Crash Prevention

[imready86k]

This is just my personal experience with downloading and playing Oblivion mods over the past 4 years. It stresses 1 point to play a crash free game.

 

First: Quick Tutorial for Dummies, beginners, who want to have as much as they can, crash free.

*This tutorial is for those who don't like to read, can't understand Wyrebash, or want to.*

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Fresh Install Oblivion, and all basic essentials (literally basic essentials)

 

1)

 

-Oblivion

-DLC's

-OBMM

-Boss

-Wyrebash (even if you dont plan to use it, get it)

-All Patches for these mods, or installs, including unofficial.

 

2)

 

Choose 1:

 

OOO or Warcry New Dimension. (remember I said crash free)

-Get Patches.

 

3)

 

Texture replacements, Music, and Sound.

 

4)

 

Learn about installing mods. Google for a good tutorial on Load Order, and using OBMM.

 

5) Hopefully that's most of it. This tutorial is for beginner "crash free" gameplay.

 

Next Step: Main Point.

 

For 4 years I dealt with crashes every 5 minutes, or 10, or 1, randomly. I found Better Cities, Unique Landscapes, and others, to be essential, so I dealt with the crashes. They are great mods.

 

Something I don't see on the internet discussed is this main point. The more objects placed in game, the higher chance your game will crash. Streamline does not help. My pc is high end, relatively new, and can handle 200-300 npcs battling in a glob, using the console, before fps drops to 20.

 

From testing of the last 4 years, to today, for the past 3 days, I confirmed a common crash. Although Better Cities alone will not crash the game, it adds objects to the map. Same with unique landscapes. MMM installed by itself will cuase crashing if increased spawns selected.

 

If you would like to test this, do the "beginners" tutorial. Start with a crash free game (95%) that is. Start slowly adding objects to your game, like mods which add trees, buildings, or more npcs, like crowded roads, crowded cities. Every time you add more objects to the game, crashing becomes more common. It is not your pc crashing oblivion.

 

If you can handle your current crash "rate", great! Otherwise I suggest focusing on:

 

Quality > Quantity

 

for the smoothest Oblivion experience. I focus on music replacers, texture replacers, even monster replacers for Warcry, using Wyrebash. But I wary of new towns added such as Cheryse Town Master (Or however its spelled). If your not convinced this theory is true, go visit Pells Gate. It crashes so much because the city is built with a clump of objects. The game is trying to handle the city, its npcs, all of it, on top of vanilla Obivion Wilderness objects surrounding it.

 

Try to avoid Open Better Cities, for the same reason as Pells Gate. It's not your computer that can't handle it, its the game.

 

I'm not saying don't use these mods. I'm suggesting if you do, be careful about adding more object addition mods.

 

Instead of trying to add objects to the Vanilla Oblivion Landscape, I would suggest adding new land masses. New loot types, armor types, npc, monster variations.

 

Focus on Quality.

 

 

Hopefully this advice helps someone. It helped me.

[dubiousintent]

Without agreeing or disagreeing with anything you have said, in view of your goal I would add one further major bit of advice.

 

DO NOT add or remove ANYTHING in your game configuration once you start playing, until you have tested that it actually makes things better without affecting your game stability. Test on a duplicate, backup copy of the game Data folder and your profile game folder. (Use 'Multiple Oblivion Manager' (MOM) to manage this easily.) This includes updates or upgrades to existing mods. If you are still wanting to 'try something', you are not ready to actually play through. Be prepared to start your character over from the point prior to actually changing anything and everything. Mods make changes that are not obvious. Removing a mod can still leave remnants behind in your save game that will cause crashes later (often MUCH later). Everyone's setup is unique. No mod author will guarantee their best efforts will work with your game. Every change runs the risk of breaking your current game. If you want a stable, long running game ... do not make changes once you have started playing in earnest. Period.

 

-Dubious-