Any cons to the Unofficial Oblivion Patch?

[DarkImpulse]

Hello,

 

After dabbling a bit with mods, I decided to just play some more and get a feel for the game. I've played an additional 17 hours now over the past few days and it is quite fun. The mods I look for are purely aesthetic, to make things look better but does not affect the original gameplay. I know I've "incorrectly" levelled, but as a first time player, ignorance is bliss. It's fun to just do whatever and not worry about not having 5/5/5 level up bonuses. Anyway, I have noticed a few awkward things here and there, and reading up on quests it seems a lot of them have bugs that are fixed by the Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP, USIP, UOMP are the 3 I believe) but as I don't want to affect gameplay too much, I tried to see what side effects it causes. Fixing some bugs is nice but I don't want it suddenly giving me an advantage over vanilla Oblivion. (This line of thought kind of contradicts my making a personal companion mod for kicks, but I haven't completed it yet so it's ok for now.)

 

Anyway, sorry for the long introduction. Basically, I could not find any "problems" with the UOP, which is amazing since almost eveyr mod has a drawback of some sort. Is the UOP truly such an amazing patch that it will right every wrong invisibly without impacting the original gameplay, or are there some hidden drawbacks I can't seem to find?

 

Thanks in advance.

[OnyxNightBlack]

The Unofficial Patch is mostly just that, a patch. It corrects a huge amount of bugs and problems, some of them so critical that they can ruin huge questlines or mess up your character for good. I would say it's a must-have, if there is one.

 

I ma not aware of any conflicts and I use it since I first heard of it.

[DarkImpulse]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I understand it's a patch but it's so large they might've snuck in some gameplay changes in there. If there isn't that's all well and good. As far as incompatibilities go, it says you shouldn't use any other custom race fixes, which I assume the Custom Race Fix by KT mod falls under. I'm not sure if there are any other specific mods that conflict with it. Or maybe if I load the KT mod after it, it'll overwrite UOP's fix. I'm not entirely sure..

 

Basically, I'd like to know if it's "safe" for vanilla gameplay and not conflict with some of the more popular mods.

[nosisab]

Thanks for the reply.

 

I understand it's a patch but it's so large they might've snuck in some gameplay changes in there. If there isn't that's all well and good. As far as incompatibilities go, it says you shouldn't use any other custom race fixes, which I assume the Custom Race Fix by KT mod falls under. I'm not sure if there are any other specific mods that conflict with it. Or maybe if I load the KT mod after it, it'll overwrite UOP's fix. I'm not entirely sure..

 

Basically, I'd like to know if it's "safe" for vanilla gameplay and not conflict with some of the more popular mods.

 

the unofficial patches must be placed at the very top of ESPs after the ones they fix. This done, the mods that would address the same things did by it would win the 'conflict' and the worst would be not having a fix by this specific issue. So it's not only safe as is recommended using then.

[DarkImpulse]

I'm very sorry, I have to admit.. I couldn't understand what you are saying.

 

The unofficial patches (meaning UOP/USIP/UOMP?) must be placed at the very top (after the ESMs?) after the ones they fix (after oblivion.esm, DLCShiveringIsles.esp, Knights.esp?)

 

The mods that would address the same things (KT Race Fix) did by it (UOP?) would win the conflict (KT?) and the worst would be not having a fix.

 

So it's not only safe as is recommended using then (???)

 

For the record I went to the Baldurdash site and looked up the complete list of bugs fixed but it is huge and hard to digest all at once. I'm not sure off the top of my head if it conflicts with any other mods besides the KT race fix. Is there a list somewhere that states incompatibilities?

 

Thanks again

[OnyxNightBlack]

Let me say it like this: I am using well over 50 different mods, some of them huge and I never had any conflict with the UOP. Mods might conflict with other mods, but in my experience never in a serious way with the UOP.

 

Trust me, get it and never look back. Take a look at http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page and punch in any questline you are working on. At the bottom there are known bugs (Some of them break the questline in a way that you have to reload from a very old savegame), then take a look below each of those bugs. 90% of the cases there is a "fixed by unofficial oblivion patch" icon next to the bug.

