When should I play the DLC?

[soss]

First time oblivion player here. I just got out of the sewers and am following the road to my objective, stopping at anything interesting along the way.

[AC Denton]

Whenever you want.
Get used to the feel of the game though. Shivering Isles isn't for the weak.

Also as soon as you leave the sewers I always reccomend to everyone; go into the Imperial City first, sell whatever you got in the tutorial & do as many quests as you can around the city & do as many fights in the Arena as you can. It'll get you used to the game and is a great start.

[ed]

You will probably be too poor to bother with the house DLC for a while, though if you choose wisely I'm pretty sure you can just buy one upgrade to get at least one chest installed and start living out of that house pretty early if you have your heart set on it. It'll be inconveniently located compared to the Imperial Shack though, which I prefer for the early game.

If you want to be able to use the Sithis shrine in the lair house DLC, you should probably do Knights of the Nine as early as possible as it will wipe your infamy. (Note: regaining Infamy later will make you unable to wear crusader relics. You'll have to choose one or the other, personally I'm not a fan of KOT9 anyway but to each their own.)

I would say do Shivering Isles after you've done at least a good chunk of the vanilla game and are starting to want something new as Isles is like a whole new miniature Oblivion with its own map and main quest and side quests and random dungeons and fancy loot. Going back and forth between the two is possible for most of the SI main storyline (and afterwards) but it's probably better to give it focus once you start.

Also you will want to have a passable baseline of gear and spells beforehand, as IIRC there's only one limited spell vendor in the Isles and possibly not many trainers either. There are weapon/armor vendors who can craft special stuff, but it'll take you a long while to gather the materials. And the main quest will give you a number of very nice unique items, but not everything you'll want for every character type.

I never did the Mehrunes Razor DLC and don't know anything about it.

[76561198034396398]

Mehrunes Razor is fairly overrated and probably for high lvl players,Shivering Isles has some good loot for lvl 20 plus players and is quite fun.KOTN annoys me too much to even do

While playing the DLC's is a personnel thing there are certain quests you want to get done early in the game or leave until later http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Quest_Timing

[ed]

You can ignore a lot of that timing stuff with a quest item leveler mod, fortunately, and there are a lot of those mods to choose from.

[jdvmsr]

Originally posted by Anthony Campbell:

Whenever you want.
Get used to the feel of the game though. Shivering Isles isn't for the weak.

Also as soon as you leave the sewers I always reccomend to everyone; go into the Imperial City first, sell whatever you got in the tutorial & do as many quests as you can around the city & do as many fights in the Arena as you can. It'll get you used to the game and is a great start.

Agreed. this is good advice. You will want to be level ten or more when you get to Kravetch. If you do not use the cheats, you will need to be very familiar with the proticol and use of spells and/orweapons. You do not lose level or abilities, unless put in prison. Look for cheat on paying fines or delete BOUNTY. Beware of factions.