To: dick

Re: Meeting today

Our meeting today really went well, don’t you think? At one point my blood was boiling and I was almost ready to punch you in the face. Fortunately, common sense and the lack of fighting skills prevented that. But enough kidding, I seriously do enjoy discussing technical software matters with someone who is not even able to check in the changes of his working copy. As a matter of fact, I think it’s noteworthy and actually very funny that the CEO is messing around the code base in the first place.

Frankly, I really appreciate that you deeply care how stuff is implemented and what kind of tools we are using. So far, it has been a real fun challenge to try and explain the sometimes mysterious ways of the code to you. Also, please allow me to point out that your lack of trust really is a great stimulant for me to get up early and give it my best. Additionally, it gives me a great level of comfort that each and every implementation detail will be reviewed by an expert like you.

I really appreciate the fact that we (the developers) always are put last though we were the first to get cut on our salaries (even though we were responsible for most of the profit). Likewise, it always is fun to be called into a meeting just as you are about to shut down for the day. It’s nice to feel important after everything else (including the shit on the carpet) has been dealt with. I also appreciate that you never know when those meetings will be finished as there’s no agenda. It really keeps things fresh that way.

Last but not least I want to remark that I think that purely subjective performance reviews by management are a great idea. Test results or peer-to-peer reviews are probably a myth and all those metrics take time to evaluate anyway. I welcome this simplification because I know that you in your infinite wisdom will be able to review the complete array of our abilities most perfectly.

Thank you for being a dick, I really appreciate it.

Best,

Simone

 

Rythm games rule! After playing a good deal of Guitar Hero III and Rock Band for the last two months, Guitar Hero World Tour finally arrived Wednesday last week. The included tracklist is cool and pretty extensive. Unfortunately though, within a week I encountered some game stopping problems with the included guitar and drum kit controllers.

First, the guitar. After playing maybe a total of four or five hours, the day after the game arrived, the strum button started making this horrible and annoying squeaking sound. Sometimes it seems to quiet down only to get really annoying again half a minute later. It is still usuable but I have to turn up the volume of my sound system pretty high in order to not get distracted by the squeaking. It is worst when alternate strumming which is unfortunate because I really drove myself to perfect the technique whilst playing GH3.

Next up is the drum kit. After reading about (but luckely not encountering) the problems with the RB drum kit I had pretty high expectations of the GHWT drum kit. Turns out these where misplaced. It looks and feels great (especially the sound and bounce on the pads) and works beautifully with Rock Band. However, after exactly one week, during “The Hand that Feeds” (on RB, using the GHWT kit) the green drum pad stopped working completely. At first I thought it might be just a temporary glitch so I tried with the GHWT disc but (not surprisingly) the green pad still wasn’t working. 

So now I am not happy at all (and that is putting it mildly). The guitar controller is so annyoing it is almost unplayable and the drum kit is so broken that it is unplayable. But not only that, I also loose a good deal of my spare time dealing with support and sending the stuff back. This is what annoys me the most of all because that should’ve been time playing the game.

Ah well, fortunately though the Rock Band instruments are still working perfectly (even the flimsy kick pedal is still going strong) which is admittely not something that I expected a while ago when I first started playing. Now I can only hope for the same kind of luck with the Rock Band 2 controllers – if that game ever arrives in Europe that is.

 

One game that I remember fondly from the NES era is Sunsoft’s Batman. Not because it was a great game, even though it was, but more because it had such a kick ass soundtrack. I have been searching for that soundtrack without success for quite a while now until I realized tonight that I was searching in the wrong places. You see, if you google for something like “batman nes ost” or “batman sunsoft ost” you will get a bunch of crap and exactly one result that looks promising, the torrent link on The Pirate Bay. Unfortunately, no one is seeding that torrent any more so it is slightly less useful than a banana in a bucket full of shit.

Tonight I was stupid enough to try searching again but after a few minutes and a bunch of useless clicking later I was ready to give up once more. “Fuck this shit, it is easier to find the game as a ROM than to find the stupid soundtrack”. But then it hit me: why not just get the ROM and rip the music myself? After investigating for a bit it became painfully obvious that doing this manually would take a lot of time and an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the NES. I have neither one of those so that rules out that option.

