Evaluating Oblivion's notable side quests + The Shivering Isles 

Closed my eyes at 12:00 and never got told to open them again. Guess I'm blind now thanks

In my first play-through of Oblivion, I did a quest in Cheydinhal where you have to prove the Captain of the Town Guard is basically a mafioso, shaking down the peasants and levying high fines. Guy is a total dickhead. Once you prove it to the Count and Countess, they lock him up, he screaming he'll get you back. Yeah yeah, whatever. Now fast forward a bit... I find myself in the middle of Hackdirt, looking for Dar-ma. Miserable little town. Kinda creepy. I go into the inn to learn what i can. After investigating a room Dar-ma was obviously staying in, I suddenly get jumped by a knife-wielding maniac! I easily put him down with one blast of Fire. What's this? It's the old Captain of the Cheydinhal Town Guard! Turns out, no matter what, the crazy bastard escapes from jail after a set time and will find you wherever you are. I was already not a fan of Hackdirt and that asshole only put me more on edge, so it made finishing the mission all the worse. Hands down, one of the best gaming moments I've ever had.

Fun fact: did you know that in Hackdirt Caverns you can occasionally hear hellish roars and grunts? It's the most noticeable when you're approaching the descending tunnel that's blocked by boulders and debris. It's assumed that these come from The Deep Ones, which in my opinion is much cooler than if the developers included a straightforward opportunity to fight them.

Hackdirt loses some of its impact with your faces mod. The townspeople are supposed to look like mutants. It's both hilarious and sort of creepy with how hostile they are towards you.

That moment you realize when you talk to Sheogorath in Skyrim, it's actually your character from oblivion

Man the ring of happiness quest really got me. I imagine the ring itself is a metaphor for antidepressants and how when people struggle with them while also being depressed can push them over the edge. Hence the line "I tried it for a while, the "Happiness Ring" but eventually I couldn't wear it anymore. It made me feel odd -- not myself."

Have you done the Shivering Isles and then done the Sheogorath Daedric Shrine? There's unique dialogue as you're the new Sheogorath. Haskil scalds you for being vain by praying to yourself. (You still get the same quest but it's Haskil that is now the quest-giver through the shrine with modified dialogue.)

“there will be spoilers? some people were upset I didn’t outright say that last time” so they saw a 45 minute video on oblivion and thought you’d somehow do that much talking without... talking about parts of the game?

So, in Hackdirt if you're in the caves long enough, you do HEAR the Deep Ones, even though you never see them. Stand in there long enough, at the back of the cave, and you hear several deep, guttural growls.

15:00 Awe, you missed the other potential way to kill the gatekeeper. (mind, I did miss it too until my most recent playthrough.) The gatekeeper's creator visits it every night and cries, and it turns out that her tears are poison to the creature. It's a fun and interesting second option/ combination.

The horse armour dlc is the best dlc ever

"And Jyggalag is free to roam once more..." *And they never mentioned this EVER AGAIN*

I actually liked the Mages Guild. Sure, it felt like a grind getting all the recs from the guild halls, but it also made your eventual graduation feel truly earned, and got you to actually explore a lot, which was also cool. Compare that to Skyrim, where you basically walk through two dungeons and pow, you're the archmage.

There are two areas in this game that may easily be missed. Shetcombe Farm: a huge farm with an abundance of resources for alchemy that respawn every few days. It also has a moderate side quest attached to it that includes searching for the fate of it's owner. Not only a useful location, but also an interesting one. And my personal favorite: Rockmilk cave. Every 3 days, a plethora of enemies from 2 different factions fight to the death... and you get winner. All types of loot are found here, from weapons, to armor, to enchantments. And, you come back 3 days later and it all happens again. To me, these two locations are some of the best parts of Oblivion and I have spent an ungodly amount of time between the 2.

I love this. I love Jyggalag. He was the strongest of the Daedra, so strong that they had to group together to fight him and only then, all they could do was curse him.

Phew, I have never played Shivering Isles, but seeing *Hirrus'* Quest here, it crawls under my skin. Tackeling the topic of depression, the loosing of selfworth, loneliness, and trying to overcome it with the Ring of Happiness (Antidepressiva, "It made me feel odd -- not myself") feels very personal and makes me wonder if one of the developers expressed their personal struggle. That he seeks relief in death is heartbreaking. Chapeau, putting this in was brave of Bethesda.

Love that scene where the zappy dude zapped a freaking chair and you can even see it getting electrified and shit

I have a Question for you: What about the 'Knights of the Nine' Quest? I personaly think, that they aren't Bad. They have their... Moments. Can we get a Video for this Quest too?

