Hour 69: Strange Door

Okay, so I managed to pick up a copy of the GOTY edition on eBay for 99p, so I've decided to have a go at the Shivering Isles right away.

I head to the strange door in the Niben Bay and successfully traverse between realms, ending up in 'The Fringe'. Mortals gather here before they can enter into the Shivering Isle proper - in order to do so, they must either gain Sheogorath's blessing (go mad?) or defeat the enormous and deadly Gatekeeper, who has keys sewn into his body (?!). I talk to the townsfolk and eventually attack the Gatekeeper at midnight, when he is weakened (I can't be bothered to explain why he is weakened) and with the help of a villager who made arrows out of the bones of another Gatekeeper, which for some reason means they are more deadly to him (?). I kill the Gatekeeper and enter the realm of Mania.

If nothing else, I'm already hooked on this expansion due to the new enemies and locations it provides. Skinned Hounds, Grummites, Gnarls, and horrific insectoid beasts are among my assailants, and the world itself is completely different to that of Cyrodiil, with huge mushroom-trees twisting up towards a multicoloured sky. I climb to the top of a tall hill to see the view:

I'm a bit confused, because I'm sure I entered the realm of Mania, but after traipsing around for a while I have seen nothing but swamps and murky landscapes like the one above. Perhaps the realm of Dementia is even darker. I head towards the city on the other side of the island, New Sheoth, getting into a few scrapes along the way.

Hours 67 - 68: Now You See Me

After researching how to obtain a 100% chameleon outfit, I set about starting the main quest (!). I track down Joffre and then head into the Oblivion gate outside Kvatch. Immediately I am set upon by two horrifying Spider Daedra and have to quaff litres of potions just to stay alive. They have a very nasty lightning spell - a few hits from that and I'm on death's door - as well as the ability to heal themselves. This is the first fight in a long time which presents a real challenge.

I progress through the trippy plane of Oblivion. I'd forgotten how depressing this place is:

The landscape is scorched and full of lava, the sky is red and violent, and the majority of the combat takes place inside foreboding Mordor-esque towers full of horrible fleshy decor and heads on spikes. All of the daedra I come up against present something of a challenge. It's basically essential that I soften them up with a Weakness to Fire spell first before burning them - if I do this, they go down in two or three casts. Actually hitting them with the Weakness spell proves tricky, though, as I only have a ranged version, and many of the daedra are nimble and weave hither and thither. I can handle one daedra with ease, but when two or more come at me the fights get quite intense. It's nice to have some challenging combat, at any rate.

I battle my way to the top of the tallest tower and claim the Sigil Stone which will shut down the Oblivion gate. Oh Mehrunes Dagon, you fool! Had you simply stationed ten Spider Daedra, ten Daedroths, and ten Dremora Kynreeves in the chamber with the Sigil Stone, then neither I nor any of the NPCs in Cyrodiil would have a hope in hell of ever claiming the Sigil Stone. Instead, you stationed one Dremora Kynreeve in the chamber, whom I dispatched with ease.

Before claiming the stone, I save the game, as I want to make sure I get a stone with Chameleon as a passive effect. I then begin the real meat of the mission - endlessly reloading the game and reclaiming the stone after if it doesn't have the desired magical properties. I get very close to giving up as I have to reload the game over 20 times, but eventually the chameleon stone is mine!

I then proceed to 'clone' the stone using the scroll duping glitch. I had no idea this glitch existed and to be honest would probably prefer if it didn't, but now that I know it does, there's no way I'm going to spend hours trying to get my Illusion skill up to 75 when scroll duping will get me to 100% chameleon in under an hour. Sue me. I make several copies of the stone and am able to enchant the following items:

I subsequently enchant some trousers as well so that I can wear the Boots of Spring Heel Jak whilst invisible. It's pretty cool how your character actually appears 'invisible' on-screen if you view in 3rd person. I have never done this before, so my first act is to do what any decent person would do - I kill a town guard. 