Fortunately though, there is a better way. A little bit more googling turned up this gem on YouTube which shows how to rip the music without the hassle of byte fucking. Just download a bunch of stuff, click a few buttons and you are set. Within five minutes after watching that clip I had the music in MP3, ready to be enjoyed.

Someday in the near future I am going to do a more elaborate story on this music but now it is back to Zophar’s Domain for me to get the Castlevania and Megaman soundtracks.

Now that everybody and their cat has blogged about Google’s new puppy I just cannot pretend to run a technology oriented blog and ignore it. Chrome is amazingly awesome and incredibly annoying at the same time. To be clear, there is really not much wrong with Chrome itself but being a long time and evangelic Firefox user it pains me deeply that I do not have an immediate use for it anymore.

I am completely going to rant about Chrome and some other stuff in below but I strongly suggest you check out what I like to call The Chromic to learn more about what makes this browser unique. It does not matter if you visit that link now or later but please visit it. It is a wonderful example of how to make otherwise pretty dry and technical stuff easy to digest for a wide range of users.

Why Use It?

You know what? Despite all of the good reasons I wanted to list why somebody should use Chrome over, say Firefox, I cannot. To be honest, the main reasons why I am using it right now are:

• It is new
• It looks sexy

And maybe, on a more work related level:

• It is from Google
• I want to verify all the claims

Now those last two might be reasonable but frankly I do not think all the really good stuff matters for the typical user. I hate having to use a term like typical user to describe the sort of person I imagine but it will have to do. If you get excited by the following Chrome features then you are most likely not a typical user:

• A brand spanking new JavaScript engine
• Gears is included
• Each tab runs in a separate (OS!) process

And the shiny sweet stuff. A lot of people will be excited about this:

• A nice blue minimal chrome (window)
• No ugly main menu (yeah!)
• The omnibar (intelligent address bar)
• A quick loading and useful start page
• Incognito mode

There is no real bookmark management. That is most likely a feature that a lot of users will miss but I think the whole bookmarking thing should be scrapped anyway. You really should use social bookmarking services for that. Google should either obtain an existing one or cook something up and integrate that with Chrome. Everyone hail Google Links.

Driving a V8

V8 is the brand spanking new JavaScript engine used by Chrome. It is supposed to be extremely solid and fast. As a user, I don’t find the average browsing experience is really enhanced. I even started using more exotic G applications to find out if that would make a huge difference but frankly they run just as well on Firefox. Other script-heavy sites always ran pretty well on Firefox too so there is no real reason to switch.

As a developer I think some of the techniques behind the V8 are cool. It is also nice that we can just use it, investigate the code and host it in our own applications. It is also strangely heartwarming to see that some Smalltalk influence has found its way into the most talked about application on the web. I evangelize Smalltalk at every chance: there are too many ignorant fools.

People Without Gears Are Losers

Gears is excellent stuff for developers. Using Gears, almost any web site or application can be transformed to new heights. Unfortunately, developers can not depend on Gears being available universally for a good long while. This means that we have to develop downgraded applications for the next few years anyway. All because of the ignorant horde that does not have Gears installed. Fuckers they are. May the smell of dog shit forever surround them.

Chrome comes with Gears. You don’t even have a choice. Unfortunately for us developers, the ignorant fuckers who do not yet have Gears installed are exactly the same turds who are the last ones on earth to download Chrome itself. There’s no real gain there until Google starts pushing Chrome harder down the throats of those bastards.

Separate Process For Each Tab

Now this is the killer feature of Chrome. It transforms it from a mere browser to the struts of an operating system for the web. Again, from a developer perspective this is all pretty exciting stuff but for the average user it will mean shit.

Let me ask you this: how many times does your browser crash? All the time? Frequently? Better check your computer then. Every few days? Again – this is not normal. I usually format at this point and start from scratch. Look, every program has the right to crash every once in a while when you ask it to do something strange but if something starts crashing again and again then somewhere, something is wrong.

