Ok some will probably find this a silly question, but please bear with me. I'm simply curious about these things, and perhaps I can pick up a tip or 3...

I'm simply wondering what you have programmed your 1-8 keys to do.

Mine are:

1-3: Shock, fire and frost damage, or some other variations of good destruction spells.
4: Invisibility (or heal others if I have companions)
5: Detect life
6: Restore health
7: Light / night-eye
8: Various depending on situation (open lock, soultrap, summon creatures, charm, silence etc.)

So I'm using all the keys for spells, but I've been thinking of assigning maybe 1 and 2 to blade and bow as I miss that sometimes.

1: Main weapon
2: Main ranged damage spell
3: Secondary ranged damage spell
4: Paralyze spell (currently in combination with Soul Trap)
5: Main summon spell
6: Invisibility spell
7: Best open lock spell
8: Night-Eye spell

I didn't even know you could assign hot keys in Oblivion. So how do you set them up please?

How it works on PC:

Go to either your inventory or your list of spells. Hold down the number to which you wish to assign an item/spell. When you do, a small dial-menu should appear to the right of the main menu. Click the item/spell you wish to assign to the key you're holding down.

Unless of course you have XBox 360. In that case, go to your inventory, highlight an item or spell, hold Y, and press any direction on the d-pad.

1 - Night eye/detect life spell (hunter's sight normally... I love being a vampire for that)
2 - Healing spell
3 - Main range weapon
4 - Main melee weapon
5 - Ranged Destruction spell
6 - Invisibility spell
7 - Light spell/Summon spell (depending on whether I'm on my mage or assassin character)
8 - Situation dependant. Currently on a secondary bow with a different enchantment.

Battlemage character:
1 main melee weapon
2 secondary melee weap
3 restoration
4 ranged weap
5 torch
6 detect life
7 repair hammers
8 third weap/destruction spell

MageOfMages (no traditional weapons use - ever)
1 staff
2 flame spell
3 flame area spell
4 bow
5 detect life/cold spell (depending on area)
6 shock spell
7 restoration
8 hammers

It really surprises me you others who've posted don't have hammers on quick key. Any time I get in a fight I use them. For my mage, I like having several types of damage spells 'on tap' because I can pick a spell to match my opponents' weaknesses.

I honestly didn't know you could have repair hammers and torches assigned to hotkeys. See? I learned something from this silly survey!

Anyway I don't feel the need for a shortcut for hammers since the game is paused while you use them, and since torches last so long in Oblivion (thank you Bethesda!) I don't really feel the need for a shortcut for those either.

Keep posting, guys!

I also used to have Azura's Star on hotkey number 1 since I had a weapon I enchanted that did massive amounts + soultrap but drained the weapon very quickly. With the Star hotkeyed I could keep filling it easily.

1.Short sword
2.Bow
3.Dagger
4.Calming Touch
5.Light
6.Healing Spell
7.Detect life
8.Night Vision.

Calming touch, eh? Hmm... Don't think I've used that. Does it work? Meaning if you fight a troll or a bear, will it stop attacking?

Anyway I've started using 1 and 2 for blade and bow now, and it's good. I miss a staff button though.

Actually I miss more shortcut buttons available. I'm using a gaming keyboard (Logitech G15) with 18 macro-programmable keys (with 3 modes, so actually 3x18 keys), but it's not possible to assign items in Oblivion to them because of the awkward journal/inventory system. At least I don't think so. If anyone know if it's possible I'd be grateful for any tips.

About the calming touch, I have a spell that works fine on low level monsters. Rats and goblins and such. It's almost like paralyze.
Hmm, it could be more useful making it more powerfull, a good reason to join the magesguild then I guess...
Dunno, about your keyboard though. Strange if there wouldn't be any way to make those hotkeys with that.

Does it count when I've written myself a mod to give myself 56 hotkeys? 8 banks of 7 keys.

My first bank of hotkeys are offensive spells (ranged fire, frost, lightning, area fire and frost, touch fire and frost)

2nd bank is equipment: 4 different weapons, repair hammer and my CE detect life gauntlets (one slot unassigned)

3rd bank is "exploring" spells: 3 different feather spells, invisibility, soultrap, call steed and summon steed (latter two are from a mod).

4th bank is amulets and rings (can't remember exactly what... water walking amulet and water breathing ring are in there, plus some others)

5th bank is healing spells: three levels of heal self, then greater convalecense. Rest of the bank is unassigned

6th bank is looting: 5 different levels of unlock spell and telekinesis.

7th and 8th banks are unassigned.

And before you ask... the hotkey expander mod I've written is really not very friendly. It works by you assigning the 8 hotkeys to 8 custom items I created. If you trigger any of seven of the 8 items, it just equips/unequips/sets the appropriate item or spell depending on your current bank, but if you hit the key you've mapped to the "Hotkey Diamond" (1, in my case), you go into "bank switch mode", and the next number from 1 to 8 you choose determines what your new bank is.

However, as I said, it's not very friendly or polished. Since you've mapped your hotkeys to "Hotkey Diamond", "Hotkey Emerald", "Hotkey Gold", "Hotkey Pearl" etc, you can't see what each key will actually do by viewing the hotkey display. The game says "You can't equip that item" whenever you hit a hotkey for an annoying number of seconds before you get to see what you've just equipped/unequipped. You can't mix spells and items in the same bank (and need to set each bank to one type or the other... if you get it wrong, that hotkey item's script throws an error which makes the game decide to disable the item until you quit out to the front menu and reload).

