The Diary of A Simple Man

I've reached a score of 100 in ALL magic skills. Options have opened up as a result.

I read that a 100% Chameleon effect makes you effectively invisible even when you attack, making you virtually invulnerable.

So I tried making a 100% Chameleon effect spell. It worked, but enemies could still see and attack me - easily. I walked around translucent in a cloud of my own blood.

So just for the hell of it I made five magic items that each gave 20% chameleon effect.

The results were startling. Rather than turn translucent, I disappeared completely. It was (is) like being a disembodied viewpoint. And nobody can see me - NOBODY. Merchants can still see me if I address them directly, but otherwise I'm completely invisible. I took a stroll through Oblivion (Hell) and was amazed; I can just kill the crap out of everything and not be hit once.

This is going to be fun for a little while, but it will probably get boring eventually. The thing is, this isn't a cheat; it's a legitimate use of game powers. I'd say it's a flaw in game design more than anything else.

Oblivion has been weird.

For a long time the real restriction was money. I won't bore you with the details, but basically I was earning tons of experience points, but couldn't allow myself to level up because I needed to make money to train.

Every time I did level up, I was instantly ready to level up again. The experience meter was always maxed out, and still is.
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I also need to figure out some more effective spells to create at the spellmaking alter. My biggest problem seems to be lack of magicka; I can only cast a couple of my most powerful blasts before running out. Unfortunately there's no way to raise magicka other than levelling, and that levels the monsters, too. I've already maxed out my Willpower and Intelligence, so I'm pretty much stuck.

I'm getting a bit disappointed with Oblivion. Apart from the impressive graphics, the game itself simple isn't that interesting. You can't interact with most of the environment, and the setting is pretty much a standard fantasy-game world. Much of the game is simply a series of dungeons, ruins, and caves of very similar design, filled with monsters and bandits. Boring!

There are also some serious flaws with the design of the game. For example:

You can improve skills by using them. But some skills can be improved easily, while others can't. You can improve the Conjuration and Alteration skills by repeatedly casting spells from those schools of magic. I was literally able to boost those skills to 100% - the best possible score - by choosing the cheapest possible spell from a school, and putting a (closed) bottle of Hershey's magic shell syrup upside-down on the C key. My magicka regenerated more quickly than the spellcasting used it up, so all I had to do was walk away for twenty minutes or so, and boom! Instant Conjuring and Alteration mastery!

If I'd known this from the beginning of the game, I could have done it then. It takes less than a minute to gain a percentile point in either of those skills.

Not so for the Destruction and Restoration skills. For Destruction, you actually have to target an enemy with the spell - and since the difficulty of enemies scales up as you increase in power, that's never a safe or easy task. As for Restoration, you have to actually have some damage to heal - you can't just cast healing spells if you're not injured. You can jump off cliffs or high buildings to injure yourself, but the process is still MUCH slower than it was for Alteration and Conjuration.

That said, I'm more than halfway through the Mages Guild recommendation quests, and should soon be able to start making my magic staff. In the meantime I've bought the Apotheosis staff, which seems to work well.

I got sick of my fighter. Progress was just too slow, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd screwed up in designing him; I'd been working in a state of total ignorance, after all.

So I created a new character. My old guy looked kind of like me, except much thinner and younger. The new character looks more like my mental image of myself, which is very different. He's a high elf, very pale, slender, with a pointed chin and bright red hair. I made a custom class for him, basically a magic specialist.

What surprised the hell out of me was how much easier the game was with him. He primarily uses ranged fire attack spells and a summoned skeleton, and he's remarkably more effective than the fighter - I haven't died once.

One thing I need to do, though, is improve his magic skills. I haven't been able to train much, because I was pretty short of gold. When I finally DID pile up a good chunk of gold, I did something stupid with it: I bought a really powerful ranged fire spell. It wasn't until I tried to cast it that I realized that I needed to gain about 30 more points in the Destruction skill before I could use it! And now I don't have the money to train that skill.

But here's the thing. As far as I can tell (and have read), you can improve a skill just by using it over and over. So what's to stop me from simply casting a weak ranged fire spell five hundred times, thereby upping my Destruction skill by a lot? It sounds like a cheesy, cheap thing to do, I admit. But I could just go out to a safe outdoor area, aim my view at the sky, select my weakest ranged spell - I regenerate mana so quickly that I can cast it forever - and then put a small but heavy weight on the casting key.

And then go take a nap, and come back to find a much more effective character.

Okay, it's sleazy, lazy, etc. etc. etc. I know. But would it work? I can't see why it wouldn't!