You’re standing in a damp, dimly lit room inside a virtual ruin. There is a chest. It’s right there. You click it, expecting loot—maybe a Daedric dagger or some gold—but instead, a message box pops up. "This is a test of patience," it says. "Do not be impatient." Most players, conditioned by decades of RPG tropes, assume this is a puzzle. They wait. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Maybe they go make a sandwich. When they come back, they click again. Same message.
The oblivion test of patience is basically Bethesda's way of trolling you.
It’s found within the Shivering Isles expansion, specifically during the quest "The Better Mouse Trap" in the ruin of Xaselm. You’re following Relmyna Verenim, an NPC who is... let's just say "eccentric" even by Oblivion standards. While she’s busy with her gruesome experiments, you find this chest. It feels important. It feels like it must have a reward for the disciplined player. But honestly? It’s a trick. It is a literal commentary on the player's own greed and expectations.
The Mechanics of Frustration in Xaselm
If you've played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you know that the game loves its quirks. This specific interaction isn't a bug. It’s a scripted joke. When you activate the chest, the game checks a timer or simply resets the interaction. If you click it too soon, the message repeats. If you wait, nothing happens. There is no secret timer that unlocks a legendary weapon after an hour of standing still.
You just stand there.
Relmyna is a character obsessed with pain and psychological limits. It makes sense that her "home" would include a chest designed to annoy the player. Most people end up clicking it forty times in a row out of sheer disbelief. "Surely, if I click it one more time, it’ll open," you think. It won't. You're just wasting your own time while a digital necromancer works in the other room.
💡 You might also like: Why the Disney Infinity Star Wars Starter Pack Still Matters for Collectors in 2026
The genius—or the annoyance—of the oblivion test of patience is that it preys on "Gamer Brain." We are taught that every interaction has a reaction. If a game tells you to wait, you wait. In EarthBound, you have to wait three minutes to enter the Belch’s Base. In Metal Gear Solid, waiting can change boss fights. But Oblivion? It just wants to see how long you'll stare at a low-poly wooden box.
Why Bethesda Put it There
The Shivering Isles is the realm of Sheogorath, the Daedric Prince of Madness. Everything in this DLC is designed to be slightly "off." One half of the world is Mania—bright, colorful, and psychotic. The other is Dementia—dark, paranoid, and depressing. The "Test of Patience" sits firmly in the realm of psychological torment. It’s a tiny, micro-example of the expansion's larger theme: the world doesn't care about your logic.
Think about the context of 2007. DLC was still relatively new. We didn't have a million Wiki pages or YouTube "Easter Egg" channels debunking every frame of a game within three hours of release. People actually sat there for thirty minutes. They posted on GameFAQs forums (remember those?) asking if anyone had managed to crack the chest.
Someone probably claimed that if you wait three hours, you get a "Sword of Infinite Patience." They were lying.
Breaking Down the "Test" Logic
There is no script in the game files that rewards you. Seriously. Modders and data-miners looked into the construction set years ago. The script attached to that chest is remarkably simple. It’s a loop. It’s a dead end.
📖 Related: Grand Theft Auto Games Timeline: Why the Chronology is a Beautiful Mess
- Player clicks chest.
- Game displays "Test of Patience" message.
- Player clicks again.
- Game repeats message.
That's it.
It’s almost a meta-commentary on the fetch-quest nature of RPGs. We spend hundreds of hours doing repetitive tasks for incremental rewards. Here, Bethesda skips the reward and just gives you the repetition. It's kind of brilliant if you don't think about how much time you actually lost.
I remember the first time I hit that chest. I was playing on an Xbox 360, the fans were whirring like a jet engine, and I stayed there for twenty minutes. I thought I was being smart. I thought I was "beating" the game's design. In reality, the game was beating me.
Variations of the Joke
This isn't the only time The Elder Scrolls messes with you. Remember the "Scrolls of Icarian Flight" in Morrowind? You find a wizard who falls from the sky, take his scrolls, use one, jump a thousand feet into the air, and then realize you have no way to survive the landing. Bethesda likes to punish curiosity in a way that feels like a shared joke between the dev and the player.
The oblivion test of patience is just the quieter, more sedentary version of that falling wizard. It doesn't kill you; it just lets you kill your own afternoon.
👉 See also: Among Us Spider-Man: Why Everyone Is Still Obsessed With These Mods
How to Actually "Beat" the Test
You don't.
You walk away. That is the only way to "win." The moment you stop clicking and continue the quest with Relmyna, you’ve passed. You've realized that the chest is an empty promise. There is no loot. There is no hidden achievement. There is only the realization that you are a person sitting in a chair, clicking a mouse at a digital representation of a box that doesn't exist.
If you're absolutely obsessed with opening everything, there are console commands on PC. You can hit the tilde key (~), click the chest, and type unlock. But even then? It’s usually empty or contains generic, low-level loot that isn't worth the effort of typing the command. The "patience" isn't a lock; it's a mirror.
Moving Beyond the Shivering Isles
If you find yourself stuck on things like the oblivion test of patience, it’s a good sign to look at how modern games handle player time. We’ve moved into an era of "respecting the player's time," which means these kinds of trolls are rarer. Today, a game would probably give you a "participation trophy" or a funny hat just for waiting.
Bethesda in 2007 didn't care about your feelings. They wanted you to feel the madness of the Isles. And nothing is more maddening than a box that refuses to be a box.
Actionable Steps for the Perplexed Player:
- Accept the Troll: If you are currently standing in front of the chest in Xaselm, leave. Now. There is nothing coming for you.
- Focus on the Quest: Relmyna’s questline is actually one of the most interesting in the game, involving the creation of a Gatekeeper. Your time is better spent there.
- Check the Script: If you're on PC, open the command console and try to
unlockit just to see the disappointment for yourself. It’s a rite of passage. - Explore Further: The Shivering Isles is packed with these kinds of oddities. Look for the "Fork of Horripilation" if you want another example of a "reward" that is actually a curse.
- Save Frequently: Not because of the chest, but because it’s a 2006 game engine and it will eventually crash or a physics object will launch you into the stratosphere.
The oblivion test of patience is a relic of a time when games were allowed to be mean. It’s a small, perfect piece of world-building that tells you exactly what kind of place the Shivering Isles is: a place where even a chest can be a lunatic. Stop waiting. Go kill some Grummits. There's a whole world out there that actually has loot in it.