A couple of pages back, someone asked me what mods I was currently running. As of 5 minutes ago (where I updated a few texture packs), this is what I have going...
Gameplay Mods:
- AF's Leveling Mod (completely redone, more natural leveling that thoroughly eliminates the cumbersome and un-fun micromanagment requirement to leveling instituted in Morrowind and continued in Oblivion. Since Oblivion ties all skills to a single attribute, the natural leveling mod will slowly augment your stats, on-the-fly, as you increment your skills, using the pre-existing skill->stat attribute ties. Major skills affect your stats MUCH more than minor skills, of course. Stat attributes and levels update on-the-fly, no resting required. New scripts take effect after the tutorial dungeon. Mod comes with a Ring of Choice that, when activated, creates a new menu allowing you to select from a large variety of different level-calculation formulae. Some are based off skill gains, some are based off attribute gains, some allow you to max all skills, others not, some allow you to cap out at level 50 or so, others at 35, etc. Very comprehensive, very thorough. Skills and levels largely increment at similar levels to standard Oblivion.)
- Skills & Needs Part 1 - Sleep (requires sleep of 6-8 hours every 24 hours, or suffer penalties and drains. Adds portable bedroll to many stores.)
- Skills & Needs Part 2 - Eat (requires characters to eat at 8am, 12pm, and 8pm. Will auto-eat if food in inventory.)
- Jarol's NPC Equipment Mod (completely revamps NPC leveled loot/drop lists. It's still scaled per level, but the higher level the goods, the RARER the drop. Daedric drops will now only happen 2 or 3% of the time. Iron and Steel are MUCH more common throughout the course of the game. Even makes Steel show up earlier in the game. Restore's Daggerfall's Daedric rarity and helps lessen endless glut of gold that becomes available later, due to excessive Daedric-equipment sales.)
- Auto Flora Harvest (somewhat buggy mod that will auto-harvest outdoor flora for ingredients, just by getting close enough to them. Has trouble handling clumps of 3 or more, however. If you approach a clump of 3 or more, it seems to only grab 2. You'll have to manually pick the rest yourself. Still, quite convenient! Also REMOVES the 3D model for all harvested flora (auto-harvested or manually), until those flora respawn a few days later!)
- Quest Award Leveling (Oblivion has a flaw, of sorts, where quest rewards are scaled to your level. This has the unfortunate effect of penalizing you for completing MANY quests early, as you'll miss out on the ultimate versions of a lot of the game's magical equipment, some of which are quite powerful and exciting! Many magical quest rewards have lv5, lv10, lv15, lv20, etc flavors, depending on YOUR level when you completed the quest. This mod will dynamically level all quest rewards as you gain in levels. I believe rewards kept in a chest at home will auto-level when you next pick them up, if applicable.)
- Guild Item Ownership (No more immediate looting of guild-houses or factions when joining organizations. Now all guild-items are tied to an associated rank, and only a guild-member of matching or higher rank can partake of said items. You must earn your rewards. Highest ranked members will be able to appropriate all goods, eventually. Also adds "Guild Storage" chests to Fighters and Mages Guilds, allowing you to SAFELY store items there, at least until you purchase a home.)
- Bounty Reduction Over Time (pops a message when you become a wanted criminal and have a bounty. Bounties now reduce over (real) time, IF you manage to avoid the initial 2-minute heat period. Bounty of 5 takes about 7 real-time minutes to fade. Bounty of 40 about 36 real-time minutes. Bounty of 1000+ about 3 real-time hours, etc. Simulates the idea of a case growing cold, without leads, and being dropped for more current/pressing crimes.)
- Fast Home Travel (drops a magical ring on the floor of the hovel you can buy in Imperial City. When activated, it opens up a prompt allowing you to teleport to various locations you can CURRENTLY occupy. Will not grant you access to homes or locations you haven't yet earned yourself. Doesn't yet capture them all. One-way trip only.)
