There's an interesting feature
in Oblivion. Most NPCs have their own class category. Like the standard classes the player can choose
at the end of the tutorial, these NPC classes come with seven major skills, a specialization,
and two preferred attributes. Even NPCs, as inconsequential as farmers and...
ostlers. Whatever that is? Have their own unique class. As a result, we can create our own custom
class modeled after these NPC classes and play the game as an NPC, but
with less incomprehensible dialogue and agonizingly stupid behavior, to a point. We're gonna try this as a conjurer. Because conjurers are unsurprisingly magic
based, I'm going with a Breton as my race. They have an increased Magickal pool and an
innate 50% resistance to Magickal damage. Female Bretons start with more speed than
males. I expect I'll be doing a lot of running and
dodging while my conjured familiars do the fighting rather than myself getting in there
with a sword, so the reduced strength won't be a problem. Of course, I make her as ghastly looking as
possible. Not hard in Oblivion, both because there's
a randomizer feature on the character creation screen, and Oblivion faces
are abhorrent abominations to begin with. Yuck. She looks like a drowned corpse. It's perfect. The biggest difference between the character
and player classes is birth sign. NPCs don't have them because they weren't
born, they were created, I guess. I don't know. At least as far as I can tell, they don't
have them. Keep things simple, I'm just gonna take the
major sign for 50 extra Magicka on top of the Breton race's inherent 50 extra Magicka. For major skills, we're following what's listed
on the unofficial Elder Scrolls pages (dotnet). We take magic as our specialization, increasing
the speed at which magic aligns skills level, which can actually make things more difficult. Our favorite attributes are willpower and
intelligence, giving us an extra 5 points to each, and our 7 major skills, which we'll
all start at level 25 apprentice rank, are blade, heavy armor, alteration, conjuration,
destruction, mysticism, and sneak. Personally, I would switch heavy armor or
sneak with restoration since those two together don't really work out too well. Heavy armor is loud and all, and kinda counteract
sneaking, but this is what the class is, so I guess this is what I got. The heavy armor skill is likely to benefit
conjured armor, but I have no intention of ever using that anyway. We start with some simple spells like shock
and touch, a weak melee range destruction spell, and summon skeleton, a weak familiar
weak and summon a fight for us. Oh, and you may have noticed the UI looks
a bit different. I'm using the Darnified UI mod because Oblivion's
default UI is an archaic mass built primarily for playing on consoles with a CRT screen
halfway across the room, not for a 1080p LCD monitor within arm's reach, such as the nature
of playing a game from 2006. So the spells we get by default aren't all
that great, but fortunately we can buy better ones from the many spell merchants in Cyrodiil's
many mages guild chapters. But first, we need some gold, and an easy
way of getting gold is by selling stolen loot to a Thieves Guild fence. To join the Thieves Guild, we need to meet
with Armand Christophe in the waterfront of the Imperial city. What's odd is every single time I play Oblivion,
and I wait here, I get attacked by a random conjurer. I don't know why, but at least this is a good
demonstration of what a conjurer can do. Well, hopefully we do better than that. Armand won't acknowledge the Thieves Guild
if our disposition with him isn't high enough, or if he didn't read the Grey Fox wanted posters,
but I forgot to do that. I play the speechcraft game a little bit,
technically not part of my character's major skills, but I figure even the least charming
conjurer can try. You're only as confident as you feel. You can also bribe him. As an initiation, he wants us to compete with
Amusei and Methredhel to steal Amantius Alectus' journal. If you follow Methredhel close enough, you
can enter the house right behind her and swipe the book before she has a chance to. I had to pick the lock to get into the house. Security isn't one of my major skills either,
but I mean, come on. Honestly, some of the skills in this game
feel more like support than anything else. Security, speechcraft, mercantile, alchemy. You're not going to beat the game with those
skills. After joining the Thieves Guild, we can go
to Red Diamond Jewelry late at night and ransack the place. The necklaces and rings in this place are
incredibly valuable, and if you aren't good at oblivion's lockpicking minigame, you can
pickpocket the key from the guy sleeping upstairs and open everything with it. Ognar in Bruma is our fence, and we can sell
all this loot to him. Another mod I have lets me hold down shift
to auto-confirm the sales pop-ups. That way I don't have to keep moving my mouse
