TL;DR – The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Knights of the Nine (or KotN for short) is an interesting and surprisingly lengthy DLC for one of the most popular Western RPG’s ever made. Despite suffering multiple bugs that required a restart or just crashed the game, I still had a lot of fun playing through this expansion. Most of the quests contained within it had a decent amount of variety, the final boss fight is cool and the new equipment and home base it provides are worth fighting for. All-in-all it’s a great mini-expansion and worth playing for anyone who enjoyed the base game.
Quick Note: As it’s 2023, I’m assuming that you know how Oblivion plays so I’m only touching on what’s in the content pack. If you don’t know how Oblivion plays, then it’s very similar to Skyrim. If you don’t know how either of those games play, then go play one of them (I think Oblivion is better, but it’s jankier).
KotN has a fairly innocuous opening, as your character hears about a prophet appearing in the town of Anvil who is prophesying about the end of the world. This adds yet another quest to your journal, and until you go there the game world proceeds as normal without any trouble. Once you get to Anvil, everyone’s gossiping about an attack on the Cathedral which has been ransacked and is full of corpses. On talking to the prophet, he tells you about the heroic crusade of myth Pelinal Whitestrake who struck down an Evil elvish lord called Umaril in days long past. It turns out Pelinal left the job half done however, as evil in the form of Umaril has returned and has murdered everyone in Anvil’s Cathedral to prove it. As such your selfless (or selfish, depending on your playstyle) adventurer is tasked with gathering up all the pieces of Pelinal’s old equipment, which have obtained relic status. Then by using them, you’ll be able to finish his job for him by defeating Umaril. To do this, you’ll need to gain the help of Nine Divines by praying at each of their 9 wayshrines which are scattered across Cyrodil.
As you can see from the map above, most of these shrines are either next to a town or are at least near a road. This makes finding them somewhat straightforward, but as I started a new character to play through this DLC (say what you like about Oblivion’s level scaling, but it at least makes this possible) the adventure of finding these shrines amidst the realm of Cyrodil was in and of itself a fun little adventure. I would be remiss if I didn’t note that all of the relics scale with your level however, so if you want the best versions you should either be level 21+ or download a mod that scales them to your level. Once you’ve tracked down each shrine and said a prayer, three things happen. Firstly your Infamy points are reset as this questline is only available to “good” adventurers, which means it can be useful for any remorseful vampires, thieves guild or dark brotherhood members. Secondly, it lets you player pray at these wayshrines going forward so that you can gain temporary buffs should you happen upon them again. Thirdly and finally, it advances the quest to the next stage where you get a vision from the big man Pelinal himself. This vision is pretty cool, as it thrusts your character up into the sky where ghostly Pelinal talks some shit about Umaril before he gives you the location of his own erstwhile resting place.
You’re then sent to a submerged ruin which fortunately is largely indoors, as otherwise you’d need to bring a lot of water-breathing potions or have decided to play as an Argonian. While fighting your way through, you come across the remains of one of the Knights of the Nine who was kind enough to be bearing a note that confirms that Pelinal’s bitchin’ helmet is located in this tomb, and that there was a group of Knights/Treasure hunters who were looking for the rest of the relics. Once you’ve yoinked the helmet, you then head to the abandoned priory that served as their base to hunt for clues Scooby Doo style. This turns out to be an apt comparison as the (hidden) basement is clustered with the semi-friendly ghosts of each of the fallen knights. As is typical for knightly fables, they’re polite enough but ask you to prove your worth by beating them up in a sequence of one-on-one fights. This section is pretty cool and while it sounds overwhelming, they’re not too tough (they failed after all) and you have a little bit of time to heal between each duel.
After proving that you are a certified BADASS (sorry, I played through all the Borderlands 2 DLC before playing this) you can then talk to all of the Knights and they tell you where various pieces of Pelinal’s equipment have ended up. Most of these quests are short but sweet and each have their own gimmicks, which I won’t spoil too much. Without giving much away, I’d recommend doing the Gauntlets last and say that you should do the Boots (which require a bit of thinking) before trying for the Mace. The Shield is by far the meatiest of these quests as it requires you to clear out a fort full of hostile Conjurers, who are fairly frail but who can cause you problems if you decided to play with an unarmed melee build like my rotund roleplaying ass. There are also some light puzzles contained within this quest, but they’re all pretty easy so long as you got enough oxygen in the womb. The only issue I had was due to a bug where the rotating statues didn’t appear to rotate (so having them all face the right way was really, really hard). If this happens to you, then you can try restarting the game which fixed it for me – or you can use the console commands to skip to the next stage. Once your questing is done you’ll have obtained almost all of the relics and can now head back to the Priory to brag tell your ghostly gang that you’re making good progress.
