Striker879

I would recommend using OBMM. The UOP is large, so expect it to take some time when you click the Add Archive and then Create button ... it will probably look like OBMM is locked up, so be patient. The other two are quite a bit smaller, so it will be about the same as for OCOv2 time wise. When you get to the DLC patch you will just deactivate the ESP for any DLC you don't have after you have done the Add Archive -> Create -> activate the OMOD steps. If you have all of the DLCs you won't need to do anything extra after running the OMOD and it turns blue.

Yes I'm saying first Unofficial Oblivion Patch then Unofficial Oblivion DLC Patches ... only for the DLCs that you have installed then Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch then after those we move on to Qarls.

Something that occurred to me after I posted is I don't see the Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP) or any of the DLC Unofficial Patches. They fix a huge number of bugs with the game, from broken quests to things like rocks/trees/plants floating in the air. What do you think of that (plus the UOP should be installed before Qarls not after so that Qarls can overwrite files it needs to I think ... though I do see a patch for Qarls on the UOP page ... Qarls is one of those in your list I don't use or have much experience with). On the subject of bugs, one thing I do have experience with is EngineBugFixes ... this one I do recommend. It's an OBSE plugin so it doesn't ned to be installed right away though (so can be installed any time). - Edit - Ya there's an article by Arthmoor here that gives the proper install order.

And you could continue to refuse to use it if it existed, and those of us who would like to show appreciation for a comment or idea, could simply "LIKE" the idea, reducing the number of posts in a thread, instead of having a thread spammed with a ton of +1 posts. That's what the minimum character limit for posts is all about. :smile: But, if we get 'Likes', why not bring back 'kudos', or cookies as well? Kudos is still around, you can give them on a modder's page Indeed it is, but, only for mod authors apparently. Uh...I'm prettu sure I've given non mod authors a kudos, it's just a real convoluted path to get there to give them one that's for sure. About the same path as for mod authors in my experience ... go to their Nexus Mods user page and dole out your one and only one kudo (try and give two and you turn into an Indian giver).

Now looking at the list I see no obvious "OK we'd better do this next". I am familiar with some of the mods, but not familiar with quite a few. Where do you think we go next?

Yes ... I wanted to be certain that if Vanilla Gear Redux doesn't have a HGEC replacement for some obscure piece of vanilla armor or clothing that we had at least the EVE version (EVE includes eveything). Now that you have installed Vanilla Gear Redux over top of EVE you have everything you need for armor and clothing. That's why I'm saying this is a good spot for a backup.

Out growing the training wheels ... there you are, would you look at that!! OK, I think this would be a good time to make a backup of the progress so far. I don't know how you are set for hard drive space (I build my own computers so I have drive space out the whazoo, but I know not everybody does). If drive space is at a premium perhaps a large enough thumb drive/USB stick/USB external drive? What I'm suggesting is to do a right click/copy on the game's Oblivion\Data folder and then paste that into either a folder on your hard drive (I'd name the folder something like Base_Install_1 or similar). If down the road you wnat to start out with a new character using a new load order these mods would surely be on your "must have" list still. If you back them up now then getting back to where we are right now is just a simple copy/paste and you're there.

You can't use an ESP as a master using the vanilla Construction Set. There are two ways around this. The first is to use Construction Set Extender. The second is to use Wrye Bash to ESMify your one that you want as a master, and then ESPify it when you are done editing the second ESP. The second option is the one I use (with some of my own "special techniques" of course ... otherwise I wouldn't be me).

Ok ... my next suggestion is to install Vanilla Gear Redux, which will be the finishing touches on this part of your "base install" (providing you haven't uncovered any issues with your testing).

We're on a roll! I need to drag my old butt through the shower, so give me about 15 or 20 minutes. You now have everything in place for you to create your character with the mods needed for character and NPC improvement. I suggest you create your character and go through the tutorial dungeon right up to the point where you can see the sewer exit in the distance. Make a save there using the Esc menu save in a new slot. Then exit the sewer and make another save, not overwriting the first. The first will be one you can use to make a new character down the road, without going through the whole tutorial again. The second will be for testing mods as we get them installed. After that maybe take a run up to the Imperial City Market District and get a feel for how your game performance is with just these base mods installed. I'll be right back.

