So how efficient does this game run? I'm running,
AMD Athlon XP 2500+
1.83 Ghz
(2 256) 512 MB ram Kingston kvr400 (DDR PC 3200)
ATI Radeon 9800 pro
K7n2 delta msi
anyone have a similar setup; how well does it run?

I liked morrowind and I think I'll like oblivion, but I'm not in the mood for a game that will run slow right now. Should I wait till I upgrade before I buy it?

I have a:
XP 2600+
1 GB RAM DDR PC 3200
ATI 9600 AIW

so my setup is pretty similar. It gets slowed down at times and I have to play in 800x600 but overall it could be worse. During combat, framerates drop to the high teens. It all depends on what you can tolerate.

I'm loving this game. I've been playing with an entirely different strategy than I used to with MW. In MW, I'd charge headfirst into combat and trade blows with people. I got owned a few times doing this by Deranged Zombies and groups of goblins so I've resorted to trying to use a sneak attack (now at 3x damage) with my bow (sometimes with a poisoned arrow). Then I'll keep spraying them with arrows or spells till they get close. Once we get to melee, their health is pretty low.

I'm at level 7 and I just cleared out this vamp lair. Usually I'd kill the regular vamps with them only getting a couple of shots off at me. I also took out a vampire patriarch, he was a bad mofo. Each melee attack would take about 20% of my health but I kicked his ass by backpedaling and throwing fireballs at him. I got a nice set of heavy armor from him.

Now if you are a guild member, you can take pretty much anything inside the guild, does this count for what is in the locked cases? There is a glass sword in a case in a fighters guild and I want it.

Sneak kicks ass, I never used it in MW, it's really easy to raise skill points in it. Find someone who is sleeping and stand on the other side of the wall and walk into the corner. You can get about a point per minute.

you can take whatever you want, but all of the equipment in the cases are either "ornamental" or "replica". They are worthless. The mages guild have some nice soul stones and alchemy regents locked in theirs.

I have a question too. While I was recently wondering around in game, I came across Azura's shrine, and I did the subsequent quest and received Azura's Star. It is obviously some kind of soul stone, but can anyone tell me exactly what it does when its full?

There was an Azura's star in MW. It's basically a rechargeable soulgem. You use it to make and recharge enchanted weapons. This one probably has the same function.

Imagine someone playing this game, having never experienced an RPG game before.

What class? What alignment? What race? WTF?!!?

Well, here is hoping that I made the right choice...

I love the game sofar, and need to explore for another thousand hours. Good thing I have beer in the fridge!

I think I'm leveling too fast. Much of that comes from picking alchemy as a major skill. I don't want to deal with mindlessly raising skill points just to get the +5 modifiers but I don't want to end up not being able to max my stats.

Hey, how does that alchemy thing work?

I have the apprentice Mortar and Pestle; I have all of these food thinks taking up room (and weight), but I can't make anything out of them.

Are there recipies I have to collect, or do I just "Learn" it as I go?

I click the "Add ingredient" buttons, but nothing is available for the second ingredient.

Is there a list of ingredients that everybody knows?

if your alchemy skill is novice, I think you probably need to use the novice alchemy items, and not apprentice. most regular foods can be mixed together to make restore fatigue potions, they're not very useful but they're good for raising your alchemy skill.

Yeah, the lowest level thing, that's what I have. Novice? then that is it.

What do I mix together, and how do I know if I am doing it right? Everything comes up fine on the first ingredient list, but nothing can mix with it (the second ingredient slot)...

Do I go to a shop?

Which one?

Do I get special training?

Where?

I would love to be an alchemist, but damn. I am really having a blocky time learning/practicing/performing this alchemy thing...

from what I took so far, the effects have to be the same for both ingredients. it will only show the first ingredient's effects because the second ingredient's effects should be the same. then you mix them together. it said somewhere in the game that uber alchemists can make potions with only ONE ingredient. hmm..

more memory for sure, hopefully you still have a free slot or 2, stick another 512 in it at least, preferably another gig, but everything else will run it decently

Is anyone else a melee class and getting completely demolished in melee? I am just getting WORKED by everyone I face, except for the occasional mud crab and/or wolf.