back and forth between the items and the "Yes" button. I guess this would make leveling mercantile
faster and easier, but I never bothered using the haggle option anyway, so who gives a damn. With around 850 gold, I popped over to the
County of Chorrol. I assume these are counties since they're
ruled by counts and countesses. Cities fine. City of Chorrol. The Mages Guild here specializes in conjuration
magic. I bought a summon zombie spell because zombies
are a bit tankier than skeletons, got more meat on them bones, both figuratively and
literally. And I bought a boundagger
spell, a cheap conjuration spell I can use to train the skill while my Magickal pool is low. Because oblivion's leveling system, much like
marowins, is totally logical and makes perfect sense, the cost of the spell is irrelevant
to how much experience it gives in a skill. A spell is a spell. One magicka, or 1000 magicka. The experience you get is the same, so for
training, it's better to use cheaper spells. There are other summoning spells I'd like
to get, but they're way more expensive both to buy and to cast. On top of that, some spells require a higher
level to cast regardless of the magicka cost, so we'll have to come back to get them later. In the meantime, let's get on I skipped the
tutorial, but all you have to know is that we were in prison when the Emperor Uriel Septim,
voiced by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, and his retinue of bodyguards,
Agents of the Blades, came through using a secret escape tunnel built into the wall of
my cell. Eventually, the Emperor gave me his amulet,
the amulet of kings, and told me to bring it to Jauffre at the Wynan Priory, then a
mythic dawn cultist, one shot him, behold the power of dragon blood. And that's where we are now, bringing the
amulet to Jauffre for safekeeping. He informs us the Emperor has another son,
one he hid away in the event that some group tried to snuff out his bloodline. The Septim bloodline is magic because Tiber
Septim is Talos now. Don't worry too much about it, he mantled
Lorkhan and achieved CHIM, and he used the Numidium to... it's confusing, and there's
something about Akatosh's blessing. I... the lore is very interesting, but we're...
it's too much to talk about here. Martin, voiced by Sean Bean, is in the city
of Kvatch, and we gotta get him. But it seems a demon door has already opened
up here. You see, Mehrunes Dagon is trying to invade
Tamriel, but the Septim bloodline, together with the amulet of kings, are able to prevent
the Daedric princes from fiddling around too much in our world due to the dragon fires
being lit. Magic. The throne is empty though,
the amulet's septimless, so Dagon is getting bold, opening up gates, violating the coldharbour compact... also
another thing, don't worry about that, the Elder Scrolls lore is spindly. Sotha Sil, the God of the Dunmer did a thing
with Daedric princes to bind them in the... doing this he can manifest directly in the
world. The mythic dawn was already successful in
killing all the known members of the Septim bloodline, and it seems they were aware Martin
was in Kvatch. This is something I'm not too sure about. I'm guessing they suspected there was a hidden
heir here, but they weren't sure who it was, so they ditched the surgical approach and
just decided, eh, kill everyone and we'll... we'll... we'll get him eventually. So as far as we know, Martin could be dead,
but we still gotta check if we gotta get into that city. And before we can get in, we need to pop into
this oblivion gate and figure out how to close it. Pretty ballsy all things considered, there's
literally no reason to assume it's closable, and if it does close, there's no reason to
assume we won't be stuck in hell, but hey, when have silent protagonist been rational? Things tend to work out for them regardless. Get used to seeing the deadlands. That's what this particular plane of oblivion
is called deadlands. Mehrunes Dagon's realm is called deadlands. Different princes have different planes with
different names. Nocturnals got the Evergloam, Molag Bal's
hanging out in cold harbor, and the Shivering Isles are home to Uncle Sheo. Being level one, most of the enemies here
are scamps. They throw fireballs, but they're pretty weak. I found a good strategy for dealing with them
was to conjure my zombie and let it capture the scamps of tension. Then I'd run up and cast shock and touch a
few times. I also have a flare spell, which I could cast
at a distance, but I'm pretty sure most daedra are, the very least, resisting to fire. Considering they live in this place, they're
probably, they probably don't mind fire too much. I assume it's the equivalent of splashing
someone with water. It's like, yeah, it's annoying, and if it's
high pressure I'm not if you could hurt someone with it, but when you think about it, humans
are water elementals. You know, there's something funny about a
zombie smack turning daedra into ragdolls. Oh, Jesus. I thought you were an enemy. You gotta be careful, man. Well. Before we can close this gate, we need to
