Help a new Oblivion Player pick his mods.

[bdbarbeque]

Hello everyone,

I am new to Oblivion, not to ES games, because I've played and modded the absolute excrement out of Skyrim.

But I decided to Buy Oblivion to both support Bethesda, and to have a good time..

 

But since I'm used to Skyrim (a modded skyrim at that)
the graphics are probably going to bother me a lot..

 

THIS IS WHERE MY ACTUAL QUESTION IS FOR THOSE WHO DONT LIKE READING:

 

1. can you guys recommend some good texture overhaul mods? I don't care much about ENB mods tho.

 

2. are there any mods that change the terrifying visage of some of the NPCs (face overhauls)

 

3. of all the sexy body mods, which ones have the most armor support and looks the best (opinion I know)

 

4. any generic non mod related tips and tricks (usefull knowledge) you guys can bestow upon me before I embark on my adventure?

 

5. feel free to throw in any other mods you guys think are a must have..

 

EDIT:
I'm not going to download any story/quest overhaul mods before even playing the game so don't worry..

maybe later, but for now i'm just concerned with graphical/body mods

Edited February 27, 2016 by bdbarbeque

[Striker879]

1. Somebody else will need to help you there ... I'm stuck on an old computer so I don't venture there.

 

- Edit - Current state of the art for graphics (and more) is Oblivion Reloaded - OBGE v4. Be prepared for some study ... read the mod description, the manual and the mod comments. I don't run it yet as my machine lacks the video card power I'd want for it (768 MB VRAM is all I have).

 

2. Oblivion Character Overhaul v2 ... current state of the art for heads. If you want add in Seamless - OCOv2 Edition ... current state of the art for neckseams (note, to gain the full benefit you need to use the rest of the seamless series to match your choices in #3).

 

3. Most widely supported for females is HGEC ... I recommend EVE HGEC Eyecandy Variants Expansion as it comes with a complete clothing/armor replacer (required because the textures for HGEC are different than vanilla). There are other options for the HGEC body.

 

For males the only choice is RobertMaleBodyReplacerV52 (also has a complete texture compatible clothing/armor replacer that is required).

 

4. Install order is important in replacers such as those I've linked. First install the body replacers, then install OCO v2 (after installing it's requirements ... OBSE and Blockhead). Then install the Seamless series after you've installed any of the body replacer's clothing/armor replacers ... the seamless series will overwrite what they installed where it has a seamless replacement and you will have the HGEC/Roberts replacer for anything not covered by the Seamless series.

 

If you want any of the legion of HGEC armors/clothing that is available (the non-replacers) be aware you will see neckseams. If you want any of the skimpy replacers install them after the Seamless series (and again be prepared for neckseams where they are used).

 

Bite the bullet and learn how to use Wrye Bash. Read the two readmes found in the Oblivion\Mopy\Docs folder ... Wrye Bash General Readme.html and Wrye Bash Advanced Readme.html (both will display in your browser). If you decide to use the Unofficial Oblivion Patch alongside OCO v2 you will lose many of the UOP fixes to NPCs unless you use a bashed patch (a Wrye Bash exclusive ... it's a merged patch of all the conflicts between your installed mods). If you have any of the DLCs use those unofficial patches as well (links found on the UOP mod description).

 

Install one mod at a time and test thoroughly in between. You will know how each mod impacts your gameplay and stability and when you run into the inevitable installation woes everyone runs into it will be a trivial matter to know where to start troubleshooting (as opposed to the usual we see around here ... "I just installed about 50 mods and now my game won't work, help" ... try and figure that one out).

Edited February 27, 2016 by Striker879

[Guinefort1]

Here's a few tidbits from me:

 

1. If you want new textures on things, maybe try Qarls Texture Packs and the flora overhauls made by discovery1

 

2. As Striker suggested, Oblivion Character Overhaul is your friend. Love it, use it, and all will be right with the world.

 

4. Look into OBMM (Oblivion Mod Manager). It's an alternative to NMM and must be used to install certain mods. It's relatively user-friendly and come with extra features, like archive invalidation, that will help your mods run properly in game.

 

5. I also suggest looking at the weather/environment overhaul Natural Environments. It includes plugins that will improve the water, expand on the weather, and make the trees bigger. Note that this mod will not be compatible with Oblivion Reloaded.

[MalachiDelacot]

Striker879 has made some very good recommendations,

as has Guinefort1.

Everybody has their favourites and too many suggestions

may overload your computer. They gave you a good start.

You might also want to take a look at the top files.

[TheMastersSon]

While I agree with everything posted so far, my advice would be to run with no mods first, to get a baseline for Oblivion performance on your system.

 

Also, if you plan on going through the great tweak guides for the game, keep in mind they were written not long after the game was released in 2006, and both PCs and graphics cards were not as fast as today. So for example you'll see much discussion in tweak guides about the uGridsToLoad variable in oblivion.ini, and how performance is unacceptable at numbers much over the default of 5. That was true on most PCs in 2006. But we're currently running uGridsToLoad=13 on a 4.4GHz i5, and with a Geforce 980 it still runs without a hiccup (except the water visibility glitch). Oblivion almost qualifies as a different game with this kind of awareness of your surroundings, compared to relentless popup out of nowhere, and that's without any landscape texture mods. Same for maximum number of grass textures per cell (tweak guides recommend decreasing this number for better performance, we doubled it and the game is stunning). Ditto advice for everything from maximum numbers and types of shadows to decals.

 

If you experience any mouse lag, and are using an Nvidia card, go into Nvidia's game settings for Oblivion and reduce the "Maximum number of frames to pre-render" from its default of 3 to 1 (if you like fast response) or even 0 (if you like instantaneous response). Very big increase in response at a very slight and more than acceptable imo cost of FPS.

 

> For males the only choice is RobertMaleBodyReplacerV52

 

Maybe that's true for finished mods, but we've stumbled on many different Oblivion male body sets in the archives. Many or most were posted as resources in other mods, but as long as you're careful about matching meshes with textures and maps, and you don't plan on redistributing the mod, they coexist peacefully and seamlessly. I've got seven (I think) different Imperial males in one mod, with different bodies and matching armor for each. Some with body tattoos etc.

Edited March 7, 2016 by TheMastersSon

[ironbender800]

Chances are if your PC was built within the last few years performance should be no issue unless you go insane on the tweaks and mods. Any modern PC should crush this game.

 

As already said use wrye bash and I would recommend the STEP guide for.oblivion. it's not up.to.date but can be used as a good baseline. It got me started.

[Mirocu]

I´d like to recommend Witches of Cyrodiil from SubRosa. Not only does it make regular animals not attack but it also adds a witch in a cottage who sells some special armour and spells as well as ingredients. She can also recharge your items :)