Oblivion *Newest Post on 2nd Page - Start reading there Please*

[Encino_Man]

Is this worth getting along with its expansion? I've been reading on several other forums that in order to play this game to it's full potential, mods (such as OOO or FCOM for instance) are needed as the vanilla is not very good. I have been playing quite a lot of strategy games lately and am craving for a game like Oblivion (or Morrowind for that matter if it works on Vista). I hear that unless you have around 100+ mods, the vanilla is well... pretty vanilla. So my question is, is what mods would be worth getting then to play it?

[Cougar109]

In reality you don't need 100 mods to make the game great, it's just people tends to down load 100, 200, 300 mods simply to enhance their game as far as possible to their own personal taste. The only mods I say you MUST have are OOO, MMM, TIE, COBL, Deadly Reflex, one of the leveling mods, Unofficial Oblivion Patch, and LAME. These mods fix up all aspects of the core game and bring it to an acceptable, challenging, and exciting level while also bringing it more in line with a "true RPG" so to speak. Everything else is eye candy, game play tuning and fixing, and extra content and those you can spend a day or two shuffling through finding what you need to just further personalize your game to your specific taste. Love playing a mage, get some more magic mods. Need some more quests, pick up a few. What a ton of new items, there are several item packs that far surpass the work of the Bethesda team. The more mods you have, the more you've personalized it to your style and tastes, thus the more amazing the game feels and hence why you hear people saying it needs hundreds of mods. But if you download and install those 8 mods I stated, the game will be great as is and you really won't need to do much else in terms of modding unless you want to further your personal experience. If you do desire more then hit up TESNexus and Planet Elder Scrolls along with with the Bethesda Forums and just start digging through and finding what you want.

[Encino_Man]

Ahhh, thank you very much for the help and suggestions. By the way, i s there a tool type download or software that is needed to download the mods so that they do not conflict with each other? I read that there was something of the sort but its name eludes me at the moment.

[Encino_Man]

By the way, is anyone having trouble accessing Planet Elder Scrolls? All the links I've found (googled it and followed the link from the Elder Scrolls main site) all said the file could not be found... http://maint.ign.com/planet/
Anyone else having any difficulty with this?

[Cougar109]

Wrong site. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/

As to your question, there really is nothing out there simple that corrects compatibility issues. However there are a few tools out there that help greatly by allowing you to adjust load order, make a bashed patch, along with a few other nifty little things.

http://wrye.ufrealms.net/Wrye%20Bash.html This is the most important tool you can have, read the site and instructions carefully as it can greatly improve your mods by merging a few of them together.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20516 another crucial tool, run it and it'll sort your entire load order automatically to make it as effective and efficient as possible.

http://timeslip.chorrol.com/obmm_download.html another great tool needed for Archive Invalidation, which is something that allows customs textures and meshes to be introduced into the game also much simpler to use over Wyre Bash for doing simple tweaks to your load order as it has a much better UI.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki....php/Main_Page A guide and link for the construction set, if you use a lot of mods you might as well get familiar with it because you'll have to use it a few times to fix and/or remove incompatibilities between mods.

There are also a few tools out there for more advanced users but really you won't need them unless you want to squeeze out every little bug and hitch possible. Really not a concern though for a beginner, the 4 tools I listed above make modding Oblivion as simple, painless, and bug free as possible.

[Encino_Man]

Haha thanks Also, what are the full names for TIE, COBL, LAME, and deadly reflex (or at least Deadly Reflex's author )

Ahh... thank you very much! I definitely will be checking those out! And what do you mean by load order?

[mrcrusty]

Get Midas Magic, epic for mages - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9562

And the Script Extender - http://obse.silverlock.org/ It's a pre requisite for many awesome mods.

Then for lag purposes, there's OSR and Streamline.

They both use purging and tweak settings on the fly, in order to increase framerate and keep it steady. It will cap your fps at around 30 unless you change the settings, but it won't go lower then 20 in most cases, so it'll be more or less fluid. If you don't want your fps to cap at 30, then just get Streamline.

Stutter Remover - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23208

Streamline - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10400

Also, a mod that I think is freaking awesome. Oblivion XP.

Makes Oblivion's leveling systems more like a normal RPG. Your skills don't levelup after use, you have a set exp system, doing tasks like killing people, completing quests, discovering new places, stealing, etc nets you exp. Get enough exp to levelup and you can raise your skills then.

