Continuing on from my last adventures in Oblivion Remastered led me through a number of quests for the mages guild, a Daedric quest and the main quest.

One of the mages guild quests nicely tied in with advancing through the ranks because it required casting four specific spells at a pillar, one heat, one cold, one to raise Magicka and one to lower it. Fire and ice were easy. Raising Magicka also, but the last one was difficult. I didn’t have the spell and it also is very specific. Drain or Absorb won’t work. I learned that while consulting the Oblivion Official Game Guide, one of the few game guides I have in my collection.
Ultimately I resorted to making my own spell after visiting a lot of guilds where nobody could sell me one.
This quest is one more example of Oblivion weirdness: The guild members researching the pillar have been getting nowhere, but you need them to translate the inscriptions. And they couldn’t figure that out for themselves?! Stupidos.

I’m having the usual trouble with horses. Navigating with them is a pain, you continuously have to mount and unmount them and they die all the time. First prior Marobel’s horse died, then the replacement I used, the one Martin’s left behind. I’m not bothering with buying one.

I did the quest with the haunted house. That was funny. At some point the guy who was selling the house travelled to The King and Queen Tavern, but when I asked the proprietor of that same establishment of his whereabouts, he told me that he believes that the guy is staying in “The King and Queen Tavern”! Such a hoot!
Once I got the house, it was a bit disappointing. You cannot store your weapons or armor in a nice way. You can only stuff them inside a chest. It’s so nice that Skyrim let’s you hang your weapons on the wall. There has to be a mod for that for Oblivion. Why doesn’t the remaster have this?

I decided to see if there’s anything interesting in the south-east of Cyrodiil. It turns out there isn’t much there. Only some caves and some camps. That’s when you realise that Skyrim definitely is a more interesting place. One thing I came across there was the Daedric shrine to Peryte. Doing this would come in handy, because Martin wanted a Daedric atrifact and the only one I had was Azura’s Star, which I wasn’t happy to give up being a mage and wanting to use enchantments.
I did that quest and maxed out both Destruction and Conjuration while doing it and sacrificed the reward, Spell Breaker, to Martin.

Then I proceeded with the main quest and that didn’t turn out so well. A well known bug manifested where the ghost of Valdemar won’t rise up and help you. I tried waiting for a bit and leaving the area. But then I did other quests in between and I don’t want to lose that and do the whole dungeon over again.
I guess Alberto isn’t destined to confront Mehrunes Dagon. That’s a bummer!
It does provide a future knight to try again though. As much as I enjoy playing as a mage, you miss out on all the excitement of having new armor and weapons.

O well, if the game doesn’t want me to complete it, I’ll just go to the DLC.

I’m now at level 21 and it’s becoming difficult to level further, since I mainly use Destruction and Conjuration, both of which are maxed out already. I will try to use the offensive spells of Restoration more often and also more Alchemy and Enchantment.
I don’t know if levelling more means that I’ll see other enemies. Being in the Shivering Isles makes that less important though, since that area already has different enemies from the main game.