- Mark & Recall (adds two new spells restoring this beloved functionality from Daggerfall. Essentially, Mark will errr, mark the location you cast it in, and Recall will teleport you back there. Like in Daggerfall, it can fail and will still drain magicka upon failure. Cannot be cast during combat, for game-balance reasons.)
- Call Steed & Saddle Bags (allows you to purchase new call/summon steed spells and adds saddle bags to horses, ala Daggerfall. Seems slightly glitchy with initial installation of Horse Armor Pack, but there is a workaround, if you have yet to install Bethsoft's first official mod.)
- Increased Training Allowance (removes the 5 trains per level cap. Not game-breaking since training is largely cost prohibitive and I've yet been actually able to AFFORD 5 trains per level at all. Currently level 6. It's really for later-game training, allowing you to "catch up" with the training you missed out earlier in the game due to a lack of funds.)
- TF Timemod (default = 1 real-world minute : 30 in-game minutes ratio. Allows you to switch to a 1:20, 1:10, or 1:1 ratio. I'm using 1:20.)
- Light Elven & Mithril Equipment (restores classic fantasy convention of Elven and Mithril metals being significantly lighter than Dwarven, etc.)
- Gem Price Fix (doesn't spawn more gems, but makes each type of gem more valuable.)
- Lighter Alchemy Ingredients (makes food and ingredients lighter. A must for S&N2 - Eat and Auto Flora Harvest mods.)
- Buy Lockpicks (adds merchant that sells lockpicks. Great for non-members of the Thieves Guild.)
- Lower Echant Recharge Cost (self-explanatory. Default cost is exorbitant.)
- Trainer Book (adds a new book to the gameworld listing the details and locations of all of the game's skill trainers. You can safely take this book without worry of stealing and keep it with you for reference. I believe it even weighs nothing.)
- Oblivion Horse Armor Mod (first of 3 official mods to be developed by Bethsoft and sold as premium content. PC versions seem to be slightly cheaper than Xbox versions of premium content. Uh... adds 2 kinds of horse armor. Total waste of money.)
Graphics Mods:
- BT Mod (complete GUI overhaul. Smaller fonts to fit 2-3x the amount of inventory and skill information in their respective menus. Optional Customization Package available as well. Contains various options for view higher rez, more zoomed-out overworld maps (yes!!). Contains various options for tweaking in-game HUD as well. Compatible with the amazing Color Map Mod. Absolutely indispensible, as it removes a lot of the default GUI and HUD clutter.)
- Color Map Mod (recolors the default map according to region. Very professionally done, and purposefully made compatible with BT Mod's map-resizing functionality for a zoomed out, larger map view.)
- Crosshair Size Reduction (self-explanatory. Makes game look less "console-ish". Sorry Xbox fans.)
- No Outdoor Area Notification (created this mod myself. Entirely removes common "Loading Area" notification when exploring wilderness.)
- Prompt at Two Items (when buying or selling pairs of items, prompts you to buy/sell all, as if you were doing 3 or more.)
- Jarrod's Oblivion Terrain Texture Mod (a huge graphics pack, plus 2 smaller "patch" packs that include hi rez textures for the up-close terrains. Affects all roads, grasses, cobblestones, dungeons, etc, but does NOT affect objects such as trees, signs, rocks, etc. Yet. One or two specific textures look off, but in general, this looks SICK and is fully compatible with the LOD terrain and normal map retextures contained in this list. Jarrod is rather famous for his Morrowind retextures, years ago. He wasted no time.)
- Landscape LOD Texture Replacement (two separate packs that significantly upgrade the look of distant terrain when LOD is enabled. Gets rid of the hideous, low rez green blobs of land. Pack 1 retextures the central regions. Pack 2 does the same for the border regions.)
- Landscape LOD Normal Maps Replacement (replaces the normal maps for distant terrain, when LOD is enabled. Looks great and is wonderful compliment to the Landscape LOD Texture Replacement mod.)
- Better Night Sky (includes 4 different, higher rez moon texture options, all of which remove the jarring "black border" around the moons. Also includes an enhanced nebula star arrangement which looks beautiful.)
