Shivering talk:Taxonomy of Obsession

Items Already Found

Oh, no , no , no , no , no. Please for the love of jesus and baby jesus, pizza bagel bites and lead-free paint, someone tell me there is a user-mod already that crosses the items off of the list. This could drive one crazy in real life. If not, I'm gonna have to hold off on "trying" to do this one, I'll just randomly stop and see if she takes more items out until she's done I guess. --AlbinoMudcrab 00:50, 4 April 2007 (EDT)

100% agree with you there, how am i supposed to know what im still to get her? Guess i could always collect everything and give it to her at the same time...meh alcryt 13:08, 6 May 2007 (EDT)

Or you could actually write it down on a piece of paper and cross off as you go. KaidaThyme (talk) 15:10, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

Mirili

I got in the situation where I had to pay a bounty in Bravil and when I had finished the "procedure" and was lined up with the other crooks outside the castle, there was Mirili, in line with the rest of us. I followed her and she swam out to the Island. However, she would not go through the door. I had to reload a save game so I could finish her quest. --Gaea 12:21, 5 September 2007 (EDT)

I had a strange thing happened to me on this mission too. It seems like when Mirili captures the monsters she uses some kind of paralyze spell on them and when I brought back the scalon the other people in town started to attack. Bruacus got in the way and was hit by her spell and he fell over stiff like he was hit with paralyze. When I looked at him it showed " (A) talk to Bruscus Dannus" but when I clicked on him it showed his inventory like he was dead. I fast travelled away and back again and he was ok. — Unsigned comment by Hellknight79 (talk • contribs) at 23:27 on 19 September 2007 (EDT)

Well this is stupid...

The damnedable woman won't ever come out of her house. She sits in there all day everyday thus making it impossible for me to complete the bestiary quest seeing as she is never outside to capture the beast I bring. This quest is truly infuriating. --Mole126 15:36, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I'll agree with you about the frustration but the tips on the article for when she gets stuck in the house worked for me. If those ideas don't work, punch her and lead her outside then yield and try again. I remember being thoroughly sick of the quest by the end, but I did get it finished. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:51, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I overlooked that part of the article somehow. Now I have a new problem though. I've gotten her out of the house and brought her three Elytras, but she just proceeds to slaughter each and every one of them with seemingly no attempt to capture them. Is this a fluke or a bug? --Mole126 15:59, 14 February 2008 (EST)

Yeah that can happen too. Try to use Restore Health on Target / Touch spells to keep the creature healed - she'll charm it eventually. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:03, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I've found something kind of neat. Instead of punching her to get her out of her house and then risking a fight-to-the-death involving the entire village, I've found that if you bring an animal in that is under your command it will actually follow you inside her house, which is pretty nifty seeing as it is a place where you don't have to worry about the other villagers interfering. For some reason trying this never occurred to me until I watched an angry Gnarl chase Runs-In-Circles into her own house. They don't seem to follow you in the house if they are attacking you, but only when they are under your command. Perhaps this should be added to the page? --Mole126 04:12, 15 February 2008 (EST)

Hmm. I remember managing to do that once but I thought it was a fluke. If you can replicate it, feel free to add the information to the article. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:39, 15 February 2008 (EST)

It seems it was a fluke. I can't get any other creatures except that one Gnarl to enter the house with me. I still think it is worth a try every on each creature, so I'll go ahead and put it up on the page as something that is possible to do on occasion. Oh well. I'm just glad I'm done with that horrid quest. Thanks once again for your help. ~Mole126 05:02, 15 February 2008 (EST)

No problem. The trouble with this quest is that it could benefit from some more research but it's so annoying that by the time it's over you never want to touch it again! COngratulations on finishing it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 05:12, 15 February 2008 (EST)

Well, it's been a while since I played oblivion. This time I am roleplaying a short-tempered, ruthless, and calculating character. When I got to this quest, I did all the plant nonsense. Then I got a baliwog back to her via the very annoying method of having it chase me to the town since my illusion skill was so low I had absolutely no way to captivate the beast. Three times I hunted out a Baliwog, cutting down swathes of Hunger, Gnarl, and Scalon alike to find each. Each time, she killed it. Killed it on her own with no help from the villagers, and me offering the only help I could to the creature: a weak "Protect Other" spell. Three times, and hours of wasted playtime. Now as you can imagine, by the third Baliwog I was quite angry. Then I realised that the character I am roleplaying would be absolutely furious with the Dunmer wench. I put an arrow through her skull and left her naked, floating in the waters of the Isles. This is a great way to end the quest if you find it too much to bear, and you don't need the reward gold. --Mole126^T 04:48, 22 August 2008 (EST)

Another solution (if you are evil...)