With Chrome running each tab in a separate process this means that only one tab will fuck up and the rest of your browser and tabs will still be usable. It’s like running multiple programs in Windows: when one of them fails miserably you can just close the motherfucker and be done with it. Unfortunately, in the Windows world it just doesn’t really work that way and you eventually have to reset anyway whether you like it or not. Chrome proposes to change that perspective, for web applications at least.

Interlude: Stop Treating PDF as HTML; it is not

One of the use cases I can cock up right now is with PDF files. Browsers tend to choke on large PDF files every once in a while. First they have to load that motherfucking huge Acrobat monstrosity and then there is this 200MB PDF file which some asshole forgot to properly prepare for consumption by wire.

Then suddenly your whole browser is fucking around in limbo because it is trying to download (and open at the same time) that big ass PDF that some fish fart is hosting on his soon to be dead university server. Unfortunately, your average fuck of the milf browser will try to do this within the same process in which all of your other open tabs are running so they will be pulled into the deep too.

This is where Chrome is different because every tab will be it’s one process. Like running multiple Firefox instances in one cozy window – or chrome. Thanks to Chrome I can just give it a good curse or two and comfortably close the tab while I happily continue browsing Wikipedia, looking at some crazy ass’ YouTube upload and listening to some stream at Last.fm all at the same time without worrying about anyone of them going down and taking down the rest with them. My life is complete.

The Goods

Ironically, the chrome itself (the parts of the window) is very minimal. There is only the window with borders, control buttons, a little Google logo and scrollbars (if necessary). In contrast to most Windows applications, there is no main menu. The tabs are the main parts of the program. They contain an address bar, familiar URL control buttons and two extra buttons which give access to almost all of the program’s functionality.

Tabs can be smoothly dragged in and out of the host window to another Chrome window or an empty space on the desktop. In the latter case it will promptly create a new Chrome window to host the orphan tab. It all animates nice and smooth and even though all this is not really that useful, it is all strangely rewarding to execute just for the fucking eye-candy.

The omnibar is pretty useful. Although not explicitly stated, the name holds the premise of being able to type anything useful and get what you want (like Firefox’ Ubiquity or a more intelligent “I Feel Lucky”) but currently it is most useful as a search of your history, URL or just a Google search. It works well within these limits. The parser is good and I suspect that a lot of people will be able to get some good mileage of of it. However, I don’t really see what the big improvement is on the new and improved location bar in Firefox 3.

As for the incognito mode, I wanted to say that it is shitty useless but I guess it is useful when you are stuck to browsing porn on someone else’s computer. When you are incognito your browser history and cookies and are not persisted. So when you close the window it is as if you browsing all that filthy shit on your mom’s computer never happened. And no, in case you were wondering, I never browsed such shit on my mom’s computer. That computer was mine – it just happened to be in her house at the time.

Finally, there is the start page. This is a thing of beauty. However, even though I am a great fan of the recent file menus in most applications, I cannot really seem to get myself to use it. Usually I will just Alt-D to the address bar and type in either part of a familiar URL or a Google search. Nine out of ten times I do something similar when I start up Firefox and there is no real reason to change.

I like both my hands on the keyboard and my focus on a command line (yes, I am aware that my hands and focus on a girl will almost always be better but I am talking about keyboard v.s. mouse – computer mouse here). Grabbing the mouse to point to something on the screen is just so primitive and something I really can do without. Unfortunately the majority of the users do not share this opinion but simple reasoning will suggest that they are stupid monkey balls.

The Byes

This post originally started out as another Chrome hype but after two paragraphs of hype there was no more. After deleting those paragraphs I tried to think about Chrome in a more structured way and eventually there was enough to start ranting. I am using Chrome as we speak as my main browser and it works great.

For me, there is only one important thing that is missing and that is a clear orange feed icon that is displayed at the right edge of the address bar when the website publishes a news feed. Firefox has had this for a pretty long time and I absolutely rely on this feature to aggregate my feeds. A lot of sites publish feeds of various categories but do not make this immediately clear on their pages. Usually the information is there, invisibly, for the browser to pickup but unfortunately Chrome can not do this yet.

