Nairbog

New Zealand is absolutely gorgeous. Obviously it's far stormier than most people might think just from watching the LoTR movies, but Skyrim feels far more like Alaska or Greenland than New Zealand imo.

Would definitely be interested to see if anyone can fix the pop-in issue a previous poster was referring to. I'm still downloading my copy but it would be nice to get an ini fix for that, it's a pet peeve. Completely random unrelated question but don't want to start a thread for this: I've tried to limit my exposure to Skyrim as much as possible so maybe this is a dumb question, but are there any environments besides snowy pine forests, tundra, and rocky mountains? I've never been much for cold weather and it might start to feel depressing if it's always gloomy/rainy/snowy and cold in Skyrim. I realize it's the northern area of Cyrodiil so one should expect it, but it would be nice if there was still some Oblivion style lush forest/grassland environments.

Am I wrong? Could it still be mods even though it seems to be as specific point in the save that breaks it regardless of which mods I have on? I really hope I am wrong, since a mod problem I can fix: a corrupted save, not much I can do. I wasn't aware of any Wrye Bash tools for cleaning up corrupted saves beyond removing bloating. If there is something I'm missing I'd appreciate being pointed to that as well. Thanks much.

If your comp can't handle Better Cities, there's also Open Cities and Open Cities Reborn: the latter are both by the same modder. Open Cities just connects the Vanilla cities to the worldspace (no loading) but Open Cities Reborn does that in addition to changing layouts/aesthetic in an attempt to make the cities more realistic and closer to the concept art. I really like what Open Cities Reborn does. It's a huge improvement over Vanilla in my opinion, I can't stand loading screens and the layouts are more interesting. I'm guessing this is what you were asking about. That being said, I haven't tried Better Cities due to framerate concerns. If I turned off RAEVWD, I would probably be able to run it, but I'm so used to playing with RAEVWD I can't imagine Oblivion without it. I take a 20-30 fps hit (since I turn everything on) but it's worth it, to me at least.

Well there's more supporting my "it's not a mod" theory and it's why I haven't posted my load order (I think it distracts from what is the real issue and I don't want to waste people's time). Even with all the same mods loaded, I can load a save prior to returning to Weynon Priory and fighting off the Dark Brotherhood and the area is fine. There seems to be some kind of bug related to the main quest that caused corrupted data in the area. If it was a mod load order problem, it wouldn't make sense that I could load an earlier (has to be exactly before advancing that part of main quest, I've tried more recent ones) save with all the same mods/load order. As for quicksave/autosave, I never use them. I did have autosave attached to wait for awhile before I knew about the problems, but I vaguely remember someone saying autosave on wait was ok. Still, I ended up turning that off about 10 gameplay hours ago just in case. I also use BAIN for every mod that's BAIN-ready and made sure I was truly uninstalling the mods that require more than unchecking them in Wrye to remove.

I could be wrong, but how could my load order have anything to do with it if it happens even when *every* mod is turned off (and I clear the cells by waiting in the testing zone for 4 days)?

anyone?

I am unfortunately crashing in and around the Weynon Priory area with unfortunate consistency. It happens most consistently in a very specific spot: when going up the road to Weynon Priory, I crash right as the road splits, about 5 yards in front of Antus Odiil (one of the brothers you need to save for "The Killing Field). I have that quest going but have not triggered the event yet since I haven't talked to Rallus. I'm thinking it may be a quest related corruption though because months ago on the same character I started the quest but it got bugged (Rallus stuck in a pathing loop) and so I loaded before then and eventually fixed the issue. Once I fixed it, I loaded before it so I could do it later on. Probably the most important detail aside from the *very* specific point at which it happens is that it *doesn't* happen if I load up a save from before I rescued Martin from Kvatch. I can run around Weynon Priory and the surrounding area with reckless abandon w/o problems. Also of note is that the problem occurs regardless of whether I have mods turned on. I have already gone through mod debugging (turning off a mod(s), porting to testhall, waiting 4 days to clear cells, and coming back) and got all the way down to no mods/dlc at all and the problem still occurred. I even tried removing the obse files temporarily to see if that could be causing it. I have been using Earl's Oblivion Crash Prevention System from early on, and I've read that saves can become corrupt when it stops Oblivion from crashing when it should, so I'm guessing that's what's happened. I'm just hoping someone might know a way to clear the corruption or find a way around it without having to go back to my earlier save (about 40 gameplay hours ago) because I'm not sure I could bare redoing everything again. I'm not the type of player that enjoys multiple playthroughs on different characters, I make one that I do everything with and I move on to another game. I would really appreciate any help on this. Technical stuff: - Running Windows 7 64-bit, steam install to my C:/Games folder to bypass UAC. - bdospecularpass is set to 1, so it's not the same as the crash that happens in the area when you have that turned off. - Have OBSE installed with fast-exit, earl's crash prevention system, and oblivion stutter remover (none of these are causing the crash though, at least not directly) - Use BOSS after every new mod/bashed patch config

