rinoaff33

Dragon Age: Origins was the singleplayer game I poured the most hours into out of any other, so that's something. Seriously, that game was magical when I was first playing it. After the first playthrough, it was still fun, but knowing what's going to happen beforehand kind of ruins a story-based game like that. Other than that, there's World of Warcraft, THE game I've put the most hours into (I haven't played for over half a year now, though). My most recent playing showed me how down-and-dirty guild drama and raiding could get, plus the monotony of leveling through Outland again...however, the game certainly has some amazing experiences, ESPECIALLY when it's still brand new. In fact, I'd say that the game was at its unpolished best before any expansions came out, but that's probably just nostalgia talking. I personally dislike the new direction the game has gone in (making questing completely linear and speedy to the point of powerleveling) but I still have some great (and some bad) memories of it. The best memories I have are of playing the game with my IRL friends, especially when both I and a friend managed to get an incredibly rare item, the Battered Hilt, on the same day by sheer chance. I certainly still remember my friend's overjoyed/triumphant/ridiculously dramatic shouts when he got it. Oblivion is starting to become my number 1, now, though. Mods make the game into a whole new beast. The graphics are the best I've ever seen (besides the new Gran Turismo, which I don't own and haven't played anyway) to the point where I still go to scenic locations to take awesome screenshots. Of course, numerous bugs are starting to kill the experience somewhat now. I've still yet to fully explore the main quest, Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine, the Thieves' Guild, the Fighters' Guild...and I haven't even tried any overhauls except OOO so far - for that matter, I've yet to do a single OOO quest.

Hands down is I Wanna Be The Guy. I barely got into it and gave up; it's like Mario on steroids and then some. Next would be Halo 2 on legendary difficulty. Halo: CE and Halo 3 are cakewalks compared to Halo 2. You die in a completely unrealistic number of shots, even the basic Grunts act like Navy SEALs in terms of their skill level, not the mention the fact that they can machine-gun-fire their PISTOLS. One burst is enough to down you. Essentially, the only way to beat Halo 2 on legendary (without co-op) is to play it like Gears of War: stay behind cover and pop your face up for 1 second at a time. Ironically, the hardest level is the very first one due to the cramped corridors. The rest of these aren't in any particular order: I would say...hm....Guitar Hero 3 on expert would be on my list. Raining Blood, Through the Fire and Flames, and the boss battle against Lou are just ridiculous. The worst part is that said boss battle is completely luck based in true Mario Kart fashion - your powerups are random. So far, Guitar Hero 3 is the only console-based GH where I haven't 5-starred every song on expert guitar (the one song I'm missing is TTFAF, of course - stuck at a 4-star less than 5k points away from 5-star and can't get any better). To put the difficulty of this game into perspective: the game developers widened the timing window to hit notes SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE of how hard TTFAF is. Putting the Precision Mode and Performance Mode cheats on is a sure-fire way to have hair-pulling frustration (I honestly don't understand how people play in Performance Mode...and I'm a real musician who has to memorize songs). Wow, now I really feel like playing Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya again for some reason (my favorite song in the whole game and it's a folk cover...). Another Guitar Hero game that deserves mention is Guitar Hero: Metallica, solely because of the Expert+ drums. Now, I'm no pro drummer (I don't own a real drum kit), but I can play most songs on Expert+ (unfortunately, my drums have crapped out for the 20th time recently, so I can't continue getting better right now). A few songs on GH:M are just...ridiculous on drums. I mean, honestly, how is War Ensemble even POSSIBLE? As an interesting note, I have come close to beating Fight Fire With Fire on Expert+ several times, but the last two times I was 90%+ complete, my red drum pad stopped working and caused me to fail. Bah. Maybe I should calm down some when I play drums in the future. On the subject of Guitar Hero, here's a funny quote: "I've been playing the guitar for fourteen years, so it's actually less than I've been playing video games. I had a go on the Guitar Hero 3 earlier, and I don't really want to tell you the result I got." - Herman Li (lead guitarist for Dragonforce) after playing Through the Fire and Flames on GH (a song he played on real guitar) Finally, I would mention Oblivion. No, seriously. Oblivion is a hard freaking game unless you bump down the difficulty slider, use cheats/cheat mods, or perfectly optimize your character to abuse the leveling system - I currently use Realistic Leveling so I don't have to bother with getting enough attribute boosts per level. Morrowind is also pretty difficult but less so, because combat characters are so blatantly overpowered in it; try a stealth or magic character and you'll be trying to avoid combat as much as you can. Edit: Uhg, how did I forget Baldur's Gate? I've tried both of them and never came close to finishing them. The DnD combat on the Infinity games is just...broken. Surprisingly, I found the "sequel" Dragon Age: Origins to be an easy game (on Normal, at least) despite the numerous people saying it's too difficult even on Easy. Edit2: I also forgot 2 notoriously hard games: Ninja Gaiden (the Xbox version is the only one I've played) and Soul Calibur 3 (which I still play quite often; Xianghua FTW, and playing as her against my friend who prefers Siegfried is just hilarious - there's also that John Travolta guy we made...). I've never gotten past the 3rd boss in Ninja Gaiden. I've never met Night Terror or finished the awesome-but-sadly-poorly-implemented campaign (I'm on the mission where you first encounter a max level side boss - not sure if that's the last level or at least close) in Soul Calibur 3. Also, Xianghua's Soul Arena mode is a PAIN, because her destined battle is against Cervantes, who is BLATANTLY more powerful than the other computer players - the last time I got to him, my friend and I would trade the controller whenever we died, and we ended up racking up over 30 deaths before I finally got lucky. Abyss was a cakewalk - beat him first try after that.