Oblivion XP - http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15619

[Cougar109]

TIE is Tamriel Immersion Experience, LAME is Less Annoying Magika Experience, COBL is Common Oblivion, and Deadly Reflex is here, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=8273

Oblivion prioritizes mods by load order, I'm not really an expert on it but the lower a mod is in the load order the more important it is to the game. So if two mods overwrite something, the mod loaded after it would take precedent and it's data is what the game would use. I do know though that load order plays a massive roll on how well mods play together, so a bad load order will completely ruin your game if it even runs at all in the first place. That's why you use that BOSS tool I linked in my post, it sorts the load order for you to be as efficient as possible so you don't have to worry about making any mistakes.

The mods Mr. Crusty listed are also great, (not a fan of Oblivion XP though ). If you've got performance issues then defiantly check out some of those mods. If not then there isn't a whole lot of reason to use them and they just add clutter to your Data folder.

[Encino_Man]

Ahhh thank you very much the both you of you.

Oblivion prioritizes mods by load order, I'm not really an expert on it but the lower a mod is in the load order the more important it is to the game. So if two mods overwrite something, the mod loaded after it would take precedent and it's data is what the game would use. I do know though that load order plays a massive roll on how well mods play together, so a bad load order will completely ruin your game if it even runs at all in the first place. That's why you use that BOSS tool I linked in my post, it sorts the load order for you to be as efficient as possible so you don't have to worry about making any mistakes.

Thanks for the clear up. So what you're saying is that some of those tools help load the mods in an order (automatically) that allows the game to run pretty much as smooth as possible?

[mrcrusty]

If you have an idea of what each mod changes though, then using the "create omod" in OBMM will really help in reducing conflicts. Because when you activate it, OBMM will notify you of any conflicts and with what mod it conflicts with. If you're lucky, then there'll be no conflicts all round.

BOSS is a good tool though. I'd recommend using it.

Heh, I wrote a review for T.I.E a long time ago when it first came out. I still think it's on the mod's homepage. It's a really great overhaul mod though, without the hassle of FCOM and the like.

I'd want to recommend Better Cities as well, but it's complicated for someone new to how Oblivion mods work.

[Encino_Man]

So as not to spam with another thread I'll just continue discussing The Elder Scrolls series here.

So has anyone done the free Daggerfall download and playing the game? I have and it quite funny graphics wise. I can't say much since I just finally got out of the starting dungeon (took me around... 2-4hrs. to do so haha... at least it felt that way ). AAAAanyways, I'm just curious as to whether anyone else has been playing Daggerfall?

[Encino_Man]

Ouch!! I finally loaded up Oblivion and did not even get into the sewers before a CTD that told me the game just stopped working... I was just playing on vanilla so I can see the game before modding and was wondering if things like this were common? Of course unless it's my computer, which happened to run the game smoothly up until that moment where I clicked to enter the sewer

[ivan_the_terrible]

Bethesda got a lot of things wrong with Oblivion, but to give credit where it's due the game was quite stable and reasonably well-optimised. I have a crappy comp and I've experienced minimal CTDs.

[Encino_Man]

Ahhh okay. Well... considering I have a nameless graphics card (though it ran fine) I think I have your problem Do you have mods on yours?

[ivan_the_terrible]

Ahhh okay. Well... considering I have a nameless graphics card (though it ran fine) I think I have your problem Do you have mods on yours?

It's been a while since I played, but I had a few mods on mine. Not too many - I never went over 25. But even the big ones, like OOO, ran quite well.

[Encino_Man]

Cool!

As for my problem.. well. I found out that I need a new graphics card so I'm going to have to wait a while

[Cyrus the Virus]

Speaking of which, had quite a few CTD's lately with FCOM.
Well enough Oblivion is fast to load again.

Entering some doors in dungeons has had a nasty habit of crashing lately.
Good to have quicksave.

[Encino_Man]

Yeah, that's the biggest beef I've heard about FCOM is the CTD's.

[Turkeys!]

Most CTDs from FCOM are due to people screwing up the load order, or their computer can't handle it for longer periods of time. As long as you use BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting System) and double-check to make sure it is A-OK then you should be fine, though you should also make sure any other mods you use don't conflict with FCOM either.

[Cougar109]

Most CTDs from FCOM are due to people screwing up the load order, or their computer can't handle it for longer periods of time. As long as you use BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting System) and double-check to make sure it is A-OK then you should be fine, though you should also make sure any other mods you use don't conflict with FCOM either.

Nah, FCOM alone still has some serious performance and stability issues, when you start adding other mods on top of it it does have a tendency to break down and crash quite a bit even with BOSS and Wyre. I love FCOM, but I've had to go back to OOO/MMM otherwise I either have to pass on a lot of other mods I love or deal with constant lag and crashes.