Oblivion Modding Guide 2019
Thomas
You cannot copy any of the contents of this guide onto your website or anywhere else. This guide tries to update regularly, so simply provide a link to it instead of copying the contents of it to somewhere.
Redistribution is strictly forbidden. This means do not copy this guide or its files to anywhere under any circumstances.
Thanks to Bevilex, whose guide informed me and many others about several incredible graphical mods, many of which are listed in this guide.
Thanks to wakkoswami aka 'Astien' on STEP for some mods on his guide which I learned about through him, and his Multi Purpose GUI instructions.
Thanks to junkacc for giving me permission to host their Seamless MOO Equipment module here which is no longer available due them personally removing it from Nexus some time ago.
Thanks to Xelus for allowing me to post a mirror link to the no longer available mod of his/hers that they chose to remove from Nexus, High Quality Snowflakes, so that it can continue to be used in this guide.
Thanks to laulajatar for her All Natural Interiors Rain FPS Patch.
Thanks to RobinHood70 for allowing me to post a mirror link to the no longer available mod of his that he chose to remove from Nexus, Even Oddities, so that it can be used in this guide.
Thanks to malautomedonte and Pherim for their Multi Purpose GUI help.
Thanks to Lazaro for their many edits to mods that I used in this guide.
Thanks to qwertyasdfgh for Av Latta Magicka - Oblivion Magic Overhaul.
Thanks to David Brasher for his open permissions to modify and rehost his Dungeons of Blackwood mod.
Thanks to zzyma for Rebalanced and Unleveled Quest Gold Rewards.
Thanks to Mainframe for giving me permission to modify and upload Deadlands.
Thanks to Lingwei for giving me permission to modify and upload The Lost Spires AI.
Thanks to Yinsolaya for their Oblivion Reloaded Combined(ORC) presets.
Thanks to all the Oblivion mod authors in this guide for making great mods, and to all Oblivion modders in general for keeping Oblivion alive.
Thanks to all those who suggested mods and left feedback and criticisms, for helping the guide in some form.
Seamless MOO Equipment credits:
Exotic Ayleid armor:
Little Baron
Nephenee13 (HGEC and DMRA conversion)
Dragonessa (TGND conversion)
Bonemold armor:
Ghogiel
Nephenee13 (HGEC and DMRA conversion)
Lich Kings Armor:
jojjo
Nephenee13 (Vanilla, HGEC and DMRA conversion)
Dragonessa (TGND conversion)
Silverlight Armor
jojjo
Nephenee13 (Vanilla, HGEC and DMRA conversion)
Dragonessa (TGND conversion)
AlienSlof (male version)
Darigaz17 (chainmail version)
NPR (chainmail texture)
I'm looking for an updated and as recent as possible, guide to modding Oblivion. I am using MO2 and know zero about modding Oblivion, so I'm looking for something that will hold my hand and walk me through it step by step, from the beginning. My preference would be a written guide, but again something that is at a VERY beginner like level. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
This guide was last revised in 2019, but now that we're over halfway into 2023 as of the time of writing, I've had an epiphany; Less Is More. There are too many buggy and tedious mods on this list for me to feel comfortable recommending them, so therefore it's time to do another revision yet again! With that being said, I ask that you please wait or use another guide until the 'Under Construction' header is removed from this page and the Steps are all in order again. You can consider the original 2015 pastebin guide version 1, the 2019 revision initially on this website version 2, and this 2023 update as version 3.0!
Also, please note that while this is definitely a guide that can be used by anyone, including modding beginners, you may be spoiled on most aspects of the game if you've never played it before, but this guide assumes that you have. If you're completely new to Oblivion (or even the TES series in general) I recommend starting completely vanilla with no mods at all, other than perhaps a few essentials like the Unofficial Patches if you're feeling adventurous, and after playing through the game to your satisfaction (you don't have to 100% it, just finish the main quest and all the guild questlines) you can then follow the guide.
As with every other game guide on my site, know that this is a comprehensive modding guide, meaning that we will address nearly every category of content with as many mods as necessary, while minimizing hiccups and conflicts. We will be enhancing gameplay, graphics, quests, immersion, stability, and much, much more - all while maintaining lore-friendliness throughout the process. While I wouldn't consider my aim to be achieving a 'Vanilla+' experience, it's certainly not over-the-top in my humble opinion.
