I haven't finished a game yet (level 11) but so many things puzzle me as i go about exploring, spelunking, and adventuring. Maybe some of you forum people would like to shed light or give opinions.


I wonder what to do with the Oblivion Gates. There is so much to do in this game I don't find myself having the time to shut them down but I feel like I should for humanity.

I joined the Dark Brotherhood because I am a joiner but somehow I feel like I'm now a bad person. When you join does your fame take a hit? It should, my conscience sure did but they give you nice clothes that I really look sixy in.

As a rogue I wonder what to do with my mage staff from joining the Mage guild. I also wonder why the dumb mages let a rogue join their guild. The enchant on my staff is soul trap as I thought I could use the staff in that capacity but alas, I don't like carrying the weight so it sits in storage.

Speaking of rogues, i read somewhere that shoes make you better for sneaking up on people so I now wear oiled sneakers. I wonder if armor has an affect as well (I am now wearing mithril and sold my chainmail). Hopefully soon I get Elven.

I have Azura's Star but sometimes when I try to soul trap I'm told I don't have a soulstone to capture a soul that big (something like that but you get the picture). How can any soul be too big for the Azura?

It takes you the whole game to get journeyman on Armorer, or so it feels like it. I am tired of taking my enchanted armor to a repair person all the time.

I fight guys all the time that yell out "I've fought mudcrabs tougher than you". I win almost all fights (yay difficulty slider) so I guess these guys have fought some tough mudcrabs.

I am so scared of rats and the dark I often wonder why I enter those scary places. I think it's the loot that pulls me in.

I get a rush when I sneak/crit a baddie with an arrow shot.

There aren't a lot of bathrooms in this game but there are a lot of ponds and creeks. You don't suppose.........?

It's :icecream: time. Bye

Oblivion gatesare worth shutting down as the Sigil stones are generally better for enchanting than soulgems.

DB gives you infamy, not taking away from fame, which can stop you using wayshrines and altars, but with KotN, you can remove your infamy with a pilgrimage to one of each shrine.

If your staff isn't a destruction spell, it can be pretty useless. Mine always end up as house decorations.

At lower sneak, lighter footwear is better, but at journeyman, the penalty is negated.

Azura's star cannot trap the souls of mortals or Dremora, you need a black soul gem for that.

I always use my 5 levels of training per level on armourer.

Personal opinion, but you may be cheating yourself of a sense of achievement by lowering the difficulty.

I reckon the Mage's Guild perform magical sewerage removal services, that's how they afford those big buildings.

I usually try to shut down the Oblivion gates next to roads as I encounter them to get a higher Fame, and gather the scrolls and potions to pay for training, I try to stick to unenchanted armor to get armorer training by repairing my armor and loot, the downside is the wieght of the armorer hammers limits what I can keep to resell.
I usually join the mages guild before level ten, I usually get a staff with Telekenesis, but I end up sticking it in a display area too.
I like to use a bow as my main weapon until my Bow and Blade/Blunt scores are equal, Then I try to keep all my weapon skills fairly equal, but I love to zoom in on opponents and drop them one by one as they run towards me.
I have three characters in five years who have joined the Dark Brotherhood, I let my own morality affect my characters all of the time.
There are a few modded player homes with indoor facilities, You do realise that the sewer exits dump right into Lake Rumare?
Since this is the Spoilers section,You can get a set of Elven Armor thru a quest in the Fighters Guild.

Your second quoted statement answers the comment posed in the first. :yes:

Lots of question, so let me just randomly bounce upon a few.

Armorer. Pick up everything and repair it, even if you just drop it again. As zen said, you can buy training up to 5 times every level - armorer can be a good choice.

The DB? Only if you love them, not just for their snazzy duds. If you are not on PC, just go with leather. If you are on PC, go hunt for some mods that can provide black stuff like this:
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/Cho%20Bk%201/ScreenShot718.jpg
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/Cho%20Bk%201/ScreenShot788.jpg
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv43/Acadian6/ScreenShot592.jpg

The Mages Guild staff? Use your imagination. The University took the wood for my mystic archer and turned it into the staff of a nifty enchanted bow! (With a l'il help from me).

Bathrooms? Although there are some things a girl doesn't talk about, one could place a silver urn by one's bed at night. . . .

That silver urn is going to tarnish pretty bad...

On the oblivion gates question, there are two ways to look at it. If you want to finish the Main Quest at a low level, which is easiest, then you probably want to avoid messing with the gates that don't have to be closed. On the other hand, if you're not looking to finish the Main Quest quickly (or ever...), then you can take your time and do as many gates as you want, up to the maximum of 60 that will open.

Like bradleyh talked about above, I tend to be fairly diligent about closing gates that open next to the road. There are NPCs who travel from town to town, and they can occasionally be killed by the daedra that spawn at the gates, so I close them in the interest of public safety. For the same reason, I make it a point to clear out the bandits who lurk at campsites near the road, because they also prey on wandering NPCs.

Staffs: I've found that for mages who don't have high Illusion skill, a staff with Paralyze is a good choice. For an illusionist type, who has paralyze in his/her bag of tricks, Shock is a good choice, because very few enemies are immune to it. In other words, a mage's staff can fill in for a deficiency, rather than duplicating a skill one already has.

i wish i had made a paralyizing staff before i found out the awesomeness that is bear rolling ... (if the topic still exist veiw it )

First - how do you pronounce your username? Just so that I know what to say in my head, is it "suhzee" or "soozee?"