I would love a Fable retrospective

The thing about the deep ones is that they're meant to not be shown, to get you thinking and wondering just exactly what the hell they're meant to be, you can even hear what might be the deep ones at a certain part of the cave, sucks you didn't find it.

You never did Knights of the Nine. Had so much damn fun playing that expansion

Do a "is Morrowind as good as I remember?" video

The special dialogue you get from Sheogorath if you do his daedric quest during the Shivering Isles main quest is priceless

So this video randomly popped up in my recommendations and now I'm playing Oblivion again... Damn you.

if the deep ones were revealed, it would no longer be lovecraftian

I remember this quest back from my childhood where 2 girls in the inn were seducing and robbing men, and your only option to complete it is to play along with them even if you know it's a trap from the beginning. Also I liked the quest in the Imperial city with grave diggers. I really felt like an undercover agent, spying on that merchant.

I remember as a kid, Oblivion being my first ‘next-gen’ game. The side quest with the hotel ship, I found it on my own and woke up to a pirate with a dwarves sword. It was the first one I had seen dwarven!!! Man those were the good ol’ days :(

What's hilarious is doing the shivering isles before the daedric quest, and having haskill sass you the entire time you torment the citizens

I know this was made a long time ago and you'll probably never see this... HOWEVER If you complete shivering Isles and then do Sheogorath's quest you get some hilarious dialog of Haskil chastising you for praying to yourself XD

That painting quest was one of the first quests that I did in oblivion. I was still very new to the game and my character was low level. I made the mistake of saving when I was in the painting, and I could not get past the trolls. They kept just killing me so I eventually had to start a new game. I did end up figuring the game out and getting better but damn that painting quest pissed me off back then. Good quest though

The entire deep ones quest is just a easter egg refearing to the book "the shadow over innsmouth" from HP Lovecraft.

Every so often, the stars of RU-vid align and I get an actual worthy channel recommendation. You’ve gained a subscriber! I love the Hackdirt quest because it’s the best way to level up your heavy or light armor skill by lowering the difficulty and letting the shirtless maniacs wail on you. Side note: as a space nerd, I love the night sky in Mania and it’s my favorite skybox in any video game.

I hadn't seen most of those quests, great watch!

"You ever wonder why things look better without their skin on?" WHAT?????

Hey man just wanted to let you know I thoroughly appreciate your content. Very thoughtful, quality introspections. Keep it up!

Wow this was a seriously good video (like everything you seem to produce) , and I loved the art!

why does everyone forget the quest where you join a vampire slaying order, just to find out all but one of the members are vampires?

There's some neat things they did in the Hackdirt one. Lots of "old ones" hints and stuff, and if you go down to the deepest area, you can actually hear strange voices, if I recall.

20:50 I could hear Autism cat/Wilburger saying it in my head

Just discovered your oblivion videos, and I’m really enjoying your content! Your presentation is great, and I love your humor. More, please!

I watched your Oblivion vid every now and then. I just love anyone complimenting my favorite game.

"besides Matt Mercer" loved it man hahaha!

Thanks for this vid. I loved all these quests so much but never have the resolve to replay the game. So this little refresher was so nice honestly

Thanks for making this! I loved it. Yeah I always forget how tanky the knights of order were, but I ran through with fully murderfueled Mehrunes razor and high leveled crusader gear so I had an easier time than most, and well, I still recall turning the difficulty down for two fights somewhere.

Both of these Oblivion videos were great! Funny and informative :)

Oh my goddddd Christmas came early

really good job dude. Very entertaining to watch and well done editing

Dude, really like your videos, got a unique style to them. Neat sense of humour too. Hope to see more from you.

my buddy always had a great explanation for becoming an immortal vampire in this and skyrim, you get to have a loophole for a lot of the daedric quests trying to have claim on you when you die

Honestly, I even believed that skeleton, or I was just simply confused and puzzled, because at first he seemed pretty evil, then though I found out that the manor was cursed, then when I met him he suddenly seemed pretty nice and sad and afterwards when I fulfilled his desire he said something about "amusing", which at first I thought was positive and suddenly he would go on and laugh like a madman and in the next second he would cast his op fire staff at me, killing me in 6 seconds and having me trying to figure out what just happened with an open mouth. Now I'm surprised that apparently, noone else fell for it and I was the only douchebag that actually believed in his good intentions and didn't see anything foul going on.