The way you assign a bank is really inconvenient, too: assign hotkeys 2 through 8 to what you want, save the game, switch out of Oblivion and run a .exe file that massages your saved game to copy the hotkeys into the script data for the current bank, switch back to Oblivion and re-load your game. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be able to get the C code to work in reverse, copying the current bank into the hotkeys... it works for spells, but items get assigned but then vanish sequentially around the display over the space of about a second when you first access the hotkey display after reloading.

So, all in all probably not really in a fit state to be put up for general download.

That sounds very clever, Rob, although probably a bit too complicated for me...

Anyway I hope someone will make a mod that works with the type of keyboard I have. It's getting quite popular, and several other game developers have even written scripts for it.

They keys function so that you can assign lots of keystrokes to each key (macro), so that hitting that one key substitues several key presses in games etc. Sounds about like the way your mod works, if I understood it somewhat correctly.

Anyway great keyboard. Besides those keys it has an LCD display, also programmable. At default it displays RAM/CPU usage. Playing Civilization IV it displays the last 4 messages you've received, for example. It also has media controller keys and manual volume knob, which I find handy, as well as two USB ports for mouse, joystick etc...

Best thing about it though, and the reason I got it, is that the keys are lit up with a cool blue colour, so that you can play in total darkness and still see the keys clearly. It wasn't expensive either. More info here (I'm not working for Logitech ).

Anyway, I'm drifting off-topic (again) from my own thread, but being able to program more keys to avoid the rather unfriendly user interface in Oblivion would be great.

Yah, interesting ways of expanding hotkeys. And I could certainly use at least twice the number we get on 360.
Kameo on 360 had a decent way of doing this, with each part of the 'wheel' activating a different 'spirit' that then had its own set of spells, effectively multiplying the number of hotkeys many times over.

Well, you could program each key to do something like the following:

~player.equip 00035E6E^M~

which would open the console and equip an ebony longsword (and then close the console). Likewise, you could use

~selectplayerspell 00000136^M~

to set the current spell to "Heal Minor Wounds"

(^M = control-M, a carriage return)

You could even have a single key equip a bunch of items.

The problem is finding those FormID numbers to put in your commands. For items and spells in the official game, you can look them up in the Construction Set. For items from mods, though, the first two digits change depending on what order the mods load in, and for self-created items an spells, you don't really have way to get the FormIDs other than the route I took (pull them out of the save file).

There would also be a problem with you seeing the console text pop up briefly. You'd also want to avoid pressing any other keys while the macro was running, because you might inadvertently send extra keystrokes to the console mid-command.

Anyway, it's a thought.

Interesting idea. Thanks for the tip!

text removed

Will post hotkeys tomorrow. Text removed into a new thread.

Lol holy moly, 2006!! I’m going to start calling you Mannimarco!!

Question: can we use this for questions specific to each others’ control setup?

Sure, please ask.

Edit: I decided to just make a new thread rather than NECROBUMP this one. This way, I can post my hotkeys and stay on topic.



Keep in mind, Khajiit, that I didn't just make those configurations overnight, they are the result of years of playing. And right in the middle of gameplay I might have a flash of inspiration as to how I want to set something up. 🎮

Thanks for necroning this. It was interesting reading about RobRendell’s hot key mod. I had forgotten you could do that.
I also liked Olav’s signature “Do not take me for a conjurer of cheap tricks!”
I should add; The Sisters of Insanity, Markie, and the Angel take exception to being called “cheap tricks”.

It's funny how Chorrol.com was once a really busy website, right? But yeah, RobRendell's idea is interesting.

Let me get on topic. So... hotkeys. I'm going to post what is typical for any of my characters: thief, dealer, crusader, adventurer, and so on. I'm going to describe the Xbox's set of hotkeys, 1 thru 8, which correspond to noon (if we're comparing the D-pad to a clock) clockwise to about 10:30 pm.



Hotkey 1: usually a hand weapon, like my skooma dealer's got a mace. Sometimes, with characters which don't use melee (or only use one weapon at a time) I'll slot this as a magic spell. My crusader might have Turn Undead here.

Hotkey 2: Command Mount spell. All my characters currently ride horses, and hotkey 2 allows them to call their horse.

Hotkey 3: Healing spell. Or for those who don't use spells, this might be healing potions. But #3 always has something to do with healing.

Hotkey 4: Varies. But usually a 'personal' spell such as Detect Life or Nighteye.

Hotkey 5: Varies. My archer's got her bow in this slot. Since this corresponds to 6pm on a clock it's easy to push down, right in the middle of action, if she needs to loose some arrows. /// With magical characters I'll put a defensive spell here, like Shield or Protect. ///

Hotkey 6: Usually light sources. My dealer's got torch here, my Xena adventurer has a light ring, others more magical have actual light spells.

Hotkey 7: This corresponds to 9pm on a clock, and is usually a thrown spell or object. My Xena-clone character's got her chakram here. 💥Joan of Arkay, as a crusader who often travels with others, has Convalescence. Easy to tap #7 if she needs to heal someone in the middle of combat.

My skooma dealer's got his blunderbuss (yes, a gun) slotted in #7.

Hotkey 8: Touch spells or 'personal' spells such as Bound Armor usually go here.

I don’t have a “hard” hotkey setup, but I do find myself putting heals in 3, shield spells in 5, and feather in 9 out of habit. Also, the hotkeys are almost exclusively devoted to spells, as I don’t often play a character that doesn’t utilize a lot of different spell casting. I find magic/combat and magic/stealth hybrid characters to be more fun and interesting than pure versions of the 3 archetypes or combat/stealth hybrids.