All right ... we're making progress, and it's not going backwards!! For Khajiit Male Body we will be doing the same copy and paste but with a different source folder level for the copy and so we'll use a different target folder for the paste (the rule of thumb when copy and pasting folders is you always paste into one folder level higher thatn the one you copied). After you extract the Khajiit Male to the folder you downloaded to you will see a folder named [TNP] OCOv2 Khajiit Male Body, and inside that folder you will find a Meshes folder and a Textures folder. Right click on the Meshes folder and select Copy ... navigate to your game install's Data folder and select Paste. Again you will answer yes to the folder merge and file overwrite prompts. Next do the same with the Textures folder ... copy and then paste in Data, yes is the right answer to the prompts. Again no ESP is required, just go into the game and see if you can notice the difference.

Ya same thing ... I'm working off my memory and sometimes it reads off a bad memory chip. Old age has it's "perks".

Look on your Nexus Mods profile page and see how long it shows before your next renewal ... one payments worth or two.

Ah ... you caught me on another one!! This one is an easy fix again. Open OBMM and click on the Utilities button and then select Archive Invalidation. In the Archive Invalidation dialogue that opens select BSA Redirection, then click on Update BSA Timestamps and then click on Update Now and close OBMM. You should now see some difference btween the two tail textures. By bad ... I got focused on "the list" and didn't go through my usual early troubleshooting steps. All's good though ... we'll be right back on track!

If you mean the Alternate tail texture you can experiment. Inside the Alternate Tail Texture folder are two alternate tail texture files. There were also two tail textures in the Data folder version you already did the copy/paste on that you may feel is OK ... or if you want to check out the alternate tail texture it's just copy the two files, tail.dds and tail_n.dds and paste into the game's Oblivion\Data\Textures\Characters\Khajiit\Female folder (answer yes to overwrite the files). If you then decide you would rather have the ones that came with the Data folder you just open it's subfolders down to the Data\Textures\Characters\Khajiit\Female folder and copy the tail.dds and tail_n.dds files from there, pasting into the Oblivion\Data\Textures\Characters\Khajiit\Female folder for your game.

Well Wolf you should know that it's been a pleasure working with you. The list you posted is well done, and I like how you not only used notations to indicate different aspects like what you really wanted and what you could live without, but you even gave a clear explanation of what the notation meant. So let's start with Luna's Khajiit fix first. It's actually going to pretty simple to install manually. After you download it to a folder and extract it to that same folder with 7-Zip you will find a folder named LunasOCOKhajiitFix and inside that folder there will be a folder named Alternate Tail Texture and another named Data. Right click on the Data folder and select Copy from the right click menu. Next navigate in Windows Explorer until you can see your game install's Oblivion folder. Right click on the Oblivion folder and select Paste. You will get a prompt saying that there is already a folder named Data. Select the option to merge the contents of the two Data folders (the exact wording of that Windows prompt will depend on which version of Windows you use ... I'm a Win 7 dinosaur so if you are Win 10 it will likely be worded differently than mine). You may also get prompts about file overwrites. Select Yes or Yes to All as we want the new files to overwrite the originals from OCO v2. Luna`s is what I call a "pure" replacer and so it will not have (or need) an ESP to activate. Get that done and test to see if you notice a difference and we'll move on to the males.

LOL ... don't worry, you have an "expert" at breaking stuff and fixing stuff as a wingman. Give me a few minutes to finish my supper (chilli and toast, so it won't take too long) and I'll put togther a step by step for one and then the other.

Lunas OCO Khajiit Female Fix and Khajiit Male Body for Oblivion Character Overhaul version 2. They both may need to be installed manually with copy and paste (in my opinion when looking at the downloads). You could try by using OBMM and the Add Archive but the downloads may just confuse OBMM with the way they are structured. If they are a problem with OBMM I can walk you through the copy/paste operation if you need help with it.

The Khajiit female got some rough treatment from Bethesda in the vanilla game, and there haven't been as many people making good texture replacers for Khajiit and Argonians as there have been for other races (well Orcs, Dunmer and Altmer are pretty neglected too). I do have a couple of suggestions I can offer for Khajiit females and males if you like. I know about them but have never used them myself.

