Oblivion Console Commands | A Complete Guide

Traversing the province of Cyrodil could be a treacherous feat, for which we may use a little enhancements.

Also, occasionally you may find it more than necessary to follow some other “shortcuts”, if you know what we mean.

Therefore, we have completed a thorough Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion console commands guide. It’s not as easy as typing NUTTERTOOLS and ASPIRINE cheats in GTA: Vice City, so we strongly recommend

Introduction to Console Commands

A feature available for the PC version only, console is a tool for altering various aspects of the game, as well as acquiring info about NPC, items and creatures found in Oblivion. Commands are particular phrases you type into the console in order to retrieve the said info or to procure specified results within the game.

Access, Navigation, and Syntax

Before you start entering cheats, check if bAllowConsole is set to 1 in your Oblivion.ini file. As a precaution, make a copy of your Oblivion.ini file, should anything happen to it. Changes within .INI files are a common source of game saves corruptions, recurring crashes, and failures to start the game.

To open the console, press the tilde (~) key located in the immediate vicinity of the following keys: 1, Escape and TAB. On different keyboards, the key may have another symbol like “¬”. The console prompt appears in the lower-left corner of the screen.

In order to browse the console output, press “page up” and “page down”. It doesn’t matter whether you type commands in lower or uppercase – the console is case-indifferent.

Also, for Windows Vista and XP users, there is a common problem with the Infrared Device, which stands in the console’s way. In order to make the console usable, and render the tilde key active, you need to uninstall the said device first. We have disclosed the subject in our Fallout3 command console guide.

A large number of commands may be targeted. Their phrase format has two variants: player.command and “RefID”.command. The first one affects the player, the second one – NPCs or objects.

Their names and hex codes, when targeted, are displayed at the top of the console. There is another way of targeting objects within the game. Just open the console, click on the object you wish to target, and type in the specified command.

Some commands have abbreviations. They are fully interchangeable, so the abbreviated versions literally save time.

Character and NPC Manipulation

Having covered the preliminaries, let’s cut to the chase. Why don’t we start with our character. To change its attributes, you may either type “getav ” or “setav <#>”. The first one allows to have a new one, the second one increases or decreases value of an already existing attribute.

There is a bunch of very convenient cheats to spawn and control NPCs. For instance, the command “kill ” helps you get rid of a specified actor (apart form the Essential ones). The reverse is “resurrect <1>”. What’s more, the command “moddisposition ” changes the factor of liking of either your player or any targeted NPC (to decrease it, put a minus before the value factor ‘n’).

There is an indirect alternative to disposition change. To increase your character’s fame and infamy, type in “setpcfame ” and “setpcinfamy ”, respectively. It will affect the general affinity towards you in the whole of Cyrodil.

There is an interesting cheat, with repercussions bordering on hilarity as well as frustration. “createfullactorcopy” clones target actor including… your character. That’s right, you may talk and fight with yourself, and after completing the Knights of The Nine questline, your clone may be ordered to follow you. All fancy and meta so far, right? Wrong!

If you kill yourself within the boundaries of the guild, you will be expelled. The same repeats if your clone kills any member of the guild. So you’d better keep your clone on a short leash. Or just type “deletefullactorcopy” to get rid of the problem.

Quest-wise, there are two convenient cheats. “completequest ” and “caqs” which stands for “completeallquests”. They latter results in completing all quests in the game, including the test ones and those added by mods. However, as regards titles for guild factions, you end up empty-handed.

Items, World, and Environment

Moving on to more materialistic aspects of the game, the code which enables player to get a specific item is as follows: “player.additem ”.

As we know, there are gazillion of obtainable objects in Oblivion, so be sure to type in the BaseID of the craved weapon correctly. Also, a spelling cheat comes in handy – ”player.addspell ”.

To change the weather, type in “fw ”. The effect is immediate, so if it’s too bizarre for you, use “sw ” instead. This time the weather shifts gradually to the preferred type.

In order to change the flow of time, type “settimescaleto ”. The default value is 30, and you may use negative numbers, too. However, this will result in bugs in some quests, e.g. A Brush with Death, Where Spirits Have Lease, as well as experiencing negative time values if the clock ticks back past midnight. To fix the ensuing fuss, type “setgamehourto 0” or get back to the default value.

If you’d like to move to the specific object, person or creature, use the code “moveto ”. Should you move to specific location, though, use “coc” or “coe, ” instead. The latter is more accurate as it employs numeral coordinates.

We would like to close this paragraph rather subversively: to open any door, open up the console, target the door, and then type “unlock”.

Advanced Techniques and Precautions

If you are an advanced and cautious user of Oblivion console commands, you may find a “bat ” command extremely useful. Bat command executes a text file full of commands, which was pasted into the installation directory of the game (e.g. G:\Supercool Games\Bethesta Softworks\Oblivion).

Fancy tip: if you wish the console to skip one or two lines from the bat executable file, just place the semicolon before every said line.

There are two basic precautions you have to follow in order to have your game run smoothly. First, always make a copy of the .INI files before tampering with them. Second, save the game before any major changes.

Some commands are not just simple cheats and may cause unwanted effects. Especially commands that change class, appearance, and those which clone and spawn items in front of your character. We have mentioned potential harmful effects at the very beginning of this article.

Conclusion

The Command Console is a powerful tool, which can turn the game inside out, when used without proper forethought and caution. Sure, we may get us some free soul gem, boost up our skills or learn the teleport command by heart, but we might also perform some changes which would render the game unplayable.

Use the console wisely, and the Cyrodil will become your favorite playground. Use it foolishly, and be prepared for reinstallations galore.