The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion/Tips and tricks

Tips & Tricks


 * Holding the Block button while casting spells will almost double your casting speed


 * Finish the Mages Guild Recommendation Quests to gain access to spell creation and item enchantment at the Arcane University.
 * Finish all the Mages Guild quests to gain a container which will duplicate most ingredients for free.


 * At level 2 you can do the Azura's Shrine Daedric quest which will give a reuseable Grand Soul Gem
 * See Daedric Quests


 * Want to take screenshots within Oblivion on the PC? In your \Documents and Settings\[User]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion directory is the file oblivion.ini.  To enable screenshots, first create a backup of oblivion.ini (just in case) and then open it in a text editor, eg notepad.  Find the text bAllowScreenShot=0 and change it to bAllowScreenShot=1. then save the file.  Now you can take screenshots by pressing the printscreen key.  The screenshots will be stored in your main Oblivion directory.
 * By hitting the tilde (~) key before hitting PrntScrn you can clear the gui from your screenshot
 * Screenshots will not work with AA (anti aliasing) enabled


 * If you need to steal something without being seen (if you're in a shop or something), try dropping something from your inventory (preferably something large, like a book or cuirass), use the Grab button to lift it, and use said item to push the object you want to steal into some shadowy corner. Alternatively, you can just push it by walking into it, but this won't work with smaller items. It may take lots of practice to be able to do this.


 * Alchemists and armorers: always search the barrels and crates lying around town (especially in the Imperial City market district). There's a fairly good chance that you'll find food, alchemy ingredients, and repair hammers inside. There may also be gold in them, but it's never very much (15 gold at the most).