Getting back into Oblivion

[lazygecko]

I reinstalled Oblivion recently to give it another shot. I had some good times with it back when it was new, but it didn't hold my interest that well and I never considered it GOTY material. Bethesda's games are blessed though with having some of the most dedicated modding communities in the world, even Morrowind is still recieveing new high-quality content on a regular basis. So I decided to see how a modded Oblivion holds up now almost half a decade after release, and not surprisingly I'm having a blast.

Here are some external programs you ought to install before beginning to install mods:

Oblivion Mod Manager - Most of the more extensive mods often have pretty complex install instructions, and this tool is meant to make that a lot easier. Most of those mods are released in .omod format, which you open with this program and it will install them correctly for you. It will also warn of any potential compatibility issues between mods, which can be a godsend.

Oblivion Script Extender - This is a resource for modders which allows for more complex scripts/changes than what the game regularly allows. You just copy over the files to your root Oblivion folder, and from now on you launch the game using obse_loader.exe instead of Oblivion.exe

Now we get to the good stuff. First I'd like to list some mods that fundamentally alter the gameplay:

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul - This makes a buttload of changes, primarily altering the flow and progression, and adding new content like extra bosses in all the dungeons and stuff. It also makes the game a lot harder in general, much like the RPG's of old where you'd often run into monsters that are much higher level than you that you aren't meant to face yet, so be prepared to make a run for it. This thread has some useful tips that will help you survive early on and give you pointers on where you should and shouldn't go

Oblivion XP - Changes the leveling system to be clasically exp-based instead of Bethesda's skill-based system. I much prefer this progression system. You get exp from killing monsters, completing quests, exploring new areas, reading books, etc etc. You also ought to get this addon which also adds experience to Oscuro-specific stuff.

DarNified UI - Oblivion suffered from a console-ified interface that wasn't tuned to the strengths of a PC, resulting in a lot of needlessly large text and an absurd amount of inventory scrolling. This mod rectifies a lot of those problems, and there is also a tab which lets you configure the layout of the interface yourself. You can also get this addon which gives your UI a dark red color.

Custom 3rd Person View - This is one of the mods that utilizes the script extender. It lets you play from a Gears of War-esque 3rd person perspective which I find infinitely better than the vanilla 3rd person camera. It's not 100% perfect though, as the dialouge zoom-in gets a bit weird, and it makes your ranged aim not entirely as accurate (you'll get used to it). Still, I find this worthwhile and greatly enhances the experience. Your character animations don't look nearly as awkward either when the legs are obscured from view. I recommend using camera view 2.

Combat Sounds 300 - Simple. Makes the combat and weapon sounds much meatier.

Then there's naturally the tons of cosmetic and graphical enhancement mods to choose from. There's just way too many for me to bother listing, the bulk of which consists of cutesy anime elves. Some of the most basic stuff I can recommend (if your computer can handle it) are Qarl's hi-res textures and hi-res LOD textures. For the rest you can just browse TESNexus to your heart's content (set Organise to Downloads and Descending order to list the most popular mods first)

That's about what I am toying around with right now. Of course that's just the tip of the iceberg, there's tons more high-quality content to find. I'm planning to check out some new location mods like Lost Spires or Dune at some point.

Some general links that are helpful:

TESNexus: http://www.tesnexus.com/

PES: http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/

Bethesda's Oblivion mod forums is great for keeping up to date with the latest: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/25-oblivion-mods/

With all this amazing stuff available for free, it's no wonder I end up so jaded over what paid DLC generally offers.

[Binjovi]

I've been playing with modded Oblivion for quite some time now. I've yet to try Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. It's one of those big ones—along with FCOM and Martigen's Monster Mod— that change so much about the game that I'm still somewhat hesitant to use it.

Lost Spires is a very well done quest mod. I highly recommend it. Ruined Tail's Tale is another one that's pretty much a must-play at least once.

If I'm not mistaken, Dune isn't much more than a new worldspace. I'm not sure it's been updated in a while. You might want to try out Deserts of Anequina instead as it seems to be getting a good deal of support, and is actually a lore-friendly part of The Elder Scrolls series (a plus for me). Of course, there's no reason you can't try out both.

Though they have a few compatibility issues here and there, the Unique Landscapes series of mods is excellent for breathing some new life into Oblivion. It basically redesigns the various regions of Cyrodiil creating a larger variety of (and usually much nicer to look at) geographical locations. Probably the best part of the UL series is the fact that it's modular—you can pick which areas to install, and which to leave as the default areas. I think these have some problems with both Lost Spires and Ruined Tail's Tale, so you may want to try those out first.

[Dhsu]

Just picked up the GOTY Deluxe edition during the QuakeCon sale, so this thread is very timely for me. Thanks, Gecko!

[BardicKnowledge]

My current list of mods:

Natural Habitat/Water/Vegetation/Weather (HDR) by Max Tael -- all awesome.

