Comparing Morrowind and Oblivion

I've played Oblivion for about 210 hours (it was almost the only thing I did the first 3 weeks I had it). I played Morrowind a lot longer, without "finishing" it, although I did nearly everything...or so I thought. In order to do a better job with "O", I went back to "M" for some refresher experience, and because I'm not sure about some "O" behaviors.

One of M's strengths is also a weakness...there's so much you can do that it's easy to get really lost. In going back to it I was reminded by looking at the world map that there was really a lot of territory I had not explored. A lot. I have the official guide book, looked back at it, and I had been marking each task as I finished things, and there was really a lot of THAT that I had not done either (and things I hadn't marked).

M seems a larger map than O. Seems to be more going on in M, too. Anyway. I'm level 71, I've done about half of the main story line, just short of getting Moon-and-Star. been through Ghostgate a bit (twice actually, seemed something went wrong in gameplay where Almsivi Intervention stopped working [?!], I had to back up; I think that wasn't the prob, more that a reboot was needed). I've got Keening already, and had Sunder, but of course not Wraithguard. Not even sure I can finish the main story, looking at the book. Because you can do so many things, and do lots of them out of order, I may have done thing already that are players in later tasks, and sold the loot without knowing I'd need it. and I darn sure don't remember who I sold what to...if I was willing to go back and hunt for things, I could find the buyers, since they don't lose the things you sold them.

O looks like it has much the same flavor, and possibilities, except that there seems less likelihood of mishandling the interesting items, there seem to be fewer. and O has a better journal mechanism, in that it keeps individual quests separated. M's journal had them all merged, no way I'm going to try to scroll back through that to find scattered individual entries. and O has a map marker in place for the next location you need to go to or NPC you need to talk to on whatever is you current primary task. This obviates the desire I had to be able to type my own entries, because I couldn't keep track of things in M.

Things I discovered/learned in M: enchanting is critical. once you are finding grand soul gems, and can soul-trap either ascended sleepers or golden saints, you need to be doing so, and then you need to enchant your armor with constant effects, maybe your weapons (there are plenty of enchanted weapons around already), and some rings. what I consider critical enchantments: restore attribute, especially strength; restore health, which means you don't have to sleep again or be drinking health potions; ring of night-eye (see in the dark) is phenomenally valuable--those otherwise really dark caves are now lit up like mid-afternoon sun so you can cruise right through them; ring of invisibility seemed like a good idea, but I can't tell yet; rings of summong look important, too, although not all that often--just once in a while when you need a distraction, like taking on Dagoth Ur, and it turns out that if you use a golden saint to enchant an exquisite ring, you can get two or three different critters on the same cast--a veritable army. Once you are starting to pick up the really valuable daedric items off dead things, and can get them sold reasonably easily, buy as much training as you can find. it's WAY faster than actually doing the work. I didn't find potion-making to be all that exciting, as you primarily want to make health potions, and once I had armor enchanted (actually, twas an "exquisite pants") to restore health, I stopped bothing to make any potions at all. Ultimately I was holding on to a lot of weapons I didn't need, all those glass swords had been useful earlier, but once you have Skull Crusher and Chrysamere, the only ones you still want are a jinkblade and Soul Drinker. The rest are just dead weight. If you're doing a lot of magic, you want to keep some cheap spells in the front, so that you can just cast them repeatedly while you walk/run, thus leveling-up on them all the time (this is also true for O). Once you reach 100 on them, you can stop; same is true for jumping, and swimming, running, etc, except that you almost always want to be running. Sneak and lockpick are critical things to have way high (true for O also). It might seem goofy to be jumping all the time, but practice makes perfect, and that will be valuable eventually.

Things I've learned in Oblivion: I spend more time making potions in the beginning, I hope I'll be able to enchant my armor with health restore; you can't wear pants/shirt AND armor in Oblivion, which bites, because you could do this in Morrowind, and you could enchant the pants/shirt, too. Always go into sneak when you open a door not inside one of your guild houses. Sneak is really valuable here, too. You can do a lot of it extremely early (during the training exercise where you follow the king, and the "do sneak here" message shows up, the critter you are sneaking behind will never turn around, so you can go back and forth for as long as you can stand; I think it will take 3-4 hours to reach level 100, but it's certainly worth taking the one hour needed to reach level 50). Leveling-up seems to have a perverse dis-incentive: your opponents get harder everywhere to match you, so you can't run from one problem, then come back later after gaining 5-10 levels and lay some smack down.

Once you finish the first Oblivion Gate, your next couple of little tasks will get you a free horse. This means faster travel around the map, but it also means that *you* don't get any level-up skill improvements as you would from running and jumping.

Unlike Dungeon Siege, your summoned critters don't accrue attack points to you as they do damage. So while they are good as distractions, you still have to do a lot of hitting to get points.

There's a sort of perverse dis-incentive to level-up in "O". In "M", the opponents you encounter are fixed--you go to location X and it will contain certain creatures and loot, whether you are level 3 or level 30. In "O", you go to a particular location, the opponents' abilities and loot are dependent on your level--so while Veyond Cave contains Argonians no matter what, if you are level 5 they aren't too strong, and carry steel daggers; if you are level 20 they are fairly strong and carry glass daggers. So at level 5, the loot is not very interesting--you are going to top-out on that pretty early, and you won't get wealthy at all, whereas at level 20, Veyond Cave netted me about 10 glass daggers, some enchanted, and other interesting items, worth several thousand gold. (That might be more glass daggers than I ever even saw in "M".) Fort Grief was even better, two complete sets of glass armor and one complete daedric armor, worth about 35k.

I had been avoiding level-up in order to have an easier time of things, but that's not doing me any good, it turns out. Sure, fights were easier, but loot was nearly worthless. And it does take some serious gold to buy a house, for example, which you really will want to do, because that's where you stash things you aren't willing/ready to sell. You can leave it out on the floor somewhere like in your guild-hall, it appears not to go away over time, but you can't put things in crates.

I've put in 230 hours on this...when did I buy it? I've stayed up all night more than once...