These are a couple of non-urgent questions that go through my head regularly as I play along every day.

First, houses seem to demand an awful lot of my precious gold (which I can use for training, buying spells, weapons, and so on). What are the benefits? Any items in my backpack that I don't really value for myself I sell to the appropriate merchant anyway, thus lightening my load.

Second, I have oodles of these "parchment" potions that are good for only a single use. I've started to try using them up to see what happens to the enemies but, other than health benefits, I don't really see the point. I'd much rather have spells I can use over and over again such as Fire Bolt against the enemy and Major Wounds to heal myself on the go.

Any thoughts?

It is easy to find plenty of free beds and safe storage, so I find houses important only as a roleplaying option that may fit some characters. As the game progresses, most characters find they end up with more money than they need, so the cost of buying a house later on becomes unimportant.

Regarding scrolls (the single use parchments you refer to), I find them most effective as very lightweight loot to sell. They can provide an interesting option for characters who, for roleplaying reasons, don't know how to cast spells.

Scrolls let you cast spells beyond your normal capability, so if you find a really strong one, keep it for emergencies. Other than those, they're loot to sell that's very lightweight and so high value/weight ratio.

Houses are a way to use up excess money. Gold loses its importance once you don't have to pay others for repairs, recharging etc. so you spend it on training or homes instead.

That, and houses are handy as a place to dump loot when merchants don't have enough gold to buy all that you have at one time.

I find the need for a house extremely important because I like to switch up what weapon I use and what clothing/ armor I wear very frequently. I use the houses to display what I have stolen/ looted/ bought/ earned.

I'm not a big scroll user- but I have found a few important ones. My favorite are the conjuration scrolls, since I rarely build this form of Magic, it helps to be able to conjure a Xilivai later in game with a scroll. I can build restoration and destruction, but rarely illusion, conjuration and mysticism. Scrolls help me there.

Buying a house? Why, decorating of course! :twirl:

why buy a house, because there is no place like home.

OMG, how dumb could I be to forget that!?! :foodndrink:

Where does Buffy live? I'm still a nomad but I have been house hunting. I did this quest for some Queen and she wanted $20k gold for a house. Next time this Queen wants a favor she can kiss my petite behind. Harumpt

My magic skills are very low although I still make the most of what I have. The scrolls are very handy for letting me do things I couldn't do otherwise.

I bought my Imperial City Waterfront Shack (love the name) as soon as I could, so I'd have a place to store things I wanted to keep but didn't want to carry with me. Then I worked hard to buy the house in Skingrad so that I could give (can't remember her name but she had lived with Gunter, the merchant) a home so that she wouldn't have to "share a bed with him" anymore. :sick: But I rarely go there since she keeps calling me "my lord" (YUK!). :wacko: But at least she has a home to live in that doesn't have strings attached.

Now I own all the houses and they store my loot since there is so much, I can't sell it all. But my main headquarters is my little old Imperial City shack. It's homey and quaint and I like it. :laugh:

mar

Buffy hails from Bravil and owns a small house there, but in truth, she lives on the road. She has a bag of holding, two sets of saddlebags for her mare, and a portable campsite. She honestly doesn't carry or own much except for her large wardrobe of clothes. Most truly unique artifacts she finds, she donates to the Mystic Archives at the University. She has so many friends throughout Cyrodiil that she finds herself constantly traveling and visiting. :dance:

Isn't Oblivion an RPG?

As others have stated, I like a place to display cool looking armors, weapons, and ingredients that i have gathered but have no immediate use for. I've never bought a house, however. I just use Frostcrag Spire and Battlehorn (?) Castle. The castle especially because there are a good deal of display cases and tons of shelf space. A good telekinysis spell makes placing items on shelves and in cases alot easier. Be careful storing items in upgradeable residences, tho. I was carrying a HUGE amount of ingredients (some of them rare, from both cyrodill and the shivering isles) and decided to store them in two barrels in the castle basemant so that i could come back and level up my alchemy skill relatively quickly. They remained in the barrels (i kept adding to them) until i decided to start buying upgrades for the place. I think i got the library and living quarters. In any case, when i went to add more ingredients i noticed that both barrels were empty. Ouch.