So there you have it. I am not even going to say that you should download it or not because I am just not sure why someone would want to use Chrome instead of Firefox. I will give it a try for a few weeks and hopefully they will have that one missing feature (feed discovery) in the next version. If not, I will be very angry.

Let’s face it – Nintendo’s Virtual Console is great. It’s like having every console that ever existed (before the PSX at least) plus a classic arcade machine and a C64 all tucked away neat and tidily in that cute white box that we all know and love as the Wii.

When I was a little turd, I was fond of being a stupid prick and sold my NES with an awesome library games so I could buy a SNES. I later pulled the same stupid stunt when I sold the SNES (which turned out to be the fucking greatest console ever) for a PSX (which luckily turned out to be OK too). I blame myself it every day but thanks to some geniuses at Nintendo I can now, at last, play a significant part of my library again on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Nintendo would not be Nintendo however without fucking up a brilliant idea. And that is exactly what the rant below is about.

The Cold War

The first ten years of my life, during the full 80′s, for me, the U.S.A. was the greatest country on earth. Yeah, reflecting upon that makes me sad too but alas, that’s how it was. As a little kid my days revolved basically around three things: Nintendo, movies and Lego. Friends had to be interested in either one of those. Life was simple.

There were a few basic rules when it came to games and movies: the US would always have the coolest movies first, the US would also have the coolest games first and finally they would also always have more of either one of them. Now that was completely understandable as the market over there was simply much bigger. Looking back now, it makes sense and as a little kid, not knowing better, I was cool with that too.

Back to the Future

Fast forward twenty years and here we are, well under way in the glorious year of 2008. I would like to say that things are better but they are not. Things are different though but the fuck ups are the same. The amount of games that differs between the two VC libraries of the pond is down to five games but now the difference is in the actual games that are in each library.

You see, instead of just creating a global Virtual Console channel for the Wii, Nintendo, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to divide the world into regions. Yeah, that’s right: regions. How the fuck you can divide the world into regions is beyond me but God damn, unbelievable as it is, Nintendo did it. Now, in the words of the AVGN: “that’s bullshit!”

Each region has games that the other region would like to see. All of those games are perfectly releasable in every region but instead Nintendo is handing out the cool games to individual regions. Its like you and your little brother or sister both want that awesome toy but only one of you gets it. I know, it’s shit.

Fuck Me, Regions?

Unfortunately, I am so completely fucking mystified by the fact that some dick flippers at Nintendo were able to divide the fucking world up into regions that I just have to get this little side rant of my chest.

Fuck monkey shit, it’s stupid as hell but below are the “official” regions, the numbers represent the size of the VC library as of August 25, 2008:

• Japan (357)
• North America (248)
• Europe (243)
• Australia & New Zealand (230)

Now, how the fucking hell are you able to divide the world into that pile of shit? What happened to, you know, those things we call “continents”? Are those not just fucking right when you want to divide the world up into pieces? Noooo, instead we have these arbitrary regions that make no sense whatsoever.

What the fuck happened to countries like, just to name something, Russia? Is that not a real country? Does that not almost span Europe and Asia? OK, maybe some people think that Russia is in Europe but not part of Europe. It does not really make sense, cool.

But what the fuck about China? I guess nobody is playing VC over there. All those countries in South America? Maybe we can extend our logic and make that part of North America. They are connected after all. Yeah right, while we are at it we can fit Africa in just about anywhere. But I guess nobody is playing VC there either. Only some tribes that can’t stop killing each other there so why bother, right?

I though that was it but wait… Fuck holy manure! After looking this shit up in Wikipedia I found out there’s a fucking fifth region:

• South Korea

You might be thinking: “Damn shit those Koreans, a whole region of their own?” But actually, it seems that Nintendo is taking a little piss on those poor South Koreans because only 22 titles have been released so far. Also, the store “updates irregularly on Tuesdays”. I feel almost sorry for ranting now. Almost.

