Which mods?

[Keyenhancer]

First time poster, short time mod user, long time Oblivion player. I apologize if this is the wrong thread on this.

 

I have a couple questions regarding mods, which I have been using for the last several days now, and playing with (mainly figuring out which mods work with which mods).

 

I'm looking for mods to (obviously) enhance my experience, mods that will add several balanced weapons/armors/items to the game, some new areas and quests. I'm not looking for mods that will turn Oblivion into a rpg version of sexvilla, though I'm not against using the better body textures. My current mods in use are: Decorator Assistant, Training Cave, 1Demons, Aos Si, DMCWeapons, MidasSpells, Oblivion Alive, Hentai Mania, Alt Start by Robert Evrae, Streamline, HrmnsOblivionScrtiptOptimization1.0, Malebody Replacer, Enhanced Vegetation, HGEX body 1.21, Unique 1.0.

 

There is only one major conflict between the Alt start, and Midas Spells - but I have not noticed any significant side effect(s).

 

These are the only mods I've been able to run together without destroying savefiles, causing crashes, etc. I did download Boss, but when I run the .bat file in my data directory all that happens is a black box pops up for a split second and I get a blank notepad - I haven't read anywhere if this is a desired result (meaning if nothing gets listed I'm ok?) or not. I also downloaded Wrye Bash, but all that shows up in its appropriate folder is an uninstall executable, and I downloaded the python - which I will confess that I haven't spent much time trying to learn yet.

 

I'm not looking for 250+ mods, like the a list I looked at earlier, or animation mods (yet), just something to add a little more fun with compatibility.

 

My second question is: is there any mods that are compiled together and released as such? Such as one mod that adds various weapons, armors, items, quests, spells, area(s) or am I stuck with having to use multiple mods to achieve said affect?

 

Edit: I am running vanilla Oblivion with the latest official patch.

 

 

Thank you in advance for any helpful responses.

[Tushaar]

you did download the masterlist for boss, did you? =) you need that in data folder also :)

Although i don't use it, a huge mod compilation is FCOM, search around and you will find it quickly :)

[Balakirev]

My second question is: is there any mods that are compiled together and released as such? Such as one mod that adds various weapons, armors, items, quests, spells, area(s) or am I stuck with having to use multiple mods to achieve said affect?

 

There have been some mod packages compiled and released here on TES Nexus, but in general they're not used. For one thing, no two people have the same taste. For another, re-releasing somebody else's mod without having their permission (which is usually the case with compilations) is frowned upon.

 

FCOM, mentioned above, is actually four separate mods that reconfigure much of the way Oblivion responds. It's difficult to get all four working together properly, and takes a lot of CPU and RAM to run at a distant speed. If you're interested, search out threads in the Bethsoft forums about FCOM to read what people say about them. I myself use only two of the components: Francesco's leveled creatures/items mod, and Mart's Monster mod (often abbreviated Fran's and MMM). Francesco's isn't that great a drain on your computer's resources, but MMM is. Cavaet emptor.

 

For quest mods, I strongly recommend checking out TOQL, The Oblivion Quest List. It lists a ton of Oblivion quest mods, divided by size, including descriptions, and links. It's not completely up-to-date; the author became a first time father about a year ago, and has taken a break from Oblivion. Understandably so, but it remains an excellent resource.

[Keyenhancer]

Thanks for the responses, they were helpful.

 

@Tushaar - I did have the masterlist in the data folder, but it changed nothing. Is the masterlist just a txt file, or is it something else? Also, FCOM looks interesting, I'll be checking it out :)

 

@Balakirev - I can see why compilation would be frowned down upon. I have been through all the lists atleast twice, I've spent a few hours quickly pouring over a couple hundred mods and their descriptions. Does FCOM have problems running with Streamline, or Scriptoptimizer? Send the author my congrats, its a great pleasure being a first time dad, let alone a 3rd time as is the case with me.

 

Well I guess its back to playing around with the mods, but before I go:

 

I found out why Midas Magic, and the Alt start might not be good to run together per se (though it may not have had anything to do with them). I attacked an unsuspecting necromancer, out of no where several necros appeared with all sorts of creatures. Then this invisible guard tells me I've broken the law. I choose to pay my dues and after the load screen I find myself way above the clouds dropping. I never hit the ground, instead I land on a patch of sky with some spots of grass above the clouds where I died. As the camera does its little zoom away my character begins to melt apart, literally. My head rolls off, and each individual piece of armor slowly slides off my skin. The game naturally crashed and the savefile became corrupt. It was fun to watch though, lol.

