Striker879

"Honest boss I only had one frontal lobotomy ... err, I mean bottle in fronta' me".

In the section [General] find bBorderRegionsEnabled and change it to bBorderRegionsEnabled=0 .

Try renaming Oblivion.ini found in your My Documents folder (NOT Oblivion_Default.ini found in your Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion folder) to something like Original_Oblivion.ini and then start your game. Oblivion will build a new Oblivion.ini using Oblivion_Default.ini modified to suit your particular hardware (which is why it doesn't do a good job with things like video settings anymore ... can't recognise hardware that wasn't even invented the last time the game was updated).

Just had a quick look in the CS to see exactly what my changes were and have found I was a bit misleading. I've only made changes to the original AesLowerLevelEnemiesDontDisappear.esp (both of those settings you asked about are now changed to 99, whereas the original only changed iCreatureLevelDifferenceMax to 99) ... probably when first testing so that the changes could easily be reverted if I decided to not go that route. AesLowerLevelEnemiesDontDisappear.esp will be merged into the bashed patch and disabled if you use Wrye Bash, whereas my own MyTweaks.esp doesn't because of some of the other changes it contains. Those changes will get moved to MyTweaks.esp at some point (probably when starting a new character, whenever that may be). Another option you may want to look at is Maskars Oblivion Overhaul. MOO also makes changes so that even in the beginning of the game you'll sometimes run into higher level enemies and equipment. By far MOO is a much more complicated mod (though most of it's changes can be disabled via INI edits). I have it on my list for my next character someday.

I used the change that Lower Level Enemies Don't Disappear makes to iLevCreaLevelDifferenceMax as inspiration and added that change to my personal MyTweaks.esp that bundles a lot of little things I prefer into a single ESP.

I'd say it is more likely that if he could not find anything, we would see a new search system implemented in no time. :wink: Bullseye!! @Drake ... ya I'm pretty sure it was back on the old Oblivion Nexus site layout where the only advanced search option was "mod description contains". I usually did my searches by author back then if I wanted any chance of finding what I was looking for (and then again thinking back ... was it the author field or the uploader field that gave good results??). - Edit - @Zixi ... does this mean it's going to be a bit more crowded when I'm looking over people's shoulders? Would you prefer to look over the left shoulder or right shoulder? I'm good with either, so you pick.

Careful whose toes you're trodding on ... and for the record that never crossed my mind (honest)!! :laugh:

Zixi ... did you not realise that the less it covers the more it protects (I believe it follows the inverse square law). I use the "hover over the user's name and see what they're doing" trick a lot. I've never seen anybody who uses search more than Dark0ne (so I'm implying that if the boss finds search suits his needs we may be barking up a tree that will never be climbable). - Edit - Search and me are also not on the friendliest of terms. I've even found that when searching for a mod that I have the exact name for (spelling, capitalization ... the whole nine yards) it won't come up using search because the mod name isn't used in the mod description field (easily avoided if there was an option to search by the mod name field, but this was long ago on the old web site mod page layout ... could be fixed now for all I know).

Can't be 100% certain but I have seen some mods for the Bodybuilder male body that said they had larger necks (now that could also be just at the lower part of the neck, not where the head attaches). Blockhead allows you to assign bodies and heads on a per NPC basis. The player character formID (baseID) is 00000007 (so to assign a unique upperbody to just the player you would rename the upper body mesh to Data\Meshes\Characters\BodyAssetOverrides\Oblivion.esm\00000007_UpperBody.nif ... after installing Blockhead of course). - Edit - Room207 Bodybuilder Male Body Replacer V52 is the one I was thinking of, and I see it includes a Head folder in the Resource\Wideneck folder with all the files needed (NIF, TRI, EGT & EGM) so I guess it must be possible.

In Oblivion the very first line in the file obse.log tells you the version number ... I would guess that f4se would have the same info in it's log file (f4se.log perhaps?).

Zixi ... in my mind's eye I'm picturing one of those old time rock star keyboardists with the keyboards arrayed front and back and stacked so that both hands are on various keyboards. Would this be a somewhat accurate description of your "office"?

