Oblivion:Gripes/Item and Spell Management

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This article provides Item and Spell Management gripes, as part of the User Interface section of the Gripes article.

No simplifying inventory I thought of this idea a while back. Bethesda should have allowed you to link together several pieces of clothing into a single uniform, so they can be put on and off rapidly. What I mean is- you could select all of the Blades equipment and type in "Blades Uniform" and it would appear in your inventory as a quick button to put on all of it at once. Or, you could take the Black Hand Robes and Hood, and some shortsword and call it "Black Hand". Same thing with the Arena, etc. Then I could have just hotkeyed it and change clothes for my character with a single key or directional pad selection instead of opening up my inventory and painstakingly searching through all my apparel and changing every bit. This could go further- why not allow you to redesign your inventory, for example creating two separate lists for clothes and armor? Split lists for books and other pieces of paper? It would be better if you could create categories in your inventory and type in names for them. This would be hugely appreciated in the spells list. As of now, it is horrendously cumbersome, for a lot of reasons. For characters that use magic a lot, they tend to accumulate 50+ spells over time. It would be easier if you could create submenus yourself for example creating one called "Combat magic" and adding into that spells you think would be needed for combat(destruction spells, protect spells, conjuring, heal wounds)

The Quick Wardrobe mod allows you to set up to eight different sets of clothing and armor that can be switched to in an instant (required OBSE.)

No spell management This goes with my above point. Why can't you have a normal "Quick List" or something, for spells you still use, and move obsolete spells to a out of the way "Archived Spells". I mean, if you learn Defend, you don't need Protect clogging up Oblivion's cumbersomely long spell lists. Do you really need Flare at the top of your magic list when you open it up at level 30?

You can arrange spells by magicka cost. Hit the little lightning bolt symbol and spells will be sorted by magicka cost, rather than alphabetically. You can use this to place all of your most expensive spells at the top of the list.

No quickview of remaining weapon enchantment. You cannot see how much enchantment is left on an enchanted item without looking in the inventory first. This should be something akin to a bar beside the weapon health on the weapon icon.

Actually as remaining enchantment goes down or weapon gets more damaged the picture of the weapon next to your compass fades and becomes darker, almost transparent.

Agreed. Although, the reply above mine basically fixes it IMO. Whenever my item gets translucent I will repair it/restore it if I am able to. In fact, I often check it before it gets that low so that I can get the most protection, damage, etc.

No quick-select keys of single/all items in inventory stack. In Morrowind, you could ctrl-click to get a single item from a stack or shift-click to select all items in stack, thus bypassing the "How many items?" dialog. Worse, the "How many items?" dialog does a fade in/out which takes even more time. Reinstating Morrowind quick-select keys would be save a lot of time.

Pressing the Left Bumper or Right Bumper on the "How many items?" dialog in the 360 version moves the slider all the way left (one) or right (all), respectively.

Pressing L2 or R2 on the "How many items?" dialog in the PS3 version moves the slider all the way left (one) or right (all), respectively.

No submenu for keys. As a thief, I amassed at least 100 keys to various shops and houses. And of course, every time I wanted to get out a torch or something that wasn't hotkeyed, I had to scroll through all of my keys. If I accidentally change the inventory page, I'm back to the top of the list. On the Xbox, this is a pain. A keyring would've been nice.

There is a Keychain mod that will fix this and put a keychain item in your inventory.

You could always drop your keys somewhere safe and accessible. It's not like you need them more than once anyway

Houses can be relocked by the owner.

Just throw them in one of your owned containers. If you need them again just go retrieve them. I only keep the ones I assume I will use again on me. I know, I know, this doesn't fix your problem. Then use the mod listed above if you are using the PC version. If not, maybe there is a way to scroll to the bottom and then back up on the console versions.

I found this to. I fix it by, every time I use a key I will never have to use again, drop it. You will be surprised how few you actually need to keep.

It should also be noted that even though most keys are weightless, resembling quest items, you can still remove many of them from your inventory. I only kept the ones I couldn't remove, the rest I placed in a chest I owned.

Sale process is mouse intensive because each item must be sold separately and sales confirmation dialog doesn't allow key presses in place of clicking. All of this makes the sales process unnecessarily time consuming.

The Menu Escape mod maps keys to confirm & cancel dialogs (requires OBSE).

Using the single item bartering system actually benefits the user, as you get disposition increase for every large item you sell, and your merchantile skill increases with each sale. The old way makes it harder for users to get the very best deal/skill increase without going through extra hassel.

If selling multiple items at once was possible then you could sell one item at a time and get the same effect. I'm a thief and I sell a LOT of items and it gets boring after the 50th click. I'd rather sell it all at once and be done with it.

It doesn't take that long to be honest. Maybe you need to work on your mouse skills? Joking, of course. Try to up your sensitivity and get a higher DPI mouse. While not a solution, this isn't that big of a problem and as said somewhere below it seems that the developers didn't want you jacking a bunch of items anyway.

