What's up, Yas Forums? A long time ago I made a thread here detailing my strange encounter with the corrupted clone of my Oblivion (TES IV) character. I made the clone using a "Permanently clone yourself with the Skull of Corruption" glitch. Needless to say, the results were interesting. The clone exhibited some behaviors that I honestly couldn't explain, such as being able to summon two summons at once, having an abnormal system of sorting through equipment, etc.
Now, I already see you rolling your eyes, so I want to be clear I don't view this as a creepypasta type thing, or anything like that. I think this is an explainable thing based on Oblivion and how the game works. I'm returning to this today because I still have many unanswered questions about the clone's mechanics and how exactly it did the things that it did. That brings us to now. I went back and organized my saves, so I have 3 possible save routes I can investigate:
1. A new, re-creation of my clone. It isn't set in my actual most updated save path but it's as close as I could get. I lost the Skull of Corruption a while back, so I can't actually recreate the clone on my current character anymore.
2. A blank slate version of the clone from a few months ago. He spawns completely naked but has all my gear on him. This is meant to test how he works starting from a base state.
3. A save from the first time I cloned myself, i.e. the "original" clone or at least the same starting parameters as the original.
Which do you think I should investigate first? I want to make it clear that I'm doing these investigations on an unmodded Xbox 360 version of the game, played on an Xbox One X. I'm going to follow up this post with some info about previous strange behaviors that I'm hoping to replicate and study.
To prove that I'm not making this up and that I am who I say I am, here's a clip from years ago showing the very first time I ever did. It's one of the first clips I ever took of this glitch: gamerdvr.com/gamer/the-jinjabaker/video/28280233
So now, the strange behaviors I'm talking about include:
- Being able to summon two things at once - Breaking off from an encounter to run down a road, as if traveling or heading towards something very specific. If I follow him for long enough, he will eventually break off from the road, but after a while he gives up and stops running. This one in particular is confusing because AFAIK he shouldn't have any AI packages. - His summons can track me even when I'm invisible or using 100% chameleon. They blatantly walk up to me, but don't engage. - As I said, he has a strange way of choosing what armors to equip. He likes to equip things in a matching set even when alphabetically he theoretically shouldn't be. For example, he'll equip the entire Crusader Set when the Helm of the Crusader comes after the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal alphabetically. Additionally he seems to equip gradually better equipment the longer he lives. - At the moment he spawns, he does not interact with any other NPCs besides the player. However, in the few times a clone has survived for a long time, notably the second Corrupted Clone I made which I could not kill at the time, he eventually somehow gains the ability to have conversations with NPCs. Beyond this, he has them, at times, with his weapons drawn or fists raised, which I thought was impossible since it indicates he's in a combat state.
Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. There was also some stuff with bounties behaving strangely but I was never able to confirm that, so I don't want to add it to the list officially.
He's gonna get you OP, he wants to kill you and take over
Zachary Green
Alright, I loaded the earliest save I had on the very first time I did this. It's right after he exits Capstone Cave, the place I made him in. I was able to immediately replicate the Summons following me thing (I just took this clip):
never played the game but maybe the clone's summons are acting as your summons?
Liam Harris
Sounds like the T-1000’s theme. Fitting.
Chase Hill
That would make the most sense, especially if they're tracking you when you're undetectable, but not engaging.
Do both of his two summons do this, or just one of them? If only one, it could suggest his second summon is somehow borrowed from you
Xavier Myers
If I vaugely remember my autist days of Morrowind and Oblivion, using console commands I might be able to help. Any duplicate of your character always causes bizzare shit because it struggles to define you vs your clone and there are little rules defining when your clone is classed as you or a npc.
>Being able to summon two things at once This is likely because as said the game is not making a differentation between you and clone. He is most likely using YOUR summon slot aswell. Try summoning yourself and see what happens.
>Breaking off from an encounter to run down a road No idea
>he shouldn't have any AI packages Again, weird shit happens with dupes. They do seem to be assigned certain npc traits. In morro where I experimented most with clones, they would seem to get a default npc profile based on where they were spawned.
>His summons can track me even when I'm invisible or using 100% chameleon. They blatantly walk up to me, but don't engage. This is because they are tracking you as if YOU summoned them due to the game not differing between you or the clone.
>As I said, he has a strange way of choosing what armors to equip. This happens all the time. Remeber you have a statue put up of you in Bruma? Go look at the weird armor/weapon combos it has on it. Really bizzare. The statue is actually a 'living' npc as far as I remember from game files.
And the last point again, is just the weird way the game handles clones. They are literally you according to the gamefile while running bizzare default npc scripts when required.
