Having covered more Oblivion territory...

btw, I'm at sneak 100.

Something funky happened. I had gone through Fatback Cave, I did a lot of sneak, bypassing the Goblin warlords. No interest in taking them on, they don't carry anything interesting (except one), so I just grabbed loot in boxes. I killed all the goblin shamans, they at least have something interesting. Then I left.

Later I came back, and lo and behold, the cave is repopulated with loot and goblins, including the two guards outside, and the footplate-based trap is reset.

Huh? I thought once you cleared a place it stayed that way. Maybe a rat or two returns, but an entire group, AND the chests are refilled? Wow, and nifty! Maybe this means I can go back through other places where I got really neat loot. Not that you can sell it for anything much, or buy anything interesting. The only things I've found for sale that I thought were interesting are spells I can't use (3-400 magicka range). There's the very occasional special weapon for sale, but I already have better stuff. This was true in Morrowind too. Interesting weapons seem rare at merchants.

Money seems of limited value in Oblivion. Not much of great interest that you can buy. Spells, enchantments. Not something you do often, and as you can't get rid of spells afterward, I don't buy many; can't remember which ones I really like--and once I replaced "Ease Burden" with "Pack Mule" I'd like to forget "EB". Can't.

Alright, you can buy training, but since you have to level-up to get another five training slots, this isn't too exciting, and can't happen very fast.

Dungeon Siege got this right--merchants (of which there weren't many) had mountains of stuff, huge variability in all categories.

You will need/want to make yourself a ring of night-eye (you only need a petty soul for this). Makes caves/etc be lit up like daytime. Hard to beat that. And you want something that has long-range life-detection. And an enchanted silver blade, for hitting undead things like ghosts and will-o-wisps. and you need to make yourself an equivalent to Morrowind's "Soul Drinker". I think you can't make a jinkblade, so you really want to make your Mage's Guild staff be one of paralyze. Although that's not perfect either. I think not everyone can be paralyzed.

The non-availability of more advanced weapons regularly is pretty annoying. I'm still working with the Honorblade, which you can get pretty early, when it's a fabulous weapon. Many levels later, it's a little better (I think it starts out around 16 hp, 15 levels later I'm up to 20 hp with it--I ought to have a least a 30-hp weapon by now, maybe 40).