Best manager to mod Oblivion?

[AlphaOmegaFreak123]

So, I tried using Nexus Mod Manager, but whenever I install a certain number of mods, the game immediatley crashes on startup. I tried using Wyre Bash, but the process to install it is a *censored*, and when I tried installing a mod called deadly reflex, I kept having a camera bug which no matter how deep I dug, could not root out the source until I deleted all files of Oblivion entirely. And as of thus far, there are mods that require Wyre Bash to work properly. Not to mention I am having quite a hard time trying to use Oblivion Mod Manager despite people saying its the best one. I'm exhausted because I've had to restart my game four times already and i'm wondering if using a mod manager is worth the trouble or if I should just install everything manually bit by bit. Can anyone please help me? I'm at my breaking point.

 

Edit: Now I've had to reinstall it a sixth time. God f*#@ing dammit.

Edited April 30, 2020 by AlphaOmegaFreak123

[Dispensation]

Wrye Bash is considered the best for Oblivion. If you don't like that then Mod Organizer 2 is a second option.

 

I wouldn't use any other mod managers than those two.

[Moksha8088]

Oblivion is an antique game. Many mods for Oblivion were made before the standardization of NMM came into place for Fallout 3 and all subsequent Bethesda games. Unfortunately, Wrye Bash does not use the file loading structure Windows users are used to and so it seems very unintuitive to the unwashed masses like myself. Since most Wrye Bashers are power users, that lack of intuitiveness has not hindered their fondness of it.

 

Edit - making patches is easy, but Wrye Bash is so old that the idea of making Youtube tutorial videos showing how to actually install a mod with Wrye Bash was unheard of when it came out, it wasn't a big deal because of the power user thing. The idea of easily installed mods was still a ways off in the future. I think Gamer Poets has retroactively made a Youtube video on installing mods with Wrye Bash though.

 

There are a few mods that will work with NMM. I think there are also a few very old mods that require the Oblivion manager.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Moksha8088

[leonardo2]

So, I tried using Nexus Mod Manager, but whenever I install a certain number of mods, the game immediatley crashes on startup. I tried using Wyre Bash, but the process to install it is a *censored*, and when I tried installing a mod called deadly reflex, I kept having a camera bug which no matter how deep I dug, could not root out the source until I deleted all files of Oblivion entirely. And as of thus far, there are mods that require Wyre Bash to work properly. Not to mention I am having quite a hard time trying to use Oblivion Mod Manager despite people saying its the best one. I'm exhausted because I've had to restart my game four times already and i'm wondering if using a mod manager is worth the trouble or if I should just install everything manually bit by bit. Can anyone please help me? I'm at my breaking point.

Calm down. It doesn't make things better and I know how frustating it can be. :smile:

 

If you haven't looked at it yet then perhaps the Wrye Bash Pictorial Guide might help as it shows you how to do this or that in Wrye Bash plus a few tips as well.

 

If I were you I would install the WBSA package (Wrye Bash Stand Alone = Wrye Bash can be launched as an exe without fiddling with Python).

 

Oblivion is an antique game. Many mods for Oblivion were made before the standardization of NMM came into place for Fallout 3 and all subsequent Bethesda games. Unfortunately, Wrye Bash does not use the file loading structure Windows users are used to and so it seems very unintuitive to the unwashed masses like myself. Since most Wrye Bashers are power users, that lack of intuitiveness has not hindered their fondness of it.

 

Edit - making patches is easy, but Wrye Bash is so old that the idea of making Youtube tutorial videos showing how to actually install a mod with Wrye Bash was unheard of when it came out, it wasn't a big deal because of the power user thing. The idea of easily installed mods was still a ways off in the future. I think Gamer Poets has retroactively made a Youtube video on installing mods with Wrye Bash though.

 

There are a few mods that will work with NMM. I think there are also a few very old mods that require the Oblivion manager.

True about Oblivion.

 

If you are referring to the steep learning curve that Wrye Bash has for beginners I agree it has, but once one have tried the features a couple of times in Wrye Bash will notice how easy doing this or that really is. For people who still need help need can ask here or go here.

 

In case you didn't know, but Wrye Bash works best with Oblivion mods since the bash tags are working in Oblivion.

