Current Top 10 Oblivion Mods

For those of us playing on the PC, the Oblivion experience has only gotten better since launch. Planet Elder Scrolls has a short blurb on ten promising mods already released by the community. The top two have been running on my system for slightly over a week now; I highly recommend BTMod (mentioned by Tycho last week) and Natural Environments.

In addition to those, my short list.

These are some of my favorites here:

Better Sortable potion names [elderscrolls.com]

Cool armor for the Grey Fox [elderscrolls.com]

Show more places on the map (wayshrines, rune stones) [elderscrolls.com]

Make YOUR OWN map markers for things [elderscrolls.com]

Those are just the ones that are bookmarked on this computer at work. My home puter has a bunch more.

Slashdot wubs Gamespy

Is this a legitimate /. article or a shill? Gamespy comes up with a list of ten of the "most influential and eye-catching" Oblivion mods, despite the fact that there are hundreds (513, in fact) of mods listed here [tescreens.be], not [tessource.net] all [gamingtown.net] of which [elricm.com] are hosted on Planet Elder Scrolls.

Note that Gamespy only included mods hosted on their website, and that Gamespy is notorious for running interstitial ads that require a Greasemonkey script [userscripts.org] to bypass. Besides, this wasn't submitted by a Slashdot reader - Zonk posted it himself. The linked article had nothing more than some guy's opinion on what mods were good, so if Zonk is such an Oblivion fan, why not just link us to his favorite mods right there in the Slashdot article, rather than shilling for the ad-ridden IGN network?

an almost great game

I'm excited that we have so many mods already - what is sad is that people have to waste time creating mods that fix the game. Why aren't the developers doing this? They released a buggy as hell game with several glaring design/balancing/"realism" issues - why do we need a mod to make animals behave correctly? Why do we need mods to fix broken quests? Why do we need mods to fix the screwed up UI? Why do we need mods to fix the stupid inventory system? Why do we have to manually edit .ini files to change obvious performance enhancing settings? Why do we need people creating custom shaders to improve performance on low-end cards? Why do we need people to create improved textures for high-end cards? To me all of these issues illustrate that the development team has some serious problems - they've got their own mods out to add content to the game (that they are charging for!) but they have released a seriously flawed game - what the hell is up with that?

That said, I'm not an RPG fan really but Oblivion is one awesome game - and it does run great on my 2.3ghz A64 w/6600GT, minus all the godamn bugs. And fanboys - don't tell me it is my system! I've got a fresh install of XP, fully patched and updated - Oblivion, HL2, and Firefox are the only programs installed on it - the fact that my entire system locks up if I load any of my saved games without first creating an entirely new game on a product that the developer is already releasing paid expansions for instead of patches is BS.

without this mod I wouldn't still be playing Ob

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul [filefront.com]

Does a bunch of good stuff, but most importantly it gets rid of that stupid level scaling thing.

I've been involved in some debates over that, and I still maintain its dumb, mostly as it provides no sense of accomplishment to leveling or getting better items or anything.

The Obvious Question

If a handful of amatures can produce a decent mod in a reasonably short period of time (I think the game was only released last month) why are they charging $2 for a Horse texture or a 10 minute quest?

Incorporate into official patch

If Bethesda is smart, they will keep an eye on these mods, so that ideas from them can be incorporated into an official patch.

In the spirit of D&D...

The D&D portable hole! Literally 6 feet wide and 10 feet deep. It's loaded with chests and stuff so you don't have to carry it around on your back. And you can access it whenever you wish.

10 mods aren't enough

I blogged pretty thoroughly about many shortcomings of Oblivion. At least 75% of the mods out there are fixes that mould this game into what it should have been out of the box. Oblivion was very obviously designed with the 360 in mind as is made obvious by the horrible UI, enormous font, cryptic icons, tiny buttons, and lack of onscreen information - and that's just for starters. Read for yourselves if you can stand fair criticism of everyone's favourite game.

http://demodulated.blogspot.com/2006/04/elder-scro lls-oblivious.html

The ones I'm using.

Natural Wildlife [elderscrolls.com] - Instead of all animals (aside from deer) being universally aggressive, this mod adds variable creature behaviors.

