Let's be honest, most of us play Oblivion by instantly zipping between map markers, treating Cyrodiil like a checklist instead of an actual province.

But what if you had to call just one place your home for a while? When you're locked into a single starting region and forced to really stew in a town, the game completely transforms. You start noticing all the little details, hidden dungeons, environments, emergent storytelling that even 20 year veterans normally run right past.

The Oblivilocke Challenge traps you in your starting sector, and the only way to expand your borders is to literally buy your way into neighboring regions. It completely fixes the broken late-game economy by giving your gold a massive, tangible purpose, making every single septim you scavenge feel incredibly earned while naturally culling the usual wealth exploits.

On top of that, we all know vanilla Oblivion eventually gets too easy, but just cranking the slider to the right is a miserable experience that only creates ANNOYING, SPONGY enemies. Oblivilocke makes the game difficult in much more meaningful ways. By enforcing strict hotkey-only combat... meaning no freezing time in your inventory to chug forty potions while a Minotaur swings at your head... every single encounter turns into a tense, heart-racing brawl for survival. Combined with caps on Chameleon, save-restrictions, and hard skill-gates for overpowered artifacts, it forces you to actually think tactically, turning a standard playthrough into a genuinely high-stakes survival RPG. I really hope you give it a try and enjoy.

Hey, even if you don't have the time to try it out, tell me which starting town you think would be optimal. I am considering organizing them into a difficulty tier list.

Oblivilocke Challenge

I. BASIC PRINCIPLES

• Difficulty must be set to about 60-70%. Unfortunately, there is no way to view the exact number. It should just be about two-thirds of the way to the right.

• Hotkey-only combat. You cannot open your inventory menu while in combat. You may only use weapons, spells, and potions bound to your 1-8 Hotkeys. You are legally "in combat" if the battle music is playing. You can alternatively tell whether you're in combat by trying to Wait. You cannot Wait when enemies are nearby.

• Fast travel may not be used under any circumstances.

• Quest markers may not be used for navigation. Navigate using your map, journal entries, or physical road signs.

• The "Wait" function may only be used when standing inside a Chapel, Tavern, Inn, or Player-Owned Home. Under Options --> Settings, disable "Save on Wait".

• You may only save your game when you sleep in a bed. After sleeping, use the manual "Save" function while the bed is in view. You may not utilize Autosaves or Quicksaves under normal circumstances (see "Angel Saves" below). There are no restrictions on loading; you can feel free to load a legal save at any time.

• You may only sleep in "safe beds". These will usually be: inn beds that you paid for, earned guild beds, and beds in your own home.

• "Angel Saves": You may use autosaves and quicksaves purely for crash protection. You may ONLY uses these saves if the game crashes or you have another out-of-game emergency.

II. BALANCE & EXPLOITS

• Your total Chameleon effect from all spells, gear, and potions may never exceed 90%.

• You may not use Sigil Stones to enchant gear. You must rely on standard enchanting or looting equipment.

• You may not own both the Skeleton Key and Azura's Star. You must choose one at most to keep. To actually use the artifact you keep, you must level its corresponding skill before using it: Level 50 Security for the Skeleton Key, or Level 50 Mysticism for Azura's Star. If you accidentally acquire both, simply choose one not to use. The unused artifact may be given to Martin for the Blood of the Daedra main quest.

• This challenge assumes you have all DLC. You are encouraged to use them. They are not required to complete the challenge, but it will be more difficult without them.

III. REGION LOCKING

• Refer to Cyrodiil_Regions.png for this section.

• When you start this challenge, you are effectively under quarantine. The province of Cyrodiil has been fractured into distinct sectors separated by the thick cyan borders drawn on your challenge map. You are trapped entirely within the borders of your starting sector. You cannot take a single step into an adjacent region until you officially purchase a "Visa" for it.

