Oblivion talk:Feather

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"For instance, if you create a custom Feather spell that gives you 100 points of Feather for 120 seconds AND another custom Feather spell that gives you 90 points of Feather for 120 seconds, you can cast them both and gain a net bonus of 190 points' worth of Feather." This sentence seems a bit ambiguous, some people might think that you need to make Feather spells that are of different value (while in fact you can cast as many 100pts for 120 secs Feather spells as you want). I suggest changing that 90 to 100. Lisan al Gaib 10:46, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Good point. In fact that whole paragraph is pretty much redundant with the following paragraph, so I took it out and added in a new example. Hopefully that works better! --Nephele 11:26, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Contents 1 Where can I find and buy this spell? 2 Run faster 3 And longer duration 4 Sigil Stones and enchantments 5 Concerning Reverse-Pickpocketing 6 Not Bugs 7 Stealth

[edit] Where can I find and buy this spell?

I'm not sure I have this spell yet.--ShakenMike 13:08, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Ease Burden is the lowest level feather spell, available from Alberic Litte, Alves Uvenim, Delphine Jend, Druja, Edgar Vautrine, Selena Orania, Sulinus Vassinus, Thaurron or Trayvond the Redguard Jadrax 14:26, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Ok thanks--ShakenMike 15:44, 25 February 2007 (EST)

For enchanting (which is the best way to use Feather in some cases: see http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Movement_Formulas) the effect is available "for free" as part of the Cheydinal Mage's Guild Recommendation quest. Aliana 07:07, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Run faster

Using Feather over Fortify Strength has the benefit of making you run fastser as it lowers your encumbrance, the more you're encumbred the slower you run. It's not a huge amount, and is only noticable when you already carrying a heavy load. Grandmaster z0b 18:03, 5 March 2007 (EST)

[edit] And longer duration

The other advantage of Feather over Fortify Strength as a spell rather than an constant duration enchantment is that Feather lasts longer. This can be important in a fight, where your Fortify Strength might give out at a critical moment, leaving you frozen in place over-encumbered until you can get it cast again. --Vilhazarog 13:58, 6 March 2007 (EST)

[edit] Sigil Stones and enchantments

Concerning the Sigil Stones, I am currently experiencing what is warned for above - that I applied a Transcendent Sigil Stone of Feather to my cape, only to find out it only gives me a bonus of 33 instead of 125 as promised... This seems to relate to the "zero-weight items" thingy - now the question is, how do I get rid of it? I want to have a 125 Feather cape, but I see no other way except buying another similar cape, adding a Sigil Stone via the console and then reapplying it - or can you do this on already enchanted items? Thankful for any input, even if I suspect the abovementioned is what I have to do. Lovykar 14:14, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

If your problem is related to the Bug described in the article, then simply taking the cape off and putting it back on again should fix the problem. That bug shouldn't affect the actual enchantment on the article, just the math that gets done when it goes to apply the enchantment to your character.

If, on the other hand, your cape permanently claims to only have a 33 feather effect (i.e., that's what it says in your inventory, not just what it says on your magical effects page), then I'm not sure what would have caused the problem. --Nephele^Talk 21:29, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

[edit] Concerning Reverse-Pickpocketing

Under the "Bug" section of the Feather page, it says:

"On your screen, Feather appears to increase your maximum encumbrance (so instead of carrying 250 pounds of an allowed 225, your inventory now says that you are carrying 250 of an allowed 325). However, behind the scenes, the game actually implements Feather by reducing the weight of the items that you are carrying (so in fact you are carrying 150 pounds of an allowed 225). Although the difference is often semantic, at other times it leads to a glitch: the magnitudes of your Feather spells and potions become set to zero."

