All must bow before the Master of the Fighters Guild

Well, of the remaining quests to complete to the Fighters Guild, three more involved going into a cave and killing [plural noun]. The final ones actually broke form, but even with that said, they weren’t that exciting, despite being concerned with taking down the Blackwood Company and destroying a crazy drug-producing tree. It was still go here, kill these people, report back what happens, accept next quest. Very disconnected and disappointing, but I’m glad to have to at least fully completed a guild questline–other than the easy-peasy Arena one–so here, look at my shiny rewards:

Champion, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Champion rank in the Fighters Guild

Master, Fighters Guild (50G): Completed the Fighters Guild Questline

The final quest involves you taking down the Blackwood Company, a group of no-gooders that have popped up a few other times during your growing career in the Fighters Guild. Instead of going to a cave to murder them all, you go to their base of operations in Leyawiin…and murder them all. Molly summoned a lot of skeletons to distract them and then plucked them down systematically with her bow and arrows. Nothing terribly hard. In the basement, she found a tree surrounded by cogs and wheels and other crazy-looking mechanisms. Every time you click on it, nothing happens. You are tasked with destroying the pumps powering the chaotic thing; I loosed some arrows and fire spells into it, but nothing seemed to be working. Then I noticed some boards on the ground, which fit perfectly in the spinning wheels, breaking them fast and setting the whole place on fire. Upon returning to mean ol’ Vilena Donton and telling her all about Molly’s good deeds, she bestowed upon her the grandest of grand titles, the Master of the Fighters Guild. After that…um, nothing. There’s no confetti or party in the basement, no roasted rat meat and seasoned cheese wedges, no cheering and clapping, no anything. Hollow from beginning to end.

For this marathon run, I stayed focused. I picked up very little loot, unless it was lightweight or simply gold or more arrows for my enchanted bow of numbing, and that was a little hard for me at first. I am, by nature, a lootwhore. I like taking everything, whether I plan to use it or not. I mean, in my mind, there’s always the possibility that X might come in handy or that I could always just sell Y at a later point, but this then leads to spending a lot of time on inventory management. My goal was to see every quest completed, and so there was little time for fidgeting. Bad enough all the loading from fast traveling to and from constantly, from cave to city, city to city, city to cave.

And that’s mostly that for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. From what I’ve gathered, the most exciting guild questline in the game is that of the Dark Brotherhood’s, but I chose poorly, going with Fighters Guild and am now out of time. Tonight, I am going to be devouring The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in big-eyed fashion, and while there’s no Fighters Guild in this new snowy realm, there is another guild similar to them. The Warriors? I dunno. I think though for my first playthrough I’m going to work on getting into the Thieves guild and going from there.

Molly the Master, out!

Too many caves for the Fighters Guild to count

Molly’s been working like a mule as of late in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, increasing two more ranks in the Fighters Guild. See here, non-believers:

Warder, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Warder rank in the Fighters Guild

Guardian, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Guardian rank in the Fighters Guild

Ping and ping. That’s all well and good, but to be honest, these last few quests have been a grind. An extremely bland one, too. All involved going to some cave marked on the map and exploring it, whether to find out what happened to so-and-so, escort so-and-so safely through, or simply murder a bunch of so-and-sos/escaped prisoners. In fact, the majority of quests for the Fighters Guild so far have been of this ilk, with the only ones standing uniquely being “A Rat Problem,” “The Unfortunate Shopkeeper,” and “Drunk and Disorderly.” Otherwise, it’s been this on repeat: tip-toe through a really dark cave that looks just like every other cave in the game, spam the heck out of Nighteye and Minor Life Detection spells in hopes of seeing something, and save frequently to avoid losing progress to quick deaths from unseeable tripwires and pressure plates. Not overly exciting stuff, and it doesn’t help that I’m sitting in a freezing cold living room, crawling through digital caves that look just as cold, if not colder.

