I'll check those times out and see if it helps. I may do that, or I may focus on doing all the Dark Brotherhood quests.

You can store stuff there, and you don't need a chest to put it in. It gets to look like shit after a while, and you may have trouble finding what you're looking for, but you can just drop stuff on the floor.

some chests will reset the contents in battlehorn castle! Look it up in the oblivion forums. The chests in your room are safe but i lost a whole list of stuff that was in a chest by the front door.

My OCD took over when I played this game.

I spent hours (over the course of days of playing) to keep everything super organized. I had one room for extra weapons, with swords in one chest, bows in another, etc. A desk with drawers had different types of potions in each drawer.

I knew it was silly to keep so much extra stuff and to organize it so, but I couldn't help myself.

I had tons of fun for a few weeks, finished maybe half the game, but it has been over a year since I played. If I started again, I'd have to start from scratch.

I kinda hope I never pick it up again, as i know it will consume every waking moment for a few weeks or more.

I always sold all weapons, armors, and shields. I only keep what I used the most or the most lethal weapon.

I can tell you for sure one chest to not put stuff in (unless the 360 version was patched since I played it). Slight spoilers for Mage's Guild...

Can someone explain alchemy to me in simple terms? I tried mixing two items together, and then I'm supposed to name whatever I created, but I never see it show up in the list of potions. What's going on with that? I feel like I'm wasting items.

You don't have to name them, but if it's something good that you plan on keeping/using, then you may want to name it just so you know what it is without reading the description. Sometimes it may call a potion "Absorb strength" or something, but it may actually be a feather potion. If you're just making whatever potions you can to sell, who cares what it's called?

Sometimes I just go into stores that sell ingredients & buy every ingredient they have, make every potion possible, sell back (or keep for later) the rest of the ingredients, then go sell the potions. This is also a very good way to get your alchemy skill up so you can see more effects of what the ingredients do (3 or 4 instead of 2).

See, that's the thing. I couldn't tell that I had made anything. You just place two ingredients together, hit create, and it makes something? Nothing more to it than that?

That's it. You may have created something that you already had in your list. Potions you made should be less than 10gp, whereas others should be higher.

Make a potion and call it something like Jack & Coke and then see if it's in the list. You're probably just missing it.

What's the point of soul capturing something? I just got Azura's star, which looks like a really expensive soul capturing gem. I always steal the gems from stores because they sell for a good value when I fence them, but what's the point of capturing souls. I don't have any soul capture spells (my magic is atrocious since I never use it, and I'm waiting to get brought back into the mage's guild to build it up), but is it something I should be looking into?

By the way, you guys have been great. This forum is so great for answering questions.

Captured souls can be used to recharge magic weapons.

Azura's Star is great! Check this out, you can reuse the star as often as you like...it's an endless soul gem. You do need a soul capture spell, so I keep one in my hot key. The Star hold 800 pts I believe, maybe 1600, I forget. Anyhow, you hit something with a capture spell right before you are about to kill it and it will put X number of points in the Star. Then use the Star to refill the magic of one of your weapons. You can't put more than one soul in the Star at a time. If you use it correctly, you will never have to pay to recharge any of your weapons again, so remember...

Soul Trap, then kill, then recharge your weapon. Repeat as often as you can.

Oh yeah, one more thing...the Star will grab the soul of any CREATURE, but not a humanoid.

I believe it holds 1600. So does the creature have to be weak to be captured? What determines how many points the creature is worth? Why can't it hold more than one soul at a time if the points aren't full?

It doesn't have to be weakened, but the spell is usually short, 3-10 seconds.

Creatures have predetermined points. The larger/closer to humanoid, the higher the points (usually). Check Wiki for creature points. I would do it now, but I'm in a hurry, lol.

One soul at a time, so if you kill a rat (300), use it before you kill a Lich(1600).

you can go create black soul gems... this is very important early so you can grab necromonger's souls and vampires and such...

search the Oblivion Wiki for 'Black Soul Gem' and there is a very detailed walk through...

also when doing alchemy create poisons of all kinds and poison a weapon with each swing. or bow with each shot... early in the game this is very important...

Question about the Guard:
I was doing a quest and was trespassing inside a homeowner's basement last night at about midnight (game time). I don't think anyone say me come in. I turn around, walk up the stairs, and on the inside of the basement door suddenly appears a guard with his "Halt, miscreant!" speech. Where did he come from? Did he follow me in and I just missed it? I haven't quite got the hang of thievery yet.

I kept running into this early on, which really confused me. I could swear that no one had seen me do my miscreantly deeds...and BAM!, arrives the nigh-invincible guard.

However, I began to notice that there really were NPC's around whenever this happened. They didn't always make it known that they had seen you and alerted the guards. If you are truly unseen (sneak, invisible, chameleon, etc), then you can get away with anything!

I never ever open a door without that sneak icon being clear.

Did anyone else have trouble with the Forlorn Watchman Quest? I'm at level 13, and there are these Wraiths everywhere, and I don't have any strong weapons or spells that can attack ghosts. I'm just skipping the quest for now. They hit me with this drain, burden, spell that just crushes me. Stupid Dwarven longsword is good for nothing on them.

You'll want to use either silver or enchanted weapons to hurt wraiths. They can be a pain.

I can't stress this enough, make as many feather potions that you can, and try to have all of the feather spells (Ease Burden, Lighten Load, etc...). As for magic weapons, you need to go through more Ayleid Ruins. There's almost always a decent magical weapon to be found in the ruins. You can also enchant a weapon at Frostcrag Spire.

Well, I usually don't worry about that since I have the Nocturnal Mask which is an automatic 200 points of feather when I put it on.

I never really go in any ruins if it's not part of a quest. Actually I don't go to any caves I find if it's not part of a quest. I guess I should start doing that. I have avoided the main quest because I wanted to become head of all the guilds, but if all the good weapons are in there, I will go scour some of them.

200 points of feather? lol. My guy could carry somewhere around 500-600 (IIRC), but there were plenty of times that I would lug close to 2,000 pounds of shit back to Imperial City to sell. I guess if you aren't doing that much exploring, you probably won't find a need to carry all that much, but if you do start heading into the ruins, and especially when you start closing gates, you'll need some bigtime feather. When you get into closing the gates, each warhammer weighs like 60 pounds.

What I mean is it gives me a bonus 200 points of feather. My character right now can carry I believe 375, so the I put on the helmet and that jumps to 575.

On a related note, do I have to buy a type of spell before I can create something like it? For example I couldn't create a soul trap spell, but when I tried I didn't have any soul trap spells available.

Where would I find this ultimate feather that lets you carry 2,000? Everytime I see a spell I want to buy, it always says I don't have enough magicka. When will I start having some decent magicka to work with? I have a healing spell that only heals 20 points yet I can only cast it once before having to recharge. It seems like my magicka doesn't increase all that much which I guess is simply because of my character classes.

Is there a way to get more magicka other than leveling up?