[Tushaar]

:D weird death you had there! :D

But yea, masterlist is a txt file, and try running the exe and bat file of boss :) . if the problem is still there then i can't help you further :(

[Smooth613]

First I suggest you ditch Hrmn's OblivionScriptOptimization, it's known to be buggy with negligible performance increase. Even the author admits the increase is minimal, 0.3-0.4 FPS, not worth the trade off.

 

If BOSS is only outputting a blank BOSSlog.txt then it would seem BOSS is having permission problems. If that is indeed true then Oblivion would likely be having these same permission issues, explaining why mods are not working properly resulting in crashes.

 

Are you running Vista or Win 7? And do you have Oblivion installed in the default directory, Program Files\Bethesda\Oblivion? If you answer yes to both of those questions that will likely explain your problems. You need to reinstall to a location outside of UAC's jurisdiction(Program Files). C:\Games\Oblivion will work just fine and will not have these permission problems associated with UAC.

[Keyenhancer]

@Tushaar - Yeah, I ran both, no luck, but Smooth16 pointed something out that I'm embarrassed to say, I completely forgot to check out. . .

 

@Smooth16 - Thanks for reminding me of Vista and 7's annoying (though sometimes saving) administrator approval. It is installed in Program Files(x86) directory (since I use a 64bit system). I'll just grant all associated programs administrator approval, even though it will cause an annoying popup every time, but I can live with that - Unless I'm not thinking of something else, but if I'm right, it should work just as well? I also ditched the Scriptoptimization before reading this, but thanks for affirming my decision. :)

 

Edit: I forgot to mention, I am currently running all previously mentioned mods without any trouble now, with one change: I'm using Natural Environments(?) vegetation mod, instead of the Enhanced Vegetation (realizing it was more of a performance mod). However, the extra trees and vegetation fails to show up. I did play with it and switched that particular part of the mod with a prepatched one in the 'unsupported extras', even though I am fully updated, and it started working. Perhaps moving the installation or granting permissions will fix this too.

 

Cheers!

[MrJim]

If you are prepared to use WryeBash (And spend a few frustrating hours trouble-shooting) then I would highly recommend playing with Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul, Martigens Monster Mod and Francesco's Levelled Creatures and Items installed under FCOM convergence.

 

Weapons, aromur, new creatures, more action, more interesting loot, it's all there with those mods and probably more (I have only had them running for a short time myself)

 

I'm thinking of adding Cobl to the list also and watching in awestruck terror as my list of active mods slowly encroaches upon reaching triple figures.

[Draakon]

IMO, for me at least, mod compilations make the game more enjoyable for me. A year or so back, I was running around 350 mods together(of course some of them were merged). And no, I didn't lag a bit. Thought I had to turn down(or off) some graphics settings.

[Keyenhancer]

@MrJim - I downloaded OOO, but I found out I needed other parts to make it work right (apparently the latest file didn't have everything), go me! But those other parts are pretty large and I hit my internet allowance (5gb under verizon). I'll be downloading the rest of it later this month when it resets. Francesco's Levelled Creatures was one of the first mods that gained my attention when I first started downloading, I'm not quite sure why I never downloaded it.

 

@Draakon - I agree, though I think Balakeriv was referring to those who would do something sneaky, like compile mods of different authors, then place it for download on a website.

 

I appreciate the responses, they have been informative and helpful, and with the few mods I have running, I haven't even hardly touched whats in them yet. Midas Magic for instance, I've seen some of the spells used by npcs in Oblivion Alive, but haven't picked one up myself. Hentai Mania. . .well I think I found one cave of this mod, and the exit had several dozen argonians huddling around it, hmmm. Though content with my current mods, I will be checking into these other mods soon, and I'm still browsing about for interesting ones (like OFF by the_philanthropy - just downloaded, and hoping it works well) and ones with more items - which seems like I may only need a few of the larger ones for that :). Well, and one that raised caps on magic vs uses. No matter how powerful the weapon, 10 uses it too few :P