I started playing Oblivion and I'm enjoying it a lot so far (about 30 hrs of playing right now). There's a thing I'd like to know concerning dungeons. I "completed" only a few of them (I think 3 or 4) and inside one of these I encountered a npc carrying a quest related weapon. I was really glad to find such a thing, but I also read on UESPwiki that there are very few unique objects to find in dungeons. Is this true? What's the incentive in trying to complete all dungeons apart from hoping to find good levelled gear to wear/sell? I repeated a single fort three times, finding good armors to sell at lv11. Does each dungeon of the same type give the same levelled objects?

All this "nagging", in short, only to know if it's really worth my while going through all dungeons or it's better focusing on quests and going into dungoens only when I need money or I'm in the mood for it. Thanks in advance for the answers. And anyway, OB is a great game (and I think few MW fans like me would say such a thing! ).

Play at your own pace. Dungeons , farming as you are your probrably getting good loot and most quest rewards don't add up in money value anyway.

Also you probrably have Umbra, its a sword right? Nice little piece you got there I bet. Its all really randomly generated from my experience. Sometimes its armor, arrows, tomes, or potions.

Dungeons aren't really something to be "completed," they're just different areas to explore. Some of them are related to quests, meaning you'll be sent to find an item or NPC or do something else specific, while a few contain their own quests to discover.

Loot in the game is drawn from loot lists, and will appear almost anywhere in the game, inside dungeons and outside of them. The lists are leveled, which means you'll receive certain items based on your character's level. Most all loot is randomly generated too, so you won't always be finding the same things every time you open a chest or clear out a dungeon.

Dungeons are a good place to find a lot of enemies grouped together in a confined space, so yeah, they're really good for finding a bunch of loot to sell, and sometimes something really useful. Most things in the game respawn after 72 hours, so after you go through a dungeon, you can wait three days and go through it again.

All dungeons will drop the same items.....the items dropped are randomly generated from lists...which are effected by your level.....aka....common kinds of stuff are everywhere at the start....rare items are in everything by level 30 (you'll rarley see something like a dwarven weapon at higher levels)

There are a few (as in less then 10) that might have a single unique items in them...but the itesm are rarely any good and are much outclassed by other item you'll find in random loot. Other then in quests, there is next to no incentive to go dungeon diving.

This and scalling enemies are the two major gripes with oblivion.

Actually I found Rockshatter, and I've been carrying it for a while. As a spellsword however, it's not much of use like blade weapons for me at the moment.

So there aren't a lot of unique artifacts to discover as in MW, just to make a comparison. But dungeons will be usefull for other purposes.



This is what I feared and wanted to actually know. Yeah I'm a bit disappointed, to say the truth.

Not to give anything away, but Rockshatter is a quest item that you will need for a quest later on....less unique item and more quest fetch item....thats pretty much what any static loot is in the game, it will be related to a quest.

Yeah I know about Rockshatter, and I think I've already "seen" the npc related to that quest but totally forgot about it at that time.

Although the almost complete randomization is annoying, the different dungeons do have different loot depending on the nature of the dungeon itself. Same with the denizens in it, of course. For example, on fort might be classified by the game as a "mystic" lair and only have various mystical creatures, plus loot associated with such creatures. A bandit lair has different denizen lists and loot lists.

Of course, there are crossovers between the different lists, too.

My character loves dungeon crawling. For her, it is the thrill of the hunt - what she really loves is that if you leave a dungeon, a few days later more baddies move in for her to hunt again!

She doesn't care about the loot at all. In fact about the only thing she picks up in dungeons are actual gold coins to fill her purse and arrows to fill her quiver.

I'm one. I cut my teeth on Morrowind, played and modded the heck out of it for years. I don't even want to know how many hours I've spent on Morrowind, and I loved every minute of it.

But Oblivion is my game now. I still play Morrowind, but my love now is Oblivion. It kind of surprises me to say this but Oblivion is my favorite video game.




You know, the longer I play this game the less I find myself playing quests and the more I find myself roaming around the countryside and dungeon crawling. My most recent games have consisted of almost nothing but dungeon-hopping, with an occasional quest thrown in here or there. Nowadays I enjoy making my own fun.

Making my own fun and arguing with my characters about where to go and what to do next and what not to do and whether we want to stop now and bathe or bathe later or sleep in this dungeon or wait until we get outside, etc, etc, etc. Half my time is spent arguing. That will teach me to make headstrong characters.

Could I define her a "bloodthirsty" one? Just kidding.

No, I go through a dungeon only for loot, I'm almost never interested in blood bath which it's an end in itself.



I can understand you, but with all bad comments said from MW players about OB I admit I started playing it with certain kind of prejudice. Instead I'm really enjoying this game. It's not worse than MW, it's simply different.

There are still a lot of unique items to be found, many just appear as random loot instead of being hand-placed all the time. Daedric quests can still be done as well for artifacts. There's also a Museum of Oddities in New Sheoth (Shivering Isles) where the curator will take certain donations found around the Isles, but they aren't as significant as those found in Mournhold's museum.

Same here. ^_^ There always seems to be an area I haven't explored or NPC I haven't met.

There is a special lure for those that love Alchemy. Dungeons are the only place you can find master level apparatus (mortar and pestle, retort,etc). Even then, it's only certain dungeon types that may have them. They are random loot.

I set my respawn time to 24 hours for a mod that I use, but doing this also allows me to clear out the dungeons near my characers house every day.

There's good stuff(sometimes really good stuff) to be found, it's just randomly-generated. Other than that, various dungeons may have hidden secrets of a non-materialistic nature. I've found plenty of dungeons with backstories and interesting little oddities that make dungeon diving worth it, for me.

That's it exactly.

Like many of us, I came to this from Morrowind, and like many of us, I was initially disappointed. It took me five tries over the course of a year or so before I finally got into it, but now I would almost say that I like it more than Morrowind. I definitely play it more than Morrowind.

The biggest difference I see, and the biggest reason that I keep playing it, is that it's really much more free in a sense. Sure there are more choices and more factions and such in Morrowind, but in Morrowind, everything has scripted consequences and there are very real dangers potentially around any corner. While that's much more exciting and engaging, it also requires much more effort and dedication. My Morrowind characters were very carefully planned out so that they could advance in the factions I wanted to play and so that they had sufficient skills just to stay alive, and even then, it's a bit of a challenge to get them to the point at which they can travel anywhere relatively safely.

My Oblivion characters, on the other hand-- I can do absolutely anything with them. I've created, and played, more than one Oblivion character that, had the same character been in Morrowind, wouldn't have even survived long enough to make it out of Seyda Neen.

That said, to the topic-- I think the dungeons in Oblivion essentially even out with the ones in Morrowind, in the long run. There definitely are fewer hand-placed items, and most of them are just fairly drab items (like an iron dagger enchanted for 5 points of shock). But there are also some surprisingly impressive items on the leveled lists. Sure, your level 8 fighter might kill 20 bandits in a row and get nothing more than an assortment of plain fur, leather and chain, but then he happens on the one who's carrying a Shield of Justice or wearing the Greaves of the Footsoldier. Your level 22 will still be opening boss chests, only to find, all too often, that they contain 17 gold and a lockpick, but then he'll open the one that's got a Necklace of Swords or a Daedric shortsword AND a filled grand soul gem to enchant it with. And those moments make it all worth it.

And the dungeons themselves-- a lot of them are frustratingly generic. But there are just so many of them that I don't think that could've been avoided. And there are quite a few, if you keep looking, that are definitely unique and interesting. And quite a few that are notably rewarding in terms of loot, if that's one's preference.

One of my recent characters is an Orc Adventurer, who I created specifically because I happened to get diverted with another of my characters and found myself just going into dungeons-- see one and just go in. That character had other priorities, so I couldn't keep doing it with him (and he isn't really cut out to be a dungeon crawler anyway, since he tends towards heavy armor and carries a claymore), but I was enjoying just dungeon-diving so much that I built another character just for that purpose.

Then I got caught up in playing yet another character, but still.....

And to go back and wrap this up, that, to me, really illustrates the biggest difference between the games. In Morrowind, I'd never think of creating another character just on a whim, because I know that before I could really do much of anything with him, I'd have to get him to at least the point at which he wasn't at risk of being killed by a mudcrab. It takes a lot of time to get to the point at which a character is pretty safe going into pretty much any dungeon, but with Oblivion, I can do it fresh out of the sewers-- just swim across the lake and go clean out Vilverin, right off the bat. Maybe even find some nice loot......

I don't think Morrowind is too bad on leveling up characters, I had trouble with it till I started making potions and using trainers. I played it for years on X-Box. I kinda hate the 5 train limit on oblivion since I play on 360 it can take forever trying to get a +5 attribute on level up so I usually avoid efficient leveling.

I think you do have a good point that loot is kind of better in Oblivion, in morrowind I had a lot of higher end type stuff but it isn't till being a very high level in it I'd find anything useful. Oblivion I find nifty stuff quite often when dungeon raiding. Plus with boss level characters in specific dungeons you can target those specifically for a better chance of enchanted or best level weapons/armor available from them. Most of the generic magic items in Oblivion feel equivilant to the legendary daedric artifacts from Morrowind to me.
I think oblivion really kicks things up a bit the special ability effects from certain skill levels is excellent like armor losing weight I use to enchant exquisite clothing with constent effect bound armor to cut down on weight. acrobatic dodge is really fun, jumping off water is plain cool.

Oblivion does take some adjustment but it's great in its own way, it can't compare to the size or depth of morrowind but I think I will be playing it for a very long time like I did ESIII.

This is an interesting point. I don't think I've ever considered it quite this way before. But it's true. When I made a Morrowind character I had to use meta-game knowledge in order to make sure that my character would have the right numbers at the right time to meet house or guild requirements. You had to go into the Construction Set to find these numbers (there was no Wiki). They were not given to you in-game. In my opinion, any game mechanic that requires me to use my own meta-game knowledge is an inferior roleplaying mechanic.

The fact is - now that you mention it - I do feel more comfortable roleplaying in Oblivion. Because I don't have to worry about behind-the-scenes numbers I am freer to concentrate on my character.

A great little insight, gpstr.




I'm actually impressed with the ingenuity Bethesda put into its dugneons. I think they did an excellent job in laying out each dungeon and making each one slightly different. They really are more different than most players give them credit for.

I think when players call Oblivion's dungeons generic they are really talking about meshes and textures, not layout. Bethesda created a small number meshes for each dungeon type and, on a superficial level, that will make them look somewhat alike to some people.

Just for kicks I looked up fort floor plans on UESP. Unless I missed something they are unique, every one of them. There is not a cut-n-paste job among them. And I'm sure the same goes for caves, mines and Ayleid ruins as well. I sure can't say the same for other 3D cRPGs I have played over the years.




A heavy armor and claymore character is my absolute favorite for dungeon crawing! Well...to each his own. :foodndrink:




I think gpstr's point was not whether it was easy to level through combat or gain points to advance in a faction. It was that the system was less free than the one used in Oblivion. I agree - it was not hard to get out of Seyda Neen, or to get through the entire game, for that matter...if you knew the tricks. Like any system invented by man this one can be mastered. I think gpstr's point was that meeting arbitrary requirements set by developers (particularly in the matter of faction requirement) is a constraint on roleplaying. Every minute I spend in making absolutely sure my character's numbers match the numbers set by the developers is a minute that I am not focusing on my character's personality and my character's story.

Caves can feel pretty generic, the tile sets for these are considerably more limited than for forts and Ayleid ruins, there are only a few possibilities for larger areas since these are mostly built whole. Still there is enough variation in them to make exploring worthwhile, and there are one or two that really stand out.

Another thing that I find adds to the generic feel is the interior lighting, mods like darker dungeons and let there be darkness make a huge difference here, when you cant see anything beyond your source of light, it is hard for everything to look the same.

I have to agree. Every on of them has some sort of unique feature. I just a little while ago explored the Smoke Hole cavern (east of Anvil) which has a miture of cave and fort feature's, including a room completely covered with fort walls. Many features are reapeated, but they are always configured differently enough. I think a big reason for the "generic" claims are the same enemies and same treasures that each place has.

I now have FCOM install with Artifacts mod to add something nice to many places, problems is every Impling wtfpwns me

Well since I'll try to master Alchemy, that is a good incentive.



Good to know there are things like those inside dungeons, it makes raiding them more various and entertaining I guess. I have to come back exploring again dungeons already explored to see if I missed something, since I've not found anything like that so far (well I only went into 4 or 5 dungeons till now).



I didn't find difficult at all staying alive and the necessity to put a lot of effort in preparing the right character before adventuring in Morrowind wasn't really... a necessity. Anyway, choices are what I consider a necessity to make a role-playing game a REAL role-playing game. I really liked playing MW having to make choices. For example, the fact that if you are a warrior it will be more difficult to raise in Mages Guild ranks is a point in favor of Morrowind. Roleplaying a warrior make you feel that it will be (almost) impossible to become a high-rank mage. Instead, for what I could see till now, Oblivion is much more free, but I don't think that is better than MW for this, only it makes me consider it much less RPG than Morrowind. That's it, OB is more an action-adventure game, MW is more an RPG game. But I like playing both as they are.



As I said above, it's a matter of playing-style, obviously I'm not the right person to judge Oblivion in its entirety, but while playing I feel that I will be able to accomplish everything (well, theorically) the game has to offer on the first playthrough, just because developers didnt' put numerical (or other kinds of) limits. But whether this way is better or not it's subjective, a matter of taste.

EDIT: and thank you all for your posts, you've made me revaluate Oblivion dungeon diving a little