A Champion’s Experiences… [part three]
[This is part three in a series of postings about my experiences of playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, taken from Menori.com]
Four Dremora stood before Hadaster each of them brandishing huge claymores. The blades briefly reflected the light from the Sigil Stone that burned above. A lesser mortal would have run in terror from the sight of the snarling humanoids, but Hadaster could only think about the magical properties of the weapons they carried. "I'm going to have to shed some loads if I'm going to carry that loot out of here" he pondered.
A Champion’s Experiences… [part two]
[This is part two in a series of postings about my experiences of playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, taken from Menori.com]
"There's something out there," The guard turned to Hadaster who had drawn his sword Goldbrand. A look of anguisg came over the guard's face. "I'll go first", the Monk said and stepped off the platform on which stood the Oblivion gate. Hadaster knew he had to keep the guards from the terrors that lurked in this otherwordly realm. He'd faced them several times before and knew that the Spider Daedra were especially deadly, their smaller minions would paralyse from out of sight and a torrent of lightning would surge down from the Daedra itself.
"Charge!" screamed the guard. Hadaster turned in a flurry to see the guard rushing off in the direction of a huge humanoid shape. "No!" Hadaster bellowed, "Get back."
Too many times do you have to do quests where keeping someone alive is the key focus. Anyone who displays a crown on them is a vital character to the plot and therefore cannot die, the simply fall unconscious. Be wary though as this can change through the game. A character deemed critical at one point can be slain just as any other at some points of the game. So be aware of characters that you need to keep alive (especially in Oblivion) and their tendency to leap towards enemies fool hardedly. I found that standing in between an enemy and the character helps as the enemy tends to focus on you if you're doing more damage. It's a bit like drawing aggro in Everquest 2.
Generally my experiences of combat tend to be how the game was intended to be played I think. Having a shield and actually using block is essential for most battles. I found that on the Xbox 360 you could keep the left trigger held down for blocking and then press the right trigger to attack. Once the right trigger was released you'd revert back to blocking. Patience and conserving your endurance in battles is essential. For starters your Armour doesn't degrade as fast if you block and you can take advantage of the 'recoil' to get a good hit in. I've found that Clanfear at any level tend to dish out a lot of damage even if you block, so it's best to take them from a distance.
The guard was dead. A huge Xivilai stood over him brandishing an enormous axe. A summoned Clanfear stood beside the huge daedra, like the master's pet. Only then did Hadaster noticed the lithe figure of the Spider Daedra out of the corner of his eye. All ready the small spiderling was rushing towards him. Goldbrand hummed in his grasp and he thrust the sword into the spiderling. The small creature was caught within Goldbrand's flames and with another swift blow Hadaster killed the foul thing.
Despite picking up Umbra, and keeping the sword, which is said by many to be the best sword in the game, I found that Goldbrand is better for out and out damage. Not many things apart from Dunmer are resistant to fire (and I know, it saved me a few times) so Goldbrand dishes out a lot of damage when charged. I found it much better to cast Soul Trap and then hack away rather than use Umbra and its ability to Soul Trap. Although Goldbrand is good, I found that as I progressed in the game I preferred to wield lighter weapons. My favourite weapon, therefore, is a Daedric Shortsword that I enchanted with a Sigil Stone that adds fire damage. In total it does about 10% less damage per strike than Goldbrand, but weighs less than half as much. Never use two handed weapons. They're just too big and unwieldy and you get a rubbish backstab bonus for using them. Oh and Mehyrunes Razor is rubbish (from the add-on pack). In fighting about 15 enemies it only once killed one of them instantly and then it's charges ran out.
A Champion’s Experiences… [part one]
The Oblivion posts on Menori.com have been quite popular so I thought I'd do a short series of posts gathering some of my experiences during nearly 200 hours of play and becoming the Champion of Cyrodiil.
The candle flame flickered as Hadaster sat at his laboratory bench. A varied assortment of herbs, flora and animal parts lay in neat piles on the bench top and the Arch-mage grabbed the pestle infront of him. "Samples first, I think" he muttered to himself. Hadaster took a bite out of a Clanfear claw. "Grim", he frowned.
I found that 'sampling' ingredients is a slow but good way of getting increases to your Alchemy skill. Alchemy was good to get increases in because it was one way if getting Intelligence increases upon level up. And Intelligence is the prime stat for Magicka. Always concentrate on getting your secondary stats up during the time between levelling. As a Monk, Hadaster got his Agility up very quickly but neglected things like Intelligence due to the Monk having a high proportion of Agility related stats as primaries.
Two hours had passed by the time Hadaster had finished his alchemical studies. An entire crate full of Restore Endurance potions was the output of his labour. "They'll sell for a reasonable price", he chuckled and smiled.
Repitition is rife in Oblivion if you want to progress. I spent ages making Restore Endurance potions because they're quick and easy to make. You can find an abundance of Potatoes, Onions, Corn, Flour etc. and comining two of them to make a Restore Endurance potion proved to be a good way of churning out potions to get my Alchemy up. At higher levels my Endurance never dipped below about 95% unless I was hacking at creatures constantly [the battle with Mankar Camoran comes to mind, he was hard to kill]. So I sold the potions and managed to get a little Mercantile skill along the way.
Remember to keep casting spells too. The spells actually need to do something in order to qualify for an increase in their stat. Cast low level spells over and over such as light, bound dagger (cast the spell get the dagger then put the weapon away - rinse, repeat) to get increases. I used to do this while on the move. Later in the game when my speed was greater I used to run everywhere rather than ride in order to qualify for the Althletics increase. Oh, and jump everywhere too. The further you fall the better, I seemed to get better increases to Acrobatics if I hurt myself when landing. The throne rooms of most castles is a good place - jump off the balcony run back up the stairs and jump off the balcony again.
Lock-picking the easy way
Ok so lets say that you haven't done the quest yet to get the Skeleton Key. You need a way to get past those locked doors and into those locked chests. Well I was having a nightmare with lock-picking (I'm only a 19 in Security) until I realised something. Now some of you out there will go "dur, yeah of course that's how it works" but I've discussed this with a few people in my friends list and none of them had sussed it so I supposed there must be more poeple out there who haven't. Also what I write here is what I have found to work for me. I can't guarantee it will work for anyone else but I'll share the knowledge and you can all try it for yourselves! The first thing to realise is that lock-picking relies on pushing the pins up and getting them to lock into place. This relies on pressing the A button (Xbox 360 version of course) when the pin is as high as it will get, and this needs to be done at different times depending on how strong the spring is (different spring strengths mean that the pins move at different speeds and therefore the A button needs to be pressed at different times). Right that's the easy bit out of the way. This whole process becomes far more simple when you realise that the strength of the spring is randomised each time you move the pin (and not just set for each pin). There is one particular setting of strength which means that the pin will move much slower (relatively speaking) and these are the ones that you need to find. It means that you need to have fairly good reactions and also not be drawn in if you're not happy with the speed of the pin. I always start at the right-most pin (I don't know if you have to or not, that's just how I do it) and I keep pushing the pin up until it moves at the slow speed and then I lock it in. Then move to the next left pin, rinse and repeat. To give you some idea of how successful I've found this, before I used this method I would break around 6-8 picks per lock. Since I've been using this method I've picked around 12 locks and not broken a single pick. I never press the button if I'm not happy as I'd rather save the pick and try again. Like I say it might not work for everyone but I've found it helps me…
It’s amazing what you can find…
So my travels have taken me to Skingrad. I've been a member of the Fighters Guild for a while now (hey show me a weapon wielder who isn't in the damned guild nowadays!) and so I found myself in the Guildhall in Skingrad when I overhear a conversation between a couple of other members about a couple of good goblin-hunting spots. Not wanting to miss out I decided to check a couple of them out. The first was a doddle, a gallop in the meadows if you will. It seems that goblins don't like my Dwarven longsword and many fell upon my blade. So here I am now in the second (and I'm not telling you where - this treasure is all mine), and the reception here was a little more heated shall we say. Fortunately it seems that I've managed to cause some confusion. I don't know if it's the bad light or not but it seems that the goblins are far happier to fight amongst themselves than take me on. It even seems that one of them preferred to fight one of their own war chiefs than try to battle me. Of course he fell, but it made the war cheif even more simple to dispose of, I even ended up unarmed to finish the job just to show my strength and power. So theres another dead goblin at my feet. And that's where things took a turn for the better. Wandering around after slaying the war chief I found a couple of chests that were no match for my lock-picking. Turning the corner I could see a shape on the ground but couldn't quite make out what it was. As I moved closer I realised that whatever it was it was very lavishly decorated with the faces of animals and goblins. It was also slightly buried in the ground so I thought I'd best uncover the rest of it. As my hand moved down to move away some of the earth I felt a tingling. I haven't felt such a feeling since I looted that Dispelling Warhamer from another ex-adversary. I'm guessing this thing could be magical. It also looks stunning. Not beautiful, it's covered in goblin faces of course, but stunning. The craftmanship is a thing to behold. It looks like a staff and being a basher rather than a blaster I reckon I'll have little use for it. But I am sure that it's worth a good couple of thousand coins if i can find someone interested in it. I hope the merchants of Skingrad have plenty of money left as this little beauty will go to the highest bidder. Now all I need to do is get out of here alive…
Vampire, me?
Did you know that the Count of Skingrad is a Vampire? How do I know? Let me tell you a story that’ll make will make you want to reach for a sharpened stick and your neck itch…
A while back I had just entered the Mage’s Guild and Arch-Mage Traven needed me to retrieve some information from the Count. So I saddled my horse and rode from the Imperial City to Skingrad to seek an audience with the Count. Before he’d give me the information I requested though, he insisted that I “clean out a nest of Vampires that could make people suspect that I’m a Vampire,” which I dutifully did. So all was well, I got the information for the Arch-Mage and thought that was the end of it – how wrong was I?
Fate of the Empire
The past month has been something of a blur. Having fled the Imperial City I ran to Chorrol, I moved on to Skingrad and the to Kavach. My first impressions were that the Imperial Guard would be after me.. but no there is a far greater foe. Denizens of Oblivion roam these lands and indeed they are foul. So my trials have taken me into Oblivion and back, literally. I've joined Mages Guild and Fighters Guild alike. Bastards don't pay very well and my living comes mainly from the loot I find on various corpses. Thankfully I've got a reasonable stock of healing potions. By the Nine do I need them as well.
Part of something much larger
What is going on? Was the Emperor right? Did he genuinely see something in me? That I could right wrongs? I honestly don't know but I'm driven to find out. I carried the Amulet of Kings with me as I made my way to Weynon Priory. Immediately leaving the Imperial City behind me. I had to make sure that place was far away. Too many disturbing memories.
Fort Carmala
So I stumbled across Fort Carmala completely by accident. Appearing out of the gloom in the middle of the night, Fort Carmala can barely be called a fort anymore. It's completely ruined, and more of it appears to fall away from the building on a daily basis. A large wooden door protects what were once the lower floors of the fort from the elements, although probably not for much longer! Upon opening these doors I was soon to realise that the gloom outside was nothing compared to what was inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust.
Ridding yourself of swamp fever
So there are a lot of people out there who seem, like my character, to have contracted swamp fever. And what a pain it is if you are of a class where Strength is one of your main attributes (like a warrior for example). Fortunately help is at hand and I know the cure, and I have to tell you that is maybe isn't as difficult as people think. First you need about 20 Nirnroot…. Only joking. In fact ridding yourself of swamp fever is as simple as finding yourself a church in which to pray. I used the one just outside Chorrol on the road between the Imperial City and Chorrol. Wander in, have a quick pray, and you're cured. Not a lot to it really!!