Nolan Jones
This is my guess as well, although why the Summon doesn't attack me is strange. It technically is not actually detecting me. It also means Summons are tied to Base IDs rather than Reference IDs.
I have only seen him summon two things at once a handful of times, and they were all when he was fighting large groups of people, so I'm not sure. I wonder if there's some way to get my own summons to follow him rather than me, though. The issue is getting them to not detect him.
To update where I'm at with this, my classic method of testing these clones is to get them to engage me in combat, turn invisible, then run out of the combat zone, fast travel away, then fast travel to a nearby location and run back. The clone almost always shifts locations somewhat when I do this, despite normally staying still when not in combat. I follow the trail of dead things to locate where the clone is gone. Unfortunately at the moment I've lost him, I'm scanning the area around Capstone Cave now. That said, I did come across something really strange, that I've never seen on console Oblivion before. A dead Imperial Forester nearby was stuck in a T-Pose. There was another forester fighting a brown bear nearby, but at my level no Brown Bear should be able to kill an IL soldier. At least, I thought not. That means the clone likely killed him. See:
Screenshots taken on this version of the game are huge files for pictures due to the Xbox One X upscaling, so I'm gonna post links instead of attaching them to replies. I can attach snapshots of clips though, and will be doing that as often as I can.
Ayden Gray
At the moment he seems non-hostile, though pretty angry at me.
>This is likely because as said the game is not making a differentation between you and clone. He is most likely using YOUR summon slot aswell. Try summoning yourself and see what happens.
Doesn't seem to work on my end. As I said in another reply he honestly doesn't do this much, and oftentimes doesn't even try to, so I'm not sure if certain conditions are needed for it to occur. Clip of me trying: gamerdvr.com/gamer/the-jinjabaker/video/95250544
>In morro where I experimented most with clones, they would seem to get a default npc profile based on where they were spawned. Huh, interesting. I wonder why location would be relevant in that case?
>This happens all the time. Remeber you have a statue put up of you in Bruma? Go look at the weird armor/weapon combos it has on it. Really bizzare. The statue is actually a 'living' npc as far as I remember from game files.
That's kind of the issue, though. Sometimes he doesn't use weird combos, he appears to actually use full, organized sets.
You mentioned he equips gradually better sets the longer he lives- could this be related at all to the level/difficulty scaling for enemies? For example, bandits wearing daedric, etc. If your level isn't changing, could he be scaling his own "difficulty" based on his own level?
Hudson Martinez
>At the moment he seems non-hostile, though pretty angry at me. Possibly due to the skull giving a disposition penalty. I believe it relies heavily on that to get the clone to attack it's double.
Grayson Jenkins
>EST is the only time zone
Zachary Turner
Seems reasonable. It could work with a single StartCombat command the moment the clone spawns, as well.
No idea.
To spice things up, I'm leading him to Bruma. This very first clone is not technically invincible, as this was before I got 100% Reflect Damage on my character, but he's doing very well nonetheless:
Oh, and that reminds me. Before someone calls me out for it, I fully admit: my character's stats are glitched, I heavily abused the Permanent Effect Ring Duplication glitch on this character after beating all the major questlines.
Matthew Ortiz
OH BOY HERE WE GO
Austin Brooks
Just had a thought on him equipping different sets of armor. Does he do this while in combat?
If so it could well be that he is subject to the same degradation of equiptment you are. This coupled with the fact it is possible they also degrade for you both at the same time due to clone logic, he might be being forced to equipt items due to them braking at a rapid rate.
Also just curious. My games would often just crash the moment I took a swing at my clones. Can you engage and kill yours? If so maybe it's unique to the skull rather than cloning via direct console command.
Nicholas Carter
Please stream
Nathan Powell
Alright, before continuing w/ this savepath I think it's more productive to get some new clips of the behaviors I mean. This one was taken from an attempt roughly approximating #2, and it was saved just before one of the first times I observed the strange running down roads behavior. I'll follow him this time just to see what happens:
Note that this clone WAS made when my character had invincibility-tier gear.
I haven't seen him actually do it during combat. That said, I actually do think degradation plays role. With clones who I gave little armor selection to, it does eventually break and they run around naked or with bound armor only. That said degradation isn't the only thing that causes switches, as I took an example in this thread even where they switched out something without having seen any real combat.
Very interesting, I hope you’re actually who you say you are OP. Would love to see more videos of the strange behavior.
Oliver Adams
Video displaying an instance of both permanent fists-raised and an actual conversation. This clone was extremely old & developed at the time this clip was taken:
