What are the must-have Oblivion Mods?

[Ubiquitous]

I bought Oblivion Game of the Year edition [includes the two expansion packs] yesterday. I have yet to install it because my new laptop is sitting in a delivery depot five miles away that is closed on a sunday [yes I went down even though I knew it was shut - I am very sad]. I won't be picking it up until tuesday night now, which gives me plenty of time to download all the famous Oblivion mods that I have heard so much about.

I realise there is a thread on this subject, but it is now out of date and hasn't been updated since GOTY was released.

Thus, what mods should I get to maximise my enjoyment of the game?

[Joviwan]

Exnem's female eyecandy body replacement and Natural Environments, both are pretty popular and easily found. There's oodles of packs that make all the clothing in the games Exnemized, too, their all found on TESSource, which is, coincidentally, probably the biggest mod sight ever for Oblivion+mods. However, Planet Elderscrolls usually has more detailed descriptions of mods, and they usually have pictures.

You can find Natural Enviroments, and two other must have mods, here, numbers 1-3 at the bottom.

I had an animation switcher that made the default idle weapons stances not gaytarded, but I've forgotten which. I'll post later if I remember.


EDIT: And now that I've told you about Exnem, I can't find it online anywhere, even after looking at the posts here.. I'll try to dig it up this evening, when I get back from visiting my grandma, and try to PM it or something, I dunno how it works. Unless someone points him in the right direction before I do.

[Ubiquitous]

Thanks for your help - how easy are these mods to install then?

[Joviwan]

pretty darn easy, actually. It's basically copy-pasting into the Data folder of the oblivion directory, and then you activate it from Oblivion's 'data files' mini-program. Alternatively, you get the Oblivion Mod Manager, which is infinitely superior, and also a must have, that I feel bad about forgetting until now.

[Covenant]

Look for Exnem's mods under the title "female eye candy". Honestly, they just look better and more natural, and I used the less busty version. There was a more moderate sized breast model out there. A lot of the people who do clothes for it are assholes who have no sense of fashion outside of "lol we can fucking make some titties poke out of the armor!!!1" and such, but there were a few set of clothes that were nice. Get the non-naked one unless you don't mind randomly nude women on occasion, as some NPC enemies spawn without complete armor coverage.

I recommend getting OOO.

And I heartily recommend the "no backwards running" mod, and the "no psychic guards" mod.

No backwards running is useful when you get OOO, as it stops people from running away from you at full speed, backwards, while throwing fireballs or shooting arrows. And best of all it stops YOU from doing it so you're not a whiny bitch constantly kiting people. Stand your ground and fight! Wussies deserve to die!

No psychic guards allows you to, say, kill someone in a house and not be caught unless the person inside made noise. Guards are annoying. They rush into places they couldn't have seen you, already aware of your crime even if it made no noise. Annoying.

[Shinova]

Any interface overhaul mod. BTMod is one, but I'm trying out Major Jim's UI soon, and is probably better. Get Streamline and Operation Optimization to speed up the game, and also get low-poly grass. Even if your system is a killer rig, the visual difference between normal and low-poly grass is not much and yet makes the game run faster. You may also consider short grass, which shrinks the heights of all the grass into something a little more realistic and also speeds up the game.

Get a better map of Cyrodil as well. I use Elven Cartographer's v2. Makes the map so much more appealing to look at.

Also if your system is a killer rig, you may also consider getting Qarl's texture pack which replaces pretty much every texture in the game with super-high-quality ones.

Any of the famous game balancing mods like the forementioned Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul or Francesco's mod. OOO completely changes the gameplay of Oblivion while Francesco's retains more of the original Oblivion style of gameplay but fixes the levelling issues. You can't lose with either mods.

There's also Martigen's Monster Mod if you want greater monster variety and behavior, and works with either OOO or Francesco's.

[Ubiquitous]

Wow, thanks a lot guys! This has been a great help, although I am slightly worried about compatibility problems - will all these mods be able to run at the same time without problems?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Wow, thanks a lot guys! This has been a great help, although I am slightly worried about compatibility problems - will all these mods be able to run at the same time without problems?

OOO is the most compatibility-unfriendly, but it's a fairly common standard so there are a few mods out there specifically designed around OOO. Other than that, you can use OBMM to change the load-orders of your mods, so you can choose which incompatibilities to throw out and which to keep. With a careful eye to what you're using and how you want Oblivion to play, you can get a pretty stable mod list without much difficulty.

[Covenant]

Also, OOO changes so much about the game that it's nearly stand-alone. It's up to you, from there, to decide what to add. I know that while I preferred to install a lot of difficulty-increasing mods so that I had as hard a game as possible, and thus I was the most justified in making obscenely powerful magical artifacts, other people find it more fun to go around and 'play' with the game rather than 'fight' it, and install such things as Sauron's Armor and Weaponry sets, flying dragon mounts, and so on.