But up two ranks means that I’m almost done with the Fighters Guild, right? Well, no, not exactly. The endgame of the latest quest got problematic. Seems like the mother of Viranus Donton, found dead in a cave, was not happy with the mission’s outcome. Did I also mention she’s Master of the Fighters Guild in Cyrodiil? Yup. So, she threw in the towel, firmly, firing Modryn Oreyn for his lack of winning. Molly was also reprimanded and demoted down to the rank of Defender. So, it’s more like, up two ranks, down two ranks. I gotta make good and climb back up the corporate ladder for the Champion and Master ranks, which means more cave quests. I think I will just grin and bear it though as I’d love to complete at least one whole guild before The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim arrives. Once that game comes out, I’ll probably forget all about its predecessor–the same thing happened with Fallout 3 once Fallout: New Vegas reared its shinier head.

I’ve already joked with Tara that I’ll basically stop playing Skyrim the way it’s meant to be played when I get my first cave quest. I’m sure my character will be content to just spend the remainder of his/her days in a safe, well-lit town, decorating his house and chatting with locals. Maybe he’ll start a spoon collection. Or just make potions and fancy foods, sunrise to sunset. Who knows. The realm is my oyster. It’s gonna basically be Animal Crossing: Wild Skyrim, and that’s fine. Unless, I dunno, the caves got a whole lot better in the fifth game or my bad eyes are perfected magically overnight. Let’s hope for both of those things, my fellow fantasy spelunkers. Let’s hope.

One-goal Molly wants to be Master of the Fighters Guild in Oblivion

A long ways back, like in April 2011, on that infamous day where everyone gets hiiiiigh, I talked about diving back into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and giving some it another go, this time trying to play a little differently, as well as finishing up all the major guild quests. Well, that plan quickly fizzled out as that was actually the last time I played the game until this very weekend. I think my gaming ADD hit me hard, and I was off on some other adventure, one that was probably immediately followed by another adventure. And so and so on. Such is the life of a gamer…

But then, as the world outside went snow crazy, I started Oblivion all over again, giving Hodor the heave-ho and creating a creepy looking Night Elf woman witchhunter with bleach blonde hair named…Molly. She focuses on a little bit of magic and a little bit of bow and arrow action. Not bad, truly, and I was able to rush through the majority of the opening quests for the Fighters Guild, finally breaking into new territory, advancing not once, but many, many times. Oh, just look:

Swordsman, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Swordsman rank in the Fighters Guild

Protector, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Protector rank in the Fighters Guild

Defender, Fighters Guild (10G): Reached Defender rank in the Fighters Guild

Good job, Molly. You’ll be Master of the Fighters Guild soon enough. Four more ranks to go. That is if the power comes back on and I don’t yet have The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to eat up. See, on Saturday, as an October snow unseen of before descended over New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the power kept flickering on and off. And yeah, I continued to game, or tried to at least. The last straw was the power shutting down as I was exploring a cave for the quest Azani Blackheart; I hadn’t saved since I entered the cave and did not feel like doing it all over again, at least not just then. So, we’ll continue to advance in rank some other time. I promise, Molly.

What is helping this playthrough versus the one I started with Hodor is that I’m no longer worrying about all the little things, such as picking up every bit of gear to sell, collecting a thousand and seven ingredients for alchemy purposes, and always trying to level up this skill or that in hopes of reaching the next level. All that matters is the quest at hand, and as long as Molly has some potions and plenty of arrows, we’re good to go. The quests themselves are not terribly difficult; the difficulty lies with–and this is inherent in all open-world games, I guess–the player’s determination and not getting distracted by Everything Else. With blinders on, one can get through the guilds pretty fast, I’m assuming. After Fighters, I think we’ll tackle the Mages Guild since Molly does have a knack for summoning skeletons.

This spurt of Oblivion playing is also a great reminder of what worked in that game from 2005 and what’s going to be ten times more fantastic in like twelve days. Every time I speak to someone and the camera zooms in on their fugly faces, Tara makes a noise. A mixture of a gasp and utter disgust. Especially for khajiit women. It’s the best.