Oblivion:Combat
Combat is the part of the route logic that focuses on optimizing all instances of combat between the player and other NPCs/creatures to be as short as possible in the event that they cannot be avoided through other means, such as sequence breaks during quests.
Overview
Despite playing on the easiest difficulty, combat can still be annoying due to enemy aggro preventing fast travel, and nearby enemies preventing the player from waiting. There are a vast number of instances of combat throughout the various quests, making it a constant problem that wastes time while achieving other objectives. Keep in mind that combat is not limited to just enemies that attack the player, but also enemies that need to be killed to advance quest logic quickly, such as the Master Trainers. In any combat situation, there are several options to consider, ordered by priority:
- Route around the combat situation entirely in the first place.
- Use 100% Chameleon to prevent drawing enemy aggro or de-aggro enemies.
- Load Warp out of a combat situation to despawn enemies.
- Load Warping to the Kvatch Chapel and entering it will run a script that de-aggros enemies.
- Despawn the enemies via QSQL De-Aggro if applicable.
- Kill the enemies with a weapon.
- Within this, there are the parameters of weapon attack speed, weapon damage, and weapon repair/recharge.
Combat also technically includes the consideration of avoiding enemy damage, but there are essentially no situations in the route anymore where we can die easily in combat.
Previous Methods
Version 1 and 2
In Version 1 and 2, we had to manually farm Combat skills anyway for the Skill Grind, so we wore a set of Light Armor from the Tutorial and used a Silver Dagger from the Bravil Mages Guild throughout the run, killing enemies in almost every possible combat situation. The Silver Dagger was chosen since it could attack ghosts (making every enemy in the game killable with a single weapon), it had a faster attack speed compared to other weapons, and it did low damage to get more hits per enemy for the sake of skill farming. In the event that the dagger broke, duped repair hammers were used to repair it, farming Armorer slightly in the process. Animation Cancelling was used to speed up the attack rate.
Version 3
Version 3 introduced a significant improvement to combat with the implementation of Apotheosis, a staff that deals 99 points of mixed elemental damage (and kills any type of enemy since it is magic). This staff is easily purchased from the Market District at Rindir's Staffs. On the easiest difficulty setting, this weapon can kill almost any enemy in the game in a single hit, and it can attack from long distances unlike the dagger. Apotheosis has a lightning animation, which is the fastest magic projectile in the game. Instead of needing to be repaired, Apotheosis needs to be recharged, so a duped stack of Filled Grand Soul Gems from the Arcane University lobby were used to recharge it whenever it ran out. The vast majority of combat situations became trivial since the Skill Grind no longer required combat skills to be farmed anyway. At this point, tech relating to Load Warping and 100% Chameleon was not implemented yet, meaning that Combat situations still had to almost always be resolved by killing enemies.
Current Method
Version 4 has introduced several new improvements, including not needing to recharge Apotheosis with soul gems, as well as using 100% Chameleon to avoid the vast majority of combat situations.
At the beginning of the run, Apotheosis is purchased from Rindir's Staffs in the Market District, and then duped to make a stack of two. This stack is then hotkeyed prior to equipping the staff. This sets up the Stack Refresh glitch, allowing the player to recharge Apotheosis in the middle of combat by using the hotkey to unequip and reequip it. This method of recharging doesn't even require entering any menus, allowing the flow of combat to be uninterrupted. Apotheosis does 99 points of mixed elemental damage, allowing it to kill virtually every enemy in the run in a single hit. This, combined with Apotheosis having the fast lightning projectile and the instant recharging, makes for an extremely efficient weapon in any forced combat situation. The one problem is that the Stack Refresh glitch occasionally has a bug where the stack needs to be duplicated again, but this only wastes a handful of seconds total throughout the run.
100% Chameleon has now been implemented via Perma Enchants. 80% Chameleon is Perma Enchanted, with the last 20% being applied to a ring that can be toggled with a hotkey. This is because 100% Chameleon prevents a handful of quests from being able to be completed. 100% Chameleon makes almost every enemy in the game ignore the player, allowing them to freely fast travel away from areas with enemies. On top of this, Load Warping can be used to teleport out of combat as well, although this is susceptible to a bug where the game constantly thinks the player is in combat and cannot fast travel. This can be fixed by Load Warping to Kvatch Chapel and entering the main door, which runs a script that de-aggros all enemies. QSQL De-Aggro is also used in the route, although it has become uncommon due to how player pathing works with Load Warping.
Potential Improvements
There are very few conceivable ways that combat could improved at this point. Spell Stacking in certain situations could be used to deal massive AOE damage to enemies, but ultimately the setup time would likely outweigh the slight decrease in combat time. AOE also introduces problems in situations where there are NPCs nearby that you don't want to kill. Most concepts for improving combat would sacrifice the low upkeep of Apotheosis, which makes it a much more consistent and user-friendly weapon.