvatch. Joined some guilds, did a few murders and cleared out a few caves, among other things; this game is the utimate ime sink. I like it way more than Morrowind.

[est]

I'm just totally ignoring the main quest for now.  My current character is a bit rogueish, and as such he doesn't really give a fuck.  He knows that he can't fence the amulet or he'll get caught, but that it's too important an item to just throw away.  Other than that he hasn't seen any reason to worry himself with carrying out a request for some old dead dude who put him into prison.  I mean, who knows how long we were down there, anyway?

So yeah, basically I'm exploring the countryside and trying to use the quick-travel as little as possible.  The Emperor asked me to go west, so I figure that's a bad idea.  From the opening sewer I've gradually worked my way eastward to the point where I'm almost at a city, raiding numerous little holds along the way (including one vampire den, which was scary as hell).

Once I get to that city maybe I'll pretend like it's the first time I've hit civilisation & suddenly everyone's telling me news of calamity surrounding the Emperor's death.  Maybe after I hit town I'll sell whatever loot I've grabbed, talk to a few people & see if they tell my character any dire news that he would be concerned about.  If he's suitably scared by the news he's been given perhaps he'll look into the quest that the old dude gave him, else it's in his best interests to keep on truckin' (where "truckin" roughly equates to "raiding random dungeons and selling the ill-begotten booty").

But I agree about the timesink thing.  This game is basically a 1-person MMORPG where the community can develop new content and you get to choose which ones to apply.

[Trollstormur]

the reward for the main quest-line rules. I'm not gonna give it away or anything, but doing that shit first and foremost has it's advantages.

[usmcnavgeek]

So there's a hack/exploit you can use to dupe items on both the PC or Xbox versions.

1. Equip Bow
2. Nock an arrow, hold it
3. Enter inventory
4. Click twice on your quiver of arrows
5. Drop item you wish to dupe
6. Profit

You will spam out a number of copies of the item in equality to the number of arrows in your quiver.  Be careful, as this will choke your system if you are too greedy.

Some stuff can't be duped, like nirnroot, but daedric artifacts?  Arrows?  Potions?  Go wild.

[Kukushka]

Oh man, I want this game. Nay, I need this game. We went to the store to get it, but they were all out. So we got Black and White 2 instead. Couldn't go home empty handed!

[nihilist]

I'm not sure that B&W2 classifies as not coming out empty-handed...

[Kimmi]

My brother plays it day in and day out. He's got fifty pages, FIFTY pages of cheat codes that he uses with his stronger character to go around, kill everyone, and steal everything. It's pretty awesome. There was this one chick we thought was a guy though. Then he took her robe.

I have yet to play it though. I think I might install it on my computer just to go and be at the Coliseum and become Grand Champion. x3

Advice: Don't get turned into a vampire. If you can help it, help it. Being a vampire sucks and it takes up a lot of time. Plus, it makes your chick ( if you have one ) look like a guy, it's not even funny.

[usmcnavgeek]

Look, it is this painstakingly transferred FAQ from another forums I hang out in.  May it serve you all well.

Where is Oblivion.ini?[/u]
My Documents\My Games\Oblivion

Contents[/u]

1. Crash/lag problems - immediate problems that need to be fixed
-many copies of "ffdshow" slowing down game
-"mpeg2dmx.ax" error message
-keyboard/mouse lag
-sound stuttering
-Oblivion gate lag
-starting dungeon/shiny stuff lag

2. Quality tweaks - make the game look better or run faster or both
-fucked up shadows on people and horses
-distant land looks like crap OR I want to make water look nice
-ugly textures
-FPS-boosting grass tweak
-read this section if you have an Nvidia card
-other Oblivion.ini tricks

3. Other - miscellaneous stuff
-no startup movies
-what video card to buy
-how to drop things
-HDR/AA
-about defragmentation
-what's my FPS
-how do I take screenshots
-where are the new Nvidia drivers
-some links


1. CRASH/LAG PROBLEMS[/u]


This "ffdshow" thing keeps screwing up the game
One of the most common problems is that a program called "ffdshow" will show up and make many copies of itself while playing Oblivion, slowing down performance by a lot. This is caused by DefilerPak. To fix this, either uninstall DefilerPak, or go into Start -> DefilerPak -> Audio Options and disable Oblivion.exe. You need the latest edition of DefilerPak to do this, you can get that http://hellninjacommando.com/defilerpak/'>here. Click http://img234.imageshack.us/img234/7528/ffdshow7dm.jpg'>here to see a picture of how to disable Oblivion.exe in DefilerPak.

