Beginner's Guide to Lock Picking in Oblivion

Picking locks is an art in Oblivion. If people's privacy are stopping you from stealing items, read this short guide to lock picking.

In order to pick locks you first need a lock pick. Lock picks can be found on many monsters and can be bought off several NPC characters. In your journeys, there will be times where a door or container is locked. Using your security skill, you can open these locks to access the contents inside.

When you attempt to pick a lock, a minigame comes up. This minigame shows you your lock pick and the tumblers that you need to pick. Depending on the difficulty of the lock, the number of tumblers required to be picked can range from one to five.

To pick locks, you need to fix all the tumblers so that they all are not obstructing your lock pick. Picking tumblers is very easy once you develop the patience needed. Whenever you tap a tumbler, it can go up slowly or quickly. Most of the time, the tumblers will almost instantly rise, giving you very little time to fix the tumblers. The trick is to wait until it goes up slowly. If the tumbler rises slowly, it gives you much more time to fix the tumbler once it reaches the top. Failing to pick a lock will break your lock pick, as well as lowering some tumblers.

Lock picking is directly related to the security skill. As you pick locks, your security skill increases. The higher your security skill is, the slower the tumblers will rise. After reaching certain levels of security, the tumblers that fall after failing is reduced. For example, a novice of security will drop all tumblers upon failure where as a journeyman of security will keep two up.

After reading this article, you should never need to auto-pick a lock.

How to Lay Suppressive Fire in First-Person Shooter Games

Learn how to suppress the enemy using an unending spray of bullets.

Suppressive fire is a real-life military tactic used to give a force an advantage. NATO calls this “the application of fire, coordinated with the manoeuvre of forces, to destroy, neutralize or suppress the enemy.”

This technique can also be practiced in first-person shooter games. Very few people understand the purpose of suppressive fire due to the sense that suppressive fire is only truly useful in a coordinated team setting. Suppressing an enemy force is useless if your own team doesn't know what to do about it.

Suppressing fire is laying down a barrage of bullets upon the enemy. It does not always have to be directly targeted, though it should close to enemy locations. Doing so will usually keep enemy players bunkered down and immobile.

Why? Well, if you're lying below cover and you see a stream of bullets whizzing past you, you're not going to leave your only form of defence right? Or if you're moving accross an open field an a gunner starts laying fire on you. Naturally, the first thing you would do is to make yourself a small a target as possible, which means crouching or lying down, rendering yourself immobile.

And how is this useful? Firstly, if the player walks into your bullets, then your job's done. Secondly, if they don't, they should be left in one spot. If you're playing with an organized team, they would know to take the advantage and circle the enemy. This would cut off the enemy's escape routes and basically leave them incapable of doing any significant action.

To set up an effective suppresive fire, one should use weapons with large ammunition supplies (machine guns usually) or explosive ordnance. Of course, spraying indirectly at an enemy doesn't necessarily mean that it will earn you kills. Laying down suppressive fire drains a lot of ammunition very quickly. Therefore, you must make sure that you have a surplus of ammunition before considering this tactic. If you're using machine guns, simply spray or use short bursts at the opponent's cover. If you have an explosive weapon with many charges, then feel free to do the same thing.

Games from the Call of Duty series can be put into example. Modern Warfare 2 will be used in this example. A machine gunner will take an overwatch position high in his team's base building. He sees several opposing troops advancing. He fires repeatively unto them. He doesn't necessarily get any kills, but he did manage to injure a few. The advancing troops go behind cover. The machine gunner doesn't stop his firing. Those advancing troops are now pinned and can't move. The gunner's allied troops take advantage of the suppressive fire and quickly maneuver around the enemy troops, and swiftly cut them down. In this example, the machine gunner has burned through a huge amount of ammunition, and doesn't score any kills at all. However, this contribution ultimately leads his team into getting an advantage over the enemy. Do you now start to understand the concept of suppressive fire?

Remember that suppressive fire is a team-based maneuver, and requires a competent team to be able to be put into effective use.

Best Mutators to Make Horde Mode Easier

Gears of War 3's Horde mode is very challenging, especially when playing on Insane difficulty. Use these mutators to make Horde mode easier.

Up to three mutators are allowed in one game. The three presented to you will greatly lower your overall score, but will make completing Horde mode much easier.

Infinite Ammo. This mutator gives all starting weapons gives all starting weapons and pistols infinite ammo. Imagine being able to spray bullets indefinitely without fear of exposing yourself to collecting ammo.

This does not apply to weapons that are picked up (i.e. longshot, mulcher), so be wary when trading a starting weapon with one on the ground.

Super-Reload. When used with the Infinite Ammo mutator, all your starting weapons become amazingly more dangerous. The Super-Reload mutator allows you to keep your weapon's active reload status indefinitely until you switch weapons or reload again. As well, any ammo that has been replenished by an active reload will be added on top of your clip! For example, you fire a Hammerburst five times. You active reload. You now have five active reloaded burst shots as well as a full clip of ten, totally 15 bursts.

When used in conjunction with Infinite Ammo, you can deliberately burn ammo to use an active reload.

Remember that active reloaded bullets do significantly more damage than regular ones, so active reload whenever possible.

Insta-Gib Melee. This mutator enhances your melee attacks to instant-kills. Imagine being able to fall drones, maulers, and even berserkers with a mere punch!