learn how to do that. We kill the Jormor sigilkeeper and take the
key he's holding and the guy over here in the cage tells us we need to remove the sigilstone
from the top of the tallest tower to close the gate. Why can't we free this guy? What's gonna happen to him? I don't know. Best of luck to him though. This time around, I killed stuff on the way
to the top of the tower, but the truth is you don't actually have to. Once you grab the stone, the gate begins closing
and you'll eventually be teleported out. Pretty convenient. By closing the gate, you are rewarded with
the stone itself and it allows you to enchant some of your gear. This one has frost damage for a weapon or
10% frost shields for armor. Why not add my robes? Not like it'd be any worse. Mage's Chilly Robes, brrr, so cold. Now with the gate closed, we can enter Kvatch
and find Martin. Although at this rate, we're more likely to
find Ashi's cinders on a wall with the silhouette of Martin at the center. Always alive. Oh, that's good. But he refuses to leave Kvatch while it's
still being threatened by the lingering forces of oblivion. Looks like we've gotta press further into
the city. Thankfully, I have a squad of Kvatch and Imperial
soldiers to act as cannon fodder while I hang back and summon skeletons and zombies. Easy enemies are not with how many there are
and with how weak I am right now. The extra help is much appreciated. I got to level 50 conjuration during this
campaign, unlocking the ability to cast journeyman level spells. We'll soon need to buy them though. We fight our way to the palace, tasked with
finding the count and bringing him out to safety. By the looks of the state of things, I'm guessing
he's fine. Whoa, this room is weird. I'm gonna leave. Here's the count. Let me check for a pulse. Yeah, he's probably not gonna make it. I'm just gonna take his ring and be off. Oh, sadly I'm wanted the ring. Yeah, fine, take it. He gives us his stupid light armor, cures
his reward. Doesn't he know conjurers only use heavy armor
apparently? Now we could pick up Martin from outside Kvatch
and head off to the wing in private. Well, damn, the mythic dawn already here. Surely planning to steal the amulet. They stole the amulet. Oh my god, Martin, you alright? Alright, hold still. Let me just... There, all better. Why are you mad at me now? To keep Martin safe, we're gonna bring him
to the main base of operations of the blades, Cloud Ruler Temple. This is a longer cutscene. It's just Marty making a speech about trying
his best so I popped around the place to entertain myself. Jumping in oblivion is nonsensical and I love
it. Surely the temple will be behind the walls,
not above them at the top of the staircase. They should install some kind of guardrails
or say... Oh, okay, I'm fine. Martin's face is all messed up again. Oh no, it's spread to Jauffre too. What should we do? Should I go to Brimman to get help? No, I might be contagious. Maybe we should just quarantine here at the
temple. What if we... Oh, I love this game. Okay, so our first task now that Martin is
safe at the temple is to meet with Baurus. The very same Baurus we met in the prison
when the emperor was killed. He wasn't fired. We need to get the amulet of kings back and
he might have some leads. But before we get on to our first task, we
first need to do some housekeeping. Let's pop on over to Bruma and level up. The first building I went into, I thought
was an inn, but it's just a shop. Then I had a thought. I'm gonna need a good deal of gold to buy
spells and getting gold in oblivion can be a bit tricky. However, alchemy is a pretty reliable way
to turn cheap ingredients into not so cheap potions. Basically buy a bunch of food for a couple
of septums each and make restore fatigue potions and sell them for a profit. Alchemy is not one of the conjure classes
major skills, so would it be rule breaking to use alchemy to make money? I mean acrobatics and athletics aren't major
skills either, but I can't imagine a playthrough without jumping or running would be any fun. Hmm, let me write that down. As a compromise, I won't make any potions
that'll help me in combat. I'm just gonna use alchemy to make money. Treat it like a support skill. Any potions I make, I'm gonna sell. The next building I went into was the inn. I took a nap and leveled up twice. I had enough skill ups from all the comatching. Notice the extra stat points available for
certain attributes. Like marwin, you can add
points to three attributes per level and the amount of points an attribute will get is based on what skill you leveled
up over the course of that level. If you get 10 destruction levels, you'll be
able to allocate five points to willpower because willpower governs destruction. The problem is getting 10 levels across your
major skills levels you up, so if you use your major skills a lot, you're gonna level