• How to Purchase a Visa:

  • Because there is no in-game merchant who sells territorial rights, you must act as the tax collector. Once you have scavenged enough physical gold coins in your inventory to afford the region you want, you will permanently delete that gold using the developer console. To pay your toll, press the tilde key (~), type player.removeitem f [amount], and press Enter. The gold will vanish from your pockets, and you are now legally allowed to cross the cyan border into that new sector.

• The Visa Pricing Chart

  • Use this table to determine exactly how much gold you need to dump into the console to unlock your next piece of the map.
  • Starting sector: FREE
  • 1st expansion: 10,000 gold (20,000 if Imperial City; 5,000 if Kvatch or Nibenay)
  • 2nd expansion: 25,000 gold (50,000 if Imperial City; 12,500 if Kvatch or Nibenay)
  • 3rd expansion: 50,000 gold (100,000 if Imperial City; 25,000 if Kvatch or Nibenay)
  • 4th expansion and beyond: 100,000 gold (200,000 if Imperial City; 50,000 if Kvatch or Nibenay)

• The Rules of Expansion:

  • Strict Adjacency: You cannot leapfrog across the map. You are only allowed to purchase a Visa for a sector that physically shares a cyan border with a sector you already own.
  • The Scaling Economy: As your freedom expands, the empire takes notice, and the cost of Visas skyrockets. The price is determined by how many regions you have previously unlocked.
  • Destination Modifiers: The price you pay is based purely on the specific sector you are trying to enter, not the sector you are currently standing in.
  • The Imperial City: As the wealthy heart of the empire, unlocking this sector costs double the standard fee, regardless of when you buy it.
  • Kvatch & Nibenay: Because Kvatch is a burning ruin and Nibenay is a harsh wilderness devoid of major economic hubs, these sectors are heavily discounted. They cost half the standard fee, regardless of when you buy them.

IV. STARTUP GUIDE

• Treat the opening tutorial as a consequence-free prologue. You may save, sleep, use the inventory in combat, and do whatever else you want to do. Once you see the sun, the real game begins.

• Play through the Imperial Sewers. Just before exiting the final grate, finalize your Class and Birthsign. Then, DROP EVERYTHING in your inventory except:

  • Any gold you found.
  • One Primary Hand Item (a 1-handed or 2-handed weapon).
  • One Secondary Hand Item (a shield or a torch).
  • One Extra Item (a single potion, a single piece of armor, a single lockpick, etc.).
  • Undroppable quest items (e.g., the Amulet of Kings).

• The Imperial City Sector is BANNED as a starting region. Therefore, you are currently trespassing at Vilverin. Open the console (~) and type the teleport code for your chosen starting sector:

  • Anvil: coc AnvilChapelofDibella
  • Bravil: coc BravilChapelofMara
  • Bruma: coc BrumaChapel
  • Cheydinhal: coc CheydinhalChapelofArkay
  • Chorrol: coc ChorrolChapelOfStendarr
  • Leyawiin: coc LeyawiinChapelOfZenithar
  • Kvatch: coc KvatchChapel
  • Skingrad: coc SkingradChapelofJulianos

• You may not start in Nibenay.

• It is advised to immediately enter the city and sleep in an inn to create a save.

• The Kvatch Exception: If and only if you started in Kvatch, you may use the refugee camp beds as safe beds.

• Your challenge has begun. Good luck.

TL;DR

• Region Locked: Pay gold to unlock adjacent map sectors.

• Live Combat: Hotkeys only; no inventory pausing.

• Real Navigation: No fast travel or quest markers.

• Hard Saves: Save only by sleeping in safe beds.

• Safe Waiting: Wait only in inns, homes, or chapels.

• Exploits Banned: 90% Chameleon cap; no Sigil Stones.

• Scrap Start: Drop tutorial gear; keep only three items.

Someone in Elsweyr probably blinked and missed me

I'll always defend the Fighter's Guild as one of the best factions in not just Oblivion, but all of the Elder Scrolls games. I think that people don't give it a fair chance because it takes a while to really get going. But it's a great way to money because of the number of humanoid enemies, the missions are fun with lots of combat and unique characters, and there's some wild things that happen near the end of the questline.

