@Bubb raise dead costs at temples depend on the level of your character. You'll find it won't be quite so cheap if you are unfortunate enough to suffer further casualties a bit later in your run .
After failing my archer run, I decided to try a complete novelty: an orc kensai..
Yes I know it, but I was going to try a new approach: meleeing. So It was a not to shabby 93 roll, min/maxing and specialized in staves and 2 handed fighting.
I was going quickly for the Nashkell mine - only stopping to pick up the canon party.
I will add some documentation of the disaster
The idea was bad - and the execution worse. So I ended back with a unique and novell character: the orc kensai with dagger focus.. Yes I know its been done, but I havent . And his skin is red.
This time its also the canon party, no mods and core difficulty.
I cut some corners this time. Dodged Imoen for starters, killed Shoal and the basilisk and hit level 6. Then picked up Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira and cleared the mine.
From there it was picking up Minsc and getting Dynaheir. Khalid died on the way - not a good omen..
I am suspecting that Dynaheir cant use the enchant weapon spell. In that case she will have an accident when Voghlin comes up... But we will have to see by then. Imoen may also get swapped with Safana for more SoD powerplay. But we will see.. if I get that far
Ps: @Wise_Grimwald congratulations on becomming a grandfather
I was expecting the raise dead price so be in the thousands like Baldur's Gate II, but apparently the prices are adjusted for the early game. I managed to get the 400 gold I needed by selling some gems and raised my party members in the Nashkel temple. The run is back on track, and I'll make sure to be more careful moving forward...
The price for raising dead increases with level, so don't expect it to remain so cheap!!
@Bubb Another cheap source of safe gold is the ring in the tree by the entrance of the FAI. I believe you can sell it for upwards of roughly 2000 gold which should cover your expenses I would think.
I sell the ring that RVNS is talking about all the time, unless my own character is a mage, or maybe if I have a mage in the party early, which usually I don't.
@Iroumen The Ring of Wizardry next to the FAI was in fact part of vanilla BG1, but it was much harder to get - the reason being that the option to highlight lootable objects via tab didn't exist yet, so items such as these were hidden - if you didn't know the exact pixel you had to click (you could find the info about the exact position online and get there via the x and y axes of the map), it was very hard to actually pick them up, and if you never had heard of these treasures, there was almost no way you would ever find them.
One of the best sources of gold is selling ankheg shells at the Beregost Smithy. The problem is that he takes ALL the shells for the 500gp. Put all but one on the ground and pick them up one at a time and sell it after selling the one in your inventory. (Unless you have a helpful mod) 18 shells gives 9000 gp!!!
If you are away for too long between selling one and selling the next he will say that they have gone rotten. Therefore take as many as possible to Beregost and sell them all within as short a time as possible.
If your party has a high charisma character (or a mage who can use friends and you actually use the friends spell to get 20 CHA) and high reputation, it's not hard in BG 1 to get high gold by the end of the game. I have lots of games that by chapter 7 I have 100,000 gold, and that's without looting the TotSC areas. It's my evil parties I have big issues with gold. For example, my good parties can get the robe of the good arch magic for about 18,000 gold - my evil parties, about 30,000!
After heading back to Nashkel to resurrect my fallen party members I go to Durlag's tower to farm some more xp. My party is barely able to defeat the two Doom Guards that bar any low-level parties from entering Durlag's. Once in the tower we head to the roof to do some more basilisk hunting.
After sufficiently leveling up, the party heads down to the Nashkel carnival and the mines. The mines prove to be very easy for my level 4 party, and Mulahey stands no chance against my hold-immune beserker. Outside of the mines we fight the amazonian party, using the web spell I just obtained inside of the mines. My "noobness" rears its head again when I falsely believe that my beserker rage protects against the web effect. I trap poor Zaxem in my own web; luckily the amazonians remain webbed long enough for Zaxem to break free. The fight is won quite easily from afar.
We return to Nashkel to claim our bounty on the emeralds and report our success in defeating Mulahey. Nimbul proves no threat at this point, falling quite quickly. The party goes on the hunt for Bassilus on the advice of my fellow forum-goers. I accidentally pick the wrong dialog options so all of Bassilus's skeletons / zombies stay alive, though the fight is also almost too easy for Zaxem in his rage. The 5000 gold reward is quite handy! It is about time to advance the story, so the party goes and confronts Transzig about the Bandit Camp. Again, the party easily prevails.
The party heads north to do some ankheg hunting, particularly because I want some new armor for Jaheira. While in Beregost I do the Neera encounter just to steal her gem bag. I have Taerom forge me one ankheg plate armor and sell 2 additional shells for 1000 gold; not bad! To tie up some loose ends I also visit High Hedge to cure Melicamp of his unfortunate situation.
With the party up to level 4 / 5 I believe it is time to go pay the Bandit Camp a visit.
While flying around the west coast, I spot an unusual monster of remarkable size, accompanied by a pair of dead humanoids. It's a bipedal monster similar to a Kagouti or Alit, but it's a clearly different model.
I saw this creature once before, in a previous run that failed. All I saw was its outline, but it sheer size convinced me to turn and run, as I was a very low-level character at the time and I was sure that it would destroy me.
Despite my previous run dying at the hands of another mod-introduced creature I didn't recognize, I decide to go down and check it out. For safety's sake, I let my Golden Saint fight it while I strike from afar using enchanted items. It turns out the thing has spectacular resistances.
I move in to land some attacks with the Daedric Longsword and nearly die in the process, but the creature finally goes down.
According to a note left by the slain humanoids nearby, it's an imported creature called a Wormmouth that somehow got let loose and went on a rampage.
It's time to tackle the corprus questline. Frost is a decent mid-level character with some strong equipment and mediocre stats. Half of our armor rating and a quarter of our Health comes from enchantments instead of our own abilities.
But our enchantments are strong enough to compensate for our weaknesses, and the Daedric Longsword, which has been enchanted to absorb 80 points of Agility for 4 seconds with each hit, makes it very easy to stun-lock Dagoth Gares, the spellcasting boss of Ilunibi, the next dungeon.
Before receiving the cure from Divayth Fyr, I wait for many days to let the corprus disease worsen. By the time I'm done, Frost has a Strength of 153 (the normal natural limit being 100), and all the other damage to our attributes can be cured with a custom Restore Attribute item.
Next stop, Kogoruhn. We have some mutant ash critters to kill, and many souls to absorb to fuel new enchantments (on a related note, we recently made an amulet that regenerates 2 Health per second!). Every single Ash Ghoul has a soul strong enough to make a constant effect enchantment, so I focus on improving Frost's shoddy defenses.
I even tack on a 2-point Shield effect to our Dwemer Greaves, even though we're going to get a better set of greaves later on. We can afford it; I'm struggling to find enough uses for all the powerful souls we're finding. For special occasions, I already have items with Shield effects up to 80 points!
By now, we can actually stand up in melee combat without worrying about a rapid death. I even engage the Ascended Sleepers, who have a surprisingly tough melee attack despite being fat lumps of mushy flesh. Check out the lovely patterns on their robes!
Fortify Strength enchantments, Resist Fire enchantments... we have lots of excellent tools now. As long as we boost Frost's Shield, we're quite tough in melee combat. Another boss gets stun-locked by our Absorb Agility sword.
Dagoth Uthol gives us a massive 600-point soul when he falls.
I spot the dragon again. This time, I decide to pass it by.
I already looked up its stats, and beating it is not realistic for basically any character without godlike stats--nor do I see any remotely meaningful reward from defeating the creature.
It's time to get some better gear, which means looting the Redoran Vault. I don't have a Command spell this time, so rather than hypnotizing a local noblewoman to lure her away from a key I want to steal, I just use the "Taunt" function to bait her into attacking me, then calm her down with a spell when she runs downstairs to knife me.
I don't want her to be hostile forever, so I try to bump up her Disposition permanently using Speechcraft. The process turns out to be extremely difficult, however, even with a Charm effect to make her more pliable, and I alternate failing and succeeding so many times that Frost's Speechcraft skill jumps up dozens of points before I call it a day.
In the vault, I nearly die to a trap I didn't think would threaten me, but at level 15, Frost just barely has enough Health to survive it. With a 200% Chameleon enchantment, we can snatch up anything we want from the vault, Ordinators be damned.
Finally, we're back up to speed, both on the main questline and our gear. We proceed to our next mission: the Nerevarine is supposed to bear the Moon-and-Star ring of the original Nerevar. One theory is that it comes in the form of a birthmark, but since Frost has no such birthmark, we can't satisfy that interpretation of the prophecy, so we just hunt down Nerevar's actual ring, carefully hidden in a shrine.
While I'm there, we talk to the ghosts of the many failed Nerevarines, the people who satisfied some parts of the prophecy but died before fulfilling all of them.
Next, we need the other Ashlander tribes to recognize us as the Nerevarine (the Urshilaku aren't enough). We fly out to the next camp, chain-casting Levitate and Fortify Speed spells to get there faster--I happen to have a custom Restore Magicka spell on hand to regenerate magicka on command, which means we can spam spells without worrying about resting. It's done a lot to boost our magic skills.
The Erabenimsun is run by a bunch of proud militaristic jerkasses, so our only option is to kill all the leaders...
...and then give some magic items to the new guy to give him the confidence to take charge of the tribe.
As for the Ahemmusa Ashlanders, they want a new home. So we go over to a nice daedric shrine to kill the worshippers and make room for the Ashlanders...
...then lead the wise woman over land and sea to show off their new home.
Finally, the Zainab tribe. The leader wants me to go kill a vampire or something, so off we go.
Still not satisfied, he wants us to hook him up with a high-born Telvanni bride with big hips so he can start cranking out some heirs. Telvanni nobles aren't keen on marrying dirt-poor Ashlander hillbillies, so we go purchase a slave from Tel Aruhn, give her some fancy clothes and perfume, and walk her all the way to her new husband. We make a new Fortify Health amulet to improve her survivability, as it's possible for her to die en route, and her HP is pretty terrible.
We re-create Sparky, our instant-death amulet, bump up our health with a new enchantment on our stolen tower shield (shields, especially tower shields, have high capacities for enchantments), and earn an endorsement from the top leader of House Hlaalu. Fortunately, the price is dirt cheap.
The other leaders of House Hlaalu want more. We bribe one and lie to the other, playing to the latter's xenophobia.
House Hlaalu formally declares Frost to be their Hortator, fulfilling part of the next prophecy. But we need to do the same thing for Houses Redoran and Telvanni. Most of the Redoran councilors aren't bad, but Bolvyn Venim is a problem. First, we need to kill his guards and rescue another nobleman's son, whom Bolvyn Venim decided to kidnap for reasons that don't matter to us.
This is enough to earn us the support of the rest of the councilors, but Bolvyn Venim himself says no. So, we challenge him to a duel. He hits really hard with his two-handed katana, but we can stun-lock him with our sword.
Once we report back to Ald'ruhn, we become the Hortator of House Redoran as well. Last of all is our own house, House Telvanni.
Telvanni lords and ladies are idiosyncratic. Each one wants something different. Neloth's requirement is the easiest: just leave him alone.
Therana is crazy and doesn't listen to you, but by doing "something amusing," you can win her favor.
Dratha requires no persuasion. She just thinks it's hilarious.
The last Telvanni councilor will never support you--he'll just procrastinate indefinitely. In true Telvanni form, the solution is to kill him. Unfortunately, he comes with two dremora guards, and in the process of starting the fight, I accidentally get myself expelled from House Telvanni.