Using Shift-Click to drop could be improved. Combined with the previous suggestion of single/stack selection a better method would be to have Right-Click as drop (with popup menu), Ctrl-Right-Click to drop one from a stack, and Alt-Right-click to drop the whole stack.

I'm not sure what you mean. Your suggestion with right-clicking achieves the same effect as shift-click (thus it becomes a thing of preference and opinion) and it only takes slightly longer to specify that you want to drop a whole stack. I do agree that it would be easier to drop one item though. I think there is a mod mentioned in this gripe section that allows you to toggle the "How many" on and off with the control key. Check it out.

When you have 2 of an item, the popup selection menu is not displayed.

This actually makes perfect sense, for the most part anyway. Say I have two items in a stack.

• Looting/Dropping: Without the popup, it's 1 click for 1 item, 2 for 2. With popup, it would be 3 clicks for one item, 2 for 2.
• Buying/Selling: Without the popup selection, I have to click twice to sell one of the items, 4 clicks to sell them both (avg. 3). If there were a popup selection, I'd have to click three times to sell both items and 4 times to just sell one (remember to count moving the slider down to 1 as a click), giving an average of 3.5 clicks.

By contrast, not having the how many box when you have two items and want to sell both, prevents you from selling two items (worth 50 each) for a total of 100 which would kick up the buyer's disposition, whereas selling them individually would not.

The Toggleable Quantity Prompt mod lets you toggle the "How many?" prompt on and off with the Ctrl key.

Cannot delete spells from user interface (need to use console and know spell IDs, which is awkward for in-game spells and more so for player-made spells; Morrowind's shift-clicking no longer works). They could at least have a separate tab for 'archived' spells. I don't need to know no flare anymore!

The Spell Delete mod allows you to delete spells (requires OBSE). Also Wrye Bash allows you to delete spells.

Really minor point, but if you're playing a mage character, I highly recommend keeping flare around, actually. It's a really cheap fire spell, and is perfect for getting those hard-to-reach varla and welkynd stones. Cheaper mana-wise than telekinesis, plus you don't need any equipment, either.

Disorganized Spells. Even if you could delete spells from your interface, you still need a better organization system. The game only will divide spells into 3 predefined categories. I'd like several user defined categories (like only offensive spells with a soul trap component), or the ability to drag-and-drop spells into more menus. At the very minimum, the ability to separate spells into there base type (fire damage, restore health, etc.) would be helpful. Many of the spells names change so drastically between versions that it makes it very difficult to locate the spells that you want to use. Sorting spells first by school and then effect (multiple effects could be listed in multiple fields without problem) would make life so much easier to find that one spell that gets lost in the jumble of everything targeted.

Rational Names renames many objects, including spells, to cause them appear together in spell and inventory lists.

Haggle should be on sales page. The haggle bar should be displayed at the bottom of the merchant window rather than having to open a separate window each time you wish to check or adjust the haggle level.

Most-recently-used" spell list would be very nice-- one tab on the spells page that lists the last five or ten spells cast.

Inventory disorder. It would be nice to be able to arrange your inventory in order of item instead of alphabetical order, i.e. all arrows together, all swords together etc.

(Partial solution) Rational Names renames many objects to cause them appear together in spell and inventory lists.

A more realistic inventory size would help--instead of a character being able to carry six bows and six hundred arrows, on top of all of their other gear, a person would carry a more reasonable amount, such as one bow, one melee weapon or maybe one major weapon and one smaller dagger), one set of armor(and maybe a standard pair of pants and shirt,)and less than 700 tomatoes. Being able to carry six bandits worth of gear out of a cave breaks the immersion.

The game is fantasy, a smaller inventory would be way too annoying. Encumbrance limits being what they are is limiting enough.

Of course, lets make the game realistic, all we have to do is remove everything until it is a white box with nothingness inside. Either there should be an attempt to reality it all, or it should be left just as fantastic as it is now. "Awesome I have a realistic carrying capacity, but I can still kill elves and cast magic."

If they made it smaller, then you would be dead in minutes due to lack of armor / weapons / potions. Also, there are lots of quest items that you might need frequently.

You WANT a Diablo inventory? Find/Make a mod that adds burden to you permanently and your problem should be solved.

Less clothing at once. Why was the clothing system so over simplified? It was cool to run around in Morrowind with different pieces of armor. It was also good to be able to wear a shirt, then armor, then a robe over the top (That's three possible enchantments!!).

Called balance. Having two pauldrons, two gauntlets, boots, greaves, cuirass, helm, shield, robe, shirt, and pants all enchanted would be too much.

Why add the restriction, if a player wants to, why not? You can't just say you wouldn't like it. Restrict yourself not others.

