Oblivion and Her Graphics

[stroytika]

i ask this on a by opinion of the poster basis. there are literally a buzzilion texture and graphics mods for oblivion. looking at it from a perspective on enhancer the stock game: IE: Retextures, city mods, etc. by opinion of the poster, whats the best of the best combination of compatible texture packs + mods based on beautification for oblivion?

Thanks

[VictoriaG]

I use Qarls Texture Pack 3 with Better Cities.

[Wolfhound646]

I perfer DarnDarkUI Black and Gold by luchaire, and a summerish style from natural Enviroment's, and the cell-shader from OBGE.

No texture replacer's, my computer sucks.

I also like Unique Landscapes, and Better Cities, but I don't usaayly use Better Cities because it affects my framerate.

 

As you can see, I like my graphics fantasyish.

On the other hand, I am a hardcore realist when it comes to gameplay

 

If you're considering to download some mods, remember to keep it simple. You start using to much, and then you start getting bugs. Focus more on the quest mods, because they're the ones you're actually going to be playing.

[chaospearl]

If you want an intense graphical experience AND your computer can handle it, I'd suggest these. Anything with an *asterisk* is going to stomp your FPS into the dirt unless you're running a Cray.

 

Game-Wide Texture Overhauls:

*Qarl's Texture Pack 3

Enhanced Weather OR Advanced Weather System OR Natural Weather

Enhanced Water

Alive Waters

Diverse Grasses

Animated Window Lighting + texture pack from Illumination Within

Improved Face Textures + Enayla's

Your choice of body replacers (most popular are Exnem\HGEC, BAB, Robert's, Fantasy Figures)

 

Texture Replacers for Specific Things:

Real Night Sky

Unique Signs

Book Jackets

Get Wet

Kafei's Better Amulet Replacer

Painted Paintings

Slof's Horses Base, Slof's Extra Horses pack, Slof's Dogs

Shiny Gold

GP Arrow Replacement Pack

Better Potion Bottles

Better Wine

Improved Fruits Vegetables & Meats

Life Detected (imho, best of the "Detect Life shader" mods; literally dozens of color\pattern choices)

 

Landscape\City Improvements:

*All the Unique Landscapes mods

*All the Better Cities mods except Bravil (B&M is better)

Blood & Mud

 

Misc:

Elsweyr Anequina

Elven Map Redux & the add-on for Elsweyr

DarNified UI (with or without Dark UI; your preference)

Your choice of the various loading-screen-message replacers

No Load Message (this is built into some overhaul mods)

TES4 LOD Gen

 

Note the "if your computer can handle it" part. That combination will pretty much flatten anything short of the latest gaming setup on the market. I don't think it would even boot up on my laptop. It's mainly QTP and BC that will kill you, and some of the UL mods (individually the FPS hit is miniscule, but with all of them together it's noticable). I can and do run almost all the others; I created that list by browsing through my own mod folders.

 

There are likely other things out there to add ; someone mentioned the shaders from OBGE, and I know there are some impressive magical-effects replacers out there. The above list only includes the mods I either use myself or that I've been able to personally try out and view -- albeit one at a time for the three marked with asterisks (QTP3 knocked my FPS down to the point where I thought the game had locked up a few times).

 

You can also download as many extra animations, player homes, villages, and cities as you care for. If you do choose to use UL, make sure to visit the patch page. For months I avoided even looking at the UL mods because I kept hearing they conflicted with lots of things, and since I'm currently running 200+ mods I figured chances were high I wouldn't be able to use UL without a conflict. Then finally I decided to take a peek and see what I was missing out on, and I found out the UL Team has a patch page with OVER 100 -- I'm not kidding -- over 100 compatibility patches to make the UL mods work with almost everything else out there. They've got patches for obscure mods I've never even heard of that have 50 downloads and no endorsements. Chances are if a UL mod conflicts with something you're using, there's a patch to fix that. And if there isn't, and you really want to keep your mod, just don't use that particular UL component. The different areas are all split into parts so you can pick and choose the ones you want to use.

 

Heh, I sound like an advertisement for Unique Landscapes. I don't even know those people, honestly. I'm just amazed that they went to so much trouble to make UL compatible with hundreds of different mods. Most of the landscape-changing mods I've seen, even the great ones, only offer at best a patch or three to fix conflicts with the absolute most popular mods that thousands of people use. UL seems to have gone above and beyond to make their work compatible with 4\5ths of the damn Nexus, and you gotta admire that even if you don't personally care for the UL mods.

 

Anyway... yeah. I'll edit the post in a couple hours to include links for everything. Need to put on another pot of coffee first!