I crash sometimes and it gives me an error message about "mpeg2dmx.ax"
It's just an old system file. Go find the file (don't know where it is, use Search or something) and rename it to mpeg2dmx.ax.old
This should fix the crashing.

I have keyboard and/or mouse lag
If you're having keyboard lag, go into My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini and change bUseJoystick=1 to bUse Joystick=0 (it automatically goes to 1 if it detects a joystick)
If you're having mouse lag, turn off self shadows.


The sound is stuttering
Doing this will manually disable hardware sound acceleration. Go into Oblivion.ini (My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) and change bDSoundHWAcceleration=1 to bDSoundHWAcceleration=0
Some people have reported this fixes the sound stuttering.
Another solution someone has found was renaming the Battle music folder in Oblivion's data files, effectively disabling it. Of course then there's no battle music but then the game doesn't get choppy. Bethesda or Creative or someone should have a fix on this pretty soon.

I get horrible horrible lag if I even so much as look at a gate of Oblivion
This is a temporary fix. Try turning off vsync. This is kind of annoying in some regards but seems to fix it.

The starting dungeon is real laggy
Go into Oblivion.ini (My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) and change bDoSpecularPass=1 to bDoSpecularPass=0. This will turn off the shiny walls in the starting dungeon. This might improve the performance by a lot.
WARNING: This WILL crash the game at some points, such as Jauffrey's House. To stop the crashing, change it back to 1.


2. QUALITY TWEAKS[/u]

Is there a big list of a lot of Oblivion.ini tweaks somewhere?
http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html'>Yeah check it out.

Shadows look really weird
If you are seeing stripy shadows across the models that look kind of like http://random-m.com/images/1920299970_stripe.jpg'>this or http://random-m.com/images/1041064221_uglyshadows.jpg'>this, then turn off self shadows to fix it.

I can see far away, but the textures are really blurry and everything looks like crap
This isn't a bug or anything, Bethesda just thought it looked fine for some reason and shipped it like that. There's no official way to fix this yet but some smart people have figured out a temporary fix. Follow these instructions and make http://img479.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0787d372e26en.jpg'>this look like http://img468.imageshack.us/my.php?image=f542870dc74gr.jpg'>this (sword not included). http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=282542'>Here is a possibly better set of instructions.

Go into Oblivion.ini (it's in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) and change this line (btw, this increases load times.):

Set uGridsToLoad = 10 (5 by default)

This does mess up water reflections a bit. To somewhat fix the water, change this:

uNumDepthGrids = 1 (it's 3 by default)

By default, the water only reflects the land. Inside the ini you can change it so it reflects all trees, static objects, actors, and other miscellaneous objects (all default to 0):

bUseWaterReflectionsMisc=1
bUseWaterReflectionsStatics=1
bUseWaterReflectionsTrees=1
bUseWaterReflectionsActors=1

You can also mess with the tree settings, changing the maximum distance real animated trees can be placed (the variable is fLODMultTrees). Doing all this will lower your FPS by a considerable amount, it's up to you if you want to do it.

Some textures are strange, like flat white heads or maybe your sword is bright green
You probably do not have enough video memory to handle all the textures. So sorry. To fix this, try lowering the Texture Size in the game options.

