drakeelvin Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) Hi, I finally opened my Oblivion/Shivering Isles bundle this week its been there on the shelf for a long time. Obviously it's a great game I got absorbed in it for several hours the first time I played, I was just planning to play for an hour to see what it was like. I have some technical questions I searched around for answers to some of these but couldn't find them all: I'm running Oblivion+Shivering Isles on Windows Vista with the latest game patch. Question #1 I noticed in my log I was getting flagged for "Assault" and I am like wtf? After doing some back tracking I figured out that when you shoot bandits with a bow when you are stealthed, to get a sneak attack, you get dinged for assault. Thinking back I wondered why innkeepers and townsfolk seemed to be really hostile to me early on, and those Imperial Guards too. So this leads me to question 2 ... Question #2 This community patch looks pretty good, 1800 bugs fixed, is this sneak/bow bug fixed by this or any other patch? Currently I don't get dinged with assault if I sneak up and use my sword on those guys, only my bow. Or do I simply have to not use my bow for "hunting"? Question #3 I noticed there are guilds for Fighter, Mage, Thief and Dark Brotherhood. I was hoping for Imperial Legion. My character is what I call a Paladin, basically it's a mage who decides to become a warrior of virtue, so starts out strong in spellcasting but focuses now totally on heavy armor, blades, blunt and shields, but still uses a ton of miscellaneous magic. I use a Breton and make Magic the main specialization, but for major skills they are all as mentioned, weaopons and armor, knightly stuff. But starts out as a Breton with pretty decent magic skills. Starts out weak in melee but in Morrowind this class was so much fun, being a strong fighter with good healing skill and a pocketful of misc spells for nearly every situation. Seems so far to be working out the same as Morrowind, tough fighting melee at low levels but that will change after some levels of building up strength and endurance. Big difference in this game is access to the mages guild is a lot harder so I'm going to start on that earlier. In Morrowind I only ever joined the Imperial Legion, had no use for other guilds. Any feedback on anything, especially on the sneak/bow is appreciated. Edited October 22, 2011 by drakeelvin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elvinkun Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) Well,about the bow, I have no idea, I never had anything like that, and I spend most of the time by sniping from stealth, isn't it possible that you slapped some civilian by mistake or perhaps a bit of a hit with AoE spell? Also, you might've shot Imperial Forester, they tend to look like bandits on a stroll trough forests. As far as I know, there is no way to get a murder or assault from attacking bandit faction. As for the community patches, I'd say apply them, they fix a lot of problems and even more, they prevent many glitches from appearing and do no harm. There are many glitches in the vanilla game which might not appear at all, but when they do, it hurts a lot. I suggest you get in the Mage's guild soon as possible (It doesn't take as long as it might look at first), because it gives you acces to enchanting and spellmaking (Making your own spells, usually you can mix up better things than the game offers) altars, and that is very needed. Only other way to get to them is the Mage's tower DLC.And there is no way to join the Legion, but you can join the Blades (Emperor's guard) later, if you feel like Imperial patriot. Edited October 22, 2011 by elvinkun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drakeelvin Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) @elvinkun: Thanks. Yeah, to clarify the sneak and bow issue, I went into one of the first dungeons, the ruin you see straight ahead when you first exit the tutorial just past the dock and the water. There are two bandits outdoors and when you deal with them and go inside the ruin there are a handful more downstairs. It was them that flagged me. I save often (lesson from Morrowind lol) so I tested and retested this dungeon from the entrance once I figured it out the source of the assault flag. If I sneak up on those indoor bandits and shoot them with a bow before they attack me, I get flagged with an assault. These are all confirmed bandits. The goblins I attacked this way in the tutorial did not flag me and I did this fairly often to them. EDIT: In the end I did that dungeon over and just went in cautiously and managed to draw them to me one by one, it was good mouse and click practice for the sword and shield. Longsword really owns and it's nice to see they made it a slashing weapon in this game, I never really liked longswords in Morrowind becuase they were stabbing/piercing for some reason so I always tended to use the Imperial Broadsword or a Katana. I'm going to install