I thought I'd start a thread for people to talk about their experiences so far, and post screenies of their characters etc. Not got any of my Ninja Wood-Elf yet, but I'll get some later.
Useful Info
Screenshots
To take screenshots you need to edit your \My Documents\My Games\Oblivion\Oblivion.ini file and change bAllowScreenShot=0 to bAllowScreenShot=1 (Thanks Spoodie
)FPS
To show your FPS press ` (the key next to 1 and tab) to bring up the console and type in tdt
Game Crashes
Taken from the readme file: "ALT+TAB may cause some game instability with some hardware configurations and is not advised."
In addition to this, since xfire currently doesn't support the game, the popup over fullscreen for when you get a message doesn't work for me, and caused the only crash I've had when it minimised it automatically. This will be fixed in thursday's patch when Oblivion support will be added, but until then I'm just going to be turning xfire off when playing.
Model your own face:
http://www.facegen.com/ is the site for the company who created the face modelling software for the game. If you get a two profile and one straight-on pictures of your face, it will render a 3D model of it for you. You can then note the slider settings for tone and shape, and recreate it for your character in-game.
General Points about Gameplay
If you haven't played the previous games, especially Morrowind, then you really need to read the manual. It may sound obvious, but I know that I for one usually don't bother with most games, but for this game you really need it.
Some people have commented that the main quest is very hard, but I expect that its because they're attempting it with low-level characters. In this game, the best way to get ahead is to join whichever guild is most appropriate to your character, or even better, join several. On the most part the missions don't clash so you can happily bumble along doing missions for them all and rising through the ranks and your player's levels. Guilds are found in most major towns, but there aren't any in the main city.
I've only played about 4 hours so far, but I'm at level 4 now I think, and at least 2 of my attributes are in the mid 60s, and the rest are doing quite well too. Sneak is so far my best skill, and I'm nearly a journeyman already. I like the way that you get new abilities as the rank goes up rather than a fairly ambiguous "just gets better". For example, when sneaking I currently get a 3x damage bonus for shooting someone, and a 6x damage bonus for using a one-handed weapon if I attack undetected. This means that in most places I've been so far I'm getting instant kills which is nice. I'm also enjoying the fact that casting spells is a lot easier than in previous games, and blocking is no longer a passive skill.
So how is everyone else doing then? What characters have you gone for in terms of race and skills? And lets see some screenies too!
im gettin this game then