- Beautiful Stars (redoes the rest of the stars, seemingly without conflicting with the moon and nebula mod listed here. Night sky has more detail, major TES constellations are now highlighted, and there's a nice twinkling effect in play. Looks gorgeous and dynamic. High AA seems to diminish the twinkling.)
- Short Grass (halves the height of terrain grass, improving performance significantly without seriously compromising visual lushness. Works great for seeing harvestable ingredients and wolves/rats in the wild!)
- Better Gold Textures (high rez re-texture for gold coins.)
- Better Water (improves look of water, underwater and otherwise. Tweaks opacity and underwater fogging.)
- Magic Effect Dim (halves the aura effect of spells and enchanted weaponry, doing much to minimize the garish, glowy saran-wrap effect of default settings.)
- Oblivion Cats (adds a bunch of new creatures to Oblivion's cities. Street cats!)
INI & Miscellaneous Tweaks:
- Enabled Screenshots
- Disabled start-up logos and cinematics. Game loads straight to main menu.
- Lowered grass density but GREATLY expanded grass range. Looks better, much less grass pop-in, and a slight boost to framerate. Can't complain.
- By default, game mirrors terrain on water surface. Tweaked INI to have water surface also mirror trees, static objects, miscellaneous objects, and actors.
- Enabled a colored (green to red) health bar above enemies' heads, instead of the mono-scale health bar a top crosshairs.
- Increased Pre-Load, which benefits high-RAM systems with a slight performance increase.
- Got a No-CD crack to keep my CE DVD packed away and free from harm, and reduce drive wear & tear.
All mods tested with Oblivion Mod Manager 0.5.2 and deemed compatible with each other. Should you decide to use any retexture mods, make sure to download and run the ArchiveInvalidation.txt Auto-Generation Tool which will scan your game folders and create a valid and comprehensive ArchiveInvalidation.txt file. This file overrides Oblivion's tendency to IGNORE some or all of the installed upgraded textures and use the generic textures from the game archive.
Woo woo folks. PC version is indeed the definitive edition!
Gameplay Mods:
- AF's Leveling Mod (completely redone, more natural leveling that thoroughly eliminates the cumbersome and un-fun micromanagment requirement to leveling instituted in Morrowind and continued in Oblivion. Since Oblivion ties all skills to a single attribute, the natural leveling mod will slowly augment your stats, on-the-fly, as you increment your skills, using the pre-existing skill->stat attribute ties. Major skills affect your stats MUCH more than minor skills, of course. Stat attributes and levels update on-the-fly, no resting required. New scripts take effect after the tutorial dungeon. Mod comes with a Ring of Choice that, when activated, creates a new menu allowing you to select from a large variety of different level-calculation formulae. Some are based off skill gains, some are based off attribute gains, some allow you to max all skills, others not, some allow you to cap out at level 50 or so, others at 35, etc. Very comprehensive, very thorough. Skills and levels largely increment at similar levels to standard Oblivion.)
- Skills & Needs Part 1 - Sleep (requires sleep of 6-8 hours every 24 hours, or suffer penalties and drains. Adds portable bedroll to many stores.)
- Skills & Needs Part 2 - Eat (requires characters to eat at 8am, 12pm, and 8pm. Will auto-eat if food in inventory.)
- Jarol's NPC Equipment Mod (completely revamps NPC leveled loot/drop lists. It's still scaled per level, but the higher level the goods, the RARER the drop. Daedric drops will now only happen 2 or 3% of the time. Iron and Steel are MUCH more common throughout the course of the game. Even makes Steel show up earlier in the game. Restore's Daggerfall's Daedric rarity and helps lessen endless glut of gold that becomes available later, due to excessive Daedric-equipment sales.)
- Auto Flora Harvest (somewhat buggy mod that will auto-harvest outdoor flora for ingredients, just by getting close enough to them. Has trouble handling clumps of 3 or more, however. If you approach a clump of 3 or more, it seems to only grab 2. You'll have to manually pick the rest yourself. Still, quite convenient! Also REMOVES the 3D model for all harvested flora (auto-harvested or manually), until those flora respawn a few days later!)
