Strategy Master's Combat Hide

As some of you may have noticed, I tend to learn a lot more towards the stealthy side of Oblivion. Although occasionally it can be fun to storm a bandit camp, mercilessly lobbing people's heads off as you go, it just seems to make more sense to try to have the advantage of not being seen. That being said, I'm sure warrior-oriented characters sometimes feel occasional desires to assassinate an oblivious stander-by with a dagger as well.

One gripe I've always had with Cyrodiil's enemies is that they always seem to know exactly where you are as soon you make your first move. It makes sense to have a general idea of where an attack came from, especially if you can hear someone scurrying away after planting the shot, but you can only hunt down a person for so long before you have to start guessing. Strategy Master, a mod author that tends to specialize in realism mods, employed a new detection system for NPCs that would give characters a chance to lose their tails. This is Combat Hide.

When watching the video, note that this mod is much more difficult to capture than it is to actually experience in game. I tried to film a couple of examples, but I'm not entirely sure how successful I was in properly portraying the mod's effect. Hopefully it's enough to understand the purpose, and if not, at least there's always my discussion and the mod description.

If you're in an interior such as this Ayleid ruin, it's likely that you won't be able to avoid combat entirely. With NPCs running around looking for you, chances are you'll be caught at some point. The most useful method of taking advantage of this mod is to hide from an enemy only when you think you won't be able to beat him in head-to-head combat. This gives you a second chance at getting a good blow to the back in before trying to finish the job. If this sounds at all appealing to you, you can read more about Combat Hide or download it for yourself at TESNexus.

Another day, another post. I would have liked to get one more in before the end of the weekend, but I ended up having more to do than I anticipated. I might not get time for another tomorrow, so the next update will probably fall on Tuesday evening or Wednesday. Until then, blessings of Julianos upon ye.