Afraid I'll get butchered if I don't establish an advantage early, I use every single magic item I have to buff up Frost, since it only takes a single in-combat mouse click to activate each one. Our defenses shoot through the roof.
We tear the enemy apart without suffering a scratch.
With no remaining councilors offering any objection, we are now the Hortator of three houses as well as the Nerevarine of all Ashlander tribes.
We finally meet with the living god Vivec, who tells us how to defeat Dagoth Ur. While Vivec is busy maintaining the Ghostfence--the colossal barrier keeping the corprus monsters of Red Mountain from overruning the entire continent--we must lay siege to Dagoth Ur's citadels, seizing two key Dwemer artifacts, the dagger Keening and the hammer Sundar, and use them to destroy the source of Dagoth Ur's power as well as Vivec's: the Heart of Lorkhan.
@Iroumen The Ring of Wizardry next to the FAI was in fact part of vanilla BG1, but it was much harder to get - the reason being that the option to highlight lootable objects via tab didn't exist yet, so items such as these were hidden - if you didn't know the exact pixel you had to click (you could find the info about the exact position online and get there via the x and y axes of the map), it was very hard to actually pick them up, and if you never had heard of these treasures, there was almost no way you would ever find them.
Actually in the unpatched version the ring is simply not there. Maybe it was introduced in TotSC but of that I am unsure.
The BioWare people kept adding/removing the Ring of Wizardry. I hope I am remembering this right, but I think it worked like this:
BG 1 unpatched, no TotSC - no ring BG 1 patched, no TotSC - ring present BG 1 and TotSC, unpatched - ring not present BG 1 and TotSC, patched - ring present
I mostly ignore the random items on the road. The diamond, the ring of Princes, the ring of wizardry, the wand of frost. Somehow it loses the challenge.
Big update on Yvralline. As I believe I have said, I chose to go with a party this time, so I fired up level1npcs and made Ajantis a Cavalier, Jaheira a Fighter/Shapeshifter (vanilla Shapeshifter, I didn't install the SCS component to make shapeshifting paw-based because I believe it's quite broken in terms of power, I miss it a lot nevertheless) and Xan a Fighter/Mage, besides others which are irrelevant because they're not going to be part of this run, or did not have any of their stats or class modified.
First, I'm going to start with a quick infodump about my install and characters. Yvralline is a Gypsy. This Song and Silence kit changes the traditional Bard for a once per round charm, which starts off with a +2 vs. spells, and goes down by one every five levels of the Bard. The effect lasts only for one round, making it nearly useless against most enemies, but low level critters and Mages that can die to one of their own spells are particularly wonderful targets for it.
Our early game is filled with deaths, all of them both very dumb and avoidable. Starting with Imoen and Branwen dying to Tarnesh's slimes (SR introduces Monster Summoning spells for all levels; the second level Mage one, summons two Green Slimes, which against level one characters with no equipment, are very effective), who died to the Guards, which Edwin had charmed, but the charm had just worn off when one of them got the killing blow (thanks to TobEx I believe, there's no hostile reaction after Charm). Jaheira got killed by Teyngan, Jemby succumbed to her own Web spell we made her cast, and the Hobgoblin that was with them lost the Long Bow 1v1 against Coran. By doing this, killing a few Ankhegs and several other threat-less enemies, some of us made it to level 2. At this point, I hoped to include Xan in our party, until nearly the end of today's session where I decided to recruit Ajantis, but at this point I hadn't decided that yet so we were just five.
Thanks to this, Jaheira pretty much killed every single opponent we came across for us. As everyone knows, Shapeshifters are utterly broken in early BG1 (the previously mentioned SCS component does in fact nerf it, but the ability to Shapeshift back and forth, not only at will but in the middle of combat, I think, is actually much more powerful), although one or two hits in the same round, and they're out. And there's also, as always, criticals to get in their way. Now, admire this oddity, for that it thankfully does not happen often.
And yes, those are three critical misses by the same character in the same round.
Our strategies up to this point were Grease spam and having Coran pelt the enemy with arrows or having Jaheira both tank (Regeneration lets me have her take one hit and then kite the enemy untill her HP's back) and deal all the damage. Ankhegs are incredibly easy to kill once you have someone with Jaheira's shapeshifted stats and Command. Ankhegs are very prone to sleep attacks, which, if timed correctly, will block them from attacking as well, when, paired together with their slow ranged ApR, turns them into a rather minimal threat. In SR, if creatures inside the circle of effect of the Grease spell fail a save vs. breath at +2, they "fall" which gives them the sleep effect, and this stacks, so you can have several Grease spells on the same area, and enemies will have to save several times in the same round or end up giving you free hits on them. Grease also reduces their movement speed to half, as in vanilla, but it's radius is greatly reduced.
More Ankheg hunting resulted in Jaheira's death, 9 Ankheg Shells, which in consequence resulted in one Ankheg plate and 4000gp, which just means we got the armour for free (well, 200gp from the Raise Dead cost actually, and all the trouble I went through to carry them as well). We also stole the Ring of Free Action from the halfling in Urgoth's Beard, killed Mutamin by abusing of his "walk up to player before turning hostile" script, along with half of the map's Basilisks and the group of adventurers that were oh so prone to Hold Person and Stinking Cloud (in SR, it blocks you from doing anything while letting you move, instead of inducing the sleep effect).
Now, Mutamin dropped an Adventurer's Robe for us, which, while equipped, provides protection from critical hits, something which helmets in IR don't do (instead, they all provide a base of 1 point of Armor Class, which is honestly not as convenient as protection from critical hits), and that also Wizards don't have a way of avoiding, so this is our Robe of choice for Edwin, along with the Protector of the Second+2, which provides the same effects, for Coran, and (although we found it a bit later), the Mail of the Dead +2 for our protagonist, Yvralline, who casted Mirror Image about three times, and Identify like five, so having an armour equipped is not much of a problem for us, since Edwin is there to cover for her. Branwen got the Ankheg plate all for herself, which in IR gives the wearer 40% Acid resistance, besides the usual penalties from it being a plate mail, and a bit of damage resistence to go with it. Her armor class is not great, but it's just barely under zero which is very convenient, because it ensures most creatures can only hit her on a critical, which means more armour would in fact be wasted on her.
After this I realised I already had two Arcane casters, and would probably do better without Xan, but since we still have only one melee fighter, I decided to recruit Ajantis instead. So we set onto the quest to find a magical bastard sword for him (we're still looking for one). This resulted in the death of Aldeth, an early excursion to the Ulcaster Ruins, which only amounted to a Potion of Mirrored Eyes, which is pretty cool because we can use it against the remaining Basilisks, and another pair of Boots of Stealth which I believe we promptly sold.
As you can see, Aldeth perished to a rather primitive and ruthless strategy, which even if it put Edwin in peril, I was certain it would not amount in his death, merely because of the faith I had in the rest of the party being able to kill him before he could shell out even a single attack (if I had had Branwen cast Hold Person on him, we could have had gotten the potion as well, but I realised that just now, which means it's late. Very late).
I am unsure where I found the Intelligence tome (I think either Meilum or Teyngan had it, not sure), but I can say for certain that Mutamin had the Charisma one. Now, Yvralline has had both of those stats raised up to 19 thanks to those particular tomes.
Now, I'm going to quickly go over the items and proficiencies my party currently has now, right before we start the Mines. —Yvralline, 5th level Gypsy. Mail of the Dead+2, Ring of Free Action, 2 scrolls of PfM, 3 Potions of Invisibility, one Wand of Magic Missiles and the Heart of the Golem+2. Spear+, Crossbow+ and Two-handed weapon style+. —Ajantis, 4th level Cavalier. Plate mail, medium shield+1, Watcher's Helm (IR version of the Helm of Infravision, gives immunity to Blindness and Deafness instead), Ring of Protection+1, Boots of Speed (either one of Sendai's party had them, or Zal, the fastest deceased dart thrower or his friend did). Bastard sword++, sword & shield style++ and war hammer+. —Jaheira, 3rd level Fighter/Shapeshifter. Ring of Protection+1. Club++, two-weapon style+++. —Coran, 3rd/4th level Fighter/Thief. Protector of the Second+2 (I think we got this one off the Nashkel fields hidden container), Cloak of Non-Detection, Boots of Stealth and a Long Sword+1 (we got like 5 total, sold the rest). Long sword++, long bow++++ (for some reason he started with 3 stars, but I am not sure whether to fix it or leave it). —Branwen, 5th level Cleric. Ankheg Plate mail+1. —Edwin, 4th level Conjurer. Adventurer's Robe, Bracelets of 7 AC (the Adventurers group from Mutamin's garden) and a Staff +1, which I have absolutely no idea where we got it from (not from Silke, since we haven't dealt with her yet). As for spells, I don't consider the need to explain the functionality of those heavily modified by SR, because of the lack of usage they've received so far. I will surely post about my most used ones or the ones I encounter the most in the future.
We re-join House Telvanni after a quick chat with our Mouth (it makes sense in context) and go to steal back our stolen gear after turning ourselves in for the assault. A custom enchantment on an amulet lets us unlock it with no trouble.
Thanks to our Restore Magicka spell, we've been grinding Alteration and Restoration dramatically while flying around. For the first time ever, I max out Restoration in Morrowind.
I create some new custom Fortify Intelligence spells to produce a set of new potions. Just for the hell of it, I tack on some Fortify Intelligence potions, too. I planned on never using "super potions," which I would define as potions generated by other Fortify Intelligence potions (as opposed to spells) but meh. I use all the rare and expensive and powerful ingredients to create potions for the endgame. The stat values are pretty absurd.
Potions actually get much stronger than this, infinitely so. But ours can only get so strong because the ingredients with the Fortify Intelligence effect don't appear to restock, so we can only make so many Fortify Intelligence potions. In the unmodded game, you can buy an unlimited number of those ingredients, which means you can get your Intelligence into the tens of thousands (or anything, really) without enough work. One of the famous uses of a top-quality "super potion" is giving your character a large enough Strength boost to kill the final boss in a single hit with a simple Iron Dagger.
We can't get potions anywhere near that strong, but we don't need to. Frost has already hit level 20 and has stupendous gear to boost her defenses thanks to all of the souls we've been collecting.
First stop, Odrosal, home of Dagoth Odros. Since enemy mages in Morrowind don't use pre-buffs or potions or anything like that, we can just stun-lock them with our sword of Absorb Agility. Killing Dagoth Odros earns us another 600-point soul, fueling yet another enchantment that's incredibly powerful but honestly just redundant at this point.
Our prize for sacking Odrosal is Keening, a little dagger that we need to take down the final boss. It's a decent weapon in its own right, too.
We proceed to Vemynal, the second-to-last dungeon of the main quest. We collect more Grand souls and use them to put constant effect enchantments on every piece of equipment we have, boost our Health and Shield and even our resistance to poison and fire, just in case Dagoth Ur or somebody else has a strong poison or fire spell.
I don't actually know. I don't remember anything about fighting Dagoth Ur other than what he looked like.
Vemynal is home to Dagoth Vemyn. After a quick chat, I decide to try zapping him to death with our items instead of stun-locking him with the Daedric Longsword.
I actually get pretty hurt in the process when the spells get reflected back at me. Turns out I set one of my items to deal shock damage on target, but failed to give the Resist Shock on-self effect a duration long enough for it to work (a duration-less effect on self won't block a reflected spell unless the spell is a Touch spell).