up before you can get a high enough attribute spread. Ideally, you'll place five points in each
of three attributes by having only useless major skills that you use only to get a character
level. This isn't that big of a problem in marwin
because enemies don't scale with your overall level, at least for the most part. In oblivion, everything scales. So it's possible to get 10 levels and have
terrible stats while fighting scaled enemies who are scaled with the assumption that you
don't have terrible stats, but you're probably like somewhere in the middle round. You know, they wouldn't scale the enemies
to assume that you're the best you could be, but they weren't gonna scale the enemies assuming
you were gonna be the worst because then it would just always be easy. If you get 10 levels with the minimal attribute
allocations, you'll only increase your attributes by a total of 30. If you're optimal, you'll have 150. It's not easy to balance a game with such
a wide disparity in the potential character builds. It's probably possible to do, but that's a
sure end to it. Before leaving Gruma, I bought a shock spell
from the Major's Guild here. It's like Shocking Touch, but with more range,
and it's way easier for you to miss. Also, that summon Daedroth spell, I'm gonna
want that later. I can't cast it right now and it's too expensive,
so we'll just keep it in mind. Instead, I went back to Chorrol and bought
a summon flame atrium axe spell. I've never really played oblivion with summons,
so I'm interested in testing some of these out. I don't think it'll be that great considering
a lot of enemies are resistant to fire, but I don't know. Time for our rendezvous with Baurus. We meet up with him in Luther Broad's boarding
house and sit down next to him. He tells us not to speak to him, but just
to follow him into the basement after the guy in the corner tails him down there. In the basement, mythic dawn, go fire atrium
axe, use flame thrower. Or just lunge at him, whatever that works,
I guess. Letting bolt, done. So the assassin has a book on him, commentaries
on the Mysterium Zarkseeds, volume one. We'll take that for later. Alright Baurus, what's our next move? Speaker 2: There's a scholar at the Arcane
University, Tarmina's her name. Supposed to be an expert on Diedrich Colts. Diedrich. Speaker 1: We swing by the Arcane University
and have a chat with Tarmina, who tells us that there's four volumes of the commentaries
all written by someone named Mankar Camoran. She gives us a copy of the second, but she's
not sure how to get ahold of the third and fourth. She suggests we talk to the proprietor of
the first edition, a bookstore in the market district. Speaker 2: Finthia seems to know a The first
two volumes are rare, but you may run across them from time to time. The third and fourth are impossible to find. I happen to have a copy of volume three on
it. Speaker 1: Not really impossible to find,
are they? Some elf named Gwymtitles or something, already
called dibs on the book. He's actually on his way to pick it up, but
he's remarkably rude to us when we try talking to him about it. Instead, we wait for him to pick up the book
and then talk to him about it. We tell him that the Mythic Dawn cult were
the ones who killed the emperor, and he naturally just believes us. With a name like Gwymtitles, you'd think he'd
be a bit more assertive. He gives us the book, and he even tells us
about the meeting he had arranged with the cult to get a copy of the fourth, since that's
the only way to get one. The meeting is in the sewers, so we grab bars
when we head off. You know, they're cute when they're small,
but when they start getting too big, everyone just flushes their pet goblins down the toilet,
and this is what you end up with. Full-grown gobbos running amok in the city
sewers. Baurus, are you alright? Okay, you know they're cute when they're small,
but when they start getting too big, everyone just flushes their pet mud crabs down the
toilet, and this is what you end up with. Full grown crabs running amok in the city
sewers. We arrive at an inconspicuous table and chair. I told Baurus to wait in the shadows while
I sit at the table as per the cult's instructions. But before I can smooth talk the elf and convince
him to give me the book, Baurus jumps out and presses the attack. He usually dies here, but not this time. We dispatch the cultist, one of whom gets
stuck in this door performing a very rude gesture and loot the final copy of Mankar
Camoran's commentaries. The elf was also carrying a ring with a 7%
fire shield in chant, better than nothing, right? So the incredible secret is just words spelled
out by the first letter of each paragraph in the books. Tells us where to go, and what time. It's somewhere in the
imperial city, how convenient. And here's the sewer cultist's little base
of operations. Quite the ritzy setup. Come, join our cult, sleep in the sewers. In fact, I will sleep here and get another
level. And in one of the loot chests is a base ring
