Hours 29 - 31 - Daybreaker part 2

Yes, this blog entry covers thee hours. I don't know how it took so long, but it did. First, I travelled to see the witch. Take a look at the map:

The red marker is her location. The marker near the lake is a Daedric Shrine which I haven't been to yet, only been told about, so I can't fast-travel there. There is nothing to the south for miles - you can't see that from the map of course. So the nearest location I can travel to is Fort Magia, then it's on foot from there onwards. It's not all that far, of course - part of the wonder of Oblivion is that it makes the continent feel absolutely vast, when in reality you can walk most places in a matter of minutes - but it's still a fair old way, especially considering I am assailed at several points along the way by wolves and bears. In any case, it's a long way for Woodley, so although it only takes a few minutes it feels like an epic journey.

At one point I am attacked by goblins. I summon my skeleton to battle. Look how huge this goblin is:

That's a human skeleton it's fighting, so that makes the goblin at least six feet tall, if not more. I feel it's a bit silly - the larger greenskins should be 'hobgoblins' or something. 

When I reach the witch's cabin, she give me a veritable shopping list of ingredients to find for her to make the 'cure vampirism' potion. Blood of an Argonian, ashes of a powerful vampire, and several plants and herbs. I decide to get the vampire ashes first - I must head to an abandoned, sunken fortress far to the east. The distance from the witch's cabin to this fortress makes the distance pictured on the earlier map look tiny. It's easily twice as far, and there are literally no waypoints to fast-travel to on the way. I must never have been to this region of the country before. 

Along the way to the fortress I fight several imps. I actually love coming across imps now - I treat them like a mini-game. They always engage from a distance with ranged spells (often fireballs), so 

I do likewise and we play a game of 'dodge the fireball' - it's fun to try to land a direct hit on them whilst also strafing to avoid their spells and trying to factor in the imps strafing as well.

On the way to the fortress I see a Daedric Shrine map symbol, so diced to have a look. It's a shrine to Peyrite and the worshippers are stood in a circle in a trance:

What's that,man Argonian? Don't mind if I cut you with this enchanted dagger to collect a blood sample, do you? No? Fortunately neither the Argonian nor any of the other worshippers noticed me stab him, so deep was their trance.

The fortress is a pushover, with just a couple of relatively weak vampires within and a boss vampire at the end. The strangest thing is, once I enter the room with the boss in, he doesn't attack me, but instead runs throughout the whole dungeon back the way I've come. I gave chase, pelting fireballs after him. Eventually he reached a corpse and picked up a dagger from it, and began to attack me. How odd.

The fortress seems to be unique in that it's partially sunken, and it also has some nice vampiric touches like the above candle-lit coffin.

Well, the first two ingredients are done; now for the easy ones right? As it happens, most of the next two hours is taken up with searching for the other ingredients. In the end I resorted to the internet for help, but even then it was still time-consuming. The garlic was easy enough - there are a couple of houses you can break into which have numerous cloves lying around. I also needed nightshade. And blood grass (which is a Daedric plant I suppose). Likewise I bought all the nightshade I needed at The  Main Ingredient in the Imperial City. But that shop only had 1 clump of blood grass, and I needed two. As I haven't opened the Oblivion gates yet, I had to rely on vendors. I travelled round many cities looking for blood grass. Sometimes I was simply unable to find an ingredients vendor (even after scouring the Mages Guild), and the rest of the time I found one but they had no blood grass 

Bear in mind that all of the aforementioned travelling and faffing was made much more tedious as I frequently could not fast travel due to my vampirism being too advanced - I would then have to wait until nightfall, or break on somewhere and feed on then to rejuvenate myself.

In desperation, I returned to The Main Ingredient, only to find he had restocked on blood grass. Damn you! With all the ingredients gathered, the potion was created and I was cured at last!

The Count also gave some to his wife:

He also rewarded me with 1000 gold for my efforts. I can't believe that lifting the vampire curse has taken four hours. Along the way I also picked up a couple of side quests which I'll pursue at a later date, but for now I'm disease-free and ready to continue with the Mages guild.

Hour 28: Daybreaker part 1

I did a bit of reading of some of the dusty tomes gathered online and learned that as part of the quest I'll need five empty grand soul gems. I find two whilst poking round the Arcane University, and manage to procure three more from the merchants at various Mages Guilds across Cyrodiil. In the course of my travels I get to thinking about my lacklustre repertoire of spells, and blow a good amount of gold upon acquiring some more. I upgrade my Turn Undead spell to Repulse Undead (or is it the other way around) which will now work on Undead up to level 15. I buy some Fear and Frenzy spells, as I've never used them before. Lastly, I go for some new Summons: Flame Atronach, Dremora, and Skeleton Guardian. Here's the Atronach:

Sweet! I'm guessing it shoots fireballs rather than melees, as that's what the ones in Skyrim do, so I hotkey it in the place of my Scamp (which I never used much anyway, as the zombie was more useful for tanking melee opponents). Speaking of which, it's probably time to say goodbye to the zombie too, since the Skeleton Guardian not only looks cooler and lasts 10 seconds longer, but I'm willing to 

bet it's tougher too. I shall miss the zombie, though. Perhaps I'll raise him from time to time to look at some views with me.