I really don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I can't believe how much the requirments for RAM have changed. I remember building my first computer when 256 was equivelent to probaly 2 gigs of RAM today.

I need to decide if I want upgrade just my RAM or motherboard processor or whatever else... hmmm...

With how Oblivion attempts to equalize the difficulty of enemies in relation to your character level, it's common to fall behind in comparison to things you're fighting. I believe it's based solely on your characters level, and so for example if you have blunt and sneak as two major skills, getting 8 improvements in sneak and two in blunt would cause you to level up, so you're melee skills can easily lag behind. This creates a gap in melee proficiency between you and your enemies. It's kind of a skewed system that you can only really get around by setting non necessary skills as your major skills. My fighter character has all spell skills, alchemy, and hand to hand as his major skills as this lets me decide when I level up so that gives me a chance to make sure my melee skills raise at a decent rate in relation to enemies. Hope that made sense, it's a little tricky to explain hehe.

That said, the difficulty slider has a huge effect. My nearly non-combat theif dude struggled until I dropped it two notches. Combat still is hard, but challenging hard, not impossible hard ;). There's no penalty for lowering the difficulty, so if you want to experience a character that doesn't have to whack everything (sniping with arrows rocks. Especially once you get the goodies from finishing the thieves guild quest) it's a good way to go about it. All skills can be maxed out eventually, and different ones do different stats. If you think your strength is lagging, whack something with a dagger or weak weapon for a while :)

From playing morrowind I know that isnt really neccessary, just make sure all your primary skills are primary combat skills, even if you want your character to focus on alchemy, make sure the skills you use in combat are primary, even if that isn't the focus of your character.

Does anyone know how long it takes for dungeons to re-spawn?

Yeah, at least one aspect has to be the same. As a novice alchemist, you only SEE one aspect, so the two have to have the same primary aspect (night-eye, for instance). As you gain skill, you see more aspects for each ingredient and can mix a greater assortment of potions. You can also use the "See All" button or whatever to make two pairs, each with different matches, to increase the combinations within a potion. For example:

Bonemeal and Ironwood Nuts both have Resist Fire

Crabmeat and Lettuce both have Fire Shield (not right at the beginning of alchemy, but they do)

You can mix one of each to get the combined Resist Fire and Fire Shield

Eh, that's a bad example at any rate, because they also have common aspects (damage fatigue I think)... but you get the point. Now, you could do the same with only three ingredients if one had both Fire Shield AND Resist Fire, such as Dragon's Tongue.

Actually, you can get Fire Shield and Resist Fire with just two ingredients at Expert (Dragon's Tongue and Cheese Wedge) since they both have both aspects.

Three days seems to be the default respawn timer for everything else... but I don't know if it applies to dungeons.

So who is going to pay the $2-5.50 for the horse armor :rolleyes:

I lost a lot of respect for Bethesda with that.

Huh? What horse armor and why does it cost RL money?

You can download horse armor.

Something like 5.50 for the Xbox on xbox live
2 bucks for the PC on some download site.

I'm not kidding, its offical eye candy you pay for.

Gotta collect them all!

:rolleyes:

Hahah, well, more power to them IMO.

This isn't really anything terribly new to video games. Especially for eye candy. When BlizzCon occured last year, people were pissed that you got a Murloc pet for attending... so it was basically looked at as you paid $80 for the pet rather than got the pet with your ticket price to go. This is less devious than the proposed Trading Card Game Blizz is supposed to be putting out this year with "rare" cards that will give you items in game.

Yeah, I love this game, but this is REALLY lame. Expansion packs are great... but charging people for stuff that should have been included in the box? L-A-M-E

The really lame part is that this is crippling the mods since they won't release the 3d exporter thingy like they did for Morrowind, so modders can't make new objects.

they dont plan to release the 3d exporter? i just figured they were waiting to release it for now.

Ustwo - do you know if the horse armor has any functional value, or is it just eye candy? This would really suck if the armor actually protected the horse, thereby giving you an advantage in the game that can only be realized by paying extra money.

