Can you beat Oblivion without gaining any experience? 

"Martin, we have to save the Empire!" "What are your skills?" "Literally? Nothing. At all." "...you mean-" "Not a fucking thing, man."

"I’m going to get up in a minute and walk out of here. That guy in the corner behind me will follow me. You follow him. I will follow you. Remember, I’ve trained for this kind of follow thing my whole life!"

I remember playing Oblivion for the first time. Completely glossing over the "sleep to level" up thing. Went through the entire game wondering why my character level never went up. Slept, gained a dozen or more levels, and had quite the whiplash as the random scamps turned into Minotaurs.

You cheated, bud. By playing this game, you gained experience. The experience of gaming, that is. As such, I cannot accept this run in good faith.

The idea of Steven Seagall making a deal with Clavicus Vile certainly explains his acting career.

I really liked when he visited Desktop for the 35th time. Thank you Todd, very cool.

only a gamer could appreciate that clanfears are the phlog pyros of oblivion

Reading the title, i thought you were going to mod out the ability to gain exp. This was infinitely more convoluted and entertaining

Vampirism in Oblivion is never the right choice, JBN. Never. Except when it is.

"The next stop is.... the desktop." Goddamn that was good :D

Fun fact: holding your weapon out lowers everyone's disposition when you talk to them.

Gonna be honest, I'm very tired and about to go to bed but when I saw this video, I thought the viewer count said "2B views" as in 2 billion and I just thought "Wow!!! Glad to see you're finally getting close to the recognition you deserve!" I figured out a few seconds later that it was "28 views" but we can dream I suppose

30:38 One day my dad decided I wasn't getting enough exercise, so he tricked me into going to the park with him to visit the RC airfield in hopes of seeing a crash. Eventually I noticed he left without me this time (usually only took a few minutes of not seeing a crash for him to get bored and want to leave), so I started walking back home. On my way I watched a fluffy, wooly caterpillar cross the road. Almost got run over a few times, and once I thought for sure the poor guy biffed it because it stopped moving for an entire minute after a SUV passed. But nope; took almost half an hour, but our hero managed to crawl all 20 feet to the other side. I decided to celebrate its victory with a 2lb hot pocket and 80oz mountain dew. God bless pre-"Supersize Me" America. That caterpillar is long dead, I am the only person who ever took notice of its struggles in life, and I don't even know for sure if it grew into a butterfly or was promptly eaten by a squirrel who was run over ten minutes later in a tragic waste of two lives. But it was a beautiful moment to bear witness to, one that I will treasure and fondly remember from time to time. I'm sure someone who thinks gooder than me can find some profound lesson in the caterpillar's quest to cross the road beyond the obvious platitudes about determination. Or someone with a melancholic outlook will find some lesson in futility, who knows. All I know is a bug crossed a road and for a moment; someone cared.

You can get another free horse by talking to Prior Mabel at Weynon Priory after giving Jaufree the amulet

That sewer level was used as a demo to show off things such as physics and lighting for the game. Which is why there are strangely placed traps in it

That NPC's "Hello there!" After you had to struggle against the sun to get to his house. That got me good 😂

The way I see it, as in real life, books can give you knowledge of how to do something, but to gain experience you really gotta DO the thing. So realistically, no XP was gained. Run valid.

"thank you Martin for opening this DOOR" I love how this still pisses you off

Oh this is just what I needed rn. Thank you for constantly uploading such comforting content

One of my favorite obscure spell tricks in Oblivion was water walking for X amount of time on Target. Then I'd cast it on my horse and ride across water. It was rarely useful but it looked really cool, so I enjoyed it. Bonus fact: Ruma Camoran is oddly named, as ruma means "ugly" in finnish. Go figure.

There's exactly one use for the spell tomes dlc. It has certain exclusive effects, like fortify skill

Fun fact: The whole "priests not being allowed to shed blood" thing had major implications for how the medical profession developed in the middle ages. Basically, what happened was that you got two different types of medical professionals. Doctors and Surgeons. Doctors studied medicine at the universities, but because early universities were religious institutions, studying medicine meant becoming a cleric and therefore taking a vow to not spill blood. Thus, a doctor could only treat his patients by administering medication and giving recommendations on how a patient should live, what they should eat, etc. Surgeons on the other hand weren't part of academia at all and just learned their skills through an apprenticeship. They technically started out as barbers, presumably because that job already involved treating people with a sharp blade, though you would sometimes also have other people such as executioners and nurses offering surgical services. Surgeons would operate on patients but weren't allowed to prescribe medication. So you've got this interesting situation where depending on what ailed you, you'd seek the services of two completely separate fields. If you caught a disease, you'd call for a doctor, but if you suffered an injury, you'd ask for a surgeon. A doctor might also end up prescribing a bloodletting session (based on their study of Galens teachings of the four humors) which you might then have to visit a surgeon for, because the doctor wasn't allowed to touch the red icky stuff.

