Oblivion:Negative Stats

Negative Stats

Category: Player Stats

Also Known As: Negative Skills, Negative Attributes, Negative Drain

Version Compatibility

v1.0	v1.1.511	v1.20214	v1.2.0416
?	?	?	✔

Required DLC Images will go here.

Details

Found By:	steev jobs
Date Found:	1/28/2023
Archaeologist:	N/A
Date Recovered:	N/A
Original Source:	Link

Negative Stats are a glitch that can occur if a skill or attribute is fortified and drained at the same time using spells, and the fortify effects wears off first. Different stats have different behaviors when they go negative. Health, Fatigue, and Magicka can all be drained to negative values normally, so glitch only pertains to skills and attributes.

Instructions

1. Create a fortify effect and a drain effect for a desired stat, both with the same magnitude, but with the fortify effect having a longer duration.
   • Example: Fortify Stat 100 points for 3 seconds On Self, and Drain Stat 100 points for 1 second On Self.
2. Cast the fortify spell and then cast the drain spell so that it is applied to your character just before the fortify effect is about to wear off.
3. If timed correctly, check your stat before the drain effect wears off. It should now be negative if the drain magnitude was larger than the base value of the stat.

Mechanics

This glitch requires further research to fully understand its mechanics. Some information in this section is currently speculation.

Base stats for skills and attributes cannot be negative, they can only be a positive value from 0-255 (aka an unsigned 8-bit integer) as demonstrated in Skill Underflowing. However, fortification and drain effects are not limited to positive values only, meaning that these stats can still be set to negative values temporarily with the right effects.

Normally, when a drain skill/attribute effect is applied to the player, the game checks to see if the value will be negative. If this is the case, the resulting value is capped at 0 instead. However, this check is only performed at the time the drain effect is applied, not after it is already active on the player. By casting a fortify effect first, the game passes the check at the time the drain effect is applied since the resulting value is not negative, and then when the fortify effect is the removed, the game does not check again for a negative value. If the game was checking the base value of a stat instead of it's current value including fortifications, this glitch would not work.

Below are tables showing each stat and the current knowledge of how it is affected when made to be negative using this glitch. Blank behavior descriptions are untested, so we will need to research those stats further.:

Skills

Stat	Negative Behavior
Armorer	Significant: Repairs will actually decrease the armorer rating of an item resulting in that armor's health becoming negative, eventually wrapping back around to be positive.
Athletics
Blade
Blunt
Hand to Hand
Heavy Armor
Alchemy
Alteration
Conjuration
Destruction
Illusion
Mysticism
Restoration
Acrobatics	Incredibly short jumps. Fall damage is untested currently.
Light Armor
Marksman
Mercantile
Security
Sneak
Speechcraft

Attributes

Stat	Negative Behavior
Strength
Intelligence
Willpower
Agility
Speed	Incredibly slow movement.
Endurance
Personality
Luck