What's best for modding Oblivion?

[akiresenpai]

I keep reading diffrent forums and posts on what's best...I want to know for sure. What is better for adding mods and sorting load order?

Mod Organizer or OBMM w/ Wrye Bash or NMM

BOSS or LOOT?

 

some say MO and OBMM and some say OBMM w/Wrye Bash and BOSS and of course there is the argument that LOOT is better than BOSS but then some say BOSS is better for Oblivion

 

I had CTD when using MO and OBMM (used LOOT for load order)

[razorpony]

I wouldn't use MO and OBMM together as they are both managers. My personal setup is OBMM/BOSS/Wrye. They seem to play together nicely.

[Surilindur]

If someone uses Mod Organizer, then installing mods through another manager directly into the game folder would make the use of MO a bit interesting as an idea. I think the main advantage of Mod Organizer over Wrye Bash is the virtual mod installation feature (that does not work for OBSE plugins). Using MO to keep the actual game folder clean is futile if also using another manager to install stuff directly into the actual folder. Also, in general, using more than one mod manager can make install order management a bit tricky. But those are just my thoughts. Use whatever works for you. :thumbsup:

Edited December 14, 2016 by Contrathetix

[DrakeTheDragon]

Let's call the Mod Managing part of Wrye Bash by its name here, BAIN, so not to confuse the multiple purposes one can fulfill with Wrye Bash.

 

Keeping this in mind MO, OBMM, NMM and BAIN are mostly mutually exclusive with regards to the mod managing aspect of their use. Mixing multiple mod "managers", actually managing your mod "installs", -can- be done but is not advisable unless you absolutely know what you're doing. Stick to one manager of your choice and use the others, only if you really need to.

 

- My personal preference for Oblivion would be BAIN, due to how streamlined it works and how straight-forward I can create installers with multiple options and choices through it. But it requires a bit of knowledge and isn't just click-n-go.

- OBMM has a bunch of additional functions unrelated to managing your installs, but its OMOD proprietary archive format allows for really complex and advanced guided installation wizards as well. But it is limited to that kind of format and in order to add mod installs which are not OMODs one has to specifically "turn" them into OMODs first, which isn't necessarily always the easiest task, depending on the complexity of the mod.

- Long since I've switched to NMM now, but more due to an urge to be able to help others use it correctly and know the in's and out's and if's and but's of it completely myself (staff member and everything). The NMM is likely the most easy to use of the whole bunch, especially considering all those "download with manager" buttons all over the site, guided installation instructions are also rather easily created once you know how it's done (it's a sort of scripting via XML), but sadly it's also the most limited one when it comes to archive formats, and it's a matter of fact that many, if not most, Oblivion mods have been released long before it even was an idea and as such their formats can't be understood by the NMM correctly without previous manual intervention. (Said manual intervention is most easy to myself by now, I can make every mod I come across installable via NMM, but I can't say the same about others, because being a programmer myself I know a lot more about the technicalities than them.)

- MO I don't know really much about, only that it is absolutely paramount to keep the program running and to only start anything that's going to work with your mod installs, load order, other files, specifically "through" MO as well or it won't find a thing. The entire file system of that manager is virtual. Without tools and such also run "through the manager" nothing of it will exist for them.

 

 

Load Order Management is a different part of modding. All tools mentioned above can also view and edit your load order. Some are more comfortable, some less, some can even "lock" the order so others can't mess with it anymore, or they "restore" it back to the one they stored previously as soon as they are run again. People often stumble over that obstacle not knowing it exists and wonder why they can't change their load order with one manager while also using others.

 

Automatic Sorting Tools like BOSS and LOOT are a godsend to many a user, but even with those one has to know what each of them does and that's it's not necessarily perfect what comes out of them.

- BOSS has for a long time been like the amalgamation of community knowledge about the best possible order for all known mods. Thousands of contributors kept its managed lists always up-to-date and functional for a decade. But of course as time went on so did the contributors. If BOSS nowadays is dropping below LOOT, it's primarily because the number of mods not in the list anymore is steadily rising.

- LOOT on the other hand went about it a little different that time. From what I know it no longer works based on a community-managed masterlist of sorts but more based on automatic analysis of actual plugin contents and the conflicts arising thereof. However, it might be worth mentioning it was not intended primarily to be used for Oblivion, and as such often does not know everything it should know about the important parts of conflict solution for this game. Reports of LOOT actually creating "bad" orders for Oblivion have been so manifold that I can't safely suggest its use for this game until I no longer hear it happen. It's near perfect for the other games it was specifically created for, but I for one stick to the good old BOSS for Oblivion and it's community-curated masterlist, which by the way I can always easily add my own mods into at any place I want only for myself locally and without it becoming publicly used rules for others.

 

 

Wrye Bash now is a completely different story, and in my eyes an absolute must, inevitable for proper modding of this game. I'm talking of its invaluable Bashed Patch feature here, of course, which combined with the Bash Tag suggestions as coming from a run of BOSS is about the ultimate tool for conflict solving for this game. By using the Bash Tags Wrye Bash isolates important parts of plugins and reincorporates them into your load order in a separate plugin after all others have been loaded, thus preserving what otherwise would've easily been lost by conflicting mods' records needlessly overriding it.

 

Oblivion's own plugin merging on start up is so severely limited, it does not even differ between male and female gender when a mod touches a race. One plugin altering male settings and another altering the females of the same race can never work together as the one loading last will effectively revert all of the previous changes back to Vanilla, even if it's not intended to do that and they were just left "unchanged". Only the Bashed Patch can preserve them both, and it can do exponentially more than just that.

[Nightflash7]

I highly recommend TES Mod Manager. http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/5010/?

 

It's an updated version of OBMM, and you can also use it for Skyrim if you want, but I'd rather stick to MO when it comes to Skyrim. MO (Mod Organizer) doesn't work very well with Oblivion as it doesn't have OMOD support, etc.

 

And if you're comfortable enough, try BAIN. I never used it, but I've heard good things about it. Anyway, TES Mod Manager works perfectly enough.

 

Definitely get Wrye Bash for its bashed patch (essential).

 

Use either LOOT or BOSS to sort your load order. Either one should be fine.