Fun fact - the Conjurer is a bit of a meme in the Oblivion community, especially with hardcore mods that turn him into a raid boss, so from the moment you start the game, you'll be racing against the clock to gain enough power and cheese to take him down when he inevitably finds you, or manage to give him the slip 😂

God this must have been torture to play. I found out recently through another Oblivion video that you can skip Sancre Tor by having enough healing magic/potions and a staff or spell to blast the armor you need off the pedestal and close enough to you to pick up.

I always love finding a channel that I can confidently hit the like button on before I've even watched the video.

HE NEVER LEARNED A DAY IN HIS LIFEEE

23:43 " _Egg salad_ "

horse riding is a weird combination of consoling a large dog and athleticism in my experience

Oh! Theres a trick to oblivion lockpicking. There are several different animations the game will cycle through. The one that lets you (somewhat) consistently get through is always the one right after the fastest animation.

Mr. Bean speedrun: bumps into the main quest, accidentally kills enemies, keeps gesticulating wherever he goes

"How many videogame horses don't operate like cars anyway?" One. One horse. Agro will not listen to Wander's steering attempts, you must go where the horse desires.

Fun fact, Clavicus vile is voiced by Todd Howard

Four random levels be damned, this was remarkably impressive.

"oh that's a neat idea. Oh wait. That's going to be a pain. A whole lotta pain"

My god, Oblivion is beautiful. Amazing. It just works

34:28 Wow, that scamp has some moves. Crazy what the development team of this game focused on, no matter how sick.

Man... I replayed Oblivion literally just last year, around this time, and watching this video is already making me want to do it all over again. All it took was the music kicking in at 5:45 and immediately my braincells started firing lmao EDIT: Aaaand immediately you have your first crash a few minutes after that. God, that's a mood and a half - I think a lot of people might underestimate just how disruptive the crashing really is. Anyway, super-interesting run! The idea of trying to literally never gain EXP is a really neat choice for a game like TES, and because of how wonky Oblivion's level-scaling is, I think the challenge works a lot better this way (compared to, like, getting a no-EXP mod or something like that).

12:26 The little "Oh, hello" really killed me, idk why xD

I love that paralysing animation, gotta play the game again just because of it

35:55 Oh hey Todd, didn't expect to hear you here.

Thank you, Martin, for opening this *DOOR* ^_^

Get super jazzed every time I see one of your videos pop up, haven't finished video yet, but love it!

This is honestly one of your best videos, homie. Great work all around.

man, i just gotta say, this channel was an absolute GEM to find, the mixture of childhood nostalgia games with the modern challenge video format is just PERFECT!

11:52 I love the Morrowind Reference there. Lol, Your Rest has been Interrupted *Dagger Rasps from Sheath* "You N'Wah!"

been watching elder scrolls challenges lately and the one thing they all got in common is the crashing, be it oblivion or skyrim, moddem or modless.

man i appreciate the captions sm

I love your personality, humor, and creativity! Like many others in my life, you have inspired me to think ahead of the curve and in ways to utilize the fullest potential of Morrowind/Oblivion.

That Vin Diesel/Vindasel joke got me to subscribe. It hit me the exact right way that I couldn't breath I was laughing so hard.

Btw, it maybe because of the patch or something, but when I played Oblivion as a kid, Martin only cared about whether the gates are closed or not. Even though his dialogue sounds like he wants us to expell daedra from the city, he would always go with meto Jauffrey as soon as the gates were closed. The keep quest is a side, when I played the first time as a kid, I even missed it.

Im so excited to see another Oblivion video, I hope you do more oblivion! There's such a charm about the game

"This is how I will feel at the end" lol best funny looking character I've seen

I was expecting a kenshi video, but was not disappointed when I saw the oblivion title

I absolutely love your sense of humour. This video in particular had me laughing the whole time.

the pet vampire line got a genuine lol outta me, great video

27:40 made me laugh. that zoom in on the "oblivion has stopped working" got me good.

Poor Baurus catching pot shots all run lol

Why do I feel like the Oblivion gates are the perfect moment for a classic Dark Souls edge drop.

Man, I always love when you upload. Thanks for the entertainment.

Spell Tomes also added some new cool spells so it isnt completly useless One even lets you conjour a bear

I hope you never run out of wild ideas to bring to video form. Fantastic entertaiment ❤

Nice to see this video gain 3k views since I opened it, this channel's challenge runs puts it at the top of my favourite content creators right now. This level of perseverance is insane to me, and as someone who grew up playing all these games it's wild seeing the self-imposed restrictions people endure for entertainment

The "I'm about to zero-sum" bit absolutely sent me lmao

That wet paint joke at 12:14 should not have gotten me as good as it did

Perfect timing, I just got done cooking.

Dang, one of the more challenging runs just by how much of the core design of the game has to be worked around in order to beat the challenge, well done!

Mehrunes' packing some serious heat. It's at least 12 feet long.

