Oblivion:Glitch Hunting

The PRCLive community has an ongoing project to hunt for new glitches through a variety of methods. While most glitches mentioned in this article are theorized to exist based on leads and/or video evidence, some glitches are being researched due to the significant impact they would have on the 100% speedrun regardless of whether or not leads currently exist. Additionally, several glitches listed were already solved mechanically, but are being further optimized to discover new potential routing options for 100%.

Glitch Archaeology

The internet has a large quantity of Oblivion glitch videos/posts from decades ago. People within the community have been finding relatively obscure glitches/tech just by looking for old YouTube videos/forum posts. If you would like to hunt for glitches this way, you may just find something useful that was never noticed by the community at large. Message us on the Discord with your findings and we’ll attempt to recreate any found glitches and verify which versions of the game they work on.

Glitch Archaeology is not only about finding long-forgotten glitches. It is also about finding the earliest documented example of each known glitch to more thoroughly document the history of glitch hunting in the Oblivion community.

Unconfirmed/Pending

Glitch	Original Year	Archaeologist	Description
Bruma Gate Jail Glitch	2011	Fevus	You can close the Bruma Gate by going to jail to skip doing the actual quest.
Deer Glitch	2013	Fevus	A Missing Name item dropped by the player results in deer spawning. This could be the result of a Skull of Corruption item.
Horse Mount While Sitting	2013	theRealpoBBpC	The player is teleported to 0, 0, 0 when mounting a horse while seated.

Confirmed

Glitch	Original Year	Archaeologist	Version	Description
Selling Equipped Items	2014	theRealpoBBpC	v1.0 only	Selling an item you have equipped gives you the gold without losing the item. This glitch is also mentioned on the UESP.
TCL Glitch	2009	Fevus	v1.2	The player can walk through objects as if the TCL console command is active by fainting a horse while mounting it.
Lucien Duping	2013	dnayls	v1.2	Lucien's Lockpicks are glitched in the same way as Dorian's Gold. This strengthened our understanding of the Negative Inventory Glitch.

Havrd Escort Optimizations

Speedrunner Havrd created a crazy complicated setup for progressing through the escort section of the tutorial. His setup was slower than the regular method, resulting in it being largely forgotten, until we recently found a way to bring it much closer to the time the normal method takes. Here is a video showing how to perform it.

1. Set hard save with Adrenaline Rush cast for the first save clip in the prison cell.
2. Do the tutorial normally through goblin cave to end up at the door to escort.
3. Hard save at escort door.
4. Load warp the prison cell save so that you have AR, go in, quicksave at hole in wall.
5. Load escort door hard save, load warp through door.
6. Exit back through door, quicksave quickload
7. Go back into escort, flare mythic dawn, stand at base of stairs to pick class and do dialogue with uriel.
8. Wait for uriel to start walking, quicksave
9. Load escort door hard save, load warp through door
10. Exit back through door, quicksave quickload.
11. Run to save clip position to the left of the open door in escort, save clip
12. Void warp at base of stairs to trigger glenroy walking, go through door to finish escort.
13. Finish run as normal.

The general revelation here is that NPCs in the tutorial can be manipulated to move around by leaving areas where they are running scripted events, unloading the cell by quicksaving and quickloading, then reloading the cell to skip their events.

• Given that we are stuck in “tutorial mode” using the Class Reset Glitch, are there other long scripted events in other quests that we can skip with similar methods? Will this tech work even if we aren’t in “tutorial mode”?
• Is there a way to improve the tutorial even further, especially by skipping dialogue or finding a better save clip?

Testing Hall Access

There is a test room (which you can visit using the console command coc testinghall) which contains essentially every item in the game in addition to tons of debug functions. Getting into this area would completely break several objectives for 100%, especially Skill Books Read. Is there any way to access this room?

