nowbotmike

---Update Jan 18 2012: Fixed image links
---Update Nov 19 2011: Changed link to UOP
---Update Oct 1 2011: Small update, just updated a few links
---Update July 1 2011: Hello Steam Summer sale buyers Added links to all mods in the mod list and added some new mods. CREATED A BASHED PATCH GUIDE!
---Update April 16 2011: Just want to plug jim-jam bongs' awesome thread Fallout 3 with mods: what, why and how. Modding FO3 should feel pretty familiar if you've already checked out my thread, or vice versa. Oh, and I also changed some text in the guide for clarity.
---Updated January 5 2011: Re-arranged the guide, added some headlines, table of contents and the step-by-step section
---Updated January 1 2011: And some more text
---Updated Dec 31 2010: More clarifications and added bit about OBGE
---Updated Dec 13 2010: Clarified some things in the guide
You should! And I can help you Make sure you READ THE WHOLE GUIDE BEFORE INSTALLING ANYTHING! It's not that long and will hopefully be a big help.
---TABLE OF CONTENTS---
- Introduction
- Links
- External Programs
- How do mods work?
- OMODs and why they are awesome
- Making your own OMODs
- Install Order
- Load Order
- BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) and Load Order
- Wrye Bash: The Bashed Patch
- Archive Invalidation
- Steam Users: Changing the date on .BSA files before installing any mods
- Step-by-step guide to installing your mods
- Which mods you should use
---INTRODUCTION---
In this thread you can ask questions and get help about using mods for Oblivion. But which mods should you use? How do you install them? Why should you even use them?
Let's answer the last question first. Mods for Oblivion can change the game completely. They can give you prettier graphics, a better UI, a new leveling system giving you XP like in Fallout 3, hundreds of new weapons and armor, new cities, huge new quests, companion characters with back-stories and advanced (by Oblivion standards) AI capabilities, etc. Basically if you can imagine it, someone probably created it already. The Oblivion mods community is incredibly active and there are thousands and thousands of mods to choose from. They are often regularly updated and changed. This makes the prospect of finding a few you like very intimidating, especially for beginners. Don't worry, I'll help
So now you know why you should use mods, but how do you do it? Well, I'll give you some important links. Also you should know that when someone mentions 'vanilla' Oblivion, they mean the regular game without any mods whatsoever.
---LINKS---
First, the two download sites you'll need. Yes, you may need to register, but it's free (yes, even at FilePlanet) and it's fast. After you do, you can get all the mods you'll ever need. They also have very useful 'top 100' lists and other means of finding the most popular and/or best mods.
- TESNexus
- Planet Elder Scrolls
Next, a few useful sites you'll want to bookmark.
- The Official Oblivion Mods Forum. This is where it happens. All the modders hang out here, mods get released here, and you can get help with any question you have from the most competent people in the scene. It is also here that you can find tons of 'mod lists' for beginners or advanced users, so be sure to make an account, look around a bit and ask questions!
- TESCOSI. This is a guide to everything you'll need to know about modding Oblivion. I'll give you some basic info later, but you really should check out this site and read as much as you can. It may have a slightly confusing layout, but it's an amazing resource.
- Dead End Thrills Oblivion Modding Guide. This is made by a GAF:er, yay! It's a step-by-step guide to modding your game with some of the most popular mods out there. It's a bit old and so slightly outdated mods-wise compared to my list further down, but still awesome for beginners. I recommend you at least read through it once even if you don't use it.
- The Oblivion Texture Overhaul. This is a guide to the sometimes confusing world of texture mods. It hasn't been updated in a very long time, but texture mods aren't released at the same breakneck pace as other kinds of mods, so it's still very useful.
---EXTERNAL PROGRAMS---
The Oblivion community has worked hard to make mods better and easier to install. These programs will help you with this.
- Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) helps you install and manage mods. It's explained in the section below. You'll be using this A LOT.
- Oblivion Script Extender is required for many mods to work. It adds scripting functions and other advanced stuff that modders can use in their mods, but you only have to worry about installing it. If you have the Steam version of Oblivion, there is a slightly different install process. Just check the readme!
Oblivion Graphics Extender (OBGE) is actually a very powerful plugin for OBSE, so you'll need OBSE first if you want to use this. OBGE is very important if you want the kind of graphics you see in the pics below. Basically getting the best graphics depends on three things: Texture replacers, body replacers and OBGE. Texture replacers fix the blurry textures, body replacers fix the ugly people's ugly bodies, and OBGE gives you the opportunity to use modern shaders and other graphical tricks in Oblivion. I personally don't use it, since it's too demanding for my rig, but you should check it out and learn how to enable its features if you have a powerful computer.
