Speedrunning an Oblivion Gate

Foolproof instructions on how to speed-run any standard Oblivion Gate. Now with 50% more "how-to"! Check out the reader comments for more great tips.

Advice

Here are a few general suggestions when getting ready to close an Oblivion Gate, before I get down to the nitty-gritty bits.

1. Your goal is to go up. In order to close a Gate, you need to get the sigil stone. There is one per gate, and it is always located at the top of the tallest tower, at the highest point in the plane of Oblivion. (Rapunzel, Rapunzel...) That means, in general, as long as you're moving to higher ground, you're on the right track.
   
   
2. Your goal is to move fast. The goal of a speed-run is, obviously, to get in and out as fast as possible. If your character can do so, sprint the whole way through. Remember that most of the enemies you will see (like Dremoroths) are big and slow moving -- very easy to outrun.
   
   
3. Your goal is to go unseen. Become one with the invisible chameleon. Potions, scrolls, and spells that make it harder for enemies to see you are your best friend. So...work on that Alchemy, Sneak, and Illusion. If you do need to attack someone, do it from behind, with a poisoned blade, enchanted with Frost damage (Dremora hate that), while sneaking. Always remember: the Deadra have home field advantage -- and backup.
   
   
4. Your goal is to not die. Potions and spells which restore health, shield, and reflect are going to keep you alive. Enchanted items will not hurt either. In particular, look for items that shield you from Shock and Fire damage. The majority of Deadric creatures that use spells are Shock masters, and you will encounter many towers (which aren't fooled by invisibilty spells) that shoot fireballs.
   
   
5. Your goal is to make progress. The best videogame PSA: Save, save, and save again. There are bosses and glitches aplenty.

How fast is fast? My best record is about 90 seconds for an easy plane; about 5 min. for the slowest (tunnel-type; see below).

General guide

Here's a general walkthrough for any and all oblivion gates:

1. Find this door, and go through it:
   
   
   
2. Go through doors as you see them, always traveling upwards on any ramps you see. The doors often have weird names, which you can ignore, as they all lead to the same place in the end.
   
   Be careful of doors labeled "Citadel Hall Door" -- they take time to open, and enemies will use that time to attack you.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Find this place, and climb ramps to its top:
   
   
   
4. Take the "sigil stone", and get out. The sigil stone is the floating, glowing rock at the top of the room. Don't worry about enemies attacking you; once you grab the sigil stone, you're essentially home free. Do remember that there are probably Daedra in Tamriel wating for you, and that you won't be able to fast-travel away if they see you. Always prep an exit strategy.

The 9 Types of [Random] Planes

Seriously, there're only nine types of planes that generate in your world, even though you may find dozens of gates. Most are fairly easy to get through. Below I've taken screenshots of each type, and given them an easy-to remember name, based on the most important part about them (usually the first thing you see). No, these names aren't canon, but they work just fine.

• Blah-type (nothing special in view)
  
  
  
• Body-type (note the charred corpses)
  
  
  
• Empty-type (large open space in front)
  
  
  
• Bridge-type (note the giant bridge)
  
  
  
• Horse-type (note the dead horse)
  
  
  
• Single-type (first thing you see is one, obvious tower)
  
  
  
• Spike-type (note the large spike immediately in front of you)
  
  
  
• Pentacle-type (so called because it has 5 towers) (Sorry, I had my sword out for this shot. Do you like my sword, sword, yes, my shiny sword, sword...)
  
  
• Tunnel-type (the only type that requires traveling underground)
  

Go to the section that matches your type for more details of speedrunning.

Blah, Body, and Empty Types

These three are the easiest. Just head East or West (towards open space, away from your entry point, heading towards the big central spire). Get inside the Spire. Climb to the top. It's that simple. Obviously watch out for enemies and explore for loot, but if you're speedrunning neither of those things is really a concern.

Horse and Single Types

These two types can be annoying, particularly if you have a low Acrobatics skill. In these, the main spire is hidden behind some gates that you "can't" get past. I say "can't" in quotes because you can, in fact, bypass them, but only with a high enough acrobatics skill. So...

