I just very recently completed an almost-full set of glass armor (higher tier light armor). The only thing that isn't glass is the helmet, which is elven (next best thing)

Now, how did I get all this stuff?

I decided to join the fighter's guild a bit late in my playthrough, (level 20) and one of the first mission was to handle a bunch of burglars who were stealing from some shop owner (which is based if you ask me, this game's universe feels like a Liberty Hangout staff member's wet dream but that's material for another post).

So I spend the night in his shop, and went the loading screen fades away, what do I see? Three peons wearing fucking glass and Elven armor sneaking around behind one another. Absurd. Their leader was the one who had the Elven helmet, with the horns and all. Later in the quest you learn that these guys were ex employees from shop owner. They were probably stealing from him because they were poor. Explain to how in the hell does it make sense that three piss poor burglars are wearing the best set of standard armor in the game.

The reason behind this is that the overall level of the game scales along with the player. This is made so that the game is always a challenge to the player, but never too hard to beat. It's a game mechanic choice, and a bad one if you ask me. Which is probably the reason Skyrim works differently, thank god. The whole purpose of games like Oblivion is that you start off weak, grind yourself to higher and higher levels and then start to feel more and more powerful, unlock more effective gear and so on. How am I supposed to feel powerful when a simple shitty goblin from a beginner level quest can potentially kill me if I'm not careful enough, even if I'm wearing good tier armor after 50 hours playing? And even if they don't kill me, they'll still be a pain in the ass to slay because they will have so much HP, and the only way for me to kill them fast is to use my magical equipment, which will deplete it's charge, which will cost a small fortune to recharge. Also spells suck.

I'm so looking forward to moving onto Skyrim.

  • XxxUSAFlagPisserXxx [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Listen, Oblivion is one of the best games ever made. I know everyone hates it, but honestly when I played it as a kid I never noticed the borked leveling. Just get mods my friend. One should never play an elder scrolls game without them. The Vanilla oblivion experience is pretty shit I recommend oscuros oblivion overhaul. Oblivion has the best side quests of any elder scrolls game IMO but mechanically it needs a lot of work. Oh and play Morrowind. Seriously go and play Morrowind right now if you haven’t already. Also fuck bethesda for life. All my homies hate bethesda.

    • cummunist [he/him,they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Are you kidding me I love this game too. I wanted to first finish it without any mods and then have fun tweaking it. I wouldn't be playing it I didn't like it, but I needed to rant about this one thing, because struggling to kill every damn cannfear even at level 25 makes me feel like I'm playing the game wrong :/

    • cybernetsoc [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Oblivion was the best. It was the perfect middle ground between Morrowind having huge amounts of content and development, but everything is slow and you are spending hours collecting books for Cosades, and Skyrim where things are really streamlined and straight forward and all the guild quests being "Let's have this guy we just met be our leader." The Oblivion Dark Brotherhood quest line was awesome.

          • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            as others have said -- mods improve the experience, but yeah Skyrim tbh has had way more staying power than it deserves. Don't think I've actually played it since 2011-2012 solely due to the fact that I usually love playing casters and yet...

            • Orannis62 [ze/hir]
              ·
              4 years ago

              It is still possible to make a broken caster, just nowhere near as good as in previous games. With top-level enchanting, you can make armor that makes spells from particular schools cost 0 mana, and then you can spam Expert destruction spells constantly, with the Impact perk making it possible to keep enemies from reaching you.

              Still not as good as other games, but it's worth messing around with

      • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        You on PC? Or Xbox I think might have it too if it's the newer version.

        https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/1090

        Use Apocalypse spells. Adds much-needed variety and spells into the game. The base game spells aren't awful, I found mage to still be a powerful build, but the variety is lacking in vanilla.

    • Zo1db3rg [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yea I miss being able to make a fire and lighting ball that did 5 aoe damage to the entire populace of the capitol city. lol

      • AlexandairBabeuf [they/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        extra conveniently while your bandits won't start wearing daedric armor, stats and health increase so you don't even get the extra valuable loot for slogging through health sponges :)

        this is why I play that game on like medium and try to get the goals of the playthrough done at early levels; balancing is pretty ok early where the hits you deal & receive are weighty. you play on high difficulty all it does is beef up enemies while making you weaker, which is a lame approach to difficulty imo

  • GnastyGnuts [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The way you break that game is way funnier than Skyrim. Being able to pump up stats like speed and acrobatics in particular is funny as hell. Going into an oblivion gate, super-jumping all the way from the start of the map to the top level of the tower in one move, funny shit.

    • comi [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I remember I’ve made 100% invisible armor with some soul pebbles or some shit, was just running through quests like ghost.

    • cummunist [he/him,they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      Yeah I do that to close the gates because the enemies always beat my ass. It's either speedrunning or pressing the "wait" key and take an hour break after each fight

    • USSMillicentKent [any]
      ·
      4 years ago

      Use restore health and shield potions on yourself, poison your weapons, sneak attack everyone, get hopped up on skooma, strip naked, run into the streets, punch guards in the face

      where in that sentence we transition to real life is up to you

    • cummunist [he/him,they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      4 years ago

      i guess the fault is on me for wanting to play vanilla at first in order to get a clean game experience

      will these mods work on Linux? I imagine yes since they seem to be managed by the launcher but the game is old

      • WoofWoof91 [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        i guess the fault is on me for wanting to play vanilla at first in order to get a clean game experience

        Nah, the fault is definitely on bethesda for godawful game design lol

        will these mods work on Linux? I imagine yes since they seem to be managed by the launcher but the game is old

        I'm not sure on that, but i would assume it would, the mods are just .esp files iirc

      • TheCaconym [any]
        ·
        4 years ago

        will these mods work on Linux?

        Absolutely they will. Oblivion support in wine is pretty much perfect. Try D9VK for best results & performance but it should run like a charm even with the standard wine.

  • Zo1db3rg [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I remember almost getting wrecked by a bear after I slept and didn't realize the bear would be harder since I hit the level marker to increase npc levels. I was like "wtf I two shot a damn bear 5 minutes ago?"

    Also Skyrim does this too it's just not as obvious about it and since you can craft it also helps negate the effects. By the time the npc start having ebony armors you will have probably already crafted to or beyond that point.

  • quartz242 [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Chad morrowind, virgin sequels.

    I'm still salty about the removal of medium armor and spears.

    My levitating agorean poking downward from above.

  • Ol_King_Coleslaw [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Take any armor set, enchant with chameleon until over 100%, walk through game on easy mode.

    • Mardoniush [she/her]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I propose we get Michael Kirkbride back, give him all the drugs, and make him chief game designer.

      It won't be a very coherent game (At least unless you've studied 9 different types of western and eastern mysticism) but it will be a great ride.