The game also features a number of new enemies, ranging from the Knights and Priests of the Order to the Gnarls to giant basilisk creatures to Shambles to zealots to Grummites to Flesh Atronarchs to Dark Seducers and Golden Saints – all told, in the end there are 10 new creatures which you'll only find in this world (also of note is that none of the creatures from the regular Oblivion world are here). The look and style of the new creatures are great, especially the giant spider like insects, but the Gnarls take the cake as they are these hulking tree creatures that shamble towards you – very nice. The new creatures also have their own specialties, as one can heal itself by being near water or in the rain; Gnarls can cast Silence on you so you can't use magic; but the worst – and by worst I mean best – is the Scalon, which is the giant basilisk lizard that is a hulking brute who does this jump at you for tons of damage (the kicker though is he'll often make himself invisible, surprise you, and scare you to death cause you'll hear the enemy music, look around frantically, and then it pounces).

However, though the enemies all look cool, I had some problems. For one, I don't know what the issue is, but my archer I've been using since day one felt severely underpowered, as I found myself using up a ton of arrows to take some of the bigger enemies like the Gnarls and Scalons out, which meant that I often had to drop some of the cool loot I was finding, and often found myself simply bypassing all enemies, running from one dungeon point to the next until that quest was done, just because combat happened too frequently (umm, seven Knights of the Order at once is fair how against my bowman?) and I often found myself out of ammo (and the bow is all I'm good at – no other weapons do I use nor magics other than my one healing spell).

New to Shivering Isles are also two new sets of armor – Amber and Madness. Unlike Oblivion, you don't simply stumble upon the new armor or are able to buy it, as you instead must find the goods needed for a craftsman to custom build it for you. Madness Ore I found the easiest to find as the Grummites like to carry it around, plus there are places you can mine it from as well. The Madness armor is nicely black, with the cuirass in particular having this wicked grin on it. Amber is used to make Amber armor – duh – and you can find this in Gnarl root passages and on Gnarls themselves. Amber was a bit harder to find I found. The Amber armor looked particularly nice for the lightweight armor users (Madness is heavy) as it is golden and shimmers splendidly. Along your way you'll also find matrices, which you can use to have your craftsman build better armor, weapons, and magically influenced items. You'll also find some new special weapons, like Duskfang (a sword that gets more powerful as you use it) and Ruin's Edge (a bow that curses the victim with various ailments).

The problem is – much like the enemies – they are good in concept but not execution. For example, I went into the Shivering Isles sporting my gear from the Knights of the Nine download content as it was my strongest. I thought, "Hey, new expansion – gear has to be better!" So imagine my surprise when I bought my first piece of Amber armor and found it was exactly as powerful as my Helm of the Crusader (and without the magical benefits I might add). Weapons were the same, as the bows I found were typically several points lower than the Ebony Bow I came into the game with. You can get better armor and weapons, but you have to have the matrices, as the armor and weapons made for you come in various flavors of quality, since there is no unity to where all Amber cuirasses are created equal. I eventually lucked out and created a more powerful Madness bow with an enchantment, and ended up settling for a nice Dark Seducers armor and helm set, though overall it was still less powerful than my Crusader armor – I just thought it looked cooler and more stylish and settled on it. If you are starting a new game and run straight to the Shivering Isles, however, you'll probably start out pretty well for yourself armor and weapon wise.

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