I also think the Dark Brotherhood is overrated. It's probably my least favorite questline.

Only played Skyrim and need something new.

I like ESO but doesn't scratch the itch plus monthly fucking gamepass needed

Do I just wait till witcher 3 release their new expansion.

The first TES I played was Skyrim in 2011. I fell in love with the mechanics, quests, and story. I've never played any other TES game because with Skyrim SE, mods started to overflow the Nexus and the internet. Now that Oblivion Remastered exists, I wanted to try it out, but the remaster is very heavy for my PC (I'm running a GTX 1050 Ti). I decided to give Oblivion a chance and installed Northern UI to get controller support.

My initial experience and impression with the game wasn't good because I was "Skyrimized". Also, the graphics didn't help. I know that Oblivion was released in 2006 and I had to ignore the poor graphics. I was lost because I didn't understand how spells actually work and how you get more spells instantly without books, and so on. But I loved the idea that you can equip and cast spells without having to unequip your weapon. You can have your Claymore and cast Flare without problems. It just makes sense. I don't know why they changed this in Skyrim.

The lockpicking mechanic is amazing! It took me some hours to figure it out and, for me, it's better than Skyrim's lockpicking mechanic. The only mechanic that I dislike is the persuasion mechanic. It's weird!

Regarding the story, I was surprised when I wanted to play more to see what would happen next. I ended up closing the first Oblivion gate, saving the city and clearing dungeons. It felt pretty good! I now understand why the community is working hard on Skyblivion. I hope we can play Skyblivion this year!

You do not talk about fight club.

Hail citizens. Well since I can’t talk about it I should point out they still broke the rules it’s only two to a fight fellas! I wanted to get the mages guild recommendation while here but little did I know what that would start. Now about that recommendation!

In a recent video, Mrmattyplays confirmed he reached out to Bethesda with some questions, one was regarding Oblivion Remastered. They confirmed that they were working on optimizations for the Switch 2 version, and hoping to bring this performance patch to PC and Console.

Finally. This is exciting news!

Long time Skyrim player, first time playing through Oblivion. I'm 20 hours in, and have completed the Arcane University. I am not using any exploits or glitches, but I was not aware that the necromancers amulet reward was bugged. I don't want to load back to before I did the amulet quest, I'm just wondering if there's any way to retrieve this item, without losing the last 10 hours of progress?

I’m loving the thieves guild so far just became a shadow foot,

but hands down my favorite mission so far is the one where you have to jump into the painting and kill all the painted trolls with turpentine I don’t it gets and more peak than that for me lol

Hey r/oblivion - Msk from the OblivionMP (OB:MP) team here! We went a bit quiet after trailer #4 because the work since then has been the unglamorous yet important kind: compat/smoke testing the client mod - now we know that it paid off. The launch process is smoother, crashes dropped, sync latency is at levels good enough for actual play, and along the way we shipped a batch of fixes or features testers asked for. The clips in this post come straight from our community testers over the past two weeks.

https://reddit.com/link/1v3yw2n/video/alq8hr4ynveh1/player

Later this week the first server owners from the Early Access group receive the SDK together with the server binary. That means the first community-hosted servers running outside our own machines (private or internet-facing) running their own resources and scripts. Roleplaying commands, custom mechanics and systems, game modes like prop hunt or arena, all of that becomes buildable soon.

https://reddit.com/link/1v3yw2n/video/ujrlgubznveh1/player

On our end, focus shifted to NPC sync and quest sync. Most of Oblivion's Remastered world hangs off those two systems, a legacy going back to the original Gamebryo engine before the Remaster devs ported it into UE5, so getting them right matters most.

If you were running your own OB:MP server, what would you script there first? Heavy RP with factions? Prop hunt in the Imperial City? Happy to answer questions in the thread.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/obmp
• EA signup: https://oblivionmp.firstlook.gg

I was about to complete the Corruption and Conscience quest, and saw an option to make Ulrich, the corrupt guard captain, follow me.