Back to the Story

With that whole region shit comes this crazy release policy that should only make sense to the turds who cooked up this pile of shit in the first place. Now the fact that Japan is the dog’s bullocks in library size makes completely sense. Most of the games that they have over us (EU, NA, A&NZ) are just too plain weird, stupid or hard for most of us. Let’s face it: those guys are hardcore and just way more insane when it comes to gaming than us. That’s cool.

They deserve that huge ass library. More power to them and that kind of shit. Not to mention the fact that it is the easiest market for Nintendo: huge name, huge market, no localization, no limits – no question about it. That does not mean they should treat the rest of the world like shit, which frankly, sometimes it feels like they do.

Love Not War

It seems like the Japanese through Nintendo are conspiring to drive “The West” apart while at the same time keeping the South Koreans on a nice and tight leash so they can throw them a few bones once in a while. Of course this idea is totally absurd but it is a good example what kind of crazy shit can happen when you leave a reasonably sane person wondering about what the fuck is happing for too long.

A large part of the VC games that we are given so far is superb and hopefully a lot more good stuff will follow. It is just the little things like what happened today that really tick me off: USA VC Releases: Ys Book I & II and Samurai Shodown II.

Samurai Shodown II is cool but what I’m really very pissed about is that Ys Book I & II are available in the US as we speak while in Europe we are wondering what the fuck we did to deserve this. Did we not pray enough? Did we not drew blood of those damsels and did we not offer it on the blood stone below the full moon on those sacred nights in February and September? Damn you Nintendo and all your offspring! May the joy of children bring you blood and evil until the world is no more!

The Other Side

To be fair, those guys at the other side of the pond (or those down under for that matter) are just as fucked by Nintendo as we are over here in the region they call Europe. While they are treated to the fabulous Ys Books we got Super Mario RPG last week. We also have Mega Man 2 since the 14th of December last year. We also have a bunch of old school C64 gems that are not available over there yet. I think it is a master stroke to provide C64 games on the Virtual Console but am absolutely stupefied why they are only available here.

And on a personal note: who is the fuck hole’s banana bearing pickle licking pile of dick weaving professional hamster shit diving ass wrinkle that is responsible for me now almost craving a year for Axelay? It hurts man!

Why the Fuck Is It So Hard?

Come on now people, we are living in 2008. Birds are singing, the sun is shining and a large part of the world is connected, at least, the part of the world that matters is. Now, fuck those tribes in Africa for a minute and never mind that there are actually some reasonably civilized people living in other parts of the world besides those living in the sacred parts of Nintendo’s official region system. Now ask yourself this question:

“Why oh why, in the name of our beloved Lord and saviour, would we differentiate between the east and west side of the pond and those unfortunate to live down in the underbelly of our beautiful earth?”

I asked myself this question a thousand times. A few times I thought I had an answer but unfortunately, after giving it a little more thought, it never made complete sense.

“It has to be localized for Non-English speaking European monkey”

While this is often the case for current games this cannot be true for VC releases because those games where localized once already (if any localization) and you would be hard pressed to find a publisher who will go through all the trouble of localizing a twenty-year old game just to release it in Europe for the VC. As far as I can see it, there are three scenarios:

• If the game has already undergone localization to English it will most likely just appear in that form
• If it has not been localized to English then it would be completely reasonable to only release it to the Japanese market and be done with it
• If it has been localized to English but not to, for example, French or Italian or some other stupid Nationalistic language there should be no reason to withhold it from the European market

By the way, if you are offended by that last sentence you may also want to see the closing note.

“European monkey won’t like it”

That may very well be the case. But you know, the beauty of our world wide web is that it is – like – world wide. While I can understand the motivations for releasing some games in Japan only there is nothing in my mind that can find any reasonable understanding for the policy of releasing some games only in one or more of the other regions while depriving the other regions of said games.

“European monkeys rate slow”

I can understand that some regions use a different kind of rating system than other regions. And some institutes work faster than others. Agreed. But that still does not explain while some games take over more than a year to appear on either side of the pond.