 

You mean OBMM or the improved OBMM Extended.

[bobbyskel78]

to be forth coming, i've been playing this game since it's release. i've always used obmm and have never found any use to change, it's been stable for me since ... i suppose common sense goes out the windows for many and they need tags to identify which mods may conflict with each other and don't know which ones should take precedence in loading priority ... so enters wrye bash.

in some cases, multiple over-hauls trying to be executed at once ... gecko goes out the window, can't combine, simple load order is no longer sufficient enough, about the only single situation where i've seen wyre a necessity.

from what i've read, you can use multiple mod-managers. i would definitely suggest at least one and understand how they work. in addition, a load-order manager, it seems LOOT has finally gained ranks over BOSS ... something i actually consider more important. often telling one when a mod is out of date, a preferred mod for some aesthetic such as weather, a load order and the reasoning ... cleaning via tes4edit ... i often use the CS for some probs via conscribe or messagelogger errors.

i already spend too much time correcting errors and modding myself, so wyre bash just seems like a unessential PINtA. so i don't use it, i don't need to run OOO, ... etc. i've already played those in the past and now prefer a more modern over-haul, for me Maskar's.

So over-all and in summation, the answer is what fits one's taste and how technically understandable one is of the mods one is running. many time i just open two mods in the CS and couple em that way. i find it simple.

[DrakeTheDragon]

I myself was using several mod managers over the years since 2006, although for a long time I sticked to manual install.

 

OBMM was the first I think. People kept asking, I provided OMOD-ready versions of my mods and had to give it a try myself for programming their install scripts.

I'm still using it nowadays, but not as my manager anymore. Its "Utilities" menu still comes in very handy in regards to Archive Invalidation, Steam BSA timestamp fixing (not a Steam user myself though), BSA archive browsing and extracting whenever I need a Vanilla resource for modding it, and OMOD-to-ZIP conversion for those few mods only available as an actual OMOD still.

 

NMM was the second, or third, mainly due to me wanting to know it so I can explain it to those who ask (a part of the job kinda deal).

 

Didn't yet switch to Vortex (my current mod installation is way too complex for a successful transfer) and never got Mod Organizer MO/MO2 running in my Virtual Machine (probably a problem with creating virtual file systems inside a virtual file system or similar). So I can't vouch for those.

 

Nowadays I'm back at Wrye Bash's BAIN, as it's the most straight forward and uncomplicated of the bunch (kinda keep telling it "automated -manual- installs", as every option inside a BAIN archive is in fact a manually installable mod).

Other than f.e. OBMM BAIN also reinstalls files from previous installed but overwritten mods, when a newer installed mod was uninstalled and took all files it overwrote with it. OBMM would have left a hole of missing files.

 

 

But all in all Oblivion is a very old game and the majority of its mods are almost antique, from a time where there was neither managed installs nor standardized folder structures in mods releases. Not every manager understands every other manager's mods. OMODs can only be installed by OBMM (afaik), BAINs can't be installed by either OBMM or NMM/Vortex(?), and certain manual install packages (requiring you to "rename" optional/alternative files) cannot be installed by any (straight away).

So every manager in existence will have problems even "understanding" a lot of (older) mods, and they will need to be re-structured first before they can be installed. But then "every" mod manager can install every mod, or at least I can make them so they can be installed in every manager I choose.

 

It's really only a matter of personal preference at this point. Just stick to the manager you know best and fix those mods it can't understand.

 

 

Though Wrye Bash I was already using long before OBMM, just not for its BAIN (don't think it was even a thing right at start). Its Bashed Patch is invaluable nowadays where everybody wants to have at least 50+ mods. Load order is important, yes, but in this old game load order alone can't fix everything.

 

Did you know, for example, that the game's own plugin merging on load does not even distinguish between male and female parts of race records at all? The race record loaded last will be taken into account 100%, male and female parts at the same time. This is already a known issue when using a male and a female body mod. Their plugins won't mix without undoing each other's changes. Add other cosmetic mods or even character overhauls into the mix and you will loose a whole bunch of vital features.