I'm lagging outside, and don't care much about what grass looks like
In Oblivion.ini, these are for the grass draw distance (I don't know what this stuff means because I don't have the game but read that guide)

[Grass]
iMinGrassSize=200
fGrassEndDistance=10000.0000
fGrassStartFadeDistance=5000.0000

READ THIS >>>> http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=283055'>More detailed grass info here - grass is a big FPS hog so read up <<<< READ THIS

Read this if you have a Nvidia card
You probably want to install http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815'>Coolbits which is an enhancer for Nvidia's Forceware drivers. Some people have reported that using this nearly doubled their framerates with absolutely no hit in performance. After it's installed, to unleash the awesome power of Coolbits, go into Display Properties (right-click your desktop and click Properties) -> Settings tab -> Advanced -> GeForce * tab -> Performance and Quality Settings -> Additional Direct3D Settings. Set "Max frames to render ahead" to 0 (default is 3).

    A PM I got posted:[/i]

    Hey, about Coolbits. You should add in that post that you need to turn off Vsync to get that tweak to work. Otherwise it does nothing.

    And the main effect that tweak has for me is getting rid of that awful mouse lag, which you may also want to mention.

Other ini things
I don't know if any of these work or what they do, use them at your own risk.

1. Go into Oblivion.ini and look for [OPENMP] and change the values to what you see here:

[OPENMP]
iThreads=20
iOpenMPLevel=20
iPreloadSizeLimit=1000000000

This has been reported to give a small FPS boost. It might be a bad idea to do this if you don't have a lot of memory.

2. This probably only works for cards with Shader 3.0. Anyway, go into Oblivion.ini and find bAllow30Shaders=0 and change it to bAllow30Shaders=1. This means it wasn't using 3.0 before but now is and has been reported to give a major FPS increase.


3. OTHER[/u]


How do I disable those dumb startup movies?
Go into Oblivion.ini (if you forgot, it's in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) and change these lines:

SIntroSequence=bethesda softworks HD720p.bik,2k games.bik,game studios.bik,Oblivion Legal.bik
to
SIntroSequence=

SMainMenuMovieIntro=Oblivion iv logo.bik
to
SMainMenuMovieIntro=

What video card should I buy? HELP
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=270923'>Click here for a very useful ranking of many many video cards, a much more detailed set of specs, and other miscellaneous important bits of info if you're playing the PC version.

How do I drop things?!
Shift-click in inventory. Shift-clicking does a lot of things you might not expect. Try it in other situations!

Can I use HDR and AA at the same time?
No. It is unknown whether this will ever change. Yes I know rthdribl lets you, but Oblivion won't, we don't know why, stop asking.
update: Ati has released an update that lets you.

Does defragmenting help?
Yes, run a defragment before you play, preferably right after installation. I like Raxco PerfectDisk, it has a 30 day free trial, but normal ol Windows defragment should be okay. Some people have reported that defragmenting got rid of a ton of stuttering, some people say it does nothing. It can't hurt.

How do I find out what my FPS (frames per second) is?
Open the console (press ~) and type tdt and press Enter. Hooray FPS. Also you can use Fraps which is free and does a lot of other things.

How do I take screenshots?
Go into Oblivion.ini (if you forgot, it's in My Documents\My Games\Oblivion) and change bAllowScreenShots=0 to bAllowScreenShots=1 and use the PrintScreen key ingame to take screenshots. Images are stored in the Oblivion directory as BMP files. This may or may not work with bloom + anti-aliasing.

I'm retarded and I can't find the new Nvidia drivers
Click http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downloads_winxp_2k_32bit_84.25.html'>here. Don't worry if Windows says they're not supported, that's just Microsoft being dumb.


Your problem isn't here? Check out these other things by smart people
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=279865'>Here is a link to a useful tech thread on the official forums.
http://ideveloper.pandora-studios.com/files/OblivionSettingsGuide.txt'>Here is a link to a quick and dirty performance tweaking guide.

[Zaarin]

Ah, I need to get this game. I've frittered away so much time on Morrowind, I might as well fritter away a bit more on Oblivion.

I think I'll be...a Bosmer. Good, cute little Wood Elf types who love trees yet are still good in a fight.

