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TES IV: Oblivion

Playtime: 134.7 Hours (116.5 Cyrodiil, 18.2 Shivering Isles)

Logged playtime on Steam is 343 hours, which includes all the time spent in previous unfinished runs and modding. My goal with this playthrough was to keep the core gameplay loop fairly close to Vanilla, with some rebalancing done to fix the horrible scaling and levelling system - more details can be taken from the modlist. I used a default female Breton character, and focused mostly on stealth, archery, and conjuration - at least initially. At a certain point in the game I got powerful enough to do pretty much anything; near the end, I was mostly spamming a custom lightning/paralyze spell that eviscerated everything in the endgame. Still, a big draw of the game for me is how beautiful the world is when extensively modded - it could look a bit better with some ENB applied, but the world was stunning even without any post-processing. It certainly helps that Cyrodiil tends to be far more photogenic than Skyrim, but I found myself looking out at the scenery of the game very frequently.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this game - it did start to drag a little at the end once I got really overpowered, but the slower scaling of the mods definitely helped maintain my interest for a very long time. I feel like the early struggle of the slow pace made it so much more satisfying to start snowballing, and I finally got to do all of the questlines that I'd previously ignored. From my memory, the only major questlines I had ever finished before was the Thieves' Guild and Arena - I had never even managed to make it very far in the Dark Brotherhood, Mages' Guild, Fighters' Guild, or even the main quest. I did walk into this playthrough with a hefty amount of spoiler knowledge already, but still mostly enjoyed just being in the world and actually doing the quests myself. I also hadn't done a single one of the DLCs before, either - so finishing them in this game at "appropriate" moments was also very satisfying.

Speaking of the DLC, the two really significant packs for Oblivion are KOTN and the Shivering Isles, which I'd never played before. The KOTN DLC is really cool, but quite short - it feels like just another mid-sized questline like the Imperial City Ayleid plot, but is very well focused and has some really cool challenges for the relic retrieval missions. The ending is also pretty cool, with a neat final fight against Umaril over the skies of the Imperial City. The Shivering Isles is a fully-fleshed expansion, with a new map set in Sheogorath's realm of Oblivion, and it's a really interesting and fresh experience. The environments of Mania and Dementia wonderfully contrast against each other, although most of the other features (dungeons, enemies) are very similar. Also, while the main quest of the expansion was quite good, a lot of the side quests were terrible, involving huge collect-a-thon missions, random item placements, and other tedious tasks. Overall, the expansion was very much worth playing once, but I don't really care to touch it again.

Probably the most significant thing that kept killing all my previous attempts was a poor set of mods without proper resolution of conflicts, which caused certain cells to permanently crash - obviously, this can easily make the game completely unplayable or otherwise so unenjoyable to play that I'd just give up. This time, I tried using a modding guide - Through the Valleys - as the core of my modlist. As a result, while the game would still occasionally crash (it's Oblivion, after all) I didn't face any consistent bad cells or corrupted saves that would kill my playthrough, just some memory issues or maybe some random bugs that would crash the game a couple times a night. However, given that I've finally conquered the game, I don't really have much interest in trying it again; more than once in this run I lost significant time to untimely crashes.

Build

Name: Mei
Race / Gender: Breton / Female
Birthsign: Thief
Class: Bowmage (Specialization: Magic, Attributes: Intelligence/Agility, Skills: Marksman/Sneak/Conjuration/Mysticism/Illusion/Alteration/Restoration)
Level (Final): 46
Health (Final): 490
Magicka (Final): 460
Fatigue (Final): 480

Attributes (w/ Equipment)

Strength: 120
Intelligence: 130
Willpower: 130
Agility: 120
Speed: 125
Endurance: 110
Personality: 110
Luck: 79

Skills

Alteration: 82
Conjuration: 110
Illusion: 100
Mysticism: 100
Restoration: 91
Marksman: 100
Sneak: 102
Armorer: 95
Athletics: 72
Blade: 83
Block: 53
Blunt: 28
Hand-to-Hand: 35
Heavy Armor: 39
Alchemy: 26
Destruction: 100
Acrobatics: 94
Light Armor: 49
Mercantile: 53
Security: 88
Speechcraft: 32

Factions

Court of Madness: Madgod
Order of the Virtuous Blood: Sister
Thieves Guild: Gray Fox
Nine Divines: Pilgrim
Fighters Guild: Master
Blades: Knight Sister
Mages Guild: Arch-Mage
Arena: Grand Champion
Dark Brotherhood: Listener
Knights of the White Stallion: Knight-Errant
Knights of the Nine: Divine Crusader
Knights of the Thorn: Honorary Knight
Order of the Dragon: Champion of Cyrodiil

Miscellaneous Tracked Stats

Days Passed: 202
Active Quests: 0
Quests Completed: 224
Skill Increases: 1078
Training Sessions: 176
Novice Skills: 0
Apprentice Skills: 6
Journeyman Skills: 4
Expert Skills: 5
Master Skills: 6
Bounty: 0
Shivering Isles Bounty: 0
Fame: 194
Infamy: 0
Days Jailed: 0
Items Stolen: 1631
Items Pickpocketed: 19
Trespasses: 144
Assaults: 255
Murders: 36
Horses Stolen: 0
Largest Bounty: 1000
Creatures Killed: 2922
People Killed: 1291
Places Found: 443
Locks Picked: 469
Lockpicks Broken: 31
Souls Trapped: 108
Ingredients Eaten: 5
Potions Made: 8
Oblivion Gates Shut: 43
Horses Owned: -2147483648 (actually 3)
Houses Bought: 8
Stores Invested In: 0
Books Read: 331
Skill Books Read: 25
Artifacts Found: 15
Hours Slept: 636
Hours Waited: 942
Days as a Vampire: 4
Necks Bitten: 3
Jokes Told: 236
Diseases Contracted: 7
Nirnroots Found: 113

Guide - Through the Valleys

TES IV: Oblivion

Status: Complete!

Playtime: 134.7 Hours (116.5 Cyrodiil, 18.2 Shivering Isles)

Character

Build

Attributes (w/ Equipment)

Skills

Other Statistics

Factions

Miscellaneous Tracked Stats

Modlist

Guide - Through the Valleys

Modding Tools

Utilities and Engine Tweaks

Bug Fixes

UI Changes

Core Gameplay Tweaks

World Enhancement

Sound Mods

Character and Armor Mods

Graphics

Bashed Patch

Load Order

Screenshots