A good few of them even never appear for the folks down under at all but they are not very vocal about so I’m not sure how they feel about that. I do know that a lot of people are hugely frustrated by some of the games popping up but in the wrong region and rightfully so. This shit is not right.

Fuck This Region Shit

There’s no reason that Axelay should not be released here. Likewise there is also no reason to not release Megaman 2 and Super Mario RPG in The States. It is a fucking download for crying out loud! Why the fuck should it cost more money to just have a single access point for the rest of the world instead of this crazy region shebang we have now?

I hate this fucking region shit. I hate it on the fucking DVDs I buy and I hate it even more on the fucking VC. Its fucking useless. It does nothing but it is only there because some corporate ass holes deemed this shit looked like a solid plan. In the end, it only frustrates fans and customers.

Fuck Axelay, I don’t even want to play it any more. And even if, I will just download an emulator, play the bitch for a few hours and be done with it. Saves me some money too.

Closing Note

If you live in Europe and can not understand English well enough to play a few video games well: fuck you. Why are you fucking it up for the rest of us who took some time to learn another language or two?

Note

Before anyone gets the wrong impression: I love this game. I have to restrict myself because once I start I can’t stop playing it. I even got to grips with the level up system and have managed to learn to play to accommodate it but still hate it. I must confess that I owe a great deal to the fantastic folk who maintain and contribute to the UESPWiki. Without them I would’ve never had the knowledge I needed to play the game to satisfaction. It’s a resource more insightful than the Arcane Library itself and also a wonderful example of what can be done with a wiki.

Overview

The leveling system in Oblivion is genius and fucked at the same time. Below are the rules.

• There are twenty one skills and seven of them are major skills.
• A character has eight attributes.
• Each attribute except for luck governs three skills.
• Every time you use a skill you gain experience for that skill.
• You gain experience for major skills more quickly.
• There are also some other experience modifiers but it’s complicated enough already.
• The game shows your progress towards getting a skill point and we should all thank The Nine that it does.
• Once the bar fills up you get a skill point and once you have ten major skill points you level up.
• The game also shows your progress towards a new level up.
• Once you level up you get to assign a positive modifier to three of your attributes.
• The modifier for luck is always +1
• The modifier for all other attributes is determined by the total of skill points gained in all three skills governed by that attribute.
• The modifier for all other attributes ranges from +2 to +5.
• You get the +5 modifier if the total number of skill points for an attribute is equal or greater than ten.

And that’s basically it. However, gaining a level in Oblivion is not always a happy event because the whole damn world levels up with you. That’s right: almost every treasure, NPC and enemy will level up with you every time you gain a level. This tends to fuck with your mind. Only if you are prepared and sure to get good attribute modifiers must you level otherwise you risk underleveling and getting fucked in the behind by a mud crab.

Fucked by a Mud Crab

Underleveling happens when you level up too quickly and unfortunately this happens all too easily. When you are picking a character it is natural to select a class (or create a custom one) with the skills that you use most often as your seven major skills. This seems the right thing to do and, looking at the predefined classes, recommended but it will also set you well on the way to underleveling. If you selected all the appropriate classes and play the game focusing on your character you will find that, making good use of your major skills, levels come pretty quickly.

This should be a good thing but unfortunately chances are also likely that you will get small bonus modifiers when you level up. Maybe +3 but usually +2. This is not good because enemies will grow stronger too and if you’re not careful they will grow stronger more quickly than you. At this point your only remedy is to turn down the difficulty slider (more on that later) but if you have to do this every time you level up you will quickly find it at the lowest setting. Unable to turn it down even more when the next level comes it’s highly likely that you’ll be trampled by a deer.

Being Careful

Besides getting fucked by a Mud Crab or getting trampled upon by a deer, it is also very easy to fuck yourself in the ass by sheer stupidity. Remember that you need ten skill points for all three skills governed by an attribute? Let’s just say you’ve got two of the three attributes covered and you are working on those last two skill points to cover the +5 bonus for the last one. Acrobatics is one of your major skills and you can see that you’re about to gain a skill point. However, you don’t want to yet because you already have the ten points to cover your speed attribute.