All the things i had displayed openly in glass cases and shelves were still there. But i lost a lot of ingredients that had taken me some time to collect. lol

I'd have to say that Suzzi the Steathy Thief hails from the Imperial jail because that's where I first found her. She has no bags of anything and no campsite and wonders where they are sold. She owns a lot of stuff because at this stage in her young career as a first time player she really doesn't know what is important and what can be sold. Suzzi only donates to beggers because she feels sorry for them and they tell give her information. She has very few freinds probably because she's....ahem....explored many people's homes and travels with the philosophy that no chest should be unopened and if something isn't being used then no one will miss it. She has been falsely accused of many crimes and tossed into jail frequently and is on a first name basis with most of the city jailers. :biggrin:

Suzzi, what are you getting from beggars. I was giving a coin every time I was asked, sometimes two, and all I ever got was a "Thank you, sir". I'm now at the point where, if they weren't right out in the open, I'd start killing them! Useless sods.

Pure role playing, but the character's ability to sleep soundly at night must surely take a boost.

Seriously you sometimes get better rumors or at least you are supposed to according to what I've read about the game. When you join the thieves guild and go through their little initiation the chief thief who initiates you tells you to use beggars for information and in the very first initiation quest you do talk to a beggar or at least it is recommended. Therefore, when they approach me I give them 5 coins to see if I get a rumor that steers towards a quest.

Except for my comment about "being on first name basis with the jailers", there was no RP in my post. We all know the jailers just go by "jailer".

I imagine most of you cut your teeth on Morrowin and the other games in the series before Morrowin so you really can't relate to the experience of jumping head first into Elder Scrolls as I am doing.

If you do get to know your local beggars better, you can breeze through a very annoying Master Training Quest later in your playthrough, and the hints the beggars give are very useful in some quests, when you are looking for a specific individual or quest location.

Actually, even if we started with an earlier game, we can all relate. At some point in the past, we all jumped into the Elder Scrolls.

And welcome to the greatest fantasy rpg series ever!

Okay, thanks.

Scrolls are not Potions, I almost went off on you.

Potions (and scrolls) are mostly vendor fodder. They have a great value-to-weight ratio, so you pick them up and then you sell most of them.

Why buy a house? Home is where you hang your hat. Or your helm. Hood. Whatever. I enjoy having a place that a character can call their own. I'm also an incorrigible pack-rat; I like to keep a chronicle of my character's adventures in the form of stuff they've found.

Down in the basemant of my Rosethorn Hall, I keep a specimen of every random enchanted weapon I've ever found. From a silly little Iron Dagger of Sparks, to a Daedric Warhammer of the Inferno. It's all there.

On the ground floor, I keep my liquor cabinet stocked with Ale, Cyrodillic Brandy and fine wines. The pantry holds food and various alchemical samples. The adjacent chest holds alchemical apparatus and useful potions/poisons i've created.

On the second floor, I keep armor. One chest holds at least one full suit of every type of light armor, another for heavy armor, and another for enchanted armor pieces. My most prized pieces are the enchanted fur, iron, steel and leather bits; these all disappear completely from Tamriel as your character grows in levels. The jewelry chest on the shelf stores gems and non-enchanted jewelry. Again, my most prized pieces are from the lower grades. Ebony Diamond rings are a dime a dozen after a while; the real treasures are things like the Copper Topaz and Copper Ruby rings you picked up way back when.

On the top floor, I keep clothing, magic jewelry, stones, rare books, any faction-specific stuff, and artifacts.

So, yeah. My character's house is home, a place where they can trade their armor/weapons for a set of aqua silk robes, relax, enjoy a bottle of Tamika Vintage 399, review what they've accomplished, make future plans, craft some potions/poisons, crawl into bed... whatever.

Especially with some of the Mods I have installed, its made the Bruma House go up to 40,000 Gold!
Although, from a roleplaying perspective this is a must have, as I mean, where the hell are you going to live if you don't have a house? I mean sure, at first I got round sleeping at camps but to be honest, who actually enjoys doing that?

Potions as well, I never saw the point of the alchemy skill until this playthrough. I've gone from previous games on struggling to make even 10,000 without constant dungeon raiding, to having over 10,000 by level 2 (it's not much compare to what some of the others out there have, but still it shows how good that skill is).

As has already been said, the parchments sell for quite a bit of gold and if you have the Spell Tomes DLC, you can learn the spell from the book then either sell it or use it to decorate your house