I made and played a Khajiit in Morrowind, a decision I regret. No shoes, no full face helmets, and all the other Khajiit are slaves. Bah.

[usmcnavgeek]

I'm a Khajiit in Oblivion and they are rockin light armor-types.  No such shoe or helmet limitations in Oblivion.

[McTaggart]

I never wear a helmet anyway, so I didn't notice that part. I like the Khajiit, nothing looks more civilised that a cat dude wearing an overcoat.

[öde]

I hate you, Radeon 9250. For now Oblivion is going to be sitting on my hard drive untl I get a new video card. Maybe by the end of the month.

1. Equip Bow
2. Nock an arrow, hold it
3. Enter inventory
4. Click twice on your quiver of arrows
5. Drop item you wish to dupe
6. ???
7. Profit!

Fixed.

[dps]

Daggerfall doesn't work on XP

Didn't know that.  On the other hand it barely worked at all.

Don't get me wrong--I loved that game.  But, man, was it buggy.

[neomang5]

Right now I am a level 6 custom class (all magic, but with a blade proficiency as well) and am COMPLETELY ignoring the storyline. Ive joined the Thieves guild, Mages guild, and Dark Brotherhood.

Also, Being suspended from the Mages Guild SUCKS. I cannot find the herbs they want, and if i teleport anywhere that stupid fuck Erthor will follow me (I got suspended for stealing from him, which was actually an accident. It was a chest in a fucking dungeon. Logic says "TREASURE")

I also killed a few guards in my shack in the waterfront district. It is awesome because I got a silver longsword to match my silver bow, and full legion armor. What is not awesome is that i now have 2 dead, naked bodies in my house, and cannot get rid of them.

Wolves killed my damned horse while i was travelling to Bruma.

[est]

I am still trying to play my current character as a self-interested yet mostly law-abiding dude.  Haven't started the main quest yet.  I'm level 16, Master of the Fighter's guild & working through the Mage's guild.

Next character will probably be some kind of Nightblade/Mage Assassin.  Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, steal everything that isn't nailed down, kill anyone in my way, etc.

Either that or I'll finish up the Mage's guild line then do the main storyline, then fuck around some with the Thieves guild & Dark Brotherhood quests.

I like the guild-running options once you become Master of the Fighter's guild, but I don't think there are enough options.  I am thinking of some kind of mod that lets you send your people out to dungeons and so forth on behalf of the guild or at least lets you second Fighter's Guild forces for whatever task you're currently doing.  The secondment option would be fairly easy, I think.  There are already a few "companion" mods knocking about.

[cheesepie]

Either that or I'll finish up the Mage's guild line then do the main storyline, then fuck around some with the Thieves guild & Dark Brotherhood quests.

I'd recommend doing this, cause that's what I did but in reverse.. Finished DBH, Finished Mage's Guild, currently working through fighter's and thieves and Main quest.. it's too awesome.. I don't like having multiple characters. I tried it but you can do everything with one well rounded battlemage, which is what I am, so that's what I like to do.

[McTaggart]

I tried it but you can do everything with one well rounded battlemage,

This is the main way I think Oblivion is broken. Thief can't kill, warrior can't thieve, mage can kick ass at both

[neomang5]

That is pretty much right. I took almost no damage during the siege on Kvatch as my mage, and have almost no trouble picking locks, sneaking, and stealing.
the only real weakness is the inability to hold most heavy armor without Ease Burden. At least 'til you get to a high level.

[est]

For a lark I turned off my levelled creatures & item rarity balancing mod last night.  It was hilarious.  The first random dungeon I went to had punk-easy bandits waiting out the front holding elven weapons & wearing mithril armour.  I killed them in about 2 secs flat, went inside & found a bunch more of the same kind of deal, including undead holding silver weapons.  How the fuck does that work?

Once inside the bandits started dropping glass daggers and bows, so I was like "ok, this is nice & all, but I am only level 15.  I am turning that mod back on before really stupid drops".  In that little stint I found a glass war axe, some glass daggers, some glass bows & an enchanted glass bow that does 15 frost damage on hit.  That last bow is pretty good, because I'd been looking for a frost damage weapon for use inside the Kvatch Oblivion gate.