What happens if you put EnhancedWeather - Darker Nights, 80.esp after EnhancedWeather.esp instead of before it? - Edit - On your COBL question I missed last time ... I have Cobl Main.esm, Cobl Glue.esp, Cobl Si.esp and Cobl Tweaks - SI.esp as well as Cobl Filter Late MERGE ONLY.esp (but I believe you'll only use the Late MERGE ONLY.esp if you also use Wrye Bash and build/rebuild your bashed patch). I think you'll find that Cobl Races.esp will conflict with Oblivion Character Overhaul v2. Additionally I just noticed USIPS Additional Changes.esp listed before DLCShiveringIsles.esp (should be after) ... what are you using to sort your load order?

Maybe Picky was just doin' a bit of fishin' ... seein' if the Jimmies were jumpin' today (and you know it's common knowledge that if the Jimmies are jumping they won't be biting).

I guess my packrat tendencies have come to be a good thing ... every mod that that I have installed also resides on my 1TB Data drive in a subfolder of my OblivionFiles folder (along with those that may be included in any characters I might create in the future's load order). Download once ... use forever.

Don't have an answer for your question but I do have one of my own ... are you using EngineBugFixes?

Glad you got it figured out. All I had to offer was what the UESP Wiki has to say about ingredients and their effects (Oblivion:Alchemy Effects and Oblivion:Ingredients) neither which seemed to offer a lot towards the problem you were describing.

Only advice I can give you is to look at a couple of different alt start mods, Arthmoor's Alternative Beginnings and an old alt start mod MOE Main Quest Delayer with Alive Kvatch (which is no longer playable unless you have the required old version of Kvatch Rebuilt already downloaded). Arthmoor's mod has you starting the game with the main quest started in so far as the Kvatch gate is active but it doesn't progress beyond that point until you "find" the Amulet of Kings. With the MOE mod you start in Anvil and none of the main quest has started (so no Kvatch gate). Looking at what those two mods do while following the tutorial may help things fall into place.

Sounds to me like you are leading with the right foot. There is absolutely no better way to learn the ins and outs than letting somebody else make mistakes for you ... plus it's more fun figuring out someone else's mess than any tangles you may create unaided.

There is one more option... Switch to Linux :smile: Edit: Really, it's more than one option... There are so many different distros... Plenty to choose from. https://distrowatch.com/ And the (relatively) recent Steam's support made Linux much more gamer-friendly than it was before. Don't worry I've been following you and Zixi's discussion with great interest. The day will come, it's inevitable. - Edit - And this edit comes from a cloned Win7 boot via my new Samsung SSD (well it was new a half dozen years ago ... just unused until today). Woohoo, I'm only a decade or so behind the times now! I have a few old Win98 boxes laying about, could probably mix and match parts enough to bring a machine or two in for you (if you're really missing those "good old days" ... ya right eh??). Good thing we have the StormWolf to bring this hijack back on track!!

Good info Shumkar ... if only I was an "Enterprise". Hey dropped a little morsel in another thread a while back concerning tomorrow being "the day" the Win7 lights get switched off. Guess what I've been doing yesterday and so far today ... short version is me and the Microsoft Update Catalog (as well as Windows Update) are very familiar with one another. As in I'm having dreams about it (or are they nightmares ... is there a difference?). I have my current Win7 box as updated as Win7 will ever be updated, and am currently making my way down my installed updates and determining which I need my own copy of (I still have a virgin copy of Win7 Pro ready for my next build ... I won't face Hey's problem as motherboard and CPU have been collecting dust for quite a while). I ended the day yesterday scouring Canada Computers site for memory, video card etc, especially the memory, DDR3 RAM won't be available forever. So I guess this is "thank you Hey", though there are times it hasn't quite come out that way. Mucking through MS stuff is just SO much fun.

Striker879, I actually have installed COBL recently, but I still get the same error that I started out with. I have all of the data files like Cobl Main.esm, Cobl Glue.esp, Cobl Races.esp, Cobl Si.esp, ad Cobl Tweaks.esp. Do I need every one of these, or are some unnecessary by looking at my load order? What about the other missing master you mentioned ... VVAdvanced.esm ? Edit - I use See You Sleep DLL myself (the masterless version). Haven't ever tried the one you are using so I can't say whether there are any differences but the DLL version does say it's an update to the one you're using.