I have no real advice to add, unfortunately, but I would like to point out that the processor COULD be the issue. It's below the minimum specs (2.0 Ghz+). Oblivion doesn't use multicore, so dual-core won't help any. Your game might be crashing by trying to load everything and not being able to handle it.

Are you using a texture from vanilla Oblivion? If the texture file is packed into a BSA archive, NifSkope won't load it (at least in my experience). You'll need to extract it using a tool, like OBMM.

Did you undress your character to see if it worked? Armor meshes are, sadly, independent of what's under it, so you will only see a difference when your character's not wearing any gear. You'll need custom armor meshes to fit the game's armor to the body replacer. If you've confirmed it's not actually replacing anything, could you give more detail? What body replacer are you using? Is it an OMOD? I would assume it's not since you said "put them into the data folder" but I would recommend converting the mod into an OMOD for ease of use.

It should be relatively simple although perhaps a bit time consuming (like most mods). First, you'll need something that can extract files from a BSA archive. OBMM can do this. Find the corresponding mesh for the crusader's shield in the Knights.bsa (should be meshes/armor/ndknights/ndshield.nif although I don't know if that's the right one since I haven't played KOTN enough to get the gear) and extract the file to an empty folder somewhere easy to find. Second, open up the construction set. Load the oblivion.esm (to be safe, load the Knights.esp too). Find the Chorrol shield (have no idea what it's called, it's likely under the Armor folder) in the list. Right click and select Edit. Replace both of the "Biped Model" spots with the mesh you extracted. If you want to be complete, you can extract the ground model and icon texture as well and insert them. Save as an esp.

Said yellow exclamation marks only appear when your game is missing a mesh (a 3d model file). Did you install the meshes from your mods correctly? If you extract all the files in a mod, there should be a folder labeled "meshes" which you can drop in your Oblivion/Data folder if you're not using OBMM. Where are the !'s happening? Is it on your modded stuff or on the default stuff?

The screenshot you provided looks perfectly normal. If you could provide some more screenshots that would be useful. Also, the RAM thing only comes into play if you use many, many mods or have many, many NPCs near you, as in so many you can only achieve it via mods or repeatedly spawning people.

What??? Morrowind has great graphics and atmosphere aside from the blocky meshes, especially if you play at high resolution (although it is a bit overly brown...but I found that, when I installed a texture mod to add more color, I didn't like it as much). I do have to say, the complaining about "the younger generation" (yes, I realize most of you are kidding around [no pun intended]) in some of the posts in here rings hollow - these arguments have existed since the first generation had grandkids. There are always younger people who prefer the "now" and follow the mainstream and then there are those who can appreciate vintage. Playing on the Internet (especially Xbox Live, and 4x so on any Halo or Call of Duty game) is not a good sample size of today's youth. Anyway, I find that some older games still look good compared to today. Games like Diablo 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and newer games like Silent Hill 2 and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (which looks like it's on the Xbox 360 despite being on the original Xbox) still look amazing. Oblivion, while a current-gen game, would be considered quite old in terms of the technology world, and indeed it does look a bit dated, BUT with mods, it's the only game I've ever played to continue to wow me and make me want to take screenshots.