You could just kill the townsfolk. That'd solve the problem! --Odd.bod 09:21, 1 April 2008 (EDT)

Agreed :) --VergilSparda 19:28, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Another solution with the wabbajack

This worked for me. Use wabbajack on the creature you bring and hope it turns to a small creature. Then take control of it in its altered state and walk in her house. It should follow the soon change back. It worked for me I hope it helps you all. — Unsigned comment by 76.169.150.131 (talk) at 13:24 on 5 June 2008

PLEASE HELP!!!

Hello every oblivion fan. I have a serius problem whit this quest. My illusion skill is 100(i play on 360 not pc) and i bought the best spell that lady has to offer and it works well BUT, when i get her a baliwog and talk to her she only says "Liar,you dont have any blah blah blah". I dunno what im doin wrong but this is detailed list of how i do: 1:i find a baliwog,but only the venemous ones. 2:Do the best spell that she offered on the venemous baliwog. 3:run to the settlement. 4:Finds the lady,wich is outside her house. 5:Talk to her and choose the topic wich is required. 6:Then she says that I dont have a baliwog whit me. 7:I do the spell again on the venemous baliwog. 8:Talk to the lady again.Gets the same answer. 9:Go to a cage and pushes the baliwog inside and then close the gate. 10:Same as 8.

What am i doing wrong? Should i talk to her inside the house? Should i get a normal and not venemous baliwog? Is it a bug?

Please help//Dodogong 14:48, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

You clicked the conversation for the ingredients (which you don't have), but you should click on the "bestiary" conversation option.

No. I have the same bug. I tried every single dialogue option. There is definitely a problem here. -kj — Unsigned comment by 63.246.169.152 (talk) at 08:44 on 9 February 2012

The "Liar" dialogue is strictly related to the ingredients, so if that's what you're getting, you're clicking the wrong thing. You should see a "Mirili's Bestiary" option. Click that and if there's nothing there that works, tell me what options show up there, and what Mirili's reply is when you click on them, and I'll look into it more deeply. – Robin Hood↝talk 05:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Additional Tips for Bestiary

Use command humanoid on Mirili, and lead her just outside of town along the path to the north or south. Mirili will not immediately go back to her house. Find a creature and get it to chase you in attack mode back to Mirili (do not bother commanding them). Each time I did this Mirili's first action was to join the attack from a distance, and subdue the creature. I never had to heal it even if another townsfolk joined the fight. I was able to get each creature on the first try without any hassles. The only downsides are her slow walk back to her house, and her disposition lowering to zero. Her disposition does not effect the question. The Gray Cowl helps a lot on this quest for the 120' detect life. --shalley303 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 17 January 2009 (EST)

I finished this quest ages ago, on a new account now, and no matter how many times I try and reload, she never bothers to subdue it. Even if I heal the creature in the end in kills someone thus making me reload. Is this quest worth the hassle one might ask. --Manic 11:22, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

RefID?

I've completed this quest but the only creature that showed up at Highcross in it's pen was the baliwog. That was the only one I lead back to Mirili - for the other three I just transported Mirili to the creature using the moveto player console command, and when it was subdued I transported her back again to Highcross. I dunno what happened to the subdued creature, much less where I left it incase its still alive, so is there any way to spawn a 'Mirili's Elytra/Gnarl/Scalon' via the console? All I can find is the BaseID for them, but (at least in my limited knowledge of console commands) I need a RefID to spawn/move pretty much anything ingame. So, my request: is there any console command (or other method if nesissary) that will place the remaining creatures into the pen at Highcross, or at least will generate a RefId for me to use? 89.124.235.130 12:50, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Nevermind, I figured it out. I'm such an idiot; I completely forgot about the placeatme one. :/ 159.134.255.23 12:59, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Well you got me interested :)

The Elytra's refid is 0004565C; the Balliwog is 0004530D; the Gnarl is 0004565A and the Scalon is 0004565E. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:26, 28 March 2009 (EDT)

Mirili ALWAYS kills the Scalon

For the Baliwog, Elytra, and Gnarl, Mirili subdued them easily with one spell. With the Scalon, though, she ALWAYS attacks it until it's dead. I've tried different Scalons at different times, and let her hit the Scalon with more than fifty spells, and all her spells do is damage it.