SpellIconReplace.esp -- assigns each spell a separate icon, surprisingly useful.

Quest Award Leveller -- this makes it so you can complete quests whenever, as the rewards will scale with your level.

Clocks of Cyrodill -- Adds hundreds of working clocks (and clocktowers) into the game, many of which are extremely intricate and awesome looking. Very well done!

Harvest [Flora] -- When you pick up flowers, the petals / mushrooms / etc actually alter their appearence to show that they've been picked.

The Lost Spires -- a fanmade expansion that is all kinds of awesome. If you try only one mod that adds new content, make it this one.

As far as the official DLC is concerned, I highly advise buying the Knights of the Nine DVD used if you can get it, as it comes with everything for cheap. Short of that, I really enjoy Frostcrag Spire, Spell Tomes, the Orrery (largely because the game feels incomplete without it, as you can see the room but not enter it), and Knights of the Nine.

Edit: I forgot BTMod, which preserves the look of the original menus, but presents them at a resolution that doesn't suck so you can see a ton of items instead of just 6. If you're playing on PC and you don't have some sort of UI mod (BTMod, DarkUI, DarnifiedUI) you're really not getting the full experience.

[Brandon Strader]

I got this for Xbox360 with Knight of the Nine and the Shivering Isles DLC in the GOTY version, which was actually cheaper than the regular version at the time. I loved this game very much, and played through every single quest and visited every place I could. I spent about 100 hours in it which is more than any other game, I bet. I can't wait for V.

[Cinderwild]

I don't ever want to play a game you have to heavily modify to enjoy. I bought this and played it for a few hours and the first person I talked to about it started telling me about how you need to mod it and shoving all these download links down my throat.

[Brandon Strader]

You don't have to mod it to enjoy it... you'd have to be crazy to mod something that is already so exquisite. It's like putting ketchup on a steak.

[Ferret]

you put A-1 on steaks, not ketchup also make a Field Medic custom class. Wisdom and Endurance as key attributes, then your main skills are Alchemy, Athletics, Mysticism, Blade, Block, Restoration and Speechcraft.

That gives you a free Minor Detect Life and secondary effects to alchemical ingredients early on while also fortifying your ability to guard against attacks.

Of course you can do whatever the hell you want, that's why it's an RPG.

[Strike911]

you put A-1 on steaks

Amen to that bro.

[Brandon Strader]

The A-1 for this steak is Knight of the Nine and Shivering Isles.

[OverCoat]

I don't put anything on my steaks

because I cook them right

anyway yeah I modded the fuck out of my oblivion game, though it turned out to be like 15 GB so I deleted it after not playing it in forever. Once in a blue moon I'll reinstall everything though and play through again, and get lost in the world. I think modding works so well for the game because Oblivion is already a "complete" world, as in the base for everything is already there, vanilla just needed... more stuff. I got some mods that add like 300 more NPCs to the towns and the wilderness, for example, also children running in the street [who are damn near invincible and hard to catch, goddam!]

I should try running it again now that I have a monitor that does 1920x1200 and can probably run the game maxed out graphically, it'll probably look bloody amazing. I tried getting one of those new texture packs, and it looked like shit though, so I'm just gonna use the normal textures [also khajiit arms turned purple lol]

seconding the clocks mod and lost spires, that shit was great!

[BardicKnowledge]

I don't ever want to play a game you have to heavily modify to enjoy. I bought this and played it for a few hours and the first person I talked to about it started telling me about how you need to mod it and shoving all these download links down my throat.

Unfortunately, in the days of development for every platform simultaneously, if you want an experience that feels designed for the PC, you're largely going to have to go the extra mile yourself. It's a little bit of extra work, but the reward is very well worth it.

And once you've experienced the original game, you can use things like Obscuro's Overhaul (see the OP) to create an entirely new gaming experience -- something the console players have to live without.

[OverCoat]

yeah I feel bad for people who bought Morrowind and oblivion [and team fortress 2!] for the xbox. they're missing out on so much!

[Binjovi]

I got some mods that add like 300 more NPCs to the towns and the wilderness, for example, also children running in the street [who are damn near invincible and hard to catch, goddam!]

I should try running it again now that I have a monitor that does 1920x1200 and can probably run the game maxed out graphically, it'll probably look bloody amazing. I tried getting one of those new texture packs, and it looked like shit though, so I'm just gonna use the normal textures [also khajiit arms turned purple lol]

seconding the clocks mod and lost spires, that shit was great!

I'd like to know what NPC mod that was. The purple-armed Khajiit thing sounds a bit like a problem I had when I tried out some body model replacement mods. Argonian tails turned bright purple for me in addition to the Khajiit problem. I'm surprised to hear you say the texture pack looked bad. Qarl's Texture Pack makes the game absolutely beautiful in comparison. I believe this is the one I use. OMODs make things a breeze, and unless the author screwed something up—which usually results in them fixing the problem rather quickly—you shouldn't have any problems with incompatible/missing textures.

