Oblivion first time modded or vanilla

[Naraya]

The amount of butthurt in this thread is already hilarious, can't wait for more.

 

[octavius]

A proctologist could make a fortune on the RPG Codex.

 

[Kliwer]

With Oscuro's Overhaul the game is much better but still shit... But there are some very good adventure modules, which are worth play. So start from the OOO and add some adventure mods.

The best one is this: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/13714
Ivellon, sweet Ivellon... This mod alone is the best TES game ever made.... It clearly shows what this games COULD be... I am crying when I'm writting this worlds.

It is the signle best dungeon in first-person RPGs... so immersive... You could FEEL the atmosphere of gothic horror... The lore of the mod is great, there are clever riddles and some skill checks. The mod doesn't use map markers, so finding the way to the main dungeon, based on enigmatic clues and landscape signs, is a great adventure itself. Dungeon is entirely dark so torches are mandatory.

The whole game designed around features of this mod would be a marvel. But we have only this one dungeon. However this is high lavel adventure (>20 l.) so it is very likely that You will be bored with the main game until You will reach this masterpiece.

 

[Yosharian]

You piqued my curiosity. Shame I'd rather gouge out my eyeballs than suffer through Oblivion again

 

[lefthandblack]

Make sure to install Estrus.

 

[Lilura]

Every time someone mentions Oblivion, no one installs it.

 

[octavius]

Every time someone mentions Oblivion, someone installs Jagged Alliance 2.

 

[DalekFlay]

In almost any situation I would recommend an "as the developers designed it" playthrough first. In fact I rarely use mods at all other than simple tweaks to the HUD and stuff like that. However in Oblivion's case it really requires some kind of mod to deal with the horrible level scaling. Last time I played (which was a long fucking time ago) Obscurio's Overhaul was the one I used, and widely considered the best. I don't know if that's still the case. In any event, it made the game playable.

 

[SwordCoast]

So in an thread i saw this suggestion:
(MOO works with other overhauls. You can also setup MOO + OOO which is a popular setup. Though this guy comes with an alternative).

Did you consider Francesco + MOO + LAME + OblivionXP + rebalanced races? Its my setup and I am fairly happy.

Francesco adds lots of content and fixes the "world scales with you" problem (in my opinion) better than OOO. And, yes. In OOO At level 40-50 you dominate the whole game world; it's even explained in the readme.

LAME makes the defensive magic more interesting without making it overpowering. I admit, in this context OOO did a nice job too.

OblivionXP is another fix to the level up system that makes it similar to classic games like Baldurs Gate. I have to admit it's kinda "give up" as solution to the problems of Oblivion leveling, however I always found totally stupid that to train you need successes as it implies repeat and repeat simple actions. I find it unrealistic and immersion breaking; what kind of sense makes that an expert of Destruction needs to light matches to improve?

Rebalanced Races: makes select the race actually interesting making them different. No more: "Why should anyone not play a Breton/Atronach? A part of sense of challenge, I mean." "Oh, that's restricts a lot..."

I also use Realistic Health and Fatigue with more forgiving settings than the default so it's still make fights more interesting and give visual feedbacks, but it does not alter the vanilla game much outside fighting.

If you are interested I can share more about my setup, like .ini files or exactly that .esp files I used.

 

[Butter]

I can't speak to Francesco, LAME, or Rebalanced Races. MOO is good. Oblivion XP is good, although I think the person who wrote that has never touched Baldur's Gate. It's actually much closer to classic Fallout, in that you buy skill increases every level-up, and major skills are cheaper to upgrade than minor skills are.

 

[hello friend]

Skyrim is so dull you could sell it as telescope paint. Oblivion is unplayable without mods, but is a lot more charming and fun than Skyrim can ever hope to be. If you're modding in levitation you should get Open Cities to avoid glitches.

 

[SwordCoast]

Also here some modded Oblivion:

 

[octavius]

Also here some modded Oblivion:

Could have looked nice if not for that radioactive glare from Bloom (which is very easy to turn off BTW).

 

[Edija]

Vanilla of course, you'll appreciate mods more when you realize how bland vanilla Oblivion really is.

 

[thesheeep]

A proctologist could make a fortune on the RPG Codex.

What do you think DU does during the day?

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

A proctologist could make a fortune on the RPG Codex.

What do you think DU does during the day?

Hunting aboriginals?

 

[sputtering fart balloon]

Read between the lines of this thread. Your options are "I hate the game so play it modded so that you can still hate it like I did" or "Play it vanilla because life's too short to spend your time modding Oblivion."

 

[Doktor Best]

Play with Nehrim mod.

Either that or the uninstall mod.

 

[JDR13]

Normally i would directly play the game vanilla. Because i want to see the game from first hand what it is. For the knowledge of knowing the game etc. But this is oblivion so i can't decide. What do you think?