I feel like this might be happening because I talked to her about Scalons before reaching level 9, and then again after reaching level 9, which made her say something different. Could that be causing her to forget how to subdue creatures? Or is there something I'm not understanding about this?

I'm just about ready to use the console to complete this quest (which I feel I deserve credit for completing), but I'd like to know if I'm actually experiencing a glitch before I try to fix it. Shashakiro 05:02, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Never mind, she subdued him as perfectly as the others when I reloaded the save today. Weird, but whatever, finally completed the quest. Shashakiro 16:13, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Not in my case, the scalon or gnarl seem to have a knack for killing her. I'm a high lvl character on xbox 360. So not only do I have to punch her in the face twice but I also have to heal her while she fights my creature and then persuade her to like me again then pay the saints/seducers money to not be chased down by them

Minor bug

I encountered something that i suppose is a bug. It doesn't keep me from completing the quest or anything, but it's still kind of annoying. Every stage of capturing the baliwog went fine, and now there's a tame baliwog wandering around the den. I also brought her the gnarl and elytra, they got subdued and i got paid. However, those two simply disappeared afterards. Several days have passed, and none of them have appeared in the den. Has anyone else encountered this?

Buggy as hell

If you are 100% vampire, it is impossible to receive your reward for delivering beasts. You bring a beast to the girl, she says, let's go to the house so I can pay you. When NPCs change cells, all spell effects are dispelled from them, including Charm. So when you enter her house, her script forces her to approach you to give you your payment. But instead she will say, "No, no, stay away from me!" Ok, so now the way to go is to re-cast Charm on her, except it's not possible, because her script loops again and forces her to talk to you again, so she talks, but again, instead of giving you your payment, will just say, "You won't get any of my blood!" The script enters an eternal loop, not giving you the chance to cast Charm. Every time you try to cast the spell, she will interrupt you by talking to you, get scared, exit the conversation, talk to you again and so on.

Sometimes she fails to cast the domination spell on the creatures at all. They fight for hours, I cast healing spells both on the beast and the girl, but she won't cast the subduing spell! At some point the beast will kill the girl, because she takes constant damage from the beast and you can't cast healing spells forever, unless you've got 100 welkynd stones in your inventory. Then the quest is over. As if this were somehow my fault! She isn't even set essential.

I checked out what the modders responsible for the Unofficial SI patch changed - they set the girl's Destruction skill to 1 and her Illusion skill to 100, trying to force her to cast the subduing spell. Nice try, guys, but it doesn't work, the girl continues to use destruction spell even if her destruction skill is set to 1. She also continues to use blade melee attacks, even if you set her blade skill to 1. In general, NPCs and creatures are very reluctant to switch spells in combat, for example a lich will always summon a gloom wraith once it selects this spell. It will never switch to "summon skeleton" or anything else. The AI sux. The only way is to actually force the girl to cast the subduing spell is through the script as soon as she enters combat, the script must specifically order her to cast this particular spell.

The wabbajacking tip above is very useful (should probably be added to the main page), because as a vampire you can't wait for her for hours until she exits the house, since sun damage will kill you, so you need to take the beast inside the house. Except, not all wabbajacked beasts will follow. Ogres follow into the house, so do skeletons and trolls, but deers, daedroth, and rats won't. Alternatively, you can use the console on the pc to get the beast inside the house. Use the "moveto player" command.WRFan 19:52, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Observations regarding the Quest

I read this page thoroughly before beginning this quest and proceeded to do it very methodically and made a couple of observations:

It's possible to complete this quest without giving her all 26 of the listed ingredients. The first time I completed it, I gave her only 24 of the 26, and I gave them to her in sets of 6 beginning at the top of her list. Each time I gave her 6 different ingredients, I made the "bestiary" inquiry and proceeded to capture the monster she requested. I kept this pattern up until I'd turned in 24 ingredients and captured all four beasts.