of shadows. It gives 20% chameleon, a useful enchant for
stealthy characters, but I'm more interested in that value. 1340 septums. After escaping the lab brinthian imperial
sewers, we can follow the incomprehensibly obscure hints in the four books to learn the
location of the cult's headquarters. By going to the emperor's way in the imperial
city at midday, the tomb of prince Camero shows us where to go. I wonder if Mankar Camoran picked this tomb
because of the similarity of their names. Also, I like to imagine everyone knows about this phenomenon, but it's
such a regular occurrence that no one thinks anything of it. Eh, the tomb is blowing again happens every
afternoon. So when you get to the location marked on
that map, there are a few different options you can take. One way is to pretend you want to join the
cult. You hand over your equipment and are allowed
to walk through the mythic dawn's caverns without being attacked, and you can go about
the rest of the infiltration like a spy. I opted for aggression because it's easier. Kill Harrow and take his key. Enter the caverns and start killing. The cult is not all that tough, and my zombie
is good at drawing aggro while I zap them from a distance. Our main reason for being here is to get the
emulator of kings back, or at least to find a lead. When we get to the shrine at the end of the
caverns, we find Mankar Camoran giving a speech to his acolytes while preparing to sacrifice
some poor Argonian shrub because Bethesda really needed to hammer on the fact that these
are the bad guys. As soon as Camoran senses danger, he shloops
through a portal but leaves behind the Mysterium Zarkseys itself, a bit irresponsible but to
our benefit. We take it and get back to killing while we
figure out how to escape this maze. Alright zombie, you get behind him and I'll
push. Okay, that was kind of mean. Zarkseys in hand, we return to Cloud Ruler
Temple and tell Martin what we learned. He says he can decipher parts of the tome
in order to figure out how to open a portal to Camoran's paradise, his own personal pocket
of oblivion where he's most likely keeping the emulator of kings. But while Martin works on that, Jauffre tasks
us with rooting out some spies in nearby Bruma. But first, let's level up again. Not a lot of attributes to allocate this time
around, not like in that... uh... yeah okay. Then that's how Mehrunes dig on Conquer Tamriel
by relying on the hero of Kvatch's clumsiness. How can we be sure this woman is a mythic
don... ah there we go. Oh my god is this place full of lightning
rods? Stop missing. Good job Tony. His name is Tony, by the way. Tony's on Boney. Favorite food? Macaroni. Favorite inventor? Marconi. Once, he took an arrow below the knee. Now that was a stretch. Since Yorla the spy is dead, she's unlikely
to be bothered if we rummage through her stuff in her home. In her basement, we find orders from the cult. They're either so confident of their success
or they're totally inept because not only have they neglected to use any kind of cipher,
but they use their spy's actual names in the correspondence. Well, time to kill Saveri. Saveri indeed. Back to the temple. Am I the only one who does this, but I like
to jump before I talk to someone so I freeze in the air above them. Mehrunes discern that to open a portal into
Camoran's Paradise, we need the blood of a Daedric Prince. A Daedric artifact. Any artifact will do. Normally, I'd pick a somewhat useless artifact
to hand over, like the Sanguine Rose or something like that. But the easiest and earliest artifact to get
comes from Azura's quest. You only need to be level 2 to do it. I swung by the imperial, stated I buy some
glow dust, which you need to summon Azura's attention, got attacked by some cultists,
and then went on an alchemy spree to make some gold. As I've said, just about any food can be turned
into restore fatigue potions, and you can find food all over the place. Steal from shops, grab it out of barrels,
actually buy it from in keepers. One place with a good supply of food is the
vineyards outside of Skingrad. Tons of grapevines you can harvest, and the
game doesn't even count this as stealing even though it totally is. After selling all the potions, I return to
the Chorrol Mage's Guild to check the prices on some of the spells I wanted to buy. And that's when I realized being a member
of the guild means I can take a bunch of the stuff in the displays. Look at all these soul gems. Sure, I have to pick the lock, but lock picking
is really easy on oblivion. I actually think oblivion's lock picking system
is the best among all of Bethesda's games, including the newer one like Starfield. Starfield minigame is interesting, but I don't
like that I can't test my own skills on high level locks without allocating perks. Same is true for Fallout. Skyrim's system is pretty good too, but that
one feels a little more luck based. There's less skill involved with that one,
but I do like that I can go through 50 lock picks trying to unlock a master lock with
