The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is back with a remaster which borders on remake and keeps the vast majority of its systems intact. This means almost every kernel of knowledge longtime fans of the game have found and gained over the years can be applied to this iteration. Though the vast open-world RPG can feel very familiar at first glance, trust us, you need to check out some of our best Oblivion tips and tricks if this is your first time in Cyrodiil.
We’ve tried to leave obvious, tutorial-like tips out of this article, as we believe there’s not much value in that type of piece and the game already does a solid job of walking players through the basics of combat, deep exploration, leveling, and whatnot. This isn’t an extensive tips and tricks list either, so we still recommend spending some time among Elder Scrolls diehards and in the dedicated forums to learn as much as you can about one of the deepest and most expansive Western RPGs ever made.
Looking to cheat your way through some tricky areas and/or encounters and to tinker with the game’s commands? We’ve got you covered here as long as you’re playing on PC.
You can just ignore the main quest
This might seem obvious to anyone who’s played an Elder Scrolls game before, but newcomers may think you miss out on a lot of what makes Oblivion special if you forget about the Amulet of Kings, the Oblivion gates, and whatnot. But no, you don’t. Sure, it’s a main quest worth experiencing at least once to get the full adventure, but it also kickstarts a number of big world events that are sort of annoying and disrupt the game’s signature cozy vibes, so if you want to treat it more like a big immersive fantasy RPG with almost no ‘chosen one’ pressure, you can just step out of the Imperial City sewers and choose not to seek Jauffre in Chorrol or close the Oblivion gate in Kvatch.
There’s a downside to this approach, however. Whenever you end up deciding to tackle the main quest, the experience will be harder due to Oblivion’s hugely divisive ‘almost everyone and everything’ levels up with you approach to scaling. The more you level up, the stronger the enemies that spawn in most areas will be, and this is especially noticeable when you deal with the threat from Oblivion across several quests and the many optional gates that pop up around Cyrodiil after closing the Kvatch one.
Feel free to break the game
Hitting the sack every time you’re ready to level up means your character will get better at plenty of things depending on which attributes you choose to boost. This will also affect the item drops at large and the enemies that spawn. Does this render ‘getting stronger’ pointless? Not at all, but unlike in other games, becoming visibly stronger than most enemies depends more on working on optimal builds, enchantments, and spells.
The main trick here is to pay attention to how attributes, skills, and weapons work and to abuse them as much as possible. You can also stack spell and potion effects to greatly boost attributes for a good few seconds (or even minutes), making you extremely overpowered if you play your cards right. But of course, the best recommendation we can give you is to…
Create your own spells
Spell making is a big part of Oblivion’s magic system, and all you need to do to access the Altars of Spellmaking is to join the Mages Guild and complete the recommendation quests to join the University. There, you’ll be able to access this unique mechanic which requires gold, magicka (required to cast the spells), and the relevant skill level.
These requirements serve as roadblocks of sorts to prevent players from abusing the system early on, but there are ways to get around them if you look hard enough. Regardless, this system shouldn’t be ignored, and once you begin to make fat stacks of gold and raise your magic-related skills, you should spend some time tinkering with spell making to make your life easier as the world becomes harsher.
Join the Thieves Guild early if you’re a kleptomaniac
Unless you’re doing a committed ‘good two-shoes’ run of the game, chances are you’ll end up stealing stuff from NPCs and places which aren’t yours because some items are expensive and perfect to sell in exchange for quick gold. The thing is you need to sell stolen items to a specific type of merchant.
Fences are linked to the Thieves Guild questline, so even if you don’t want to go through it yet, make sure to check the midnight reunion at the Imperial City Waterfront (behind the wall-like structure) and join the Guild by completing an easy starting test. After that step, you can go to Bruma and sell any stolen goods to Ongar the World-Weary, who spends all day either sleeping inside his small house or at the tavern.
Vampirism sucks and will get to you eventually
Though there’s a hard-to-miss way to become a vampire if you join the Dark Brotherhood or fight blood suckers, the game makes sure you have to deal with it regardless by having a ‘night visitor’ randomly bite you in your sleep. At that moment, a new quest to either deal with or cure the disease begins. You can roll with it and enjoy the attribute/skill boosts and special abilities which come with it, but it’s just a hassle to manage and way less cool than its counterpart in Skyrim.
Finding the cure to vampirism involves completing a long quest, but the easiest way to get rid of the disease is to visit Deepscorn Hollow (this used to be a DLC, but comes included with the GOTY and Remastered versions of the game) and use the Font of Renewal alongside purgeblood salts. You can walk to this location southeast of Leyawiin; just look for a little peninsula-like chunk of land and dive past the ruins to find a hidden underwater entrance.
The Skeleton Key is a must for thieves and assassins
Oblivion veterans know the Skeleton Key is one of the most broken unique items in the game, but newcomers might not come across it until late into their playthrough, and we think anyone rolling a thief/assassin type of character should work towards attaining it as soon as possible.
Once you’ve reached level 10, you can head to Nocturnal’s Shrine following the road north of Leyawiin. There, you can start a relatively easy quest which will reward you with this unbreakable lockpick that also raises the Security skill by 40 points. This all translates into simply being unable to ‘lose’ the lockpicking minigame, as the Skeleton Key doesn’t break and you can just spam auto-attempt on any lock.
Horses aren’t entirely useless in Oblivion Remastered
Elder Scrolls games which aren’t TES Online haven’t gotten horses right yet for some reason, but Oblivion Remastered makes them slightly better.
Mind you, a high-level character with many points into Speed and with a high Athletics skill (plus skooma boosts) doesn’t need horses at all, but if you’re not there yet and don’t like using fast travel for maximum immersion, horses are slightly faster and just handle better overall in the remaster. You can steal and buy them all over Cyrodiil, but the easiest way to get one early on is to just close Kvatch’s Oblivion gate and return to Jauffre; after a short melee with Mythic Dawn agents, you can request extra help and he’ll offer some dead monk’s horse free of charge.
Local maps exist, and here’s how to use them
The majority of changes and extras in Oblivion Remastered are great, but a few things feel like small steps back. Many players have reported they couldn’t find local maps, which had their own menu tab in the 2006 release, but that doesn’t mean they’re not in the remaster. They’re just a bit hidden.
In Oblivion Remastered, local maps only show up when you zoom all the way into the world map and then press the zoom in button again. To exit them, do the opposite. While this might not seem too important while navigating towns, dungeons can become a bit of a nightmare without the ability to check where you are, especially when they have several levels.
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