No one seems to be sure. Since its a single player game that aspect doesn't worry me that much, PC users can cheat all they want with mods after all. They apparently have new real content and shops etc they will be adding. This was the plan all along, as all of this could have been in the release.

not to mention mounted combat isn't in the game, so horse armor is about as worthless as tits on a boar hog. I've never lost a horse to combat, and rarely even have encounters when mounted anyway. Just another example of a good company gone bad due to greed. The mods for morrowind are what made it the amazing game it was, and they were upset they didn't cash in on it. So now they have figured out a way to rape and pilage our wallets throuhgout the life of the game, and keep modders from showing them up with more innovative add-ons for free.

Rape and pillage our wallets? Who is making people pay for these downloadable extras, anyway? You don't want it? Don't buy it. Seems obvious to me.

but why should I have to pay for it when mods of equal or better quality were available before in Morrowind? It would be different if they released the exporter, and then competed against modders by putting out, and charging for, professional mods with a quality that you just couldn't find anywhere else, just like what was done for Neverwinter Nights. In this case, however, the modders don't even have a chance. And this is just the beginning. How long do you think it will be before some company starts making people pay extra for things that used to be included as part of the purchasing price? Say, maybe EA decides to charge 2.99 for each retro jersey or historical team in Madden or NHL. Or Blizzard releases Diablo 3, but it cost 2.99 for every unique armor set you want in the game. You may think thats silly and you would never pay for a game like that, but if the majority of game publishers require the studios to make games in this fashion because they can see it as a viable source of extra profit, that is how games will be made. And it will start with flagship titles such as these, because there will be enough fanboys that will pay the extra money to have every item in game and make it worth while.

I've been gaming for a long time, and there are plenty of things I never thought we as gamers would allow, such as paying $50 for a game, and then paying $15-$20 dollars a month just to be able to actually play it. But I find myself typing this after just finishing a session of D&D Online, which uses that exact method to charge its customers.

That was Coppertop's point, Niki... you DON'T have to pay for it. $1.99 isn't much if the content is worth it to you. If it's not, don't buy it. Just because a lot of mods are free doesn't mean I download them all. And some free ones I'd be willing to pay for if I wasn't able to code it myself. The whole micropayments issue is here to stay, and it's going to become bigger, not smaller.

You don't like MMO models? Well, sure there's some profit, but there's also a baseline cost to a company like Blizzard for RUNNING all those WoW servers. They also have to pay for GMs and Forum Admins. They also have to pay for ongoing development. Since not everything is in a retail box (in WoW at least, a LOT of content comes out in patches every few months)... THAT'S what the $15/month pays for. I find that to be a bargain, frankly. So you don't want to pay $1.99 for horse armor. *shrug* Would you pay $1.99 for some of the other new content coming out at that price like the Orrery or the Wizard's Tower? I most likely will...

The problem should be obvious.

The over all quality of the games will decrease, as that which was once 'included' will now be extra charged for later. Like getting a barebones car vrs a delux model.

In Oblivions case, if you never played the Morrowind mods you don't know how utterly screwed you are in terms of content. Playing morrowind with a full set of mods is BETTER than oblivion in most ways other than the Havoc engine. Now vanilla morrowind is a good game I played it all the way through in vanilla mode, but my disapointment with oblivion made me look back and try the mods. Holy christ they are good. Entirely new skins, faces, sounds, enemy ai, scripting, models, zones and even voice acting. All free. These mods are why morrowind is still on the shelves despite it being an 'old' game. I'll also add that Bethesda added two plug ins on their own for free as well.

Because of this paid for content, do you think Bethesda is going to let people compete with them? The modders can play with what is in game, but can not add anything new, like horse armor, Bethesda made sure of that by not including the 3d exporter like they did morrowind. So while you can pay your $2 for horse armor and your $2 for a wizard tower and your $2 for more vendors, know that you are paying for INFERIOR content that was once free. This will work in the short run, but long run they really pissed off one of the most loyal fanbases in gaming. So yes new people to an RPG most likely think this is heaven, but its like having sex with a condom. Seems great unless you had the real thing.