Also: I just did Azura's quest & got an Azura's star.  Goodbye, recharge worries!  I can now break out the Staff of Shock I received from the mage's guild & use that to save magicka, then capture a soul into Azura's star & recharge it without wasting precious soul gems.

After I'm done with this character I think I'm going to expand my "Ungifted" mod to include all non-magical NPCs also.  Just silence them all so that you don't have warriors healing themselves mid-battle while you're stuck quaffing potions.  Maybe it'll also make Alchemy something more than useless for me if I can't cast spells.

One problem though is that the magic system is so pervasive that it affects other things, like enchanting.  As far as I can see there is no real way to get around having to know spells in order to create an enchanted weapon, as there is no way to get someone to make one for you.  Hang about, now there's an idea for a mod.  I wonder how hard that would be?  I mean, you've already got a base script to work with in the "make yourself a magic staff" quest.  Ok, I'll have to look into this.

[McTaggart]

If I wasn't playing on easy (because I suck at games and I prefer the world to the gameplay) I might complain about that too. One of the first things that I did was dive random dungeons around the place and I stumbled upon Umbra. Dammit, I wasn't even level 10 and I've got myself full ebony armour (although I use light) and one hell of a kick ass sword (although it's slowly sending me broke with repair costs). I've stumbled across an 18% constant effect shield shield.

[est]

I found an 18% shield ring & another 12% one.  Then I made a bunch of clothing with 10% shielding on them, giving them names like Swordingproof Vest & Brown Trousers.  I got it up to about 80% shield.

I am pretty sure that given enough time you could probably find decent % immune to physical damage gear.  Let's say an average of 10% for each piece.  That gives you a possible 80% resistance to physical damage.  Ignoring the whole "100% chameleon" thing, that's pretty neat.

[Trollstormur]

If I wasn't playing on easy (because I suck at games and I prefer the world to the gameplay) I might complain about that too. One of the first things that I did was dive random dungeons around the place and I stumbled upon Umbra. Dammit, I wasn't even level 10 and I've got myself full ebony armour (although I use light) and one hell of a kick ass sword (although it's slowly sending me broke with repair costs).

the umbra sword is tits. I haven't found a better base-dmg sword, and it weighs nothing. the armorer skill is probably one of my favorites. If you master it, you can repair your shit up to 125% quality, increasing their effectiveness greatly. +25% armor and damage is huge for a combat based character.

[McTaggart]

Well, they had a good run but Bethesda have gone and used the sucky (maybe a SPOILERLOLZ, but you probably saw this coming) 'escort critical character and make sure he doesn't die whilst fighting really really big thing' mechanic. Worst move ever, guys, worst move ever.

This is the part of any game that I just can't do, and don't even want to try. I get the impression I'm close to the end of the main quest line (short story?) and it only really got interesting right up near where I'm up to. I'm kinda lamenting the lack of interesting books lying around although not having a character in the mages guild means I dont get to any of the libraries.

Also: Combat when you are in a group with allies is terrible, I usually slay more allies than enemies or just don't attack anything until all my allies are dead. This is like that bit in halflife 2 where you have a couple of turrets and you have to fend off waves of combine; the one bad bit in the game that ruins the entire thing.

[Alegis]

Well if I'm with allies they either dissapear (where the hell did my DB murderer ran off to ?) or kill each other. Or guards start attacking them. Weird shit.

Still, awesome game. Around over 65 hours orso now, about to end main Q. Still got thieves to do. I loved the endings of DB and mages. At first when doing all those recommendation quests you get a bad image of Hannibal Traven, which resulted in a strange love for the char in the end.

Great voice acting, lovely setting. My char is a bit too badass with the full enchanted glass + DB hood look thing. Cast weakness to fire 100%, and either firedmgstaff (80firedmg on strike) or 25fireonstrikedeadrabow. Some things make the game a bit too easy in dungeons like invisibility.