- Quest Award Leveling (Oblivion has a flaw, of sorts, where quest rewards are scaled to your level. This has the unfortunate effect of penalizing you for completing MANY quests early, as you'll miss out on the ultimate versions of a lot of the game's magical equipment, some of which are quite powerful and exciting! Many magical quest rewards have lv5, lv10, lv15, lv20, etc flavors, depending on YOUR level when you completed the quest. This mod will dynamically level all quest rewards as you gain in levels. I believe rewards kept in a chest at home will auto-level when you next pick them up, if applicable.)
- Guild Item Ownership (No more immediate looting of guild-houses or factions when joining organizations. Now all guild-items are tied to an associated rank, and only a guild-member of matching or higher rank can partake of said items. You must earn your rewards. Highest ranked members will be able to appropriate all goods, eventually. Also adds "Guild Storage" chests to Fighters and Mages Guilds, allowing you to SAFELY store items there, at least until you purchase a home.)
- Bounty Reduction Over Time (pops a message when you become a wanted criminal and have a bounty. Bounties now reduce over (real) time, IF you manage to avoid the initial 2-minute heat period. Bounty of 5 takes about 7 real-time minutes to fade. Bounty of 40 about 36 real-time minutes. Bounty of 1000+ about 3 real-time hours, etc. Simulates the idea of a case growing cold, without leads, and being dropped for more current/pressing crimes.)
- Fast Home Travel (drops a magical ring on the floor of the hovel you can buy in Imperial City. When activated, it opens up a prompt allowing you to teleport to various locations you can CURRENTLY occupy. Will not grant you access to homes or locations you haven't yet earned yourself. Doesn't yet capture them all. One-way trip only.)
- Mark & Recall (adds two new spells restoring this beloved functionality from Daggerfall. Essentially, Mark will errr, mark the location you cast it in, and Recall will teleport you back there. Like in Daggerfall, it can fail and will still drain magicka upon failure. Cannot be cast during combat, for game-balance reasons.)
- Call Steed & Saddle Bags (allows you to purchase new call/summon steed spells and adds saddle bags to horses, ala Daggerfall. Seems slightly glitchy with initial installation of Horse Armor Pack, but there is a workaround, if you have yet to install Bethsoft's first official mod.)
- Increased Training Allowance (removes the 5 trains per level cap. Not game-breaking since training is largely cost prohibitive and I've yet been actually able to AFFORD 5 trains per level at all. Currently level 6. It's really for later-game training, allowing you to "catch up" with the training you missed out earlier in the game due to a lack of funds.)
- TF Timemod (default = 1 real-world minute : 30 in-game minutes ratio. Allows you to switch to a 1:20, 1:10, or 1:1 ratio. I'm using 1:20.)
- Light Elven & Mithril Equipment (restores classic fantasy convention of Elven and Mithril metals being significantly lighter than Dwarven, etc.)
- Gem Price Fix (doesn't spawn more gems, but makes each type of gem more valuable.)
- Lighter Alchemy Ingredients (makes food and ingredients lighter. A must for S&N2 - Eat and Auto Flora Harvest mods.)
- Buy Lockpicks (adds merchant that sells lockpicks. Great for non-members of the Thieves Guild.)
- Lower Echant Recharge Cost (self-explanatory. Default cost is exorbitant.)
- Trainer Book (adds a new book to the gameworld listing the details and locations of all of the game's skill trainers. You can safely take this book without worry of stealing and keep it with you for reference. I believe it even weighs nothing.)
- Oblivion Horse Armor Mod (first of 3 official mods to be developed by Bethsoft and sold as premium content. PC versions seem to be slightly cheaper than Xbox versions of premium content. Uh... adds 2 kinds of horse armor. Total waste of money.)