Again Ustwo, you're comparing a game that has been out for several years to one that has been out a few weeks.

A few of the things I've really liked so far that I haven't mentioned:
Restructuring of skills:
Medium armor was useless. Now there is light and heavy.
Short blade and long blade have been combined (which is really great to me).
Alchemy is soooo improved, the interfacce kicks ass. Ingredients are easier to come by as well. In MW, restore magika ingredients were not as plentifull and it made taking the Atronoch sign much more difficult. Now it's a nusiance, but not crippling at all (which is what should have been intented).
Enchanting is no longer a skill and descent constant effect enchantments are actually possible. It just didn't make sense for it to be a skill, you don't spend enough time enchanting items for it to be a skill and in order for it to be effective, you needed to either drop a bunch of money on training or waste a lot of time recharging enchanted weapons with soulgems. You might as well have just used a console command.
Bonuses from skill mastery, although I haven't been able to get the good ones yet, I'm looking forward to how the knockback, disarm and paralyze will work out.

I do think it's a pain in the ass that you need a bedroll to level up. That's about the only lame thing I can think of.

Some complain that they don't like that the map always tells you where to go. Honestly, I always thought the whole "go here and retrieve item x but I won't tell you where it is" acutally located was an immersion breaker. What is more likely, a hero on a mission that never asks for directions or a hero on a mission that takes the extra second to ask where that location is?

If Bethesda lets the modders mod like they did in Morrowind there is hope that in two year Oblivion will be far better than Morrowind ever was, mods and all.

If not, you won't see Oblivion on the shelves in 2 years, unlike Morrowind.

Right now that $2 pay to upgrade, mostly due to how the xbox 360 works, is crippling that which was best about a Bethesda game.

I agree with Ustwo and Nikil, I flat out wouldn't have played Morrowind without the mods. Which I can actually say with certainty because I got it when it originally came out without using any mods and returned it then picked it up a few years later to try it again with mods and liked it.

As far as what Nikil said about gamers letting companies like blizz charge us monthly, the point is not that Nikil and others like us feel we should get things for free. Nikil it sounds like, me for sure, and Ustwo probably as well are all experienced gamers, we understand that certain things must cost money but just because the way things are now does not make it the only viable way things could be.

Look at paradigm breaking games like guild wars. I personally don't like the gameplay but its online gameplay, without pay per month, is something a lot more people would like I think, but these games like WoW, and DDO know they can get away with charging per month and go with the classic style of managing online gameplay. I'm guessing it's a lot more profitable to go that way and they will if gamers let them. It also encourages bad design principles such as timesinks to keep your playerbase addicted and playing whereas a game like guild wars encourages the developers to make quality expansions to make you want to play rather than manuevering you into staying.

Not releasing everything, like has already been said, is bad because it inhibits player creativity. NWN did very well and the developers competed just fine with the playerbase instead of locking out certain parts of the game...its just like a monopoly...theyre bad in any form.

Nobody is seeing the advantage to the way Bethesda is doing things. Instead of paying $40 for an expansion pack that has, say, ten new features and a shiny box, you can choose the parts you want. You don't want horse armour? Fine, save your two bucks. I though it looked cool and downloaded it. I hope they do many more in the future, because a) if you can afford a 360 a couple of bucks doesn't hurt, and b) it gives them an incentive to create new content for a long, long time.

And ffs, stop comparing Oblivion to Morrowind. If you want Morrowind, go play Morrowind. I've looked at the game box, it doesn't promise Morrowind. Nowhere on the internet has Bethesda ever said that Oblivion is Morrowind. The game isn't even set in Morrowind. You're not going to have the exact same experience as you would playing Morrowind. Hell, I'd wager that if Bethesda made an exact remake of Morrowind, including all the mods, using the Oblivion engine, the same people would complain that they'd be forced to pay for a game they already have. Sheesh.

I'm with hulk on this debate. :)

I haven't been this sucked into a game since the WoW beta. I'm loving it. Best $50 I spent in a long time...

what exactly are they doing to inhibit modders. there are already tons of mods out there. given them time and they will rival the MW mods.