I remember completing one of the missions labeled as "Very Hard" or some such by complete accident when I stumbled upon where I was supposed to go (something about a dragon attacking you and you had to find a temple to make a certain type of hero)? Anyway, it's too bad they didn't ever make a worthy sequel, because, with some additions (like being able to train a controllable army on top of having the heroes, foreign policy, and more), it could've become quite awesome. Maybe even a mixture between Tropico and Stronghold - now that would be interesting.

Hm...my take on Fable 3...well, that would depend on what you mean - my take on Fable 3 as a game to itself, or my take on Fable 3 as part of a series? Here's my review/answer to both of those questions: Fable 3 is two steps forward, thirty steps back. I've finished the game one time and have no desire to replay, while I still play Fable 2 every now and then, especially on co-op with friends. The only real improvement to the game was the improved real estate interface with the map, and it was still impractical (why can't you just get a list, or a "repair all" button?) Otherwise, Fable 3 is Fable 2 with more gimmicks, more railroading, less items, and less fun. Edit: Snipped my post to cut the ranting.

I don't mean to semi-necro, but I think this deserves a mention: So here I was, triumphantly (OK, not really) returning from Bruma to the Cloud Ruler Temple by foot (such a long distance, I know) after doing the Spies quest. As I began to climb the mountain, I heard the battle music start up and promptly went FFFFFF- because I knew there were Frost Titans (very very overpowered minotaurs) in the area, and I figured I'd gotten one of them on me - well, either that or a snow leopard (equally deadly - no, really). Lo and behold, I look up the cliff and see Jauffre coming down at me, dai-katana (it literally means "big sword" by the way) in hands, covered in full Blades gear. I go "Well maybe he was nearby and decided to help out with whatever invisible/pathfinding retarded/slothful/all of the above creature that's coming after me." That was quickly dispelled when he swung his BIG SWORD at me and took off half of my health. Now I just go "WTF" and run away towards the Temple. The rest of the Blades are non-hostile, yet somehow they approve of their Grandmaster chasing me up a mountain and through their fort with a BFS Benny Hill style. Note that he's hurling insults at me this entire time. I try to yield, but that fails horribly (got another sword in the face as my answer) and I continue running, this time back down the mountain. I decide to be crafty and jump down the cliff to cut time. Jauffre follows in the same manner...and lands at a spot ALL the way down. "Jauffre is unconscious" pops up, and I figure that he'll be non-hostile when he gets up. Not so. He continues trying to get at me, eventually climbing up the cliff (hax, man). I seriously still have no clue what heinous crime I did to have the Grandmaster after me personally like this is Kill Bill or something, so I run to Bruma. The guards are hostile - to Jauffre. Cue the entire city picking a fight with the old man and getting their **** wrecked. Here is the weirdest part - after he finished killing the last guard, he promptly put away his sword, walked up to me, said "Good day" like we were random pedestrians in the city, and walked away, presumably back to the temple. I STILL have no clue what happened there. There was also that time I walked into the Tiber Septim Hotel to see a Frost Titan...even bigger WTF moment.

I get the feeling that you may be right about Oblivion dying off. The main reason that Morrowind is still around is because it's unique - it's nowhere near the same as Oblivion, in terms of gameplay, story, graphics, and overall atmosphere. Skyrim, on the other hand, looks exactly like Oblivion but with more snow and Nords, plus dragons, a stereotype of fantasy everywhere on Earth [excluding maybe Africa and islanders] (somewhat off-topic but I would personally like it if they added a new race of some type, humans and elves being predominant gets old, and Khajitts and Argonians aren't all that beast-like; maybe they can bring back dwarves at least?).

