Oblivion talk:Athletics

Swimming against an Object Does Increase Athletics

This page says swimming against an object will not increase Athletics. But I have found that to be false. I set my character to auto-run and had it swim against a rock in a pond right beside Cheydinhal. I saw the Athletics skill increase until it gained another level. -- Jargon 05:29, 27 December 2006 (EST)

I did more experiments on swimming against an object in the river inside Bravil. Athletics is a minor skill in my character's class specialization. Since my character's Athletics was at level 70 during the experiment, the required experience points to reach the next level is 113.6. Since swimming gains 0.04 experience points per second, swimming for 10 minutes would gain 24 experience points, which is almost 1/4 of the way from level 70 to level 71. So I set my character to auto-swim against a rock for 10 minutes. And voila! The Athletics progress bar moved forward almost 1/4 of the way to level 71. I did the same test auto-swimming against the wall beside the Bravil river gate and got a similar result. This proves again that auto-swimming against an object does increase the Athletics skill as swimming that covers distance would. -- Jargon 07:16, 28 December 2006 (EST)

I did still one more experiment auto-swimming against a wall in Cheydinhal. My character was about 1/4 away from reaching level 75 (Expert) in Athletics. My rough estimate was that it would take around 15 minutes of swimming to reach the Expert level. My estimate turned out to be right on the dot. After 15 minutes of auto-swimming against a wall, the Expert level congratulations box appeared.

I also did an experiment auto-running against a rock and my character gained a level in Athletics.

That's it! I'm deleting those erroneous "running/swimming against an object does not increase Athletics" statements. I was just wondering why someone put those statements there.

By the way, in the past, I had been able to achieve the Master level in Athletics by swimming against an object. I used the original unpatched version of Oblivion then. Since I now use the patched version, I performed these experiments to verify that running/swimming against an object still works in the latest version. -- Jargon 21:40, 9 January 2007 (EST)

Here's a monkey wrench that I'll throw into the works: I tried the same trick, but wired my controller thumbstick so the character ran backwards against a wall for several minutes. My Athletics did not appear to increase (from Level 68, less than what was mentioned above). I'm wondering if it counts only if you run/swim forward, not backwards. With an XBox 360 controller, it's easier to band the stick down rather than up, so an XBox user is more likely to lock a character into moving backwards for Athletics/Sneak cheesing. Perhaps this is where all the contention lies.Dark Spark 00:47, 16 December 2007 (EST)

Fast Travel

This comment (after some editing) was added to the article:

Your athletics skill also determines how much in-game time passes while fast travelling. It works for values over 100.

It was originally added with the edit summary "Athletics affect fast travel time. This is easily tested if you boost your Athletics with spells over 100". However, this disagrees with a large amount of work that has recently been done to figure out movement speeds. Based on Fast Travel, "You (or your horse) are also always assumed to be in "Walk" mode for the estimate." And based on Movement Formulas, your walking speed is not controlled by your Athletics skill, only your Speed. So some discrepancy needs to be resolved here.

As for the point about working for values over 100, that's true of everything related to Athletics, and is already mentioned in the Notes section. Adding it in this way to the skill benefits section makes it sound like fast travel time is affected, but running and swimming are not. --Nephele^Talk 13:01, 2 January 2009 (EST)

It was added again? I've already removed that comment once. Daedryon^{•T•C•E•} 13:49, 2 January 2009 (EST)

Oh, I see, 2 other editors reverted my edit and added to it, yet I actually went ingame and tested the theory, and there is no fast travel speed change whatsoever. Daedryon^{•T•C•E•} 13:52, 2 January 2009 (EST)

Athletics vs Speed

I'm a little confused about Speed and Athletics- is Athletics supposed to make you faster in addition to your Speed? For Example- would a Character with 100 Speed and 5 Athletics be slower than a Character with 100 Speed and 100 Athletics? And also, which contributes more to how fast you move: Speed or Athletics? What I mean is if a Character with 100 Speed and 50 Athletics would be the same speed as a Character with 50 Speed and 100 Athletics?Jplatinum16 14:19, 3 July 2009 (UTC)Jplatinum16

This article shows the formulae in detail. It basically comes down to it that Athletics has a bigger influence on your running speed than Speed. --Timenn-<talk> 16:02, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

fast travel and skill

I could have sworn that I saw a section in here that says whether or not fast travel increases athletics skill, but I can't seem to find it again. So am I blind, or is it missing? (I am quite often blind)

Does fast travel increase athletics skill? — Unsigned comment by 67.183.28.2 (talk) on 10 September 2009

There is a small possibility that that was incorrect information that was removed afterwards. In any case, fast travel does not increase your Athletics skill (nor any other). --Timenn-<talk> 11:58, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Wrong message

I know this will just end up being one of those 1 off glitches, but on my most recent character when athletics went up to 25, the perk announcement popped up, only it was the description of a high elf (my character) that is shown at the beginning of the game. Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else, and after reloading my recent autosave, I got the correct message. — Unsigned comment by Catmaniac66 (talk • contribs) on 28 February 2010

Perk messages don't differ depending on what race you are. Is this a mod you may have downloaded?--Corevette789 00:51, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

No mods, original version with no patches. And if it was confusing, I mean the perk message was replaced completely, word for word with the description for high elves that you see during character creation. — Unsigned comment by Catmaniac66 (talk • contribs) on 28 February 2010

Well I haven't heard of any occurrence like this one before, so if anyone can pledge to this happening to them it should be added to the article.--Corevette789 01:25, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I probably added this to the wrong place, I bet that if this happened to others, it would have been with any skill, just to point that out. Also, I did absolutely nothing special when this happened (Ran out of skingrad, headed to get erthor, summoned a dremora lord, then got that message. Tried to repeat and it didn't work, so I gave up). — Unsigned comment by Catmaniac66 (talk • contribs) on 28 February 2010

I think maybe moving it to this page might be better.--Corevette789 01:34, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

"This article documents the common and notorious glitches that you are likely to encounter when playing the game of Oblivion." So maybe not :-D. It is so minor that I wouldn't even worry about it, it affects absolutely nothing, but it would be nice to get an answer as to why it happened. Although my money is on the usual scratches. — Unsigned comment by Catmaniac66 (talk • contribs) on 28 February 2010

Combining Athletics and Acrobatics "excercise".

Fact: Skill increases are gained by running. But does "running" mean the actor has to be "grounded", or just moving forward, as when jumping with "auto-move" switched on (so as to effectively increase Acrobatics at the same time)? And does running while "water-walking" count as running or swimming, or not at all because the actor isn't technically running on ground? Predcon 22:22, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Good questions, was just thinking about this while training. I'm not an expert but I'm quite sure you can level up both athletics and acro at the same time, as long as you're not jumping in place, you should get points in both skills. I'm also quite sure that water-walking is entirely considered running, you get ath points for doing it, but not at the rate you would if you were swimming. 98.240.146.10 07:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)