the two unofficial patches for OB and SI they look good, and I'll retry that first dungeon I've got a save at the entrance/start. Thanks for your feedback. Edited October 22, 2011 by drakeelvin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elvinkun Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) Oh, right, also beware, in some ruins and dungeons, there are those "Adventurers" from Orsium, I belive those also count as murder if you get nasty with them. As for the assault, I guess it's a "location" bug then, I'm pretty sure it doesn't occur everytime you go for humanoid from stealth. But I might know what dungeon you mean, had some weird run in in one (can't remember the name) close to Imperial City, room with two talking and one sleeping bandits (or marauders), who seem to act like townsfolk, even with typical town banter, and haven't even attacked me untill I tryied to initiate dialogue with one (even had the speech icon). That could be the same place. Edited October 22, 2011 by elvinkun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drakeelvin Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) @Elvinkun, thanks again man. Yeah I'm going to have to be careful and watch my tracker. I just reentered "Vilverin" dungeon was the name of it, and I get flagged for assault on "Bandit" if I even attack them before they go hostile. I had been cautious and only using the bow but I was able to lose my heavy armor and sneak up on one and backstab with my sword and it was the same result, flagged for assault. As you say, it must be location dependant so I'll just have to keep a close eye on my crime status when I go spelunking. Actually, it overall will suit my playstyle I've always preferred the head on tank fight to sneaking, but early on I use sneak more to mitigate my weakness as a Breton warrior. And when there is a good chance for surprise if I get Line of Sight on an enemy before being close enough to be detected, I like to take the opportunity shot. But I just let those guys attack me first and I remained with a clean record. Anyhow, the unofficial patches did not fix it, so thats cool I already did it the straight up walk in and swordfight way so now I'm aware of it. Better to find out halfway to Chorral than to get all the way there and get arrested because I was planning to take at least a quick peek inside all the small ruins along the road there. P.S. Thanks for the heads up on The Blades, that is cool. Kudos to you for your help today. Edited October 22, 2011 by drakeelvin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Striker879 Posted October 22, 2011 Share Posted October 22, 2011 Is the bow a vanilla one that comes with the default game or one that is added by a mod? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drakeelvin Posted October 22, 2011 Author Share Posted October 22, 2011 (edited) @Striker879: At that stage my game was unmodded, it was the rusty iron bow from the tutorial. It was not the weaon, however, it is a general issue with the NPCs in that particular dungeon. I only played a bit and my initial analysis was wrong. As Elvinkun had suggested, this is a specific scenario where those "Bandits" will get you flagged for assault if you attack them before they attack you. However, they are hostile and attack you on sight, so the only way to get in a preemptive strike first is to use sneak. That's why I was confused about it, to me it looked like a bug of some kind with sneaking and the bow, but I was wrong. I retested the dungeon later and tried out a variety of attacks there are about six bandits down there. With my sword and sneak attacking I also got flagged for assault. It was not just the bow. I think the first time I tried the sword I may have been detected and he attacked me the instant before I attacked, thats why I didn't get flagged, he had gone hostile on me before I landed the first blow. But for sure, later testing confirmed an actual sword sneak attack also got me flagged. So its the NPCs, not the weapons or sneak or anything like that. The dungeon was "Vilverin" the one straight ahead of you when you exit the tutorial. Since then I have installed the unofficial patches and nothing changed, I still got flagged for assault when sneak attacking those particular guys. Elvinkun mentioned there are some dungeons like this around Cyrodil so I'll just have to save early and pay attention if I use sneak to get the jump on "Bandits" and if I have to reload well so be it. However, on the bright side, my game is MUCH more stable now and has not crashed since I installed those unofficial patches and I even have the enourmos mod Vilja version 4 (500 megabytes) and the game has been stable and not crashed yet. It was crashing on me frequently, about once per hour, prior to installing the unofficial patches. So there is a silver lining here, indeed! Edited October 22, 2011 by drakeelvin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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