Jenrai

Then I would almost certainly say your drain isn't so much the graphics card. I mean, the memory, ideally should be bigger, but I know not everyone has money to spend on the latest all singing all dancing ones... an Nvidia 256 should still put out more FPS than yours is doing, especially at low detail/res and with all those performance boosters. Back up your .ini to somewhere and delete it, let the game make you a new one. That might buy you some back but I doubt its the root cause of that much of a frame-rate loss. Do you have Mass Effect? Thats a decent benchmarking game that doesn't knock the living daylights out of a CPU or require the worlds fastest video card. If so, how does it run/look? Jen

Agree with the new graphics card statements. But focus on video memory. 256 is way too low, and with how poor your FPS is with pretty much everything you can do giving little to no benefit, I would guess yours is dying anyway. Obviously no way to be sure of that without testing it for myself but that sounds really, really low. MSI make some great budget cards that use the Nvidia chipsets, maybe slightly older models, but you can pick up a 1gb MSI 9500 Nvidia for half the price of the newer Nvidia cards. In all honesty, my base system is somewhat better without the taking the cards into consideration anyways, but Oblivion doesn't even know what multi-core processors are, let alone how to utilize them properly, and only recognises up to 2gb of ram anyways. Having more helps because the background stuff doesn't then eat into the 2gb that the game is using. I'd also look at what you have running in the background. Even on the higher end computers, too much clutter will slow pretty much everything down. Things like device programs you don't neccesarily always use (mobile phone PC programs, sat nav programs, mobile internet connection programs, ITunes & torrent hosts are all belters for this) but that start on the systems start up can be disabled. Also, and this sounds daft, but believe me, it helps - disable your internet connection whilst you're not using it. Last but not least, what AV do you use? Several of them are real process gluttons. I mean real bad. Like a Cadilliac drinks fuel, these things will gobble up your system resources like nobody's business. Norton is an absolute cow for it. And is bloody useless to boot. If yours is bad, look at getting something like PC Tools Spyware Doctor with Antivirus: Updates regularly, has both spyware and AV defense, and whilst it breaks it down into several smaller processes, instead of one huge one like some, so it looks worse on your process list, this in fact helps your computer maintain its resources as several smaller ones are easier to run than one big one. Jenrai

Craftybits... can't find the link because I can't browse the file server from work... but it lets you scribe, play the lute (oh the fun to be had busking in the IC Market district) make your own food/armor/weapons from stuff you farm and kill in the world... and several other things that I've not quite got around to playing with as yet. Groovy little mod. Again, its still a WIP (work in progress) and the gauntlet has just been picked up by a new scripter, but hey, the changes in the new version seem to work thus far and I'm thoroughly enjoying playing with it, even if it is draining my own modding time into nothingness. :D Also look for Simyaz' (sp?) mods "Tears of the Fiend", "Malevolent" and "Ruined Tails Tale" if you want some pretty cool, lore fitting, questy type mods that add a couple of CM partners and other things upon completion. (Watch out for Malevolent though. Might be better activating that one at a later point with a tougher charector. :D) Jenrai

The Gecko/TESIV edit trick is a handy one, but as Balakirev says, easy to mess up. Wrye Bash is safer, but not as able to merge as many mods. Using Gecko to merge all of the Unique Landscapes plugins from the latest OMOD collection worked, and saved me a heckuva lot of ESPs (well... about 20 I think - running as close to the limit as some of my games do, thats a lot) I've also found that merging some of the stores (check to make sure you're not doing something daft like merging two shops that appear in the same worldspace before you do it *guilty grin* ) and a lot of the freespawning weapon/armour mods hasn't caused me any serious problems - I seemed to loose a set of armour and gain another, unrelated, vanilla set merging these with Wrye Bash - no idea why. I've not tried merging the better cities OMOD collection ESP's, though I have thought about it, as these are one of the "constants" for every save I have... has anyone else tried, and if so, how did it work? Jenrai

