The Elder Scrolls XV: This is my Thu'um Stick

[Aeson]

Are arrows consumable?

In games which treat them as a finite resource (at least over the short term), yes. A big difference between arrows and most other consumables, however, is that arrows are generally dirt cheap and readily available in quantity almost anywhere whereas something like a Scroll of Ekash's Lock Splitter or an Exclusive Potion of Fire Shield is expensive and difficult to find, and vendors who have them probably only have one or two available for purchase at any given time. Another difference is that you cannot make an archer without using arrows whereas very few character archetypes actually need to use other types of consumables on a regular basis.

[factotum]

The odd thing is, though, even those really expensive and hard to find potions are just using regular ES mechanics--the Locksplitter was just Open 100 points on Target, and you could certainly make such a thing yourself had you a high enough Alchemy and the right ingredients. In later ES games than Morrowind the "special" potions have become even more generic--it really doesn't feel special to find a powerful healing potion in Skyrim when you have about 100 of the things and can make more at any time.

[Aeson]

The odd thing is, though, even those really expensive and hard to find potions are just using regular ES mechanics--the Locksplitter was just Open 100 points on Target, and you could certainly make such a thing yourself had you a high enough Alchemy and the right ingredients. In later ES games than Morrowind the "special" potions have become even more generic--it really doesn't feel special to find a powerful healing potion in Skyrim when you have about 100 of the things and can make more at any time.

I don't think that you can use Alchemy to replicate a Scroll of Ekash's Lock Splitter in Morrowind - not unless you're referring to its use in boosting the enchant success chance up high enough to make the attempt worthwhile - and if you're not resorting to exploits then a 100-point Open enchantment is probably right at the limit of what's practical even with 100 Enchant skill, 100 Intelligence, and 100 Luck so spending the effort to create a single-use item for it is kind of silly. On top of that, you'd have a far better return on investment with a permanent spellcasting item, such as a Ring of Open 100pts on Touch, than with a scroll.

As to the example of the fire shield potion, yes, to some extent you can replicate it through Alchemy, but fire shield potions are made from Comberry (not a problem), Fire Salts (expensive or harvested from Flame Atronachs), Raw Glass (limited availability, somewhat difficult to find, and expensive, but doesn't really have any other use in the game), and Sload Soap (vendor only, somewhat expensive).

As to the larger point of your being able to replicate consumables - or at least create consumables with similar effects - through crafting, sure, you can do that, if your character has the requisite skills and any necessary components and equipment, but not every character invests in Alchemy and Enchant, and even for those that do there's no guarantee of convenient access to the right ingredients to make the potion or of success in enchanting anything beyond fairly minor effects (without abusing the system, anyways).

[Rynjin]

Started up a new modded playthrough of Oblivion, made what I think was a mistake in installing Oblivion Reloaded. So many half-assed features outside the main purview of the mod. I have no clue why it is such a consistently highly rated mod for Oblivion. I've had to turn off a plethora of different **** that the mod has that makes my playthrough more frustrating. The horrendous half-implemented Dodge (in a GRAPHICAL MOD? Why?), the garbage Enhanced Camera-lite that makes it so you can't see your hands in 1st person, the thing that is supposed to dynamically control your draw distance if your framerate dips that never turns off so you have to manually boost the draw distance again, the incredibly annoying and distracting low Health/Fatigue indicators...ugh. I hope that's all I end up having to shut off. I'd uninstall it but it's just enough of a pain in the ass to uninstall that I probably won't unless forced to.

Edit: The mod also...breaks sleeping. I can't.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I had the abrupt realization: Altmeri isolationism is a survival trait. The Sload like throwing biological weapons at them, and at least some of those diseases must have been spread person-to-person...

[Triaxx]

Social Distancing: Support your local Stealth Archer today!

[halfeye]

Edit: The mod also...breaks sleeping. I can't.

If you can't sleep, you can't level up. That sounds totally broken.

[Caelestion]

There were a few OB mods that gave you much more dynamic levelling, including not needing to sleep to level up.

[Keltest]

If you can't sleep, you can't level up. That sounds totally broken.

Probably not actually. Unmodded leveling in oblivion generally made the experience worse unless you really wanted to be wearing something better than steel/chainmail armor or wanted a specific daedric quest.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Probably not actually. Unmodded leveling in oblivion generally made the experience worse unless you really wanted to be wearing something better than steel/chainmail armor or wanted a specific daedric quest.

Gotta agree here; running into angry Minotaurs/Land Dreugh every ten paces gets old very fast.

[halfeye]

Gotta agree here; running into angry Minotaurs/Land Dreugh every ten paces gets old very fast.

You had to level up the right way, but once you sorted that out, it was okay.

[Rynjin]

If you can't sleep, you can't level up. That sounds totally broken.

It was. It came about due to another half-assed feature that lets you see your character while they sleep. Which is neat, except it also removes the "pick how long to sleep" menu so your character just plays on the bed until you wake up. So I also had to disable that in the ini, as I have for about half the so-called "features" the mod adds in addition to its graphical overhauls.