1 lock picking. The other scrolls online has a decent lock
picking system too. It's actually pretty similar to oblivion's. In fact, it kinda looks like what oblivion's
was trying to be. Anyway, we have a couple grandstall gems in
this case worth 350 septums each, a few hundred septums worth in this one over here, and even
more food lying around to make potions with. Now that I have about 1000 gold, it's time
to buy some new spells. We'll grab some in Dremorara because I'm curious
how tanky it is. The zombie's good, but it's pretty slow. If the Dremorara is anything like the ones
I fought, it's probably quick. But in case it's not that good, we'll buy
summon headless zombie too. It's like a regular zombie, but it's stronger
because it don't got a head. I'm starting to feel more like a necromancer
than a conjurer at this point with all the skeletons and zombies. I prefer to use non-undead, so living summons
instead. But I'm working with the games giving me. We will buy the Daedroth soon enough though,
onto Azura's quest. Some of her followers got mixed up with the
vampire becoming vampires themselves. She wants us to go to the gut of mine and
put them down, freeing them from their affliction. Pretty sure there is a way to cure vampirism? Well, I guess killing them is a cure. But I think there's a non-lethal cure as well. This is easier. Okay, maybe it's not that easy. This is why I put points into speed, by the
way. A mage without Magicka can't do more than flee while they wait for
that Magicka to replenish. If you can't out-damage your opponent, and
you can't out-run your opponent, you're screwed. So what's the ruling on using staves? I got this one from the cultists when I stormed
their little hideout. Using a staff doesn't level up any of my skills
because there's no staff skill, and as far as I'm aware, skills don't actually affect
the staff's damage. A staff's power is what it is, and there's
no changing it. They're basically Magicka batteries when you
think about it. Am I no longer a conjurer because I use this
staff in desperation against the vampire? If so, oh well. Good job, Tony Shoulders. That's the zombies name. The headless zombie. Tony Shoulders. Ooh, short sort of sparks. I could use that, or I could just sell it. Getting into melee distance is kinda dangerous. First service to Azura, she rewards us with
Azura's Star, a powerful artifact that should be one of the last on your list to give to
Martin, but this is a one and done playthrough, so I don't care. The star is the same as its incarnation in
both Morrowind and Skyrim. It not only acts as a soul gem capable of
holding a soul of any size, but it doesn't break after use. It's great for playthroughs
that rely on recharging enchanted weapons. This isn't one of those playthroughs though. Here you go, Martin. Azura's Star, just for you. Ah, Azura's Star. While Martin starts that out, Jauffre asks
us to deal with some trouble brewing in Bruma. While we're there, let's stop in with Augnar
and sell some stuff. Some merchants don't buy certain goods, but
guild defenses aren't particularly picky about what you're trying to move, stolen or otherwise. Not only will he buy the Ring of Shadows I
picked up earlier for 500 Septims, but he'll also buy all those soul gems I swiped from
the Chorrol Mages Guild. This affords me enough gold to buy the Summoned
Daedroth spell, but I don't have enough magic to cast it yet. Instead I'll buy the Summoned Skeleton Guardian
spell. Again, I've never played a Conjurer before,
so I have no idea if this familiar is any good. We'll find out. Is it a different skeleton each time, or... So, Oblivion Gate opened up outside of Bruma. Captain Burd gives a nice speech and all,
but like, guys, you're not essentially My favorite feature in Oblivion is how broken
jumping can be, with even middling acrobatics. I think you're supposed to traverse the pathway
to get to the tower, but if I can make this jump, I can skip a ton of fights. The trouble is getting out of the lava once
I land. It might be a shock to learn, but lava does
a lot of damage when you swim in it, and when you try to reload, your game crashes. Oblivion doesn't play nice with newer operating
systems. Let's load back in. Alright. We haven't used our Brent and Racial ability
yet. I don't know if the 50%
shield works for environmental damage, but it's worth a shot. Ehh nope. Just need some footing so I can jump. Ah, there we go. Hero of Kvatch. Believe it or not, the Oblivion protagonist
is actually the ancestor of all of Skyrim's horses. Slopes are subjective. A Dremora! Get him, Boney! I guess that was more of a Pokemon battle,
if you assaulted the other trainer at the start of the fight. Boney, I'll shock him. You grab aggro. Boney? I- What? Why are we not fighting? What's going on? Yeah, alright, into the tower. Oh, yikes. Gotta watch out for those spikes on the walls. Oh, loot! Ah, I'm gonna die once I grab these coins,