Leads

• This post claims to have specific coords for the testinghall (“change your location to: 3DB92, Y:1932.375000000, X: 1823.990000000 Z: 7162.773000000”)
• This UESP discussion ends with someone claiming to be traveling towards the same coordinates the other post mentioned, but in a TestEndGame cell that is found by climbing out of Anvil Castle. We should visit this cell/location and see what the deal is.
• The Frostcrag Spire Glitch allows players to get into a similar test area by uninstalling DLC. Is there a “legal” way to achieve this? Possibly with Load Warping?

Super Perma Key/Perma Key-like Effects

The Perma Key Glitch allows you to set a flag for having successfully unlocked a door with a key, and keep that flag set so that all other doors will now open even if you don’t have the key. The interesting thing about this glitch is it universally activates across all save files for the current instance of the game, so the only way to disable it is to close it:

1. Open any door with a valid key so that the popup appears confirming the key was used.
2. Before closing the popup, load any other save.
3. The glitch is now active on all save files until you close the game.

The glitch only works on doors with a valid key somewhere in the game, meaning that scripted doors do not work. The Super Perma Key Glitch would be a system that lets us enter locked scripted doors in addition to regular doors. This would have massive implications not just in 100%, but in every category:

• You could skip the entire tutorial with only a few save clips.
• The main quest (and many other questlines) could be massively sequence broken since you could now gain access to dungeons that are scripted to open once a specific quest starts.

Additionally, it is very interesting that this glitch is universal across save files, since it implies a global flag was set permanently due to a fault in the game engine.

• Are there any other global flags that can be permanently set by simply loading a save to interrupt the process of resetting the flag? Or through other means?
• The perma key effect was tried on chests, and the result was that the game no longer let the player open any chests until they closed the game. There could be another way to do this, which would possibly allow for sequence breaking several quests.

Ancestor Moths Well Clip

During the Turning a Blind Eye quest, when you exit the dungeon it spawns you on the well outside. It turns out, there is actually a hidden door underneath the well that could be used to skip having to go through the entire dungeon, effectively skipping the entire quest. Is there a way to get into this well?

• Finding a clip that will work for this will likely result in us discovering new tech about clipping through outdoor terrain, something which has never been done before.
  • The core issue is that all current methods of clipping such as Save Clipping and the TCL Glitch don’t actually let us go through outdoor ground, only buildings and other objects.

Daedric Shrine Cutscene Skips

Daedric Shrines take forever because of cutscenes at the beginning and end of each quest. Is there a way to skip having to sit through these?

Leads

• If you open your inventory on the one frame of actionable gameplay after making an offering to a shrine, you can fast travel away. You can also drop the items you were about to offer as well, although this is not useful in our case.
  • Returning to the shrine will trigger the cutscene to start as soon as you are in the area. Is there any way to overlap multiple cutscenes at once via saddling?
• It was discovered that if you uninstall the Shivering Isles, the Sheogorath cutscene instantly ends because there is no audio file for his voice. This implies the audio file length determines the cutscene length. Any “legal” way to achieve something similar? Maybe through in-game sound settings?
  • New tech was discovered that will also likely be deemed "illegal" in the speedrun. By disabling the sound device on your computer that the game is outputting to, all dialogue is cut short or entirely skipped, which includes shrine cutscenes. Finding an in-game way to recreate this via audio settings would be solve this glitch.

Nude Warping

If you load warp into an indoor area using an outdoor save file, humorously the NPCs will not be wearing any weapons/armor/apparel, instead having them in their inventory. What this means is we can possibly steal items that are otherwise completely inaccessible to us normally from essential NPCs (example, Gray Cowl of Nocturnal) and NPCs we need to keep alive for other reasons. Are there any useful situations where we could use this tech?

• Agronak gro-Malog’s raiment could sequence break the Arena.
• Ahdarji’s Ring from Countess Alessia Caro.
• Steal from Ancotar for Zero Visibility (already outdoors, may not work).
• Arnora Auria’s amulet during Two Sides of the Coin.
• Caranya during The Necromancer’s Amulet.
• Jakben, Earl of Imbel to sequence break Boots of Springheel Jak.
• Rosentia Gallenus during Whom Gods Annoy.