Now, normally you have two options: You get him to follow you and feed him to Llevana Nedaren's rats, or you throw him in jail by securing evidence of corruption from his private quarters.

I chose my own way: I offered him to follow me through Kvatch, to Oblivion and back, and to finish the main quest with him, redeeming him and either letting him honorably retire or die a hero.

Through it all, the only thing he ever said was "Keep leading!", which really encouraged me to pursue my destiny as the Hero of Kvatch.

But when Baurus and I were to stage a meeting with the Mythic Dawn cultists, he turned on us! No matter what I tried, he attacked Baurus every time. Went straight for him and killed him easily, as he's 17 levels higher than I am. He was also sporting a full set of bugged conjured armor that I gave him via reverse-pickpocketing. I tried using paralysis on him and calming them both, but my illusion was too low, and my calming spell only worked on Baurus.

But anyway, during one of the attempts to reconcile them, his paralyzed daedric-clad form collapsed in a way that I could only describe as a Lego-Star-wars-esque death animation. His head, arms and legs fell in a heap like disassembled parts, only to then reform 2 seconds after.

Anyway I laughed my ass off and loaded a save. I ended up pickpocketing the cultists for their book. They scoffed and said it's worthless to them anyway. Which makes them really stupid for wanting to die for it.

Anyone ever encountered this?

Over halfway done with the list!

source UESP page

To preface, all damage calculations are going to be based off of a weapon with a base damage of 29 (level 30 nevershatter, bound blade, perfect Amber hammer) meaning the actual effectiveness for any other weapon will be less than described here. This should emphasize just how pitiful efficient levelling actually is for increasing combat effectiveness.

So to start with a damage baseline and premise. Increasing your main combat attribute from 50 to 100 will add 8 points of weapon damage at most. So level 30 nevershatter at 50 strength will deal 8 points of damage less than level 30 nevershatter at 100 strength. For reference, a level 5 sigil stone can add 10 points of damage to a weapon. However, even without efficient levelling your main combat attribute is unlikely to be 50 by the time you are level 30.

If I make an orc with the following custom class: combat, sign of the warrior, strength and endurance, block, ha, blunt, armorer, restoration, alteration, athletics that character will start with 60 strength and a blunt skill of 40 meaning I can level up 6 times from blunt alone increasing my strength to 90. From 90 to 100 strength I would increase my base damage output by 1. So is it worth getting 20 levels in blade (which will be vastly inferior damage) to get 1 additional point of damage? Consider that at 90 strength 50 luck 100 blunt 10 blade that a sword will deal 6 damage at max fatigue. The blunt weapon will deal 29 damage at max fatigue. So levelling blade 20 levels will be able to increase your blunt damage by 1 point of damage.

This should also work to emphasize that levelling your skill has a much greater impact on damage output than levelling the attribute (hence efficient skilling is recommended, aka prioritize your main combat skill to improve combat effectiveness)

This is where the discussion of efficient levelling should end but people will still defend it for some unknown reason so here you go.

Typically the recommendation of efficient levelling isn't even to just increase your combat attribute either but to max all attributes. However, this makes no sense. Let's take my orc, what benefit does my orc get from increasing personality? Outside of roleplaying, none (and arguably as an orc there is more roleplaying potential with low personality). So why would I go out of my way to level illusion for the above build just to increase personality? It has no impact on combat at all for this build yet efficient levelers will argue that it is necessary because otherwise combat becomes a drag... But how does not levelling personality reduce combat effectiveness for someone that doesn't use illusion? I've never had any efficient leveler be able to answer this question they instead deflect as if it's a matter of opinion and not a matter of ignorance.

Final nail in the coffin is it simply isn't fun. This is made worse by the fact that it gets recommended to newer players trying the original every time a thread pops up of someone asking for advice when trying the original, and then they try efficient levelling and don't have fun and stop playing.