 

Now ask yourself this: Do I really want to deal with hundreds of bugs with almost every quest?

 

If you answer with a resounding "No", then get the UOP. It's honestly one of the safest and most importent things you can install.

 

:thumbsup:

[DarkImpulse]

Thanks, that sounds like it sums it all up. I'm just afraid of possible conflicts because of the KT race fix, but if that is the only mod I have to disable then that is fine. I don't think that would affect my current save game too much because I've already started, and a new game would be using the UOP one anyway. If I'm wrong feel free to correct me.

 

I'm hoping there won't be any problems with this and the Quest Award Leveller mod, as these two are likely going to be the last mods I install for my first run through the game.

[OnyxNightBlack]

Good choice. Don't overload your game on your first run. The only thing you might want to get is a mod like OOO or Francesco.

 

The game in it's original form will level any kind of enemy alongside you, meaning when you are level 30 you will be fight puny bandits in some backwater cave, equipped with the finest armor/weapons the game has to offer and on the same level as you. This annoyed me because you actually don't feel like you are getting stronger, to the contrary, if you don't level efficiently the same enemies you fought on level 1 will be much harder when you are level 30.

 

If that doesn't phase you, don't bother with those mods. They contain rather big changes and OOO has a long list of possible conflicts. Francesco's was quite "safe" in my experience though.

[DarkImpulse]

Here's another question..

 

I bought the GOTY edition of Oblivion which came with Oblivion, SI and KOTN, but KOTN and SI are loaded as esps. Is this normal with the others are is it unique to the GOTY?

 

The problem is that the USIP state that it should be loaded before any mods, but does that mean loading it before the SI esp or after it? I presume this would be the same question for KOTN and all the other official mods..

 

Would my load order then be something like

Oblivion.esm

UOP

SI.esp

USIP

Knights.esp

UOMP Knights

Quest Award leveler KOTN *I assume this goes here after the UOMP for Knights since this mod is used to adjust the levels of levelled items with your character's level.

DLCHorseArmor

UOMP HorseArmor

[etc etc]

 

If this is not right, please tell me what I'm doing wrong.

 

Also, UOP said they recommended the use of the ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated! mod instead of the usual ArchiveInvalidation.txt file (I used ElChE's ACV v1.1.0 to make the file) so I hid the txt file and installed that mod in accordance to its instructions - Added the bsa to Oblivion.ini and copied the bsa into the Data folder. However, I'm not entirely sure if this is all I need to do.. How does it know what files to invalidate? Do I have to do that manually or does it figure everything out on its own somehow?

 

Thanks again.

[OnyxNightBlack]

Let's tackle this one by one:

 

"I bought the GOTY edition of Oblivion which came with Oblivion, SI and KOTN, but KOTN and SI are loaded as esps. Is this normal with the others are is it unique to the GOTY?"

 

- I also use the GOTY edition right now and only had Vanilla Oblivion (without SI or KOTN) before, so I can't say for sure, but I think it's normal that KOTN and SI have their own .esps.

 

"The problem is that the USIP state that it should be loaded before any mods, but does that mean loading it before the SI esp or after it? I presume this would be the same question for KOTN and all the other official mods.."

 

- My load order considering only relevant mods looks like this:

 

Oblivion.esm

UOP.esp

Shivering Isles.esp

USIP.esp

 

I haven't encountered any problems so far, so this should work for you.

 

"Also, UOP said they recommended the use of the ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated! mod instead of the usual ArchiveInvalidation.txt file (I used ElChE's ACV v1.1.0 to make the file) so I hid the txt file and installed that mod in accordance to its instructions - Added the bsa to Oblivion.ini and copied the bsa into the Data folder. However, I'm not entirely sure if this is all I need to do.. How does it know what files to invalidate? Do I have to do that manually or does it figure everything out on its own somehow?"

 

- I use the BSA alteration feature of OBMM, because it makes manually updating the ArchiveInvalidation obsolete, doing everything automatically. It's the best and easiest way in my opinion.

 

 

I hope I could be of some help here. You shouldn't worry so much. Most things work out somehow if you follow the readmes and use OBMM. :thumbsup: