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Personal infoEdit
Hello all. I'm from Finland. I've read this wiki since late June 2009 and on 22.7.2009 decided to make an account if I ever wish to contribute to this wiki (which I undoubtedly will at some point :P). Although I had played Oblivion for some 140 hours before even finding this site! Apart from browsing the Internet and playing a few games on PC, I also own a PS2 with some good games on it. Too bad that PS3 has already been around for so long that no proper new games are released for PS2, so obtaining new games is starting to be a bit tricky these days.
When I still had my older computer, I often played Oblivion in windowed mode, because I didn't have a good computer then. That forced me to keep the resolution at the lowest level (640x480). But when playing in windowed mode, I could still enjoy better graphics than in full-screen, since the game didn't have to bloat those tiny 640x480 textures into my desktop resolution which was exactly twice that size.
Since August 2010, I've had a new, much faster computer, which can run Oblivion in full detail with ease. Hell, I've even downloaded some mods to make the graphics even better because there's still so much performance to spare!
The Warrior is not my "real" birthsign (if looking at The Firmanent and transferring the Tamrielic months to real-life ones), but rather the one I've picked the most when playing: I had numerous experiments in Morrowind, including an Imperial that looked exactly like the other Imperial Guards, even his name was just "Imperial Guard", a Nord axeman (very short-lived), a Redguard (not played much), and a bad-ass Orc, all of which were born under the sign of the Warrior. And my Oblivion Nord character is also born under this sign, of course. Nord race is a play on the facts that I enjoy playing a heavy combat character (yet still with a one-handed weapon) and that I'm from a Nordic country.
Elder Scrolls historyEdit
My first experience with Elder Scrolls was playing Morrowind (with Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions, of course) at a buddy from school (in 2003-04, can't remember the exact year). I was astonished by the free world that allowed you to take whatever items you want, kill anyone you want, do a huge amount of stuff freely and such. Yet at that time I didn't buy a lot of games, resorting to the ones that my dad bought or the ones I found on the Internet instead, and I never visited my buddy's house after that (not that our relation turned sour; rather just that I got other friends and the following year we were on a different class), so for a long time I had no more Morrowind experience.
In 2006, however, a friend at my school was selling some of his old games. Amongst them was Morrowind, though with no expansion sets (he sold his copy of Morrowind because he was going to purchase Oblivion soon). Remembering what it was like to play that game, I immediately bought it from him. I played long just wandering around and doing random quests, until I settled down with the Fighters Guild and Imperial Legion (I didn't play the main quest after delivering the package to Caius Cosades). But soon the temptation to use console cheats grew too big and I ended up ruining my game experience for a while. The other reasons why I quit was the game's bugginess: random crashes occured too often for the game to be fully enjoyable (most irritating when I hadn't saved the game in a while), and I had other games to play. After a couple of months of break from the game I installed the latest patch and started a new character, this time avoiding using the console for cheating. I decided to once again make a fighter-type of a character and throw the main storyline at the nearest cliff racer :P. Once again the Fighters Guild, Imperial Legion and random quests were my priority with this axe-wielding Orc. At some point, I decided to try something different for a change and made a sneaky Wood Elf character. With this character I completed the Thieves Guild, Morag Tong and some random quests before actually advancing in the main storyline for the first time ever! I think I should play this save again some time, it was left so half-way. In mid-2008, after another long-ish break from Morrowind I finally got the expansions from another friend of mine, exploiting the "feature" that allows one to play the expansions with only the original game disc after installing them. I started the Tribunal questline with my Orc fighter, mainly just to get rid of the DB Assassins harassing me all the time.
I also had a very different TES experience in early 2008: a demo/shareware version of Arena on an old CD that had shareware and demo games besides the actual title game (can't remember the game just now, although it's most likely Duke Nukem 3D). It didn't spark my interest though, at that time the graphics were already severely outdated, even for me who usually doesn't pick his games by their looks, and I couldn't decide what type of a character I'd want to create (demo version, duh!).