won't I? Hero of Kvatch. It's a good thing Mehrunes Dagon uses the
exact walking key mechanism as they do in Cyrodiil. Are you kidding me? I have to make sure Burd is with me, but I
just aggroed the whole room. Okay, Burd. Walk carefully. See that Sigil Stone? To close the gate, just take it. This one came with a 10% shield and chant,
so I'm gonna put it on my gilded shoes. With Bruma sorted, we return to Martin to
see if he's made any progress. He tells us we need the Blood of the Divine. Where do we get that? From Tiber Septim, of course. There's some armor of his in the Old Ruins
of Sancre Tor, a secret known only to the Blades, and we gotta go get it. But the place was sealed by the Blades after
the Underking cursed it. This is the very same
Underking from the Daggerfall games, and the Warp in the West. We were you when the dragon broke. Before I did that, though, I was under the
impression that I had to go to each hold and close each of their personal blugging gates. Honestly, I've only ever done the main story
a few times, so I didn't remember. From this gate, I got a Sigil Stone with fortified
20 points to Magicka, and then I realized this was a waste of time. I did get a level from the gate, though. Oh, damn it, I'm a vampire now. Must've caught it during Azura's quest. Well, I guess we're beating the game as a
vampire because carrying this would take way too long. Vampirism isn't so bad in Oblivion, though. If we don't feed on anyone, we go full vampire. Plus 20 points. To Acrobatics, Athletics, Destruction, Hand
to Hand, Illusion, Mysticism, and Sneak, and another plus 20 to Strength, Willpower, and
Speed. It comes with a 50% weakness to fire and 8
damage per second while in sunlight, but we'll just avoid sunlight. I've done it my whole life. It's easy. The damage isn't the problem. What's annoying is you can't fast travel while
taking damage, so a lot of times you'll walk out into the open, try to go somewhere, and
then get the message saying you can't fast travel while taking damage. So then you have to go back inside and wait
for sundown. Since we're in the Mage's Guild, we can just
take random clothes out of this wardrobe, so let's grab a shirt and enchant it with
the Magicka Enchant. I don't mind losing the Frost Shield and enchant
my robes, I think the Magicka is more useful. Whoops, and no pants. Let me grab a pair of pants. Merry Christmas. While I'm here at the Mage's Guild, I'm going
to buy a better Shock spell. It has a greater Magicka cost, but it does
more damage. The weaker spell is technically
more Magicka-efficient, but bigger numbers give brain the good feels. Sanctaura is a nightmare. First of all, I couldn't wait anywhere in
the dungeon. It kept saying I was in combat, and since
waiting has been my primary means of healing, I was running around like a wounded deer. If deer could shoot lightning, just use potions
you say. I could, but I'd rather use those potions
during combat when I normally can't wait to heal. I can't even use healing spells since conjurers
don't believe restoration is a perfectly valid school of magic. I'll make do. There are four skeletons in this dungeon we
need to kill in order to free the spirits of the four blades trapped within. Once we do that, the ghosts open the path
forward to the armor of Tybur Septim. We grab it and get the hell out of here. Mountain, I got you dumb, Mama. Now you need a welkynd Stone. A greater welkynd Stone. Alright, where to? Micarcand. Alright, we'll go there after buying the Summon
Daedroth spell. Notice the magic of cost is much lower. The higher your level in a school of magic,
the cheaper the spell costs. A spell costs 1.4 times the base cost with
0 in a skill, down to 0.2 times the base cost at 100 scaling linearly. So basically a spell can cost 40% more, or
it can cost 20% of the base cost. It's still an expensive spell, but I'm hopeful
that the Daedroth will make up for it in strength. How could a giant crocodile not be strong? Get him, Vex. Um, okay. Get him, Vex. Can you stop running past? If you just get someone, Vex. Alright, now there's a skeleton here. I'm so confused. Know what? The enemies in this place are so tanky it's
probably easier just to book it while sending out summons here and there to draw attention
away from the faster enemies. Pardon me, Mr. Bones? Oh, that goblin's got summer in a bee. Ah, the welkynd stone. How easy was that? Combat? Who needs combat? There's an army of monsters chasing me, but
that's fine. I'm fine. Let's just freeze time while we pick this
lock. Watch out, zombie. The door's opening. Can you imagine how vile this place must smell? And we're out. Oh, right. Vampire. Martin, we're back. Got the rock you wanted. Oh, look at you and your new duds. He tells us we also need the opposing counterpart
to a greater welcome stone, a great sigil stone. This means we need to let Mehrunes Dagon open
not any old oblivion gate, but a great oblivion gate. Fortunately, we know from the Mythic Dawn