Knew my subscription would pay off! No such thing as too much Oblivion

There's actually a mod for Hackdirt where the rock covered entrance is opened and you get to fight Cthulhu at the end.

With Hackdirt your face mods changed them normally theyre vary stretched and weird looking which helps with the unsettling nature of the town and they hate outsiders because I think bandits raided? its been a while since I read up on it you can read a bit if you attend their church meetings and read their book talking about the deep ones and in some parts of the cave if you listen closely you can hear things crawling beneath the cave its actually a really interesting town if you look around enough

33:46 He said enjoy the view. So now you have to stare at him for eternity

Awesome video once again man, this video combined with the earlier Oblivion video has inspired me to check the game out on PC. With how good it seems to be and the Deluxe Edition on Steam being $10, I'm glad I found your channel to spur me on (plus I get to watch some pretty good content as well)

Considering how long you've been there and how good your reviews are, you deserve more subscribers Salt!

The "Caught in the Hunt" quest which you can find in bravil is also a fun side quest.

The sidequests definitely were where the game shined. I bought it for 360 at release and didn't complete the main questline. To this day I have only had a few characters that bothered to save Kvatch (if you can still call it saving at that point). I didn't like the pesky gates popping up everywhere and I didn't like the NPCs praising my name over it repeatedly. Oblivion was well suited to players who just wanted to exist in that world as a normal person. Dialogue was a bit sketchy. A small number of voice actors were stretched to their limits. And you mostly only spoke in single words; two words if you were lucky. While it was a massive simplification of Morrowind's system it still left plenty of room for player to imagine their characters motivations for themselves. None of this business about fulfilling a prophecy because of your blood (Skyrim), nor being forced to look for your father (Fallout 3) or son (Fallout 4). In this regard it feels like Bethesda has exchanged player agency for a reliance on safe, Hollywood-esque values. To this day Shivering Isles is still perhaps my single favourite DLC. It was amazing to see something so different within the same continuity made on such a large scale. On my first run I played a character who upheld the typical principles of a paladin except in the Shivering Isles the air itself would enable him to make decisions that no sane person would. And the game made no attempt to debunk this bit of head-canon that I made up for myself. That's how you make a story feel accommodating. Though taking a step back I did feel like the sidequests had one major drawback and that was the levelled rewards. If you managed to acquire a unique piece of equipment early in the game, you would permanently block yourself from getting its best possible version within that run. This was just one of a number of things that made starting a new character burdensome. Others included the immediate grinding of endurance due to its non-retroactive health benefits and the long af tutorial if you didn't have access to mods.

your videos are absolutely amazing. Thank you

Man, I love your content. You really crack me up, but I love your jaded, realistic take on things.

The fact that you made Oblivion girls to look attractive is quite impressive

People complained about spoilers? I don't want to sound snooty or anything but this game has been out for a long while! Unless the person complaining had the intention of playing the game for the first time I don't see why they would even watch that previous video. (No hate, I'm just sayin' it's a little silly) I remember playing this on my PS3 tho (-w- good times, I do miss it.

Another cool thing about the hackdirt quest is if you sleep in the Inn, you actually find Dar-Ma's diary and a ramshackled bedroom, where you learned she was kidnapped. When I played that part I was genuinely spooked, great bit of world building.

Dude, as soon as I saw that group of the Knights of Order, I thought, "How many times have I had to reload because I was either using Umbra or Dusk/Dawn Fang, and those bastards disarmed me, on a hill, WITH TALL ASS GRASS EVERYWHERE." I was so glad to see you mention that. I certainly enjoyed those crystal things more than the Oblivion gates, but they really should have toned down those things' ability to disarm you. Great vid man! Keep up the good work!

The Hackdirt quest when referring to the "deep ones" is supposed to be the Sload. A slug like telepathic species that is constantly at war with the other races of Tamriel, trying to infiltrate and get a foothold. It is some deep lore stuff that should have been explored deeper. It was a wasted chance IMO.

Clavicus Vile has a great quest. its for the Umbra sword. Normally you'd have to wait til level 20 to do it, but you don't have to. you can go to fight Umbra whenever you want, and until you finish the quest you have a weightless soul trapping ebony sword. And really, there's no reason to ever finish the quest since your reward is the sword but it weighs a lot. I actually managed to do this at level 1. if you can pull it off, defeating Umbra with that sword and wearing a full set of ebony armor, at level 1... you're set.Its not easy to do. I attacked her then ran like hell, swam across the lake to the imperial city, and hopped up on roofs at the waterfront area, letting guards fight her for me. I think she took out 20+ of them. And nowhere on the roof is actually safe. she can't climb but can reach you, so you have to keep moving. It probably took an hour XD

I played through oblivion numerous timed since it came out and never even new about The Unexpected Voyage until about a week ago. It was an awesome surprise.