I think it's a pretty good highlight of how much lower the standards were for being a "top file" for Oblivion modding. It's the 12th most popular mod of all time.

[Aeson]

You had to level up the right way, but once you sorted that out, it was okay.

I don't really agree. Leveling "the right way" was a band-aid that postponed the enemy HP scaling issue to levels beyond the 25th or so, tops, because you'd hit the max level in all of the skills and stats affecting your character's combat prowess in any significant way by then, if not earlier. It was also an irritant in and of itself, because "the right way" was to get 5-5-1 or 5-5-5 levels, which basically meant picking one or two minor skills and a major skill and leveling each of them ten times (minor skills first, since minor skill advancements made after you hit the requirement to advance to the next character level didn't count for the current level's advancement bonus) and thus required book-keeping if you were playing across multiple sessions and caution not to use the "wrong" skills too much and mess up your perfect levels even within a play session.

Moreover, leveling "the right way" doesn't affect how Oblivion spawns enemies, it only affects your ability to deal with them. Caves full of goblin war chiefs and minotaurs around every corner are spawning problems that can only be resolved by not advancing to a high enough level for the game to spawn those enemies like that; it's not a problem that can be solved by leveling "correctly."

[LibraryOgre]

I don't really agree. Leveling "the right way" was a band-aid that postponed the enemy HP scaling issue to levels beyond the 25th or so, tops, because you'd hit the max level in all of the skills and stats affecting your character's combat prowess in any significant way by then, if not earlier. It was also an irritant in and of itself, because "the right way" was to get 5-5-1 or 5-5-5 levels, which basically meant picking one or two minor skills and a major skill and leveling each of them ten times (minor skills first, since minor skill advancements made after you hit the requirement to advance to the next character level didn't count for the current level's advancement bonus) and thus required book-keeping if you were playing across multiple sessions and caution not to use the "wrong" skills too much and mess up your perfect levels even within a play session.

Moreover, leveling "the right way" doesn't affect how Oblivion spawns enemies, it only affects your ability to deal with them. Caves full of goblin war chiefs and minotaurs around every corner are spawning problems that can only be resolved by not advancing to a high enough level for the game to spawn those enemies like that; it's not a problem that can be solved by leveling "correctly."

I wound up getting a mod that gave me *5 in every attribute in which you advanced anything. It made the game more playable, but, as was said, it's a stopgap to deal with bad design, not an actual solution.

[Rynjin]

I have one that gives you incremental stat ups as you level skills (based on their linked attribute) and sets all level up bonuses to 1. it works well.

[Resileaf]

I remember a mod that gives levels to areas in the game instead, making leveling more a matter of getting strong enough to go through the latter parts of the game.

[Rodin]

I've been clearing out my ITunes library of music that I don't need any more. Ah, the joys of social distancing.

This has made me realize that all the music from Oblivion I've been getting nostalgic for isn't actually from Oblivion. See, not long after I started playing I got tired of the same tracks over and over, and Oblivion chose its music by picking at random from any MP3 that was in the correct folder. Add new songs into the folder, and voila! You've expanded the soundtrack.

Every single song I associate with Oblivion is actually from Guild Wars. I can't actually remember a single song from the base game. This is not true of either Morrowind or Skyrim.

Either the Oblivion soundtrack wasn't very memorable, or Jeremy Soule has some sort of power to hijack my brain. Possibly both.

On the flip side, the reverse has happened with the gameplay from Guild Wars. I know I played it. I just don't remember a blessed thing from it outside the tutorial area.

[Vinyadan]

I pretty much only remember those from Morrowind. The ones in following games didn't feel nearly as prominent to me. I remember the bombastic song from Skyrim, but that's because it was in the trailers.

[LibraryOgre]

The opening theme from Oblivion was pretty good... variation on the Morrowind and Skyrim theme, with a more martial, Imperial, sound.

[halfeye]

I feel that musically the Skyrim themes relate a lot more strongly to the Morrowind themes than to the Oblivion ones. I think I vaguely prefer the Oblivion ones, but they're all okay.

[factotum]

I pretty much only remember those from Morrowind.

I don't really remember any of the in-game music from these games. The one bit of music I could recognise is the main title theme from Morrowind, which is, IMHO, the best version of that theme in any Elder Scrolls game.

[Vinyadan]

I don't really remember any of the in-game music from these games. The one bit of music I could recognise is the main title theme from Morrowind, which is, IMHO, the best version of that theme in any Elder Scrolls game.

I agree. While it was renamed "Nerevar Rising", its original title was "World of Magic", and I think it's very good at portraying the feelings of awe and gradual discovery of someone who is entering such a world.

The others feel more generic, in the line of "look! epic stuff!". It might have something to do with how the Morrowind Theme had to do the lifting by itself, while the others were integrated into videos that would introduce the player (the opening for Oblivion and the trailer for Skyrim).