It's not difficult to get a copy of Oblivion nowadays, but what you want is the "Game of the Year Edition Deluxe", which contains all released DLCs and Expansions for the game. You can find it on Steam here.
I personally recommend NOT purchasing the game on Steam, simply because the Steam overlay can range from annoyingly interfering with, to catastrophically wrecking, some aspects of the game. This usually only happens with certain mods, none of which are in my guide as far as I know, but if you're adamant on using Steam then make sure to disable the overlay for Oblivion in particular. For Steam users, see the very bottom of the guide for helpful tweaks.
As a disclaimer, the fully modded setup will require a decent mid-range PC for the game. Many of the mods have options to tweak performance in case you fall under the recommended specs. I also have the game and mods installed on an SSD instead of an HDD for better loading times, they're always lightning-fast and take about 5 seconds at the most. Speaking of storage devices, the fully modded game takes up 30GB of space (not including essential backups!) so make sure you have the disk space. This guide also assumes that you use a monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920x1080 screen resolution, which is the most common and universally compatible. I don't recommend that you use a resolution higher than 1080p for these games, because the diminishing returns in performance are not worth it.
My PC is from 2020, and its specs are as follows:
OS - Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU - i7-9700 @ 3.0GHz
Memory - 16GB RAM (can't be assed to check the clock speed)
GPU - RTX 2060 SUPER
Do note that there is a soft limit to how good the performance can get on a heavily modded 32-bit game from 2006 no matter how good your hardware is, so don't think that it is essential to have a better PC than mine/don't be discouraged if your specs aren't as good either.
Only start a new game to begin playing after you have finished the entire guide. Also, never uninstall mods or install any new mods during a playthrough after a save has already been created. This should go without saying but some people may not know that these details can break the game. You can save a test character for now, but remember to not use it for actual general gameplay and to delete it entirely once you're finished the guide.
You'll want to make another backup after you are fully finished following the guide - it helps to have a modded backup in case you decide to modify your setup and want to restore it. You may also wish to compress the backups with an archival tool in order to save disk space.
- TES4Edit is for cleaning dirty mods, which we'll do at the end. Can also be used to tweak your game/mods extensively if you're into that, but this is not recommended for most people. 'Dirty Edits' are named as such because they are unnecessary changes accidentally made by modders and can clutter up, slow down, or even catastrophically damage the game if they aren't taken care of. You'll be made aware of which mods are dirty and which ones are clean whenever you run BOSS. See the end of the guide for more info.
NOTE that you are to NEVER clean a mod if the mod author says not to on their mod page, even if there are dirty edits discovered by BOSS. The reason being is that some mods intentionally make dirty edits in order to function properly, so be careful what you clean.
- Delete the patch .esps for DLCs that aren't installed or you'll CTD when you launch the game (Ignore this if you're using all official DLCs). Also deactivate the 'UOP Vampire Aging & Face Fix.esp' as we'll be able to fix said bug without using an .esp slot later.
- It should be around this point that you notice that some mods automatically show up as "Mergeable" when you attempt to rebuild your patch. Follow this picture in order to successfully merge them into your patch - this is very handy because games on this engine have a limit of 255 active .esp files at a time (the game will not launch with any more than that), but merging them into your patch allows you to use more than 255 mods activated at once! The picture shows WB for Skyrim, but the same principle applies to Oblivion. While we don't come close to hitting the .esp limit in this guide, you'll still want to merge mergeable mods into the Bashed Patch in order to slightly increase performance from having less plugin files loaded, and to also somewhat future-proof this load order in case you ever want to add more mods than what's listed in the guide.
- NOTE: Ragdolls for Oblivion is not properly placed within your load order when running BOSS, as its .esp must be manually placed ABOVE the Bashed Patch.esp. However, don't worry about manual load order changes until the very end of the guide.
- Grab both the main download and the NewIdleAnimations package for BlockHead Animations Compilation. It is a very subtle change to most vanilla walking and idle animations by giving different the races different personal touches, I recommend not straying too far from what it does by not downloading any similar mods.
- Unidirectional Attack is similar to Mortal Enemies for Skyrim, IE preventing egregious enemy tracking during their attacks. Open its .ini in Oblivion/Data/Ini and change the line 'set UAQuest.bUseOnPlayer' to 0.
- Coloured Enemy Health is a surprisingly useful little mod, don't overlook it.