This quest is very funny because Erthor has zombie radar for some reason and just has a perfect lock on sense of all zombies in a half mile radius. Weirdly specific power of the guy.
Ironically the quest would probably be harder if he *wasn’t* flagged essential and also wasn't telepathically aware of if the player had dispatched all of the zombies in the cave. It would most likely still accomplish the same goal of encouraging players to just kill all the zombies to ensure his safety
while marksman may be the weakest physical damage, the fact that you can deliver it at range, possibly undetected, able to poison enemies from afar, etc is a massive bonus I feel you're underrating a bit The bonuses for it are also huge - they don't require power attacks. normal attacks can paralyze or knock down opponents
Agreed - I remember having a great time with Marksman and Sneak at 50+. Once your Sneak is up around that point, and you can use the Marksman zoom perk, you can hit enemies from so far off that they may not even be able to effectively search for you. Totally possible to get repeat sneak attacks that way and just eliminate a bandit camp from the next hill!
This seems to be the best video to mention this, given the title. I watched almost all your videos, and appreciated your advice; However, having listened, I proceeded to reinstall the game, and make an altmer under the Apprentice, specializing in magic, and the following major skills: Armorer, Heavy Armor, Blade, Alteration, Destruction, Illusion, and Mysticism. Preferred attributes being Endurance and luck. Logic being, Altmer Apprentice gives me all the magicka I would want for a long while, allowing me to neglect INT and Willpower initially, and recoup later using minor skills like conjuration, alchemy, and restoration. Willpower had become my focus at that point, and I was prepared to hard-level INT moving forward. This character hit level 10 faster than I liked, but it was becoming rather powerful indeed. Good build, just leveled too quickly for me. I ended up redoing the character and chose the 'stealth' specialization specifically because that would increase the rate at which skills leveled, but only affect minor skills i would use "in the background". It's the only adjustment made, to be a bit more well-rounded and to delay hitting level 20 as at level 10, my previous character was not a high ranking member in any faction, had not touched the main quests at all, and was about half-way through the arena faction. I know you dislike the stealth specialization, but here i'm treating it as the "shore up my weaknesses" element of the build, while also giving myself more time to get good gear and enjoy a longer early and mid game, since it won't contribute to my leveling rate at all. On the flip side, however, it does mean that i'll tend to get larger bonuses to speed, speech, and agility when I DO level up. Since you insist skills matter more than (most) attributes, this might be a balanced choice with no obvious weakness if using the Mage sign instead? I look forward to any commentary you provide on this idea, especially considering i'm still intentionally using my major skills, and took only a -5 on 4 of my major skills for this deviation.
How fast you level up is a big deal! It’s not a terrible idea to ignore a couple of your majors early game and start using them later, or to pick skills that level very slowly. I’d never thought to use a specialization to intentionally level more slowly, it sounds like good thinking to me!
@@theoldknight85 Honestly, it's a bit of a reaction to the size of Oblivion, and how the game is balanced around some kind of assumption about players hitting level 20 or so, even though anyone who keeps playing will obviously get to notably higher levels. Enemy diversity doesn't much change after that point, health pools just start growing rather than anything new. Given both of those things, if I return to Oblivion after a long time away, I don't want to sprint to that stage of power and find myself doing large portions of the base game like that. Now if you've been playing the game intermittently or often over the last 15 years, or just finished a playthrough last month or something, I totally see why sprinting to the endgame as early as organically possible/reasonable makes sense, as that means the best sigil stones will come sooner, and there will be more transcendent sigil stones in your playthrough and fewer of the weaker ones, and the same of other leveled gear, as that all seems to generally become true in the transition from levels 15-22 for all the gear in the game, though i think a few outliers are at 25? Not finding yourself stalling while leveling for in your 100th playthrough makes perfect sense, since availability of these things are all level dependent and directly increase player power exponentially. Oh, and it occurred to me that armorer, heavy armor, a weapon skill, and 4 magic skills with a stealth specialization seems to be the most balanced way to do a 3-way archetype hybrid generalist like this, since the only skills that don't level faster than default are some combat skills you don't proactively use to achieve victory, like the other melee weapon skill and athletics. that's 15-20 skill points fewer for your level spread across your major skills, but it is hybridization, explicitly not specialization, and only 5 points in any one skill. EDIT: I also recognize that i'm not interested in doing another 20 playthroughs of this game, and that I appreciate a transition into being a power fantasy far more when I have spent a larger amount of time in the same system without it being a power fantasy.