It's easy to rectify, however, since the damage didn't stagger me and Frost's hands are already up in spellcasting position, ready to use an item to cast a healing spell (otherwise, we couldn't instantly heal without using a potion). We grab our second prize: the hammer, Sunder.
The bonuses on Sunder are just crazy. That's a 30% flat bonus to our hit chance as well as a massive base damage and attribute bonuses. It's also incredibly fast for a blunt weapon. It's even better than our stun-locking Daedric Longsword simply because of its sheer offensive potential and speed.
Before we proceed to Dagoth Ur, I teleport back to Balmora. In order to make the most of Sunder, we need to get our Blunt Weapon skill much higher, and with our massive gold supply, we can just burn gold on training to bump up our skills.
I sell off thousands of gold in equipment to finance our training sessions, until Frost's Blunt Weapon skill is at 50. Combined with the 30 Fortify Attack bonus from Sunder, we have a base hit chance of 80%, not counting the bonuses we get from fortified Luck and Agility.
We fly over the Ghostfence to Dagoth Ur's citadel. The place is infested with high-level ash monsters, but we can kill most of them in two hits with Sunder.
Notice that purple mist. Even now, I'm still using Soultrap on everything. As strong as Frost is, we can always stack more buffing spells on her. I even go to the trouble of creating a custom Golden Saint summoning item so we can wear a stronger helmet while still having a Golden Saint ally (the Cephalopod Saint Helm offers less defense than our Ebony Closed Helmet).
I go over our inventory and make sure that our best equipment is equipped before entering Dagoth Ur's chamber.
Dagoth Ur stands before us and greets us as a friend. We are, after all, the incarnation of his dearest friend, Lord Nerevar.
But he has no illusions about our motives. He knows why we are here. He offers us the courtesy of the first blow, and once we've buffed the crap out of Frost, we bash him. Even Dagoth Ur loses huge portions of his Health to fully charged blows from Sunder.
Dagoth Ur goes down without dealing a point of damage to us. We proceed to the Heart of Lorkhan chamber, but Dagoth Ur is not quite done.
Behind him is the Second Numidium, a massive golem he plans to use to destroy the Empire and conquer Tamriel through sheer force. But we have the tools to destroy it.
We fly down to the Heart of Lorkhan and attack it with Sunder and Keening, the only tools that can possibly harm it.
Dagoth Ur tries to stop us, but even when he takes a massive chunk out our Health, a single potion--one out of many, many others in our inventory--covers the loss. The Heart of Lorkhan dies, and the Second Numidium collapses without its power source. We watch the colossal golem fall from its scaffolding into the lava of Red Mountain.
The fight is won! Morrowind is over! On the way out of the chamber, Azura herself, a Daedric Prince, appears to thank us in the anachronistic form of a Dunmer woman--a brief message of congratulations, a gift of a unique ring, and then she is gone.
Once we're out of Red Mountain, we teleport away and travel to the south, where we meet with Vivec. He is pleased with our success, but there is still work to be done in Morrowind.
That, however, is outside the scope of this run. With Dagoth Ur dead, the Heart of Lorkhan and Second Numidium destroyed, Vivec and the Almsivi rendered mortal, and the plague of blight disease and corprus finally receding from Red Mountain, the main quest is over.
Here is Frost as she appears at the end of the game, a bizarre character with sky-high but nonsensical stats and mismatched skill levels, supported entirely by a massive suite of enchantments.
All of the gear in her inventory is worth well over 300,000 gold. She never used the vast majority of the enchantments and the potions at her disposal, so here are her stats if she casts every buff and drinks every potion, and a shot of her in third-person mode, with all the magic swirling around her.
One no-reload Morrowind main quest run with the Morrowind Rebirth and Morrowind Advanced mods, complete.
Gate70/Grond0 multiplayer attempt 159 (12 3) Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
We are into the city for a brief foray. After picking up a couple of tomes (dexterity, wisdom) we have Jalantha Mistmyr dead and make our way into the Iron Throne HQ. With four casters blinded and the doppelganger dead we should fare well, however Slider talks to Thaldorn and this allows a newly-rejuvenated doppelganger to rush in and shred her before she can move (multiplayer lag).
Xati kills the doppelganger and runs down the stairs, leaving Gardush and Zhalimar Cloudewulfe inside. A temple revival later we head back in and backstab Gardush. Only Zhalimar remains, his arrows causing severe irritation but he only had a few and switches to chasing with his halberd. With more arrows he'd have put up a convincing counter to us, but with a melee weapon equipped he is picked apart.
We'd better remember to deal with Marek, having relieved Lothander of his boots we are both speeding along in our poisoned state.
I am still finishing up small quests and grabbing some extra gold and xp. I finished Tarnesh and all the FAI quests, I finished up most of beregost quests other than gurkes cloak. I killed Cattack and his chill mercenaries with a sleep wand charge and sling bullets.
That was all I had time for last night but I am close to leveling and have a few extra thousand gold to purchase with when I get to nashkel and the carnival. I think I will head to the gnoll stronghold where I know easy magic items can be obtained since pretty much the whole area can be kited.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 1
With Morrowind complete, we now proceed to Oblivion! This is not a standard Oblivion install, however--I have installed Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, a massive mega-mod to enhance gameplay and make things more difficult, more intense, and more complex. Skills improve slower, but combat is faster and more deadly.
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, also known as OOO, completely removes the leveling problem. In the unmodded game, the strength of all enemies was almost entirely dependent on the player's level. The level scaling was so extreme that you could easily beat the entire game at level 2--in fact, that was the easiest way to play the game, because enemies gained more from your leveling than you did! A level 2 character will never have to deal with anything stronger than a Dremora Caitiff; a level 25 character will have to fight gigantic hulking Xivilai with Daedric Warhammers around every corner.
In OOO, enemies are mostly unleveled. A low-level character might be able to do some early-game quests, but late-game quests will be far too dangerous without high levels.
OOO also gives enemies some interesting new tactics, some of which are downright mean. Lots of critters have potions, enemy vampires will use invisibility spells, and some unique enemies will even use Light spells and low-magnitude Chameleon spells just to screw with the player's vision--which is actually pretty unfair, but very clever and cool.
Finally, OOO removes a fair number of exploits. Custom Drain Health spells can no longer be made, for one thing, and lots of numbers, from prices to spell cost to skill progression, have been rebalanced.
Much of the basic system is very similar to Morrowind: everything revolves around skills. Train skills like Blade and you gain levels; gain levels and you increase your attributes like Strength. As always, the best classes are custom classes.
Luck is the hardest attribute to increase because no skills are attached to it. During a level-up, you can increase any 3 of your attributes from +1 to +5 depending on skill progression, but Luck can only get a +1 bonus. Choosing Luck as a class attribute, however, gives us +5 at level 1, which amounts to a +2 bonus to almost every skill (Luck invisibly modifies all skill levels). Endurance is our other class attribute; having high Endurance at lower levels means you get more Health over the course of the game, compared to starting with low Endurance and increasing it over time.
This is a fairly unusual class. Using Heavy Armor means we move slower, which synergizes better with a melee skill like Blade or Blunt instead of Marksman, which governs our skill with bows.
But this is going to be a very unusual run. I'm going to use a special exploit of my own devising that will do crazy things to gameplay. All I need is Alchemy, Restoration, and Marksman; the other skills are just for support.
Our birthsign is the Atronach, a classic powergaming option that I believe is actually rather subpar--even in OOO, where the thing is stronger than in vanilla.
Not being able to regenerate magicka is a huge handicap, both in terms of power and convenience. But it's a perfect fit for my special trick (and no, it's not Telekinesis and Spell Absorption).
Frost is a Breton, just like in Morrowind. But Bretons are much, much better in Oblivion than in Morrowind. In Oblivion, their 50% Resist Magicka blocks half of all spells, even elemental damage spells and paralysis. A single spell can change the entire course of a battle, so 50% Resist Magicka is a huge buffer against a fatal shift in the tide. The Atronach birthsign also absorbs half of all spells, but it's not a 50% absorption of each spell--it's a 50% chance of absorbing all of a single spell, which isn't nearly as reliable.
Bretons also get some nice bonuses to magic skills, an extra 50 Magicka, and Dragon Skin, a greater power that can be used once per day to grant +50 Shield for 60 seconds.
Shield works differently in Oblivion. In Morrowind, it worked on thresholds, so you needed your armor to be fairly high for it to make a difference at all against heavy hitters. In Oblivion, it's a flat percentage damage reduction capped at 85%, which means every point of Shield is more valuable than the one before it; the benefit of higher Shield values is exponential. Having 50% for 60 seconds will let us survive pressure that would otherwise obliterate a low-Health character like Frost.
Aside from a brief scare in the starting dungeon where an assassin almost kills us, nothing in the prologue is very exciting. It's just fighting rats and goblins.
First order of business is leveling up our Alchemy. We don't need it to be really high, and we won't be relying heavily on Alchemy in general in this run, but it will help set up our exploit. Once we buy a very important first spell...
...we get to work on collecting ingredients. Every single character I've ever created in Oblivion has had Alchemy as a class skill, so I have lots of experience in grinding Alchemy quickly.
But I also am rather tired of doing the inventory game, so we're going to use the scroll duplication glitch. The glitch is hideously overpowered for all kinds of reasons, but for this run, we're only going to use it on ingredients to speed up our early game ingredient gathering and Alchemy grinding. All you need is two scrolls of the same type. I use two pairs of scroll stacks to multiply each other, then use the bigger scroll stack to duplicate a bunch of blackberries.
Unfortunately, the blackberries quickly roll away...
...so I choose something easier to see and less likely to run away.
Gentlemen, behold... CORN!
After making a lot of corn-and-blackberry-juice potions (yum?), I duplicate a whole bunch of onions to keep fueling our Alchemy grinding. The process earns us lots of gold and a whole new level just from the Alchemy skill gains.
Notice that we get +5 Intelligence on this level. Intelligence doesn't make for stronger potions in Oblivion, so "super potions" are no longer possible, but it does give us extra Magicka, which is important for an Atronach character who can't regenerate Magicka on her own.
Now that we have some resources built up, it's time to visit Frostcrag Spire out in the mountains, a DLC-introduced area for mages (though most of the features must be bought at very high prices). OOO removes fast-traveling for areas you haven't visited, even for major towns, but Frostcrag Spire is still available for fast-travel. On the way up to the tower, I admire Oblivion's beautiful textures.
Apparently the quality of the game's textures got set pretty low for my computer, but whatever. Once I visit the place, I fast-travel back to the Imperial City to buy some furnishings for Frost's new home.
Unfortunately, OOO has increased the price of all the furnishings. The Magetallow Candles, which I need to make custom spells (unless I'm willing to complete the many, many "recommendation" quests in the Mages Guild to get access to spellmaking altars), cost over 3,000 gold, where they only cost 1,000 in vanilla.
The solution? I duplicate cheese and onions and make potions until we can afford the candles.
There's only one thing left we need to duplicate--or at least, one thing that we can duplicate to avoid having to collect them normally: wisp mushrooms, Morning Glory root pulp, and some Restore Health ingredients. We need Damage Willpower potions.
No, not poisons. Potions. We need to damage Frost's Willpower. Willpower increases magicka regeneration, but since Frost is an Atronach character and can't regenerate magicka no matter how high her Willpower is, Willpower is of little use to us. Frost drinks the potions until her Willpower is at zero.