Graphics Mods:
- BT Mod (complete GUI overhaul. Smaller fonts to fit 2-3x the amount of inventory and skill information in their respective menus. Optional Customization Package available as well. Contains various options for view higher rez, more zoomed-out overworld maps (yes!!). Contains various options for tweaking in-game HUD as well. Compatible with the amazing Color Map Mod. Absolutely indispensible, as it removes a lot of the default GUI and HUD clutter.)
- Color Map Mod (recolors the default map according to region. Very professionally done, and purposefully made compatible with BT Mod's map-resizing functionality for a zoomed out, larger map view.)
- Crosshair Size Reduction (self-explanatory. Makes game look less "console-ish". Sorry Xbox fans.)
- No Outdoor Area Notification (created this mod myself. Entirely removes common "Loading Area" notification when exploring wilderness.)
- Prompt at Two Items (when buying or selling pairs of items, prompts you to buy/sell all, as if you were doing 3 or more.)
- Jarrod's Oblivion Terrain Texture Mod (a huge graphics pack, plus 2 smaller "patch" packs that include hi rez textures for the up-close terrains. Affects all roads, grasses, cobblestones, dungeons, etc, but does NOT affect objects such as trees, signs, rocks, etc. Yet. One or two specific textures look off, but in general, this looks SICK and is fully compatible with the LOD terrain and normal map retextures contained in this list. Jarrod is rather famous for his Morrowind retextures, years ago. He wasted no time.)
- Landscape LOD Texture Replacement (two separate packs that significantly upgrade the look of distant terrain when LOD is enabled. Gets rid of the hideous, low rez green blobs of land. Pack 1 retextures the central regions. Pack 2 does the same for the border regions.)
- Landscape LOD Normal Maps Replacement (replaces the normal maps for distant terrain, when LOD is enabled. Looks great and is wonderful compliment to the Landscape LOD Texture Replacement mod.)
- Better Night Sky (includes 4 different, higher rez moon texture options, all of which remove the jarring "black border" around the moons. Also includes an enhanced nebula star arrangement which looks beautiful.)
- Beautiful Stars (redoes the rest of the stars, seemingly without conflicting with the moon and nebula mod listed here. Night sky has more detail, major TES constellations are now highlighted, and there's a nice twinkling effect in play. Looks gorgeous and dynamic. High AA seems to diminish the twinkling.)
- Short Grass (halves the height of terrain grass, improving performance significantly without seriously compromising visual lushness. Works great for seeing harvestable ingredients and wolves/rats in the wild!)
- Better Gold Textures (high rez re-texture for gold coins.)
- Better Water (improves look of water, underwater and otherwise. Tweaks opacity and underwater fogging.)
- Magic Effect Dim (halves the aura effect of spells and enchanted weaponry, doing much to minimize the garish, glowy saran-wrap effect of default settings.)
- Oblivion Cats (adds a bunch of new creatures to Oblivion's cities. Street cats!)
INI & Miscellaneous Tweaks:
- Enabled Screenshots
- Disabled start-up logos and cinematics. Game loads straight to main menu.
- Lowered grass density but GREATLY expanded grass range. Looks better, much less grass pop-in, and a slight boost to framerate. Can't complain.
- By default, game mirrors terrain on water surface. Tweaked INI to have water surface also mirror trees, static objects, miscellaneous objects, and actors.
- Enabled a colored (green to red) health bar above enemies' heads, instead of the mono-scale health bar a top crosshairs.
- Increased Pre-Load, which benefits high-RAM systems with a slight performance increase.
- Got a No-CD crack to keep my CE DVD packed away and free from harm, and reduce drive wear & tear.
All mods tested with Oblivion Mod Manager 0.5.2 and deemed compatible with each other. Should you decide to use any retexture mods, make sure to download and run the ArchiveInvalidation.txt Auto-Generation Tool which will scan your game folders and create a valid and comprehensive ArchiveInvalidation.txt file. This file overrides Oblivion's tendency to IGNORE some or all of the installed upgraded textures and use the generic textures from the game archive.
Woo woo folks. PC version is indeed the definitive edition!