1. As has been stated a lot, "Whodunit" is by far numero uno. It's especially fun if you're using fancy clothes instead of armor. 2. The one where you stage Baelin's "accident" is fun (you can see the head fall if you peak through the boards, by the way). 3. I also like the second Dark Brotherhood mission, the one where you sneak onto the pirate's ship. 4. Maybe Dark Brotherhood missions are just cool period, because I also enjoyed the one where you sneak back into prison to kill a certain little annoyance. 5. Taking back Kvatch deserves a special mention, not because of the quest's content itself, but because one time while I was doing it, the sun rose VERY dramatically over the ruins (even took some screenshots). It was absolutely amazing seeing that with OBGE on. 6. Killing Umbra is certainly an epic fight, not to mention the rewards you get (from Umbra, anyway - Clavicus Vile can go shove it), plus the puns of the town and the ruins... 7. [insert all of the Thieves' Guild quests except for the very last one which I've never completed here.] 8. Sanguine and Sheogorath also deserve a special mention for their shrine quests. I've been playing Oblivion for a long time, but I've never finished a single quest line except the Mages' Guild and I've yet to even touch Shivering Isles...I'm kind of afraid to go there at the wrong level (apparently the rewards you get are level-scaled, plus there are new enemies that may or may not be tough, but I don't want to use my high level characters since they have so much stuff to carry around now, plus they already have super-good gear). Maybe I'll get some new favorites soon.

1. The hair is fine. It's not bugged. It just sucks by default, period. Custom races and hair (or using beast races) can fix that. Depending on how [bOOMING VOICE RAAAAAAH *viking metal solo and lightning strikes*]MANLY AND SECURE[/booming voice] you are, you may be disappointed, as most of the custom races are female/metro/involve nudity/final fantasy/all of the above. If it's any consolation, your character's vanilla ugly mug and face (which won't be so ugly if you're a non-human race, really) will usually be covered up by a helmet. 2. If the newer shaders don't work, switch back to the old ones (may have to reinstall if you deleted the old ones). 3. The crash on exit problem is widely acknowledged - if it's really annoying, download Fast Exit (http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22410). Note that it requires Oblivion Script Extender. 4. IMPORTANT: If you use OBGE, disable Anti-Aliasing. That's what's causing the transparency...weirdness. Don't worry, OBGE has its own variants of AA to compensate for the incompatibility. (I bolded it because I've helped someone else who had even more severe problems but this is what was causing all of the issues). 5. Setting up OBGE can cause serious headaches. You might notice that the graphics look completely F'd up after installing it - you have to configure it. A lot. However, it's worth it (although a few bugs [mostly related to Godrays.fx] can get annoying). For now, move the obge.dll (will probably be obgev2.dll or obgev3.dll depending on your version) out of the folder it's in to disable it until you've fixed what's wrong. 6. Your system is far more than is needed to run Oblivion, but Oblivion sometimes decides that it spits upon your "puny" high-tech fancy pants gaming computer and runs slow for no good reason at all. This is most notable for multicore processors - Oblivion has little to no multicore support, so having one powerful core (3.0 ghz+) is actually better. Also, Oblivion likes to make your graphics card run on a treadmill from Hades, to put it lightly. RAM shouldn't be an issue, but you might want to look up the "4gb fix" since you have 8gb - Oblivion will, by default, only use up to approximately 2gb (depends on system) and then crash if it caps that. 7. Since you're on Windows 7, it might be a good idea to install Oblivion outside of the Program Files folder due to the built-in security of Windows causing some major issues (said security can be disabled but is a bad idea unless you are very confident about your anti-virus and firewall).

I would recommend sticking with OBGEv2 if 3 isn't working. v3 doesn't even add that much. Of course, the download might not be available anymore...

