Using other diamonds. That's how they cut them.

So you're saying for alchemy, you will need multiple diamonds and a diamond crushing apparatus to be able to use them in a potion.

Yes. You asked how to do it I just replied. And anyway you find diamonds in rows so when you find one diamond there are bound to be some more nearby.

You could use a mortar and pestle covered in diamonds that you have to do a quest to get.

Each magical discipline has their own quest line so that the mages guild is split into minor factions. To become arch-mage you must complete all of the disciplines questlines and then one more quest to become arch mage.

ask a jeweler or an alchemist, or someone that cuts/crushes them.
again where talking about a video game. where technically anything is possible.
hell maybe the diamonds in tamriel, are not as strong as diamonds on earth. and can be crushed by my bare hands with my high strength score;)

A lot of people posting here are the people I thought killed Oblivion's potenial because they're the people Bethesda sold out to appease.

Waste gaming time? I've never once did anything in any TES game where I was "wasting time." Wrong game for you, buddy.

-1 internets to you both, it wasn't an honest question. It was pointing out a silly.

I know but I have an uncontrollable need to answer questions.

wrong. the only game i feel is worthwhile paying for is a tes game. and if like me, you have other things to do besides play video games all day. then you should understand, that when you've only got about an hour to play. you dont wanna spend that time walking around looking at the same 5 ruins you've already explored and.....oh look that tree over there that looks just like the one i walked by about 20 mins ago....i dont really feel i need to justify the fact that i would rather "play" the game then "take in the scenery" over and over again. thats what walking in the woods at night with a knife and some beef jerky is for. oh wait thats just my sense of adventure.
maybe i should just take a hike down the same path, over and over again, till i can memorize the shape of the rocks under my feet....sorry im rambling...i wouldnt care if they put a morrowind esq travel system in the next game. aslong as they still give players like me a fast travel option. where i can speed up my game play, and get to the adventure more quickly.
i fell in love with morrowind. but the tedious pace of getting from point A to point B(when ive already been there) along with the not so fun combat. were my only complaints. and then i fell in love with oblivion. and my complaints were the lack of unique items, and items in general, and the level scaling made it feel like you never accomplished much for your hard work, when you leveled up.
so like i suggested earlier, if they give sort of a hardcoe mode, where you can turn certain features on/off like money weight, the need to eat or drink, fast travel, quest compass. then i think there will be less complaints across the board....now dont take me wrong here. i love finding a place for the first time. but once ive found it. it no longer intrigues me as much. this is actually the reason i love tes games. because unlike other games, i can play for a year or 2 or even 3, and still not find/do everything. if i wanted to visit the same place 100 times id just replay lame games like dragon age, or fable, or grind out levels in some mmo somewhere.

edited: looked like a wall of text cause i dont use caps or even proper punctuation probly. i always hated english class in school.

What? Who are you even talking about? I don't know anyone who is complaining about wasting time.

And BTW, you aren't cool just because you didn't like Oblivion. Most of us who enjoy the series as a whole still like Oblivion for what it brings to the table: A more physical, reactive world, with more satisfying and realistic combat, more lush environs, and enough mainstream appeal to make the series enough of a money-maker to provide more potential to the series in the future. You don't seriously think Bethesda would be the powerhouse it is today if it weren't for Oblivion's success, do you? Besides, what does "selling out" even mean? Being successful? Allowing their continued existence? Hell, think for a moment, and you'll realize that the fans that the series has gotten because of Oblivion will allow future installments to be more deep and "core". The series, especially before Morrowind, was impenetrable to most audiences.

Now please, if you aren't going to actually make suggestions for the series, go look at the numerous "Is oblivion good" threads from over the years.

hahaha....internets....whats -1 internets precious?

what i woul like is to make it more like morrowind and i say morrowind cause that was the only one i have played besides oblivion and just make the different stats or abilities back like spears and throwing weapons and medium armor because with all options you had you realy had to think a little bit more on what you wanted and i like to see them to bring more back son not blades but long swords short swords and maybe even claymores could be separate so that you have to really think about what your going to use how much wait you will have to carry and just make it a bit more stratigic

i like that you had major and minor skills now im not saying give us X amount of major skills and the same for minor maybe like 3 or 4 major and then have the rest be minor so you can be great in a few areas and decent in others, but i mean you can still be everything if you work enough at it

and other then more skills to make i more complicated and actually making you think of the character your trying o build i would like four things i want companions like in fallout no not like O i beat a quest ine so now i can get an infinite amount of people so when one dies i can just go get another no i want specific characters and as much as i would like it to be like new vegas where they actually have there own quest and veiws on things i will settle for more like fallout 3 where its just based on what people think or maybe you do a quest for them to get them or you can pay alot of gold

