Unofficial Oblivion Patches causing my game to crash on startup on Steam

[Ganonloth]

I have the Unofficial Oblivion Patch as well as the Unofficial DLC and Shivering isles patches downloaded into my Data folder within the Oblivion folder using Steam. Are you just suppose to download the Unofficial patches, and put them into the Data folder? There must be something i'm missing here, any help would be great, thanks!

[Striker879]

The Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP) is just a big mod, and can be installed just like any other mod.

 

There's a trick to installing mods ... follow their installation instructions. Granted many mods are sorely lacking in that department, but the UOP doesn't fall into that category. If you download it manually to a folder and then extract with 7-Zip you will see a folder named Docs, and in there is a file named Unofficial Patch Readme.html (it will have an icon the same as your web browser, as it uses your web browser to display). Section 3 covers installation.

 

If your crashing is immediate upon starting the game you could be getting a missing master crash from either the DLC UOP or SI UOP if you have activated one of the ESPs for a DLC you don't have (or if you don't have SI but have activated the Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp).

 

A missing master crash can also be caused by load order (so what happens is the game loads the patch before what it is supposed to patch). Steam got "creative" with the dates for the vanilla game files and assigned modern dates for them ... the Unofficial patches are all dated appropriately for the dates the vanilla game files are supposed to have (year should be 2006). This would lead to the patch being loaded before the DLC (which will lead to instant crash on game start).

 

One simple way to fix load order problems is to use BOSS. Another is to use any of the mod managers to manually sort your load order (not recommended unless you know what you're doing). You could also use a utility like File Date Changer to manually change the file dates (again not recommended unless you know what you're doing). The game will load the oldest file first and newest file last.

[Ganonloth]

The Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP) is just a big mod, and can be installed just like any other mod.

 

There's a trick to installing mods ... follow their installation instructions. Granted many mods are sorely lacking in that department, but the UOP doesn't fall into that category. If you download it manually to a folder and then extract with 7-Zip you will see a folder named Docs, and in there is a file named Unofficial Patch Readme.html (it will have an icon the same as your web browser, as it uses your web browser to display). Section 3 covers installation.

 

If your crashing is immediate upon starting the game you could be getting a missing master crash from either the DLC UOP or SI UOP if you have activated one of the ESPs for a DLC you don't have (or if you don't have SI but have activated the Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch.esp).

 

A missing master crash can also be caused by load order (so what happens is the game loads the patch before what it is supposed to patch). Steam got "creative" with the dates for the vanilla game files and assigned modern dates for them ... the Unofficial patches are all dated appropriately for the dates the vanilla game files are supposed to have (year should be 2006). This would lead to the patch being loaded before the DLC (which will lead to instant crash on game start).

 

One simple way to fix load order problems is to use BOSS. Another is to use any of the mod managers to manually sort your load order (not recommended unless you know what you're doing). You could also use a utility like File Date Changer to manually change the file dates (again not recommended unless you know what you're doing). The game will load the oldest file first and newest file last.

 

So If i download all three unofficial patches, where do i put them? and do i just use the .esp files and not anything else that comes with the download like the folders?

[Striker879]

No the downloads are the complete package, so you use all of the extracted download with the exception of any of the ESP files you don't need/don't want to use (e.g. in the UOP download there is an ESP to fix a problem with the Citadel doors found when in the planes of Oblivion ... it just fixes where the source of the sound appears to come from, which in the default game doesn't match where the door is, which bugs some people and others couldn't care less, thus Oblivion Citadel Door Fix.esp is optional).

 

The way the downloads are structured you could download to your desktop and then when you extract with 7-Zip navigate in it's menu to your Oblivion\Data folder. I don't like to extract directly to my game's folders myself as a rule because then you are at the mercy of the competence of the mod author. In this case you are safe on that front.

 

If you download to a folder (mine is named H:\Oblivion_Downloads\Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch ... I have a separate drive for downloads etc). and then extract with 7-Zip it will default to extracting everything to that same folder. I use the right mouse click menu copy and paste method myself as I find it more reliable than drag and drop. The rule of thumb is you paste into one level higher than you copied from for folders, paste into the same level folder for loose files.