As an aside, I do think it's a bit silly that zombies and skeletons are created from nothing as part of a summon spell. You should be able to raise dead enemies as zombies or skeletons, and only summon spirits and Daedra out of nothing.

I should really get a more powerful damage spell, but the only ones on offer seemed to require a Destruction Magic skill of 75, whereas mine is 73.

Traipsing around looking for the soul gems and messing around with spells takes the best part of an hour. I head to Castle Skingrad, where the new retainer keeps me waiting around for a bit for the Count. Here's the impressive main entrance hall:

I've thought of something which I think would greatly improve the game-playing experience for me: Tightening up restricted areas. As it is, the castles and palaces are ornately designed and often quite sprawling, but ultimately empty shells. You can break into the living areas of them (or in some cases simply walk right in) with relative ease, and if you're caught, you are simply warned 'you shouldn't be in here', giving you a chance to leave before the guards are called. In this entrance hall, for example, I can run around and run up the stairs, go right up to the doors, jump off the balcony, etc. If the castles had their own full-time guards, preventing any tom-dick-or-harry from prancing round like a ninny, if feel it would create a much more immersive experience. Sneaking past them could then be a genuine challenge, and getting caught in a restricted area should trigger a full-scale alarm/man-hunt. Perhaps have some valuables scattered throughout the castles to provide an incentive to break into them, should you so desire. Incidentally, this immersion-destroying 'empty sandbox' phenomenon affects Skyrim's castles, too. There's obviously only so much they can put in the world, but creating the illusion of reality by enforcing restricted areas would go a long way to making the world feel more huge, I feel.

Anyway, I meet the Count eventually, and he sends me off on my quest, to find a witch by a river. It turns out I'll be helping him too, because he wants to cure his wife of vampirism. Onwards, for honour and glory (?!)

Hour 27: Darkness Rising

The goblins turn out to be Sharp Tooth tribe, and they are Skirmishers. What this means, as far as I can tell, is that they are huge. No longer the little runts I used to terrorise with impunity, these goblins are actually much larger than me. In fact, they can't be that much smaller than a troll, and they attack with almost as much ferocity. A passing Imperial Soldier helps me slay the two guarding the entrance, and I head in alone with some trepidation.

The cave (well, it's the Derelict Mine, actually - I think I've been here before, but it must have been repopulated since then) is crawling with the blighters, and what's worse is that they seem keen to hang around in pairs. It's a hard slog but I manage to kill them all and escape without using too many potions.

I then head into Skingrad under the veil of darkness and check into the Two Sisters Lodge to get some rest and level up. Little did I know that the darkness not only veiled the land but also dwelt within me... As I settled down in my bed to rest, expecting to see the familiar 'level up' screen, I was instead greeted by this:

I read it with increasing alarm. This cannot be! What have I done? I have to check myself, and sure enough I see my eyes are now red and my face twisted.

I am a vampire, a foul foul vampire! It's then I remember that whilst battling Seridur's cursed cronies a while back, I was scratched by one of them and infected with the disease. I forgot to cure myself, and now it's too late! I consider reloading, but the nearest save will set me back quite a while, so I decide to press on. Whether I will regret this decision remains to be seen...

I continue with the quest at hand - I must speak to Count Skingrad. However, his advisor makes me wait a day before I can see him. Waiting causes me to progress to the next stage of vampirism - where I take damage from being out in the sunlight! It damages me slow enough that I can keep my health topped up by healing, but it's clearly no good! I take shelter in a guard tower until nightfall, then creep out and sneak into the Mages Guild, whereupon I slake my unholy thirst upon an unsuspecting Argonian Mage.

I then meet with the Count's advisor again, but he had tricked me and didn't want the Mages Guild interfering in Skingrad, as he was in league with the necromancers. He and two Necromancer goons attempt to slay me, but the Count comes to my rescue.

I speak with the Count, then return to the Arcane University to report my findings. I've already resolved that I must cure my vampirism, as taking rapid damage in daylight is too much of a hindrance for me - fortunately, Raminus Polinus has dialogue about curing vampirism, so I start that quest - which entails me heading all the way back to Skingrad to speak with the Count again!