Quite a few good tips have been covered in this topic, but here's some more: 1. Use alteration and get used to cycling buffs (for the sake of user friendliness, it may be worth consolidating spells and weakening them to give them a longer duration and to save hotkey space, plus making it easier to refresh in combat). The Shield spells give a substantial amount of armor (and resistance, if you use the elemental kind). As a note, the non-elemental Shield doesn't give any bonuses aside from armor but it costs less magicka. 1a. Use conjuration and illusion, as has been stated. It is EXTREMELY useful to have a big meat shield in front of you to take the hits. However, don't get a summon that takes your entire magicka bar. Some good spells that are underused in particular are Frenzy (causes enemies to fight each other; also does not count as a crime, so you can even make guards fight each other without being blamed - this can be particularly useful in Sanguine's quest to get the guards off your tail), Turn Undead/Demoralize (causes enemy to run away, and for the former, it's doubly useful, as a necromancer won't resummon a zombie/skeleton/evil undead thing/etc. that's still alive [you know what I mean] but running in terror), and Invisibility (of course). Another decently useful spell is Convalescence (aka Heal Other), so you can keep friendly NPCs alive for longer (it's not really worth using on conjured creatures since you can just resummon). Some resistance spells are also handy, especially if you're a high elf/use The Apprentice. 2a. I would like to mention that UI mods for casting may be in order, because, often, you'll have multiple useful spells for combat but no room on your hotkeys to put them (unless that's just me). My usual hotkey setup is: 1 - Heal spell 2 - Ranged attack spell 3 - Touch spell (they're very useful despite putting you in harm's way, as they hit substantially harder than target spells) 4 - Summon or buff spell 5 - Summon or buff spell 6 - Misc. useful skill or equipment (On my rogue, this is the button for my sword, but on my caster, it is Lull [a cheap, touch-range silence]) 7 - Misc. useful skill or equipment 8 - Torch or glow staff 3. Training up by spamming spells (like conjuring a creature and killing it repeatedly) may increase your magic skills fast, but if you're playing vanilla Oblivion (or don't use gameplay/leveling overhauls) the enemies will quickly overpower you with the level scaling, since you'll be neglecting minor skills (admittedly not as important to a caster, although you'll still need some for the health provided by Endurance), gear (you may not use actual armor, but you'll still need to find or make enchanted clothes and weapons/staffs), spells, etc. Plus, it's just plain cheap. 4. Level alchemy as a minor skill, since it's pretty easy overall and doesn't pertain directly to combat. It is, however, incredibly useful, although the extra weight caused by hefting around alchemy gear and ingredients can be a pain for a, shall we say, non-athletically-minded caster (on that note, why is everyone in Oblivion perfectly fit?). 5. There are many unusual spell combos on the Wiki and the Unofficial pages (some are kind of cheap/abuse the system, though, like draining your skills temporarily in order to buy training for dirt cheap prices, a "glitch" that was also in Morrowind). 6. Mods: Using Supreme Magic or Midas Magic (I personally use the former, the latter is apparently not compatible with OOO and I have no desire to fiddle with mods at this point after many recent hours of modifying/bug fixing) will greatly improve your spellcasting experience. For races, I personally have a caster who is of the Cute Elf race (don't laugh, I hate the name too, although I like the characters it allows in terms of appearance), which has racials that grant +75 mana (a fair bit, not sure if it's higher than the High Elf one) and damage reflection (somewhat useful, but not as much to a caster where you shouldn't get hit as much) at a cost of weakness to fire and shock. They also have a Charm Greater Power. Their improved skills also relate to stealth and magic for the most part (and they have very few points in Personality, which is good, because it's a fairly pointless attribute - I can reach 70 disposition at 20 Personality and 25 Speechcraft). 6a. If you're using non-modded (or, you know, male) races, stick to Breton or High Elf. Your birthsign should either be The Mage or The Apprentice. The former is safer, but the latter is risky with a high bonus. 7. Don't be afraid to chug potions and use scrolls unless you'd REALLY rather sell it (or if it's useless, like a scroll that casts Flare...). Also, Welkynd Stones are surprisingly useful for restoring magicka, but you're likely better off selling them for the gold unless you're in a pinch. 8. Be very careful with Area spells. They cost slightly more magicka, making wasted shots more painful, plus they can accidentally hit allies, including your conjured creatures. 9. When going through dungeons, don't run through as faster as you can. It's better to sneak (you can sneak-run, it stills helps a lot) to avoid pulling the entire dungeon's worth of monsters to you. Also, make sure your health and magicka are pretty much full before picking a fight. 10. Pure caster may seem appealing, but you're likely to be better off getting a few non-magic skills. A weapon/armor type can be useful, because that way you can use conjured gear (which is a. powerful; b. weightless; and c. awesome), but it is up to you. 10a. Here's a rundown on the rest of the skills: Mercantile gives money (and is hard to level), but isn't a combat skill in the slightest - this one's up to you. Sneak is great, but can be replaced by buff spells/invisibility/chameleon. Marksman is redundant if you have Destruction. Hand to hand is...lacking. Block is fairly pointless if you aren't going to be in melee a lot. Athletics and acrobatics are pretty pointless as major skills (athletics/acrobatics taking a while to level? stop abusing fast travel!). Security is pointless unless you are bad at the lockpicking mini-game or you have OOO (you have to have enough skill to activate lockpicking on Hard and Very Hard non-door locks in OOO, much to my chagrin...); of course, Alteration can also open locks, but you'll miss out on Average, Hard, and Very Hard locks until you increase your skill a LOT (requires Master for Very Hard!). Armorer is a great skill to have unless you don't use armor or weapons (excluding conjured gear obviously), making it useless to a pure caster. Mysticism is a magic skill, but, honestly, it's pretty crappy as a major skill, especially since you can get Soul Trap at a Novice level (unless you use mods that give it some useful spells). Speechcraft is utterly useless, doubly so if you have Illusion skill; you won't be needing a huge +5 personality boost per level anyway. 11. Lastly, remember that Oblivion is a game. Have fun! It's not an MMORPG, where you have to min/max in order to be competitive. It's not a PvP first-person shooter where you need reflexes like a tiger and the only rule is "win." It's a wide open singleplayer game - you're not pigeonholed into any particular class, quest line, or set of mods. You could choose to create your own particular character and ignore all of the suggestions we've made if you wanted. Edit: Wow, it took me so long to post that some of what I said is completely redundant with what some of the above posters said. What??? I didn't even know that was doable...you didn't just use Flare or even your fists? I think the worst death I've ever had in The Elder Scrolls is being killed by a Scrib in Morrowind because I started the fight with very little health and I got paralyzed (and yes, they can chain-cast that crap)... More edit: I forgot to mention about the resist spells: You will need the various types of them during the Mages' Guild quests. Resist, reflect, absorb, and maybe dispel will be of great help against those annoying necromancers (especially the final boss...he can even kill himself on his own spells due to his very high damage/very low health if you reflect him). Even more edit: Good tips for alteration: 1. You can put water walking on your horse. Seriously, I had to look that one up to figure it out. 2. The Jewel of the Rumare from the old fisherman in front of the Imperial City (lives in the house across from the inn by the bridge) is a water breathing ring, so you don't need to bother learning the water breathing spell if you've got that. Sum mo' edit: Wanted to add that I'm currently playing as a min/maxed character (excluding the race, which is custom and I chose it 'cuz I like the race), and it's really not as fun as a more experimental build. It's the typical uber-paladin combat build (who, at level 2, is about twice as strong as my level 22 rogue - seriously, I'm carving through OOO like it's nothing now, not to mention that I seem to be getting much better luck with loot). I'm getting the impression that I only bear the character so I can eventually get enough gold to buy an eyecandy set (using iron right now - would love to get a full Dwemer set, that's some cool armor [excluding the helmet unfortunately]). On that note, why are paladins so overpowered in every RPG? Note that I'm mainly saying this from my experiences in Diablo II, Baldur's Gate/Dungeons and Dragons in general, and World of Warcraft (ESPECIALLY the latter...bloody Blood Elf Blood Knights...)