For the non-athlete

Your only choice is to go into a secondary tower to the left or right of the Spire. These are somewhat shorter, but still skyscraper-size. The big tower (the Spire) is located behind a massive set of gates that you can't get past.

Climb to the top of the smaller tower, conquer your enemies, and activate the gate controls you will find there (they look like massive gears on the wall). Then go all the way back to the bottom, leave the tower, and go through the now-open gate protecting the Spire. Rinse and repeat until you find the Spire's front door. "Hello, I'm here from the census bureau and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions..."

(The images below are horse- and spike-type.)

For the athlete

Get next to one of those gates protecting the Spire. This might involve jumping over some lava. Find a place that looks like the screenshot below.

Jump on top of the slanted portion and climb as high as you can. Now, jump sideways over the edge of the gate nearby. You should pop out right next to the door you need.

Make sure you save before making the jump! Sometimes you can get stuck in a way that not even an Acrobatics skill of 100+ can get you out of (believe me, it's a dumb way to ruin a save file).

Bridge, Spike, and Pentacle Types

These types can be done using methods already described in this guide -- but there is a faster way! It involves crossing lava. Notice that the Spire is on an island surrounded by lava, all by itself.

A high Acrobatics skill can ensure you never even touch the lava, or you can use Restore/Fortify Health and Shield potions to keep you safe while you go for a nice little swim. (Note: Fire Shield does not apply to lava. Regular Shield does.)

Once you decide on a survival method, follow these steps:

Find a place where the lava is narrow enough to cross. Just how narrow "narrow enough" is largely depends on how many restore health potions you brought with you, or how far you can jump. As I've said before, save first, experiment second.
In Bridge-type, find a "lava peninsula" located directly under bridge:









In Spike-type, be careful of the "false bridge". (Far right) It's a nice place to die, but that's about all it's good for. There is a lava peninsula somewhat before the Bridge-That-Must-Not-Be-Named.







In Pentacle-type head East immediately after entering the plane and find the pictured wall. Directly behind it is the lava lake's narrowest point.








Once you've crossed the lava, make your way along the no-man's-land to the Spire door. Lucky for you, few daedra consider lava lakes good vacation spots, so your trip should be fairly quick and painless. Beware of the fireball-spewing towers that guard the Spire's door.
In Bridge-type, go Southwest.


If for some reason you can't find the Spire door, look up and notice the small bridges leading from the smaller towers to the jumbo-Spire. There are some that stick out about 3/4 of the way up the towers, then others that stick out a little bit higher. Enter a secondary tower that corresponds to one of the lower bridges. There will be a door halfway up your tower that opens onto this bridge and connects you to the Spire. The higher-up bridges connect to the Spire, but there's no way to get the sigil stone room without backtracking.

Tunnel Type

Tunnel-type is by far the slowest Plane to speedrun, regardless of your level or skills. This is because it involves traveling through... tunnels. Deadroths are the same width as the tunnels, so there are often traffic jams. To make matters worse, if you miss the tunnel entrance, you'll never know until you eventually hit a dead end and have to backtrack. Which sucks.

If you're truly trying to speedrun the plane, I'd reccomend either learning an invisibility spell or stocking up on invisibility potions. They'll come in handy when you're in the tunnels trying to sneak past daedra (the close quarters will make Chameleon effectively worthless).

With that said, here's how to successfully navigate them thar tunnels:

From the Plane entrance, head East until you see your first fireball-spewing tower on the left of this picture. Watch out for Spiddal Sticks, as they'll damage your Speed.


Make an immediate right turn and go through the tunnel door you see. Be careful not to miss this door, it is the only way to the Spire! While there is loot on the path beyond it, that path is also a dead end. A looong dead end. (Seriously, why is it so long?)


Use your map and find the next cave door. Use. The. Map. You'll need to keep going through these doors until you finally make it out and it is ridiculously easy to get turned around. Watch out for Harrada Roots hanging from the ceiling and lava pits in the floor. Left=cave door, Right=what you should see upon exiting


Go East till you find the next tunnel entrance. Head inside and repeat the cave-door procedure.