Hour 26: The Mages' Staff

I decide it's high time I continued along with some Mages Guild quests. I spent so long doing all the recommendations, and I am starting to get bored of my piddly little fireball and cold touch spells. I made myself a better healing spell but it isn't actually 'better' - it heals 4 times as much, for 4 times the cost, over 4 seconds instead of 1 second. So, it's quicker than casting the heal spell 4 times, but I'm beginning to feel that I should become a better spell caster than I am.

I've already been told about gathering some special wood to make my own staff, so I head to the cave to do just that. Unfortunately, when I arrive it is crawling with necromancers - and they're no pushover. Ironically they're all bald - you'd think they'd be able to resurrect their dead hair follicles as well as ghosts and zombies, but no. I eventually battle my way through the cave and out into a clearing where I am beset by about five powerful necromancers. It turns into one hell of a fight, one which I think I have no hope of winning at first. They all summon ghosts and start pelting me with lightning and fireballs - by health is stripped by 50% almost straight away. However, by sprinting around, dodging their spells, and repeatedly healing myself, I manage to buy myself enough time to summon a zombie. The zombie keeps a couple of them distracted and I'm able to get a few hits in on the others. They're very tough to bring down since they heal frequently, so I decide the only thing to do is wade in with my Cold Touch spell and just focus them down one at a time. In order to do this, I keep myself artificially alive by raiding my potion supply and drinking almost everything I have - this is the first time I've had to do this.

Eventually I realise that I can hide on top of a rock, which I can jump up onto presumably because of my agility. The vampires can't reach me in melee there, so I just dodge their spells and keep summoning my zombie to whittle them down. Finally they all succumb, and I gather the wood and take it back to the Arcane University.

One thing I do prefer about Skyrim is the College of Magic in Winterhold. As much as I like the Arcane University, the College in Winterhold was truly massive and did a very good job of creating the sense of a being 'sequestered away' far from the rest of the world when you were in it.

I choose to create a staff which has a paralysis spell - this is the spell I used for my previous Warrior character and I found it ridiculously useful. I'm only level 9 so I don't get the best bang for my buck from this staff yet, but I didn't feel like putting the quest off any longer.

Keen to continue with the Mages Guild, after receiving the staff I speak to Raminus Polinus (I think that's his name; I can't be bothered to check) who sends me to Skingrad to speak to the Count about something or other.

I decide to walk to Skingrad. I've done a lot of this walking instead of fast-travelling so far, and I enjoy it. Sometimes I prefer to fast-travel, but often I appreciate the scenery and sense of adventure that walking brings. Come to think of it, I used to have a unicorn, didn't I? I've no idea what happened to it.
As it turns out, the walk was well worth it. I encounter two bears, two trolls, and three imps on the way, and slaying them pushes me up to level 10! I intend to level up when I reach Skingrad, but first, there are some goblins milling around by a nearby cave... I think I'll take a look.

Hour 25: Troll Country

I return to Seridur's house to see if I can loot anything. The Order of Virtuous blood is now run by Roland Jenseric, and after speaking to him there he says I will be rewarded for killing vampires. In fact, he pays 250 septims for each Vampire! I've already killed quite a few so I sell the vampire dust to him and make about 2000 gold! He also gives me a ring worth thousands.

I decide to complete the quest to get Lex away from the Waterfront. It simply involves sneaking around a bit and stealing a staff from the Arcane University. Since I want to do the Mages Guild soon (I might even start it next) I am a bit dubious about this, but figure it's fine so long as I don't get caught.

Everything goes according to plan and soon Lex and his guards leave the Warerfront due to increased crime elsewhere in the city (and a threatening letter from the Arcane University, delivered by a Dremora - my first sighting of one). In order to collect my reward, I must journey back to Bravil and see Skri'vaa. I travel on foot to Bravil, as one of the Mages had previously told me that Hircine's Shrine is on the way there. First I clear out Fatback Cave, which is near the city. Afterwards, I find the shrine but am too low-level to do anything (I'm now level 9).

However, I stumble upon another cave near the Shrine, which is guarded by a ferocious troll. I think this is the first troll I've come across, and I'd say it's the scariest foe so far. It doesn't have a ton of health, but it is insanely fast both at moving and attacking, and its attacks do a lot of damage. Running backwards and blasting it with fireballs doesn't really work, as it's fast enough to keep attacking me as I back away (unlike, say, a Minotaur, which, although more resilient, is basically unable to hurt me as I can run backwards faster than it can run towards me).

I summon a zombie and blast fireballs at the troll, and although it rips the zombie apart with frightening ease, it is weakened enough to be brought down by a couple more fireballs.

Apologies for the poor picture quality (and lack of pictures in this post). In my new flat, unlike the old one, there is a tremendous amount of screen glare on the TV, making it almost impossible to take pictures during daytime, which is when I'm not playing. Come to think of it, I started this blog only about 9 months ago, but I was in my old flat, using my old phone to take pictures, playing on my old TV...)