With that, would it be possible to use feather spells to lower the weight of an object enough to cause it to be considered a zero-weight item? It would seem that with the weight of the object so low, the game would read it as 0. Without the patches, spell stacking could be used to make a feather spell of any magnitude. The only problem is that I have the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion and don't understand the mechanics of the game well, but it would be great if someone with the PC version could verify if this idea is possible. I tried the spell stacking strategy mentioned on another page, but I don't think that I raised the magnitude of the spell by enough. If this is possible, then any object can be reverse-pickpocketed to an NPC. Zephyr5 17:32, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

It's already possible to stack Feather even without pre-patch exploits, but no: you can only reverse-pickpocket items that have a "true" weight of zero. Feather doesn't make items weightless, it just stops them counting towards your inventory weight. Aliana 08:56, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me! Zephyr5 10:06, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Not Bugs

I've renamed the "Bugs" section. The game is clear and explicit about how Feather works: yes, it's annoying, but wanting it to be different doesn't make it a bug. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aliana (talk • contribs) on 12 October 2008.

Except that behavior means that if you "start casting spells before picking up all of the loot, most of those spells will actually have zero magnitude" (to quote the next paragraph), which is pretty clearly a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:31, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

How so? "Feather decreases the weight of items you carry", and it's implicitly "at the time the spell is cast". I don't think anyone would try to argue that it's intuitive, but it IS clear and well defined: the problem is people (albeit understandably) insisting on trying to make it mean something different to what it actually says. Drain Skill: Blunt 100 doesn't give you -95 Blunt if you only have 5 ranks in it, but we don't call that a bug. Aliana 09:09, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

That's exactly the point. The Drain would still show up as a 100 point effect, but Feather shows up as 0 point. That is a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:44, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I see what you mean, but again, that's what we WANT feather to be rather than what it IS. The magnitude "correctly" shows x because that's what it's actually doing: feathering x lbs of stuff. None of us like it, but it's doing exactly what it says it does, and we're stuck with it. I guess a better parallel would be: if you cast a Fortify Skill 100 spell in armor and then take the armor off, the spell is still only 95 points - it doesn't become 100 because of something you do AFTER casting it.

Please consider what the word bug means. Try looking it up on Wikipedia for example. The unexpected behavior part applies to that description. Most readers who come to the site expect Feather to work one way, but they will read here why it behaves differently in some aspects, thus, they will look for a Bugs section. We don't know what Bethesda considers this issue to be, we can only deduce that from our readers. --Timenn < talk > 10:22, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

It's nothing to do with desire. The game lists an active effect as having a zero point effect. By all means cause the spell to have no effect and vanish the moment it's cast, but to claim that it is active with a zero effect is pretty much an oxymoron. This is the only occasion in which the game does this: it's a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:26, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I understand you. Really. I agree that the display is certainly confusing even though it IS a correct indication of what's going on. But "bug" means "does not behave as INTENDED", which isn't the same as "does not behave as expected by people who didn't write the code", and the behavior is clearly exactly as intended, and exactly as it says in the game itself, even though we all think it's stupid. Still, it's all semantics: what's important is that it's well documented and clearly understood, and as long as that's covered you can call it whatever you want, so let's get back to more important things. :)

<=/
As I said, we can only guess what Bethesda intended. It's safer to try to anticipate what readers would expect, which we believe would be "Bugs" rather than just being it a game mechanic. Important or not, it was the subject of the discussion, thus we replied in kind. --Timenn < talk > 06:56, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Also, the behavior is different than implied by in-game statistics: on your inventory screen, Feather increases your maximum encumbrance, whereas actually your maximum encumbrance is not affected. So not only is it different than what players expect, it's different from what players are told. I'd say that makes it a bug, so I've changed the title back.

Furthermore, logistically changing the section title doesn't really work. This section is linked to from other pages, so changing the section title without editing all of those other pages breaks those links. Therefore, even if the section title is not yet resolved, the title should be left in its original form while the discussion is active. Even more importantly, there already is a "Notes" section on the page, so we can't just rename the section: either it's a separate bug section, or else it's merged with the existing notes (at which point it's impossible to link to just this one note from other pages). --Nephele^Talk 22:33, 21 October 2008 (EDT)

[edit] Stealth

Does an equipped feather-enchanted item also reduce your risk of being detected while stealthing, even though it does, as mentioned in the article, not show it (it appears as if it raises your maximum encumbrance instead of lowering the weight of your items)? SwedishBerzerker at youtube.com 08:34, 3 May 2009 (EDT)