With the Magetallow Candles in hand, it's time to head out to Frostcrag Spire and set up our own personal spellmaking altar. On the way, however, I run into a Scamp.
For a moment, I'm confused. What is a Scamp doing way out here? Daedric critters shouldn't be showing up in the wilderness before we've even started the main quest.
Then a Conjurer appears out of nowhere--the Scamp is his summons! Completely unprepared for a fight, I summon a skeleton and hack away at the Conjurer, but with Frost's low Fatigue thanks to her zero Willpower, she's quickly exhausted, and every hit does practically no damage.
We manage to bring down the Conjurer with enough pressure, but it was an alarming episode. I didn't realize there was any chance of being attacked in this area.
Now we need to visit some of the major towns of Cyrodiil. We need to join the Mages Guild and learn some new spells if we are going to deal with any more unpleasant surprises. But since we can't fast-travel to towns we haven't visited in OOO, we have to hoof it the whole way.
But hoofing it is dangerous. The roads are plagued by bandits and wild animals. I get chased by a wolf for quite some time, struggling to kill it with long-range Flare spells as I run away. Wolves are fast, but their attack animations have huge windup and lag, which means you can just dodge all of their attacks if you know the timing.
But the combat music is still playing, which tells me there's still a monster around. I scan my surroundings and find another wolf... but the second wolf is already dead.
Slain by a troll, the big, furry green gorilla already chasing after me.
Trolls are incredibly fast, and they are extremely dangerous in melee combat. I can't possibly duke it out with a troll as a level 3 character with barely any gear, nor can I outrun the thing. I have to hurry backward, firing as many Flare spells as I can get off the ground before it finally closes the distance. Trolls are vulnerable to fire, and the Flare spell is buffed in OOO, so we just barely burn down the troll before it catches up and tears us apart.
Another disturbing sign of the dangers of OOO. The wilderness is not a safe place, and the further you get from civilization, the more dangerous the enemies are.
We brew some Restore Magicka potions to make sure we're ready for the next fight. We don't have to travel long before we get accosted by bandits on the way from Bravil to Leyawiin. We have two archers to deal with, and archers are much scarier in OOO, as their arrows deal more damage and move much faster. In vanilla, you could dodge arrows based on an audio cue, but in OOO, the reaction window is tiny. We summon a skeleton to buy some time.
Our magicka is low and it's hard to aim Flare spells when the archers keep sidestepping. It takes five arrows and most our magicka as well as a potion just to outlast the enemy.
It's not much longer before we run into yet another enemy: a Will o' Wisp.
But Will o' Wisps are highly evasive, highly dangerous critters that I'm not even sure I have the tools to harm. I bolt rather than risk a confrontation with a high-end mythic creature.
Why are we going to Leyawiin first of all places? Well, there's one very special item from one very special quest that we're going to be using for the rest of the game:
The Staff of the Everscamp. Currently it belongs to a Leyawiin native who has been looking for someone to take the cursed staff off her hands.
It's possible for us to get rid of the staff by taking it to a special cave, but we don't want to do that. We want to keep it.
The Staff of the Everscamp has two properties. First, it reduces your Speed attribute by 20, slowing down your movement rate by a considerable amount. Second, it creates four infinitely re-spawning Everscamps around you. They are very weak, don't fight for you unless you charm them, and constantly get in the way in tight spaces--not to mention the fact that they're not very pleasant-looking or sounding critters. But we want to use them for our special exploit.
They're actually useful even in a normal run. You can train combat skills by attacking them, and while they'll fight back at first, they die quickly and the re-spawned scamps aren't hostile.
One of the best things about the Everscamps is that it gives you four nearby targets at all times. By creating a custom spell, we can get a very powerful and very cheap healing spell by sucking up all four scamps' Health at once. All we have to do is give the spell a slight area effect.
I still need to get my hands on a Command Creature spell before I can create a custom one to make the scamps into temporary allies, which means that, in the meantime, I have to rely entirely on my summoned skeleton to deal with enemies. OOO Imps are very worrisome, as they have much stronger spells than in vanilla as well as much more Health.
I lose 10 arrows before the imp goes down.
Only when I reach Chorrol can I find a Command Creature spell, as Athragar and Alberic Little both have some really excellent spells for sale. Finally, I get the spell I need to turn the Everscamps into allies.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 2
Okay. So what's this big special exploit all about?
I call it "fatigue boosting." It's based on a very simple multiplier in the damage formula. For those who aren't familiar with the Elder Scrolls, fatigue measures how tired your character is. The lower your fatigue, the more tired you are.
Fatigue in Oblivion determines the damage you deal with melee or ranged weapons. At half your normal fatigue, you deal half damage. If you use a Fortify Fatigue spell, you can get a slight boost to your damage output, at least until you burn out the extra fatigue. Your damage is multiplied by the ratio of your current fatigue over your maximum base fatigue.
But what happens if you decrease the denominator in that ratio?
The smaller the denominator, the larger the ratio. How can you decrease the denominator?
Well, your base fatigue is the sum of four numbers: your character's Strength, Willpower, Agility, and Endurance. Strength determines how much you can carry and how much damage you deal with melee weapons; Willpower determines magicka regeneration rate; Agility determines your ability to avoid getting staggered and the damage you deal with bows; and Endurance determines your Health. And, as it happens, you can use potions (or a small number of items, in narrow and largely impractical situations) with Damage Attribute effects to decrease those numbers.
So, if you damage your Strength, Willpower, Agility, and Endurance to 1 each, your base fatigue will be 4, where it normally is at well over 100 even at level 1. A 100-point Fortify Fatigue spell will crank your current fatigue up to 104. What's the ratio?
Twenty-one. With 4 base fatigue and a 100-point Fortify Fatigue spell, you deal 21 times as much damage as normal.
But there's a problem. Having 1 Strength means you can only carry 5 pounds without Feather spells, and you deal barely any damage with melee weapons. Having 1 Willpower means you barely regenerate any magicka at all. Having 1 Agility makes it extremely easy for enemy attacks to stagger you, and you deal barely any damage with bows. Having 1 Endurance means you have essentially no Health without Fortify Health spells.
So what good is it?
Well, it isn't good. You're easy to stagger, easy to kill, and have essentially no magicka regeneration and no ability to carry loot or even your own gear. It's certainly no good for a no-reload run, where a single hit could end the whole run.
But what if you could push one of those attributes into the negatives?
First, we drink Damage Willpower potions until Frost's Willpower is at zero. Then, we create a custom area-effect Absorb Willpower spell (whose duration must exceed the duration of the potions' Damage Willpower effect) and use it on our Everscamps in order to absorb Willpower from multiple creatures at once. This allows us to boost our Willpower much higher than if we absorbed it from a single creature. The scamps go hostile, but they don't hit us for very much damage.
Then we drink more Damage Willpower potions. When the Absorb Willpower spells wear off, our Willpower drops deeply into the negatives.
Our Fatigue drops lower and lower, which means any Fortify Fatigue spells we might use become exponentially stronger.
Then we use our Absorb Health spell to kill them all at once before they can deal too much damage. Once they respawn, we repeat the process.
We keep it up until Frost's Willpower is at an incredible -92. This means her base fatigue is only 3 points!
The disadvantage is that losing fatigue by attacking and jumping and blocking is much worse for us than for a character with high fatigue, and if our fatigue drops below 0, we fall unconscious until it gets back up to 1. But the extra damage from Fortify Fatigue spells wildly overcompensates for the loss, and thanks to choosing Marksman as a class skill, our Marksman skill is at 25, which means we don't lose any fatigue while using a bow.
We have a cheap, 45-point Fortify Fatigue spell from early in the game, and we deal 16 times as much damage while it's in effect. With a single arrow, we can nearly slay a bandit and knock him back several feet from the sheer impact.
For slightly weaker creatures, like an imp, wolf, or Glarthir from the Paranoia questline, a single arrow is sufficient.
The only disadvantage of extremely negative Willpower is that we can't regenerate magicka. But the Atronach birthsign already imposes that penalty, and the magicka bonus largely compensates for it.
Better still, a bow, unlike a melee weapon, is not affected by Reflect Damage effects, which means that we can one-shot a Clannfear without taking massive damage at the same time.
With super-powerful arrows at very little cost, we have incredible offensive potential at level 3. But not long after this breakthrough, we suffer a major setback.
In the process of doing the Cheydinhal Mages Guild recommendation questline, we accidentally steal something from the guild, resulting in our expulsion from the guild. Raminus Polus says that we need to give him 20 Redwort Flowers and 20 Dragon's Tongue flowers to get back in.
I could get these things by snooping around the swamps of Leyawiin or even just using the Wait function to buy the ingredients from alchemists across Cyrodiil. But since this is a stupid quest that serves no purpose but to frustrate the player--Raminus Polus himself even says that's the point--I decide to bust out the duplication glitch to speed things up.
Out of cheer contempt for his request, I flood his office with extra copies of the flowers.
Due to a bug of some sort, I actually can get into the area behind the Arcane University gates, which normally isn't open until you get all the recommendations from the Mages Guilds of each town. To my frustration, I discover that Raminus Polus had multiple copies of each flower growing in the garden in the back!
Whatever. It's time to make some progress in the main quest. First, for safety's sake, I want to nab a couple of followers.
Followers are rather hard to come by in Oblivion, and the ones that do exist tend to be situational and not very strong. However, the Jemane brothers are two excellent exceptions. After re-uniting the twins by speaking with Reynald Jemane in a seedy motel in Chorrol and following the clues to Cheydinhal, I offer to find their childhood home, Weatherleah.
Once I've slain the ogres at Weatherleah using poisoned arrows, I offer to escort the brothers there. Thing is, they'll follow you anywhere, and there's no penalty for not taking them to Weatherleah. They have no armor, but Guilbert has a warhammer and Reynald has a shortsword, so they can fight, and because they're marked as "essential," they can't die--they can only fall unconscious.
I want them to help me deal with the Skingrad Mages Guild recommendation questline, because there are a lot of zombies to kill, and I do not like fighting those zombies. I let them do the work instead.
On the way back to Chorrol for another recommendation from the Mages Guild, one of the brothers somehow gets in trouble with the local authorities, who gang up on him and totally butcher him.
But because he's immortal, he gets right back up afterward, and the guards decide to let him go.
There are only two dangerous Mages Guild recommendation quests left. First, we're going to do the Anvil quest, which involves fighting a bandit mage named Caminalda.
Caminalda is very tough and uses strong cold damage spells, but with two followers, massive arrow damage, and even some Invisibility potions thanks to grinding Alchemy, I am not worried about her. We hunt her down, initiate combat, and I drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape before drawing an arrow.
But merely beginning to fire the bow was enough to break invisibility. Caminalda casts one spell, and kills us in a single hit.
Back to the starting dungeon. It only took one spell, but Caminalda completely wiped us out. Next time, I'm going to have to be much more careful.
I think my favorite non Infinity Engine no-reload RPG was probably KoTC. You could consider giving that a try if you haven't already.
Some thoughts on others, as may or may not be useful:
VTMB is pretty good in no-reload, albeit with a few cheesy sources of death (bumping a fire in the burning mansion, getting a car thrown at you in the junkyard, some insta-kill traps in one the final dungeons).
