Another Newbie Looking For Mod Recommendations

magicgraduate · December 17, 2011

So I've been playing and modding the heck out of Skyrim and decided to go back and try out Oblivion since Skyrim was really my first TES game. Modding Skyrim seems easier since there are fewer mods and you can basically just check out the latest and pick and choose what you want and there's not a whole lot of duplicates yet. Plus the STEP guide is awesome for helping find great mods.

Anyway, the tools for Oblivion are quite different. I use Mod Organizer for Skyrim and have no idea what FOMOD, OOO, OBSE, BAIN are or what any of these acronyms mean.

The most I've played in Oblivion thus far is through the prison tutorial. Being a bit of an altoholic, I'll went ahead and downloaded the Alternate Start Arrive By Ship for future characters. Any other cool roleplay mods out there?

My preferred playstyle is 3rd person, so I got the No Motion Sickness mod so looking for any other mods that improves 3rd player play.

I have a decent computer and can run Skyrim at high settings with 2048 textures so I can handle most high res textures. I'm not sure however what the best textures for Oblivion are and which ones go well together. I like to remain true to the vanilla game, just have a higher quality setting. Also looking for good mods that make the characters look better without turning them into anime characters or the women into sluts and sparkly covergirls. I like nicely updated armor and clothing too.

I like a good semi-linear style of leveling and decent amount of challenge to the game so would be interested in any good, well balanced mods of this sort too.

Oh and the Oblivion UI is pretty hideous and clunky, any good UI mods out there?

Good horse mods such as making them follow you, make them essential or keeping them when stolen, if playing a horse thief I'd like to keep the silly horse instead of it running back home.

I've been searching the forums for various mod recommendations and guides so I've a bit of an idea of what's good but thought it couldn't hurt to ask outright too.

Edited December 17, 2011 by magicgraduate

Hoptic · December 17, 2011

I'll try and make this quick since I got no time but know a good deal about Oblivion mods out there :D

Still, it's pretty hard at first to understand everything there is to understand, but there should be tutorials here and there... I'll try to give you the basics.

As for the tools, you've GOT to download OBSE (Oblivion Script Extender) for a LOT of mods, so make a quick search on Google and you'll find it right away.

I advise you to use the old Oblivion Mod Manager and NOT the Nexus Manager, because it can't handle OMODs and that's pretty darn important.

What's an OMOD? It's kinda like an archive which contains all files for an Oblivion mod. The good thing is that you don't have to manually extract: you just open it up in the OBMM (Oblivion Mod Manager), and you activate from there.

A lot of mods are .rar or .zip and got an "OMOD conversion data" folder, make a quick search if you want to know how to make an OMOD out of this.

OMOD are really sweet. You can activate/deactivate fairly easy. I remember the time when you had to remove manually the files... often, it was quicker to reinstall the whole game x)

Oh, and you don't want to install too many mods all of a sudden -the game will likely crash, and you won't be able to know which mod caused this.

If the mod is just a .esp file, put it in Oblivion/data/ folder and activate it through OBMM.

The load order is critical, and compability esps too. Check out "compability/conflicts" sections in the readmes of the different mods you download, in order to know how to make them running altogether.

Ok that covers the basics, let's talk about mods now.

I got a low-end computer so I'm not too good with graphical enhancements, though I know some names. Qarl's Texture packs seem to be good as an overhaul. You can use Beautiful People (and Beautiful Faces? ... if it exists) to enhance the general look of the NPCs.

I'm really immersion and realism oriented so the mods I'm gonna adivse make the game more challenging I guess:

- Alternative Start (but you already got that one)

- Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul -comes with a LOT of other great tinier mods. It makes the game a LOT more interesting but also a LOT more challenging. Oblivion is a game where everything levels up as you do: so you don't expect a big shift of difficulty as you go up in levels, but then there's no real difficulty either because you can go everywhere from the beginning. OOO makes it so it makes sense to actually level up: there are stronger monsters here and there, and you can't go everywhere at low levels -however if you dare venture in dark dungeons, you'll actually face formidable ennemies and get great rewards... I really love it, it makes the games much more challenging and interesting. If you've got a bit of experience in Bethesda's games (Fallout 3, Skyrim...), it shouldn't be too hard though. Don't forget the mods that are included, like Harvest and Living Economy, they're really cool;

- Darker Dungeons -what's the point of having a Torch or Light spells if they're useless? This mod removes ambiant lights from the dungeons :) (be aware not to activate Daker Dungeons and Darker Dungeons - SI at the same time, pick only one)

- I advise Deadly Reflex (the name might have changed) if you like dynamic combats and new move possibilities, although I don't have it anymore and I don't feel the need for it. And/or Supreme Magicka if you intend to play a magical character (this one is pretty cool).

- Enhanced hotkeys: this one is critical I'd say.

- Darnified UI: a really good UI mod (although there are some other good ones, look for yourself)

- Loading Screens if you want better... loading screens. :)

- Less capacity encumbrance -divides by five the carrying capacity of your character. That's a bit extreme but I enjoy the challenge. I ended up adding 10 encumbrance point though because, as a mage, I had only 30 capacity and that's really hard :D

But there are a lot of other great mods! Go out and explore the Nexus :D

edit: okay this wasn't quick. FTW!

Edited December 17, 2011 by Hoptic