I've noticed with some frustration that Living Economy has the annoying tendency to reset all of the items' prices to the vanilla values. This leads to ridiculous things like unfinished and worn armor being worth more than brand new armor, plus it causes my income to decrease dramatically (I wish I'd known this before trying to work my way up the Thieves' Guild, since I could've done it much faster with the upped prices). I've used the "startquest cflemenu2" command to set the prices to Alternate Prices --> OOO Prices, but, unfortunately, that was only a temporary solution. Today, I noticed that the prices reset once again, and I believe it happens any time I enter/leave a store. Even the temporary solution stopped working; setting it to OOO Prices does absolutely nothing now (and yes, I did remember to use Recalculate Prices). Disabling the Living Economy ESPs and making a clean save did not do anything to help. I would disable OOO and reinstall, but: 1. that is a lengthy process; 2. I have many items that are from OOO; and 3. that could glitch up my game even further unless I restart all over again. I want to be able to use the dynamic prices, but it looks like it's going to have to go. Does anyone know how to fix this? Edit: Living Economy's ESPs are loading before OOO, before anyone asks. I've also tried Enhanced Economy as an alternative, but it doesn't run without Pluggy, a notoriously crash-prone addon.

Do both the English and German versions of eyepatches need to be on at the same time? What about the two Apocalypse Armory esps? Do any of your mods involve extremely high poly count armor or weapons? Is your RAM being overloaded? Does it happen with and without the 4gb patch on? Have you tried the game without any mods on?

