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I'm working on Marksman and Security right now, and then I'll work on Sneak, so I can eventually complete the Dark Brotherhood quest that grants a permanent boost to those skills.

Coincidentally, I also just started the Collector quest, although so far I've only done Vilverin.

I even went back to Vilverin to get the stone bricks in the stairwell, which I'd missed, then saw them mentioned in the wiki. I don't know what I'll do with them, but I was thinking I might go back every so often and see if they respawn, then after I gather more of them maybe I can try to do something with them in one of my houses, like build a small pyramid.

Maximum difficulty, vanilla game, level 3, Alchemy skill 25, I killed Umbra with a bow, using four iron arrow shots and one dose of poison. (I needed the sword for soul trapping with conjuration).
I was pretty amazed it was so easy. It also did not require any skill-building beforehand.

Conjuration (major skill) was used to beat the Mages Guild quests and get admitted to the Arcane University.
I picked the very hard lock display case in the lobby of the Arch mage's tower and stole the filled Grand Soul gem. I did it when backs were turned--no sneaking about at night.
I used the free Frost salts that are sitting out in the University Lustratorium (alchemy shop).
I picked up Milk Thistle, Sacred Lotus, and Peony seed while out and about, and I used novice alchemy equipment to make the poison--Frost Damage-3x11s + Damage Health-2x9s.
Bow and arrows were free (fine steel bow-didn't matter, and iron arrows); my Marksman skill was only at 7.
Orc w/Apprentice sign provided Drain Speed (drain attribute-Berserker) spell and the Weakness to Magic spell.
Illusion and Alchemy as major skills provided the light spell (optional) and ability to make a double poison (Frost and Damage Health) without any skill-building involved.
Destruction as a major skill allowed me to use a Weakness to Poison spell (I did have to buy that).

I walked up to Umbra, shot her three times with short draws, poisoned the fourth arrow, shot her with that, and then stood in front of her while she died. The only mistake I made was not casting the Jones Shadow spell on myself to get past the rats and crabs on the way in so I could fill soul gems on the way out. They hurt me bad on the way in because I was trying not to kill them--and then the traps got them.

The bow details
Light 30ft for 5 seconds--This lets you know if your second shot hits in time for the weaknesses to work and it makes aiming follow-up shots more easy.
Drain Speed 100 for 1 second--This makes the enemy forget it was just shot. Command humanoid/creature can be used for non Orcs.
Weakness to Poison 100 for 5 seconds.
Weakness to Magic 94 for 5 seconds--This must go last to multiply the other enchantments on the next shot.

Poison will not be affected by the enchantments on the first shot so you need to apply poison on the second/following shots if you want to multiply it. You also do not want Marksman Expert or Master skill perks because they cause the target fall over, which makes the follow-up shots more difficult. Mages can be troublesome when they reflexively conjure things to that get in your way, so it can help to poison the first shot with Silence (or Silence + damage) and follow that up with a damaging poison on the second shot.

If you want to try this type of enchantment on a blade/blunt, don't. Blade/blunts don't work the same way as bows with poison. For some reason you do not get the full multiplication when you deliver the poison with the same weapon that holds the Weakness to Poison enchantment. You can switch weapons in the middle of the fight to make it work, but it is easier to cast the weaknesses in a touch spell (WtoP + WtoM) and then whack the thing with the poisoned weapon.

Update on my latest Oblivion playthrough: Neither my auto-save nor my full save can be loaded; they freeze before the loading progress bar even budges, and I have to shut down the game in the Task Manager. Naturally, I don't have any older saves that I can try, because I always delete my previous save before making a new save-- just because I'm stupid that way. I even tried the trick of renaming both the auto-save file and the backup of the previous auto-save, but the previous auto-save also freezes up. So it looks like I'll need to start all over-- again-- and be sure to keep at least one good save game in addition to my latest save game. I guess I don't mind, because I didn't start micro-managing my skill increases and character leveling until I was well into the game, and I was thinking I should start over and micro-manage everything from the get-go for the most efficient leveling.

@Chicken Slayer, those are some impressive achievements! You must be quite the Sneaky Thief.

Oddly enough, When I play an archer I don't start sneaking until after I work up Marksman. I just walk around barefoot and have no trouble getting into range without being noticed until around level 9. This build is a conjurer first so the play is to run up, dump a zombie on them and run back to the shadows to wait for the kill.
I won't have to sneak for quite a while.

Today I tested various iterations of Command bows. IMO these are a close second as most valuable bow type in max difficulty games after poison stacking bows. They help reduce the number of enemies in larger rooms by causing them to fight each other. The bows can be made either by having Illusion as a major skill or building it up to Apprentice level, which is very easy to do with a star light spell.

