HOW TO START THE QUESTS
Adapted from a post by Arkngt
Lots of people have asked for details on how to start the quests in OOO 1.32 and later. A Path of Iron and Knights of the Dragonborne both have a clearcut start - the other ones can be triggered on different locations/occasions. Generally, reading the notifications you'll find in cities would start you out on these. The one in Anvil would point to Shadows in a Struggle for Power and the one in Bruma to The Skyrim Bandit Clans, for example. Here are some more specific tips:
A Path of Iron
Triggered by trying to grab Melus Petelius' Claymore by his wife's grave in Brindle Home. More details at: UESP
Light Through the Darkness
Started by reading the book "An Expanded Excerpt from Vampires of Tamriel" found in various locations, including the First Edition in IC Marketplace, the Mages Guild in Bruma, the Arcane University library, and the Cheydinhal Mages Guild. More details at: UESP
Knights of the Dragonborne
Triggered by finding a Dragonborne ring on a dead knight in either Fatback Cave or Cracked Wood Cave. More details at: UESP
The Skyrim Bandit Clans
Read any of the imperial posters in Bruma and/or read the note on the desk in the West Wing of Clouds Temple. (Airwave) More details at: UESP
Shadows in a Struggle for Power
Started by reading the warning posts in Anvil or stumbled upon by either finding the Dread Helmet in Fort Facian, killing Faran Hestarius at Fort Flecia or reading Hannibal Traven's writings, for example. More details at: UESP
Slavers and Smugglers
Triggered by discovering either the Nayon, Seran or Mars Punk camp. More details at: UESP
The OOO UESP pages also have a full list of the quests with links to more details on each quest.
Note that there are other options for starting these quests, except Path of Iron.
MAGES GUILD RECOMMENDATION DIFFICULTY
by Showler
Doing the Mages Guild recommendation quests in OOO can be a tricky challenge. They range from Bruma, which is absurdly easy, and Cheydinhal, which is easy if you have the right spell, to Leyawiin, where you have to fight bandits, marauders, creatures and other Mages. OOO increases the disparity. Best thing to do is do the MG recommendations in order of difficulty: Bruma, Cheydinhal, Bravil, Anvil, Chorrol, Skingrad and then Leyawiin.
A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO MAKING A SURVIVABLE PLAYER CHARACTER FOR OOO
by MadCat221
OOO-modified Oblivion is a tough game, particularly so for low-level characters. However, oftentimes it's due to a character creation plan that wasn't well thought-out. For those of you wondering how to make the ass-kicking less severe for a noob character in OOO, here's a guide that will hopefully help you.
The key to making a survivable character for OOO is specialization. "Universal" characters don't do well, since their skills are too jack-of-all-tradesy (and you should know that the appendix to that is "and master of none"). In Vanilla OB, many often do what I call the "Major is Minor" class customization method, where they choose majors that they'll rarely use in the usual play so they can power-level. That WILL NOT WORK with OOO. In OOO, you need every ounce of skill you can get, and starting off with your "major" skills at Novice level will guarantee you'll get smacked down quickly.
Now onto the mechanics: Following the theme of Specialization, you should start off deciding which of the Big Three Archetypes you're going to play (to which the three Guardian birthsigns are named after): Warrior, Mage, Thief. Combination of any two will still result in a viable character (and is recommended, since diversity means more ways to fight), but combination of three results in a Jack Of All Trades mixture, which you want to avoid.
On Race:
I'll presume you know the affinities of each race, and which of the Big Three Archetypes best suit each one. Pick the one that best suits the style you wish to play as. Remember to take in to consideration their starting attributes, even between the two sexes. For instance, a Nord Female may make a viable Battlemage: if combined with the Mage birthsign, she gets a hefty 50 willpower (OOO mods the Mage BS to have WIL +10, and reduces the Fort Magicka to +30), which is a great boon to recharging your magic bar without aid. In addition to that, she also packs 50 strength (the only female of any race to boast that), and fairly nice racial skills conducive to more mundane means of combat. On the opposite side, the Nord Male doesn't make a good Battlemage because he can't start off with any major magic-based perk (other than the Restoration racial bonus). Nord males, however, still do make excellent predominantly Warrior-oriented chars.
On Birthsigns
Birthsigns serve two purposes: To shore up racial attribute shortcomings, or to enhance the capabilities of your character (either by further enhancing racial perks or by adding special powers). For instance; if you take a Dunmer female, her attribute shortcomings are in Willpower and Endurance. Taking the Lady birthsign will add +10 to those, thus shoring those up. For either sex of Orc, if you give them the Steed birthsign, you easily shore up their slothy starting speed attribute of 30. You could also take a Dunmer and give them the Steed birthsign, and give them an insane starting speed of 70, making fleeing enemies that are way over your head much easier (which is often with OOO especially in the early levels). Many of the Birthsigns have been altered by OOO, but keep the general theme of each birthsign. The descriptions have all been changed to reflect them, so read them all.