1 - As a follow on to the "save lots" tip - don't be afraid to experiment. You can always roll back to a previous save. 2 - Don't underestimate the power of the "weakness to X" (where X is a damage effect) potions and magic. They can easilly turn the tide of an otherwise loosing battle in your favour. Especially if you're using something that lets you use potions/poison as an area of effect grenade attack. (UV for example) Personal favourite for knocking the stuffing out of a whole group of enemies is a "weakness to shock" damage potion, followed up by AOE lightening attacks, before switching to my bow/blade (depending on how many enemies survived and how close they are) to finish them off. 3 - Try to engineer it so your first save is at the end of the tutorial dungeon, before you exit the sewers. You can then create multiple toons from this without needing an alternate start mod as you can edit your race/class/birthsign and therefore your appearance/name/major & minor attributes & skills before you step out of the sewer. Jen

Someone has. Doesn't really follow on from the message, but Delivery Job adds the "Gold Horse" courier company to the world. I wouldn't have it but it was in BC when I installed the OMOD, and figured I might as well give it a shot. So there. You can be a courier. Gets interesting late on too. There is a glitch though. One of the quests requires you to make a delivery to a "Strange Crate" in the courtyard of a fort - unfortunately it appears as soon as you install the mod, meaning you can glitch your way through like 2/3rds of the quest line just by trying to open that crate. Jenrai

Yeah... I never gave the Ini a thought either. Which reminds me... I should probably rebuild mine. :D And Illiad86 - I agree. Some systems are built for it. Most are not. And that right there is a stumbling block of epic proportions. I would defo say you're right about it being safer to overclock a CPU and not so much a GPU. Most of the damage I have seen has been badly/extremely overclocked Graphics Cards, usually without adequate additional cooling (I'm not saying that if its cooled all will be well and good. Thats not a one shot solution either) The problems start when people think OCing is as simple as the guides/experienced pro's make it out to be and that it will magically fix all their problems, without knowing exactly what they are doing or why it 'should' be done, if at all. Fact is, most of the systems that will easily support overclocking don't need it to run anything todays software market can throw at them, unless you're really hammering it and running 20 things at once. (If you are, woah there bunny! slow down. Get off the caffiene. You're killing your system's performance rates and potential lifespan.) Anyways, back on topic - Usually, if you're experiencing either processing or graphics problems, the absolute last thing you want to do is overclock anything as doing so will likely shoot the final nail into your system's cofin. Best bet is to find out whats wrong and repair/replace long before you try to overclock anything. Jen

I have Tona's store. And I did exactly what you did... -I already had HGEC (latest OMOD version) from months ago. -D/Led the store and unzipped it to my desktop. -Checked the file set up where it sat. (Data - Meshes/textures ect.) Was correct. -Copied the Data file into my Oblivion directory. -Launched OBMM -Ran Boss to check my load - order. (have preferences saved anyways for un-bossed mods) -Moved the store to where the rest of my armour/shop mods are (godess store, Heroes store, slofs goth shop) -Checked the ESP was active. -Launched the game. -Loaded my test toon (high level with stacks of cash and like 10 CM partners stashed around the place to check things out) -Bought a WIDE variety of things (probably spent like 200k in the shop) -Tested the male/weapons on my toon, the femme armours on a CM partner. No problems. -Took them killing because I hadn't for a while with a high toon. My poor partner didn't even get a look in. Though that has more to do with my Vampire having the full Midas spell book at his disposal - gotta love the Cheese & Melon atronarchs. ;) Jen

You said you had Eshme's body replacer before you tried this, then tried installing HGEC to get this to work? If you have 2 body replacers running at the same time, they're both trying to alter the same things, so which ever is last in your load order will take priority, but you'd likely still have conflicts. You'd have to deactivate (uncheck the Eshme's ESP in the launcher/OBMM, if it uses one) or preferably completely uninstall Eshme's (open your data folder and remove all the files related to the Eshme's replacer) before running the HGEC body. Personally I've never used Eshme's, so I don't know if it uses an ESP to point at the new bodies or just overwrites the vanilla bodies completely. If it does that shouldn't be a problem as HGEC should reinstall everything you need anyways. Oh, you wouldn't need Exnem's and HGEC... (I think they're both the same thing anyways) just the HGEC OMOD. Jen

Yeah, limits 256. Do you have OBMM installed? Not 100% sure myself what the deal is with OMOD limits or even if they count seperately. The game also seems to struggle if its trying to load more than a certain number of BSA files. Jen

***EDIT*** And another silly question just occured to me... you said you were using Eshme's... did you deactivate that before running the HGEC OMOD? If not, and Esh's loads after HGEC, you'll still have the same problems as if you didn't install HGEC at all. ***Edit edit*** Oops, that was supposed to be an edit. Didn't mean to reply to myself. heh heh.