**Call to action** everytime you see someone recommend efficient levelling, call them out on it. It isn't beneficial, it is sometimes detrimental (like dealing 6-8 damage for 2 levels as you try to increase your damage of your desired playstyle by 1), it isn't fun.... And quite frankly it isn't needed.

My most recent playthrough I started and turned the difficulty up to max and even at level 44 I am 1 hit killing most enemies. Efficient levelling isn't the advice that newer players need to make combat go faster. There is weakness stacking, poisons, teaching them how sneak and power attacks actually work, fatigue exploitations (reduce max fatigue below current fatigue to deal massively increased damage) and most importantly from level 1 to 20 your greatest increase in damage comes from replacing your gear with better gear... Not increasing your attributes which only gives you about 1 damage every 2 levels and only if it's your combat attribute.

On the remaster: it didn't actually solve the issue the efficient levelers actually have with levelling up (being the rate at which enemies scale as you go up the levelled list... Remember only a handful of enemies actually scale infinitely, most just stop spawning and get replaced with a variant with different stats). Arguably this is actually detrimental because now you can accidentally level up when using minor skills resulting in enemies out levelling your skill level. Remember the blunt being 29 damage versus the blade being 6 at the same attributes... While the issue is relatively minor it results in the efficient levelers suggesting the remaster fixed a problem it actually made worse.

Anytime you see someone say efficient levelling is required, immedietly disregard everything they say. They have no idea what they are talking about.

TL;DR mathematically efficient levelling makes no sense, is not fun, and yet it is still recommended to new people which ruins their experience. Stop recommending it.

I swear I’ve seen this man in Cheydinhal before, havent I? I suppose I can ask around there. We still have to check on Cheydinhal’s oblivion gate, but 50 gold should cover a drink or two while I’m here. Guys what are you doing? You’re supposed to stop bar fights not start them! I thought the chairs were supposed to do the flying?

Hail citizens. It seems Pally was the only one who phased through the walls again. It is quite entertaining to try and get multiple guards to glitch with the whole spinning trick. Unfortunately in enclosed spaces it can cause people to “pop” outside of the walls. In this case Pally. Which I’m sure is one of the red dots that might be slightly smaller. I’m gonna need a better paralyze spell that hits multiple targets.

the shivering isles is technically one of my favorite DLCs of oblivion. rising to become the ruler/sheogorath of the island at the end feels like a real satisfying closer to our MC to oblivion. However there are some things I wish there could more things to do like using Xedillian once a week or month to repopulate the settlements(especially crucible) to take in some empty houses After some NPCs die

I tried saving my progress, unfortunately, once i go to the load menu i cant see any saved game.

I have the Oblivion GOTY Edition.

I felt that, after finally completing the game, dungeons, especially the Oblivion realms, but also caves (such as the battle against the King of Worms) felt incredibly repetitive, monotonous, and cheap. I felt that explorations was rarely rewarded by lore insights, cool secrets, etc. in the dungeons themselves anyways.

Did anyone else feel the same about Oblivion's dungeons?

AU of an AU...... AUception??

You guys have seen him before in my previous posts! But this time in Sheogorath flavor! (In an outfit I designed myself 🙂‍↕️)

In Tyal's story he does not go to The Shivering Isles. After The Oblivion Crisis is over he becomes a nomad and travels all across Tamriel and Nirn. Last night I saw how dripless Skyrim Sheo is- and I was like "let me design my own Sheo fit" ..and that turned into drawing that outfit on my boy! :)

I wanted to include the red and purple from Skyrim Sheo's design since I really do like THAT aspect of it- but then I wanted to include shape language and aesthetic choices from Oblivion's design. Incorporate that with elements of The Dark Seducers and Golden Saints and BAM! That's the idea lol. Idk if it's actually good or if I'm just delirious from staying up all night- but I really like it! I guess I'll see how much I like it later after I sleep and then wake up 😅

(I'll share a secret with you... Out of the hundreds of hours I have spent playing Oblivion... I have never played through The Shivering Isles. I know, I'm a fake fan.)