Fallout (2) is a pretty garbage no-reload, but you can do it. The issue is that the gameplay becomes dominated by the silly critical hit system.
Wizardry 6/7 are pretty superb no-reloads, if you like the underlying games.
Divine Divinity was really a lot of fun. The no-reload aspect removes the cheesy item/store reloading and gives the game a little more challenge.
I personally didn't no-reload any of the TES games because it seemed too straightforward to gain power outside of combat. Maybe I'm wrong about that though.
No reloading various final fantasy games might be interesting, but I think the leveling mechanics are too broken.
I tried the Kings Bounty games but it doesn't really work because there are too many situations where you can't tell the enemy army size until you've already engaged and then its too late.
D:OS Honour mode was fun. I thought PoE was pretty good too. Shame subsequent developer efforts don't appear to be as good.
Witcher(s). Only did the first, but thought it was great.
I tried to no-reload a reaslistic run through Deus Ex and made it the secret MJ base. I'm pretty confident this is doable, albeit very difficult because enemy weapons are so lethal.
I tried the Kings Bounty games but it doesn't really work because there are too many situations where you can't tell the enemy army size until you've already engaged and then its too late.
But one of the secrets to no reload is to find out that sort of information and try again . That can take a long while of course - I've had 273 attempts so far at a no-reload challenge with Kings Bounty: the Legend. Admittedly I'm using very severe rules (only allowing the use of undead creatures and not allowing any losses from my army in combat). I've never completed that game in any form and have only made it about 2/3 of the way through with this challenge, so I'm sure there's still plenty more to learn in the coming years!
If I were to go noreload on other games I would for sure go with the Alice series. American Mcgee's Alice and Alice: Madness Returns are both very enjoyable and doable in one go.
Overlord is also quite possible with the correct minion mixes.
I managed to get a little done yesterday. Saved Branwen and made my rounds in the carnival. Went to the gnoll stronghold for the easy magic items hoping to get something that I needed. Found some studded leather +1 and a club +1. I did however pull the large shield +1 which was surely a boon.
I had to run back to town to get more sling bullets to finish off the last little bit of the gnoll stronghold and that was where I called it for the night.
Comments
Ok 93 - the wrong way and the right way..
After failing my archer run, I decided to try a complete novelty: an orc kensai..Yes I know it, but I was going to try a new approach: meleeing. So It was a not to shabby 93 roll, min/maxing and specialized in staves and 2 handed fighting.
I was going quickly for the Nashkell mine - only stopping to pick up the canon party.
I will add some documentation of the disaster
The idea was bad - and the execution worse. So I ended back with a unique and novell character: the orc kensai with dagger focus.. Yes I know its been done, but I havent
This time its also the canon party, no mods and core difficulty.
I cut some corners this time. Dodged Imoen for starters, killed Shoal and the basilisk and hit level 6. Then picked up Imoen, Khalid and Jaheira and cleared the mine.
From there it was picking up Minsc and getting Dynaheir. Khalid died on the way - not a good omen..
I am suspecting that Dynaheir cant use the enchant weapon spell. In that case she will have an accident when Voghlin comes up... But we will have to see by then. Imoen may also get swapped with Safana for more SoD powerplay. But we will see.. if I get that far
Ps: @Wise_Grimwald congratulations on becomming a grandfather
@StummvonBordwehr Thanks for the congratulations.
Samuel, the Deserter is a very easy quest for a low level party, by the way.
I would never sell the ring RVNS is talking about.
If you are away for too long between selling one and selling the next he will say that they have gone rotten. Therefore take as many as possible to Beregost and sell them all within as short a time as possible.
The helpful mod makes this unnecessary too.
Diary of Zaxem ; update 3
After heading back to Nashkel to resurrect my fallen party members I go to Durlag's tower to farm some more xp. My party is barely able to defeat the two Doom Guards that bar any low-level parties from entering Durlag's. Once in the tower we head to the roof to do some more basilisk hunting.
After sufficiently leveling up, the party heads down to the Nashkel carnival and the mines. The mines prove to be very easy for my level 4 party, and Mulahey stands no chance against my hold-immune beserker. Outside of the mines we fight the amazonian party, using the web spell I just obtained inside of the mines. My "noobness" rears its head again when I falsely believe that my beserker rage protects against the web effect. I trap poor Zaxem in my own web; luckily the amazonians remain webbed long enough for Zaxem to break free. The fight is won quite easily from afar.
We return to Nashkel to claim our bounty on the emeralds and report our success in defeating Mulahey. Nimbul proves no threat at this point, falling quite quickly. The party goes on the hunt for Bassilus on the advice of my fellow forum-goers. I accidentally pick the wrong dialog options so all of Bassilus's skeletons / zombies stay alive, though the fight is also almost too easy for Zaxem in his rage. The 5000 gold reward is quite handy! It is about time to advance the story, so the party goes and confronts Transzig about the Bandit Camp. Again, the party easily prevails.
The party heads north to do some ankheg hunting, particularly because I want some new armor for Jaheira. While in Beregost I do the Neera encounter just to steal her gem bag. I have Taerom forge me one ankheg plate armor and sell 2 additional shells for 1000 gold; not bad! To tie up some loose ends I also visit High Hedge to cure Melicamp of his unfortunate situation.
With the party up to level 4 / 5 I believe it is time to go pay the Bandit Camp a visit.
Zaxem - Beserker (to be dualed to Mage) ; Level 5 (16,511 / 32,000)
Khalid - Fighter ; Level 5 (16,414/ 32,000)
Minsc - Ranger ; Level 4 (15,821/ 18,000)
Jaheira - Fighter / Druid ; Fighter Level 4 (9,957/ 16,000) : Druid Level 4 (9,957/ 12,500)
Imoen - Thief ; Level 5 (15,761/ 20,000)
Dynaheir - Invoker ; Level 4 (16,295 / 20,000)
Frost: No-Reload Morrowind Run
Part 10
While flying around the west coast, I spot an unusual monster of remarkable size, accompanied by a pair of dead humanoids. It's a bipedal monster similar to a Kagouti or Alit, but it's a clearly different model.I saw this creature once before, in a previous run that failed. All I saw was its outline, but it sheer size convinced me to turn and run, as I was a very low-level character at the time and I was sure that it would destroy me.
Despite my previous run dying at the hands of another mod-introduced creature I didn't recognize, I decide to go down and check it out. For safety's sake, I let my Golden Saint fight it while I strike from afar using enchanted items. It turns out the thing has spectacular resistances.
I move in to land some attacks with the Daedric Longsword and nearly die in the process, but the creature finally goes down.
According to a note left by the slain humanoids nearby, it's an imported creature called a Wormmouth that somehow got let loose and went on a rampage.
It's time to tackle the corprus questline. Frost is a decent mid-level character with some strong equipment and mediocre stats. Half of our armor rating and a quarter of our Health comes from enchantments instead of our own abilities.
But our enchantments are strong enough to compensate for our weaknesses, and the Daedric Longsword, which has been enchanted to absorb 80 points of Agility for 4 seconds with each hit, makes it very easy to stun-lock Dagoth Gares, the spellcasting boss of Ilunibi, the next dungeon.
Before receiving the cure from Divayth Fyr, I wait for many days to let the corprus disease worsen. By the time I'm done, Frost has a Strength of 153 (the normal natural limit being 100), and all the other damage to our attributes can be cured with a custom Restore Attribute item.
Next stop, Kogoruhn. We have some mutant ash critters to kill, and many souls to absorb to fuel new enchantments (on a related note, we recently made an amulet that regenerates 2 Health per second!). Every single Ash Ghoul has a soul strong enough to make a constant effect enchantment, so I focus on improving Frost's shoddy defenses.
I even tack on a 2-point Shield effect to our Dwemer Greaves, even though we're going to get a better set of greaves later on. We can afford it; I'm struggling to find enough uses for all the powerful souls we're finding. For special occasions, I already have items with Shield effects up to 80 points!
By now, we can actually stand up in melee combat without worrying about a rapid death. I even engage the Ascended Sleepers, who have a surprisingly tough melee attack despite being fat lumps of mushy flesh. Check out the lovely patterns on their robes!
Fortify Strength enchantments, Resist Fire enchantments... we have lots of excellent tools now. As long as we boost Frost's Shield, we're quite tough in melee combat. Another boss gets stun-locked by our Absorb Agility sword.
Dagoth Uthol gives us a massive 600-point soul when he falls.
I spot the dragon again. This time, I decide to pass it by.
I already looked up its stats, and beating it is not realistic for basically any character without godlike stats--nor do I see any remotely meaningful reward from defeating the creature.
It's time to get some better gear, which means looting the Redoran Vault. I don't have a Command spell this time, so rather than hypnotizing a local noblewoman to lure her away from a key I want to steal, I just use the "Taunt" function to bait her into attacking me, then calm her down with a spell when she runs downstairs to knife me.
I don't want her to be hostile forever, so I try to bump up her Disposition permanently using Speechcraft. The process turns out to be extremely difficult, however, even with a Charm effect to make her more pliable, and I alternate failing and succeeding so many times that Frost's Speechcraft skill jumps up dozens of points before I call it a day.
In the vault, I nearly die to a trap I didn't think would threaten me, but at level 15, Frost just barely has enough Health to survive it. With a 200% Chameleon enchantment, we can snatch up anything we want from the vault, Ordinators be damned.
Finally, we're back up to speed, both on the main questline and our gear. We proceed to our next mission: the Nerevarine is supposed to bear the Moon-and-Star ring of the original Nerevar. One theory is that it comes in the form of a birthmark, but since Frost has no such birthmark, we can't satisfy that interpretation of the prophecy, so we just hunt down Nerevar's actual ring, carefully hidden in a shrine.
While I'm there, we talk to the ghosts of the many failed Nerevarines, the people who satisfied some parts of the prophecy but died before fulfilling all of them.
Next, we need the other Ashlander tribes to recognize us as the Nerevarine (the Urshilaku aren't enough). We fly out to the next camp, chain-casting Levitate and Fortify Speed spells to get there faster--I happen to have a custom Restore Magicka spell on hand to regenerate magicka on command, which means we can spam spells without worrying about resting. It's done a lot to boost our magic skills.
The Erabenimsun is run by a bunch of proud militaristic jerkasses, so our only option is to kill all the leaders...
...and then give some magic items to the new guy to give him the confidence to take charge of the tribe.
As for the Ahemmusa Ashlanders, they want a new home. So we go over to a nice daedric shrine to kill the worshippers and make room for the Ashlanders...
...then lead the wise woman over land and sea to show off their new home.
Finally, the Zainab tribe. The leader wants me to go kill a vampire or something, so off we go.
Still not satisfied, he wants us to hook him up with a high-born Telvanni bride with big hips so he can start cranking out some heirs. Telvanni nobles aren't keen on marrying dirt-poor Ashlander hillbillies, so we go purchase a slave from Tel Aruhn, give her some fancy clothes and perfume, and walk her all the way to her new husband. We make a new Fortify Health amulet to improve her survivability, as it's possible for her to die en route, and her HP is pretty terrible.
We re-create Sparky, our instant-death amulet, bump up our health with a new enchantment on our stolen tower shield (shields, especially tower shields, have high capacities for enchantments), and earn an endorsement from the top leader of House Hlaalu. Fortunately, the price is dirt cheap.
The other leaders of House Hlaalu want more. We bribe one and lie to the other, playing to the latter's xenophobia.