Really, really stupid question perhaps... are you sure the charectors you're trying to equip with the items are female/male respectively? I know it sounds daft but I can assure you certain items will not only not appear, but the corresponding body part will vanish entirely if the charector is the wrong sex. My guess would be that the base body types are different, but I can't say for sure. (For example HGEC - Roberts Male v5 or whatever) I spotted this because I edited a custom race and somehow ended up with hemaphrodites. heh heh. So I put the offending articles on a vanilla race CM partner and they worked fine. :D Jen

I was actually playing with these the other day on my system (Athlon quad, 8gb RAM, twin MSI Nvidia chipset 1gb cards, SLI linked) as a result of playing around with the HDR/Bloom/AA in the Oblivion settings naffing up on screen writing whilst in the game (its all blurry, even the shop signs are illegible. Books however are unaffected so I wrongly thought a mod had done it) and realised I could use the Nvidia control panel to enable AA & HDR at the same time, which seemed to overwrite the game preference settings telling me only one was available at a time. It didn't even register that I could probably enable AS too though, so I'll check that out when I get home. Kudos for you and thanks for this. :) Jenrai PS - playing around did fix the writing, so it certainly wasn't a mod. PPS- MSI are a third party provider. Their cards generally aren't quite as hot as Nvidia's own, however, for the price difference, they're great if you're working to a budget. ***Edit*** Will give the Kudos later (if I remember). Unfortunately, work's ninja-blocker stops it. /sadface

Well, there's 100's of mods out there for deleting spells, so hey. I have one even if I'm not sure which mod added it. :) Jen

Of course, if your toon is low level, you won't be able to use them without further console manipulation, but hey. ;) Jenrai

I would tend to agree. Whilst I've little or no solid proof (that I can reasonably present here at least) I've seen systems that should munch through just about anything todays gaming market can throw at them struggling to handle older games and programs... did the usual maintenance things (removed all overclocking, blocked non-essential programs that were running on start up, shot down the useless crap like CTFmon et al the rest of the jive) and still, naff performance. Switch out the offending overclocked items, moreoften than not the GPU's, (sometimes, but not often, reinstalling them works) and it starts singing like you would think it should again. Whilst there is a lot (and I mean a LOT ) of information about overclocking, safety margins and the eventual effects of overclocking out there, seems a lot of people either don't bother checking it out, or read it and forget it the second they've closed the window (Mod read-me's, anyone? :rolleyes: ) Whilst it can have its benefits, I'd advise AGAINST overclocking if Oblivion is the only game you have slowdown on. Chances are, your system isn't using its full resources the rest of the time, and all you will do is burn it out much, much faster if you do overclock it. Jenrai PS - I'm not a computer pro, however, I've been building high performance machines for myself and others since I was about 16. I'm now 30. So whilst I may not work down your local PC World, chances are I have a heckuva lot more 'real' experience than the spotty geeks that do.

WoW is much easier to turn off. Because it sucks. Hey ho. Personal opinion and all that. I actually work relatively unsociable shifts, and only require between 3 and 5 hours sleep a day (not as in I think I do, so I set my alarms and am actually killing myself slowly through sleep deprivation... as in I will wake up, regardless, within 5 hours of going to bed, and won't go back to sleep, so I get up) so when my guys are chilling out at home, I'm usually at work, and when they are at work, I'm usually on Oblivion, so I guess I have it quite easy. Even manage to make time for the Lady in my life... thats what weekends are for! :) Jenrai

Actually, it IS supposed to work with DR... but UV is still in release B1, and therefore isn't perfect. I love this mod... and as a little bit of a script writer myself (not quite in Hex's league, I'd be the first to admit that) I appreciate the amount of planning, thought, testing and general work that must have gone into this so far, and I'm awaiting the next release with heavily baited breath. As I am the next release of DR (come back horse combat! :) ) Other than that I agree with much of the above. One word of warning about the crash prevention system - as great as it is (and it is) if you have more than a couple of warnings in a few minutes, save and quit, then reload... yes it prevents crashes, but it breaks other things to do so, and can seriously bug your game. I've not seen any broken saves from it yet, and like I said, it really works, but just bare that in mind. ~Jenrai~

