It started some months ago, and since Skirim is coming, the urge is stronger than ever. I really need to play Oblivion again, but as I was really disappointed with vanilla, I don't know which mods to start with.

I've always wanted to try OOO, but there's one step I can't figure to understand : Wrye Bash and its patch options. Man, before, you just had to install a mod. Now you have to install them in a very specific order, and "wrye bash" everything. Is it really necessary ? And if yes, why ?

Anyway, I've also foung a link to a blog describing a good way to mod Oblivion. I think I gonna go with that one : Oblivion modding guide by Knots. Many hours of work to come...


And you, which mods do you use, and why ?

Try Nehrim
A free total conversion with roughly 60 hours playtime (for the MQ), and more than 140 h to get everything.

It's a limitation of the modding interface presented by Bethesda. Basically, if you use more than one mod at a time, you'll have conflicts, incompatibilities, and undefined results. For this reason, TES modders have developed tools that can solve the conflicts and allow mods to coexist. Several tools have been made for Morrowind, and the best of them (learning from the mistakes of the others and written with a greater understanding of the system internals) was Wrye Mash. Wrye Bash is its Oblivion adaptation.

Mash and Bash also allow to clean and repair saves when you decide to remove mods from your list.

The exact nature of the various problems is explained on the Wrye Bash site.

Knots' guide looks like good stuff. I think I used most of what's shown on there, though I used only OOO+MMM instead of FCOM and I didn't install too many of the item replacers. Rather than Open Cities, I used Open Cities Reborn, which redesigns several cities to create more interesting and/or more logical layouts.

It's worth checking out The Ayleid Steps. It's a quest/dungeon/travel mod involving an Ayleid teleport network powered by welkynd stones. Epic fun.

I see he lists Immersive Interiors in the guide. That one's interesting. It adds modelled areas outside many windows so you can see through them (minus the people moving around). It also causes the weather to affect lighting indoors (or is that the other part of the mod?). That part is cool, but it does kill most of the darkness indoors during the day and has a funny bug where the sunlight comes from the wrong direction if the interior cell was built in the construction set with a different orientation than the world (eg. the temple in Skingrad is the only one with correct sunlight because despite facing different directions, all the temples get the same sunlight).

i use the unofficial oblivion patch. it fixes the challenge issue and it makes the game more like Morrowind except with less OMG HIT THE DAMN CRAB!!!!!