Oblivion Remastered player spends 10,000 gold on a cocktail of spells and buffs, all to keep one troubled NPC alive through his murderous rampage

A cropped photo of Glarthir fighting an NPC
(Image credit: Bethesda, UESP)

One Oblivion Remastered player pushed the RPG's spellcasting to the limit - at significant personal cost - just to save a single murderous NPC.

In the town of Skingrad, a Wood-Elf named Glarthir can approach the player and ask for their help. As part of a quest notably named 'Paranoia', Glarthir thinks there's a conspiracy against him, and wants your help proving that he's being followed around by several of his neighbours. There are multiple ways that the quest can eventually play out, but if you tell Glarthir that he was right, but then refuse to help him take out his foes, he'll take matters into his own hands.

As you might have seen, an NPC who randomly starts a fight in the middle of a town tends to be pretty quickly dispatched by Oblivion Remastered's guards. So when Glarthir heads off to try and kill three of his fellow characters, he often doesn't last very long. That's where one player stepped in.

Having reached the climax of the Paranoia quest, Reddit user Plane-Session-6624 decided they wanted to keep Glarthir alive. But having attempted to kit him out with some endgame armor, they found that Oblivion Remastered doesn't allow for reverse pickpocketing, meaning Glarthir couldn't get that extra protection.

Asking the community for help, the player said that "I also have a Fortify 100 Strength and 100 Endurance spell for him, and a powerful heal, but he just doesn't seem to be doing nearly enough to hurt the guards and I just can't keep my magicka up long enough to heal him through it. Any ideas?"

The following day, they returned with an update: "I have created Super Saiyan Glarthir. He has mowed down hordes of guards, killed all his enemies…and got away with it all?"

Plane Session says that in the end, shields and blunt damage buffs were the key. Their eventual concoction of spells offered a 70% shield, Fortify 100 Blunt and Endurance, enhanced Agility, and a top-level healing spell for good measure. To make sure that they could keep all those buffs active, they say they spent "about 4k on sorcery potions." The overall cost, however, rose to more than 10,000 gold "between spell making, creating magicka-boosting items, and potions."

The result, however, was extremely effective. Glarthir made short work of his first target, dispatching the NPC before the guards could even intervene. But by the second fight, Glarthir has attracted some unwanted attention from the authorities. With some help from Plane Session, the second target and two guards both fall, before Glarthir heads to his third target and does away with them too.

So far, so good, except Glarthir now has a lot of blood on his hands. The player says they waited 4 hours to see what would happen when the rest of Skingrad's guards caught up with this mass murderer. Dawn breaks, and "dead guards [litter] the streets." Most NPCs now seem to want to have nothing to do with Glarthir, except a couple more guards who are killed after they catch him standing over the bodies of those he's slain. Once those two go down, however, Glarthir retreats to his house, where he's no longer bothered by his foes, appearing to have quite literally got away with murder, all thanks to his mysterious magical benefactor.

Elsewhere, other players are abusing Oblivion Remastered's systems in some very different ways.

Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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