Hello! First post! Having played Morrowind about a year ago, I started Oblivion for the first time 3 days ago. I bought oblivion about 2 years ago but I never found the time to play it.

First of all, the scenery...OMG...I wandered into a Daedric tomb [ayelid tomb???] and killed some imps. Everything is so much more photolike than in Morrowind. That and I have a pretty average PC: medium quality recommended but I am running it on high quaility with some slight framerate lag [latest NVDIA driver - that one that came out a month ago, 3GB of RAM with duo core but a low-end graphics card [nvidia GEFORCE 7300 GS] . But even so it's one pretty landscape.

So, having got to level 4, my main point is this: how long do people play Oblivion for without looking up any spoilers, hints, etc? I have played to level 4 totally blind. All I know is what the skills are and that's it. I know where to get info; it is my choice to play blind. I have to say that I have found it easier to work out than Morrowind, in terms of game mechanics like how to cast a spell. I don't think that Morrowind experience helped; they are different games ikn so many ways. I'm in two minds about it. On the one hand I like the element of surprise playing blind. I have managed to complete the first bit of the main quest without looking up where Jauffre was. I get a lot more satisfaction from that. Yet it also takes more time and with the levelling system I may well get to a stage where my character stats do not match those of the monsters. Interestingly, I have coped quite well in combat. I have only died once with my mage to level 4. That's a lot better than I did in Morrowind.

So, playing blind? Do people do it? When do people give up and look a few things up? :rolleyes:

Has anyone played blind and beaten the game? [Please be honest!!!]

It is something that I regret from Morrowind: I looked up so much stuff before I played. I was left with no real surprise.

In any case Oblivion is an awesome game. I have the Vanilla version. So I have no knights of the 9 or DLC or patch or mods.

Thank you

I'm irritated because I didn't didn't play blind, and so there were no surprises for me. However, if WHEN TES IV comes out, I will most definitly play blind, as hopefully that will increase the whole experience for me.

Oblivion is pretty straight forward, in most cases. There's hardly any quests that you really can't figure out without thinking about it long and hard or looking it up. Mostly it's "follow this arrow there and do that", which is pretty simple and you don't get stuck. Unlike what happens sometimes in Morrowind, things are relatively easy to find. So in that sense, not looking ahead and reading quest spoilers works with Oblivion. You don't really have to look things up, at least I never really had to.

The only problem is that if you run into a bug, you might not recognize it. Or, if you had read the quest info beforehand, you could have avoided the bug. So, it's a two-edged sword really. I'd say play without looking ahead for as long as you can, but if you run into something that really feels like it's not right, check and make sure it's not a bug. You can, for example, skip straight to the Bugs-section while reading in the UESPWiki, so you don't spoil things for youself too badly.

I wish I could go back and do things without reading ahead...

I would say that understanding how leveling works won't spoil the game, and can avoid getting into trouble by doing so too fast and letting the enemies strengthen faster than the Player. There may be other parts of the game mechanics that would benefit from a "missing manual" - like casting faster when blocking - things that may be in the game's booklet but are obscure enough to be overlooked. Doing the quests without a walkthrough is much better, but eventually you'll need a reference for what you never found at all.

Thanks for the thoughts!

I will play blind until I get stuck on a quest. I will probably look up some gameplay hints at some point.

But I will try to play blind for as long as I can!

As much as they can be compared I like Oblivion better than Morrowind. So many things work better. Some spells that were useless in MW are so useful in Oblivion.

Keep so.I do not think there are many plots with twists.

HOWEVER... Save regularly! have a file for whe you begin a quest and do not touch this file. Use others for saving, etc... There are a few bugs that can annoy some quests but AFAIK they are not that many nor that serious.

EDIT: In answer to your question, I played blind till level 6-8, I do not remmeber. Then I looked up some quests on the wiki, for the purpose of knowing which quests would grant me akills / attribute boni, so I could leave those for later (so as to go above 100). Then I kinda screwed up the game and read loads of stuff from the wiki....

I played blind up until I beat the main quest. After which I played mostly blind unless I ran out of quests or wanted to make sure there wasn't a quest I was missing from such town.

I understand and completely respect the draw of playing blind. It sounds like you would enjoy doing that, so I recommend it.

We're all different of course, and I don't work that way. I will fret and worry that I am missing something if I play blind - and therefore dislike the experience quite a bit. I find if I know what to look for and what I am getting into, I can relax and really savor the experience much more fully. Sounds odd, but I've tried both ways enough to know I will never play a new game blind. Knowing 'what's out there' doesn't detract from things a bit for me. One upside of this is that I get right into a game and play it for years. I have been playing Oblivion daily for 3 years and don't care if it is another 3 years before I move on. Call me wierd but happy.

I've never looked anything up. Not while I was playing anyway. Reading a walkthrough is like hearing somebody spoil the ending to a movie. I don't want to know.

I've looked things up in order to answer people's questions on this forum, though. And I'm often surprised at all of the things in this game I haven't seen. I love that. It means there's still stuff I haven't done.

I actually never want to feel that I've seen and done everything in the game. I always want to feel I have new things to look forward to.

I do and i don't play blind. it depends. I have two kinds of characters. First, my main character, Dirge, I envisioned a particular role and career and intend to see it through like i am writing a story. So, in his case i tend to look up spoilers and whatnaught so I have reasonable control over turn of fate in his story/life. I should say that he is only playing a couple of questlines through, so that leaves plenty of uncharted waters for my other characters.

For most of my other characters, i only had a loose idea of their character traits when i created them and virtually no idea of what their story/fates would be. So in those cases i role play more like a role playing game than a story. I don't look up spoilers and just play through, come what may. Of the two styles of play, i usually find this later to be more fun, with the exception of buggy/gamey/glitches that catch me by surprise because i failed to read up on it.

I played the game with three separate characters (did it all) until I came to these forums. And I still find new stuff.... different playthroughs tend to yield new things I haven't seen. I say, play blind as long as you can. It's quite fulfilling figuring things out on your own. I was stuck on one quest for one month irl.... I worked it out though. Stick to General Forum, never go to the Cheats/Spoilers Section. Never look at the wiki. At least for a good long while.

Going on my 1,900'th hour and still haven't looked up spoilers.

Maybe when I win, I'll look them up as a reward.

May I ask, have you run into any situations (glitches / bugs) that ruined any quests?

I first started reading up on quests before doing them after I made the mistake of starting the TG without the unofficial patch. Wish I hadn't done that.

Only two. And those were with the pre-GOTY version. Harlun's Watch for the FG and curing vampirism for the 360. But since I'm a saveaholic, especially with Bethesda games..... it was good.

When I started playing Morrowind my brother from another mother had been playing it for 2 years before I even got it and by two years I mean he was playing at least a few times a week. He would give me tips or hints but never any spoilers. After he moved I'd look up about stuff that I'd already done or if I'm absolutely puzzled but I try to avoid stuff that I don't know which is still a lot even after 3-4 years of playing but sometimes it offers clues of where to head off to next to find something new.
Oblivion I tend to do the same with.

This. I suppose this could be classified as OCD, but I need to know how every game mechanic works. If I don't understand the leveled lists, I go to the wiki. If I want to know something about respawns, I go to the wiki. And the same is even more true when it comes to quests. I want to make sure that I'm not missing anything. So no, I don't play blind. But I'm going to try to avoid the wiki as much as possible when TES V comes out.

Am I the only person who initially thought that, after reading the title, this thread was going to be about blindfolding yourself and seeing how far you could make it?

:rofl:

That was my first thought.
Second was someone might be role playing one of those moth priests.

I'm willing to believe that, in order to think this, you:

- spent a 'happy' 40 hrs office crisis-dealing;
- drank 10 lt of bitter black turkish offee during that ime;
- ate nothing less than 8 Ultimate Cheesburgers;
- smoked 9 packs of cigarettes "Palhinha da boa";
- drank 2 bottles of whiskey after arriving home;
- noticed you entered your neighbour's home, an alcoholic ex-jiu-jitsu champion, who chase you 3 blocks before XXX you to the ground;
- limped all the way to your *right* home;
- got undue credit charges of $ 18,000, expired 2 weeks ago;

Then thought that.

I played blind the first time through. High five. After that run, though, I went wild with the UESP.