Introduction
Welcome, adventurer, to the sprawling, enchanted lands of Cyrodiil! For years, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has captivated players with its deep lore, engaging quests, and vast open world. Whether you’re stepping out of the sewers for the first time or returning for another playthrough, the journey through this classic RPG is always full of discovery. While the main quests and guild storylines offer hours of epic adventure, mastering the nuances of the game – knowing those clever shortcuts, powerful strategies, and hidden secrets – can truly elevate your experience. This guide is dedicated to unveiling essential **Oblivion tricks** that can help you become more efficient, more powerful, and get the most out of your time in this incredible world. Get ready to explore Cyrodiil like never before, armed with the knowledge of these powerful **Oblivion tricks**.
Quick Gold and Wealth Oblivion Tricks
In the world of Oblivion, gold is king. It funds your training, buys you better gear, allows you to purchase homes, and opens up many opportunities. Fortunately, there are numerous effective **Oblivion tricks** for accumulating wealth quickly, letting you focus more on adventuring and less on worrying about your coin purse.
One of the most fundamental wealth-generating **Oblivion tricks** is simply thorough looting. Every enemy, every chest, every forgotten corner often holds items of value. Prioritize weapons and armor (especially Daedric and Glass at higher levels, but even basic steel and iron are worth selling early on), magical items, and expensive ingredients. Be mindful of your carry weight; learn what items offer the best gold-to-weight ratio. Dungeons are excellent sources of loot, but don’t forget to check city houses (carefully!) or even just defeated bandits on the roadside.
Joining the Thieves Guild offers a structured path to riches. Their quests often reward you with significant amounts of gold, fences who buy stolen goods (essential since most vendors won’t), and access to lucrative heists. Similarly, the Dark Brotherhood provides generous payment for successful contracts. These guild-specific **Oblivion tricks** combine quest progression with financial gain.
Alchemy stands out as one of the most profitable skills, and mastering it is a key **Oblivion trick** for wealth. By combining ingredients with compatible effects, you create potions. The sale price of a potion is influenced by its effects and the ingredients used, as well as your Alchemy skill and Mercantile skill. Focusing on creating potions with high-value effects (like damage, paralysis, or invisibility) using readily available ingredients can quickly generate massive amounts of gold. Learn which ingredients combine well (Jarrin Root is incredibly valuable but rare; Nirthworm is also excellent) and where to find or buy them efficiently. Spending time gathering ingredients or buying them from vendors, then crafting potions, is a repeatable and highly effective gold-making **Oblivion trick**. You can then sell these potions to alchemy vendors or general merchants.
Power Leveling Skill Oblivion Tricks
Oblivion’s leveling system is tied directly to your skill progression. As you use your skills, they increase, and raising enough skills associated with your major attributes contributes to leveling up your character. Higher character levels often mean encountering stronger enemies, but also gaining access to better gear and higher-level quests. For players who want to reach higher levels efficiently, knowing some power leveling **Oblivion tricks** is incredibly useful.
Many skills can be raised simply by repeated use, often in non-combat scenarios. For example, Conjuration and Mysticism can be leveled rapidly by repeatedly casting your lowest-cost “Bound” weapon spell or “Detect Life” spell while standing still. Find a safe corner, preferably near a bed (to rest and restore Magicka), and simply spam the spell. This is a classic **Oblivion trick** for quickly raising magic skills early in the game.
Sneak is another skill easily power-leveled. Find a non-hostile NPC who is sleeping or facing away from you, crouch down, and simply walk (or run gently into a wall). As long as the eye icon is partially or fully closed, you are gaining Sneak experience. Finding an isolated NPC or a wall to push against while sneaking are common **Oblivion tricks** for maxing this skill swiftly.
Armor skills (Heavy and Light) can be trained by allowing low-level, non-threatening creatures (like Mudcrabs or Skimpy) to hit you while you wear armor. Stand still and let them attack, ideally while healing yourself periodically with restoration magic or potions. This continuous impact on your armor will raise the relevant skill quickly. This somewhat risky but effective **Oblivion trick** requires managing your health carefully.