I'm looking for a mod that affects the ability to loot fallen NPCs with impunity in FCOM. This may be less of a problem in the original game, but in FCOM, you can get overwhelmed by an opponent much stronger so you run back to the city for safety. The guards try to kill it, and eventually do after a few of them die in the process. The result is that you have a high level enemy to loot AND 3 high-level guards to loot. Looting them isn't a crime so now I just feel like I found a way to get money/items way too easily and I've lost motivation to play. Are there any mods that change this functionality in some way? I posted this on the official forums as well and did get a link to a mod that prevents you from wearing guard armor, andwhile that helps, it doesn't solve my main problem which is the ability to get guards to do my dirty work for me. Another solution I thought of was to use the looting NPC and creatures mod from MMM and change it so that guards do loot their kills. In MMM, guards are made the exception to that rule but that's actually how I'd prefer it. It's more realistic: if you just lost your comrades in battle to an exceptionally skilled dark mage are you going to let the idiot that brought him to you (me) take his valuable mage components? Or are you going to loot them and donate them to the mages guild at the very least?

This is way, way too broad of a question really. Check out some of the guides to picking mods available out there. If you search "oblivion mod guide" you'll get dozens. These will help explain what type of mods are out there, what will suit your gameplay style, and what are the most popular. To answer your question though, yes, there are mods that improve gameplay: hundreds of them even. Some of the more popular ones are Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul, Francesco's Leveled Lists, Oblivion WarCry, and Martigen's Monster Mod. These all do similar things. The most important change these make is that monsters/NPCs no longer level with the player, or do so at a limited/capped rate. In the base unmodded game, since monsters level with you, you never really get stronger than them, and in some cases, you can get weaker if you don't follow a strict leveling process. With these mods, you don't have to worry about that as every time you level you will be getting more powerful, the world does not revolve around you. There is a mod called FCOM: convergence, which as you might guess is a convergence of these 4 mods. However, I would not recommend it for the beginning mod user. I definitely recommend playing on your PC because unmodded Oblivion is really annoying in my opinion. There are so many things that need fixing and you'll be stuck with them on the XBOX whereas if there's something you don't like about it on the PC, chances are, there's a mod for that.

edit: nm just saw the mod detective thread. sorry about that moderators, please delete.

this not the right forum? surely there's gotta be lots of FCOM users here who can confirm whether or not this is an intended mechanic...

I was exploring around Anvil today when some rangers in the wild attacked me. I tried fighting them but they did almost enough to kill me with one arrow so I fled to Anvil to let the guards take care of them. The guards did take care of them although one guard wearing glass armor died. I'm only two so the loot from the rangers alone was pretty absurd, but the glass armor is just out of control. I have a full set of glass armor at level 2, I knew it must be really high level armor so I checked the wiki and low and behold it is the HIGHEST level armor you can get in the game. This severely hampers my motivation to keep playing if I can just get the best items in the game from having guards fight mobs. I realize I could just not loot any guards or things killed by guards but that seems like a cheesy solution. Is this an intended FCOM mechanic or did I just screw up the install? Thanks.

Wrye Bash is now at version 294 (required for BOSS 1.8 ), and the Nexus page is available at this moment. Awesome thanks for the help!

The download link for wrye bash on texnexus is down for me, but I did just get it a few days ago. My version is 293 is that not the latest version anymore?