I would save it because its not very appealing

but who knows... you might like it OR

want to get it over with... idk lol

I am a firm believer in delaying the Main Quest in Oblivion. There are several reasons:

1. Realism and immersion. It doesn't make any sense for a low level character that just crawled out of the sewers to be successful in the Main Quest. Much more realistic to do the MQ after becoming experienced, and maybe after becoming the lead for one or more guilds,
2. There is a change to the world soon after dropping off the amulet (ie after Kvatch). And from a role play perspective I recommend experiencing Cyrodiil before that change. (However no NPCs are killed that would prevent you from doing a quest).
3. The best rewards in the Main Quest are at higher levels.

So I highly recommend deferring the main quest until you complete at least one Guild questline. And maybe get to around level 25 or 30.

I disagree. The emperor is murdered before your very eyes, and you're given an amulet containing the very souls of all of the Septim emperors, an amulet from Akatosh himself. The emperor warns you of a very real threat from the Prince of Destruction and the 'jaws of oblivion' ... And you're happy to just sit idly by?

Yeah, but:

Yo, I just got outta prison, get me the hell away from authority. Do YOU a favor? Uh no, sorry guys, I'm not going on a mission for you, even if I did get out of jail.... Big threat to our world? I'm just a prisoner.... I'm sure someone somewhere knows how to deal with THAT mess.... it's not me though, I'm sure of it. Now where's the nearest tavern? Let's celebrate getting out of jail for free!

This is how most of my characters handle it as well. I tend to gravitate towards fairly cranky, anti-authoritarian characters and they tend to take a "Hey, this is your problem, not mine" attitude.

That applies for the characters that even go through the tutorial. Most of my characters use an alternate start mod to side-step the whole ugly mess.

From a role-playing aspect I'd think it makes the most sense to deliver the amulet ASAP, as it does nothing for me, and it's a potential magnet for trouble. Let that Jauffre guy worry about it, not me.

Whether I get involved in Martin's problems is another matter. If he's going to ask me to do anything scary, I'd want some training in the Fighters or Mages Guilds first, or even learn a bit of Stealth from the "other organizations" before taking it on. Or not, if I'm rp'ing a naive young adventurer who doesn't realize what he/she's got into. As said above, that's the choice that spawns the gates, so drop off the amulet and decide later.

I use an alternate start, too, but for those who don't, the same thing can be accomplished by starting new characters from a generic save at the tutorial exit. Just ignore the amulet in your inventory. Maybe the character just ducked into the sewer entrance to get out of the rain.

I came to this conclusion while attempting the MQ with my wizard character. He happened to be a materialistic sort, and with a very big ego. It not only made sense to him to close a larger amount of gates to keep the roads safe, he also did it for the money.

As a kind of "counterpoint" to the "do it late" idea, I'd like to quote something you posted in another thread:

It's a buggy game. "Do it late" means greater rewards, but it might also mean "do it never."

If Jauffre was a gentleman, he would take one look at my tiny elf, hand her 100 Septims and say, “Thank you, young lady for bringing this to me. The Blades will take it from here.” But nooooo – he’s a jerk who gives her the third degree resulting in her slamming the amulet on his desk and storming out of his office. Either path leads to the same point of completing her obligation.

At some point, she might encounter a valiant Legion captain standing with his force of defenders against an Oblivion Gate who commands, “Stand back, citizen!” Her response would of course be, “Yes sir.” She might even call him a hero and gently touch his face before leaving.

It might take quite some time before she realizes that both the Blades and the Legion seem to be at a standstill. At that point perhaps the tiny elf feels the memory of that valiant captain tugging at her heart. . . . Only then might she consider the unthinkable, and begin to hone her skills accordingly. . . .

I'd amend this to read "...makes the most sense for some characters."

I don't think of roleplaying as a "one-size-fits-all" approaching to gaming. I approach roleplying on a character-by-character basis. I change my gaming rules to fit my character; I don't make characters fit my set of rules. In my philosophy of roleplaying, what might make roleplaying sense while playing one character might not make any roleplaying sense at all while playing another character.





That's a good appraoch, too. I'm reminded of something someone (I forget who) said in this forum years ago. They said they roleplayed that the encounter with the Emperor was just a dream. The act of finalizing the character at the gate and stepping out into the world was actually waking up from a dream. I thought that was pretty clever.

This is true. When I started the Grey Wizard, I had already experienced the A-bomb twice. I figured I had at least 150 to 200 hours of non-MQ gameplay (which is still quite a lot) before he'd have to hunker down and finally start the MQ.

I've never been hit by the A-bomb (although I suspect that Fortja, at something over 300 hours, was close to it.) I never play a single character to high enough hours to worry about it.

I've only done the MQ at fairly low levels, simply because the characters who would do it at all are the ones who would take it seriously. "The Emperor needs me; I can't let him down!" Kara Whey just finished it at Level 11. I think Fortja was level 2, although she may have turned 3 before the conclusion.

I have the advantage of mods, though. Kara Whey has stashed away more than a dozen nice sigil stones, and she has the benefit of the Quest Award Leveler, which will max them out if she waits to level 17 to use them.

I often wonder, when people wait until high level before doing anything, to maximize the rewards: What are they doing until they get to that high level? I'd rather play, I guess.

My characters who actually deliver the Amulet usually listen to the concerns of those around them (Oblivion gates are opening RIGHT NOW!), take a walk outside, take another walk, and another, and eventually come to the conclusion that whatever happened in Kvatch ain't happening in the rest of Cyrodiil. They therefore blow the entire messy-sounding situation off with a virtual set of shrugs, and move on to things that seem more pressing.