- Wrye Bash is an extremely powerful program for installing mods and many many other things. Basically it's OBMM on crack+tons of other features. I don't use it for installing mods simply because I find it to be quite complicated, although I do use it for making a Bashed Patch (read on). Most hardcore modders swear by it because it has so many useful features lacking in OBMM (which is much more limited in its functionality). Wrye Bash has many components within it, but one of the most important is the one that handles installation of mods. It's called 'BAIN' and is extremely powerful, but again, I don't use it and can't really explain it that well. You may also need to use Wrye Bash even if you use OBMM for installing, for a feature called 'Bashed Patch', although this is only necessary for a few special mods. More about that in the BOSS section. Here is Wrye's homepage which contains large amounts of documentation about Wrye Bash and other stuff he's done. NOTE: I'm using Wrye Bash 291, and there seems to be some pretty big changes in the latest version (293). I don't know what they are, so if you want to be sure that you'll be able to follow along with my guide, just use 291
- Better Oblivion Sorting Software (BOSS) manages your load order, and is explained below.
---HOW DO MODS WORK?---
(NOTE: DO NOT MOVE FILES INTO THE DATA FOLDER MANUALLY if you're using OBMM to make OMODs instead. OBMM will take care of everything automatically. This paragraph is not meant as a guide but as an illustration of how mods work. When you're ready to start installing mods, preferably after reading through the rest of the guide, refer to the step-by-step guide further down)
Okay, so how do mods work? Basically, when you download a mod, it can come in a few formats. If it's a normal .zip file, unzip it first. Usually there's a readme and a few folders with names like 'textures', 'meshes' and the like. If you're doing a manual installation without using OBMM (you shouldn't), these folders all go in the 'Data' folder in your main Oblivion folder. Often (but not always!) there will be a .esp or .esm file as well, this also goes in 'Data'. The .esp or .esm is the main mod file, the file that controls everything about the mod unless it's a simple texture replacement mod in which case no such file is usually needed. It must be activated by starting the Oblivion Launcher, clicking 'Data' and checking the .esp or .esm file in the list. You'll notice that the normal game also uses these files, with .esm (the m stands for master) files for the main Oblivion and Shivering Isle files, and .esp files for the smaller DLC content.
---OMODS AND WHY THEY ARE AWESOME---
This can all be made much easier if the mod comes in .omod format. omod is a format used by the third party program Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM), and it makes installing mods a breeze. Essentially an .omod file is a kind of package file, like a .zip file, that contains the entire mod within it. It also has some extra capabilities used by OBMM. First, you must download and install OBMM. Then, simply put the single .omod file in the omod folder specified by OBMM (this folder can be changed from within the program) and start the program. On your left, you will see your .esp and .esm files and if they are activated or not. On your right, you will see a list of your different omods. If an omod has a green square next to it, it's ready to be installed. Simply double click and OBMM will do everything for you. The square will turn blue, which means it's been extracted and installed into the Oblivion directory, and the .esp or .esm will be checked for you (so you don't have to check it in the launcher). It's that easy! The omod file itself will stay where it is after extraction, meaning that when you uninstall an omod using OBMM, the only thing that gets removed are the extracted files in the Oblivion directory. You can basically treat your omod directory as an archive for all your mods, and you never need to move them or worry about copying them anywhere. If you don't want to use a mod, simply uninstall it using OBMM.
---MAKING YOUR OWN OMODS---
Many mods come in omod format, and if they don't, it's VERY easy to make you own omod. For example, you download a mod called 'My Oblivion House'. It's a .zip file containing 'My Oblivion House.esp' and two folders called 'textures' and 'meshes'. Put these three items in a separate folder called 'My Oblivion House', and start OBMM. The important thing here is that the files are in the correct folder structure, ie so that you could theoretically copy/paste the contents of the folder into your Oblivion/Data folder if you wanted to, and the mod would work. Now, in OBMM, click 'create' at the bottom, and a new window will pop up. Press 'Add folder', navigate to your 'My Oblivion House' folder and press ok. If you want you can fill out details such as name, version, author and so on at the top of the window. You can also right-click the .esp you just added (if there is one) and choose 'import mod details', this will usually fill in a few of the fields. If you want the mod readme accessible through a simple right-click and choosing it from a menu in OBMM, which is a VERY good idea, click 'edit readme' and copy/paste the mods readme in here. Now click 'create omod' and you will soon see your new omod pop up in the right window, ready to be installed! The omod file itself will be stored in your specified omod folder just like the ready-made ones you download. If you want, you can now delete any .zip archive or folder you downloaded and simply keep the omod file you made, since it contains the entire mod.