I would like to suggest something here if you pop back into this thread: Install the Oblivion Graphics Extender. It looks great and doesn't kill FPS. Also, here's one possible solution to the lag occurring because you hit enemies: Disable blood decals. It barely makes a noticeable difference, and they can even cause crashes with high poly armor.

Not all glass is "glass" glass, aka window glass. Sometimes things like obsidian are called glass, which can be extremely sharp and durable. Things Skyrim needs that Oblivion didn't have yet Morrowind may have (likely some or all of these have been stated but I want to reinforce how needed they are - some of these are somewhat unrelated to Morrowind): 1. Lots of land area to explore - how was Vvardenfell so much larger than Cyrodiil? 2. Lots of environment types 3. More types of weapons and armor, "tiered" gear is OK if it's not 100% linear (although I personally dislike using mod weapons and armor because it renders all vanilla gear obsolete, killing any sense of progression) 4. Multiple body types per race/gender 4b. More feminine women, bulkier men, etc. - seriously, elves, especially wood elves, should be slender, and nords and orcs need more muscle on them 5. More unique NPCs (more interesting people like Glarthir who isn't just a random face in the crowd, etc.) - in Morrowind most characters wore a unique combination of clothing, at least 6. I would be hesitant to suggest re-adding the separate right-hand left-hand gloves and pauldrons - although pauldrons should be a separate slot themselves 7. More interesting spells, aka things like Levitate, plus a sense of actual progression with spells (don't bring back cast chance though, uhg) 8. Remove fast-regen magicka (but don't make it 100% static), make battles not a heal-fest 8b. I must add this: Do NOT add health regen after combat - it makes dungeon delving much too simple and unrewarding, since the game mentality becomes per-battle rather than per-sortie (health regen on enchanted gear might be okay though) 9. Remove map fast travel, don't make cities auto-explored; however, don't make the player start off with ridiculously low speed like Morrowind did in most cases 10. This is more contemplation than a suggestion - one reason that Morrowind seems like such a bigger game is because the map just plain sucked. It was next to impossible to read properly and lacked helpful icons. 11. Reduce hand-holding, keep quest markers but make them only point in a general direction (or not at all if directions aren't given, like if you're trying to find something that is secret) - don't be like Morrowind and toss the player to the wolves, though (at least it encouraged exploration, I guess) 12. Bring back some of the Morrowind creatures, like the Bonewalker (not Cliff Racers though, dear god) 13. Bring back static and secret treasure to make exploration rewarding 13b. Don't make the player spend more money on lockpicks than the value of the loot in the giant treasure chest at the end of the big dungeon 13c. Make Security not chance-based, keep the minigame (new one would be nice though) but make it so you can only unlock certain difficulties when you're high enough in skill, like in Fallout 3 14. Make enchanted items slightly less expensive...most merchants can't even buy it 14b. Make enchanted items recharge slowly over time while not in combat (I currently use a mod that does this) 14c. Some might suggest bringing back Enchant skill, but I would make this suggestion: Make Mysticism more useful by tying it to enchant skill, and add the spells and changes to Mysticism from Supreme Magicka (like switching Absorb spells to Mysticism rather than Restoration) 14d. Bring back easter egg merchants! 14e. M'aiq the Liar would be cool (perhaps his grandson or some such?) 15. Bring back guild skill requirements so that a magic-less warrior can't become Archmage 15b. Don't let the player join every single guild at one time - have some of them in competition, which adds replay value and spices up the storyline a bit; for example, in Oblivion, you should be able to join either the Fighters' Guild or the Blackwood Company (I would also bring up the Dark Brotherhood preventing you from joining the Thieves' Guild, but that would require 2 stealth character playthroughs) 16. Here's one suggestion inspired by Dragon Age of all things: Use sustained spells so that buffs are much less annoying (I personally have to cycle through nighteye, fortify health/shield, and fortify speed/feather every 45 secs on my stealth character just to survive, and that eats up 2/3 of my magicka bar). Basically, the player casts the buff, he gets a penalty to his max magicka (and maybe a % cost increase to all casting while it's on too), and it stays on until he toggles it off or it is dispelled. 17. Bring back unique architecture like Telvanni construction 18. And here's another other-game suggestion: Bethesda, imitate Assassin's Creed and make the cities actually feel alive; the Imperial City is TINY. 19. A quick-use button would be handy, separate from the hotkeys - say you use a sword and a miniature crossbow (come on, they had crossbows in Morrowind, why not a miniature one). You could press the button to quickly fire a shot from the crossbow while still keeping out your sword too. Perhaps they could also use throwing weapons in this way. From what I've seen, they've actually done something similar to this for Skyrim. Here's some that need to stay mostly the same: 1. The stealth mechanics. It's actually pretty fun to sneak around, although sometimes enemies display remarkable blindness and deafness. 2. The awesome graphics. I would play Skyrim if it looked exactly like Oblivion with the Oblivion Graphics Extender enabled - it's just that good as it is. I do think that Bethesda needs to focus a bit more on the characters' appearances now, the scenery is already eye candy to the max. 3. The open nature of the games. However, I think that it does sometimes hurt the storytelling aspect (Oblivion never once drew me into its plot). I think that they need to rework the Main Quest so that it actually accomodates side questing, rather than just basically being the player saying "Hold on, Jauffre, I know there's a bunch of demons trying to rip Tamriel a new one, but I need to turn in these jumbo potatoes right now!" 4. Alchemy. Reaching journeyman alchemy feels like an adventure because of all the new effects it opens up (to me, anyway). 5. The races. They are awesome (especially Argonians). Adding some kind of dwarf race, while likely requiring some lore handwaving, would be cool too. I mean, it takes place in Skyrim aka Scandinavian Wonderland. 6. Sheogorath. That is all. 6b. I lied, that's not all. Add more interaction from the Daedric princes, they're cool with their "do a task and I'll give you (probably useless and overpriced) treasure," but some kind of storyline with the relationships between the Daedra would be interesting (would expand a little more on the storyline of Oblivion). For example, there could be a quest where the player needs to recover the Cowl of Nocturnal once and for all, and it leads to a quest chain full of twists that reveals some kind of war (or petty squabble) between the princes.