House Hlaalu formally declares Frost to be their Hortator, fulfilling part of the next prophecy. But we need to do the same thing for Houses Redoran and Telvanni. Most of the Redoran councilors aren't bad, but Bolvyn Venim is a problem. First, we need to kill his guards and rescue another nobleman's son, whom Bolvyn Venim decided to kidnap for reasons that don't matter to us.
This is enough to earn us the support of the rest of the councilors, but Bolvyn Venim himself says no. So, we challenge him to a duel. He hits really hard with his two-handed katana, but we can stun-lock him with our sword.
Once we report back to Ald'ruhn, we become the Hortator of House Redoran as well. Last of all is our own house, House Telvanni.
Telvanni lords and ladies are idiosyncratic. Each one wants something different. Neloth's requirement is the easiest: just leave him alone.
Therana is crazy and doesn't listen to you, but by doing "something amusing," you can win her favor.
Dratha requires no persuasion. She just thinks it's hilarious.
The last Telvanni councilor will never support you--he'll just procrastinate indefinitely. In true Telvanni form, the solution is to kill him. Unfortunately, he comes with two dremora guards, and in the process of starting the fight, I accidentally get myself expelled from House Telvanni.
Afraid I'll get butchered if I don't establish an advantage early, I use every single magic item I have to buff up Frost, since it only takes a single in-combat mouse click to activate each one. Our defenses shoot through the roof.
We tear the enemy apart without suffering a scratch.
With no remaining councilors offering any objection, we are now the Hortator of three houses as well as the Nerevarine of all Ashlander tribes.
We finally meet with the living god Vivec, who tells us how to defeat Dagoth Ur. While Vivec is busy maintaining the Ghostfence--the colossal barrier keeping the corprus monsters of Red Mountain from overruning the entire continent--we must lay siege to Dagoth Ur's citadels, seizing two key Dwemer artifacts, the dagger Keening and the hammer Sundar, and use them to destroy the source of Dagoth Ur's power as well as Vivec's: the Heart of Lorkhan.
This is the endgame.
BG 1 unpatched, no TotSC - no ring
BG 1 patched, no TotSC - ring present
BG 1 and TotSC, unpatched - ring not present
BG 1 and TotSC, patched - ring present
/musing
First, I'm going to start with a quick infodump about my install and characters. Yvralline is a Gypsy. This Song and Silence kit changes the traditional Bard for a once per round charm, which starts off with a +2 vs. spells, and goes down by one every five levels of the Bard. The effect lasts only for one round, making it nearly useless against most enemies, but low level critters and Mages that can die to one of their own spells are particularly wonderful targets for it.
Our early game is filled with deaths, all of them both very dumb and avoidable. Starting with Imoen and Branwen dying to Tarnesh's slimes (SR introduces Monster Summoning spells for all levels; the second level Mage one, summons two Green Slimes, which against level one characters with no equipment, are very effective), who died to the Guards, which Edwin had charmed, but the charm had just worn off when one of them got the killing blow (thanks to TobEx I believe, there's no hostile reaction after Charm). Jaheira got killed by Teyngan, Jemby succumbed to her own Web spell we made her cast, and the Hobgoblin that was with them lost the Long Bow 1v1 against Coran. By doing this, killing a few Ankhegs and several other threat-less enemies, some of us made it to level 2. At this point, I hoped to include Xan in our party, until nearly the end of today's session where I decided to recruit Ajantis, but at this point I hadn't decided that yet so we were just five.
Our strategies up to this point were Grease spam and having Coran pelt the enemy with arrows or having Jaheira both tank (Regeneration lets me have her take one hit and then kite the enemy untill her HP's back) and deal all the damage. Ankhegs are incredibly easy to kill once you have someone with Jaheira's shapeshifted stats and Command. Ankhegs are very prone to sleep attacks, which, if timed correctly, will block them from attacking as well, when, paired together with their slow ranged ApR, turns them into a rather minimal threat. In SR, if creatures inside the circle of effect of the Grease spell fail a save vs. breath at +2, they "fall" which gives them the sleep effect, and this stacks, so you can have several Grease spells on the same area, and enemies will have to save several times in the same round or end up giving you free hits on them. Grease also reduces their movement speed to half, as in vanilla, but it's radius is greatly reduced.
More Ankheg hunting resulted in Jaheira's death, 9 Ankheg Shells, which in consequence resulted in one Ankheg plate and 4000gp, which just means we got the armour for free (well, 200gp from the Raise Dead cost actually, and all the trouble I went through to carry them as well). We also stole the Ring of Free Action from the halfling in Urgoth's Beard, killed Mutamin by abusing of his "walk up to player before turning hostile" script, along with half of the map's Basilisks and the group of adventurers that were oh so prone to Hold Person and Stinking Cloud (in SR, it blocks you from doing anything while letting you move, instead of inducing the sleep effect).
After this I realised I already had two Arcane casters, and would probably do better without Xan, but since we still have only one melee fighter, I decided to recruit Ajantis instead. So we set onto the quest to find a magical bastard sword for him (we're still looking for one). This resulted in the death of Aldeth, an early excursion to the Ulcaster Ruins, which only amounted to a Potion of Mirrored Eyes, which is pretty cool because we can use it against the remaining Basilisks, and another pair of Boots of Stealth which I believe we promptly sold.
I am unsure where I found the Intelligence tome (I think either Meilum or Teyngan had it, not sure), but I can say for certain that Mutamin had the Charisma one. Now, Yvralline has had both of those stats raised up to 19 thanks to those particular tomes.
Now, I'm going to quickly go over the items and proficiencies my party currently has now, right before we start the Mines.
—Yvralline, 5th level Gypsy. Mail of the Dead+2, Ring of Free Action, 2 scrolls of PfM, 3 Potions of Invisibility, one Wand of Magic Missiles and the Heart of the Golem+2. Spear+, Crossbow+ and Two-handed weapon style+.
—Ajantis, 4th level Cavalier. Plate mail, medium shield+1, Watcher's Helm (IR version of the Helm of Infravision, gives immunity to Blindness and Deafness instead), Ring of Protection+1, Boots of Speed (either one of Sendai's party had them, or Zal, the fastest deceased dart thrower or his friend did). Bastard sword++, sword & shield style++ and war hammer+.
—Jaheira, 3rd level Fighter/Shapeshifter. Ring of Protection+1. Club++, two-weapon style+++.
—Coran, 3rd/4th level Fighter/Thief. Protector of the Second+2 (I think we got this one off the Nashkel fields hidden container), Cloak of Non-Detection, Boots of Stealth and a Long Sword+1 (we got like 5 total, sold the rest). Long sword++, long bow++++ (for some reason he started with 3 stars, but I am not sure whether to fix it or leave it).
—Branwen, 5th level Cleric. Ankheg Plate mail+1.
—Edwin, 4th level Conjurer. Adventurer's Robe, Bracelets of 7 AC (the Adventurers group from Mutamin's garden) and a Staff +1, which I have absolutely no idea where we got it from (not from Silke, since we haven't dealt with her yet).
As for spells, I don't consider the need to explain the functionality of those heavily modified by SR, because of the lack of usage they've received so far. I will surely post about my most used ones or the ones I encounter the most in the future.
Frost: No-Reload Morrowind Run
Part 11
We re-join House Telvanni after a quick chat with our Mouth (it makes sense in context) and go to steal back our stolen gear after turning ourselves in for the assault. A custom enchantment on an amulet lets us unlock it with no trouble.Thanks to our Restore Magicka spell, we've been grinding Alteration and Restoration dramatically while flying around. For the first time ever, I max out Restoration in Morrowind.
I create some new custom Fortify Intelligence spells to produce a set of new potions. Just for the hell of it, I tack on some Fortify Intelligence potions, too. I planned on never using "super potions," which I would define as potions generated by other Fortify Intelligence potions (as opposed to spells) but meh. I use all the rare and expensive and powerful ingredients to create potions for the endgame. The stat values are pretty absurd.
Potions actually get much stronger than this, infinitely so. But ours can only get so strong because the ingredients with the Fortify Intelligence effect don't appear to restock, so we can only make so many Fortify Intelligence potions. In the unmodded game, you can buy an unlimited number of those ingredients, which means you can get your Intelligence into the tens of thousands (or anything, really) without enough work. One of the famous uses of a top-quality "super potion" is giving your character a large enough Strength boost to kill the final boss in a single hit with a simple Iron Dagger.
We can't get potions anywhere near that strong, but we don't need to. Frost has already hit level 20 and has stupendous gear to boost her defenses thanks to all of the souls we've been collecting.
First stop, Odrosal, home of Dagoth Odros. Since enemy mages in Morrowind don't use pre-buffs or potions or anything like that, we can just stun-lock them with our sword of Absorb Agility. Killing Dagoth Odros earns us another 600-point soul, fueling yet another enchantment that's incredibly powerful but honestly just redundant at this point.
Our prize for sacking Odrosal is Keening, a little dagger that we need to take down the final boss. It's a decent weapon in its own right, too.
We proceed to Vemynal, the second-to-last dungeon of the main quest. We collect more Grand souls and use them to put constant effect enchantments on every piece of equipment we have, boost our Health and Shield and even our resistance to poison and fire, just in case Dagoth Ur or somebody else has a strong poison or fire spell.
I don't actually know. I don't remember anything about fighting Dagoth Ur other than what he looked like.
Vemynal is home to Dagoth Vemyn. After a quick chat, I decide to try zapping him to death with our items instead of stun-locking him with the Daedric Longsword.
I actually get pretty hurt in the process when the spells get reflected back at me. Turns out I set one of my items to deal shock damage on target, but failed to give the Resist Shock on-self effect a duration long enough for it to work (a duration-less effect on self won't block a reflected spell unless the spell is a Touch spell).
It's easy to rectify, however, since the damage didn't stagger me and Frost's hands are already up in spellcasting position, ready to use an item to cast a healing spell (otherwise, we couldn't instantly heal without using a potion). We grab our second prize: the hammer, Sunder.
The bonuses on Sunder are just crazy. That's a 30% flat bonus to our hit chance as well as a massive base damage and attribute bonuses. It's also incredibly fast for a blunt weapon. It's even better than our stun-locking Daedric Longsword simply because of its sheer offensive potential and speed.
Before we proceed to Dagoth Ur, I teleport back to Balmora. In order to make the most of Sunder, we need to get our Blunt Weapon skill much higher, and with our massive gold supply, we can just burn gold on training to bump up our skills.
I sell off thousands of gold in equipment to finance our training sessions, until Frost's Blunt Weapon skill is at 50. Combined with the 30 Fortify Attack bonus from Sunder, we have a base hit chance of 80%, not counting the bonuses we get from fortified Luck and Agility.
We fly over the Ghostfence to Dagoth Ur's citadel. The place is infested with high-level ash monsters, but we can kill most of them in two hits with Sunder.
Notice that purple mist. Even now, I'm still using Soultrap on everything. As strong as Frost is, we can always stack more buffing spells on her. I even go to the trouble of creating a custom Golden Saint summoning item so we can wear a stronger helmet while still having a Golden Saint ally (the Cephalopod Saint Helm offers less defense than our Ebony Closed Helmet).
I go over our inventory and make sure that our best equipment is equipped before entering Dagoth Ur's chamber.
Dagoth Ur stands before us and greets us as a friend. We are, after all, the incarnation of his dearest friend, Lord Nerevar.
