Oblivion talk:Feather

Ambiguity

"For instance, if you create a custom Feather spell that gives you 100 points of Feather for 120 seconds AND another custom Feather spell that gives you 90 points of Feather for 120 seconds, you can cast them both and gain a net bonus of 190 points' worth of Feather." This sentence seems a bit ambiguous, some people might think that you need to make Feather spells that are of different value (while in fact you can cast as many 100pts for 120 secs Feather spells as you want). I suggest changing that 90 to 100. Lisan al Gaib 10:46, 8 January 2007 (EST)

Good point. In fact that whole paragraph is pretty much redundant with the following paragraph, so I took it out and added in a new example. Hopefully that works better! --Nephele 11:26, 8 January 2007 (EST)

I am a new person just adding to whats already here

I found a way to permanantly fix the feather problem all you have to do is over encumber yourself use your feather enchanted item you will get the 125 feather affect if your useing the sigel stone. when you drop the items you will keep the feather affect. so if you want to keep using enchanted feather items always over encumber yourself before useing them. Example if you max is 600 and you over encumber yourself say to 725 then you use your feather item then it will raise you max to 725 if you are permanantly equipping your items then it will stay at 725 even if you were to drop everything. I just kept using the bug to equip unlimited rings and can now carry 8000 withoug increasing my attribute strenght just make sure before you equip that you are over emcumbered each time or it will decrease the amount you can carry rather than increase. — Unsigned comment by 71.96.131.136 (talk) on 10 October 2012

Where can I find and buy this spell?

I'm not sure I have this spell yet.--ShakenMike 13:08, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Ease Burden is the lowest level feather spell, available from Alberic Litte, Alves Uvenim, Delphine Jend, Druja, Edgar Vautrine, Selena Orania, Sulinus Vassinus, Thaurron or Trayvond the Redguard Jadrax 14:26, 25 February 2007 (EST)

Ok thanks--ShakenMike 15:44, 25 February 2007 (EST)

For enchanting (which is the best way to use Feather in some cases: see http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Movement_Formulas) the effect is available "for free" as part of the Cheydinal Mage's Guild Recommendation quest. Aliana 07:07, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Run faster

Using Feather over Fortify Strength has the benefit of making you run fastser as it lowers your encumbrance, the more you're encumbred the slower you run. It's not a huge amount, and is only noticable when you already carrying a heavy load. Grandmaster z0b 18:03, 5 March 2007 (EST)

And longer duration

The other advantage of Feather over Fortify Strength as a spell rather than an constant duration enchantment is that Feather lasts longer. This can be important in a fight, where your Fortify Strength might give out at a critical moment, leaving you frozen in place over-encumbered until you can get it cast again. --Vilhazarog 13:58, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Sigil Stones and enchantments

Concerning the Sigil Stones, I am currently experiencing what is warned for above - that I applied a Transcendent Sigil Stone of Feather to my cape, only to find out it only gives me a bonus of 33 instead of 125 as promised... This seems to relate to the "zero-weight items" thingy - now the question is, how do I get rid of it? I want to have a 125 Feather cape, but I see no other way except buying another similar cape, adding a Sigil Stone via the console and then reapplying it - or can you do this on already enchanted items? Thankful for any input, even if I suspect the abovementioned is what I have to do. Lovykar 14:14, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

If your problem is related to the Bug described in the article, then simply taking the cape off and putting it back on again should fix the problem. That bug shouldn't affect the actual enchantment on the article, just the math that gets done when it goes to apply the enchantment to your character.

If, on the other hand, your cape permanently claims to only have a 33 feather effect (i.e., that's what it says in your inventory, not just what it says on your magical effects page), then I'm not sure what would have caused the problem. --Nephele^Talk 21:29, 4 June 2007 (EDT)

Concerning Reverse-Pickpocketing

Under the "Bug" section of the Feather page, it says:

"On your screen, Feather appears to increase your maximum encumbrance (so instead of carrying 250 pounds of an allowed 225, your inventory now says that you are carrying 250 of an allowed 325). However, behind the scenes, the game actually implements Feather by reducing the weight of the items that you are carrying (so in fact you are carrying 150 pounds of an allowed 225). Although the difference is often semantic, at other times it leads to a glitch: the magnitudes of your Feather spells and potions become set to zero."