Harvest Mod [elderscrolls.com] - Makes it so when you harvest fauna, most of it disappears from the environment or is replaced by a "deflowered" version of the model. Makes it much easier to tell which flowers and mushrooms you've already picked.

Stamina/Fatigue Text Switch Mod [elderscrolls.com] - Gets rid of the annoying use of the word "fatigue" in the game and replaces instances of that word with "stamina".

Turn Out the Lights [elderscrolls.com] - Makes it so you can snuff out various candles, lamps, etc. found in environments.

Yay mods

100% agree about BTMod... this came out days after Oblivion's release, and it was very needed. I'm not sure what kind of lazy programming left that original UI in the PC version, but it's inexcusable. I'm also using the Natural Environments mod and loving it. Here are some others I'd recommend:

Tom Servo's equipment rarity mod
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1968 [tessource.net]

Tired of seeing supposedly rare daedric and glass armor drop off common bandits at high levels? Ever wonder why these guys are harassing you for 100 gold when they're wearing tens of thousands of gold worth of armor? Download this... now rare armor stays rare, only dropping from high level creatures, and bandits have more appropriate gear. (I know this is the same as #9 on the list, but this is the one I use personally).

No psychic guards
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=2299 [tessource.net]

It's hard to be a master of crime when the guards are psychic... ever try killing someone and having a guard port up to get you? This mod greatly reduces the guard alert radius when you attempt a crime against someone. No guards hear, no bounty. Yay.

Arrow velocity
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1793 [tessource.net]

Now a bow actually shoots harder than a plastic Wal-Mart bow... even the lowest quality of arrows will fire harder, and the better ones work much better.

Longer summons
http://www.tessource.net/files/file.php?id=1898 [tessource.net]

The summon length in the game is really low... some only last as long as 20 seconds. This mod can double or triple that value... especially useful for pure mage characters who depend on summons to 'tank' for them.

OOO?

Color me surprised that Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul [tescreens.be] wasn't even mentioned in that top 10.

Slow inventory screens?

Has anyone else noticed after installing BTMod (or maybe some other mod..), inventory screens, such as opening containers or shops take about 5-10+ seconds to show up? It's quite a pain in the ass to have to stop playing for 10 seconds when looting bodies. Also, viewing the map (the detailed zone map) also makes the game pause for a pretty long time, but once that area's map is viewed it shows up pretty quickly.

Yes.

Yes.

Re:WoW

It's not really the same type of game at all, but I do enjoy playing both of them. It's an open ended, single player RPG, and it offers a lot of innovations for the genre, especially in how the NPC's act. I can't do it justice here, so check out one of the many fansites and decide for yourself. Another big plus is that modding is actively supported, and you can find mods to change just about anything. Honestly, the ones on this list are a pretty poor sample of what's really available, but you're not going to know what kind of mods (if any) you want until you play the game yourself.

My favorite feature is that in Oblivion, the server NEVER goes down... even on Tuesdays.

Re:How about ten essential mod download sites

"That don't require you 'sign up'?"

I believe this site [bugmenot.com] doesn't require login.

Re:WoW

Yeah, give it a try. It's especially nice to walk around in a beautiful world that isn't mobbed with people shouting about Britney Spears and the Green Bay Packers. Plus the more action-based combat is more involving than hitting buttons to adjust statistics.

Re:TES:III

There are people porting TES:III items and features to TES:IV already! Such as missing armor types-- certain furs, nordic, chitin, etc, and skills like unarmored!

Re:The mod I REALLY need

With fast travel, why do you need to fly? Just for fun? Pretty sure someone has already made a levitation mod, but not a flying one yet.

Re:WoW

Like the others here have said, it isn't the same type of game (other than being fantasy world and an RPG, although WoW is less of a standard rpg in terms of story progression and npcpc interaction and effecting lasting world/plot change) but it is definitely as engrossing. You may even like it better than WoW... With all the mods coming out there is an even higher ability to tweak the game to your own liking beyond the simple UI and macro mods made for WoW.

If you want a game that is exactly like WoW you may want to try EQ2...

Otherwise, onward to Cyrodiil!