While working I need Just Background Noise to listen to. I was searching a bit and saw this video in the recommends. Your puns are delectable, your way of speech and voice is pleasant to listen to. It was a pleasure listening to this video, and I'm going to go on to watch/listen more! Thank you for your work!

I have hundreds of hours in Oblivion and I never knew about the Order of the Virtuous Blood quest. Neat. Also, if you ever do another Oblivion run, you may want to consider the Lord Star if you don't know what you want. The heal power it gives is kinda crazy.

i swear to god, ur vids help me sleep, i really use ur videos as background noise at night, then rewatch it by day

Random Korend Underground music in the middle of the video. Love it.

Re: Spell Tomes, largely they were added because there is no easy way to move Upward through spell schools that isn't Just Buying New Spells(which was often quite pricy) or Crafting(which is pricy AND investment heavy), since unlike gear, enemies prior did not drop learnable spells, aside from that, they have some unique spell-effects you couldn't find in shops prior(no wholesale new effect types though iirc, so spellcraft didn't get any winners), and a numerous supply of new spells that are just like, mid-stages between the really abrupt jumps the base game spells MP costs, or some more unique combinations of effects (they're DLC for ostensibly REALLY STUPID REASONS, blame Microsoft's update policy at the time apparently)

"We return to the Priory with Martin" How hard could it be--oh. Oh I can't say it either.

"What school did you study?" "Chiropractic." "I meant magic." "I did too!" 😂😂😂

Zombies are actually weakness to lightning, not fire. Common misconception.

Reading a skill book isn't gaining experience, it's gaining a level.

Here's what I say when it comes to challenge runs. If something comes up and it's required to progress the game but it goes against the rules then it is an exception to those rules. Reading the Commentaries is an example of this. Another example of this is unlocking a spell in Fable 2 in a run where you cannot level up anything. You need to use a spell on the cullis gate in order to get out of the guild cave as I am not sure if you can fast travel right off the bat. Also! There is a whole section of the Imperial City sewers that is full of Vampires. Bloodworks.

The sheer thinking and planning is impressive and definitely why I keep up with these challenges. Bonkers man

Half AFK in runescape listening to this video when catacombs of kourend started to play really through me for a loop.

30:08 eloquent and thoughtful way to say 'touch grass'

18:14 ive watched this twice and i only just got that joke, its really good.

the power lunge definitely seems to be quicker than walking

Looking forward to the adventure of this sad, Habsburg-esque Nord. Edit: Ea-nasir!

I think that the important takeaway here is that if you want to be a vampire, complete the main quest first.

Only at 15:44 rn but if anyone wants to curse themselves with this run, there’s stones like tower stones that are permanent. Some fortify skills, but some fortify health, stamina, and stats.

With that guy in the cage at the top of the tower, there should be a lever around on the floor that opens the bottom. Usually there's no floor directly beneath, so whoever's in there falls all the way to the bottom.

6:46 The game of Oblivion is an unstable realm. Save often!

"What school do you study?" and then "Chiropractic" killed me

I love the wonky hitboxes not being properly tied to the models (mainly with the knock back attack/knocked down). Since you don't need to hit NPC and creature's models. Just aiming at the hitboxes will do the trick. Which you don't see it in Skyrim.

I really like the addition of the FFX tracks in the background while showing footage, id recommend upping it just a lil bit or upping it when just showing footage with no audio then lowering during dialogue

That run looked painful, thank you for your sacrifice so that we may be entertained.

i loved the contempt in your voice when calling the portal a door

12:00 The Spell tomes are actually kind of nice. They give you a way to get spells through simply doing dungeons, allowing you to get new "gear" like the other "classes". Additionally the DLC allows natural access to some spell effects that originally weren't obtainable (I believe Summon Bear is one of them), or were only obtainable through a power (like Fortify Skill). A lot of the spells from the tomes are also rather effective/efficient for their level (example: Choking Grasp is a novice spell that Drains Health by 35pts for 3 seconds on touch with a base cost of 25, this is essentially an instant win button at early levels), along with allowing some spell's at earlier skill levels (example: Blink is a novice spell that grants you 5 seconds of Invisibility with a 20 cost). Now sure, you could just rush the Arcane University questline, but Spell Tomes are nice for those who don't want to do that for whatever reason. Edit: There's a slight argument that could be made on whether or not reading a skill book should count as experience. Technically they don't give their corresponding skill any experience, but instead simply set the skill as being one level higher, and so long as they aren't a major skill, they won't count as experience for progressing towards a level up.

It's crazy that there weren't any safety saves before the books were read to redo

"Drawing from real life lore, history as its called" 💀💀

Yayyy more JBN Oblivion!

32:15 it's funny because chiropractice is essentially quasi-esoteric woogly boogly mixed with a bit of common sense.

36:00 Fun fact, Clavicus Vile is voiced by none other than Todd Howard himself here.

Great video in my time of need! Watching this while my sinuses explode

I don't think I can fall asleep to Oblivion.