With that, would it be possible to use feather spells to lower the weight of an object enough to cause it to be considered a zero-weight item? It would seem that with the weight of the object so low, the game would read it as 0. Without the patches, spell stacking could be used to make a feather spell of any magnitude. The only problem is that I have the Xbox 360 version of Oblivion and don't understand the mechanics of the game well, but it would be great if someone with the PC version could verify if this idea is possible. I tried the spell stacking strategy mentioned on another page, but I don't think that I raised the magnitude of the spell by enough. If this is possible, then any object can be reverse-pickpocketed to an NPC. Zephyr5 17:32, 11 October 2008 (EDT)

It's already possible to stack Feather even without pre-patch exploits, but no: you can only reverse-pickpocket items that have a "true" weight of zero. Feather doesn't make items weightless, it just stops them counting towards your inventory weight. Aliana 08:56, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me! Zephyr5 10:06, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

Not Bugs

I've renamed the "Bugs" section. The game is clear and explicit about how Feather works: yes, it's annoying, but wanting it to be different doesn't make it a bug. — Unsigned comment by Aliana (talk • contribs) on 12 October 2008

Except that behavior means that if you "start casting spells before picking up all of the loot, most of those spells will actually have zero magnitude" (to quote the next paragraph), which is pretty clearly a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:31, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

How so? "Feather decreases the weight of items you carry", and it's implicitly "at the time the spell is cast". I don't think anyone would try to argue that it's intuitive, but it IS clear and well defined: the problem is people (albeit understandably) insisting on trying to make it mean something different to what it actually says. Drain Skill: Blunt 100 doesn't give you -95 Blunt if you only have 5 ranks in it, but we don't call that a bug. Aliana 09:09, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

That's exactly the point. The Drain would still show up as a 100 point effect, but Feather shows up as 0 point. That is a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:44, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I see what you mean, but again, that's what we WANT feather to be rather than what it IS. The magnitude "correctly" shows x because that's what it's actually doing: feathering x lbs of stuff. None of us like it, but it's doing exactly what it says it does, and we're stuck with it. I guess a better parallel would be: if you cast a Fortify Skill 100 spell in armor and then take the armor off, the spell is still only 95 points - it doesn't become 100 because of something you do AFTER casting it.

Please consider what the word bug means. Try looking it up on Wikipedia for example. The unexpected behavior part applies to that description. Most readers who come to the site expect Feather to work one way, but they will read here why it behaves differently in some aspects, thus, they will look for a Bugs section. We don't know what Bethesda considers this issue to be, we can only deduce that from our readers. --Timenn < talk > 10:22, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

It's nothing to do with desire. The game lists an active effect as having a zero point effect. By all means cause the spell to have no effect and vanish the moment it's cast, but to claim that it is active with a zero effect is pretty much an oxymoron. This is the only occasion in which the game does this: it's a bug. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:26, 12 October 2008 (EDT)

I understand you. Really. I agree that the display is certainly confusing even though it IS a correct indication of what's going on. But "bug" means "does not behave as INTENDED", which isn't the same as "does not behave as expected by people who didn't write the code", and the behavior is clearly exactly as intended, and exactly as it says in the game itself, even though we all think it's stupid. Still, it's all semantics: what's important is that it's well documented and clearly understood, and as long as that's covered you can call it whatever you want, so let's get back to more important things. :)

<=/
As I said, we can only guess what Bethesda intended. It's safer to try to anticipate what readers would expect, which we believe would be "Bugs" rather than just being it a game mechanic. Important or not, it was the subject of the discussion, thus we replied in kind. --Timenn < talk > 06:56, 14 October 2008 (EDT)

Also, the behavior is different than implied by in-game statistics: on your inventory screen, Feather increases your maximum encumbrance, whereas actually your maximum encumbrance is not affected. So not only is it different than what players expect, it's different from what players are told. I'd say that makes it a bug, so I've changed the title back.

Furthermore, logistically changing the section title doesn't really work. This section is linked to from other pages, so changing the section title without editing all of those other pages breaks those links. Therefore, even if the section title is not yet resolved, the title should be left in its original form while the discussion is active. Even more importantly, there already is a "Notes" section on the page, so we can't just rename the section: either it's a separate bug section, or else it's merged with the existing notes (at which point it's impossible to link to just this one note from other pages). --Nephele^Talk 22:33, 21 October 2008 (EDT)

Not that I care much, but displaying as zero points is a bug. As for the rest of the effects, I agree with Aliana. Feather effectively offers a bonus to running speed due to its mechanics, is that a bug? It is certainly unexpected; that definition of a bug is overly broad. Although I am at pains to point out to anyone I can that WP has an undeserved rep as being inaccurate, in the sense of containing new urban legends or obvious falsehoods, it can be incomplete or indistinct. To say nothing of the fact that WP guidelines themselves point out that the fact that "Other Stuff Exists" is not in itself a solid rationale ('We have always done it this way', 'look at this other page that frames the subject in the same way', etc). Although the section title should of course stay, because of the displayed zero and Nephele's argument of logistical difficulty, I suggest that material be moved from that section to Section Name, with a note in the Bug section to See Section Name for other unexpected behaviour of the Feather effect. Anarchangel 21:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

Stealth

Does an equipped feather-enchanted item also reduce your risk of being detected while stealthing, even though it does, as mentioned in the article, not show it (it appears as if it raises your maximum encumbrance instead of lowering the weight of your items)? SwedishBerzerker at youtube.com 08:34, 3 May 2009 (EDT)

Fortify Str

I 'disappeared' (still there in the page record but not visible) a couple of things in the Fortify Strength section. Both await verification or deletion as applicable.

