10 replies to this topic

[Donkeymog]

This is serious business right here.

Brief: So despite being a massive fan of Morrowind I've never given Oblivion much of a go. There are many reasons for this, most of which can be traced back to stubborn ideological notions, but I have decided to give Oblivion one last chance to impress me. To truly give Oblivion the chance to show me the errors of my way I will need to have it running at peak performance. And so I come to you guys to ask your advice in selecting which fan mods will benefit me.

And I'd particularly like to hear from Invince as there is no-one's opinion I trust more on such crucial matters.

[Vicious Parker]

Oh my. Well, I'll start with mods, since you asked... No sense in getting all riled up just yet. Try these on for size. I never got in to the big game changing mods (they almost always made the game unstable for me), so usually it's just the little things that I liked.

http://planeteldersc...w...ail&id=1546

This mod will help alleviate, but not remove, one of the biggest annoyances of the game.

And wow, I forgot about this. I was looking for a bunch of mods I used to use, and most of the important ones are all in here:

http://planeteldersc...w...tail&id=540

Sorry that the download is a little large, because for some reason it includes the Oscuro mod (meh). But, from that, I suggest you use:

Attack and Hide and No Psychic Guards if you intend to be sneaky at all.
Darker Dungeons and Darker Nights actually make a pretty huge difference. Recommended.
BTMod is a must.
Marker Explore is a DOUBLE must. It makes you earn your fast travel, and makes the tiny world feel just a little bit bigger.
The rest are kinda eh, but some are fun.

I just found this mod that looks amazing, but I no longer have oblivion, so...
http://planeteldersc...w...ail&id=2806

Most of all though, I have three pieces of advice for playing Oblivion:

1) Play it til you're bored. If you're having fun, keep enjoying it. I could never find the replayability that Morrowind had. It just isn't there. But I did have more fun with Oblivion than some games I have.

2) Just... just don't talk to people unless you have to. Nothing will ruin your game faster than the damn voice acting and bland NPCs.

3) A good alternative would be to install Morrowind again, and this: http://www.tesnexus....ile.php?id=5535 . It's beautiful.

[Donkeymog]

3) A good alternative would be to install Morrowind again, and this: http://www.tesnexus....ile.php?id=5535 . It's beautiful.

You're a step ahead of me. Just before I started uni I got Morrowind running with that mod and a mod that added grass and trees (that were actually very purdy). It was looking amazing but I decided that it'd be an idea to play Oblivion first before getting settled into Morrowind again.

I'll be sure to download all the mods you mentioned, especially the no pants one. I'll also download the upgraded texture pack because my rig is pretty pimpin' at the moment and so I want to make Oblivion as pretty as possible.

Also have you tried this one out: http://planeteldersc...w...tail&id=376

Also I noticed you mention one that cancels out the levelling on quest rewards. Is it a good idea to look for one that cancels out the levelling on the mobs too?

[Donkeymog]

The epic quest has begun!
 epic.jpg   567.56K   29 downloads
Boy does it look ugly, I'm going to have to go to work on this.

I'm not impressed with 47 fps either. I get a solid 60 with Fallout 3. So I'll need to look into that. There's also some unsettling jittering going on even when the framerate is a stable 60, not sure what could cause that.

So far I've installed the expansion and the official plugins as well as the unofficial patches. I've also made some dubious oblivion.ini modifications of my own reckoning. Finally, anti-aliasing was disabled so I could take the screenshot. And HDR and Bloom are disabled because they irk me.

[kspr]

just out of curiosity, why did you pick a Nord as your race?

[Donkeymog]

just out of curiosity, why did you pick a Nord as your race?

Actually he's an Imperial and his name is Douchebag McGhee.

I just ran through the opening sewers as quickly as possible so I could test my exterior framerate. I made a save game just before I leave the sewers so when I want to start properly I can just load it up and quickly assign my class, starsign and race.

I have just started a new game playing as a Dunmer Battlemage. But I'm sure I'll probably start a new character once I have a firmer grip on how skills have changed since Morrowind.

[Vicious Parker]

Natural environments is pretty good. Subtle, and not always perfect, but it helps.

Also, I would suggest this to help a bit with the distant graphics. If that one doesn't work well, there are lots of mods like it (all with "viewable when distant" in the title somewhere) that should.

I only tried a few of the mods that altered enemy leveled lists, but like the full conversion mods, they always seemed to make the game unstable for reasons unknown to me.

The best alternative that I had ever found was, during character creation, chose only skills that you will NEVER EVER use ever, and then just stay at level 1 for the entirety of your play through the game. You still progress because your skills will raise with use, but you don't get more hit points or endurance or that like, without enchantments anyway. And it will prevent you from getting some of the deadra quests (though, that's easy to mod, or to find a mod for), but at least the random enemies never feel..... stupid.

[Donkeymog]

Also, I would suggest this to help a bit with the distant graphics. If that one doesn't work well, there are lots of mods like it (all with "viewable when distant" in the title somewhere) that should.

I played around with this for a while but I don't think I got it working properly. I noticed a drop in framerate but I can't see any difference so I guess I bodged the installation somewhere. I might try again later, but I'm starting to let the dodgey looking distant landscapes slide for now.

The interface is really annoying me, I really wish I could use Morrowind's inventory and quest log etc. They weren't perfect but they were optimized for PC and not console which makes a huge difference.*

I might try some levelling mods after I've gained a few levels and got a feel for how the scaling works a bit better. At the moment I'm finding something about the quests really tedious. Mayhaps it's the voice-acting. The more I play Oblivion the more I want to be playing Morrowind.

*Edit: I've installed BTMod, which helps - but is still not great.

[Monkeydog]

So I'm trying to play Oblivion for the first time ever (kinda)

And I was wondering why you said meh at the Oscuros mod Invince. I was thinking of installing it.

[Vicious Parker]

Stability. It made my game crash like CRAZY. And i mostly had a stable experience with Oblivion (after a computer upgrade, of course).

[Kyle]

/>The epic quest has begun!
 epic.jpg   567.56K   29 downloads
Boy does it look ugly, I'm going to have to go to work on this.

I'm not impressed with 47 fps either. I get a solid 60 with Fallout 3. So I'll need to look into that. There's also some unsettling jittering going on even when the framerate is a stable 60, not sure what could cause that.

So far I've installed the expansion and the official plugins as well as the unofficial patches. I've also made some dubious oblivion.ini modifications of my own reckoning. Finally, anti-aliasing was disabled so I could take the screenshot. And HDR and Bloom are disabled because they irk me.

MY GOD! THE GRAPHICS!!!! IT BURNS! Well, back in the day people loved and looked at that like BluRay.