Hadn't actually thought of it that way... that could be a good one. ;) I dunno though. Theres a lotta the whole "Thom has resurrected *Richard*, and must be stopped or they'll destroy the world" or "Harry is back from the dead and coming to kill my mother's sister's husband's cousin... please help!" stuff going on. I s'pose thats part of the reason why I was sorta against the idea of resurrecting Shinji in the first place. There's enough undead already. There's gotta be a better way of satisfying the need to 'earn' the championship and allowing people to complete the origins quest too, should they want, rather than another ghost story. As I already said, the Yellow team would batter the GP, and ergo I think you earn the title in that fight. He is actually really, really soft... and I've fought him at many different levels with different classes. The three Yellow Team gladiators are always a much, much harder fight. Additionally, I think the GP's surrender is a nice twist in what can become a very hack/slash/slash some more, dull affair... so probably wouldn't change that so much as add something new to it. Hmmmm. Interesting idea for a mod, this. Jen * Edit - loool didn't think and put the abridged version of Richard in there... you know..,. Thom, ____ & Harry stylee? oops.

I wanted to collect the heads of people I'd decapitated using DR... just for fits and giggles. Sadly that one is not possible. Making a "named soul gem" collection using UV's soul gem thingy instead. :) Argomir, the old fella you kill in the first DB quest, and the fighters guild members from the quest in the mine (well... two of them anyway... one got himself dead in a trap even though all but like 2 of the Gobbos were dead ... so I killed his friends in a bloody rage... the gems will form part of a display in my house along with the third ones armour and all their 'liberated' weaponry - 'tis what happens if you fails meh. ;) ) along with Raynil Dralas and the Guard who tries to steal Anora's loot off of you are in there so far. I know, the collection isn't huge as yet, mainly because I've been too busy trying to fix the accursed bugs in the Bandit Slave Trade mod (not obtained from Nexus) which may (or may not) cause the addtopic bug and also kills the DB hideout Living Quarters in Cheydinhal, forcing poor old Vincent out into the sunlight. Not a healthy place for my Sire to be, that. At least not with Sunlight killing vampires active in the LTD overhaul. Jen EDIT - Or at least... that was the plan. What I'd failled to notice was that I hadn't actually been able to capture Argamirs soul. And several more attempts (using player.additem codes to obtain varying soul gems) have revealed that you can't... /sob ... even the colossal blacks tell you they're not big enough. Anyone know of a mod that would let me do that? PM me pls. Or something I can change in the INI or CS? please let me know. Was really looking forwards to building that museum.

Not 100% sure, but I think with Midas installed the console command for all spells (PSB maybe? don't remember) gives you them all. Potentential Spoiler - Jen

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm thinking it can't be done mate... I remember seeing something similar somewhere to this, maybe on the Bethsoft forums, but the answer was generally that you can't teleport horse and rider together, something about both been referenced to appear at the same place in the other cell causing issues, thats why when you fast travel you're always dismounted when you arrive at your destination. Sorry for the negative answer. And theres a chance there is a way to do it now, as that was a while ago, but I do remember reading it. Jen

Sensual walks is non-combat, so you're right, it should work with UV. (I use Colorwheels sexy female NPCs, which includes a couple of walks and I've not had any issues) Also, UV isn't just a dual wield mod. Theres a lotta fantastic work gone into that. Personally I'd reccomend using it with Skycaptain's Deadly Reflex, as both together give you stacks of extra combat animations and actual ways of fighting, making (the admittedly sometimes stale) combat experience in Oblivion resemble what I recon it should have in the first place. Jen

No, it wouldn't. Because Gaiden woulda been like the rest of the "spirits" you fight in Obi ... that is to say he may have looked pretty cool, but he woulda, at the end of the day, been a ghost. Use a silver weapon with any enchantment except frost and he's going down real hard, real fast. And that, against the greatest arena champion of all time, woulda been an even bigger let down than the Gray Prince. On an even sadder note - The Yellow team vs the Player n' the Pig is a much, Much, MUCH harder fight than the Gray Prince is anyway, and I did ditch the journal before I spoke to him, so you really don't miss out on much.

Awww... tried to make him my sire in the LTD vamp overhaul. Won't let me. That sucks. Jen