For combat skills like Blade, Blunt, and Hand to Hand, training against summoned creatures (like a Faded Wraith if your Mysticism is high enough to cast Soul Trap on it) or finding low-level, easily manageable enemies and repeatedly attacking them (while healing between hits if needed) is a method. Alternatively, you can find a training dummy in a Fighters Guild hall or similar location and practice swings, though actual combat often grants more experience. Remember that you can also pay expert trainers up to five times per character level to boost skills instantly, which is another form of power leveling **Oblivion tricks** if you have the gold.
Getting Powerful Gear Early – Item Oblivion Tricks
Having strong equipment can make a huge difference in surviving the dangers of Cyrodiil, especially in the early to mid-game. While the best gear often appears at higher levels, there are specific **Oblivion tricks** you can use to acquire powerful items relatively early in your adventure, giving you a significant edge.
One of the most famous item acquisition **Oblivion tricks** involves the quest “Umbra.” This quest starts by simply asking NPCs about “Umbra” or “Imperial Legion” until you get a quest marker for a woman named Umbra in the Ayleid ruin of Vindasel. While the fight against Umbra herself can be challenging at low levels, defeating her rewards you with the legendary sword Umbra – a powerful Soul Trap blade that is one of the best weapons in the game, regardless of your level. Careful preparation, utilizing summons, or strategic use of potions can help even a low-level character claim this powerful item.
Another source of potent items early on is completing specific Daedric Shrine quests. While some shrines require you to be a certain level to even begin their quest, others have lower requirements or none at all. For instance, Azura’s shrine quest is relatively straightforward and doesn’t require a high level, rewarding you with Azura’s Star, a reusable Soul Gem that is incredibly valuable for enchanting and recharging. These Daedric artifact **Oblivion tricks** provide unique and powerful items that scale somewhat with your level upon acquisition or offer utility that lasts the entire game.
Exploring specific locations known for containing good loot relative to challenge can also pay off. While general dungeon loot is somewhat random and level-dependent, certain fixed containers or mini-bosses might have a higher chance of dropping valuable items or offer specific low-level unique gear. However, relying on specific dungeons requires some prior knowledge or luck, making the quest-based **Oblivion tricks** often more reliable for guaranteed powerful items.
Magic, Alchemy, and Enchanting Oblivion Tricks
The crafting and magical arts in Oblivion offer incredible depth and power, and mastering them unlocks a different set of potent **Oblivion tricks**. Beyond simply using spells or making potions, understanding how these systems interact allows for truly game-changing strategies.
Spellcrafting is arguably one of the most powerful **Oblivion tricks** available to magic users. At the Arcane University (after completing the Mages Guild recommendation quests), you gain access to spellcrafting altars. Here, you can combine effects to create custom spells. This allows for incredible efficiency (e.g., creating a single spell with multiple effects instead of casting several) and devastating power. A particularly effective **Oblivion trick** is creating spells that stack Weakness effects before applying damage. For instance, casting “Weakness to Magic 100% for 1 sec on Target” followed by “Weakness to Fire 100% for 1 sec on Target” and then a powerful Fireball will result in drastically increased damage. Creating custom spells that suit your playstyle is a fundamental **Oblivion trick** for any serious mage.
As mentioned earlier, Alchemy is fantastic for making gold, but it also provides crucial utility and combat boosts. Knowing which ingredients provide effects like healing, fortify attributes, invisibility, or paralysis allows you to create powerful potions and poisons. Gathering ingredients while exploring becomes second nature once you understand their value. Utilizing potions for temporary boosts or poisons to debilitate tough enemies are practical **Oblivion tricks** in combat.
Enchanting allows you to imbue weapons and armor with magical effects using Soul Gems. While the most powerful enchantments require Grand Soul Gems filled with Grand Souls (usually from high-level creatures or unique NPCs), even basic enchantments using lesser souls can provide valuable benefits like resist magic, fortify skills, or basic elemental damage. Understanding the Soul Trap mechanic and using soul gems efficiently are important **Oblivion tricks** for getting the most out of your gear. Enchanting your own gear lets you customize your resistances, bonuses, and weapon effects precisely to your needs.