But he has no illusions about our motives. He knows why we are here. He offers us the courtesy of the first blow, and once we've buffed the crap out of Frost, we bash him. Even Dagoth Ur loses huge portions of his Health to fully charged blows from Sunder.
Dagoth Ur goes down without dealing a point of damage to us. We proceed to the Heart of Lorkhan chamber, but Dagoth Ur is not quite done.
Behind him is the Second Numidium, a massive golem he plans to use to destroy the Empire and conquer Tamriel through sheer force. But we have the tools to destroy it.
We fly down to the Heart of Lorkhan and attack it with Sunder and Keening, the only tools that can possibly harm it.
Dagoth Ur tries to stop us, but even when he takes a massive chunk out our Health, a single potion--one out of many, many others in our inventory--covers the loss. The Heart of Lorkhan dies, and the Second Numidium collapses without its power source. We watch the colossal golem fall from its scaffolding into the lava of Red Mountain.
The fight is won! Morrowind is over! On the way out of the chamber, Azura herself, a Daedric Prince, appears to thank us in the anachronistic form of a Dunmer woman--a brief message of congratulations, a gift of a unique ring, and then she is gone.
Once we're out of Red Mountain, we teleport away and travel to the south, where we meet with Vivec. He is pleased with our success, but there is still work to be done in Morrowind.
That, however, is outside the scope of this run. With Dagoth Ur dead, the Heart of Lorkhan and Second Numidium destroyed, Vivec and the Almsivi rendered mortal, and the plague of blight disease and corprus finally receding from Red Mountain, the main quest is over.
Here is Frost as she appears at the end of the game, a bizarre character with sky-high but nonsensical stats and mismatched skill levels, supported entirely by a massive suite of enchantments.
All of the gear in her inventory is worth well over 300,000 gold. She never used the vast majority of the enchantments and the potions at her disposal, so here are her stats if she casts every buff and drinks every potion, and a shot of her in third-person mode, with all the magic swirling around her.
One no-reload Morrowind main quest run with the Morrowind Rebirth and Morrowind Advanced mods, complete.
Xati, male gnome cleric / thief (Gate70); Slider, female human conjurer (Grond0)
We are into the city for a brief foray. After picking up a couple of tomes (dexterity, wisdom) we have Jalantha Mistmyr dead and make our way into the Iron Throne HQ. With four casters blinded and the doppelganger dead we should fare well, however Slider talks to Thaldorn and this allows a newly-rejuvenated doppelganger to rush in and shred her before she can move (multiplayer lag).
Xati kills the doppelganger and runs down the stairs, leaving Gardush and Zhalimar Cloudewulfe inside. A temple revival later we head back in and backstab Gardush. Only Zhalimar remains, his arrows causing severe irritation but he only had a few and switches to chasing with his halberd. With more arrows he'd have put up a convincing counter to us, but with a melee weapon equipped he is picked apart.
We'd better remember to deal with Marek, having relieved Lothander of his boots we are both speeding along in our poisoned state.
I am still finishing up small quests and grabbing some extra gold and xp. I finished Tarnesh and all the FAI quests, I finished up most of beregost quests other than gurkes cloak. I killed Cattack and his chill mercenaries with a sleep wand charge and sling bullets.
That was all I had time for last night but I am close to leveling and have a few extra thousand gold to purchase with when I get to nashkel and the carnival. I think I will head to the gnoll stronghold where I know easy magic items can be obtained since pretty much the whole area can be kited.
It was a toss up between that and a Fighter/Assassin
She recovered Joia's ring and easily killed Tarnesh before going to High Hedge for Perdue's Sword and getting Mellicamp back into shape.
Sadly she couldn't do the same for the werewolf.
She then killed a couple of ogrillon and took the letter to its adressee.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 1
With Morrowind complete, we now proceed to Oblivion! This is not a standard Oblivion install, however--I have installed Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, a massive mega-mod to enhance gameplay and make things more difficult, more intense, and more complex. Skills improve slower, but combat is faster and more deadly.Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, also known as OOO, completely removes the leveling problem. In the unmodded game, the strength of all enemies was almost entirely dependent on the player's level. The level scaling was so extreme that you could easily beat the entire game at level 2--in fact, that was the easiest way to play the game, because enemies gained more from your leveling than you did! A level 2 character will never have to deal with anything stronger than a Dremora Caitiff; a level 25 character will have to fight gigantic hulking Xivilai with Daedric Warhammers around every corner.
In OOO, enemies are mostly unleveled. A low-level character might be able to do some early-game quests, but late-game quests will be far too dangerous without high levels.
OOO also gives enemies some interesting new tactics, some of which are downright mean. Lots of critters have potions, enemy vampires will use invisibility spells, and some unique enemies will even use Light spells and low-magnitude Chameleon spells just to screw with the player's vision--which is actually pretty unfair, but very clever and cool.
Finally, OOO removes a fair number of exploits. Custom Drain Health spells can no longer be made, for one thing, and lots of numbers, from prices to spell cost to skill progression, have been rebalanced.
Much of the basic system is very similar to Morrowind: everything revolves around skills. Train skills like Blade and you gain levels; gain levels and you increase your attributes like Strength. As always, the best classes are custom classes.
Luck is the hardest attribute to increase because no skills are attached to it. During a level-up, you can increase any 3 of your attributes from +1 to +5 depending on skill progression, but Luck can only get a +1 bonus. Choosing Luck as a class attribute, however, gives us +5 at level 1, which amounts to a +2 bonus to almost every skill (Luck invisibly modifies all skill levels). Endurance is our other class attribute; having high Endurance at lower levels means you get more Health over the course of the game, compared to starting with low Endurance and increasing it over time.
This is a fairly unusual class. Using Heavy Armor means we move slower, which synergizes better with a melee skill like Blade or Blunt instead of Marksman, which governs our skill with bows.
But this is going to be a very unusual run. I'm going to use a special exploit of my own devising that will do crazy things to gameplay. All I need is Alchemy, Restoration, and Marksman; the other skills are just for support.
Our birthsign is the Atronach, a classic powergaming option that I believe is actually rather subpar--even in OOO, where the thing is stronger than in vanilla.
Not being able to regenerate magicka is a huge handicap, both in terms of power and convenience. But it's a perfect fit for my special trick (and no, it's not Telekinesis and Spell Absorption).
Frost is a Breton, just like in Morrowind. But Bretons are much, much better in Oblivion than in Morrowind. In Oblivion, their 50% Resist Magicka blocks half of all spells, even elemental damage spells and paralysis. A single spell can change the entire course of a battle, so 50% Resist Magicka is a huge buffer against a fatal shift in the tide. The Atronach birthsign also absorbs half of all spells, but it's not a 50% absorption of each spell--it's a 50% chance of absorbing all of a single spell, which isn't nearly as reliable.
Bretons also get some nice bonuses to magic skills, an extra 50 Magicka, and Dragon Skin, a greater power that can be used once per day to grant +50 Shield for 60 seconds.
Shield works differently in Oblivion. In Morrowind, it worked on thresholds, so you needed your armor to be fairly high for it to make a difference at all against heavy hitters. In Oblivion, it's a flat percentage damage reduction capped at 85%, which means every point of Shield is more valuable than the one before it; the benefit of higher Shield values is exponential. Having 50% for 60 seconds will let us survive pressure that would otherwise obliterate a low-Health character like Frost.
Aside from a brief scare in the starting dungeon where an assassin almost kills us, nothing in the prologue is very exciting. It's just fighting rats and goblins.
First order of business is leveling up our Alchemy. We don't need it to be really high, and we won't be relying heavily on Alchemy in general in this run, but it will help set up our exploit. Once we buy a very important first spell...
...we get to work on collecting ingredients. Every single character I've ever created in Oblivion has had Alchemy as a class skill, so I have lots of experience in grinding Alchemy quickly.
But I also am rather tired of doing the inventory game, so we're going to use the scroll duplication glitch. The glitch is hideously overpowered for all kinds of reasons, but for this run, we're only going to use it on ingredients to speed up our early game ingredient gathering and Alchemy grinding. All you need is two scrolls of the same type. I use two pairs of scroll stacks to multiply each other, then use the bigger scroll stack to duplicate a bunch of blackberries.
Unfortunately, the blackberries quickly roll away...
...so I choose something easier to see and less likely to run away.
Gentlemen, behold... CORN!
After making a lot of corn-and-blackberry-juice potions (yum?), I duplicate a whole bunch of onions to keep fueling our Alchemy grinding. The process earns us lots of gold and a whole new level just from the Alchemy skill gains.
Notice that we get +5 Intelligence on this level. Intelligence doesn't make for stronger potions in Oblivion, so "super potions" are no longer possible, but it does give us extra Magicka, which is important for an Atronach character who can't regenerate Magicka on her own.
Now that we have some resources built up, it's time to visit Frostcrag Spire out in the mountains, a DLC-introduced area for mages (though most of the features must be bought at very high prices). OOO removes fast-traveling for areas you haven't visited, even for major towns, but Frostcrag Spire is still available for fast-travel. On the way up to the tower, I admire Oblivion's beautiful textures.
Apparently the quality of the game's textures got set pretty low for my computer, but whatever. Once I visit the place, I fast-travel back to the Imperial City to buy some furnishings for Frost's new home.
Unfortunately, OOO has increased the price of all the furnishings. The Magetallow Candles, which I need to make custom spells (unless I'm willing to complete the many, many "recommendation" quests in the Mages Guild to get access to spellmaking altars), cost over 3,000 gold, where they only cost 1,000 in vanilla.
The solution? I duplicate cheese and onions and make potions until we can afford the candles.
There's only one thing left we need to duplicate--or at least, one thing that we can duplicate to avoid having to collect them normally: wisp mushrooms, Morning Glory root pulp, and some Restore Health ingredients. We need Damage Willpower potions.
No, not poisons. Potions. We need to damage Frost's Willpower. Willpower increases magicka regeneration, but since Frost is an Atronach character and can't regenerate magicka no matter how high her Willpower is, Willpower is of little use to us. Frost drinks the potions until her Willpower is at zero.
With the Magetallow Candles in hand, it's time to head out to Frostcrag Spire and set up our own personal spellmaking altar. On the way, however, I run into a Scamp.
For a moment, I'm confused. What is a Scamp doing way out here? Daedric critters shouldn't be showing up in the wilderness before we've even started the main quest.
Then a Conjurer appears out of nowhere--the Scamp is his summons! Completely unprepared for a fight, I summon a skeleton and hack away at the Conjurer, but with Frost's low Fatigue thanks to her zero Willpower, she's quickly exhausted, and every hit does practically no damage.
We manage to bring down the Conjurer with enough pressure, but it was an alarming episode. I didn't realize there was any chance of being attacked in this area.
Now we need to visit some of the major towns of Cyrodiil. We need to join the Mages Guild and learn some new spells if we are going to deal with any more unpleasant surprises. But since we can't fast-travel to towns we haven't visited in OOO, we have to hoof it the whole way.
But hoofing it is dangerous. The roads are plagued by bandits and wild animals. I get chased by a wolf for quite some time, struggling to kill it with long-range Flare spells as I run away. Wolves are fast, but their attack animations have huge windup and lag, which means you can just dodge all of their attacks if you know the timing.
But the combat music is still playing, which tells me there's still a monster around. I scan my surroundings and find another wolf... but the second wolf is already dead.
Slain by a troll, the big, furry green gorilla already chasing after me.