Keep these videos coming. Something about the way you break down games is very interesting.

Did everyone just, forget that Knights of The Nine exists? It's The first DLC for Oblivion

The editing in this video was just on point. I admire the effort you put into it... UwU

Watched this while playing Mount and blade Wordsword, Great Vid, keep it up. :)

this is 100% what i was looking for after your oblivion video!

I love your humor man. Lols for sure.

This video was really well made and I appreciated it a lot but the mod you installed for their faces makes everyone look like a character from Shrek... I mean that Argonian at 6:56 looks like she was pulled directly form the Dragon in Shrek and plastered onto her.

29:39 - Putting that face in like drawing it was NONSENSE AAAA❤

I started playing TES IV for the first time in 2020 (I'd never played the other Elder Scrolls games, but had completed Fallout 3 & started New Vegas). There's moments when it is a great game, lots of letdowns and plenty of clunkiness. Your criticisms reveal just how much potential this game had to be the GOAT. Still, it's good enough that I've sunk over 200 hours into it and have yet to complete the main quest, let alone the DLC. Your videos heighten the experience and I'm super glad I found them. Thanks, Salt!

These daedric quests were always a favorite. Skyrim may look prettier and have better combat but oblivion has the best storied sidequests hands down... I don't even mind the fetch quests

Shivering Isles is the best modern Bethesda expansion released. None of the Skyrim of FO4 DLC/Expansions even come remotely close. Its sad.

The side quest where you jump into the painting blew my mind back in the day.

On my Xbox, I found that spot where you’re looking for the “Draconian Madstone” is also where I randomly found an unmentioned ring called the “Circlet of Omnipotence.” It adds a Fortify +3 to: Agility, Endurance, Speed, Strength, and Willpower.

Wow, a mod that actually makes the female NPCs look 50% attractive.

I love oblivion so much I just can’t deal with the combat. Either everything dies in one hit or you have to bonk it a thousands times so you end up fiddling with the difficulty. So basically you are deciding exactly how many times you want to hit each enemy. There’s really no way around it. One of my favorite games of all time is now unplayable

"Ye Ole Lightning cage" made me crack up. Dude you are hilarious.

It’s 2021 and I’m still baffled by how you find the perfect random clips of music for every situation

20:52 is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, also is that octodad when she yells in pain?

2:13 I knew you were going to make that joke lmao

Had no idea about the boat quest, thanks for the information!

Great stuff man keep going

"I guess I resemble his dead son even more now" >_>;

4:19 ah yes, I remember my first K Hole as well

Thanks for a good review, Shivering Isles, I'll definetely try to play that DLC. I have both Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles installed since 2006, but I never activated them and tried to play them. 14:15 The quest where you let it "rain dogs" in the village of cats (Khajits) is short but quite funny.

Hands down my favourite game. The nostalgia is strong with this one

Doing destruction and conjuration magic really makes the combat more bearable

I always thought Oblivion had a more fun, cheeky quality that I quite liked ... & Skyrim was a more serious game? Thoughts??

I don't usually make comments on RU-vid, but wanted to speak up and tell you why I personally enjoyed the previous Oblivion video. I thought it was very well done, while being both funny and informative. I usually don't watch videos that long, but I found your commentary to be really interesting. I've watched a few of your other videos, but they don't strike me with the same kind of interest. I think that your retrospective reviewing of games is very entertaining and well done, and would love to see similar content in the future. Hell, even if you reviewed current games, I'd still watch the hell out of it. You do good work, and I just wanted to let you know. :D

When you throw cheese on the floor sheo hops up from his chair and runs over to it all excited and screams cheese and laughs .... Easily the best thing in my heart. Also the knights quest line giving you a castle is pretty great but you covered pretty fairly

"A roving pack of Regice" Lmao

Felldew: What will _you_ do?

I find myself spending more time in the Shivering Isles than in Cyrodiil. There's nothing better than roaming Mania, admiring the Mushroom Trees and the spore swarms.

There's a spectacular side quest where you sell an Alyeid Statue, and a rich guy sends you a letter that he wants you to help him collect the rest. There's no quest markers; it's more of a treasure hunt/puzzle, to find all of them, but when you do, I think you get around 10,000 gold from the whole ordeal. There's a few interesting things that happens during this quest, and eventually ends up with a rather surprising ending.