The next hour is spent roaming around Cyrodiil, picking on defenseless Ogres and bears, and trying (and failing) to climb Castle Bravil and Castle Anvil with my super-high jumping skills. Now that I've obtained the chameleon suit so quickly (I forgot that you got a Sigil Stone so early on in the main quest) I feel like this is a natural point to stop, for now. I don't have (and have never played) The Shivering Isles, so I will probably order the GOTY edition in the near future and give that a go, but for now, I think I've had my fill of Oblivion. I've finally completed three of the guild questlines, a bunch of side missions, and got the chameleon suit. For now I am quite pleased with Woodley's adventures, and it's a testament to the game that it still feels like there's a lot more to do when I decide to return, even after 68 hours. I'd guess there's another 10+ hours of side-quests, and 10+ hours in The Shivering Isles, so I may get to 100 hours one day.

Hours 65 - 66: Heist

After stealing a few more items, I am granted one final quest by the Gray Fox: The Ultimate Heist. He wants me to steal an Elder Scroll, and my last few missions have been collecting items to help me. Basically, he has arranged an appointment for a respected statesperson to view the Elder Scroll in the Imperial Palace. Obviously that's not me, so I will have to break in, and the Gray Fox knows of a torturous route through the very bowels of the ancient ruins beneath the palace, that will lead me via a magic portal into the heart of the palace.

The route is impressively arduous and epic, and this quest probably takes me longer than any other one so far - a little over two hours, in fact. I begin by traversing the sewers before finding a hidden entrance to 'The Old Way', which leads to a huge Ayleid ruin teeming with undead. There are so many of them, including Wraiths which often Silence me or drain my Endurance so that I can't move, that I decide not to even fight any of them. Instead I make liberal use of my Turn Undead spell, and send them fleeing whenever they come near me.

I encounter a brand new type of enemy within these ruins - Nether Liches. One of them wields a lightning staff which frazzles me within seconds and forces me to reload a couple of times. My Turn Undead spell would not work on the Nether Liches. The dungeon crawl has a couple of puzzles and a lot of locked doors (maddeningly, I only had one lock pick, so I had to keep saving in front of every door in case I broke the lock pick. This added a lot of frustrating time to the mission). Finally, I shot a magical arrow at a... special magic thing? And it opened a magical door into the Imperial Palace...? But where would I end up?

Straight in the guard barracks! I managed to sneak through without waking any of them, and made it to the great library in the centre of the palace, staffed by blind monks like the ones I encountered in the Ancestor Moth temple.

Because they're blind, they don't realise I am not the guest they were expecting. They show me the Elder Scroll and I nab it. I think you are supposed to sneak away at this point, but I just make a run for it with the angry monks in hot pursuit. They are soon joined by hordes of Palace Guards and as I flee back into the sewers four Palace Guards actually follow me through. I manage to slay them all and make it out alive - just about.

Apparently the Boots of Spring Heel Jak are supposed to stop you from dying at one point when you fall from a great height during your escape (this destroys the boots) However I forgot to put them on and I didn't die, though it was close. This means I still have the boots, hooray!

I return to the Gray Fox and he uses the Elder Scroll to lift a curse placed on him by Nocturnal, which erased him from history. He returns to his wife, a Countess, and gives me his gray cowl, making me the de facto leader of the Thieves Guild, as when you wear the cowl it magically makes everyone think you are the Gray Fox. It's... it's a little confusing. But I have finally completed the Thieves Guild! This last quest was insane and awesome, and felt decidedly epic. Just the Fighters Guild left, but I don't think that's one for Woodley - maybe another character, another time. There's still some more I want to do in Oblivion now, though, including making a 100% Chameleon outfit, and exploring a bit more of the world. So it begins!

Hour 64: Springing to Action

My next quest for the Gray Fox requires me to steal some ancient magic boots - the Boots of Spring Heel Jak, a deceased lord. I break into an old mansion and terrify the lord living there into letting me into the decrepit and haunted cellars beneath his house, which lead to a system of underground catacombs bristling with vampires, skeletons, and zombies. I battle my through them with relative ease and reach Jak's tomb, but he (and the boots) are not there. It turns out Jak is still alive - he is the current lord of the manor, who is a vampire, and was just biding his time before (a bit of a silly twist really. I think there are maybe a few too many of these 'twists' in Oblivion). I return to the mansion to confront him, and slay him with ease.