Insta-gib Melee and boomshields go very well together. you can run around the map and simply melee most of your enemies.

Make note that Insta-Gib Melee does not apply to large bosses such as the Lambent Zerker and Brumag.

These mutators will make your quest to eradicate the Locust Horde much less difficult.

How to Quickly Kill Elites in Halo: Reach

Those annoying Elites on Halo can cause plenty of problems, especially on Legendary difficulty. Here are some quick tips to quickly dispose of them.

Sangheili, or better known as Elites, are annoying Covenant aliens that are both strong and difficult to kill. Equipped with armor shielding, they can take plenty of bullets or punches before going out. On top of that, are physically stronger than humans.

Sangheili Minors have very
little shields.

So what do you do when you see an Elite?

The first thing to do is to recognize what rank the Elite is. Their rank can be recognized by the color and armor that the Elite is wearing. Knowing their rank is very important, as it shows how much shields that Elite has.

Similar to the Elite on the right, these blue armored Elites have very little shields, and can be killed relatively easily with a few shots from a precision weapon. Sangheili Generals can be identified by their golden armor and large headgear. Such high ranking Elites have much shielding and will take a much more effort to kill. The Elite hierarchy structure can be identified on Halo's Wikia page. The higher an Elite is on the table, the stronger it is (note that not all these Elite ranks can be seen in Halo: Reach).

When you encounter a group of Elites, it is important to first kill the lower ranking Elites. Simply having less Elites to deal with at one time will be a major benefit to destroying the whole unit. There are several ways to kill Elites. Below are several effective ways to dispatch them.

1. Pick them off with precision weapons. Target low ranking Elites first. High ranking Elites have high shielding, and would take plenty of valuable to kill.
2. Grenade and spray. A well thrown frag grenade will do significant damage and will throw the Elite in the air for about one second, giving you time to shoot at it with an automatic (relatively close-range).
3. Stick Elites from a distance. If you catch an Elite who isn't moving very much, you can stick them with a good plasma grenade. Be sure to stick them from a distance or else they'll charge you before blowing up.
4. Attack fast and assassinate. Do some quick damage, either by spraying close range or a quick melee. The Elite would stand immobile and roar, giving you an opportunity to go behind him and assassinate. Beware to not get kicked instead, as it would do heavy damage to you, and possibly lead to death.

There are a few points you should keep in mind when engaging Elites. They are faster and stronger than you. If you're backing up, they can catch up to you. If you're trying to punch one, remember that they can kick you which does much more damage.

They only real advantage you have over Elites is that you're smarter than them. They'll do stupid things that'll leave them vulnerable. As long as you don't leave yourself vulnerable, you'll win any encounter.

6 Ways to Preserve Ammo in Undead Nightmare

Ever since the dead have risen, it's hard to find ammo. Read these 6 tips to make the most of your limited ammunition.

1. Use executions. Executions consume a single bullet and guarantee an instant kill. To perform an execution, simply walk up to an undead and pull the trigger.
2. Burn the dead. Whenever you engage zombies, try to torch and burn zombies that are distant from their pack. Your torch has infinite uses, so use it instead of firearms whenever possible.
3. Loot from dead cowboys. Keep an eye out for undead gunslingers as they always carry some unused bullets in their bandoliers.
4. Aim for the head. Headshots are guaranteed kills, whereas shots to the body usually require more bullets to kill.
5. Use pistols. Handgun ammunition is more abundant and headshots guarantee kills, so with skillful use, you should always have ammo left after an undead encounter.
6. Dead-Eye the dead. Red Dead Redemption's famous Dead-Eye features can allow you to easily target heads. Dead-Eye can also be used longer in Undead Nightmare.

Use your weapons sparingly. Above all, do your best to avoid unecessary combat. Without ammunition, you really are nothing more but a lamb with a pack of wolves.

No-Rushing in Real-Time Strategy Games

So are we allowed rushing or not?

No Rushing is a very popular rule in real-time strategy games. The idea is that all players agree on a set amount of time at the beginning of which no one can attack. There is often game setting that allows you to do so, but you can likely trust the other players as well. Most players favor no rushing, and so it is usually respected.

It is important that you understand how to take advantage of the no rushing time. Instead of dividing up your resources between securing more and producing a force, you must spend all your resources on securing resources.

This means you must first become familiar about the scenario or map you are playing on. You have to know where each resource is and how to extract them.

You must now ask yourself these questions. You need to figure out how much you will produce in the allotted time, and how you will spend those resources. You must spend all your resources before the no-rush time is depleted. Therefore, if a production building can only produce tanks slowly, then you should build more production buildings. You must be careful to not spend too much on such buildings, as any uneccesary resources spent will decrease the overall strength of your force.

I recommend you perform these calculations beforehand, as the time not spent counting can be spent on securing more resources and troops.

Once you have a considerable force, you should then strategically attack the enemy with literally everything you have. If there are key buildings or fortifications that should be taken out, consider them before your attack. If your force needs to be engaged in a fight against an opposing force, then you should really just go ahead and do so. If you've properly built your troops, then you should be able to take on the force and carry on with your attack. If your troops survive the attack - which they should - there should be no real defences to stand in your way.

Key lesson? Preparation before the match, and then unhesitating execution.