Trolls are incredibly fast, and they are extremely dangerous in melee combat. I can't possibly duke it out with a troll as a level 3 character with barely any gear, nor can I outrun the thing. I have to hurry backward, firing as many Flare spells as I can get off the ground before it finally closes the distance. Trolls are vulnerable to fire, and the Flare spell is buffed in OOO, so we just barely burn down the troll before it catches up and tears us apart.
Another disturbing sign of the dangers of OOO. The wilderness is not a safe place, and the further you get from civilization, the more dangerous the enemies are.
We brew some Restore Magicka potions to make sure we're ready for the next fight. We don't have to travel long before we get accosted by bandits on the way from Bravil to Leyawiin. We have two archers to deal with, and archers are much scarier in OOO, as their arrows deal more damage and move much faster. In vanilla, you could dodge arrows based on an audio cue, but in OOO, the reaction window is tiny. We summon a skeleton to buy some time.
Our magicka is low and it's hard to aim Flare spells when the archers keep sidestepping. It takes five arrows and most our magicka as well as a potion just to outlast the enemy.
It's not much longer before we run into yet another enemy: a Will o' Wisp.
But Will o' Wisps are highly evasive, highly dangerous critters that I'm not even sure I have the tools to harm. I bolt rather than risk a confrontation with a high-end mythic creature.
Why are we going to Leyawiin first of all places? Well, there's one very special item from one very special quest that we're going to be using for the rest of the game:
The Staff of the Everscamp. Currently it belongs to a Leyawiin native who has been looking for someone to take the cursed staff off her hands.
It's possible for us to get rid of the staff by taking it to a special cave, but we don't want to do that. We want to keep it.
The Staff of the Everscamp has two properties. First, it reduces your Speed attribute by 20, slowing down your movement rate by a considerable amount. Second, it creates four infinitely re-spawning Everscamps around you. They are very weak, don't fight for you unless you charm them, and constantly get in the way in tight spaces--not to mention the fact that they're not very pleasant-looking or sounding critters. But we want to use them for our special exploit.
They're actually useful even in a normal run. You can train combat skills by attacking them, and while they'll fight back at first, they die quickly and the re-spawned scamps aren't hostile.
One of the best things about the Everscamps is that it gives you four nearby targets at all times. By creating a custom spell, we can get a very powerful and very cheap healing spell by sucking up all four scamps' Health at once. All we have to do is give the spell a slight area effect.
I still need to get my hands on a Command Creature spell before I can create a custom one to make the scamps into temporary allies, which means that, in the meantime, I have to rely entirely on my summoned skeleton to deal with enemies. OOO Imps are very worrisome, as they have much stronger spells than in vanilla as well as much more Health.
I lose 10 arrows before the imp goes down.
Only when I reach Chorrol can I find a Command Creature spell, as Athragar and Alberic Little both have some really excellent spells for sale. Finally, I get the spell I need to turn the Everscamps into allies.
But that's not our special exploit.
Our special exploit is much, much more dramatic.
Frost: No-Reload Oblivion Run with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
Part 2
Okay. So what's this big special exploit all about?I call it "fatigue boosting." It's based on a very simple multiplier in the damage formula. For those who aren't familiar with the Elder Scrolls, fatigue measures how tired your character is. The lower your fatigue, the more tired you are.
Fatigue in Oblivion determines the damage you deal with melee or ranged weapons. At half your normal fatigue, you deal half damage. If you use a Fortify Fatigue spell, you can get a slight boost to your damage output, at least until you burn out the extra fatigue. Your damage is multiplied by the ratio of your current fatigue over your maximum base fatigue.
But what happens if you decrease the denominator in that ratio?
The smaller the denominator, the larger the ratio. How can you decrease the denominator?
Well, your base fatigue is the sum of four numbers: your character's Strength, Willpower, Agility, and Endurance. Strength determines how much you can carry and how much damage you deal with melee weapons; Willpower determines magicka regeneration rate; Agility determines your ability to avoid getting staggered and the damage you deal with bows; and Endurance determines your Health. And, as it happens, you can use potions (or a small number of items, in narrow and largely impractical situations) with Damage Attribute effects to decrease those numbers.
So, if you damage your Strength, Willpower, Agility, and Endurance to 1 each, your base fatigue will be 4, where it normally is at well over 100 even at level 1. A 100-point Fortify Fatigue spell will crank your current fatigue up to 104. What's the ratio?
Twenty-one. With 4 base fatigue and a 100-point Fortify Fatigue spell, you deal 21 times as much damage as normal.
But there's a problem. Having 1 Strength means you can only carry 5 pounds without Feather spells, and you deal barely any damage with melee weapons. Having 1 Willpower means you barely regenerate any magicka at all. Having 1 Agility makes it extremely easy for enemy attacks to stagger you, and you deal barely any damage with bows. Having 1 Endurance means you have essentially no Health without Fortify Health spells.
So what good is it?
Well, it isn't good. You're easy to stagger, easy to kill, and have essentially no magicka regeneration and no ability to carry loot or even your own gear. It's certainly no good for a no-reload run, where a single hit could end the whole run.
But what if you could push one of those attributes into the negatives?
First, we drink Damage Willpower potions until Frost's Willpower is at zero. Then, we create a custom area-effect Absorb Willpower spell (whose duration must exceed the duration of the potions' Damage Willpower effect) and use it on our Everscamps in order to absorb Willpower from multiple creatures at once. This allows us to boost our Willpower much higher than if we absorbed it from a single creature. The scamps go hostile, but they don't hit us for very much damage.
Then we drink more Damage Willpower potions. When the Absorb Willpower spells wear off, our Willpower drops deeply into the negatives.
Our Fatigue drops lower and lower, which means any Fortify Fatigue spells we might use become exponentially stronger.
Then we use our Absorb Health spell to kill them all at once before they can deal too much damage. Once they respawn, we repeat the process.
We keep it up until Frost's Willpower is at an incredible -92. This means her base fatigue is only 3 points!
The disadvantage is that losing fatigue by attacking and jumping and blocking is much worse for us than for a character with high fatigue, and if our fatigue drops below 0, we fall unconscious until it gets back up to 1. But the extra damage from Fortify Fatigue spells wildly overcompensates for the loss, and thanks to choosing Marksman as a class skill, our Marksman skill is at 25, which means we don't lose any fatigue while using a bow.
We have a cheap, 45-point Fortify Fatigue spell from early in the game, and we deal 16 times as much damage while it's in effect. With a single arrow, we can nearly slay a bandit and knock him back several feet from the sheer impact.
For slightly weaker creatures, like an imp, wolf, or Glarthir from the Paranoia questline, a single arrow is sufficient.
The only disadvantage of extremely negative Willpower is that we can't regenerate magicka. But the Atronach birthsign already imposes that penalty, and the magicka bonus largely compensates for it.
Better still, a bow, unlike a melee weapon, is not affected by Reflect Damage effects, which means that we can one-shot a Clannfear without taking massive damage at the same time.
With super-powerful arrows at very little cost, we have incredible offensive potential at level 3. But not long after this breakthrough, we suffer a major setback.
In the process of doing the Cheydinhal Mages Guild recommendation questline, we accidentally steal something from the guild, resulting in our expulsion from the guild. Raminus Polus says that we need to give him 20 Redwort Flowers and 20 Dragon's Tongue flowers to get back in.
I could get these things by snooping around the swamps of Leyawiin or even just using the Wait function to buy the ingredients from alchemists across Cyrodiil. But since this is a stupid quest that serves no purpose but to frustrate the player--Raminus Polus himself even says that's the point--I decide to bust out the duplication glitch to speed things up.
Out of cheer contempt for his request, I flood his office with extra copies of the flowers.
Due to a bug of some sort, I actually can get into the area behind the Arcane University gates, which normally isn't open until you get all the recommendations from the Mages Guilds of each town. To my frustration, I discover that Raminus Polus had multiple copies of each flower growing in the garden in the back!
Whatever. It's time to make some progress in the main quest. First, for safety's sake, I want to nab a couple of followers.
Followers are rather hard to come by in Oblivion, and the ones that do exist tend to be situational and not very strong. However, the Jemane brothers are two excellent exceptions. After re-uniting the twins by speaking with Reynald Jemane in a seedy motel in Chorrol and following the clues to Cheydinhal, I offer to find their childhood home, Weatherleah.
Once I've slain the ogres at Weatherleah using poisoned arrows, I offer to escort the brothers there. Thing is, they'll follow you anywhere, and there's no penalty for not taking them to Weatherleah. They have no armor, but Guilbert has a warhammer and Reynald has a shortsword, so they can fight, and because they're marked as "essential," they can't die--they can only fall unconscious.
I want them to help me deal with the Skingrad Mages Guild recommendation questline, because there are a lot of zombies to kill, and I do not like fighting those zombies. I let them do the work instead.
On the way back to Chorrol for another recommendation from the Mages Guild, one of the brothers somehow gets in trouble with the local authorities, who gang up on him and totally butcher him.
But because he's immortal, he gets right back up afterward, and the guards decide to let him go.
There are only two dangerous Mages Guild recommendation quests left. First, we're going to do the Anvil quest, which involves fighting a bandit mage named Caminalda.
Caminalda is very tough and uses strong cold damage spells, but with two followers, massive arrow damage, and even some Invisibility potions thanks to grinding Alchemy, I am not worried about her. We hunt her down, initiate combat, and I drink a Potion of Invisibility to escape before drawing an arrow.
But merely beginning to fire the bow was enough to break invisibility. Caminalda casts one spell, and kills us in a single hit.
Back to the starting dungeon. It only took one spell, but Caminalda completely wiped us out. Next time, I'm going to have to be much more careful.
I think my favorite non Infinity Engine no-reload RPG was probably KoTC. You could consider giving that a try if you haven't already.
Some thoughts on others, as may or may not be useful:
VTMB is pretty good in no-reload, albeit with a few cheesy sources of death (bumping a fire in the burning mansion, getting a car thrown at you in the junkyard, some insta-kill traps in one the final dungeons).
Fallout (2) is a pretty garbage no-reload, but you can do it. The issue is that the gameplay becomes dominated by the silly critical hit system.
Wizardry 6/7 are pretty superb no-reloads, if you like the underlying games.
Divine Divinity was really a lot of fun. The no-reload aspect removes the cheesy item/store reloading and gives the game a little more challenge.
I personally didn't no-reload any of the TES games because it seemed too straightforward to gain power outside of combat. Maybe I'm wrong about that though.
No reloading various final fantasy games might be interesting, but I think the leveling mechanics are too broken.
I tried the Kings Bounty games but it doesn't really work because there are too many situations where you can't tell the enemy army size until you've already engaged and then its too late.
D:OS Honour mode was fun. I thought PoE was pretty good too. Shame subsequent developer efforts don't appear to be as good.
Witcher(s). Only did the first, but thought it was great.
I tried to no-reload a reaslistic run through Deus Ex and made it the secret MJ base. I'm pretty confident this is doable, albeit very difficult because enemy weapons are so lethal.
Overlord is also quite possible with the correct minion mixes.
For the rest, most old games did not age well.
Went to the gnoll stronghold for the easy magic items hoping to get something that I needed. Found some studded leather +1 and a club +1. I did however pull the large shield +1 which was surely a boon.
I had to run back to town to get more sling bullets to finish off the last little bit of the gnoll stronghold and that was where I called it for the night.