There are some pretty sneaky things you can do with Birthsigns too: the Atronach, for instance. The last thing you'd think of doing is giving a brutish mundane warrior a ward birthsign of the Mage, but get this: The Absorb Magicka 50% makes 50% of the spells cast against you ineffective, even from enchantments. Any warrior would kill to have half of the spells cast against him completely disappear. Another clever thing to do is give a Dunmer the Lord birthsign. This makes healing much easier, thanks to the healing lesser power the Lord birthsign gives you. The 25% fire weakness is easily absorbed by the Dunmers' monstrous 75% fire resistance, leaving you with a net 50%. Sweet, ay?
On Class
Now we get to the meatiest part. Obviously, custom classes are the way to go, so you can tailor your character.
Specialization
Be sure to choose one of the (up to) two specializations your character will focus on. Obviously, a brutish Nord male would have no use for Stealth. Those with two categories of specialization may have a tougher choice. In that case, you can make a choice like you did with the birthsigns: bolster your existing racial skill perks, or shore up shortcoming skill perks. Using the Female Nord Battlemage example from above, to shore up shortcomings, you'd choose Magic, since Nords are all fairly well-off in starting stats in the Combat purview.
Major Attributes:
Again, bolster or shore-up. One major stat that I highly recommend selecting no matter what is Endurance. Endurance increases your health, both when increased, and by the amount added at level-up. Having a longer health bar has obvious connotations.
Skills:
It's strongly recommended to have at least one "Kill Skill", or the skills that are capable of inflicting significant amounts of harm. The Kill Skills are Blade, Blunt, Hand-to-hand (which was un-nerfed somewhat in OOO), Marksman, and Destruction. I recommend at least one melee and one ranged, so you have the power to both mete it out and to stand-off. If you're going Mundane, Marksman is a good bet, as even one not skilled in Sneak can get a Sneak Attack X2 on a surprise first shot. However, Destruction is far greater in terms of damage per projectile, in spite of its inability to take advantage of sneak attacks. You will need significant skill in Destruction to take advantage of it, as it can drain your magic bar quickly. In OOO, the Blunts have been beefed up a bit, and offer their own shortcomings and perks compared to Blades. Blades typically have longer reach, quicker swings, and lighter pack weight. Blunts, on the other hand, do more rote damage, and also seem to have a higher chance of inflicting a stagger (at least it seems that way to me when bandits start banging me with iron warhammers). Hand-to-hand has received a bit of a boost in power, as its damage increases much faster and to a much higher ceiling. It drains fatigue with each hit as well, and is also the fastest of all melee attacks in terms of strike speed. It also weighs nothing in your pack.
After Kill Skills, you'll need some form of defensive skill. The Defense skills are Heavy armor, Light armor, Block, and Alteration. Heavy armor obviously is the better straight protection of the two armors, but weighs a lot and can slow you down in combat too. Light armor doesn't offer much protection until leveled up, but doesn't encumber as much. Block works wonders no matter which you choose; at higher skill level, a hobbling strike could otherwise be reduced to a paltry hit to the HP bar by a good block. You may look at Alteration and go "Eh?", but if you do, you obviously didn't take the Shield effects into consideration. It may be temporary, but the armor rating boosts it provides weigh nothing and don't reduce magical effectiveness. In OOO, the Standard shield effect has a much more efficient cast cost coefficient, making it actually more powerful in straight armor bonus and duration than the elemental shields.
After that, the skills are pretty much your choice in terms of specialization. I do recommend either Alchemy or Restoration, as you'll be needing the healing powers of either quite a lot.
Don't be afraid to make a racially enhanced skill a Major (like Blade for Redguards); that just means it's all the more powerful and useful in surviving the early levels of OOO. Here's a prime example of the power of such a choice: If you take an Orc and give it Combat specialization and Armorer as a major, you start off with 40 armorer, ten points away from becoming a Journeyman skill, and get the accelerated skill-up rate of it being a Major. With that, you can quickly gain access to the Ayleid Meteoric Iron Weapons very early (as they're expensive as hell to repair at a shop), making early levels much easier when you wield their awesomely powerful enchantments upon your foes. Just be sure you keep the soulgems flowing.
Parting words
Feel free to roleplay your character. If you want to, you can use the "advskill" console command, and increase your skills one by one until you level up (for whatever RP purpose). Just be sure to level-up some Minor Skills too, or else you won't properly simulate a natural level-up and get crummy attribute increases. Or, you could "hybridize" your characters race; My favorite battlemage Annika the Arcane is from a Nord mother and a Breton father; Using the console and my Construction Set modding skills, I set her race to be Nord, then I gave her an additional +10 intelligence, and made a special "Nord/Breton Hybrid" ability bonus adding 20% Resist Magic and Fortify Magicka +20. I chose Nord as the basis, because in TES lore, a hybrid child is predominantly like the race of its mother, but elements of the father's race persist in a diluted state (case-in-point: Agronak gro-Malog).