The boots boost my Acrobatics by 50. I also crafted a spell earlier in the game which boosts my Acrobatics by 80 for a few seconds. With the boots and this spell, my Acrobatics is pushed to over 200 in total, and I am able to perform huge leaps, even leaping onto the roofs of some smaller buildings.

I mess around with my new-found agility for a while before determining to head back to the Arcane University to see if I can make an even better spell.

Unfortunately it turns out that the spells I really want to make, such as a better Acrobatics boost, or a Chameleon spell, require higher skill in certain magical disciplines. And currently, my repertoire of three fire-based spells combined with drain life seem to be working a treat anyway (a ranged spell which causes a weakness to fire, a Ranged fire+drain life spell, and a Touch fire+drain life spell).

Hour 63: Moths & Mages

I go to the Imperial City and 'wait', and before long a messenger arrives telling me to meet the Gray Fox! At last! He has a job for me which involves stealing a crystal from some blind monks. Shouldn't be too hard, right? As an aside, I really feel like Bethesda could have gone out of their way a little more to give the Gray Fox a unique voice actor. I mean they did it with Lucien Lachance. I think they must have wasted too much of their budget on Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart, when they could have had some more perfectly fine voice actors scattered throughout the game instead.

So, I head to the Temple of the Ancestor Moths again, that place I stumbled upon a while ago. There are monks there this time, and I manage to convince one of them to show me to some secret catacombs, after casting my Charm spell on him. After that, it's a fairly simple dungeon crawl to get the artefact. I square off against many cool-looking blindfolded kata-wielding monks, but they all fall relatively easily to my spells.

After I return to the Gray Fox, he thanks me and says he may have more work for me but that I'll be required to fence more stolen good first. Fortunately, I have already fenced so much that I fulfill the requirement immediately. I feel this is a broken mechanic which broke my immersion a little - it would have been nice to have to actually complete some more Independent Thievery. My next mission involves stealing a special arrow from the Bravil court wizard. This quest is pretty involved and has me snooping around in the castle before finding a secret passageway to a tower out in the countryside. Part of the passageway is underwater and I have to defeat a Giant Slaughterfish - a pretty scary fight. The next part of the pathway is so well hidden underwater that for the first time so far I have to actually take to Youtube to find out where to go.

After battling my way through the labyrinthine 'Wizard's Grotto' to reach his secluded tower, and slaying numerous mages and Daedra, the wizard, above, who sports a neat set of ebony armour, is uninterested in me and is tinkering with some potions. I steal the arrow from under his nose and leave without so much as a peep from him. I return to the Gray Fox and must wait again for my next mission (the broken fencing mechanic kicks in again).

During this mission I leveled up for the first time in what feels like forever. I think I just haven't been doing much fighting over the last 10 hours, what with all the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quests. I am now level 18, so it's as good a place as any to take stock and have a look at my stats again:

    

Hour 62: Vexing Lex

My next quest for the Thieves Guild requires me to get rid of the pesky Heironymous Lex once and for all. Not with bloodshed, of course, but with subterfuge. It's an epic quest which takes up a full hour and really showcases the diversity of Oblivion's quests. Unlike some other more recent Bethesda games, many of the quests (especially in the Thieves Guild) have no fighting at all, and are essentially just a story where you have to talk to various characters and go to various locations. There's usually a few different ways of completing them and many people to speak to along the way.

First of all I have to steal a letter intended for the countess of Anvil, which recommends a new guard captain for her. Lex is not in the running, but I need to change that.

I don't think I've been to Castle Anvil before. The courtyard, above, is probably my favourite place in Cyrodiil. Nay, Tamriel even! I especially liked it in the evening but couldn't get a good picture there due to screen glare, so I went back during the daytime to get a picture. The screen glare is still there unfortunately but it's not as bad due to the brighter on-screen colours.