Oh, man. I totally forgot about the Clocks of Cyrodiil mod. Very cool stuff right there.

[Ferret]

Personally I just want to fix the faces so they're not so...weird. The heads and hands don't blend with the rest of the body's skin tone and it's very disconcerting. I suppose it's just me, though; several people have recommended the Beautiful People mod and I'm always like "which one there's like 20 of them". And they never specify

[Binjovi]

Personally I just want to fix the faces so they're not so...weird. The heads and hands don't blend with the rest of the body's skin tone and it's very disconcerting. I suppose it's just me, though; several people have recommended the Beautiful People mod and I'm always like "which one there's like 20 of them". And they never specify

Neck, hand and foot seams are not easy to get rid of so there are, sadly, very few options out there for completely dissolving the problem. Not even Beautiful People—which mostly just adds a lot of hair and eye options to character creation—can get rid of the seams; they're just reduced a bit by the new textures.

The real problem stems from the fact that the meshes for hands, feet, and faces are separate from the body. Because of this, a ridiculous amount of care has to be taken to even reduce this effect. Even if you manage to make a texture for the body that happens to perfectly line up with the hands, feet and head, the simple fact that they're separate meshes means that certain lighting conditions are going to make that seam quite obvious still.

I have seen a couple female body mods that have been built in such a way that the seams have been nearly entirely disposed of. There's a seamless version of the HGEC body—a very popular one with many new clothing and armor options—floating about on TES Nexus somewhere, and I believe the TGND body mod has virtually no seams as well. As for male bodies, Robert's is pretty much the only one (there are a couple variants, though) and it seems to be seamless from what I can tell.

As for fixing up the faces a bit, I tend to prefer Improved Facial Textures, though some swear by Facial Textures by Enayla, which are also pretty darn good. Another mod that, surprisingly, helps out a lot is the Vanilla Races With Eyelashes mod. You can probably guess what it does by it's name: it adds eyelash meshes to all the default races in the game, including all the NPCs.

I'm pretty sure Natural Faces can be stacked on top of the two texture mods listed above. While the face textures themselves improve the resolution of the textures, Natural Faces fixes a bit of the odd discolorations you get from weird tweaks of the color sliders.

I probably shouldn't be making this post any longer, but since I'm on the subject, the Tamriel's NPCs Revamped (TNR) mod may be to your liking. The goal of the project was to redesign every NPC face in the game, making each races' features stand out from the others. The result for a lot of them is quite good, and like the Unique Landscapes mod, each race is an individual package, so you can pick exactly which races you want to see given a makeover.

Using all of these things in conjunction has the slight potential of getting some things screwed up because they all deal with modifying similar aspects of the game. Even though it's tedious, I recommend applying each of them one at a time, and inspecting the game after each one to make sure you're not getting any problems, and if you are, which mod is the culprit. Some of these—the face texture-related ones in particular—are pretty old and have never had any updates, so they use older methods of applying them: namely, drag-and-drop archive invalidation. Make sure you're applying them in correct orders so as not to overwrite an important change you made earlier.

[Ferret]

yeah I sort of like oblivion mod manager and .omod files because it means I don't actually have to replace any files in the data folder. Although learning how to make omods from what I already have downloaded is a bit beyond my ability right now (Ferret is not good with technical stuff).

[lazygecko]

Awesome mod is awesome

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=30028

[kupernikus]

And off to purchase another copy of Oblivion just to run an oblivion style SM. haha.

[prophetik music]

i spent a lot of time playing this game, and really enjoyed it. can't play it on the 360, though, you've gotta play on the PC. totally different game.

i might have to dig into some of these mods. they look pretty good.

[Dhsu]

and if you can't run it on max settings look me up.

[Drack]

Speechcraft has to be one of the dumbest game mechanics in any game ever.

[Kenogu Labz]

I dunno. Speechcraft is good just because it's simple, and you don't have to spend hours learning to use it in order to accomplish what you need; your speechcraft level isn't even important, for the most part, as far as I can tell, as long as you can get their disposition high enough to get information out of them (except in the few cases where you have to bribe them higher).

Although I do feel sorry if you decided to make that one of your primary skills.

[kitty]

I dunno. Speechcraft is good just because it's simple, and you don't have to spend hours learning to use it in order to accomplish what you need.

Although I do feel sorry if you decided to make that one of your primary skills.

I feel sorry for myself too.

Anywho, is there a mod out there that makes it so that when you're level >> npc level you pretty much destroy them in one blow? It's frustrating to me that everything levels up with me.

[Ferret]

Speechcraft is used to improve disposition, and this is especially good for shopkeepers so you can get better deals on stuff. Not that you're ever going to be buying what they have to sell...