Yes that is correct. Do the double click to turn each Addon from green to blue in the right hand panel, and then when you've done that remove the tick marks beside EVE_KhajiitFix.esp and MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp as they are no longer needed.

Yup ... that'll be fixed in this final step for Oblivion Character Overhaul v2. Next is the OCO v2 compatibility addons. You will find them down in the Optional Files section on the Files tab. They will be done the same way that OCO v2 base was ... download manually to a folder, open OBMM and Create and then Add Archive. As you have both HGEC and Roberts Male you'll need to do one addon first and then the other. I would create names that make sense like OCO v2 HGEC addon and OCO v2 RM addon ... you work out what makes sense to you for names of the OMODs. Now before you close OBMM and test we want to change which ESPs are activated in the left hand panel of the OBMM window. Right now you should have a tick beside EVE_KhajiitFix.esp and MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp ... I want you to click and turn off the tick beside each. Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp has the same fix for Khajiit that EVE does and the MaleBodyReplacerV5.esp and Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp conflict with one another. Oblivion_Character_Overhaul.esp does everything that Roberts Male needs to work with OCO v2 so all will be good without it's ESP activated. Then go into the game and see if all looks well with the Khajiit and races like the Orcs (you could have a look at all races if you want).

Yup, once get through this next step we should have the Khajiit problem sorted out. So on to Oblivion Character Overhaul v2. Download the top listed download from the Oblivion Character Overhaul mod page Files tab by clicking the Manual Download button and save that file to a folder that you create and can find again easily. Once you have the file Oblivion Character Overhaul v203-44676-2-03.zip you will start OBMM and click on the Create button down along the bottom of the window. A dialogue will open and at the top in the Name field change "new mod" to something like OCO v2 (or Oblivion Character Overhaul v2 if you prefer). In the middle section of the dialogue you'll see an Add Archive button. Click that and a dialogue box will open allowing you to naviagate to where you saved the OCO v2 download. In the right hand panel of this dialogue single left click on Oblivion Character Overhaul v203-44676-2-03.zip and you'll see that file name appear in the File Name field down at the bottom. Click the Open button and OBMM will appear to be not working (you'll see that it is doing something if you move your cursor into the OMOD Creator dialogue). Give it some time and it will finish and you'll now notice that in the Relative Path and File Path columns you have some info. Next click the Create OMOD button in the lower right corner. You should now see a green box with whatever name you gave it previously (example OCO v2 if that's what you put in before). Double left click on the green box and OBMM will finsih installing Oblivion Character Overhaul. We will test OCO v2 base install before moving on to the HGEC compatibility addon and Robert Male compatibility addon. All you need to check for is that we do not have the "Install Blockhead" error face (I'm confident we won't).

OK ... there are some things with the female Khajiit body that carry over from the vanilla game. We will get that fixed when we install Oblivion Character Overhaul v2, but first let's get Roberts Male installed. On the Robert Male mod page Files tab download the fourth from the top in the Main Files section (the one named Robert Male Body replacer v52 OMOD) to that same Oblivion\obmm\mods folder we used for EVE. Same as EVE the next step is to start OBMM and again when you double click the green box it will start the install script to walk you through the different body options (again nude or underwear and body type). When you are done that and test you will again see that the female Khajiit are messed up (maybe not quite so messed but still not right). Once you confirm that the other male races are OK we'll fix that with the OCO v2 install.

Ah ... right. See you're keeping me on my toes for getting stuff in the right order! No trouble, did you already install the skeleton replacer or would you like a hand with that?

No I just use the regular NotePad for stuff like that, but NotePad++ would work too. I like to use NotePad to stip out anything extra that may come from copy and paste from somewhere like a web page (for example you could highligh the _BLKD_PERNPC_Oblivion.esm_00000007 from my previous post and use that to paste at the end of the BowForward part of BowForward.kf (making it BowForward_BLKD_PERNPC_Oblivion.esm_00000007.kf) but if any extra invisible characters got copied from the post they could screw up the file name (I see stuff like that when trying to copy and paste between different posts I've made) I've just gotten into the habit of using NotePad to "clean" any text I'm using in a copy/paste operation. Using copy/paste will make the job of renaming all those animations much quicker, easier and mistake free (it's a long thing to type out twenty, thirty or more times without making an error ... I know from experience).