The game eventually gets moronically easy, even with OOO's difficulty upgrades, and the only way to be challenged is to handicap yourself. I, for example, never used my 110 percent Chamelon armor, nor did I take sneak or marksman as skills. I also installed the no-backwards-run so you can't cheese-kite an enemy, and most of all, I never wore helmets. I liked seeing my female Paladin's long flowing hair anyway. I installed a wig mod!

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

I would so totally be with you on the no-helmet thing if Oblivion's characters didn't look like balls.

And this is with a face texture replacer, a facial upgrade mod, and a cosmetic hair/eye compilation mod.

[Covenant]

Really? I had some cool faces.

And yes, I know, that's a non-regulation piece of headgear there. The color, however, was done normally. It's a Nord, if you're interested. She was pretty even without the horns and shit, but I thought they added a very special something... it was certainly cool for a bit! I eventually remade the Dark Elf below as a Paladin, and played that through to the end. Certainly was a pretty Nord. I like the red skin.

Nice rack too.

I'd say that most of the male characters look like ass, but you can certainly fix 'em up if you try.



A normal human chick can be pretty too!

Dark Elf as a Golden Saint

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Damn son. Not half bad. I especially like the second pic.

EDIT: Which facial mods are you using, exactly?

[Covenant]

Damn son. Not half bad. I especially like the second pic.

EDIT: Which facial mods are you using, exactly?

I got Beautiful People, I think... I forgot, came with Ren's Beauty Pack or something to clean up all the goddamn ugly facial textures and replace them with higher rez ones.

Also, I make liberal use of saved games. Using Wrye Bash you can import faces from one savegame to another, so I'd download one that'd been edited a decent way, change the race (since they're nearly always goddamn mystic Elves or Bretons or some bullshit like that) and then fix them up from there manually. I'm an Animator, so I'm used to pulling goddamn facial bits around.

So to get a good face I,

1) Downloaded a Mod with Ren's Beauty Pack for High Rez Textures

2) Looked around for a face I liked in the Saved Games sections of the pages.

3) Used the Console to change their race/gender (when applicable, I s'pose!) and edit their attributes to my taste

4) Loaded the new face onto my old face using Wrye Bash.

There's also programs specifically for the painting/sculpting of Oblivion faces, but it only works properly in very specific lighting. Most of the time your characters will go from being pretty to being fuck ugly because the lighting in real life is shit and not very flattering. So I did my face-modding in ass light, indoors, so that I could get it to look nice without the extra help of the very well-manicured pics you see.

[Joviwan]

Damn, dude. Nice.

I'm running Ren's Beauty Pack and Elaborate Eyes 1.1 with Exnem's nude replacer (with someone's subtly jiggly nude breasts) as well as various scantily clad armor packs (So I can have Red Sonia wander around my pimp houses, 'cause she's my hoe). Yeah, yeah, running Mystic Elf right now, because I don't have the skill/patience to crank out an amazing face (I swear, they all come out looking the same, for me.), and all the faces I'd want to Wryebash all seem to be with mods I don't run. And I'm hesitant to run them, because I don't know what kind of conflicts might arise in my save game. I'm a wimp.

[Shinova]

Speaking of armor, have you tried the Dark Illusion armor for Exnem's? Pretty sweet, that one.

[Ubiquitous]

OK I have downloaded OOO 3.1 and I am installing it now [still haven't played yet]. I understand this changes pretty much everything? Is there anything that I MUST install now before I start a campaign?

[Seggybop]

The characters in Oblivion generally have the same average attractiveness as people you'd meet in the real world, though their features can be a bit exaggerated. A low population of especially attractive people makes sense, especially in a medieval setting. However, if you can't create a nice looking character yourself, it's not the game's fault.

If you're having trouble, try using the random face option until you get something vaguely acceptable, then go back and set the age slider to minimum, and then fine tune the appearance as you wish. This will usually produce an acceptable result if you don't want to spend any time.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

OK I have downloaded OOO 3.1 and I am installing it now [still haven't played yet]. I understand this changes pretty much everything? Is there anything that I MUST install now before I start a campaign?

Yeah, you probably want to install the latest OOO instead of 3.1 (3.2 RC4?). Changing OOO versions with a game in progress can get a little tricky.

[Ubiquitous]

OK I have downloaded OOO 3.1 and I am installing it now [still haven't played yet]. I understand this changes pretty much everything? Is there anything that I MUST install now before I start a campaign?

Yeah, you probably want to install the latest OOO instead of 3.1 (3.2 RC4?). Changing OOO versions with a game in progress can get a little tricky.

Can't find that anywhere mate, any help with a link?

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

It was RC3, my bad.