I use the filled grand soul gems from the Arcane University lobby display case for early game enchanting.
--Basic Command bow (32 charges)
Light 30ft x 5 seconds (draws enemy attention to target in dark rooms).
Command Creature 25 x 1 second (also works on Undead).
Command Humanoid 25 x 1 second.
--Basic Command bow with shield 18% for 20 seconds (18 charges) -- This protects the target some and allows for a little more more damage and death against its opponents. It takes a few seconds for a fight to start and 20 seconds is the best duration you can get with decent protection. Does the real benefit make up for the reduced number of charges? I don't know.
--Basic Command bow with Soul Trap 12 seconds (18 charges) (requires 25 Mysticism skill)--The duration is not long enough to last most fights so this bow is used as a ranged spell on enemies that are soon to die. Compare it to Umbra, which has a duration of two minutes (120 seconds -10x longer), a Grand soul bow which has a duration of 29 seconds, or sigil bows which can have durations of 5,10, 15, or 20 seconds.

If you are good using Umbra or a separate bow for soul trapping, go with the basic or shield bow. Of the latter two, if you have trouble getting enough filled soul gems for recharging all your weapons, go with the basic bow.

I looked at some buildings, and realized my current game configuration was useless for my purposes (I wanted to take some screenshots).

Started a new game as a barbarian. Never used archery. Baurus's class comment: You must be an experienced archer. Empire's finest right there.

I can't figure out how the game decides what class to give you in the tutorial. It never makes any sense.

iirc the game has Combat:Magic:Stealth ratios for each of the classes and compares that with how much you use skills in each category during the intro dungeon to get your 'expected class'. The game doesn't check individual skill usage, only how much the skill categories are used.

So like if Archer was 50:0:50 (or something) then as long as you were using Combat and Stealth skills equally with very little magic then Baurus would say you're an 'experienced Archer', regardless of which specific combat and stealth skills you used.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You would think, but I ran a bunch of reps before and after talking to Piccard in the middle to get a birthsign. I would be given two different classes for the exact same runs after a save from just before getting a birthsign (with no skill use after the save). I tried it switching between birthsigns and got no logical outcome. I think I did it with two different races Argonian and Kajiit, with the same skill use and same two birthsigns and got different results.

I think that each race and sex has a set of possible classes based somewhat on skill use in the tutorial but some coin-flipping is going on too. The one thing that was clear to me is that you can't play towards getting what you want.

From the :

The suggestion for the player's class which Baurus makes is based on the specializations (Combat, Magic, Stealth) of the skills that the player advances during the tutorial. has more details.

So, yes, it's the ratio of how many Combat:Magic:Stealth skills you've leveled up during the tutorial. And, yes, the guess is usually horribly wrong.

Oh, and to keep this post on the original topic, today I closed an Oblivion gate. As I did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. And...

Today, Oblivion was having a sale on gates, and I got a two-for-one deal. No, I don't mean a random world with , I mean two gates spawned within spitting distance of each other (northwest and southwest of Black Rock Caverns). My character got to set a new record by closing two gates in one day.

My character would be just as happy if she didn't get to set any more records.

My character has been having some fun at the Arena.
Haven't played Oblivion in years and am having a blast remembering the first times I played this game.

In some ways, Oblivion is my favorite ES game, or at least the one I have the fondest memories of. I like to play characters who excel at melee fighting, so I enjoy the arena questline, too!

Finished the main quest.

I started playing Oblivion for the first time ever in late December 2020, and I've managed to play at least an hour a day on all but two days since then. It took me 99 IRL days of playing and at least 325 in-game hours to finish the main quest. There are actually more in-game hours than that, but I did a certain amount of save-scumming. <_<

I ran the main quest all the way through Great Gate, and then took some time out to finish, or even start and finish, some of the other quests. I think I've done almost everything in the base game, with the exception of a few of the non-journal quests. I will probably finish those quests, and then go on to Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles.

Yeah, I'm kind of doing XKCD 606, but on an even greater lag than five years.

Congrats!

Down to the last recommendation before arcane university, Leyawin Recommendation! (if chorral isn’t glitched) as a female high elven mage

Caused a stock market crash in the imperial city by selling scrolls by the hundreds to make enough money to buy a nice house

Menauch, the tall handsome red-headed Nord fought an Elder Gnarl with 65K health for 37 minutes and won with the help of the townsfolk in Hale. Oh and a Dark Seducer that he summoned then banished after like 20 seconds.

Finished my first-ever playthrough.

As I noted above, I finished the main quest back in early April. It took me about a week to do Knights of the Nine, and then I started on Shivering Isles. I finished the SI main quest in mid-June and moved back to Cyrodiil in late June. It took me from then until today to finish exploring all the dungeons I hadn't yet explored.

Headline stats: Level 44, Argonian, archer, Steed. Health/magicka/fatigue 396/166/387, including some enchanted items. 3,746,301 gold - I spent a lot of time looting and selling. 730 in-game days. 230 quests complete, 3 still active (amber/madness, the Arena, the Listener). 428 places found, 201 nirnroots.

A bit over 606 hours of play time, over 254 real-life days, for an average of 2:23 a day. I made a rule that I had to play for at least an hour for that day to count. My longest streak was 89 days, in February through May 2021. I had to fix Abomb twice, at about 340.5 and 588 hours.

The Court of Dementia decided to help me vs. the Army of Order. While Kithlan died, Anya managed to knock down Jyggalag himself. New Duchess of Dementia right there?

Somehow one of the Hrota Cave thieves got a sneak attack on me (6x damage). Didn't know NPCs could do that.