Upon your triumphant return your character is greeted by a priory that now has friendly NPCs and which has been spruced up so that it no longer looks abandoned. It’s somewhat jarring, but it turns out an NPC you freed while hunting for the shield rocked on up and brought some friends with him. Fortunately enough, one of these guys was smart enough to bring you one of the two remaining relics and knows where the last one is. The only problem? It’s been using by an evil wraith (is there any other kind?) who is related to the original Knights of the Nine falling apart in the first place. You’re then asked whether you want this helpful chap to become a member of your new, cooler Knights of the Nine. You can turn him down, but I don’t know why you would especially as he (temporarily) becomes your companion and peppers the corpses of everyone you fight with Silver Arrows that you can then sell later for free money. Once you’ve resolved this intense moral dilemma, you’re then tasked with killing the wraith and stealing his sword so that you can complete your relic collection. You’ll also need to take it to a Cathedral so it’ll stop being an evil sword, but that’s a pretty modest ordeal compared to most of the other stuff you’ve been dealing with.
With your collection of relics at 100%, the Prophet and a bunch of aspirant knights show up at your priory to give/listen to a speech respectively. Once the Prophet is done with his pep talk, he tells you that you must all go to Umaril’s new house and kick his cunt in end the threat that he poses to the Nine Divines and all the mortal inhabitants of the world. Three randoms and a guy from the Gauntlets quest then ask you if you’ll let them join your suicide righteous mission, which is a no brainer if ever there was one. By this point you should have 8 knights willing to sally forth with you, unless you told them all to go pound sand because you’re roleplaying angry, angry Pelinal. They’ll all then patiently wait for you at Umaril’s base while you go sell your loot to merchants there with all due speed. Once you’re there, you all charge forth into battle against small groups of enemies who get absolutely battered from all sides
During your heroic assault you’ll slaughter a bunch of enemies before eventually needing to split off from the group because the baddies keep respawning. As per the rest of the battle, my character resolved this issue by punching the obstacle – in this case a big glowing orb which exploded and then caused everyone except Umaril and two of his lackies to disappear. If you’ve got all of the relics equipped, Umaril himself is a very easy fight as you gain a powerful buff that drains most of his stats when you hit him. One thing that’s worth noting is that his sword also scales with your character’s level (the best version requires you to be level 24 or higher) and that you have to loot it while he’s in his physical form. Once you’ve bullied him avenged Pelinal you then need to cast a spell which teleports you to his very soul, at which point you beat him up again before there’s an explosion. An explosion so powerful in fact that it caused my game to crash, necessitating me to redo most of the mission again (thanks Todd). Fortunately Umaril wasn’t allowed to escape death a fourth time, so upon beating him again again again again my heroic character was returned to the Priory for congratulations and a slight sense of anti-climax as all my comrades in arms proceeded to walk right past me back indoors after 10 seconds of cheering. But this is a Bethesda game so that kind of abrupt tonal shift is par for the course. I then returned my relics to the armoury and went back to my humble life as a pilfering, boxing Khajiit.
Once you’ve wrapped up the questline in KotN there’s not too much left to do, nor much that has changed within Cyrodil itself. You’ve now got a cool new priory base and some new equipment that conveys various permanent buffs (aside from being enchanted) but otherwise KotN doesn’t add much. There are the new areas that you’ve fought through and some new valuable books added to the loot tables, plus the ability to gain a blessing from one of the old Knights that you’ve redeemed by completing their quest. You’ll also have gained a handful of new spells but that’s about it. As such this quest is about the journey, not the destination and while it’s fun to playthrough the storyline it’s a one-and-done affair. One last thing to note is that you need to retain your low infamy to be able to use the various relics that you’ve gathered across your crusade, as once you hit an Infamy value of two or more you can’t use them (and NPCs will sass you) until you go to each of the 9 wayshrines again.
In conclusion, KotN is a fun mini-expansion / DLC that doesn’t offer too much outside of it’s quest chain but does provide a fun series of quests for you to enjoy at any level. While the re-establishment of the Knights of the Nine does feel a little bit rushed, the quests themselves offer enough of a variety that I’m willing to let this slide. Admittedly once you’re finished with these quests the DLC kind of ends, but the new gear and spells are great while the new buffs and base are appreciated even if they won’t radically change your playstyle. Ultimately KotN is a memorable and fun quest-line with some good rewards (and an easy way to reset your Infamy points should you need it) that offers great value for returning players or those who’ve already beaten the main storyline. It’s not essential, but I’d highly recommend that any fan of Oblivion play through it – especially as it’s included with the modern versions of Oblivion that are available for sale.
