Oblivion: Patch List

After patching Oblivion to version 1.2 something something, here are the additional patches I'm applying.

Unofficial Patch 3.0
There were still a lot of bugs left in the game after the 1.2 patch. This patch includes fixes for things like "game crashes on level up". It's not very heartening to think that a bug that bad wasn't worth an official patch.

Quest Popup Remover
Apparently Oblivion likes to remind you of what quests you're on. By remind I mean nag. I'll have none of that. I'll find the quest log when I need it.

Oblivion Script Extender
Some other mods need this.

Wrye Bash
Ditto. Also WryeBash uses Python and some Python modules I had to download as well.

BTMod
It was at the top of a top ten list of Oblivion mods. Apparently it improves the UI significantly. I downloaded a couple other interface mods, but I'm trying to keep this blog post semi-readable. So let's skip ahead to the big stuff.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul
So Oblivion sucks by default. You can beat the final boss at level three. And once you hit level 20, roadside bandits wear some of the best armor in the game. That is because Oblivion always makes your enemies the same level as you to even out the challenge. It's also because they didn't have time to put in any content after level 20, so they just had the player fight the same monsters, but tougher. In Oscuro's, certain levels and types of monsters live in certain areas. This means certain areas are inaccessible until the player can fight, sneak, or run through them. It also modifies a lot of other elements, like game economy, weapon timing, AI, and more stuff than I understand.

Part of me doesn't like the idea that I won't be playing what the designers intended, but I also don't want to be fighting brigands with armor so expensive there would be no possible reason for them to need to rob people.

Martigen's Monster Mod
As I mentioned, the game only has content for twenty levels, but goes to level 50. Martigen's monsters are integrated with Oscuro's mod to give me a lot more stuff to fight.

All +5
When you level up in Oblivion, the player can raise three attributes of their character. But they can only be raised the maximum amount (five points) if the character has been doing appropriate actions. This lead to bizarre behaviors like knights in full armor hopping across the landscape to improve their agility and mages carrying heavy shields around to improve their health. In other words, it made no sense. This mod makes it so that I'll be able to add a full plus five to any attribute my character has used in the last level. Considering all the warnings Oscuro's has in its text files about how difficult things are going to be, I'm thinking this will be a simple and effective way to go.

Unique Landscapes
A lot of Oblivion looks generically beautiful. With these, it should look more specifically beautiful, or at least the 13 areas the project has currently managed to cover should.

NPC Faces
It takes some tweaking with WryeBash to make it work, but since these selfless modders updated 1,201 NPC faces to make them more distinct, it seemed like the least I could do.

Seasonal Weather for More Sky Climates
Yeah. Crazy name. There are half a dozen recommended weather replacements for the game. SWfMSC, combined with OC Darker Nights and Phinix Waterfix, seemed the best compromise. This will probably be one of the first things I disable if I have stability issues. Oscuro's has a cool feature where I'll automatically drop my torch when I pull out my weapon, so I think the darker nights will be great for atmosphere. And the Phinix Waterfix was the recommendation of dev/akm who also has a very nice web site with Oblivion mod lists.

Almost Everything Visible when Distant
It'll be a performance hit, but when I'm on top of a mountain, I want to see stuff!

Qarl's texture pack 3 (Redimized)
This is the bulk of my downloading. Gigs of high resolution textures which add a lot of detail to the world. Unfortunately, it has to be repacked in a special Oblivion format before I can use it. Oh well. I can finish this article while I wait.

Oblivion Stereo Sound Overhaul
Among some other sound mods, this should make the sound in Oblivion significantly better. I'm particularly looking forward to the improved bow sounds. I wanna thwack a fool. The addition of appropriate weather sounds indoors should also be a nice touch.

Now the only question is, can I actually get Oblivion running with all these mods installed. :P