You've Got to be Crazy to Enjoy the Shivering Isles.

[David Brasher]

I am playing Shivering Isles for the second time after not really going there for months. I think it is a pretty messed-up place. The quests almost all seem to be for the amoral or the immoral. I really do not feel heroic. Sometimes I hate myself. I wonder about giving up on it all and going back to Cyrodiil.

 

At Sheogorath's pleasure, I steal things and murder people. I end up fighting against the Dark Seducers and Golden Saints which are the local law-enforcement under Sheogorath's command. I betray people. I heard one citizen comment, "I don't know about you, but I think we could do with a bit more Order around here." I spend much of my time trying to prevent the establishment of Order.

 

The religion of Ardel-Sul is all whacked-out. Both the Zealots and Heretics attack me on sight. None of these religious folks ever sit down and try to convert me, they just try to kill me!

 

The shopping stinks! There is only one place to buy spells. I believe there are six spells to buy total (available in various strengths.) One of the blacksmiths has suddenly stopped trading with me. I think he is jealous of the other smith. There are no torches for sale. I am down to my very last torch and having trouble finding enough ingredients to make light potions and potions of night eye. There is no light spell to buy. I explore dungeons by the light of the healing spells I repeatedly cast. It is rather frightening.

 

The weapons and armor are indifferent. Dawn-Fang/Dusk-Fang is pathetic. It isn't as good as the Akaviri katana I got from Brother Pinar after he fell in battle. I need to someday go back to the other world and see if the very best amber armor is indeed worse than glass (which does not appear to be available in the Isles.) After struggling hard to get a complete set of semi-decent amber armor, a Dark Seducer suddenly gives me a suit of Dark Seducer armor which is twice as good as my amber. Unfortunately, it alters their perceptions of me, and now they call me duchess instead of duke. Maybe I will put my amber back on.

 

Sheogorath seems to like me, but he is always threatening to kill or maim me. I feel betrayed.

 

Relmina reminds me of Doctor Mengele, and Sheogorath is making me help her. I got fed up with it and tried to kill her, but that was not very sane, because she is an unkillable essential character.

 

And the main road through the Shivering Isles travels through Dementia! I am sick of traveling through that swampy dismal place. It makes me depressed. The road through Mania, which has much nicer scenery, is twice as long. It's not fair!

 

The Shivering Isles are making me crazy!

 

What do the rest of you think of the Shivering Isles Expansion?

[Crimsanity]

Ask me how I feel! "Erm... How do you feel?" I feel crrrraaazy! Crrraaazy! "..." Crrazy as a coconut! "..."

 

Also, I enjoy the night sky in Shivering Isles, as well as some of the scenery. Is about the only reason I go there, really. For the most part, I romp around Cyrodiil, doing whatever I please. Just feels more homey to my character. I see SI as a nice vacation spot for occasional questing and general madness, but after every vacation you've just got to return home.

[JheeBz]

In my opinion the shivering isles is great. It would never work as being the mainland of the game but nonetheless it is a brilliant expansion. The humour and randomness sort of lightens up the quiet and peaceful athmosphere of Oblivion. If you want to buy things then go back to Cyrodil and do so. The shivering isles was never intended to be your main place of confort. You go to the shivering isles to do the quests, explore and such and you return to cyrodil to purchase whatever you need for your journey in the Shivering Isles.

 

Also if you want to compare items then sure, let's compare items. These are numbers taken directly from http://uesp.net/.

 

If you acquire a dark seducer helmet at level 20+ then it will have 5 Defense and a weight of 3.

If you acquire a glass helmet at level 20+ (Requirement) then it will have 5 Defense and a weight of 3.

If you acquire an Amber helmet at level 20+ then it will have 5.25 Defense, a weight of 3.1 AND a fortify intelligence bonus of 12.

 

As you can see, Amber is better than glass and dark seducer by small amounts of defense but with stat bonuses.

 

 

My only complaint about the shivering isles is that i personally dislike exploring insect nests but that's just my opinion.

 

 

Lastly, Sheogorath rulez.

[apocalypse1138]

Your rant makes sense but remember, that realm was designed to make people go crazy! I thought it added a nice artistic feel (bliss side anways) and I enjoyed having new and sometimes very dangerous enemies to fight. Along with the many order obelisks to shut down.

[Deepblue686]

I like weird. So I like the Shivering Isles.

My only niggle is that obelisks aren't marked like oblivion gates. I want to go back to them when I've found them (unactivated when I found them, possibly activated after a few quests) and destroy them all dammit.

 

Maybe some sort of strange creature to use for a horse replacement would have been good too.

 

But the expansion is much better than KOTN. The KOTN enemies are just xivilais with a new model, SI's enemies are completely new.

[scarb]

I love the Shivdering Isles, but I also like things a bit weird. I love the layout and the concept with the two sides. I love Sheogorath's presence, personality, and story. As soon as I decided to give it a visit, I was hooked and did all of the quests before I returned. My only complaint was that it didnt seem to live up to its potential. I wanted to further explore the polarity, the politics between the two Houses, and I felt I should have gotten a bit more for taking the place of a Daedric Prince (perhaps a mod is in order ... ).

 

Anyway, it may well be true that you have to be a bit "crazy" to enjoy the Shivering Isles, but then is that a "bad" thing?

[Oruboris]

Call me crazy, then!

 

Wasn't till I got to SI that I realized just how bland and boring the rest of Cyrodil is-- all the towns surrounded by identical walls, all the houses the same colors, boring armor, boring clothes, no real vibrancy to anything.

 

Yeah, there are some mods to fix this, but it really isn't a very exciting game world to look at when you think about it. The distant veiws rock, but otherwise it's about as diverse and visually stimulating as the average city park.

[DremoraChurl]

I've just finished SI. I found it tedious - perhaps there's no possible expansion I would have liked, and I shouldn't treat it as an extension of the mainland, but from an early point I looked at SI as "a load of grummite dens and gnarl dens". Equipment progression is sparse, then they throw you shadowrend near the end. And yeah I can't believe Relmyna is unkillable. Mankar Camoran's got nothing on her.

[ChalkLine]

I like SI for the 'whimsy' factor that is special to a certain breed of fantasy, and it's mordant sense of humour is kinda fun. It's about as big as it needs to be though, because there's not much else you could do with it. I think the modders working on other Realms have the right idea; suit the theme to the Prince/Princess and let your imagination work within a theme.

 

This is why I like base Oblivion; the mediaeval fantasy is a nice base to return to. Perhaps a sort of 'anime style' realm would suit a lot of the mods available more than the more gritty Tamriel, which I think has a cool smell of sweat and blood.

[TheCalliton]

Call me crazy, then!

 

Wasn't till I got to SI that I realized just how bland and boring the rest of Cyrodil is-- all the towns surrounded by identical walls, all the houses the same colors, boring armor, boring clothes, no real vibrancy to anything.

 

Yeah, there are some mods to fix this, but it really isn't a very exciting game world to look at when you think about it. The distant veiws rock, but otherwise it's about as diverse and visually stimulating as the average city park.

you needed SI to figure that out?