---INSTALL ORDER---
Install order can be very important. The thing is, sometimes different mods you have will replace the exact same file. For example, two different mods may want to modify the exact same texture file. Obviously the mod you install last will take precedence because it will replace the texture file that is already there with its own. If an uninstalled mod potentially conflicts with a mod you've already installed, OBMM will show this by coloring the dot of the uninstalled omod red or black (depending on the severity of the conflict). You can right click on the omod, choose 'view data conflicts', and it will show the conflicts with already installed mods. When you install it, OBMM will let you choose which files you want to overwrite and which ones you want to leave as they are. If you ctrl-click 'yes' or 'no' you will do 'yes/no to all' and not have to strain your clicking finger as much Things like patches will obviously overwrite something, so they will usually be colored red or black. Don't worry about this! Conflicts are only bad if you know that the mod isn't supposed to overwrite something, or if it's going to overwrite files from another mod that you want to keep. For example, Oblivion XP (a mod that makes leveling use XP instead of the default system) comes with a few files that modify the interface. If you have previously installed an interface mod, Oblivion XP will conflict with it. This is supposed to happen! When you install the Oblivion XP omod, it will ask you which interface mod you use, and overwrite those files with its own, designed to fit the design of your chosen interface mod. So in that case, the conflict is no problem. This is very common.
Wrye Bash is extremely powerful when it comes to file conflicts. With it, you can choose which files from which mod will be used, no matter which order they were installed in. In OBMM, you would need to uninstall and re-install two conflicting mods if you change your mind about for example which texture to use. Not so in Wrye Bash. I don't know much more about this since I don't use Wrye Bash for installing, but it seems extremely useful if you like changing your mods around or experimenting with different mod setups.
---LOAD ORDER---
.esp and .esm files are loaded in a specific order, according to date. The exception is that .esm files are always loaded before .esp files (that's why they're called 'master files'!) Load order is EXTREMELY important. Just as install order means files from one mod may overwrite the files from another you installed earlier, so load order means that information in the .esp of one mod may be 'overruled' by information found in a mod later in the load order. For example, let's say two mods both want to make changes to a specific NPC. The first mod changes the NPC:s level, and the second mod changes his inventory, giving him a cool sword. These changes are stored in the .esp/.esm files. The problem is, Oblivion only allows one mod to change an NPC, an enemy, or anything else in the game. So instead of using the changes from both mods, only the changes from the mod that is loaded LAST will be shown in the game.
---BOSS (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) AND LOAD ORDER---
So what do you need to do about load order? Well, fortunately, there is an easy solution here as well A program called 'Better Oblivion Sorting Software' (BOSS) will do your load ordering for you! It's constantly updated and contains data from thousands of mods and their proper place in the load order. So download and install BOSS. Then run 'BOSS.exe' from your Oblivion/Data folder, and tada! Your load order has been set for you Do this every time you install a new mod (or after installing all of your mods).
Okay, so then there is Wrye Bash.
---WRYE BASH: THE BASHED PATCH---
NOTE: I'm using Wrye Bash 291, and there seems to be some pretty big changes in the latest version (293). I don't know what they are, so if you want to be sure that you'll be able to follow along with my guide, just use 291
Wrye Bash is a very powerful program, and it has tons of different features. The only one I use personally is called 'Bashed Patch', and it consolidates the conflicting changes from different mods into one .esp file (the Bashed Patch). This .esp file, basically a compilation of conflicting changes made by your other mods, will always be loaded last and thus always override everything else. This is very useful and in some cases required. There's really no reason NOT to make a Bashed Patch, although you may or may not actually strictly need it. You will still need to run BOSS though! If you have multiple mods that change things like item drop lists or NPC equipment, you'll have to do it in order to see the changes from all of those mods at once. I'll post here a short guide for getting a Bashed Patch after you've installed all your mods.
1. Install ALL YOUR MODS and Wrye Bash first (obviously).
2. Copy 'Bashed Patch, 0.esp' from your Oblivion/Mopy/Extras folder, to your Oblivion/Data folder.
3. Run BOSS! BOSS will put 'tags' on all your .esp/.esm files. These 'tags' will be read by Wrye Bash when creating a Bashed Patch, and it tells the program how to deal with different .esp/.esm files and their content, for example which info to incorporate into the Bashed Patch, etc.
4. Open Wrye Bash and go to the 'Mods' tab. You'll see a list of all your .esp/.esm files.
5. Right Click 'Bashed Patch, 0.esp' and choose 'Rebuild Patch'.
6. A window may pop up asking if you want to automatically de-activate some mods. SAY YES! This is Wrye Bash informing you that these mods do not actually have to be active, they will instead be incorporated into the Bashed Patch completely! Great!
