Excited About returning to Oblivion

[vixstile]

Hi all

 

When Oblivion first came out I must have put about 50+ hours into it (and that's without touching the main quest). Then my hard drive died and I didn't have any backups of my saves *dismay*. I tried to start a new game just to play through the main quest, but I just wasn't feeling it anymore.

 

Now that I've just built a much more capable rig, I've been getting the itch to return. I think it has been long enough now. I just bought the Game of the Year Edition of Oblivion and it should be arriving latter this week. With addition of Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine, and the fact that I plan on modding the hell out of it, I'm expecting a pretty fresh experience.

 

Which brings me to my question. Mods. Below are a list of Mods I've plucked off various "top Mods" lists that interest me the most. I was hopping to get some feedback as to potential conflicts between mods listed, superior alternatives to mods listed, or just additional recommendations.

 

And a big thanks in advance to anyone taking the time to help me out.

 

PS- I have a copy of this list in MSWord were each item hyperlinks to the mod, but couldn't figure out how to easily covert it for use in this post (other than doing each item by hand which would be a huge pain), so I hope you can know what mod I'm talking about just form the name.

 

Utilities

• Oblivion Mod Manager

• OBSE (script extender)

 

Game play Improvements

• The Unofficial Oblivion Patch

• The Unofficial Official Mods Patch

• The Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch

• DarkUI'd DarN

• Keychain

• Streamline

• LowPoly Grass

• Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul

• Quest Award Leveler

• Supreme Magicka Update

• No Psychic Guards

• Drop Lit Torches

• Harvest Flora

• Harvest Containers

• Horse Commands

• Deadly Reflex

• House Map Markers mod

• Custom Race Fix

• Marksman Velocity

• Marksman Effectiveness+

• Deadlier Sneaking

 

Visual Improvements

• Landscape LOD Textures

• Landscape LOD Textures (border regions)

• LOD Normal Map Fix

• Qarl's Texture Pack III

• Beaming Sunglare

• Qarl's Harvest

• Natural Environments

• Illumination Within

• Let the People Drink!

• Clocks of Cyrodiil

• Loading Screens Themed Replacer

• Enhanced Magic Visual Effects

• MaleBodyReplacer

• Rens Beauty Pack

• Female EyeCandy Body Replacer

• HG EyeCandy Body

• High Rez Skin Textures for HGEC

• Clothing and Armor Replacer for Exnems Complete

• Black Luster Weapons and Armor for Exnems Body

• Growlfs Hot Clothes and Armor 5 Full

• Book Jackets: Oblivion

• Book Placement

• Better Letters

• Rusty Items

• Vagabond's Better Gold

• Kafei's Better Amulet Replacer

 

Additional Areas/Quests

• Kvatch Rebuilt or Kvatch Aftermath

• Thievery in the Imperial City

• The Dungeons of Ivellon

• Mountain tower

• Kumiko Manor

• Snow Dragon Temple

• Bravil Sea Domes

• Glenvar Castle

• Bartholm

• Belda Elysium Manor House

• Hoarfrost Castle

• Frostcrag Reborn

• Servant of the Dawn

• The Lost Spires

• Ancient Towers

• Castle Highrock

• Unique Landscapes: Entius Gorge

• Unique Landscapes: The Heath - Wetland

• Unique Landscapes: The Dark Forest

• Unique Landscapes: Colovian Highlands

• Unique Landscapes: The Great Forest - Ancient Redwoods

• Unique Landscapes: Ancient Yews

 

 

Additional Weapons /armor/NPCs

• COMPANION SONIA II

• Gabrielle Companion

• Ruined-Tail's Tale

• Frostmourne and Lich Kings Helm

• Lost Paladins of the Divines

• Thieves Arsenal

• Adonnays Elven Weaponry

• Dark Illusion Armor

• Adonnays Elven Longblades

• Cats & Rats

 

:thanks:

[Michlo]

Welcome back.

 

Your list looks good. Take a look at my sig for further info / ideas and make sure you also include the FCOM helper tool to aid in your sort order. Hmm I think the Kumiko BECAME Glenvar so you might want to check into that. I'm glad you chose the best castle though. ;)

 

Oh and Kvatch Aftermath is the one to choose. :)

 

Good luck.

