Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Game Stories and Spoilers

You pickpocketed a guy's sword and he didn't notice?

You're good.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Anyway, everywhere I've tried to buy a house they've told me they don't trust me enough yet. Anyone want to post some basic prices? I've got almost 5000G saved up since I never spend money on anything.

There's a house in Anvil you could afford with your 5000g. That's the only price I've seen so far.

Has anyone gotten very far in the main quest? I'm wondering if it ever relaxes a bit to the point where you don't feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Right now it feels sort of silly for my character to be exploring or killing some fish for some guy when I've got quest NPC's telling me to to something quickly before the world falls into blood and chaos.

That's something I liked about Morrowind ... at regular intervals the NPC's would tell you to go chill for a while (i.e. gain a few levels) before you came back to see them again.

Woohoo! First goofy AI thing!

I was walking around the stables late at night and I met a Redguard that was sneaking up on someone else. Because, y'know, them Redguards just can't help themselves. So he picked the guy's pocket and got caught, and then a guard came after him and killed him. I checked his body...

He'd stolen a potato. Died for a frikkin POTATO.

Bru wrote:

You pickpocketed a guy's sword and he didn't notice?

You're good.

Yeah, it was good, too. A big magical one.

BiggerBoat wrote:

Has anyone gotten very far in the main quest? I'm wondering if it ever relaxes a bit to the point where you don't feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders.

I read in one of the many interviews that the game waits for you.. there's no time limit imposed or anything. The NPC's and quests may make things sound dire and urgent, but you could go off and do your own thing for a month of in-game time and then come back to the main plot. On the one hand I think that's cool.. but on the other hand, a bit of real urgency for atleast some of the quests would have been cool.

I haven't yet found a point in the story where I can just chill.

I really, really liked having 2 people travel with me for part of the story, it made the game feel even more like a tradional RPG with my sidekicks.

I haven't joined the thiefs guild yet, as I seem to have lost the race to steal the journal, and I don't know what to do next.

I also really hate those Oblivion gates, as no one cares about them! I just closed one that was right in front of the Imperial Sewers! Nobody cared, or even noticed it was there!

LobsterMobster wrote:

Woohoo! First goofy AI thing!

I was walking around the stables late at night and I met a Redguard that was sneaking up on someone else. Because, y'know, them Redguards just can't help themselves. So he picked the guy's pocket and got caught, and then a guard came after him and killed him. I checked his body...

He'd stolen a potato. Died for a frikkin POTATO.

He must have been hungry.

Vega wrote:

I read in one of the many interviews that the game waits for you.. there's no time limit imposed or anything. The NPC's and quests may make things sound dire and urgent, but you could go off and do your own thing for a month of in-game time and then come back to the main plot. On the one hand I think that's cool.. but on the other hand, a bit of real urgency for atleast some of the quests would have been cool.

Yeah. I guess my issue is that if I were to try to apply some sense of reality to the game, my character wouldn't be out doing mundane things when the fate of the world supposedly rests in the balance. It would be nice if there was some story-driven breaks from the main quest (as there was in Morrowind).

LobsterMobster wrote:

Woohoo! First goofy AI thing!

I was walking around the stables late at night and I met a Redguard that was sneaking up on someone else. Because, y'know, them Redguards just can't help themselves. So he picked the guy's pocket and got caught, and then a guard came after him and killed him. I checked his body...

He'd stolen a potato. Died for a frikkin POTATO.

I hope the guy just failed to steal whatever he was trying to steal like some coins or something... instead of for a potato. If you ever see that again, try to pick the same guy's pocket Then again, maybe it's some spinoff thieves guild initiation!

LobsterMobster wrote:

Woohoo! First goofy AI thing!

I was walking around the stables late at night and I met a Redguard that was sneaking up on someone else. Because, y'know, them Redguards just can't help themselves. So he picked the guy's pocket and got caught, and then a guard came after him and killed him. I checked his body...

He'd stolen a potato. Died for a frikkin POTATO.

You know, if RAI assigns random behaviors to NPCs, then it is entirely possible that someone at some point of his OB gaming career, will have a game where most of the NPCs have killed each other off for one reason or the other.
I wonder if you can "induce" some npc to steal or kill another npc in town. ( there is already one known case of how you can get goblins to kill each other, but I wonder if that is possible with town folks)

Maybe the guards took the good stuff and left the potato.

I saw a bandit break cover and run towards me, but then around a rock gallops a patrolling soldier. The bandit swerves to avoid him, and they skirmish a moment, then they both take off in different directions. I followed the bandit, but he never turned and fought me. He just scampered back into the woods.

LobsterMobster wrote:

He'd stolen a potato. Died for a frikkin POTATO.

Glitch, or acidic social commentary? You decide!

Already I am stuck. Spoilers ahead, but you were already warned.

The quest called "Canvas the Castle". I've interviewed everyone. Found evidence in the mage's room and a mysterious painting in west tower which people tell me have seen the mage there. I try accusing her and she still won't confess. Any ideas?

Edwin wrote:

Already I am stuck. Spoilers ahead, but you were already warned.

The quest called "Canvas the Castle". I've interviewed everyone. Found evidence in the mage's room and a mysterious painting in west tower which people tell me have seen the mage there. I try accusing her and she still won't confess. Any ideas?

You might try checking out the places she went the night in question.

Checked all three places and nothing.

The clue is pretty non-standard, i.e., not an object or a conversation thread.

spoiler wrote:

[color=white]Check out the rug in the dining room, beyond the back left corner of the table (from the door)[/color]

While on the subject of spoilage, Prima has the first few pages of their guide available as a PDF on their website. It covers the beginning of the thieves guild and has some good maps of the Imperial City.

**VAMPIRE SPOILER**
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Whoops, I'm a vampire, ran into some vamps in a ruin. If you're fighting vampires and you notice a thing about a "disease" pop up, cure disease within three days or you're stuck with it. It's.... interesting.

You can feed on sleeping people to avoid really looking like or suffering any real penalties. Day-light sensitivity and people not wanting to talk to you being among the more nasty issues, weakness to fire being another. Interesting bit is that if you feed on a sleeping person, you go back to being more or less normal with some fire weakness and a couple stat boosts. You can still function in the world (and during the day) for up to 24 hours after you feed. Then you starting turning into more of a vampire again.

There are benefits though, new powers and abilities are available as you get more monstrous. Again, once you feed, you revert back to mostly normal.

So because I ignored this disease message, I am now a creature of the night and I have to suck blood to avoid being shunned. Fun! Not sure if I'm going to load an old save and go back to being normal.

Re: cheapest house.

By now, the cheapest house I've found was in the city. The lady in the office offered me a hovel in the slums (I forget the name of the area) for 2000g. My char is Imperial and I chatted her up to mid-high 70s. Not sure if that matters.

lethial wrote:

You know, if RAI assigns random behaviors to NPCs, then it is entirely possible that someone at some point of his OB gaming career, will have a game where most of the NPCs have killed each other off for one reason or the other.
I wonder if you can "induce" some npc to steal or kill another npc in town. ( there is already one known case of how you can get goblins to kill each other, but I wonder if that is possible with town folks)

This has already started happening to me. I was walking (well, running and jumping, but you know...) back to my house in the imperial city when I came across a dead woman lying on the ground. I looted her, there was no "You have a new quest" message or anything. Just laying there...dead. Don't know who killed her or why. Probably trying to steal something when a guard was around.

MoonDragon wrote:

Re: cheapest house.

By now, the cheapest house I've found was in the city. The lady in the office offered me a hovel in the slums (I forget the name of the area) for 2000g. My char is Imperial and I chatted her up to mid-high 70s. Not sure if that matters.

You can't adjust the prices for housing or horses in the game, unfortunately.

Corpses float :glee:

IMAGE(http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j100/eharzman/Oblivion2006-03-2219-15-23-30.jpg)

Certis wrote:

**VAMPIRE SPOILER**
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Whoops, I'm a vampire, ran into some vamps in a ruin. If you're fighting vampires and you notice a thing about a "disease" pop up, cure disease within three days or you're stuck with it. It's.... interesting.

Awesome! I loved the vampire subquest in BG2 so I'm going to looking for vamps now!

Erm, btw, why is everyone posting "spoiler" warnings when they're posting in the specially designated "spoiler thread"?

I found it. The holy grail for people like me who go through horses like Elvis goes through bacon.

It was just an average day, wandering around, getting into trouble, when I decided to travel to the nearest town to sell some junk, the nearest town being Bravil. Since some mysterious hidden -things- were after me, I couldn't quicktravel. So, having an amulet of water walking, I ran across the lake toward the city. But as I approached, I noticed some interesting stuff to the north, like ruins. So I headed up that way and... uh oh, wild boars! Now being chased by boars, I continued to the north/northwest when I saw an interesting icon I'd never seen before... it looked like a mountain. Heading that way, I came across...

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A white unicorn, battling minotaurs. :O I lured the minotaurs away from it, being the speedy lil' devil I am (I actually run about as fast as a horse), then ran back and jumped on the unicorn's back, and away we went.

The unicorn is actually mine. It travels with me between cities, gets stabled, etc. And there's always a fresh one in that grove! Trouble is, if you try to get on the unicorn while it's fighting or use attacks too close to it, it gets pissed and attacks you. That thing chased me for MILES (and was exactly as fast as I, so I could never lose it). It hit me a few times while I was still trying to get on and did crazy damage, like half my life bar (I'm level 12, and given I'm not a tank, but still). Finally I ducked into an inn, hid out for about an hour, and when I left I saw it trotting away. So I hopped on and it behaved like a nice horsie.

Mind you, this was when I was trying to get my SECOND unicorn. Turns out you can only have one of each type of horse at a time, or at least, only one unicorn. You can have one stabled and jump on another but you can't get both to fast-travel with you.

I don't know if the unicorn is the best horse in the game but it does kick ass. It does nice damage, it's pretty fast, and it can take a lot of punishment. It was definitely holding its own against those three minotaurs, and they would have squashed me flat in a few hits.

Oh, yeah, and Bravil also has a house for 4,000G. The place has a lot of wood, a lot of stairs, and a some neat bridges. All in all it's kind of hovelly and slummy, but I like the vibe.

I did end up getting the 5,000G house in Anvil, but the one in Bravil doesn't seem to have any "strings" attached.

Draco wrote:

Erm, btw, why is everyone posting "spoiler" warnings when they're posting in the specially designated "spoiler thread"? :P

Certis wrote:

Although we know that this thread contains spoilers, I'd like it if we still used spoiler tags and warnings, thank you

God, I absolutely love this game (and obviously I'm not the only one). I'm not really that far in the game, but here's a little experience I ran across.

Spoilers below!
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I stopped at an inn one morning after battling my way out of the sewers and dispatching a few guys hanging out by some ruins (Roxwell Inn? Roxbury Inn? Something like that). Anyway, the patrons were discussin a small village called Aleswell where everyone had mysteriously disappeared. I didn't think much of it, I just went on my merry way after a good night's sleep at the inn.

After walking for a few hours, I come across this cluster of houses by the side of the road, overlooking the Imperial City. Curious, I turn to go take a look at the little village and notice that this is in fact the Aleswell village I previously heard about. True to their word, the village appeared completely deserted, but something's a little off: I can clearly hear some footsteps, but I cannot for the life of me see anyone around. Then out of nowhere, this voice says: "Hello!" I stop in my tracks, look around and I still don't see anybody. "Over here, hello?!" I'm still hearing footsteps, but I can't locate where this voice is coming from! Then, the screen zooms in as if I'm engaging someone in conversation, and this voice goes on to inform me that the village has fallen victim to some wizards experiments. Turns out this wizard, who lives not too far from the village, has been researching all kinds of spells, and his latest attempt managed to accidentally turn everyone in the village invisible! Needless to say, the villagers are somewhat distraught, even though they a few of them enjoyed the whole invisibility thing at first. So, being the good little assassin I am, I decided to go talk to this wizard.

The first thing I notice when I get closer to the abandoned fort the wizard calls home is that I can hear some rats, but can't see any: not surprising since the villagers warned me about some invisible creatures hanging around his abode. I finally find the magical bugger and after some jaw flappin', he agrees to give me a scroll that'll dispel the invisibility enchantment, but he's obviously not pleased about it. He also said something along the lines of "there's something you should know about that spell I just gave you.... Actually, no, don't worry about it." In my head I'm going "Oh no you didn't just do that, motherfrakker!", but I decided to let it go, since I'm not that tough yet and he could probably magic my ass to Oblivion.

As per magical Trevor's instructions, I go back to the village center and speak the enchantment. Just as I finish reciting the spell, my vision briefly flashes red and I stagger ever so slightly. After a quick glance around, I can see (actually see) the villagers, so I know that the spell worked. However, after looking at my stats, I noticed that my luck was down permanently from 50 to 5, and that my intelligence had taken a 5-point hit! The bastard had cursed the spell, and I was on the receiving end!

It's a good thing that my assassin has an interest in Alchemy (poisoned arrows rock!), since I was able to whip up a few potions of Restore Luck once I got to the Imperial City (cost me a few hundred to get the right ingredients though). I also made a few Detect Life potions while there, so that son of a Female Doggo is going to wake up with an arrow in his throat for what he did to me.

Did I mention how much I love this game?

lethial wrote:

You know, if RAI assigns random behaviors to NPCs, then it is entirely possible that someone at some point of his OB gaming career, will have a game where most of the NPCs have killed each other off for one reason or the other.
I wonder if you can "induce" some npc to steal or kill another npc in town. ( there is already one known case of how you can get goblins to kill each other, but I wonder if that is possible with town folks)

Supposedly they dialed back the RAI so that it would never kill people of any importance unless the player was around and instigated it, or it was part of an intentional event. It is probably the case that the thief Lobster mentioned and Montalban's dead woman were generic people spawned for the purposes of adding this kind of color to the world. Since the normal NPCs can't kill each other freely, they've got to have someone to kill, right?

Lobster, Montalban, do you remember if the corpses were labeled with actually names, or just generic titles like thief, bandit, or beggar?

On another note, damn, I fell way behind you guys by playing Zombie Skate last night. I suppose I'll be stuck skimming half the posts in this thread for quite a while now. Oh well, it's cool to know that you guys are encountering some fun stuff.

Day 2, Baba Ganoush, Spellsword

not 5 minutes before I land my arse back in jail *sigh*

is there a jerry springer show in the world of oblivion? cuz im apparently made for it.

Actually, once you have finished the quest, the important NPCs are "delisted" as being important and can be killed off permenantly. (At least that was what some of the previews and interviews said.)

lethial wrote:

Actually, once you have finished the quest, the important NPCs are "delisted" as being important and can be killed off permenantly. (At least that was what some of the previews and interviews said.)

I think we are talking about two different things. There are people that even the player can't kill, and you are right that after they fulfill their duty for a quest that restriction goes away. However, I belive that NPCs are further restricted as to who they can kill. Even if a particular person may not be important to a quest, the player still might not be pleased to find them randomly dead in the street. That would pretty much be a bug as far as the player is concerned. As such, I don't believe that NPCs will kill minor but still named NPCs unless:

1. It is part of an event.
or
2. The player incited the incident; for example, by taunting the person to the point that they attack the player, and hence the guards come to the player's assistance and kill the NPC.

So my assumption is that nameless NPCs (ie, "thief," "begger," "bandit") are probably spawned from time to time in populated areas so that it feels like crime, punishment, and death still occur when the player isn't involved (as Lobster and Montalban witnessed).

Does that make sense?