Right. If a player wants to, why not? Why NOT put 13 god weapons in the starting dungeon? And while we're at it, why not make a full set of health regeneration constant effect armor and clothing? If a player wants to, why not? Restrict yourself, not others. Seriously guys. Quit being arrogant. Balance transcends the desires of any individual. Especially the desires of a minority.

Well, why don't they just make it so that you can only have a certain number of enchantments per equip location? For instance, you could equip multiple, say gloves, but only one of those gloves can be enchanted. That way, people could wear what they wanted too, without exploiting enchantments. The game is about freedom. Restricting that should be thought about carefully before it is implemented.

I agree that clothing should be stackable under armour (chafing, much?), but having them all being enchanted would overpower the character far too much. The difference with Morrowind was that many of the apparel enchantments were "Use when cast", basically only adding a spell to your selection. Only as your character became very powerful did you start to find "Constant enchantments". On the other hand, all of Oblivion's apparel enchantments are passive, constant effects right from the beginning. This is a huge asset, but it must be balanced in one way or another, be it by weaker enchantments, or being able to stack less of them.

Less types of clothing/armor/weapons. Why is it that Oblivion, the sequel (which usually means more doesn't it?), to Morrowind has less types of armour and weapons? What happened to Chitin, Dwemer, and the Fork of Horripilation? There was something amusing and...satisfying about fighting someone with a fork. Why have Pauldrons been molded onto the Cuirass, and gauntlets treated as a pair rather than as separate wearable items?

Dwemer is in the game, it's just called Dwarven instead due to you being in Cyrodiil instead of morrowind.

Fork is back in Shivering Isles

It's dumb to have a shortsword, wakizashi, longsword, katana, saber, etc. Just not necessary.

Having many different types of weapons increases immersion for many people, Like for example me and 20 people I know.

Shortswords, katanas, longswords; they all still exist. Does it matter a great deal that they are all lumped under one "Blade" skill?

What was meant is that having a shortsword, Wakizashi, longsword, katana, saber, etc. is better than just having shortsword, longsword, and katana. More variety in the appearance of weapons is all that is being asked for. However, it would be better to divide Longswords and shortswords, because there are considerable differences in how they are used.

More worthless stuff. Why is so much stuff completely worthless. In Morrowind, it was possible to sell a cup for 1 gold at least. Everything was worth something. There was no "Give away" option when selling.

In my opinion, it rather ruined the game experience. Breaking into homes and selling all the junk there - and therefore ruining the ambiance of a decently outfitted home - just for a small amount of gold? Besides, who would buy a clay cup from you; not to mention a merchants' doubts about the origin of goods which were obviously stolen? See also the "stolen items won't even appear in an honest merchants' sale dialogue"-thing; I think the developers thought just the same, and therefore implied the "zero value"-downside to things you can feel free to take (i.e., plates in guild halls).

The Nothing in Life is Free mod puts prices to most misc. items in Oblivion.

Never mind the fact that Morrowind saves got geometrically bigger ever time you ripped some poor idiot off, greatly increasing the chances of a crash and load times (at least on the XBOX). Still, it would be nice if I could open a box in a dungeon and it didn't have two spools of thread and a pickax for a total of 0 gold

The saves get pretty huge on the PC too although I doubt it causes crashes. It sucks to backup 900 saves though (due to the size). And, yes, I did backup 900 saves. Now I try to save as little as possible!

Can't move candles. Why can one no longer pick up and move candles? Creating eerie effects or extremely well-lit staircases was a favorite pastime of mine in Morrowind.

UI Mod Solutions: Note that many of the problems are already remedied by the UI mod BTmod, however, some of these issues can only be solved by a patch.

Merchants have too little money Why is it that the best merchant in the game (Without adding Froscrag Spire) only has 1500? Why shouldn't I be rewarded with more gold for finding a great item?

Keep in mind that a Expert in Mercantile can invest in a merchant to add an additional 500 gold, and once you reach Master in Mercantile, all merchants have another additional 500 gold, independent of investment status, meaning that fence with 1500 gold can potentially be bumped up to 2500 gold. So if you want to be rewarded with more gold for finding and selling stuff, you have to work to advance your skill in selling stuff.

Though there is the chance to get your mercantile to Master, and therefore be able to add another 1,000 Septims total, this does not change the fact that you cannot sell many items for what they're worth. There are some items in the game which are worth well over 20,000 septims, but you will never be able to sell them for what they are worth because no shops have enough money. I believe that at least one person in all of the Cyrodil should have more than enough items to buy expensive items. Not everyone is completely cheap, I assume. If people can make items that are worth that much, and they can sell items for that much, then they should be able to buy them for that much, as well. If I buy an item from a shop for 10,000, and the shop originally had 600, then it should have 10,600, as well since that would solve two problems at once.

The Living Economy mod makes the merchants' gold change when you buy or sell items, as well as in a lesser degree when you're away.

There are several mods (for PC) That change the NPC's gold amounts. It's easy to do in the Construction Set as well. Check it out - you will be happy.

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