When you get out, beware falling rocks as you go East-ish. Give yourself 5 seconds before you start marching along, as the rocks are timed to match your exit from the cave. If you look closely in the screenshot below, you can see them not pulverizing their intended target.


Keep going. At one point (pictured below), you will need to make a sharp right (next to some spikes; ha, it's punny) and keep climbing. Other than that, continue through caves and up hills till you find the Main Spire door. It's then a piece of cake to close the plane.

Unique gates

There are a few unique Oblivion Gates which appear in the world. The most notable examples are the Kvatch gate and "Great" gate -- both of which are part of the main quest. Others include the Cheydinhal and Bruma worlds.

These gates are unique in their structure, which can make them difficult to speedrun. In addition, the player generally enters them during quests that involve NPCs to protect, which adds a whole other dimension of complicated.

However, the general guidelines outlined above should help you go through quickly and painlessly. Players may notice patterns to the planes which I have not listed here -- in fact you should, because they're really obvious. The location of enemies, for example, isn't random, nor are their types. After a few speedruns, a player will start to pick up on these, and so practicing on "lesser" gates is really the best way to prepare to speedrun one of the unique gates.

A note on resources...

There are a few important and useful alchemy ingredients which are [almost] unique to the planes of Oblivion. These include Fire Salts, Harrada Root, Spiddal Stick, and Daedra Hearts (among others). While it is possible to find these resources in Tamriel, they can be found in only limited quantities, especially if you have none of the official DLC installed. Therefore, if you're a budding alchemist, you might want to keep the following points in mind.

• Ingredients in Oblivion planes do grow back after a few months, just like ingredients in Tamriel.
  
• Two gates which spawn to the same pattern of world (two Horse-types, for example) are not connected. Harvesting ingredients in one does not affect those in another.
  
• Once a standard gate is closed, it will neither reopen nor spawn more daedric creatures. There will be no way to access the resources in the unique plane attached to that gate.
  
• Once the main quest is completed, all gates will close. This really cuts down on the world's supply of daedric ingredients. Some gates may still exist in the world and spawn deadra, but a player can not enter them.

[Sir Deez Theodore Nuts II]

you won't want to use frost poisons. Dremora and various other daedra, such as spider daedra are resistant to frost. they do, however, have a weakness to shock. I always go for shock swords.

[dimredcMselrahC]

ooooooh thassa shiny sword!

[KolbRinah]

Actually, for the bridge/spike/pentacle types, I've noticed on some of them i can just go upto where theres the 2 bloodsack/lootable things and just jump down to the level beneath. I think you're supposed to open the 2 gates and then enter through from the bottom but i get lazy haha.

[Gerroffmee]

Fire Shield, fire resistance and water-walking combinations mean you can run across lava, especially if you've got a powerful, self-made Restore Health potion active as well. No need to swim if you can run!

[Mephilis78]

Weird, I've played this game since... basically the Merethic era, and still haven't run in to this many variations of Oblivion gates.

[Clinical Dumbass]

How the fuck do I do Chorrol Oblivion Gate
There's like... gates with natural disasters

[BondageSpider]

A weird thing about random Oblivion gates: It seems like there are nine worlds, but there are seven; two of them each have two gates to Tamriel. When you enter one with two gates, which end you start at is random.
It's possible to enter one gate, cross the Oblivion world to the other (without going after the Sigil Stone) and exit through the other gate.
You may return to Tamriel very far away from where you entered, making it a shortcut of sorts, but with fast travel you never really need one, so it's kind of pointless.
If you do come back and take the Sigil Stone, the gate you just entered will close, but the other gate in Tamriel will still exist. Next time you enter the other gate, it will lead to another random Obliivion world instead.

[Jonamus]

Very helpful thanks! The sluggish procedure of closing gates takes minutes now! XD

[little cry pissbaby riamu]

If you have GOTY edition though, you can just go to frostcrag to get the ingredients.