Uhm?

Anyway, I sort of wonder what difference it makes to have 50.000 or 500.000 gold in the game? Money is only of strategic importance in the beginning of the game - after that you tend to swim in money no matter what you do as there's not so much you can spend it on. I only spend money on Frostcrag upgrades, Spells and Enchantments. And Vilja, of course... So if seen as cheating regarding this, it doesn't make much difference past the first couple of levels as you have enough money for what's necessary with or without a filled Bag of Holding.

But then I'm combat oriented, so it's basically combat I'm focused on to have as free of cheats or cheap tricks as possible.

To me it is not cheating, just a magical bag in a magical world... not worse than a spell that can open a lock, or a ring that reflect damage.

Well cheating is by definition finding a way to break rules, or gain an unfair advantage over others. When you break beths rules on encumberance you are cheating. But yeah who cares, it's not a multiplayer game where other people get hurt by you cheating.

And yeah ark, it is of course the early levels money matters, I have had numerous times when i could not afford repair hammers and would have to ditch armor i wanted to keep just so i could equip working armor from npcs. And spells i could not afford until when my skills got high enough. I like to make different characters so i don't play my characters till max level, which means most of my playtime is at low levels. When i reach level 20 i don't see much point continuing.

So yeah i never really get very rich, that why i have at times cheated just so i can see all the houses and stuff fully furnished.

Hey, someone else who is like me regarding this. I'm also a masochistic fan of the lower levels, when you have to scramble money for a spell, can be killed in one hit etc. I tend to lose interest around Lvl 20 as well.

If using OOO/FCOM and the original Bag of Holding, it's actually quite hard to obtain until Lvl 10 or something like that normally, so that works out well.

Yeah, you're right, that would be a problem. So what could the 4th quintile be?

25% "No effect" seems a bit boring. But I guess since it is Bad, Bad, Good, maybe Null or relatively null wouldn't be a bad idea?

Heh, these proposed changes are simple enough, it is almost making me want to learn enough about modding to implement it.

War Summons. It's a spell that summons a weird looking chest (one of those daedric flesh bag things on stilts).

Yes, I checked up later on your page. Nice mods, although pink-haired Dremoras... Hmm...

What I find tedious is clearing areas of all loot. Oblivion's an interesting game lootwise, because there is so much junk and clutter. Having grown up on older rpgs, I began playing Oblivion the same way: loot everything! But older rpgs tended for the most part to only place as loot items that were valuable/necessary. In Oblivion, the junk/clutter/common items are simply not essential. So, I have learned to pick and choose.

For instance, I craft armor and arrows with MMM, so I am constantly on the lookout for metal tableware and feathers. Heavy items, like maces and longswords, are hardly ever worth picking up because of the encumberance issues, and because of the "space" they take up in my limited inventory. I mostly keep an eye out for enchanted daggers, boots, rings and other valuable but lightweight items to sell. No more lugging around 15 green velvet outfits!

Even with my current less punishing mod setup that allows me to progress at a reasonable pace given my limited gaming time, I still do not use bag of holding - mainly because having it increases the tedium for me rather than relieving it.

gothemasticator

On my last game, I used a similar mod. My char was a "hidden elf" from RBP. She didn't enter towns at all, and didn't interact with people unless she had to, therefore she didn't sell loot. If she found something she liked, she took it; however she was only able to access her bags at a campsite. This was to try to mimic a non-respawning world. I had a lot of fun with that game, as it was very freeing to have all of her belongings with her, albeit not much.

As an aside, she was happy to discover that gold could be "melted down" to create spells with LAME. Fun! That's when she started taking gold she found.

I don't consider it a cheat, and I think everyone should do what they please to make their games fun for themselves. If something is taking your fun away, it's time to think it through, or rethink it.

This is an interesting topic. We have a bag of holding that allows one to store in infinite amount of stuff that adds no encumbrance. I can see the argument for cheating and not cheating.

Cheating:
1. Goes against the limit of weight placed on the player.
2. Allows stuff to be stored potentially unbalancing the game.
3. Makes it so you can get those 10 suits of armor and weapons back to a merchant with only 1 trip.

Not-cheating:
1. With a lack of good loot parties including mules, horses, wagons, and squires to do the work for you then the bag is a good substitute.
2. It reduces the tedium of going back and forth to take loot to sell.
3. The game rewards hoarding to some degree.

Okay, now I think the bag could be improved. It seems like there are a lot of magic items that can be used with no drawbacks. Every player seems to be able to use magic items as well. It seems to me that should not be the case. With the bag you could have some fun with it. Make it so that it requires high magic skills to prevent side effects from using.
1. Alteration - have the potential for losing items if this is not high enough. Also reduce holding ratio for low alteration skill.
2. Destruction - high destruction prevents damage to damagable items when adding removing items.
3. Mysticism - prevents losing souls out of soul gems when added.

Anyway, you get the idea. Make there be some drawbacks to items with no much power in them. A good example to me for improvement is Umbra. Once you get the sword there should be some serious game play changes. Even have the sword make the wielder go crazy to satisfy it's need for souls.

Yes to all. It is handy to have along to get all the enchanted heavy armors, but at the same time it does feel like cheating. Though in the end it only enables you to become the richest person in Cyrodiil a bit faster :hehe:

I've concluded that it is NOT cheating, it is only time saving. Even if you fill the thing with 10s of thousands of encumbrance points, if you do not routinely open it to change out gear during combat, it does not really allow you to do anything you cannot do at the cost of much tedium and carpal tunnel syndrome without it. As someone already pointed out: if I want to clear an entire dungeon of stuff, I can do that without the BOH. The only difference is that I have to go back and forth to do it. One could start to argue that having to make the trips back and forth exposes the character to additional hazards from random encounters along the way, and thus the BOH is a breach of the original game design. But that is not true. Fast travel also allows the player to avoid hazards and that is a part of the original game design.

Thanks for your responses. This has been a very cathartic thread for me, and I will now play with my bag with impunity.

Interesting topic indeed and it looks like demolishun is is onto something with expanding the mod to make it feel less like a guilty pleasure. I was thinking it would be neat if there was a limit on the number of items, maybe even increasing with alteration skill. 5-25 can put three items in it, then four then five then six items as master, or something.

I suppose one could always impose their own personal rules to something like this, but the temptation would still be there. It all comes down to how the player wants to play the game, if they are shooting for "hardcoe" realism, this will definitely feel like a cheat. If they are just looking to play the fantasy, then perhaps it's not.