[Resileaf]

I remember most of the Oblivion exploration music, personally. Some of the songs had very melancholic feels, very calming and beautiful. Battle and dungeon music is another matter though. Those were somewhat forgettable.

Morrowind's ost is a joy all over though.

[Spore]

Eh, I feel the Morrowind title the most of these three. Oblivion was too generic for me, and I never got into the whole "Nordic" theming thing like many other fantasy fans. Granted my judgment suffers from Morrowind being the first really grand 3D RPG I've played. It is a fantastical leap from Baldurs Gate, and even Neverwinter Nights to fully realized 3D graphics.

[Resileaf]

I think the Morrowind theme is better too. I get chills every time the heartbeat starts when I launch the game.

[Vinyadan]

This is a question that was probably already asked, but: how does Online play as a single player experience? It's been almost ten years since Skyrim, and I think it's unrealistic to expect a new ES anytime soon, so maybe I'll give it a try.

There are a few questions though:

-- Cost: is there a monthly fee?
-- Are there mods?
-- I remember seeing some very old version, and I was negatively impressed by the fact that the PC was immediately offered some "collect three fish bones on the beach" quest. Is the game all like that?
-- How important are the expansion packs? Can I play without them and have fun? Would I have more fun with them?
-- And: is the writing good? Would you say that there is more narrative payoff than in Skyrim or FO4?

[PopeLinus1]

This is a question that was probably already asked, but: how does Online play as a single player experience? It's been almost ten years since Skyrim, and I think it's unrealistic to expect a new ES anytime soon, so maybe I'll give it a try.

There are a few questions though:

-- Cost: is there a monthly fee?
-- Are there mods?
-- I remember seeing some very old version, and I was negatively impressed by the fact that the PC was immediately offered some "collect three fish bones on the beach" quest. Is the game all like that?
-- How important are the expansion packs? Can I play without them and have fun? Would I have more fun with them?
-- And: is the writing good? Would you say that there is more narrative payoff than in Skyrim or FO4?

I didn't play long enough to really answer any of those questions, but I stopped playing after a few days after starting for the same reasons I stopped playing WoW after a few days. But that was half a lifetime ago, and I can't speak to the quality of the game nowadays.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

This is a question that was probably already asked, but: how does Online play as a single player experience? It's been almost ten years since Skyrim, and I think it's unrealistic to expect a new ES anytime soon, so maybe I'll give it a try.

There are a few questions though:

-- Cost: is there a monthly fee?
-- Are there mods?
-- I remember seeing some very old version, and I was negatively impressed by the fact that the PC was immediately offered some "collect three fish bones on the beach" quest. Is the game all like that?
-- How important are the expansion packs? Can I play without them and have fun? Would I have more fun with them?
-- And: is the writing good? Would you say that there is more narrative payoff than in Skyrim or FO4?

—There isn’t a mandatory monthly fee but a lot of useful things (craft bag!) are locked if you don’t subscribe. Zenimax’s setup for what is and is not covered by subscription is unintuitive so let me know if you want more detail here.
—There are some addons for PC (I think console has them too now but I can’t verify) but for obvious reasons they mostly just affect things in the UI (map markers for fishing holes, things that let you know when buffs have worn off, things that tell you how much things are selling for on the guild traders). You are NOT going to get entirely new quest areas solely through mods like you can for the single player games.
—There are a lot of quests like that. Dailies tend to be especially guilty of it.
—Depends on the quest. The Orsinium DLC, Clockwork City DLC, base game lower Craglorn - these all had excellent mainline stories. But the Elsweyr Chapter mainline was average and Summerset Chapter mainline was horrible. The quest writing quality isn’t consistent either; Clockwork City had a number of meh side quests and Summerset had some decent ones. They do, however, have a bad habit of pretending you will have some meaningful say in some quests and then ignoring it in later quests (EX: give you the option to kill or spare an important NPC and then it turns out oops! They survived regardless!) so I’m going to say no, in general the payoff is if anything less than Skyrim (haven’t played FO4 so I can’t speak to that).

I will also note it was a laggy, broken mess the last time I played (~3 months ago) and Zenimax is lax about fixing things. Bots run rampant in some areas, and have for some time. There are a lot of paywalls in place (two classes, plus of course a number of the zones, just to start with). Also about half the DLCs for the last few years have been dungeons, which range from difficult to impossible to solo.

Overall, if you’re seriously considering it I will recommend you wait for a free-to-play weekend so you can play for a bit and make your own decision. If you like it it’s usually on sale during the free-to-play weekend, if you don’t you haven’t wasted any money.

[PopeLinus1]

Has anyone here ever killed Paarthunax?

[Rynjin]

Nope. Partly because I pretty much never bother with the main quest even up to that point, and partly because the Blades, as characters, suck major ass and I hate them.

"Bro why don't you like just murder this dude who's been helping you because I...uh, don't like him very much" Yeah no.