After flexing my manhood with DS, I decided to get back to a mastodontic game I never cared to finish even after having spent more than 40 hours in my first playthrough. TES: Oblivion. I wasn't having fun with my imperial anymore so I decided to ditch that character and reroll with a breton lady. I tried to make her somewhat attractive, failing miserably. Oh well, at least I never have to look at her face again. Except for menus.
I'm 10 hours or so into the game, dabbled a bit with the main quest to get my feet wet again, freed Kvatch and took Boromir to that hideout in the asshole of the mountains. After that, I said "fuck the main quest", joined the mages guild and started working on those quests. I'm trying to keep quest burden to a minimum, to avoid excesses like it happened to me in my first playthrough. So far I've succeeded in keeping things streamlined, which means I get to savor each quest in a continuous fashion, instead of hopping here and there. My plan is to do the mages, then fighters guild, and leave thieves and dark brotherhood for last. After that I'll give the expansions a try.
I'm also having a blast making potions, something I never tried in my first run, and now I keep an eye on every single herb, fungus and flower that I stumble upon.
My playthrough keeps chugging along at a nice pace. Closing in to the 30 hour mark, I've done a good number of sidequests, onve of them involving the acquisition of a haunted house in Anvil. Now that I've lifted the curse, the manor is mine. Good thing I didn't buy that shithole in Bravil when I got it offered to me. Now I can store away anything I'm not going to use like my alchemy set, and armor/weapons that I might keep for later use.
As I'm working my way through the mages guild quests, I'm rolling with the apprentice robe, a frost staff and a dwarven axe just in case the going gets rough. Last night I earned the final recommendation and got clearance for the Arcane University at Imperial City. There is some weird shit going on with necromancers. Need to find out more.
I'm about 9 hours in. I've worked my way into the mages group that dress in red and I am at teh part where they want me to sacrifice that lizard. So I'm up there on the alter, got the knife, steal their precious book and then jump on the dude who has all my armor, kill him and now have to get out of the place.
It's hilarious, I've died probably more than 20 times so far (I don't have any potions/healing). I'm having fun with the game, but a lot is not obvious (like I've turned off the 360 twice because I could not figure out how to get out of the Persuasion minigame. Also still have not found any stores that will buy or sell anything. I want to join the Mercantile guild -- I understand that will help me trade with anyone. I don't steal anything, not worth the hassle. I don't have enough money for a horse, but since I teleport around it doesn't matter.
The fact that I've ignored almost all of the game's mechanics to this point has not appeared to have disadvantaged me toward progressing the main story. I think that if one of the makers of this game, or a devotee, saw how I am playing this they would be in shock at how I am abusing this game.
After being accepted at the arcane university, I started moving up the ranks. The necromancers plot thickens, and right now I am at one mission which involves making an offering at an altar that can only be used a specific night of the week. So to kill some time I spent a couple days at the arena, moving fast up the ranks all the way to Grand Champion. That netted me a good bit of coin. Besides, the grand champion raiment looks badass. I also looted a killer elven set of sword and shield from the former grand champion.
"The fact that I've ignored almost all of the game's mechanics to this point has not appeared to have disadvantaged me toward progressing the main story. I think that if one of the makers of this game, or a devotee, saw how I am playing this they would be in shock at how I am abusing this game."
Do go on.
My choice of going Breton has slowly started to gnaw at my ass cheeks. I can't seem to have enough magic skills for the cool spells at this point in the game (Lv 11).
This week I'm going to go on a potion mixing rampage. I'm going to raid every single alchemy joint in Cyrodiil.
Okay, wait. I've done no magic. Is it preventing you in the main story? Or just elevating through a guild, doing a guild mission?
Oh no. You can get by with or without any magic whatsoever. But my character has strong magical advantages, and I want to use them as much as possible, at least while I'm doing the mages guild quests.
But you can do the mages guild with a balls-to-the-wall warrior. It doesn't matter here.
Get the biggest axe and go to town.
With one in the brown?
In almost 40 hours of playthrough, I have had the game crash on me twice. Fortunately, I save like a madman, and the game autosaves in a pretty good number of circumstances. I would have been extremely pissed off if one of the crashes had fucked up with the Legendary Nirnroot Expedition on the Nibenay Basin.