Proper Installation of Patches

[Telonna]

No laughing please. It's been years since I've played Morrowind and Oblivion and I'm trying to make sure I'm placing the Official and Unofficial game patches in the correct places. My concern is Oblivion, at the moment.

 

First off, I am using disks, the version of Oblivion I am running is 1.1.511.

 

I just want to get my game up to par by putting the patches back into play, but I'm worried if I'm putting the files in the right place. I need those, at minimum, to start adding other stuff into the game, like mods.

 

Once I open the patch, do I just drop it into the Bethesda/Oblivion folder? Or Bethesda/Oblivion/Data folder? I could just kick myself for not remembering how to do it. The last time I had the patches loaded up, along with several mods (mostly houses/castles), I was running WINXP (2014-ish), now I've got WIN10 and honestly, files don't look the same to me in 10. The last several years I've just been playing MMOs.

 

I have been reading everything I can about installing patches/files/mods, but I cannot find specifics to make sure I'm doing it right. And so many new things out there to make the game and its mods run smoothly that, to be honest, it's overwhelming to me.

 

If someone, any one, could give me the basics, the pointers, the correct methods to get this going, I would truly appreciate it. I'm sure once I get the basics down, and 're-understanding' how to do it all, I'll be fine. The nice thing is that the mods I want to re-install come with complete 'how-to' install information.

 

Thanks.

[Striker879]

First to install is the Official Oblivion 12416 Patch. The download is a ZIP file, that extracts to an executable that you run and it patches the game to version 1.2.0416 (which is the latest/final version of the game).

 

Some caveats about the Official Patch ... you will note that there is a patch for the Shivering Isles version of the game and a different one for the non-SI version of the game (all of the other DLCs don't matter). You must use the version that matches your version ... SI patch for the game that includes the Shivering Isles and non-SI patch for the original non-SI version of the game.

 

There are also different patches for the different supported language versions of the game. The top listed download on the Nexus page is for the North American English version of the game without Shivering Isles, the version for the SI version of the game covers all English versions (note further down the list you'll find a UK English version for the non-SI game).

 

Once you have the vanilla game patched to version 1.2.0416 start it and confirm it indicates the correct version number in the lower left corner of the Main menu screen. You will also go through the initial set up for video card etc. and the Oblivion.ini file will be generated (found in the C:\Users\[username]\My Documents\My Games\Oblivion folder).

 

The Unofficial Oblivion Patch (UOP) and Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch (USIP) are simply big mods, and are installed the same way as other mods. You will need to decide whether you are going to use a mod manager to handle installing and uninstalling mods or instead go with manual install for mods. You make it sound like you are more familiar from past experience with manual install, but perhaps may be a little rusty. I personally use manual installs for the most part but have used Wrye Bash for a handful of mods in my load order. There are other mod managers available ... it will be up to you whether or not you want to learn a mod manager as well as get back into modding the game or stick with what may be rusty but at least more familiar skills (if I am in fact reading between the lines correctly).

 

The extracted downloads for both the UOP and USIP are set up so that you put the files (ESPs) and folders in your game's Oblivion\Data folder (so you will have Oblivion\Data\Unofficial Oblivion Patch.esp and Oblivion\Data\DistantLOD and Oblivion\Data\Meshes as examples). My personal preference for manual install is to use Copy and Paste beween to instances of Windows Explorer open at the same time, but I am a dinosaur still using my tried and true Win 7 (in other words I can't say what is available for you to use in Win 10).

 

The UOP doesn't absolutely require Oblivion Script Extender (OBSE) but if you do have OBSE installed it will use a couple of fixes for vanilla game problems (the fixes are the jail fix and training fix). Even though OBSE isn't absolutely required I recommend installing it as many of the "must have" mods these days require it.

 

If you need more info or clarification just ask.

[Telonna]

Thanks Striker! All of your info is very much appreciated!

 

I am a bit rusty at this, takes me a wee bit to get back on the horse and ride again. Official patch is in and running fine. Unofficial is giving me fits at the moment. I do believe I was using Wrye Bash back then too - thank you for mentioning it, so I will install that to help with the Unofficial patch.

 

Like myself, my computer is a dinosaur - upgraded many times over - but one day I will really need to replace it. I'll keep fiddling with all the patches, managers and mods to see what gets it all running smooth again.

 

Thanks again for the advice and information, and I have no doubt I will follow up on all of this if more issues arise.

[Striker879]

One of the main "advertised" advantages of using Wrye Bash to install mods is it's handling of the uninstall (it properly replaces any overwritten files with their originals from whichever mod was overwritten ... the Anneal feature). I am on an older version of the UOP, and manually installed it. Fortunately for me there weren't any changes I considered "must have" in the subsequent versions of the UOP so I haven't gone through the tedium of making certain the right files are removed before installing the latest version of the UOP (I dislike relying on a simple overwrite when version updating ... probably analogous to a preference to eating brontosaurus as opposed to stegasaurus in my dinosaur analogy ... give me the neck, I like eating neck).

 

Your situation does differ in so far as the UOP will probably never receive another update, so the utility added by WB's anneal becomes a moot point. Any new install/new character I decide to do will get the latest, greatest and last UOP of course, there isn't any reason to avoid it.

 

Depending on specific hardware of course, but some older computers can actually be pretty close to "beast" when it comes to this game. It was developed for fast Pentium4s (so north of 3 GHz) and has not a clue what to do with the advanced features introduced after the GHz Wars hit the Limits of Silicon barrier and we got longer and longer execution pipelines. I'm running on an older model Core2 Duo at 3.0 GHz and have most of the parts to build a late model Core2 Duo at 3.33GHz. I've had the other CPU for almost as long as the older one (acquired maybe a year, year and a half after the 3.0) but have had little to no urgency to upgrade/finish building the new machine because I believe the 10% gain in CPU speed will be lost with it's longer execution pipeline when playing Oblivion.

 

Pipelines have grown much longer in the time since the Core2 Duo days!

 

The biggest challenge is finding compatible replacements when the video cards do the inevitable ... fail.