[Oerdin]

I've started to get bored with this game.  It's extremely easy to power game and if you don't power game it gets almost to difficult very quickly.  I've found that you never want to make your major skills something you use very often because you  want to control exactly when and where you level so that you can always get the five training points along with the max plus five to attributes.  If you don't do this and chose something like sword or athletics as your major skills then you'll shoot up the level charts and hardly ever get more then _1 to any attributes.  I wish there was more of a middle ground.

[Sylph]

I've started to get bored with this game.

Me too, which wasn't such a bad thing with playing Morrowind because throwing in a new and exciting mod or two used to be enough to fuel my passion for that game again. But that was only after, quite literally, a year of playing Morrowind. Now it's been less than a month and already I've found myself giving up a level 30 character and starting again. Mainly because of bugs and getting bad endings to quests I really did not like and was sure weren't my fault through any moral misjudgement.

I really don't want to go on about bugs but the major one that really got to me that I found was a Arena Champion bug, which only seems to affect a select few of people. It means that when you defeat the Grey Prince, take his Raiment and talk to the Battle Matron she acts like you've let to yet to battle him. Which is fun.

Luckily I found a mod for that and currently I'm trying to balance out the leveling scale with a mod that gives you +5 multiplyers on anything you'd normally get anything in when you level up. Which at first kinda sounds like cheating but when you consider the ammount of crap you have to go through trying to level up the right skills every level it works out okay. Saying that I've had mixed results with it's affectiveness.

Oh, as for my actual character I'm going with the stealthy, assassin type. The kind that wears an apron for a chest peice apparently, becausse he's cool like that. Like many I'm also putting off the storyline until the end and I know I'm going to regret it when it comes to the Battle for Kvatch. So far I've done the Theives Guild and am working on the Fighters guild. The Mages guild is something that I'm not too keen on but as a note to everyone playing this game, do the theives guild before you do the mages guild. There comes to a point where you need to steal from the mages guild and yes, it's a bitch to get back in once you've done it.

Dark Brotherhood I'm kind of putting off til last, I'm still trying to decide if I can get over the morals of murdering from my character's point of view. A copy of 'Honor Among Theives' is probably the kind of bed side reading my assassin has.

What else? Uh, not using fast travel for the win? I think people would enjoy this game a lot more if they didn't use fast travel as much. I actually get a lot of my pleasure out of this game from just travelling the beaten paths and picking lavender sprigs on the way.

Oh! Yeah, if you're using a PC and haven't already got http://btmod.beider.org/">this mod then you must, in short. Basically it fixes your inventory interface, even if you didn't think you had any problems with your interface you'll soon kick yourself for ever using the default settings.

[Alegis]

There comes to a point where you need to steal from the mages guild and yes, it's a bitch to get back in once you've done it.

I've done that quest and all of mages. You'll get expelled from the guild if you're caught stealing. Didn't get any problems at the university for doing that quest.

Dark brotherhood has the best drama and stuff, best quests. Loved the plot.

Sad though that I can't complete thieves guild quests now (I think I was about 1 from the last one) as no one approaches me, even when standing 2 weeks in Imperial City (had to wait for Champion Armor). Fenced over 1.1k.

[happybirthdaygelatin]

Oh man, I ended up picking Oblivion up for 360.  I have a level 20-something Redguard Spellsword who hasn't even made it past Kvatch as far as the story goes.

[Bunnyman]

Meh, you guys did quests in Morrowind?  I spent the entire time Freerunning over everything.

[ramenXnoodles]

And now this got rerated to M.
Nice job first time around, ESRB.

[Alegis]

Yep, it's retarded. They couldn't make up their mind after a 60 pages report. They didn't hide anything from the ESRB.

[Storm Rider]

This doesn't bother me so much anymore now that I'm actually old enough to buy M games on my own. Suckers!

[McTaggart]

Wait, people actually don't sell games to kids? I've never seen that happen.

[ramenXnoodles]

It's happened to me a couple times.