• At a certain level of Restoration, it may be possible to cast more effective +Str spells, and I am a big fan of more information, but this may not even be notable. The same could be said for Shield and Reflect Damage, which similarly share an 'effect' (damage reduction) and have different ones. So go make executive decisions, I am equivocal about this one.
• The effect claimed for Strength, of increasing attack speed, is not noted in the Strength article, and seems a little dubious. The wording also tended to mislead the reader into believing that Str did not affect H2H damage, so I changed that.

Anarchangel 21:06, 1 January 2010 (UTC)

encumbrance calculation issue with feather

OK, I have the Ring of Perfection, the Mind and Body ring, Cruelty's Heart, and Feather Shoes. I had used a created feather potion because I was about to do the quest to take the Mysterium Xarxes and knew I would be needing it for a short time. I removed my gear after using the potion, and dropped it to avoid the turnover, however, when I took back and re-equipped my gear, my encumbrance limit was LOWER than before I removed my gear, by roughly 100 pts. Any thoughts on this? 67.193.109.219 23:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you may be looking for this --S'drassa ^•T2M 23:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Stupid Weight

I'm having a strange problem with my weight. Sometimes, my total weight is way more than I am accually carrying. It messes around mostly when I use my feather spells. For example, If I cast feather, it often does odd things like going from 150/200 to 100/300, which gives me more room to carry so that is good. The problem is, when the spell wears off, I think it is doing something odd to my total weight. It was just saying that I had 150/200 loot with me, but when I added it up (twice) I was only carrying 50 lbs of loot! I took off my boots of feather (that I made, if that matters) and it went to 50/150, when I put them back on it stayed at the correct 50/200. Do I just have to take my boots off and back on after using my feather spells a bunch of times, or is there anothre way to fix this problem?--Zefiewings 01:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

That sounds like the usual Feather Bug documented on the page. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 02:51, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Thank you Robin Hood, I guessed that was what it was, but I just wanted to make sure. i found the wording on the bug issue a little difficult at the time, though I probably should have taken in to consideration that I was reading it late :p. Ah well, ask a stupid question, get an obvious answer right? So to fix he problem then, I just remove then put back on my boots if the calculation is off, to reactivate the feather effect with what I have at the time? Got it, thanks again. --Zefiewings 18:44, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

As I understand it, that's the solution, yes; I haven't really played around with it extensively, though. As for the wording, I think it probably could use a little tweaking, but nothing's coming to me right now that isn't just as difficult. If you can think of something better, go nuts. ‒ Robin Hood↝Talk 19:11, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Constant Number Bug

I've been having a very strange bug, no matter what enchantment, spell, or any other uncumbrence altering device I use, I always get "feather (7)"

I tried reinstalling my game, removing all the mods, testing various combinations of mods, nothing is working. It's really annoying. Whenever I cast the spell, my health goes down to zero, and I die. Its awful. Anyone else getting this bug?

Scripting?

Are scripts resolved before weight? If not while abilities won't work adding a Feather effect through a script would. Just thought I should ask since we have a note on the page that abilities won't work and I figured it would be good to know if this will/won't work. Also please excuse mistakes I may have made; it's very late for me right now.--TAO^Huh? 08:14, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so I'm trying a bunch of different things...here are my results as I try each one:

Test	Comments	Result
Add permanent Feather ability	This one is just for testing, to confirm that it doesn't work as expected.	With a Strength of 108, my total encumbrance was 540, meaning no Feather effect was active, even though it appeared at a magnitude of 100 in my active effects list.
Continuously remove and re-add the same ability	A really bad way to do this, but it'll confirm that even if you repeatedly add the ability, it doesn't take effect.	Again, no effect, even though it showed with a magnitude of 100 in my active effects list.
Add Feather via a Quest stage script instead of a normal one	I don't expect any better results from this, but worth a shot.	As expected, no effect.
Add scripted effect which in turn adds Feather effect		Again, no luck.
Add as a Disease/Poison instead of Ability		As a poison, the effect was completely ignored and didn't even show in the active effects list. As a disease, it worked! It did have the annoying side-effect of leaving an icon in place at the top right of my screen, though I suspect you could get rid of that if you tried hard enough.