At this point, the quest completed despite the fact that I hadn't yet given her a sample of Withering Moon and Worm's Head Cap (the 25th and 26th ingredients in the list, respectively).

I reloaded from the point in which I gave her ingredients 19 through 24. This time, instead of bringing back the Scalon right away, I went back to my storage container, picked up the Withering Moon and Worm's head and gave these to her as well. She paid me for the transaction as usual. However, once I initiated conversation with her again, she immediately delivered new dialogue which she hadn't done during my previous completion of the quest. She thanked me for allowing her to complete "chapters 23 and 48" of her taxonomy book and also said "Please take this as a token of my gratitude."

Except she didn't give me anything. I think there was supposed to be some sort of reward here for turning in each and every sample on the list but it got missed somehow. The dialogue options on this woman are screwed up all over, actually. Bear in mind that at this point I've now turned in all 26 ingredient samples. Well, she still has the "Mirili's Research" option in her dialogue, except when I select it, she returns to square one saying "You're offering to help me with my research? etc. etc. Take this list of the ingredients I need" (she doesn't give me another copy of the list though).

As for her getting stuck in her house, I didn't actually encounter the problem myself, but her door is definitely bugged. When she led me inside the house the first couple of times to pay me for the beasts, her front door indicated two things to me:

1) That entering would be considered trespassing.

2) That the door was locked with an "Easy Lock" (this despite the fact that it wasn't actually locked and I was able to walk right in)

At some point later, perhaps after I brought her the third beast, the door somehow "fixed" itself. The trespass indicator and lock went away.

Weird stuff.

Oh, and as for her not attempting to capture the beast once you lead it back to her, I experienced that three out of the four times and had to resort to assaulting her and yielding. The one time it didn't happen was when the beast immediately went hostile after my command spell wore off. In the other three instances, once the command spell wore off, the beast didn't go hostile. It simply proceeded to walk back to where I brought it from as if it had only been mildly inconvenienced (and I was forced to get it under command again and assault Mirili) This has something to do with a creature being lead too far away from it's initial spawn point doesn't it? I've had similar experiences in vanilla Oblivion. — Unsigned comment by 174.0.106.101 (talk) at 05:48 on 18 June 2010

Oh yeah, and the bit where Mirili follows the player around. This didn't happen to me during the first quest completion. It happened the second time, immediately after I submitted the last two ingredients. So it seems submitting all 26 triggers this. — Unsigned comment by 174.0.106.101 (talk) at 07:05 on 18 June 2010

My observations on the quest

The mob has to be under your control before Mirili engages it.

If she doesn't paralyze the mob within 1 minute of starting the fight, she just isn't going to. You'll have to reload to before the fight and try again.

I originally tried just having a baliwog chase me into town, no good. I spent the next 30 minutes healing the both of them while Mirili kept repeating, "If I kill it, you'll have to bring me another."

I tried controlling the baliwog and standing next to Mirili until the spell wore off, no good. The baliwog calmly turned around and walked away while Mirili ignored it.

This is what finally worked for me:

1) Have the mob chase you to the outskirts of town.

2) Make a full save outside of town before any NPCs spot you.

3) Control the mob.

4) Run to Mirili and punch her once, your controlled pet should join in.

5) Once the Control creature spell wears off, cross your fingers.

6) Keep them both healed.

7) If Mirili doesn't paralyze the mob within 1 minute of the control spell wearing off, reload and start over at step 3.

Good luck.72.70.144.221 20:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Add to notes?