I always slap that conjuration rune stone outside Bleak Flats Cave for Daedric claymore fun. Also, the real prize of this quest is the weak fireball spell you get that bounces welkynd stones off their pedestals towards you.
Weak fireball is also weirdly efficient! A custom spell with the same damage and no area costs quite a bit more than weak fireball, good early game spell!
loving your videos, reignited my love for oblivion: currently playing through w/ a few of your recommendations (though i did some early efficient levelling to ensure that i'd be ~100 in str/end by 20.) it'd be neat if there was a place for your nascent fanbase to talk about oblivion theorycrafting together, like a discord or something
This guy + the twins in Chorrol/Cheydinal = fun dungeon party you can use for early game dungeon clears. Edit: Could also, in theory, active the main quest and complete it to the point where you can get Jauffre and Martin for a 5 man party. It kind of turns the game, at least early on, into super EZ mode, but its hilarious and fun for awhile or until you get bored.
I have truly enjoyed every one of these videos.
This quest is very funny because Erthor has zombie radar for some reason and just has a perfect lock on sense of all zombies in a half mile radius. Weirdly specific power of the guy.
Erthor's got the nose 😌
Ironically the quest would probably be harder if he *wasn’t* flagged essential and also wasn't telepathically aware of if the player had dispatched all of the zombies in the cave. It would most likely still accomplish the same goal of encouraging players to just kill all the zombies to ensure his safety
while marksman may be the weakest physical damage, the fact that you can deliver it at range, possibly undetected, able to poison enemies from afar, etc is a massive bonus I feel you're underrating a bit
The bonuses for it are also huge - they don't require power attacks. normal attacks can paralyze or knock down opponents
Enchanted bow with 100% weakness to multiple effects for 1 second, plus poison, plus enchanted arrows is a lot of fun.
Agreed - I remember having a great time with Marksman and Sneak at 50+. Once your Sneak is up around that point, and you can use the Marksman zoom perk, you can hit enemies from so far off that they may not even be able to effectively search for you. Totally possible to get repeat sneak attacks that way and just eliminate a bandit camp from the next hill!
This seems to be the best video to mention this, given the title. I watched almost all your videos, and appreciated your advice; However, having listened, I proceeded to reinstall the game, and make an altmer under the Apprentice, specializing in magic, and the following major skills: Armorer, Heavy Armor, Blade, Alteration, Destruction, Illusion, and Mysticism. Preferred attributes being Endurance and luck. Logic being, Altmer Apprentice gives me all the magicka I would want for a long while, allowing me to neglect INT and Willpower initially, and recoup later using minor skills like conjuration, alchemy, and restoration. Willpower had become my focus at that point, and I was prepared to hard-level INT moving forward.
This character hit level 10 faster than I liked, but it was becoming rather powerful indeed. Good build, just leveled too quickly for me. I ended up redoing the character and chose the 'stealth' specialization specifically because that would increase the rate at which skills leveled, but only affect minor skills i would use "in the background". It's the only adjustment made, to be a bit more well-rounded and to delay hitting level 20 as at level 10, my previous character was not a high ranking member in any faction, had not touched the main quests at all, and was about half-way through the arena faction.
