Just Bought Oblivion again, where to start?

[LordHaveMercy]

So I have built a monster rig, dual 5870's, 12gb ram etc and I never really played a lot of Oblivion when it first came out. I lost my original copy from way back when and picked up the Game of the Year edition last night. Since I have a monster rig now, I want to make my experience as cool and visually awesome as possible but I have no idea where to start as far as what mods are must haves, what I should get, what mods are pre-requisites to other mods, etc. What I'm looking for is the best visual experience with the environment, the characters, and of course armor and weapons.

 

Thanks in advance for everyone's help.

 

LHM

[Ragnarok162]

If you're looking for the best visual experience, you need Quarl's Texture Pack 3, have a look around, it brings Oblivion's graphics on par with many current games :-)

[LordWushin]

Congrats on a new rig and getting GOTY! Here are a list of mods you may like:

 

Unique Landscapes - here you can see them all separate in there tho is a combined one

 

Deadly Reflex - for more realistic fighting

 

Natural Environments - better weather

 

Better cities - what it says

 

Lost Paladins of the Nine - really good quest and armor mod

 

Lost Spire - just make sure it loads after unique landscapes

 

OOO - makes everything a lot harder

 

 

That should get you started!

[MarkInMKUK]

Start with the patches!!!!

 

Install it to C:\Games\Oblivion, NOT the default place

 

Install Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine. Install any DLC modules. It should already be at v1.2.0416, so no more official patches are needed.

 

Install the Unofficial Patch, the Shivering Isles Unoffisial Patch, and the Unofficial Official mods patch.

 

Then onto mods proper:

 

Winston Earle's Oblivion Crash Prevention System (WeOCPs)

Fastexit

3GB Memory Patch.

 

One or more of those may need OBSE v20 - that was next on my list anyway.

 

Finally install Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) and Wrye Bash.

 

Save a backup of the whole install, and that is the best place to start installing other mods on top.

[LordHaveMercy]

Awesome! Thanks everyone for the info. I have spent all day at work today scurrying around the internet for stuff and I was in mod-overload! LOL. This helps a ton. Damn, I should leave work early now so I can get started! I just want to play the heck out of this so I can say I fully experienced it before the next one comes out :)

 

Thanks again for everyone's help!

[MarkInMKUK]

Remember the golden rules of modding:

 

(1) Install one mod at a time, and test it still works.

(2) Backup the data before any major modding spurt.

(3) CAREFULLY read the howto for Wrye Bash, and if in doubt, ASK. A dud Bashed Patch can seriously knacker your gaming experiences.

(4) Even the BEST rig can be brought to its knees by Oblivion and mods. Unique Landscapes / Better cities / QTP3 and the Anvil Waterfront can turn into a slideshow on ANY PC, especially with any additional mods which add more stuff there like alternative start mods.

[LordHaveMercy]

What about mods for your actual character... races, etc. Ive seen some people's screen shots of really cool looking characters, definitely doesnt look like the out-of-the-box stuff.

[MarkInMKUK]

Plenty of those around. Some are less compatible than others, so pick and choose carefully. Reading the comments forums for ones you like will tell you how easy or hard they are to get to behave.

[Ragnarok162]

If you're wanting to play around with your character's race, with pretty darn good high resolution textures, take a look a t Xenius' race compilation

 

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=29103