That out of the way ......

The Oblivion Gates will appear, but then they won't do much of anything other than spew out red skies and lightning if you get near one. There is some risk from the creatures that appear around them - they'll probably end up killing some NPCs - but other than that, they don't do a whole lot, so you have some time. As you start to close them though, the whole crisis will accelerate and more of them will open, so once you start, you're pretty much committed.

You don't take a hit just for joining the DB (at least not if I remember correctly), though you do for doing missions for them. Curiously enough, you gain more infamy doing Thieves Guild missions than DB missions. Apparently Cyrodiil hates thieves more than assassins. But anyway, if you want, you can just keep the armor and never go back to the sanctuary and nobody will bother you.

There's not that much use for the Mages Staff anyway. I used to get the Soul Trap one or the Paralyze one, but I'd usually forget I was carrying it and never use it. Lately I've been getting the Telekinesis one, just because it's sort of fun. Whichever one I get spends almost all its time in storage.

The weight of your shoes has an effect on whether or not you might be caught sneaking, but only until your sneak skill gets to 50. Then it doesn't matter any more. And no other apparel other than your shoes ever matters.

When you get the message that Azura's Star can't trap a soul, it's either because it's already full or because it's a soul that you can't trap - most often that of a humanoid character. You get the same message either way.

I either make Armorer a major, so it increases relatively quickly, or I pay for 5 rounds of training every level. Otherwise - yeah - it takes too long to get to journeyman.

People in Cyrodiil say some strange things.

Loot's good.

Sneak hitting an enemy with a bow, and particularly a relatively small one from a distance, is one of the best rushes in the game.

I hope not - I swim in there.

:icecream:

If I can add my opinions on this....

First of all, Oblivion has no system to check the player's class, fame or infamy and make a logical decision based off of that - the most you get is some different NPC reactions and very occaisionally you get stopped from doing something, however, in most cases, if you swing a sword or cast a spell at a good enough level, the guild's will let you in.

Oblivion gates are good for levelling up - even for a rogue. They work best for levelling combat because of all the Daedra to kill, but you can also sneak through the Tower, poison and assassinate people as you go etc. If you want to get the sweet Sigil stone at the end too, that's well worth the effort.

Why can't Azura's Star trap humaniod souls? I dunno - only Black Soul Gems can do it. One possible explanation might be that the Daedric Princes don't trust you enough to give you an artifact capable of trapping their own servants (the Dremora), but because the Deadra are merely monsters it doesn't bother them. Or maybe Todd Howard just wanted it like that. :/

Places too dark? Consider carrying a torch - but you might get seen easier. So just turn up your brightness scale on your game.

Assassinations are pretty cool, as is stabbing someone in the back. Wait until TESV and we'll get to see you actually slit a guys' throat. As for the Dark Brotherhood, if you want to negate the infamy effect, do good things and help people out more - pretend you're a 'reformed' rogue. That would be some good role-playing.

Lastly, as for the bathrooms...let's just assume that's why there are so many silver urns around the place.

Hope that helps you!

Consistency with previous Elder Scrolls games. In Morrowind you couldn't trap humanoids at all, because there were no Black Soul Gems. If you do the Oblivion Mages Guild questline, you'll find that Black Soul Gems are a new necromancer development, one which is relatively unknown even to the Arcane University, until you, the "hero" investigate the situation.

Ah. See. gamesas made the no-capture humanoids, that's why.

Does strike me as odd that a massive Minotaur Lord has a lesser soul than that of a tiny wood elf, but I get the premise behind it (to stop player's genociding humans just to make their sword powerful...)

Somethin I never knew is that you can make your own http://uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Black_Soul_Gem...if you like that kind of thing.

But note that it's in a restricted set of locations, only possible every eight days, and the starting gem can hold the same level of soul. They're not trying to make it something you do every day!

That said, if you can find an empty Grand Soul Gem early in the game, then this route gives you access to Grand Souls before the creatures with them start to appear, so you can enchant a really powerful weapon. Because such a weapon is very unbalancing I tend to gimp the character in some other way to make up for it, like denying them armor, or spell-casting. The balance aspect is probably why Beth decided to make NPC souls hard to capture.

Alot to talk about but I will ponder a few things sorry if some things were already mentioned. The reason I like to destroy oblivion gates if for the simple reason that the sigil stones you get some of them have really great enchants that you can use on weapons or clothing. As far as the DB,Theifs guild and anything else that adds to your infamy I like to go through them missions before I do KOTN only because my goal is to get the highest fame possible but you could go the other route it's up to you. As far as Azura's star goes Great Artifact but just not good for trapping human or Demon souls as was already said I always keep about 3 or 4 black soul gems along with that one. Souls will go into the smallest soul gem they can be trapped into so you won't have to worry about them being trapped into one you didn't want them in. If your gonna be sneaking I suggest taking shoes off altogether no shoes is the best way to sneak unless that skill is level up then it don't matter. I can't tell you how many times I've been walking around someplace and turned around to a rat that about made me jump out of my seat because I wasn't expecting it to be there lol. I don't think they thought about bathrooms too much in the year 400 back then they probably dumped buckets out the window.