[endgamecutter]

since i dont know much about anything other than companions armor and weapons, ill stick to that.

companions might not be a good idea, they can take alot of the challenge out of the game, and they only really hit you or get hit by you anyways.

armor can really depend on what you make. if you're using a fighter ill recommend tda's armory (assuming you dont mind stylized armor) if you're going thief, ill recommend aleiyd (probably mispelt) armor (the white robed one with black even pieces) or hashashin armor. if you're going mage, either of those, or mage equipment if you're a robe fanatic.

weapons are mostly restricted to blade, i recommend frostmourne, wulfang and the weapons from the affore mentioned ideas. if blunt, nico's dreadweave axes, or dalls fireglow (assuming you dont mind overpowered gear. oh, and one quest mod i recommend is CORE1 (children of rouken episode 1) E2 is coming out soon, or so he says, but it gives you some nice light armor, a huge dungeon to explore and all sorts of cool weapons, like customizable katanas, or lightsabers (dwemer plasma blades). hope this helps

[vixstile]

to Michlo

 

I'll look over your list. I've already found some interesting stuff there. Cool.

 

to endgamecutter-

 

I try to be as 'jack-of-all-trades' as possible whenever I play an Elder Scrolls game so I don't miss out on anything.

[Shadowcran]

You might want to add some of the following:

Utilities:

FCOMhelper

Wrye Bash

 

Overhauls:

Martigen's Monster Mod

Oblivion WarCry

Francesco's Complete(this includes DLing the BSA files)

Adventurer's Oblivion(but since you've got OOO, you don't need this one)

 

Armories/weapons outlets:

Bobs Armory Oblivion

Loth's Blunt Weapons

Armamentarium

Slof's Robe Trader

 

Weapons: Just anything that looks cool to YOU, not what I or anyone else recommends

Armor: Same

 

Quests: Use these two guides to pick and choose from among what YOU like

 

http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/bigquests - As it says, for big quests

 

http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/smallquests - for the smaller ones

 

**You'll note some of those quests are companion based. I agree with endgamecutter about them, but for the purposes of the great quests associated with a few companions, it's worth the momentary trouble of having them.

 

**TESnexus is the BEST choice among sites to get mods, but they don't host some of the bigger ones due to the size and the activity on the site. If you HAVE to, use Planet Elder Scrolls before others. Oblivion WarCry I had to go to a German site to get, but it's more than worth it. It has a OblivionWarCry.esp and an Oblivion WarCryEV.esp. The EV is for english version and this is the one you should hook up to your game.

 

Mod lists that aren't so bad:

http://ballofflame.googlepages.com/balloff...oblivionmodlist

http://antiochforever.com/files/members/En.../Mod%20List.htm

 

Also get for increased performance:

Low Poly grass

Low Poly Rocks

Oblivion Optimized

Streamline

OAF (Oblivion Animation Fixer)

 

There are many more I could recommend in the tweaks and effects types, but that's all up to you.

[vixstile]

Thanks Shadowcran

 

As far a performance goes, how taxing is a heavily modded Oblivion compared to say Crysis? My computer handles Crysis pretty well with everything set to high at 1680x1050. I have no doubt that it can handle vanilla Oblivion, but what kind of performance hit are we looking at with all the HD textures and additional objects & characters?

 

And as a side note, all this studying different mods has gotten me interested in possibly making my own. I did make myself some basic mods for Morrowind back in the day, but i never submitted them to the community.

[Shadowcran]

It's hard to say. I've a top graphics card and a ton of Ram. I've yet to experience any trouble with my system handling it. However, be forewarned, there are problems with Vista and Oblivion mods(Vanilla Oblivion too). Vista is perhaps the dumbest thing to come down the pike in a while, yet I was suckered into getting it with my new computer. I DID have trouble with Oblivion(not just the mods) at one point. I ended up going to the Oblivion shortcut, right clicking it, going to properties and making it compatible with an earlier Windows. Since then, no problems.

 

The problem with modding is that they're are a few issues to consider. However, there are great tools out there that helps with all this.

 

1 is load order. In the beginning of modding up Oblivion with just a few mods, this won't pose a problem. As your list grows, it will become trouble. However, FCOMhelper/loader that I mentioned earlier solves 95% of that in less than 2 seconds. For the other 5% it becomes a matter of priority. What should take precedence over the other.

 

2 is compatibility. There aren't as many as you would think, but some mods mess things up with certain other mods. It's best to just use your head when installing them. Don't put 2 environment mods in at the same time for instance, or 2 different weather mods. I've yet to encounter this, but some mods might occupy the same place in the world. I'm sure there has to be at least ONE problem with this out there. I DID have a problem with Abacean Pirates and Memories of Daggerfall but they didn't occupy the same space, only were too near each other. The 'office tower" of Abacean Pirates was dreadfully close to the 'waiting ship" for memories.