My only character who pretty much immediately got concerned with an urgent-sounding questline was Dyan phor a'Cauz. She never did the Main Quest (why? since The Grey Wizard seems to have that covered) but instead immediately got involved with Knights of the Nine. I remember just after she arrived in Chorrol for the first time she wound up hearing about the mess in Anvil. She spent that night in Chorrol, but the very next day went on to Anvil and then immediately started looking for Wayshrines.

I guess that could work. Your character could assume that the entire oblivion gate thing was a personal attack on the Emperor and his heirs, not on the empire. Kvatch is destroyed, so the heir must be dead, so it's too late to do anything about it now...

Yeah, I get into what the character thinks about it. People are always thinking and rationalizing about what they do. In real life, people lie awake at night, worrying about some stupid detail they might have forgotten to deal with at work yesterday. When the highest-ranking Bozo in the world is assassinated in front of you, and hands you an enormous jewel, it just might get you to thinking...

Well said, glargg. Even with my very first extended character builds , I made it a priority to deliver the Amulet (with Lady Anne and later Renee Gade 1) but didn't follow through from there. Even before I really knew what the MQ was about, I simply decided not to go to Kvatch immediately. I wasn't roleplaying at the time, it didn't occur to me to RP, yet. I had forgotten what roleplaying actually was, you see. So back then, my rationale was to blow off Kvatch because I wanted it to be one of the last things I did. It sounded like the MQ would take a long time, and so I wanted to start off with a few easier, shorter quests first.

But with Igodah Go^Pe and The Grey Wizard, they both didn't get involved with Kvatch immediately because they simply didn't see an immediate reason to do so.

One character delivered the Amulet because it was tied around his neck... he was instructed that guards would ask about it... and this would be the last task, because, he WAS getting out for free...... so do this last thing and walk away, end of story. That was a good segueway. But I find them hard to come by, beyond the first do-everything character.

That is an excellent synopsis of your fanfiction novel. Too bad there isn't room here to describe Buffy's triumphs and travails. I'm sure someone who is interested could learn more from the link in your signature.

Severus did the MQ at around level 50. Everybody died including Severus who died in the streets of the Imperial City in the very last battle of the MQ. He could have lived but his cynicism and a vow he had taken earlier cost him his life. He was a rare exception to my dead-is-dead style of game play. I reloaded him and since he had died, his character flaws were no longer a limitation. He blew through the Daedra to a well deserved victory. I never reloaded him again.

Sarrah liked hunting in the Oblivion planes, and never completed the main quest. Sometimes she would clear out an Oblivion plane and leave the stone so she could come back after everything regenerated.

Angel has no plans to complete the MQ but she has begun hunting the Dremora that killed Sarrah.

My main character, Baa, took the amulet to Jauffre at Level 4 because she got tired of carrying it around. Then she went to Kvatch to check it out, but did nothing. At Level 8 she closed the Kvatch gate. At Level 10 she took Martin to Cloud Ruler Temple and did nothing on the Main Quest after that. That was four years ago and I don’t remember why she delayed it that way.

Now, four years later, at an old Level 51, she has restarted the Main Quest by going to see Baurus at Luther’s Boarding House. As of now, she has closed 50 Oblivion Gates and the gold is accumulating rapidly from all that loot, pushing her stash to over 14 million gp. She has all the proper trinkets to give to Martin, and has had them for years, but she is holding back until she closes the rest of the gates - up to #59 - the first Bruma Gate.

Having played a lot of characters, and finishing the Main Quest once, it seems to me that it is better to delay the Main Quest. After all, it wasn’t as if Baa was doing nothing for those four years, she was having a ball doing what she wanted to do. She occasionally closed a gate or two for a Sigil Stone, but she mostly just killed off the critters around the gates for some loot.

Baa is a stealth archer who wears no armor, only some shield enchanted jewelry. She likes the challenge of killing all those high level dudes inside Oblivion Worlds with her enchanted bows and poisoned arrows. I would guess that she kills 80 to 90 percent of them without any sort of ruckus occurring. You can’t do that with a low level character. There’s an edge there that she likes; can she get away with that shot without ruffling the feathers of that other guy, or does she need to wait another minute or two for them to separate more? Does she take a shot at the X man three levels up and take a chance on just wounding him, or does she wait until she gets up there with him to kill him?

Baa has closed Oblivion Gates at low levels and at high levels. She thinks the ones at high levels are the best.

Hmmm...I don't know. I think both my characters who did the MQ were Level 7 or 8 at the time. In their case, both of these characters were mages, and rather enjoyed the battles they faced behind each Oblivon gate. In other words, they would often use low or mid-level spells on the enemies they faced because this makes each battle last longer than it normally would. Plus, it saves Magicka.

They could have just used a 70 point lightning bolt, or a summoned daedroth to take down their enemies, and thereby get to the Sigil Stone more quickly, and in some cases they did just employ these more advanced magics. But they'd usually summon a scamp perhaps, or Control one of the daedra (turning it against its friends) instead. Go invisible and throw a weaker lightning bolt, perhaps. Extended battles usually amuse me and my characters more than quicker ones.

...how much money I'm gonna make when I sell this bling?

My vote...start it early, and spread it out. It took me nearly 500 hours on my previous character to finish the main quest - but that's because I only played it as the character was "in the area", rather than actively pursuing it.

Tried that. The merchants all pretended that they couldn't see it, and the fences all ran for the, uh, fences.

I think it′s like waltzing into some store trying to sell a genuine Mona Lisa. No one is gonna buy obvious stolen goods ya know

Heh, good point. Not even the Gray Fox is THAT good of a fence.