I steal the recommendation letter, which she hasn't seen yet, from the castle, with the help of a blacksmith traitor working for us. I then find a master forger living in an abandoned shack in Anvil, and he agrees to forge the letter for a good bit of gold. He says it will take him a day, and it's little touches like this which really flesh out a lot of Oblivion's quests. Of course, I could just 'wait' 24 hours and go back to him, but the set-up sort of prompts you to go off and do some other things rather than just pressing 'wait' - it feels more natural and a nice jumping-off point to get other matters sorted. I remember I am low on lockpicks so I head off to the Imperial City to find Shady Sam, who sells them. Along the way I speak to the stablehands at the Imperial City stable and they both complain about losing all their horses. However, the stable seems to be fully stocked with horses - an oversight, perhaps? An abandoned side-quest that Bethesda forgot about?

I return to Anvil and get the forged letter, which now highly recommends Lex. This quest has already been more involved and interesting than practically any of the quests in Skyrim, but it goes one further still. The letter must be sealed with the official imperial seal - so I head back to the Imperial City and infiltrate a guards' office there, and use one of their stamps to seal it. I am seen by a guard and chased out, but I find Armande Christophe in the Waterfront District and pay off my fines and bounty.

Finally, I head back to Anvil and deliver the letter to the Countess. She assumes I'm a courier (even though I'M THE ARCHMAGE -_-) and thanks me, asking me to deliver the news to Lex myself. Altogether a fairly involved and satisfying quest, with no combat whatsoever, and a good bit of travelling round between two cities.

After returning to Bravil to inform Skriiva of my success, she tells me I should expect to be contacted by the Gray Fox soon. Awesome!

Hour 61: Thief Is Me

Before I can get any more Thieves Guild missions I have to some more 'independent thievery', and steal at least 400 gold worth of items. I'm already in Cheydinhal, so I take a look around and decide to break into a house called Riverview. It's the early hours of the morning but a servant is up and about. He asks me to leave but I ignore him and rush upstairs - he doesn't follow me! There's a man, presumably the lord of the manor, asleep in bed, but it seems I've struck gold because all around his room, and elsewhere upstairs, there are Skooma bottles strewn everywhere. Each one is worth 75 gold, and I snatch up about ten of them. Before leaving, I break into the basement just to take a look around, only to find filthy bunks full of people in rags! No more Skooma, but they do have this shepherds pie on the table:

I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any shepherds pie anywhere else! Not wanting to outstay my welcome, I head out again, and as I know the Skooma won't actually fetch 75 gold on the black market, I decide I had better steal some more things. I break into an armour shop and steal several helmets, gauntlets and shields, then head to Bravil to sell the stolen wares on to a fence.

My plan worked and I easily had enough to sell to advance with the missions. Skriva tells me that the Gray Fox is looking for a particular rare book, but that the thief who stole it hasn't been seen since he disappeared in Skingrad. I head there and learn that he was caught and imprisoned in the castle dungeons! I learn this from a beggar in Skingrad (beggars serve as the eyes and ears of the Thieves Guild. Hooray for stereotypes...).

The beggar glitch in Oblivion is well known (all the beggars have frail and decrepit 'common' accents when asking for money, but if you ask them about 'Rumours' then they switch to a completely different voice and become very well-spoken), but this instance is particularly hilarious: the beggar says the first half of the information in his normal beggar voice, then switches to the posh 'guard voice' for the entire second half:

This can't be a glitch at all, since those lines of text were only ever going to be said by a beggar, so there would have been no need to record them in a different voice. Therefore it must have been deliberate, so perhaps the other beggar 'glitches' aren't really glitches at all either!

For the record, I would probably prefer it if there were no actual voices, as that way they could add tons more dialogue options and you wouldn't actually lose anything from the game. At least in Oblivion your character doesn't speak, which something that completely ruined Fallout 4 for me. God, why did they make the character speak in Fallout 4?! What a dreadful, wrong-headed, immersion-destroying decision!

I manage to gain access to the castle dungeons by accepting a job delivering food to the prisoners. A great little touch is that after accepting the job, the castle guards start being horrible to me and say things like 'out of the way, slop drudge!'. It turns out the thief was killed by a vampire who feasts on the prisoners (I presume this is connected to the Count in some way) but his cellmate learned of the location of the book, and tells me after I free him.

All in all this was a great quest - it took some time to do, involved a bit of role-playing and some interesting conversations, and Castle Skingrad itself feels huge and realistic to explore.