Exploring Famous Oblivion Tricks and Exploits
While many of the strategies discussed so far are intended mechanics, the vast and complex nature of Oblivion also led to the discovery of several famous, often unintended, **Oblivion tricks** and exploits. It’s important to note that these can drastically alter the intended game balance and experience, and some may not work on all versions of the game (especially patched versions or certain console releases). *Use these at your own discretion, as they can trivialize challenges and potentially cause unforeseen issues.*
The most legendary of these unintended **Oblivion tricks** is the Duplication Glitch. This exploit allowed players to duplicate items infinitely. The most common method involved having at least two of a certain type of scroll in your inventory. By quickly double-clicking or using the item simultaneously with dropping another item, players could trick the game into creating multiple copies of the dropped item. This could be used to duplicate rare armor, weapons, ingredients, potions, or even gold itself (by duplicating expensive items and selling them). While incredibly powerful for quickly getting rich or having infinite crafting components, this exploit bypasses the entire progression system. Be aware that this specific **Oblivion trick** was patched in later versions of the game, though variations might exist depending on your platform and patch level.
Other less impactful, but still notable, unintentional **Oblivion tricks** include minor glitches like occasionally getting stuck in geometry, or specific sequences of actions that might yield unexpected results. Approaching these exploits with caution is advised if you want to maintain the game’s intended challenge and sense of accomplishment.
General Exploration and Quality of Life Oblivion Tricks
Beyond getting rich, leveling fast, or finding powerful gear, there are numerous smaller, but incredibly useful, **Oblivion tricks** that simply make exploring Cyrodiil and managing your adventure smoother and more enjoyable. These aren’t game-breaking but improve your day-to-day experience.
Fast Travel is a crucial quality of life **Oblivion trick**. Once you’ve discovered a significant location (marked on your map), you can instantly travel back to it from almost anywhere outdoors. This saves immense amounts of travel time, allowing you to quickly reach quest destinations, vendors, trainers, or your player home. Remember you can only fast travel from outdoor locations and not from inside dungeons or buildings.
Inventory management can become a chore, especially with all the loot you’ll acquire using the wealth **Oblivion tricks** mentioned earlier. Develop a habit of selling frequently. Know which vendors buy what types of items (general merchants buy most things but often have less gold; specific vendors like alchemists, blacksmiths, or spell vendors pay more for relevant items and have more gold). Consider buying a house early on to serve as a central storage location for items you want to keep but don’t need to carry constantly. Learning to manage your inventory effectively is a simple but vital **Oblivion trick**.
Understanding the Lockpicking and Pickpocketing mini-games is also helpful. Lockpicking can be challenging initially, but practice (or the Skeleton Key Daedric artifact, which is unbreakable) makes it easier to access locked containers and areas. Pickpocketing is risky but can yield valuable items directly from NPCs. Mastering these skills adds another dimension to your interactions with the world.
Finally, using the Wait or Rest function strategically is a useful **Oblivion trick**. Resting in a safe location (like a bed you own) heals you and restores Magicka/Fatigue instantly. Waiting allows you to pass time in increments of hours. This is useful for waiting for shops to open, trainers to become available, or simply recovering health and Magicka anywhere safe outdoors. It’s a simple but essential **Oblivion trick** for managing time and character resources.
Conclusion
Embarking on an adventure in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a memorable experience filled with heroic deeds, dark secrets, and the thrill of exploration. While the core gameplay loop is satisfying on its own, incorporating the various **Oblivion tricks** discussed here can significantly enhance your journey. Whether you’re aiming to amass a fortune, become a master of skills in record time, equip yourself with the finest gear, or simply navigate Cyrodiil with greater ease, these **Oblivion tricks** provide the tools you need.
From generating quick gold and efficiently leveling your character, to acquiring powerful items early and mastering the crafting systems, the **Oblivion tricks** outlined in this guide offer diverse ways to customize and optimize your playthrough.
We hope these insights help you on your path to becoming a true legend of Cyrodiil. Experiment with different strategies and find which ones best suit your preferred playstyle.
What are your favorite **Oblivion tricks**? Did we miss any essential tips that you rely on? Share your own secrets and strategies in the comments below! Happy adventuring!