BEATING THE SPECTRAL WARRIORS
You may have trouble fighting the Ethereal Warriors. Understandably so, they're immune to normal damage (unless the weapon is otherwise ignorant of that resistance), fire, and frost. However, they have one fatal weakness: shock. They are MASSIVELY vulnerable to shock damage. If you're a mage with some Destruction talent, you can bowl those punks over quite quickly with some liberal application of shock damage attacks (although it's risky because they could bounce it back at you). However, for those of you not skilled in Destruction, there are other ways... the Meteoric Iron Weapons. Not only do they deal quite a bit of shock damage from a strike enchant, but they also have an added benefit of exacerbating the shock weakness for the next hit (if you can get the hit in quickly enough).
Below are a list of general locations of "hidden" meteoric iron weapons with shock damage enchants. No specifics; I gotta leave SOME challenge in finding them for you guys! Be informed that, because they've languisned for aeons, their enchantment energy has slowly seeped out, and the weapons themselves aren't in good condition. You'll need soul gems to replenish them (though they'll have some energy in them), and you'll need Journeyman armorer skill (as repairing them at a shop is horrendously expensive, and they're rather frail weapons to begin with).
- Malatta Gorimacil (longsword/scimitar): Rielle
- Gah Malatta Volenmaica (2H Battle axe): Veyond
- Malatta Andavar (Stave): Atatar
- Malatta Quinga (Bow): Hame, Leyawiin FG Hall (Guardian rank or higher*)
- Malatta Maicatulwe (Glaive): Atatar (again)
- Gah Malatta Volenbal (Greatmace): The Umbacano Collection
- Malatta Volenbal (Regular mace): Cheydinhal FG hall (Guardian rank or higher*)
- Malatta Lango (Dagger): Arce Lango has been separated from its sheath, and vice versa. Find them both, and you can reforge the weapon. Sheath location: Fyrelight Cave. Dagger location: Cadlew Chapel Undercroft
* Note that the two Guild Hall weapons may not be considered stealing if you have achieved an adequate rank in the Fighters Guild. However, there seems to be a bug with the FG rank-checking script. If the weapons in Cheydinhal and Leyawiin still show up red, then just use the console to remove the ownership like this:
SetOwnership
Or, alternatively, just wait until you become Master rank in the FG, after which all FG Hall contents become legitimately yours.
Surviving Underpall
This is one of those areas in OOO that can really test you to the limit. The Spectral Reavers are brutal, and Fayth Noor is too. Since some players may need to get through the final cave to complete Knights of the Nine, some tips about surviving the area are in order. There is a way to survive!
If you can, bring one of the weapons already mentioned or some other fairly good shock-enchanted weapon. This will dramatically improve your chances of taking out the Spectral Reavers before Fayth Noor blasts you to bits. If you don't have one of the above items (or similar), then there's still hope.
If you enter on the left side of the large cavern and either sneak or make a mad dash for the wooden dock on the edge of the pool, you can dive down to the bottom there and find a very good Ayleid meteoric iron axe with strong shock damage and weakness to shock effects. This should at least give you a fighting chance.
As an added benefit, this move will probably lure some of the guardians into the water after you. If you can climb back out quickly after retrieving the axe, then you may buy yourself some time before they can regroup to mob you.
GAMEPLAY TIPS
TORCHES
Q. When I pull out my sword, my torch flies out of my hand onto the ground. Is this supposed to happen? Also, there is a torch in my inventory with the words "Hot Key" surrounding it and the torches themselves have no name. Is that normal?
This is very much by design and one of the greatest immersion enhancers in OOO. Understanding how it works can help you survive when things get dark and dangerous at the same time!
The OOO version of Drop Lit Torches saves you a huge amount of fiddling in your inventory. To make use of this feature, you'll need to set a hotkey for the inventory item called Hot Key Torch.
Now, when you first get into a dark area of some dungeon, sheath your weapon and hit the hotkey for the Hot Key Torch. It auto-equips a torch so you can see your way through the dark.
When you encounter some nasty critters, you draw your weapon and automatically drop your torch on the ground so you can still see during the fight! Smart move! When you're done fighting, sheath your weapon, then pick up the torch and it auto-equips so you can continue on. If you already have a weapon out and want to shed some more light on the situation, just hit the hotkey for the Hot Key Torch and it will drop another torch on the ground.
All that without ever having to open your inventory! Simply brilliant!
COMMON QUESTIONS
This section is currently under development.