 

Now, yes, there's always been manually-made compatibility patches, for use of one body mod together with another or together with a certain cosmetic mod or character overhaul even. But how many patches from 3rd party authors are you going to look up, search and install, until even the patches start undoing each other's changes? Make your own patch merging "all" race-affecting mods you got? Damn well "I" can do that, no problem. But is it just as simple for everybody else?

 

With the Bashed Patch and the community-and author-collected and -sanctioned over the years Bash Tags (tiny snippets at the end of plugins' descriptions telling Wrye Bash which parts of the plugin are the important ones and need preserving, for example only the male parts of a male body mod and only the female parts of a female body mod, or only the hairs/eyes added to X races of a hair/eye mod) the tool will create a patch for you which will have merged all potentially endangered critical changes, and only those, from all conflicting plugins in your load order. And it even overcomes the Rule Of One and the non-splitting of record parts the game's own plugin merging so fails in doing.

 

Just get your load order correct, click a few checkmarks and let the tool build the patch at the click of a button. With this ever-growing lack of free time for modding I started encountering a decade ago, at one point even I wasn't up for making all my patches manually myself anymore. The single click of the button was soon the preferred choice even for me.

[Moksha8088]

But then "every" mod manager can install every mod, or at least I can make them so they can be installed in every manager I choose.

This would be a very helpful video tutorial if you were to share how to do it on YouTube.

[bobbyskel78]

reading a bit more and felt i had some more to say on this topic.

i've been using obmm since the beginning, mods stored in a different format, i reconstruct into a proper data structure and create a obmm file out of it. i've had no problems thus far with any other mod managers and their installation tech, i just use common sense ... choose what i want, separate, and create a 'store' compressed omod out of the file. by doing so, obmm will ask if one wants to write over existing files ... LOOT should really be the big knock n' the head on this one, as you don't have to install the entire mod to your data directory, just the esm and esp files to read the repository suggestions.

i use the latest edition of 7zip which i write over 7z.exe files in obmm for compatibility (another author's suggestion) works well when i create my own. from the Loot suggestions, the load order becomes apparent. i honestly still don't understand why this is even a topic anymore ... install mods for dummies?

if ya' do it enough, the load order optimization "tool" becomes quite apparent. i don't need to have someone hold my hand. if one wants that, perhaps play a more up-to-date game. that sounded asinine, this isn't rocket science ... practice makes perfect, right?

[DrakeTheDragon]

The first thing I learned, in school, university, and in online forums such as this, is different people have different skills. Only because things are a child's play for me I could do with my eyes closed, it does never automatically mean they will be so for everybody else, too.

There's people like me, who put their first lines of code into a computer at the age of 4, sometimes even think in algorithms, and can learn to use every software from a short read and playing around. And then there's people like my uncle, calling me in the middle of the night only to ask:

Quick, where on the keyboard do I find this "any" key from the message "press any key"?!

Needless to say English isn't his strong point either. But if your house's walls are coming down or your facade is falling apart, he's the man you'll want.

There's people who don't have the skillset, or perhaps even only the time, to understand and learn these things as easily as we have. Them coming here and asking around, even if it's questions like "which mod manager is best", which, apart from a majority voting, can't ever be answered truthfully (which they can't know either), are neither in the wrong place nor does it make them "dummies" on this site. In fact they still will learn it in the end, just from us instead. And who knows what other skillsets they will bring to the table, things which will be very valuable to us and which we in turn don't know anything about?

This is a topic still, because it comes up again and again with almost every new visitor. Learning from the masters is the key. That's why people ask, and that's why people like us keep answering.

[bobbyskel78]

the "dummies" comment was solely based on the series of books, books still exist don't they ... lol. i guess it's appropriate for one to admit to there self they are a dummy on the subject. oh hell, i'm sticking to the term noobs (newbies) ... i think the topic is starting to delve into the talk section of the forum.

so many other matters fit into this same category, in perspective of the game. some have the patience to build quest mod others, scripting out the boo-hiney. i don't remember many quest mods that didn't need correcting and yet i think, how can one correct and publish a mod that is primarily script ... i don't think ya' can.

i wonder how long it's going to take before i'm satisfied and get back to the game ... for the umpteenth time. stuck at level 7 and refuse to move on w/o feeling content and nothing else that i can correct. i was browsing through the phone book one day and found a gentleman, i assume, called Shutz Self. hmmmm.