I want the quests for guilds to be more like morrowind some guilds hate eachother so if you join one guild and beat it you either cant join or cant finish the guild that hates them which would be better also where theres multiple groups to join that hate eachother but once you beat them you get to build your own fortress like in morrowind

and i want vampire guilds to make there be more of a point to becoming a vampire also would like to see the return of the werewolf and hae guilds for them so that no matter what i become i get special quests and get to see things from there point f veiw

also i want my pack rat back

If you have a signature way of killing or leaving something behind the watch start to talk about it. The guard investigate and guard crime scenes. If you are seen fleeing they take note of your appearance (this means you can build up a reputation using masks and cloaks, like the gray fox). They only recognise your secondary appearance like the gray fox's mask.

You can start factions.

You can help the daedra.

A large part of the draw for the TES games is in exploration... going around and finding/doing tasks, embarking on multiple, long, plot-driven quest-lines, as well as random wilderness adventuring. Granted, Oblivion really fumbled on the dungeon design (making almost all of them non-sensical and same-y) so it had less of an incentive to randomly explore. But these are the kinds of games that are taken slow, and aren't meant to be rushed through due to lack of play time. A lot of the most common complaints about Oblivion come from how you're rushed through the main quest... the very start of the game is the start of the main quest, and the plot makes everything "urgent", trying to make you rush through.. and so you don't have to waste time levelling and travelling, the whole world's scaled to you and you can fast travel to almost all key cities and dungeons as needed.

That's something I'd like to see brought back from Morrowind. A main quest that starts out subtle, almost ignorable, and slowly grows in anticipation (while making sure not to rush you too much, so you have time to grow and get stronger), before cresting and finally reaching a climactic end. Due to the slow build-up, you don't have to worry so much about enemy scaling (plenty of time given to level up for the tougher enemies), and you could 'get out' of the main quest by doing the first (few) menial tasks, then not asking for more. Could do without as much political intrigue, though.. politics annoy me.

This

Here's a little something Arcania (Gothic 4) did that was a neat touch.

It has real time environmental shadows but additionally when you stand in something that casts a full shadow on you there are "blob shadows" at your feet. While that doesn't sound like much it nicely simulates still casting a shadow from light scattered and reflected around you to the ground, it's a little trick that doesn't take much resources but adds a little to the atmosphere/feeling of the game.

When you are hit by someone you take more damage in that same area. Same for NPCs.

You become disorientated if you do not drink/eat/sleep and you get weaker and weaker as well as getting blurry vision and hallucinating.

There are other killers out there and not just you. They kill and murder NPCs as well as sometimes coming after you.

More houses available.

You are greeted by strangers as a nobody and if you get a title the surrounding area addresses you by it and over time it spreads until you are known all over the province.

Aedra worlds as well as Daedra.

More books.

More drinks.

More food.

Aedric weapons.

You can beg.

You can become a count/countess.

I don't know if this has been suggested before--I don't have the time to read every single post in these threads.

A lot of TES fans are writers to some degree. Why not let us write our own in-game books and notes? If we have access to parchment, a quill, an inkwell, and a desk (or any flat, hard surface), we should be able to write something. It could be something simple, like scribbling a reminder to ourselves on a piece of parchment, or it could be a larger project, like a short story or biography. Parchment can be found just about anywhere. Blank books could be purchased from the book stores, in a variety of sizes and colors, with a set number of pages available for text. Once the book is finished, it could be sold at a book store, and after a week or more, copies start appearing on the shelves, under your character's name. NPCs can then come in a buy one or two or twenty. The author would, of course, receive some amount of gold for every sale.

But why limit it to NPCs who can buy your books? Why not have an online database where the info for all the books in the game are stored and shared? If your system is connected to the Internet when you publish a book, it gets added to this database, which then updates other connected players' bookstores to include your work. Again, the author would receive a bit of gold for every sale. This, I think, would be a deceptively fun addition to the game. Got a good story to share with the gamers? Want to publish a humorous autobiography? Why not do so?