Suddenly, you fall of a rock and fuck shit, your acrobatics skill has increased. Blam! “You should rest and reflect on what you learned…” (that means I can level up). God #@$ ^%$&! Not only have I wasted a skill point for my speed attribute. I also accidentally levelled and now have fucked myself because I don’t have enough skill points to cover my third attribute (the game stops counting when you have ten major skill points).

Controlling the Fuckage

For me, controlling the fuckage basically means one thing: keeping meticulous notes where my skill levels are at when I gain a level. This provides an essential reference point during the next session of questing and training because I can now always find out how many skill points I gained since my last level up. Even though the game lets you know when you gained a skill point it is easy to miss these messages during the heat of battle. It is also useful to have an idea about which attributes you want to improve on your next level up so you can make wise decisions about which skills to use (e.g. don’t go picking locks but use an open spell when you are trying to improve your willpower).

When you try to accurately train your character you’ll have to pull off some seriously strange shit with your character. Your mage will be walking around wearing heavy armour, sucking rhino ass because she’s so slow and her spells are so ineffective. Your Orc will look like a daisy because he’s wearing light armour in order to upgrade his speed. Your thief will be the grand champion of the Arena because you wanted to upgrade his or her fighting skills and the Arena is a controlled way to do it which pays off pretty well too. (Note to self: remember that your initial choice of armour is not final; you can grab a different piece of certified Arena armour from the back cabinet next to Owyn).

The Final Stretch

When you are near to a level up it is time to think about your attribute modifiers. I keep another set of notes for this and just write down the skills and their increases grouped by the attributes. All these notes make me look more like an accountant than a gamer but that’s the price to pay for decent leveling in Oblivion. I also keep track of the total number of points per attribute to make it easier to see on what skills to work during play. It’s also wise to start thinking about which skills are easily trained by yourself and for which ones you may need to buy training in order to avoid wasting too much skill points of other skills trying to get it up by yourself.

Most offensive skills are pretty hard to train without training other skills too. Fighting usually means wearing armour so your light or heavy armour skill will go up. Blocking is also pretty common during a fight. You might opt to not wear armour or block but then there is a good chance that you will have to rely on restoration magic and/or potions which means that either your restoration, alchemy (if you make potions) or mercantile (if you buy potions) skill will go up too.

It is not all bad though because most skills are pretty easy to train without risking wasting skill points on other skills. All the magic skills except for destruction are easy because you can just repeatedly cast a cheap spell on yourself. Security and speechcraft are pretty easy too. Mercantile is a little bit harder because you need merchandise or money to work with. Armourer is pretty hard to train too because you can’t always easily damage your armour or weapon in a controlled environment.

No Honour

Because of the skill juggling game that Oblivion wants you to play we have to find a good way to train our skills in a controlled way. Luckily this pretty easy to do thanks to an unexpected combination of conjuration magic and the difficulty slider. I have put aside my scruples about using the difficulty slider because I figured I would have to turn it down eventually. But instead of turning it down each level I now turn it a little bit up each time I level up and keep it there during questing. When I’m near a level up and need to train some specific combat skills I turn it full up or down to suit my training.

It is essential to become an apprentice in conjuration as soon as possible so you can conjure up weak creatures for training. The only problem is just that the creatures are so weak that you are likely to kick their ass in just a few blows. This forces you to conjure up another one and this can lead to rapid skill increases in conjuration. The trick here is to use the difficulty slider to your maximum advantage. If you are training an offensive skill just put the slider high and use a weak weapon. If you are training a defensive skill like heavy or light armour or block then put the slider low.

Training defensive skills is ideal in this way but training offensive is still risky. You may not always want to block or wear armour to avoid wasting skill points but with a high slider position this can be dangerous and might force you to use restoration magic. The Lord birth sign can help with this because it offers a pretty good health regeneration spell that does not influence your restoration magic.

I can heartily recommend the secret chamber behind the necromancer’s sign below Benirus Manor in Anvil as a controlled fighting environment. You can lock it up so your conjured creatures have nowhere to go and once Lorgrens corpse disappears it’s actually quite cosy in there.