 

[ZagorTeNej]

Yes, i am gonna play Oblivion. First time ever. Only ES game i've played was Morrowind. So wanna see the rest. I know what kind of shit is Oblivion, read it tons of times everywhere. I also compiled a huge modlist both for graphics and gameplay. For visual side they make the game prettier than Skyrim. As for gameplay mods i guess it makes experience at least enjoyable.

Normally i would directly play the game vanilla. Because i want to see the game from first hand what it is. For the knowledge of knowing the game etc. But this is oblivion so i can't decide. What do you think?

Play it vanilla first so you can experience the original vision of the developers. Don't shy away from the light.

 

[Invictus]

the mods I used from my most recent playthrough, you might find a few useful:

• Balanced Creature Stats - Fixed Level Scaling: makes non-human creates have level-ranges instead of just infinitely scaling forever. https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49194
• Customizable Magic Progression: changes magic EXP to be based on cost so the best way to level up magic isn't just spamming cheap spells. https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/46533
• Bandits fight creatures: muh immersion, bandits and creatures will fight. https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/48673
• Enable unused idle dialogues, muh immersion: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/38466
• Better saves, self explanatory, I recommend editing the ini file and increasing the number of autosave slots to something much higher than 3: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/48106
• OBSE plugin that enables diagonal movement animations: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49067
• OBSE plugin that shows the real stats of items: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/31855
• OBSE plugin that makes Oblivion load BSAs like Skyrim fixing many, many loading issues with mods, mandatory: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49568
• Small UI mod that just resizes the menus/maps to make them better for modern screens. Keeps the entire original UI, no overhaul: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/48832
• OBSE plugin for more hotkeys: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34735
• Mod that allows you to place your own map markers and adds many more map markers, lots of customization(e.g., being able to unlock map markers further away if you climb up high): https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/26389
• OBSE plugin that simply adds "[Read]" next to the names of books after you've read them: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49195
• Mod that fixes the broken leveling system. There's a few that do it, but this one was made recently and is my favorite: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49173
• Harvest flora, just makes flora change their model after you harvest them, muh immersion: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/2037
• More unused dialogue, muh immersion: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/49664?tab=description
• Mod that tags NPCs as 'essential' when they begin traveling so they don't all end up dead: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45401
• OBSE Engine fixes plugin, mandatory: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/47085
• Unofficial patches, mandatory: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/5296 https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/9969 https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/10739

Mandatory for all creationengine games, Mator Smash: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/90987
Creates a smashed patch from your mods that fixes many record conflict issues between your mods, works surprisingly well.

Essentially just a bunch of minor gameplay tweaks and bugfixes are all you need.
The default leveling system is pants on head retarded. The one I suggested was (IMO) really well made and keeps the intention of the original system without being retarded like the original system.

Pretty good list

 

[Modron]

No neither kingcomrade option no vote.

 

[Azdul]

I recommend Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul. Makes a lot of good/interesting changes to the base game. However, it's still Oblivion at the end of the day - an irreparable dumpster fire that no amount of quality mods can salvage.

The good thing about Oblivion quests, characters and storyline is that with Maskars Oblivion Overhaul you can ignore it all, and play Oblivion like modern Daggerfall / roguelike doing randomly generated MOO quests. It also integrates quite nicely with other overhauls, like OOO and/or WAC, which provide much needed mobs and items diversity.

It is as good as it gets if you want to have more modern and nice-looking Daggerfall.

 

[Farewell young Prince into the night]

I recommend Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul. Makes a lot of good/interesting changes to the base game. However, it's still Oblivion at the end of the day - an irreparable dumpster fire that no amount of quality mods can salvage.

The good thing about Oblivion quests, characters and storyline is that with Maskars Oblivion Overhaul you can ignore it all, and play Oblivion like modern Daggerfall / roguelike doing randomly generated MOO quests. It also integrates quite nicely with other overhauls, like OOO and/or WAC, which provide much needed mobs and items diversity.

It is as good as it gets if you want to have more modern and nice-looking Daggerfall.

I somewhat agree with you, Azdul. Lots of mods certainly improve the experience of playing Oblivion. If you completely avoid all main-quests you are left with an adequate fantasy-hiking simulator. Unfortunately, even with a large list of game-changing mods, I always get the feeling that I shouldn't be playing a game where I'm actively avoiding swathes of banal content from the base game. I've never been able to mod Oblivion to the point of it no longer being Oblivion (same with Skyrim). Lipstick on a pig, yada-yada.

That being said, I think Oblivion easily ranks top 3 games to play stone-cold drunk on holidays with your friends/family.

 

[taxalot]

People are promising that you are going to have a terrible time because this game became so disliked it is legendary and has now become a meme.

It is amusing however how back then, most people who are not Codexers had an amazing time with it by their account.

Make of that what you will.