spies that the Mythic Dawn is planning on opening a great gate outside Bruma, much like
they did at Kavach. The plan is that we let them, so I can run in and grab the stone before
the city is overwhelmed. It's at this point you can go to each of the
cities, solve their respective oblivion gate problems, and get the counts to send troops
to help defend Bruma. I think we'll be fine with what we got, though. Look at this crew, an entire family of identical
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 decouplets. This event is pretty simple. Dejah will swarm out of the gates and you
gotta fight them off until the big gate opens up in the center. It's mostly just scamps and flame atronax
with the occasional Dremoraa hair in there. The gate is open. Quickly, through the low reds firewall. What we gotta do here, same thing as we always
do, get to the top of the tallest tower and take the rock. But this time, we're timed, because there's
a giant cartoon drill being wheeled toward the gate. I'd be lying if I said I never got lost in
these places. Alright, main tower, and I'm very low on health. You can't wait in here because of the time
limit, so we gotta proceed very carefully. Quick vex, help me. Oh. Holy shit, vex, good job. Grab the stone. We did it. Let's go open that paradise portal. Whoa, Marty. Are you the bad guy? Alright, let's go kill an elf. You'd think a place with a singular path would
be easy to navigate, but I did get lost a couple times, mostly because I was trying
to avoid enemies rather than fighting them. Eventually, we run into a daedra named Kathutet,
who has the goofyest looking face I've ever seen. And he's a pair of really cute bracelets,
bands of the chosen, that we need to proceed further into Camoran's paradise. We can either do a task for him in exchange
for the bands, or we could just kill him. I killed him, took a sword too. The bands give a 50% weakness to fire, and
once we put them on, we're unable to take them off. Fire weakness, whatever will we do. If we didn't put them on, we won't be able
to go through this door, so we don't really have a choice. As Camoran taunts us, his voice seemingly
omnipresent in this realm, we meet Eldemill, which I'm pretty sure is a brand of laxative. He regrets being in the cult having helped
at the siege of Kvatch, and wants to aid us in defeating Camoran. I'm not one to turn away a perfectly good
meat shield, and even promise to remove the bands for us if we just play prisoner for
a little bit. It's not the heat that gets you, it's the
humidity. Jeez, Tony's shoulder to knock that guy's
head into his chest. At the end of our journey, we come to what
looks like an Ayleid ruins, and two members of the mythic dawn approach us. Oh, he's your dad! That explains your last name being the same. On the way here, I picked
up a dagger of pacification from one of the cultists. Calm up to level 10 for 15 seconds. I wonder if that'll work on Camoran's kids. Keep them from interfering in the fight, you
know. So, Mankar's got a monologue. Let's use this time to summon Vex and pacify
one of his kids. Hmm, seems to work. We can zap Mankar a few times, but we have
to be careful, since he can cast a spell reflect buff on himself, and his gear has innate damage
reflection. While Vex gets in his face, I'll try to draw
one of his kids away up the stairs and take them out well. Oh, did Vex just clobber Camoran on his own? Oh, Elgamel died. Eh, screw him. Now that Mankar Camoran is dead and we got
the amulet of Kings back, I didn't loot it, but magic. It's time to relight the dragonfires and restore the protections Tamriel has
against the encroachment of the Daedric Lords. Unfortunately, as we meet Chancellor Arcado
in the Imperial Palace, Mehrunes Dagon sends his forces to attack the Imperial City itself. Our job now is to protect Martin as we escort
him to the Temple of the One, killing any Daedra that try to stop us. Except Vex. He's a Daedra, but he's cool. Man, look at all these scamps. Such a nuisance. It's a good thing all these
enemies are human-sized, otherwise we'd have a pro-uh, I think we could scoop by him. Yeah, Martin, I-we could-I could see we're
standing right under him, you jackass. I know, Temple of the One. We're literally 10 feet from the door. Come on. Now that we're in the Temple, I sure hope
Dagon doesn't smash the roof in and Martin doesn't transform into an iridescent dragon
aspect of Akatosh. What did I just say? Well, that's oblivion as a conjurer. I thought the Mankar fight was going to be
tough, but it was literally the easiest part of the whole run. I was always hesitant to use summons in oblivion
because of how brain-dead the NPCs can be in this game, but watching enemies ragdoll
from being smacked by a headless corpse or slapped by a Man-croc is pretty satisfying. If I do another oblivion run, I might do a
different storyline, mages guild or something. The side stories are where oblivion really
shines. Maybe I'll try fisting Mannimarco. What?