Some of the comments on this page could and should be moved to the main pages notes section. I'm not going to attempt it as I don't have a clear enough understanding as to what aids the page and what simply clutters it up. Sniffles 23:28, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of the notes on this page are unsupported personal experience. If you want to make a change to the article, it's probably best to either go ahead and make it so it can be edited, or make the suggestion here to receive feedback first. rpeh •T•C•E• 23:51, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanx! I am play testing the scenarios now and am finding that entries 12 and 13, observations, both have a few relevant info bits, especially 13. It seems that the script on Mirili is very buggy and can easily conflict with normal NPC scripts which she also seems to have. Following 13's suggestions carefully appear to overcome these problems. Also, it appears that the 'doing all 26 ingredients' will trigger Mirili following the PC bug. That could be added to the notes. (Any idea what causes her to do that?) Sniffles 00:49, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Underpayment

I would just like to confirm the observation on the main page that Mirilli doesn't always pay you for ingredients. I had all the ingredients with me when I started the quest & as she removed them I noticed that gold wasn't always added after the ingredient had been removed. I checked my gold afterwards & had only received something like half the amount I should have done. 62.49.72.185 16:16, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

see in bugs it says: "If you give Mirili multiple ingredients at once, she may underpay you." (^{I plead Lazyness}_{Eddie The Head} 16:23, 30 September 2011 (UTC))

That's why I left this note. It says (or said at the time) that this needed confirmation (to make sure that it wasn't a one-off glitch). 62.49.72.185 12:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I can confirm this bug too; I only got 10 gold for 12 ingredients!

Stuck in the Burrow?

I've been having trouble finding Elytra out and about so I tried wrangling one inside Dunroot Burrow... but they refuse to leave the cave! Same thing whether I'm commanding the beast or attacking so it will follow me. Anyone else find this problem? I guess my only solution here might be to go looking for Elytra somewhere else? Thanks anyone who sees this! --108.161.122.141 14:53, 12 June 2013 (GMT)

Murderous Mirili

Okay, working on this damn thing, on e PS3, and she glitched, so had to keep punching her. Well, bringing in the Scalon,she up and murders Runs-in-Circles. Tten calmly subdues the Scalon, and walks off. WTF? Is this another glitch, or will she happily murder the citizens if they get in her way? Not that it matters much, I had planned on putting the whole village to the sword after I was done, but she just denied me a soul! FMPhoenixHawk (talk) 05:43, 30 August 2013 (GMT)

Mirili ignoring creature

I don't know if this is caused by a combination of mods, but if she's ignoring the creature you bring her, just punch her. It may add you a small bounty but she'll proceed to capture the creature and then reward you.

Can you actually lead anything other than the Baliwog into the pen yourself?

The article currently states

"You can lead (or be chased by) the creature straight into one of the holding pens in the center of town, then close the gate behind you."

but I'm not sure this works for anything but the Baliwog. The other creatures are too large to pass through the gate on the pen - I think. I didn't have a command spell on either of them (my Illusion was too low) - they were just chasing me into Highcross. Maybe leading them into the pen works if you have the command spell, either the one Mirili sells you or another one.

I tried this with an Elytra and a Scalon. For both of them, I picked the lock on the gate and then ran through the open gate into the pen.

The Elytra stayed just outside the open gate. It kept looking at me, and occasionally fired its butt at me, but I couldn't get it to come inside the pen.

The Scalon also stayed just outside the open gate. It kept looking at me, and it did its "hunch over" animation that it normally does right before it jumps, but it didn't jump into the pen. The closest it got was that it climbed up on top of the open gate and sort of floated in the air right above the gate, but it wouldn't jump down on the inside of the pen.

In both cases, I ended up going inside Mirili's house, punching her to get her to follow me outside, and then letting her subdue them. (Yes, I tried the trick of leaving her house before she forces you into the dialogue for the next stage, which causes her to get stuck in the house, but I only had about a 50% success rate with that.)

73.3.58.200 07:00, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Mirili's command spells ignoring Illusion boost?

When I did this quest, I had 15 Illusion. Mirili asked me to get her a Baliwog, and then I asked her about the spells. She gave me the line about my low skill making them useless. I went and got my Black Hand Hood and Robe and equipped them, which boosted my Illusion to 30, and asked her again. She sold me her Apprentice Command spell.

I then went and found a Baliwog, still wearing my Black Hand stuff, and tried to cast the spell on it... only to be told I didn't have enough Illusion skill. I looked in my stats and my Illusion was a green 30, indicating it was boosted by something, but the game still wouldn't let me cast the spell I bought from Mirili.

I haven't used a lot of magic in my game, so maybe this is a normal part of how the skill requirements and skill-boosting items interact. Given the general buggy nature of this quest, though, I figured I'd note it here.

73.3.58.200 07:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)