I know you dislike the stealth specialization, but here i'm treating it as the "shore up my weaknesses" element of the build, while also giving myself more time to get good gear and enjoy a longer early and mid game, since it won't contribute to my leveling rate at all. On the flip side, however, it does mean that i'll tend to get larger bonuses to speed, speech, and agility when I DO level up. Since you insist skills matter more than (most) attributes, this might be a balanced choice with no obvious weakness if using the Mage sign instead? I look forward to any commentary you provide on this idea, especially considering i'm still intentionally using my major skills, and took only a -5 on 4 of my major skills for this deviation.
How fast you level up is a big
deal! It’s not a terrible idea to ignore a couple of your majors early game and start using them later, or to pick skills that level very slowly.
I’d never thought to use a specialization to intentionally level more slowly, it sounds like good thinking to me!
@@theoldknight85 Honestly, it's a bit of a reaction to the size of Oblivion, and how the game is balanced around some kind of assumption about players hitting level 20 or so, even though anyone who keeps playing will obviously get to notably higher levels. Enemy diversity doesn't much change after that point, health pools just start growing rather than anything new. Given both of those things, if I return to Oblivion after a long time away, I don't want to sprint to that stage of power and find myself doing large portions of the base game like that.
Now if you've been playing the game intermittently or often over the last 15 years, or just finished a playthrough last month or something, I totally see why sprinting to the endgame as early as organically possible/reasonable makes sense, as that means the best sigil stones will come sooner, and there will be more transcendent sigil stones in your playthrough and fewer of the weaker ones, and the same of other leveled gear, as that all seems to generally become true in the transition from levels 15-22 for all the gear in the game, though i think a few outliers are at 25? Not finding yourself stalling while leveling for in your 100th playthrough makes perfect sense, since availability of these things are all level dependent and directly increase player power exponentially.
Oh, and it occurred to me that armorer, heavy armor, a weapon skill, and 4 magic skills with a stealth specialization seems to be the most balanced way to do a 3-way archetype hybrid generalist like this, since the only skills that don't level faster than default are some combat skills you don't proactively use to achieve victory, like the other melee weapon skill and athletics. that's 15-20 skill points fewer for your level spread across your major skills, but it is hybridization, explicitly not specialization, and only 5 points in any one skill.
EDIT: I also recognize that i'm not interested in doing another 20 playthroughs of this game, and that I appreciate a transition into being a power fantasy far more when I have spent a larger amount of time in the same system without it being a power fantasy.
love how detailed your videos are, learning all sorts about one of my most played games of all time is lots of fun and interesting too
I always slap that conjuration rune stone outside Bleak Flats Cave for Daedric claymore fun.
Also, the real prize of this quest is the weak fireball spell you get that bounces welkynd stones off their pedestals towards you.
I typically do too! Only reason I didn’t here is I really wanted to gain some marksman skill in a loving, comfy, and safe place.
Weak fireball is also weirdly efficient! A custom spell with the same damage and no area costs quite a bit more than weak fireball, good early game spell!
Weak fireball is my go to destruction spell because of how efficient it is on my Lv1 runs
i would love a playthrough of this game from you just with all your tips and knowledge, it would be so entertaining
loving your videos, reignited my love for oblivion: currently playing through w/ a few of your recommendations (though i did some early efficient levelling to ensure that i'd be ~100 in str/end by 20.) it'd be neat if there was a place for your nascent fanbase to talk about oblivion theorycrafting together, like a discord or something
my king still posting 🙏
This guy + the twins in Chorrol/Cheydinal = fun dungeon party you can use for early game dungeon clears. Edit: Could also, in theory, active the main quest and complete it to the point where you can get Jauffre and Martin for a 5 man party. It kind of turns the game, at least early on, into super EZ mode, but its hilarious and fun for awhile or until you get bored.
You're gonna make me start a new khajit
Hey thanks for not making this video's thumbnail AI like the last one.
Fr it does look kinda ugly
do you think that you'll use chameleon armor on this character? if so, what would you personally put your limit at?
probably not. I usually carry around the Ring of Khajitti to equip during some quests, but that's it