Rather than wade through years of posts on other message boards, I thought I would see if we have enough Oblivion players who can help me out here. I recently reloaded Oblivion, grabbed a fecal-load of mods, and promptly could not get the game to boot. So, here is where I’m hoping the Teeming Dozens (of Oblivion players) can help. Let me know what mods you like, hate, work, don’t work, and so on. Bonus no-prize to anyone who can speak to Vista compatability and Shivering Isles. I’m going to uninstall the game, clear the registry, and try again, and I’d like it to work this time.
The first mod I always install is Retroactive Health. It means I don’t have to worry about pumping stats early on.
Quickstart is a real time saver. It puts you at the end of the first dungeon, just before you leave the prison sewers. There’s a chest in front of you with all the items you would have got (no items that weren’t already in the dungeon) and you can still change all your character details.
Better Water. There are various mods changing the water. I find the default much too murky when underwater. Although the mod I use does have the occasional significant performance hit.
+5 Always ensures you always get +5 modifiers on stats when levelling up. I do think it’s a little overpowering, but the slight dissatisfaction that causes is outweighed by not having to worry about when to level up which skill.
DEJ Harvest - Flora. This mod improves on the herb/plant collecting part of the game. Basically when you pick a flower the plant disappears. it will respawn again later. It makes it much easier to clean out an area.
Living Economy. It was a long time since I installed this. I think it tries to make the economy more realistic.
Obscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul. Does what it says on the tin. It modifies many many parts of the game. Some good, some less so. I’d advise you to read the change list before installing it. I mainly installed it to get rid of the levelled list.
I have a couple of other mods but, to be honest, I don’t remember what they do anymore.
I could really do with a clean re-install myself. I’ll be keeping an eye on this thread for some good ideas.
The is a mod compatibility tool that you might need to use if you install a lot of mods. Some of them might be conflicting with each other.
I have Vista but don’t have the expansion yet, so I can’t help you there, sorry.
Thanks. I think OOO is what tanked my install, but it might be one of the other mods that had me replacing DLLs. Now I can’t start even with everything off. I’m thinking that I will reinstall and load one mod at a time, start the game, and then figure which one is breaking it.
Natural Environments. 1000x yes. This mod makes the trees huge, imposing, towering, with no performance penalty that I can see. Also enhances water and weather. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2536
Darker Nights - Makes the night darker, duh
Brighter Torches - obvious…
No Obsolete Enemies, Loot - As you level up, Oblivion will have you encounter different enemies and they’ll have better loot. So where did the wolves and rats and leather armor go? This mod keeps them in the game.
I found horses in Oblivion out-of-the-box to be rather useless. You can fast-travel to explored areas with or without a horse, and horses aren’t that good for exploring new areas since you have to get off the horse if you want to actually do something.
But after installing the Saddle Bags mod, horses suddenly become useful. The mod effectively turns your horse into a second backpack. You could load you horse with all the valuable junk you find in dungeons, which means less frequent visits to towns to sell it off. Or you could get your horse to carry specialised weapons and armour, so that you’re prepared if you find a dungeonful of incredibly strong monsters with inexplicable weaknesses to cold damage, for example.
If you decide to go for this mod, you’ll probably want to get CallSteed too. CallSteed allows you to summon your horse to your current location, which is useful when your horse inevitably wanders off with all your stuff.
I just reinstalled this Saturday (an all-day affair because I had to try it about four times to get it to work.) Turned out to be a corrupted oblivion.ini file. And first time, I tried with a ton of mods that promptly crashed my game, too. Carefully following the FCOM expanded load order got it working after the vanilla Oblivion install finally worked.
Besides the stuff for FCOM (OOO, MMM, Francesco’s, Bob’s Armory, Cobl), I have the Persuasion Overhaul, Keyring, Cliff_BetterLetters, Kyoma’s Journal Mod (requires OBSE), and I’m using both Harvest and Living Economy from OOO. About 92 working mods at the moment, and I’m slowly adding the rest of the immersion mods (hunger, thirst, real fatigue, weighted gold, sleep, etc.)
I haven’t added it back yet, but I really liked Thieves Arsenal.
I was always fond of Dwemer Spectacles. It doesn’t work for all faces, but it adds a number of glasses, spectacles, and goggles, all of which can be purchased from the jewelry store in the imperial city marketplace.