Ya you really need to put the glasses on and focus hard when reading all the info presented in the summary of what WB has done after the bashed patch is rebuilt ... there's a ton of detail. I use TES4Edit and the CS to see what conflicts and what non-conflict stuff any mod or group of mods has brought to the game. I think the best plan is always use as little "force" as possible to achieve your results, so if those two checks don't show anything that can't be resolved through load order alone that is all I use. It's quite possible that WB isn't reporting either in the bashed patch because there is no conflict between the two mods. I think if either (or both) had a bash tag set by the author they would show up in the bashed patch.

As I have zero experience with LOOT I'll need to let others advise on the BOSS vs LOOT debate. Let me see if I can give an example of load order vs load order + bash tags as it relates to leveled list ... and not mess it up (often times trying to fabricate examples on bash patch ins and outs makes my head explode). Let say we have modA and modB and each only make changes to leveled lists (like your two mods). ModA changes records for asset1, asset2, asset3 and asset4 from the vanilla game. ModB changes asset2, asset4 and asset5 from the vanilla game. If modA is higher in the load order than modB the result will be asset1 and asset3 from modA and asset2, asset4 and asset5 from modB (modB is the conflict winner). If modB is higher in the load order than modA the result will be asset1 thru asset4 from modA and asset5 from modB (modA is the conflict winner). If we now use the Relev bash tag on one of the two mods we'll see different results in the game (if both mods used the same bash tag then WB will again only have load order to determine the winners of the conflicts). Add the Relev tag to modA and the examples now become: If modA is higher in the load order than modB the result will be asset1 thru asset4 from modA and asset5 from modB (so not any different than exactly the opposite load order with the bash tag). If modB is higher in the load order than modA the result will again be asset1 thru asset4 from modA and asset5 from modB (so same as the reverse with bash tag ... note that in this simple example you could simply use load order to achieve what you want, providing having modA win is what you wanted). Add the Relev tag to modB and the examples change (and better demonstrate the power of bash tags): If modA is higher than modB in the load order we will have asset1 and asset3 from modA and asset2, asset4 and asset5 from modB (again something that can be achieved with load order alone). If modB is higher than modA in the load order we will have asset1 and asset3 from modA and asset2, asset4 and asset5 from modB (exactly the same as above ... something that can not be achieved via load order alone when referring to the same order above without bash tags). Hopefully these rather simple examples can help shine some light on why bash tags are so powerful. Imagine a situation with more than two mods overlapping. By using both load order and bash tags we gain far greater control over what parts of which mods win the conflicts. Of course there will always be conflicts that can't be resolved with only bash tags and load order, and manually merged mods then becomes the only way to achieve the results you want.

While I still use BOSS myself, I'd like to point out that Wrye Bash (WB) no longer supports BOSS and the last time the BOSS masterlist was updated is back in Dec 2018. Using BOSS with WB is possible, but it takes some manual labour on your part to work as intended. I use the desktop shortcut to run BOSS and then turn off lock load order in WB. You can't run BOSS from within WB for any of it's latest versions. Mods that aren't on the BOSS masterlist get a User Rule (I use the groups found in BOSS as a guide for sort order and adjust as needed to get things working how I'd like). I use WB to add bash tags when needed for mods not on the BOSS masterlist. I'm no expert on bash tags .... all that I know about them I've gleaned from Wrye Bash General Readme.html and Wrye Bash Advanced Readme.html along with what little I've picked up from the forums over the years. As far as I know WB will merge the leveled lists using load order without any further action required (though bash tags and load order combined can be used) I see that NPC Static Level is an older mod and is found on the masterlist, while the Balanced Creature Stats is newer and not on the list. NPC Static Level has no bash tags assigned by BOSS ... not sure whether the mod author assigned any or not. Of course BOSS won't assign any to Balanced Creature Stats, and I don't know about bash tags assigned by the author there either. The bash tag Relev may come in handy after you've identified where the mods overlap leveled list wise using TES4Edit or the CS. Relev will allow records from a higher load order mod to "win" the conflict with a lower load order mod that doesn't have the bash tag. You'll need to decide which of the two mods should have the bash tag and which will use load order alone.

Maybe something can be scripted to re-equip the shirt at some point. Would I be right in assuming that the script currently would check for the shirt each time the menu is opened (thinking of people who may open the CharGen menu more than one time)? If so then if a StopQuest is used as Drake has suggested then some way of knowing that the player has finished their character creation would be needed (been a long time since the vanilla game CharGen got more than a cursory glance from me ... normally the only way to reaccess it is via the console showracemenu command right??).