sigmakan said:
Lurker comment:
Sirian, I assume that blunt and light armor are not major skills. For if they were you'd be level 10 just from the arena fights themselves!
No, that's a bona fide un-fooled-around-with stock Barbarian character.
However, I used HEAVY Raiments, not light, during all arena battles. In fact, of the fifteen available Heavy Raiments in the various cabinets, I think I had only two or three left unused:
I did use some of the default light healing spell, but had only enough mana to cast it three times before having to wait for recharge, which came slowly. The real deal was my Mara's Gift power, which for this char at this point amounted to a Full Heal spell once per day. Simply rest (and wait) a day after using it, before going on to the next fight. I had to take a whole day for each of the last five or six fights, too, although early on in the fight series I was not needing to use the power much and got away with simply resting for an hour between fights, doing four to six fights per day.
Thus with nonprimary skill on Armor, no level-up points from taking hits, plus max Endurance gains with my two level-ups giving as many hit points as possible for this character class at those levels.
I did two dungeon runs (one to Vilverin, one to Sercen, although I did not fully clear Vilverin) to fund all the healing potions I had to buy, because the prize money alone was not enough. They RAN OUT of potions to sell me in the Imperial City. I had to make a run to Cheydinhall and another to Skingrad to find enough potions to buy to get me through the last several fights! I'm pretty sure I spent upwards of 4k on healing potions -- everything I had went in to buying them.
I'm stuck on the fight against the 3 Argonians.
That's the only fight that killed me, until the championship. I lost twice before pulling it out. I used a Fire Shield potion which bought me like 20 seconds of boosted armor, to buy enough time to kill one of the three. I had to use my Full Heal power in that span, too, leaving me out of breath and with about a dozen minor heal potions on hand. I then simply had to run backward at full speed, with
Diablo2-style "tempting fate" tactics, where you back out of their attack range before their attack animation can complete, making them whiff. Hand to hand attacks have very short attack range, so after trying axe n shield on the first run vs this bunch, I went to Steel Claymore (the one from Jauffre's chest?) for the second try, ALMOST pulled it out, tried again and made it through on the third try, albeit with an awful lot of whiffs of my own as it was high adrenalin time for me personally, and it was potluck on each swing as to whether they'd be in the tip of MY range or not. Got to love the long range on those two-handed weapons, though! A two-hander plays very differently than a dagger-wielder, that's for sure.
Took me four tries to take down Agronak, though. I may be only level three, but he's still got Master level blade skill, able to peel off a third of my hit points in one power move PLUS knock me down and just about finish me off before I can stand up again. You can see I did it with Axe and Shield (the Steel Axe from Jauffre's chest, of course. Where else could I get one at clvl 3? Heh) but I had to do a lot of "advancing to the rear" in that one, too.
I had no potions left at the end. More than 4k spent on potions, and I used them ALL.
Liq said:
The leveling system takes the game and just trashes it to the point of not being fun.
Iustus said:
I do not like the leveling system in Oblivion. I understand why they made the choices they made to make it work that way, but it leads to horrible tediousness if you want to min/max your character.
I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I found Oblivion to be the best game I've played since Half Life (the original) in 1998. Sure, the leveling system throws realism out the window, but who cares about THAT? I'm there for the gameplay, and that's just superb. Take any path, do the quests in any order you like, and never run in to gameplay cliffs where an objective is either unreachable (too hard) or a total cakewalk (too easy). No Papa Bear, no Mama Bear, just Baby Bear all the way through! It doesn't get better than that.
The only thing you have to do to min/max your character is to pick a few traits to focus on for each level-up. The game is a variant master's dream. You can play the sword/axe-and-shield warrior, the two-handed weapon "power attack" warrior, the no-armor martial artist, the archer-who-sneaks-around and stays out of melee, the assassin-who-sneaks-around and backstabs in melee, the fire/ice mage, the summoner, the staff mage, the full-on thief, the Lord birthsign fighter, the Ritual birthsign fighter, the Vampire, the Atronach birthsign mage, and those are just the mainstream options. Then you get some side variants like the Redguard thief, the high elf warrior, the Nord mage, and the Backward Build who starts with almost all major skills at 25 and is underskilled all the way through the game (but can reach clvl 50+ if you keep playing). ... Believe it or not, I've done all of these. I probably put 800 hours in to the game. This game does not suck, even if it's not everybody's cup of tea. I'm looking forward to the expansions.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing instead of playing Civ, over the spring and summer.
I have a two-year head start on the rest of you with the Civ-playing, though, so I am simply farther along the Civ4 path than others. I've still got many more hours in to Civ4 than Oblivion, although most of those were work hours. Lots of life still left in Civ4, too. The RBCiv tourneys will be going strong for a long, long time.
OK, sorry for the diversion. What would one of my SG threads be without a diversion segment, though? Blame Iustus. HE wanted a teaser.
Be right back with the start of my report for this round.
- Sirian
Sioux me. 
.
