will-o-wisps, gas chambers, and corrupt saves

[jgf]

Ah, the bats are busy tonight, but this is my last question (for now).

This was a rare coincidence of events from which I cheated to extricate myself. But i wonder if there was another way.

It was in an Ayleid ruin, a room with gas vents in the center and four walls which instantly raise if you enter that area. Vilja and I skirted that and explored the rest of the ruin, on the way out we had to go back through that room ...and there was a stentorian sound as we approached. A will-o-wisp had drifted into the gas area and triggered the walls, now that creature is one of the more difficult to kill, so those walls would drop and raise and drop and raise as it just drifted around inside. The cycle of the walls was too fast for me to get a shot at the will-o-wisp; also too fast to run in and run out, especially if the creature decided to attack. My next thought was to cheat, when the walls were down open the console, click on the creature, and "kill" it; but getting a will-o-wisp ID is problematic under the best of circumstances, all I could get was the ID of the far wall of the room. So I saved the game and exited; that save crashed every time I tried to load it. Loaded the previous save (made when I first heard those walls crashing) and decided either god mode or tcl was the only way out, the latter seemed less of a cheat.

So,
- I could not kill the will-o-wisp from outside the walls
- IF the gas could kill it, it would take a long time (and probably just as long for it to decide to drift out of the area)
- I hadn't the health/armor/speed to run into the area, make a turn, and run out

other than waiting it out was there a non-cheating solution?

[Sniffles]

Avoid that room? Wisps are immune to poison. Unless you have a silver, enchanted or daedric weapon you be snit out of luck. Worse, unless Vilja is set essential she will get her butt kicked as wisps are faster than NPCs. Their drain health ability puts down Legion soldiers and militia easily.
If you have a weapon that can hit it, melee and health potions are the best way to go. Beware, wisps have one of the highest HP of any monster in the game. Best worst is the poor schmucks that zoom up in levels then run across the Swampy Cave wisps. Depending on the PC level they can have around 1000 HP.

[jgf]

Couldn't avoid the room as you must go through it to get out. Normally the walls are down and it is easy to skirt the edge of the area without triggering them, but that blasted will-o-wisp was floating around in the middle of the room so the walls were popping up and down every couple of seconds.

[Sniffles]

Transmogrify your games and use Unrelenting Force on the wisp? Do you have an enchanted bow or any arrow of (something)?

[jgf]

The walls weren't down long enough to take aim and fire anything - the will-o-wisp was floating around apparently randomly, plus there were a couple of columns he (do will-o-wisps have gender?) could be behind at any given time; the wall drops for about a second and immediately raises again, a couple of seconds later it drops again ...by the time you notice where the critter is, the wall is going back up. Given the speed of the wall and the irritatingly slow speed of cast spells it's enough trouble just getting a shot over the wall when it's down, much less hitting a moving target near the far wall (I wasted most of my magic and numerous charges on a staff in hopes of a random hit which would lure "him" out of the gas chamber, most of that futilely blasting the wall as it went back up).

[Sniffles]

Try getting on the wall when it is down?

[jgf]

Quite dangerous, especially for lower level characters; I'm not sure if the wall smacks you into the ceiling or just throws you into the air (it happens so fast ...as I found out on the way into this dungeon). And I had no desire to possibly get trapped inside the gas chamber alone with the will-o-wisp.

All in all, quite a conundrum; if the will-o-wisp is immune to poison it would never die in there, but it moves too slowly to ever get out; I wasn't able to enter the chamber safely, much less traverse to the adjacent corner and get out, especially if the will-o-wisp attacked; and as long as i was in the cell the creatures would not reset. Stalemate. In the reality of the game Vilja and I would have become skeletons to be discovered by the next adventurer. (On a console I'd have had to keep trying earlier saves til I found one before the will-o-wisp entered that area, then hopefully be able to kill it just to prevent this from happening.)

It's good Oblivion is such an old game; I can see some fiendish dungeon builder intentionally creating such a room.