7. You'll see something similar to this:

Basically, this is were you choose what stuff to incorporate into your Bashed Patch. When you click an item on the left, the window on the right will show all your mods which include content of that type. For example, clicking 'Import Inventory' will show all your mods which make changes to someones inventory. By checking the 'Import Inventory' box on the left, and also checking the mod itself in the window on the right, those inventory changes will be imported into the Bashed Patch.
8. Check all the same boxes that I've checked in the above picture.
9. Individually click all the list items you just checked, EXCEPT 'Import names', 'Leveled Lists' (just leave this one on 'automatic') and 'Tweak Settings' and check ALL the mods in the window on the right.
10. Click 'Import Names' and check every box, EXCEPT those that end with '.csv'. They're there for some very specific purposes, and if you check them they'll probably fuck with names of stuff in your game.
11. Click 'Tweak Settings' and check the boxes that sound like good tweaks to you. I can recommend 'Horse Turning Speed' and 'UOP Vampire and Aging Fix'.
12. Click 'Build Patch'.
13. This takes a while... done! You know have your own Bashed Patch which makes sure that any conflicting changes in mods will play nice (at least most of the time) From now on, you'll have to repeat this procedure (from step 3) every time you add or remove mods.
---ARCHIVE INVALIDATION---
This bit is very, very important! I won't bore you with an explanation of what exactly archive invalidation is. Suffice to say, you need to do it or your texture replacement mods won't work properly, or at all. You only need to do it once though. Just open OBMM, go into the 'utilities' menu on the right, choose 'archive invalidation', and in the new window that pops up, press 'update now'.
---STEAM USERS: CHANGING THE DATES ON .BSA FILES BEFORE INSTALLING ANY MODS---
This is related to the above section, and is also very, very important!!!. The Steam version of Oblivion has, in it's data files folder, .bsa files (files that contain data such as texture and meshes for the vanilla game) that are dated around summer 2010, because that's when Oblivion was added to Steam. This will cause problems with your archive invalidation. So before you install any mods, open OBMM, go to utilities -> archive invalidation and press 'reset .bsa timestamps'. This will set the 'last changed' date on ALL YOUR .BSA FILES to 01/01/2006, similar to the original release of the game. The reason you're doing this BEFORE installing any mods is that if you have .bsa files in the data files folder that belong to mods, the dates on these files will also be set to 2006. You do not want this! If you do it accidentally, simply download a program such as File Date Changer to change the dates back to a later date.
That's basically it for the Steam version, it's otherwise fully compatible with all mods (except the slightly different install procedure for OBSE which is detailed in its readme).
---STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE TO INSTALLING YOUR MODS
This won't be going into any detail on individual mods, it's more of a general guide based on what you've learned so far.
1. Download and install all external programs - see section at the top. After you've installed all of them, start a new game to make sure everything works (mainly for testing OBSE).
2. Change dates on BSA:s - You only need to do this if you're using the Steam version, but it should be done before you install any mods at all. See section 'Steam Users: Changing the dates on .BSA files' for more info.
3. Archive Invalidation - You don't have to do this now, but you might as well, since you only have to do it once and that's it. See appropriate section for more info.
4. Download and install your mods - Now this is the important part. I will not be going into install order, since this is covered above, but also since it's very complicated and you'll have to figure it out yourself. If you don't want to bother, either don't install any complex mods, or stick to only mods from my mod list further down (not really recommended since finding mods you like is a big part of the fun, but you could do it to start out). This will have several steps per mod, like so:
---4a. Read the readme - The first thing you should do before installing any mod. Check for incompatibilities with any other mods you're using/want to use, and any special installation instructions.
---4b. Make an omod - Obviously not needed if the mod is already in omod format. See the appropriate section for more info.
---4c. Open OBMM and check for conflicts - If your omod is any other color than green, right click on the mod in OBMM and pick 'View Data Conflicts'. You will now see a list of all the files that your new mod will overwrite, if you install it. Make sure you're okay with this before you install.
---4d. Install the mod - Easy enough, just double-click it in OBMM.
---4e. Run BOSS.exe to correct load order - See appropriate section
---4f. Test the mod - Start up Oblivion, start a new game, and check that everything is running fine. If you can easily check that the mod is functioning, for example looking at the textures to see if your new texture pack is working, do that also.
---4g. Go back to 4a until you've installed all your mods
5. Create the Bashed Patch - see 'Wrye Bash: The Bashed Patch' section above.
6. You're done! - make a final test run to make sure it's all working, and run BOSS.bat again just to be sure.
Guide continues in next post