I head inside the cave and kill some imps and a couple more trolls. Continuing onwards to Bravil, another troll lopes across the verdant hills to assail me. Either trolls don't appear before you reach level 9, or this particular area is just riddled with them. Regardless, I'm glad to now be fighting them, as they provide more of a challenge than most enemies.

Hour 24: The Vampire's Den

Ralsa directs me to see Seridur, who says he is the leader of a group of vampire-hunters called the Order of Virtuous Blood. I have a hunch he's.not all he seems to be, though, so after he asks me to kill a vampire for him I sneak back and break into his room to snoop around. I find no proof of anything untoward, except for some spell scrolls on his desk that appear to be for damaging spells, and a book about Daedra - perhaps a bit odd. However, he bursts into the room and whines at me "YOU'RE not supposed to BE in here!" in a very aggressive manner, which makes me even more suspicious.

Upon reaching my mark, the hapless fellow (it's Roland Jenseric! I broke into his cabin in Hour 3!) explains to me that he is a victim of Seridur's, who is actually a vampire using vampire-hunting as a cover, and who murdered his lover. The fiend! Seridur and his stupid hair will pay dearly.

After gathering some clues. I head to a cave where I believe Seridur to be hiding.

I don't like the look of it one bit. It seems to be full of an eerie glowing mist. It's also infested with vampires. They are powerful adversaries and I die at one point in the cave. However, with careful progression I manage to avoid taking on more than one vampire at a time, and one-on-one they're not much of a threat. Some of the more powerful vampires cast multiple spells, including heal, lightning, and summon ghost, which makes them quite a pain to destroy. For the most part, though, the 'zombie + cold touch' method works well against them. Being able to summon creatures themselves, you would think they'd know to ignore my zombie and go straight for me, but no. Their idiocy is a bit annoying, really.

At one point in he cave I encounter a Timber Wolf. Unlike the normal wolves in Oblivion, these things are large and actually look ferocious. I wish all the wolves looked like them.

Just before I reach Seridur, there is a disturbing fenced-off area with corpses suspended from the ceiling and on the floor:

It's especially noticeable because as you go up to it there is an increasingly loud buzzing of flies noise, which makes it all the more horrible. I haven't noticed anything like this is any caves before, so if it's just added for this side-quest that's a nice touch.

Seridur falls easily, and I return to the Imperial City to sell off my looted items, making a tidy profit.

Hour 23: Bravil and Back Again

The Oblivion bug has bitten me again after a long hiatus. As predicted, GTA5 was the primary reason for my initial lapse in Oblivion playing. I then discovered Dark Souls and am currently making tentative progress through the game. However, after multiple scorchings from the enormous red dragon, then battling through gangs of ninja-zombies and mutant dogs, only to be brutally dispatched by the horrifying Capra Demon, something in me yearned for a return to the comparatively brighter, happier world of Oblivion.

I can barely remember where I left off. Upon reloading, it takes me quite some time to get used to the controls again, and I have forgotten what spells etc I have. I head to Bravil whilst becoming reacquainted with Woodley Rhyme. I immediately feel happier strolling through the lush world of Cyrodiil rather than the woefully oppressive streets of the Undead Burg from Dark Souls.

This is more like it! I fast-travel to Bravil and am drafted in to help kick Hieronymus Lex out of the 

Waterfront District of the Imperial City. So back I must go - I decided to walk back in order to take in the landscape and immerse myself in the world once more. Perhaps I'll get into a few scrapes on the way too? Just as I am thinking how serene the countryside appears, I am attacked by three different animals simultaneously - a wild boar, a wolf, and a rat. I am surrounded and beaten down, and if I had not quickly retreated and healed myself would have been killed within seconds. Struggling to remember Woodley's abilities, I frantically summon a zombie and begin raining down fireballs. Eventually only the boar remains - but what a boar. This thing was hardier than an Ogre and chased me for some time across the countryside before I managed to get enough fireballs on-target to bring it down. Here it the corpse of the brute:

Nearing the a Imperial City, I happen upon a fort which I have not yet discovered. It's guarded by some human bandits, so I decide to head in. The bandits are 'Marauders' and provide a good challenge, but by this time I have remembered my tried and trusted tactic of summoning a zombie to engage in melee whilst I freeze them with cold touch from behind. I slaughter about ten before reaching the bandit lord, who falls almost as easily as the rest.

Upon entering the City, I am immediately accosted by a Dunmer female called Ralsa Norvalo who asks for my help. She says it's of the utmost importance so I decide to check out this side-quest. As she walks away I talk to her again to see if she has any more information, but she simply says:

Can't help me with anything else? How do you know? I haven't asked you anything yet. What if I just want to know what continent I'm on, or whether it's night or day? Still can't help me? Also, I have almost 3000 gold you know...