 

3 is what I term Obsoleteness. This is where one mod does the same as another, but one does it better. Also, a lot of mods are included in the huge overhauls. It's best to just really read what all is in those monster downloads before you install some small ones to go with it. For instance, if you have OOO, you don't need the mod Capes and Cloaks.

Does this cause any real problems? not really, but for maximum comfort, it's best to archive the obsolete mod you don't want to use for maybe a later game. I've about 500 mods archive packaged this way that I won't use til some other time. It's best to keep these unused mods in a separate folder inside your data directory. name it Mods for a rainy day.

 

4 is missing meshes. sometimes, no matter how careful you are, you end up with a missing mesh. I've been lookign for fixes for this or maybe even a small download for the mesh I'm missing(I've been thinking of actively pursuing such a addon download page for this site, missing textures and meshes ) From what I've read, it always seems to be everyone missing the SAME MESHES OVER AND OVER. These 'yellow starred "wtf! I'm a missing mesh!" can get on some people's nerves.

 

 

5 is just a bad mod. Seems I've gotten a few of these, mostly on sites OTHER than Nexus and Planet Elder Scrolls. These mods are easy to recognize however. They're usually the ones that won't let you even load up the game. Simply check a new mod out by trying to start oblivion, if it doesn't start, remove the mod from the list and archive it up for another day or a fix/patch.

 

The highly regarded mods you see on everyone's load lists? Very, very few problems if you have the latest upgrades to them and those problems are usually very minor and not even worth correcting except for a perfectionist.

 

Hope I'm helping and not boring the hell out of you.

[vixstile]

I've avoided Vista so I shouldn't have a problem there.

 

This thread has been great. I think to start out I'm just looking for mods just tweak/enhance the gameplay/experience. Later on I'll explore the more quest heavy mods.

 

Here is my tweaked list:

 

Utilities

• Oblivion Mod Manager

• OBSE

• FCOMhelper

 

Game play Improvements

• The Unofficial Oblivion Patch

• The Unofficial Official Mods Patch

• The Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch

• DarkUI'd DarN

• Keychain

• Decorator Assistant

• Streamline

• LowPoly Grass

• Low Poly Rocks

• Oblivion Optimized

• Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul

• Quest Award Leveler

• Supreme Magicka Update

• No Psychic Guards

• Drop Lit Torches

• Harvest Flora

• Harvest Containers

• Horse Commands

• Deadly Reflex

• House Map Markers mod

• Custom Race Fix

• Marksman Velocity

• Marksman Effectiveness+

• Deadlier Sneaking

• More Merchant Money

• Smarter Mercantile Leveling

• Reneers Guard Overhaul

• Book Tracker

 

Visual Improvements

• Landscape LOD Textures

• Landscape LOD Textures (border regions)

• LOD Normal Map Fix

• Qarl's Texture Pack III

• Beaming Sunglare

• Qarl's Harvest

• Natural Environments

• Better Cities

• Illumination Within

• Let the People Drink!

• Clocks of Cyrodiil

• Loading Screens Themed Replacer

• Enhanced Magic Visual Effects

• Beautiful People

• MaleBody Replacer

• Female EyeCandy Body Replacer

• HG EyeCandy Body

• High Rez Skin Textures for HGEC

• Clothing and Armor Replacer for Exnems Complete

• Black Luster Weapons and Armor for Exnems Body

• Growlfs Hot Clothes and Armor 5 Full

• Book Jackets: Oblivion

• Book Placement

• Better Letters

• Rusty Items

• Vagabond's Better Gold

• Kafei's Better Amulet Replacer

• Initial Glow

• Magic Effect Dim

 

Additional Areas/Quests

• Anvil Bay Expansion

• Kvatch Aftermath

• Thievery in the Imperial City

• The Dungeons of Ivellon

• Mountain tower

• Snow Dragon Temple

• Bravil Sea Domes

• Glenvar Castle

• Bartholm

• Belda Elysium Manor House

• Hoarfrost Castle

• Frostcrag Reborn

• Servant of the Dawn

• The Lost Spires

• Ancient Towers

• Castle Highrock

• Unique Landscapes: Entius Gorge

• Unique Landscapes: The Heath - Wetland

• Unique Landscapes: The Dark Forest

• Unique Landscapes: Colovian Highlands

• Unique Landscapes: The Great Forest - Ancient Redwoods

• Unique Landscapes: Ancient Yews

 

Additional Weapons /armor/NPCs

• Frostmourne and Lich Kings Helm

• Armamentarium

• Lost Paladins of the Divines

• Thieves Arsenal

• Adonnays Elven Weaponry

• Dark Illusion Armor

• Adonnays Elven Longblades

• Cats & Rats