Obviously, this could be a little frustrating to console users--typing on a controller is a real test of patience. But unless I'm much mistaken, the PS3 and 360 are both compatible with USB keyboards (I think...?), so that would get rid of that problem. Also, to deal with the issue of having thousands of user-made texts and not enough space for them in the bookstore, the store's stock could be randomized every game week or so, ensuring that everyone had an equal chance of getting noticed. The only other issue I can think of is separating user books from the official stuff included with the game... Easily solved with a little automatic disclaimer at the beginning, saying something like "This is a user-created book and should not be taken too seriously."

I don't know. That's just something I thought of when I noticed how many quills and inkwells there are in Oblivion, and how odd it was that we can't use them. I think it would be pretty interesting. What do you guys think?

:hugs: You're my new best friend.

A.K.A. Your ideas are amazing and I'd love to hear more of them.

I can just imagine walking into a store and a random-encounter NPC running up to me and telling me they loved my book. Obviously they wouldn't get into detail because the game isn't that smart, but it would still be fulfilling, nonetheless.

I can imagine the NPC version working better than the Gamer-Gamer version though. I wouldn't want 400 Fan-Fic versions of the Lusty Argonian Maid scattered throughout the library/book store.

Perhaps, for that, Bethesda would have to hand-pick stories that were good enough to be included... which I don't see happening.

You can customise a coat of arms which is then the default for any Tapestry hanging in your house.

Oooh, I like that idea too. It'd be nice for if you were to be come a count/countess as well.

I know this is a far-fetched idea, but I wish there was a more of a dynamic change of how the world changes due to your actions. If you burn down the city or kill the queen of a major city, you should be considered "evil" to factions who belong to it. However, that could also mean that you will be praised in another city, who may have wanted to destroy that city or had planned on killing the queen. I would also like to be able to be able to completely demolish a town. I could gather a large group of people who like me to attack a city and burn in to the ground... or I could gather a large group of people who like me to rebuild a demolished town.

It's true, the file sharing half of that would require some honesty from the gamers to work well... But in my experience, the Elder Scrolls community tends to be more mature than, say, the Halo and Call of Duty crowd. I have faith.

Some kind of genre system could be implemented. Books in the store are shelved according to whether they're fantasy or whatever. The author lists his/her work under whatever genre seems appropriate, and if readers feel that the book is classified under the wrong genre, they can recommend a change with the store owner. That would instantly change the book's shelving location in their game, and if enough Internet-connected people recommend the same change, that online database updates it. So if you don't want to read Lusty Argonian Maid fan fiction, you can avoid the romance section. Also, over all of that, there would be a basic grammar grading program. Not too strict, but enough to ensure no one submits no-effort nonsense in texter talk.

Here's another idea that I doubt very much will make an appearance, but would still be nice... Custom houses. In addition to the pre-built places you find in the cities, there could be plots of land up for sale in the world. If you buy one, you can speak to an architect, who has a variety of different "building blocks" to choose from--rooms, basically. All of the blocks are compatible with each other, so if you want Kitchen A paired with Living Room C and Bedroom E, that's no problem. Long as you have the money.

Weather effects has probably been discussed to exhaustion in previous threads, but I don't see the harm in throwing out my hopes that in the next game, they will have upgraded the graphics immensely. That stuff will have higher resolution and stuff isn't what's most important to me, however - I think they almost reached what's required in Oblivion and FO3 for me to be totally immersed in the game. You don't need super high-tech blow-your-mind graphics for that -- just a little tweaking (especially on characters in TES - FO was okay).
What I want to see is a more realism when it comes to stuff like what weather does to the gameworld. Like having waves that roll onto cliffs and beaches, wind rustling trees and grass, maybe rainwater having a larger impact on the surroundings (like making puddles). Snow that accumulated after days of heavy weather would also be cool (no pun intended) - and would be a great addition if we're gonna roam around in Skyrim.
And yet again: destructible surroundings. I wanna be able to pillage and burn down towns and villages! They'd have to be slowly rebuilt over time, though.

I won''t write a long post on this, even though I've got a lot of ideas -- I bet it's been talked about in previous threads too much for anyone to take interest.


edit: Oh yeah, and just one more thing. Who else here thought that everything underwater in Oblivion was really boring? It's just poorly rendered surfaces with a rock and a weed thrown here and there
I say 'aye' to making the seas look like they really do -- the most diverse and otherworldly landscapes there is. (not letting it go too much on the expense of the landscapes on land, though... we're not gonna spend -that- much time down there.)

edit2: ah, didn't see http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1105491-a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words/thread before now - they have a lot of good ideas for scenery.

Make it the best possible graphics for each platform so that you do not have to constrict yourself for the consoles.