Oblivion:Gold Farming

Throughout the process of getting to 100% Completion, we need Gold very frequently and in large quantities, so it is very important to optimize Gold farming as much as possible.

Overview

The mechanics of acquiring gold are very simple. There are only a few ways to obtain gold in the game:

• Selling items
• Quest rewards
• Pickpocketing NPCs
• Looting containers/enemies
• Duping Gold (via the Gold Dropping Glitch)

There are three main aspects of optimizing Gold farming:

1. Since Gold is required constantly throughout the run, the goal is to find a farming method that can be performed as early as possible.
2. We also need to minimize the Gold cost of acquiring the items/spells needed for the setup.
3. Additionally, the amount of Gold being farmed needs to be minimized.

Previous Methods

Version 1 and 2

In Version 1 and 2, we optimized the process of selling items. This setup required the Spelldrinker Amulet quest reward from Ulterior Motives, a spell to fortify Mercantile to 75 (which was custom made in the Arcane University), and scrolls for duplicating the amulet. The setup was to use the spell to be able to invest in Palonirya, giving her a gold limit per transaction of 1700 Gold, the highest you can achieve early in the game. Next, scrolls were used to duplicate the Spelldrinker Amulet, which has a value of 3650 Gold. Finally, the amulets were sold one at a time for 1700 Gold each until we reached 847,000 Gold, a value that was estimated by adding up the cost of horses, houses, investing, and adding a buffer amount.

This method was extremely tedious since it required several manual mouse inputs per transaction, including manipulating the item stack slider. The process took about 20 minutes to complete.

Fiscal Responsibility

Our initial farming strategy had a very rough approximation of how much Gold was needed. A glaring issue with this approximation was that it didn't account for how much Gold we earned throughout the run, making the final total much higher than necessary. For Version 3, we created the Fiscal Responsibility Chart, which tracks every single transaction in the run. In cases where an amount of Gold given/taken was random, the worst case was always assumed. A small buffer amount of Gold was added to the final total to account for random events like getting arrested.

With this chart, we learned that the original Gold estimate of 847,000 was significantly higher than it needed to be. The chart shows that with only 425,000 Gold we can easily afford all purchases as they occur with some extra Gold to spare. It is worth noting that for each revision of the route, this chart will need to be recalculated.

Dorian Glitch

Using the Negative Inventory Glitch, the NPC Dorian can be infinitely pickpocketed for Gold as long as he is paralyzed and has a large enough stack of Gold. This glitch was first implemented in Version 3, and requires several things:

1. The Mage's Staff of Paralysis from the A Mage's Staff quest.
   • In Version 4, the Poison of Paralysis on the 3rd floor of the Anvil Mages Guild appears to be a more optimal solution for paralyzing Dorian.
2. A custom Command Humanoid (On Touch, 4 magnitude, 0 area, 1 second) spell, which requires Arcane University access.
3. At least 1,000 Gold for bribing Dorian.

This setup requires you to inflate Dorian's Gold by giving it to him repeatedly via bribes. The process is to drain his disposition to 0 instantly by using the custom Command Humanoid spell and then bribe him back up to max disposition repeatedly. The amount of Gold you bribe him each time goes into his inventory, increasing the amount of Gold you will get per click when you pickpocket him. Currently 1,000 Gold is the amount we inflate his Gold up to. After reaching that point, the glitch can be set up by paralyzing Dorian and immediately pickpocketing him. This allows you to click the Gold in his inventory repeatedly, getting 1,000 Gold per click each time. If you timed the pickpocket correctly, you will get no bounty for the theft, and only have to pay a 40 Gold fine for assault. This strategy in combination with the new Fiscal Responsibility data is significantly faster than the previous method, taking only about 2-3 minutes compared to the amulet method's 20+ minutes.

Potential Improvements

For Version 4, a few improvements are being tested for the Dorian Glitch. The Paralysis effect is more easily obtained by using the Poison of Paralysis on the 3rd floor of the Anvil Mages Guild along with a dagger.

In addition to this, the actual mechanics are being improved slightly. Since the disposition draining phase is already instant, the focus is to improve the bribing phase. By adding a Drain Speechcraft on Self and Fortify Speechcraft on Touch effect to the Command Humanoid spell, we can get more bribes per disposition drain cycle. We have also mathematically proven that it is fastest to have an even ratio of gold bribing time to gold farming time, as opposed to the semi-arbitrary value of 1,000 bribed Gold used in V3.