Did you be sure to Reset your character when you chose the Chocolate Elf race in the racegen menu? Did you check to see if the skin color sliders aren't set to be blue/purple?

Don't give up so easily, we all start from nothing in regards to modding skill. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to modding but I've learned to edit textures and meshes to my personal tastes. First thing, you should download GIMP, a free photoshop-like art program. Then you'll need the DDS plug-in (should be easy to find with a google search). It's easy-peasy to recolor a texture - there are options to shift the color of what you select to a certain hue/contrast/etc. There are also numerous filters that make it easy to make a plain texture into something interesting. You don't need NIFSkope for just textures, but it helps, because it updates every time you save the texture you're editing - that way, you can see what you're really doing.

It probably IS the processor then (or is likely to be part of the problem) - I have a quad core with only 2.8 ghz per core (recommended is 3.0 ghz single-core) and I lag really bad when necromancers start conjuring up stuff, or if I'm in certain outdoor areas. This is despite my GPU being able to run the Mass Effect games and Champions Online at max settings without hiccups. Rarely will you need to upgrade a computer's stock sound card except in extreme cases or if you're working with audio/music. Did you try the ini sound/music disable like fonger suggested? I assume that the game still loads sounds even if the volume is at 0 unless you explicitly tell it to disable it. You might want to try resetting your mp3 codecs - they're known to conflict with Oblivion and cause freezing or slowdowns when changing tracks or playing sounds (look it up on the unofficial elder scrolls pages). Edit: Would also like to add that I also lag if I look down a long path, i.e. the main road in the Market District, since installing Streamline 3.1. Yay for crappy framerates.

-snip- I realize my post was veering into trolling a bit there... Anyway, there's always more to do with Oblivion. There are many awesome mods that have fairly recently been released, and the sheer amount of eye candy (referring to environments, not people here) in modded Oblivion is astounding. Seriously, Oblivion is the first game I've played that routinely makes my jaw drop at the graphics. I've been playing since Oblivion first came out, and I've yet to finish the Main Quest on a single character. I get the feeling that Oblivion is still going to be going at least somewhat strong when Skyrim comes out, like how Starcraft and Warcraft 3 still have thousands of players despite Starcraft 2 "trumping" them (the modding community will shift, though, obviously).