The big change was to come in October 2008. Then, my friend (the same guy that borrowed me the Morrowind expansions earlier) had bought Oblivion and showcased it for me a bit. I was immediately taken away by the astonishing graphics, physics, fast travel and renewed journal and combat systems. I immediately stopped playing Morrowind and instead visited my friend's house almost daily just to play some more Oblivion! After a month, I finally bought the game for myself, although my low-end computer meant that I couldn't have that good graphics (yet of course much better than Morrowind's). I played the game for around a month and a half, continuing where I left off at my friend's house (copied the save game), doing the Arena, random quests and a bit of the Fighters Guild, but mainly I just randomly explored the world and dungeons to get my character rich and well-equipped. But then I bought The Godfather for PS2 (and played my other PS2 and PC games as well and made a couple of mods for my another favorite PC game, Grand Prix Manager 2) and got drifted away from Cyrodiil for a couple of months.
I resumed playing in March, only to stop again in late April, and only to play again in late May :P. After that, I played almost every day, until reaching the point that my Nord warrior didn't nothing to do anymore (only the DB quests were undone, but that's because I gave Lucien Lachance a "demonstration" of my murdering skills when he came to me :D). I finished the Main Quest pretty late though, when I already had around 140 hours playing time (remember, lots of dungeon diving). After that I started a new sneak character (this time an Imperial; Bosmers are too annoying!), but before his career even took off properly I got bored of Oblivion again, so he was eventually deleted.
In early 2010, I resumed playing Oblivion after almost a full year of not playing it properly, installing it to my father's computer this time (which also could run the game in full detail). I started out with a Redguard, and again played as a warrior. This time I did slightly less dungeon diving, only enough to get good equipment and a healthy sum of money. Instead I concentrated on the quests slightly more than before, although the main quest still lagged a bit behind (I only completed it at around level 30). This time I also had the official plug-ins and The Shivering Isles, so after the vanilla quests had been sorted out (including Dark Brotherhood this time, by the way), I moved on to the plug-ins, after which I entered the Realm of Madness, where I did a couple of quests for Sheogorath. Sadly, the save game didn't make it from the transition from my father's computer to my new one (it bugged weirdly by not allowing me to talk with Sheogorath), so I still hadn't been able to explore the Shivering Isles much.
In mid-November I started yet again a new character, and yet again a warrior. Only this time, it was an intimidating Orc who swung a huge warhammer. This time I concentrated a bit more on the Main Quest, and I completed it relatively early on. He eventually became my first character who completed everything the game has to offer (this time, Shivering Isles worked as well), and in the end he was a pretty unstoppable machine with full enchanted Perfect Madness armor, an enchanted Daedric Warhammer and a great Restoration skill to boot. I also topped all of his major skills (an Orc with both 100 Athletics and Speed is a pretty odd one, even further after I boosted the misc. Acrobatics skill to 100, too!). Of course, at some point I finally got bored with it, and I haven't played that save much after I completed the Mages Guild questline with him (the last one I had left uncompleted).
And in the autumn of 2011, I started a sneak character; a Bosmer, and a female one no less! I've racked about 60 hours of gameplay with it, which includes the Main Quest being completed at level 22 and almost no use of fast travel, ie. a lot of hiking!
Her endeavors were interrupted as I finally decided to push myself to one goal: finally finish Morrowind's main quest! I had played hundreds of hours of Morrowind, but never played through the Main Quest. So, an Imperial woman went on to become the Nerevarine (quite ironic, isn't it?).
The Bosmer has to wait for some time, as I purchased Skyrim a couple of weeks ago as well (I had promised myself to buy it as soon as I got MW's main quest done), and my main concentration is on that for now. The character? A Nord, of course!
What I'm going to do hereEdit
- Minor edits, such as typo fixes
- Share my own experiences on these games
- Write a couple of hints
- Do whatever appeals for me on the Task List