Having found one method of doing it, I've stopped testing there. I can think of other possibilities, like a spell that gets cast repeatedly, but I think that'd be beyond my scripting skills. I was unable to test whether or not the bug of Feather not taking effect (first bullet in the Bugs/implications section) was still problematic or not, as I've never been able to produce that effect at all that I can recall. Even though it seems pretty clear on how to do it, it never makes a difference for me. If anyone does understand it and is able to replicate it, please tell me how so I can test with the Disease. – Robin Hood↝talk 17:55, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Ah. I just saw this. Not sure if you're back yet, but what you do is drop everything before getting the effect.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 22:57, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I probably won't be back per se till at least the new year. I still check my watchlist once or twice a day, which includes all the major site pages, but I'm slowly removing everything else unless I have a reason to keep watching it (like direct replies to me two months after the original topic :Þ). Anyway, as for the topic of Feather, if you have to drop things before the effect in order to trigger the bug, then I would imagine adding Feather as a permanent disease would be a viable way to create a permanent Feather effect without triggering it. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:34, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The thing is that since it only takes effect on the weight you have it wouldn't really help if you added the disease at the start of the game - I think.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 21:34, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Good point. I seem to remember not having a problem with it, but I'll have to test it out more thoroughly at some point. – Robin Hood↝talk 01:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Okay, just tested it by creating a "Light-headed" disease with Feather 100 and adding it to the character immediately at the start of the game. My displayed encumbrance was 204 instead of 200, but the calculated encumbrance shown by HUD Status Bars is still just 200 instead of the expected 300. So it sounds like the Feather bug still comes into play in this instance. – Robin Hood↝talk 00:01, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Is there any way to make the disease cure itself every 10 seconds or so? That would at least get around the bug.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 14:43, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, you could probably get it to recast periodically fairly easily, although if you did, you could probably just use a regular feather spell being recast periodically - I don't think you'd need the disease. Either way, it's an awkward way to get a permanent feather effect. An item with the disease might be a better way to go, but that still necessitates equipping and unequipping it every time you need it to recalculate encumbrance. I'm not sure if you can add a disease to an item directly, but if not, you could do it with a script that runs whenever you equip/unequip. Here again, though, you could have it cast a normal spell instead of a disease. (At least in theory...I haven't tested any of this.) – Robin Hood↝talk 11:11, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Ease Burden Glitch

In the patched 360 version of the game, I somehow managed to gain a permanent feather affect of 50 using the Ease Burden spell. I cannot recreate it now, as I am unsure of how it happened in the first place. I was going into The Inn of Ill Omen just as the spell was wearing off and when the cell loaded I was still able to move around despite the spell no longer being active. I looked at the affects page in the magic menu but it didn't say that feather was even active anymore. I reloaded the autosave accidentally and the amount I could carry went back down from 275 to 225, leaving me over encumbered as I should have been to begin with. I didn't get the chance to cast the spell again or otherwise debunk the situation before reloading, so I was wondering if anyone had experienced this as well, or knows of people who have. — Unsigned comment by 24.58.163.216 (talk) at 02:03 on 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Enchanted items bug

I don't really understand why, but ever since I installed the Shivering Isles expansion for 360, each time I create a custom item with a grand soul gem, it only allows a total of 49 feather rather then 50. At times it also only gives me a maximum of 46. I dont know why its doing this and I did look all around this area for info on it, but no one has had this problem. Even when i uninstall the expansion and make a new game it does the same thing.

Can only obtain 32 feather points.

No matter what kind of enchantment I use it only gives me 32 extra points of carrying room. If I cast a spell for 100 feather it gives me 32. If I don the Gray Cowl it should give me 200 but yet again I get 32. If I put on my boots that give me 45 points feather, you guessed it, I only get 32. If I use more than one effect at once the first one will give me 32 and all the subsequent ones give me 0. Please help I should have 345 extra space for cave diving and I really need it.

Wording of Bug Section

In the articles Bug section, it is stated that "[...]the game actually implements Feather by reducing the weight of the items that you are carrying" which tends to lead to the assumption that the Items weight statistic is changed, which, as far as i can tell, is not the case. Perhaps a less misunderstandable wording would be "[...]by reducing your current encumbrance[...]". Just mentioning it, because it seems that some entries on the discussion page are referring to this("Concerning Reverse-Pickpocketing", "Stealth"). --Arthan;77.189.138.251 09:16, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Renamed "Bug" to "Warning"

I went ahead and renamed the "Bug" section to "Warning" as part of the overhaul I just did to the page (everything else I changed shouldn't be too controversial). While the way Feather behaves is certainly a little counter-intuitive, I'm really hesitant to call it a bug - not applying a higher magnitude than the player's weight was clearly the intended behavior, and the fact that the magnitudes don't change once they've been applied is only a bug if the devs intended them to. As much as I wish Feather worked just like it did in Morrowind, it isn't necessarily a bug just because it doesn't. spweasel (talk) 08:15, 4 March 2013 (GMT)