 

So for the file Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp you right click it in the extracted download and select copy, then navigate to your Oblivion\Data folder and paste into Data from the right click menu. I work with two Windows Explorer windows open at the same time, one open to the extracted download and one open to my G:\Games\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion folder (I use the two pane view in Windows Explorer making it easy to see the hierarchal tree view of the folder structure). For the folders like DistantLOD, Meshes, OBSE etc you will copy from the download and paste into Data (while it's not obvious if you don't understand the game's folder structure the extracted download is structured to all go into Data ... not all mods are structured that way, and once you've extracted them many come with a Data folder that is then pasted into your game's Oblivion folder).

 

If you do use the two fixes included in the OBSE folder you will also need to install Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE), which is recommended as many mods require it.

[Welshhobo01]

Been tearing my hair out trying to get mods to work with Oblivion. The ReadMes and install instructions on so many mods are utterly pathetic. Why do people make mods if they can't be bothered to correctly explain how to install. Even the advice to read them is nonsense.

 

 

 

There's a trick to installing mods ... follow their installation instructions. Granted many mods are sorely lacking in that department, but the UOP doesn't fall into that category. If you download it manually to a folder and then extract with 7-Zip you will see a folder named Docs, and in there is a file named Unofficial Patch Readme.html (it will have an icon the same as your web browser, as it uses your web browser to display). Section 3 covers installation.

 

The Unofficial Oblivion Mods' readme is actively telling people to unzip the archive in the "Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\ folder.", when it should be the "Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\" folder. If you're using Steam, close down steam and replace "Bethesda Softworks" with steamapps\common\ filepath of course.

 

Every time i've tried to use Wrye Bash or Oblivion Mod Manager to install the unofficial patches, the game freezes on the Bethesda Logo when i hit Esc.

Edited July 17, 2019 by Welshhobo01

[CHASE6]

My advice for 7zip files is to open the folder of a until you are in the mod Data folder. Then, copy the contents into the Oblivion Data folder. This will place the sub folders where the need to be. For .rar, choose the Oblivion Data folder as the Copy To destination. For either of these you just then need to activate the .esp in OBMM.

[RatTech2099]

I always unzip mod downloads into a seperate folder and then have a good look at the files and how they are structured before installing them into the game. Most of the time it's reasonably self evident where things have to go and it does tend come as a small surprise to me when a mod does have a Readme with good clear instructions or an actual Readme at all. If in doubt break it down into steps and put the texture files into the Texture folder, meshes into the Mesh folder and so on.

 

Writing good instructions is a skill and out in the real world people who know how to write good instructions are much sought after by big companies. Simply because someone knows how to make a good mod doesn't necessarily mean that they know how to write a useful Readme with clear instructions. I think in many cases they assume that because they know how to install a mod that everybody does, - which of course isn't so.

[Striker879]

Something else to consider is the differences between each user and their individual needs.

 

For example a typical "Striker" step by step is no better than a wall of text to one user but a perfect fit for another. If those install instruction were in a readme then the first user example wouldn't even read far enough to see other non-install related info in the readme.

 

The universal rule of thumb is you have zero chance of satisfying everybody, so you may as well just do what seems best to you and let the results sort themselves out.

[CHASE6]

Writing good instructions is a skill and out in the real world people who know how to write good instructions are much sought after by big companies. Simply because someone knows how to make a good mod doesn't necessarily mean that they know how to write a useful Readme with clear instructions. I think in many cases they assume that because they know how to install a mod that everybody does, - which of course isn't so.

This is true and a very intelligent statement. Bravo.

[leonardo2]

Been tearing my hair out trying to get mods to work with Oblivion. The ReadMes and install instructions on so many mods are utterly pathetic. Why do people make mods if they can't be bothered to correctly explain how to install. Even the advice to read them is nonsense.

 

There's a trick to installing mods ... follow their installation instructions. Granted many mods are sorely lacking in that department, but the UOP doesn't fall into that category. If you download it manually to a folder and then extract with 7-Zip you will see a folder named Docs, and in there is a file named Unofficial Patch Readme.html (it will have an icon the same as your web browser, as it uses your web browser to display). Section 3 covers installation.

 

Every time i've tried to use Wrye Bash or Oblivion Mod Manager to install the unofficial patches, the game freezes on the Bethesda Logo when i hit Esc.

Because every time you try and still the game freeze then you haven't install it properly.

 

What I learned over the years is that always run BOSS to sort your loadorder then rebuild the bashed patch in Wrye Bash and after that run TES4LODGen.

 

Once that's done launch Oblivion.