Had a look in TES Nexus and it is unclear what is really good. Plus it seems a lot of the best mods are not stored there, else they don't show up with the search terms I use. Also, a lot of the mods include features that I find questionable or unnecessary.

To me the best Arena Mod would be modular sort of like Enhanced Economy and allow the player to pick a number of options for different functions, such as:

1. Larger rewards for winning, else rewards based on your wins so far
2. Ability to bet on yourself
3. Slower advancement through the arena ranks
4. Options to use other armor besides raiment

You might want to look at Waalx arena mod. It's still in alpha, but the new gladiator armour and weaponry is incredible

Thanks, I'll have a look for that. Is it on TES Nexus?

You have to register at http://waalx.com/RealSwordsForum/index.php and download the alpha from there. Thanks for the tip BTW - I'll check it out myself.

Kewl. Thanks.

I think the arena is one of the few places that I haven't changed with any kind of mods.

Well I DLed the Gladiator pre-alpha version and will give it a try, however, I'm a bit worried about how it sounds really. It sounds like a great mod, but just way more than I really want.

If it was at no cost to performance, lots of new stuff sounds great, but if it is creating bugs and crashes lots of new armor, weapons, npcs, more opponents, etc. is not worth it to me.

All I really want is:

(I). To be able to bet on myself
(II). To be able to bet a wide range of amounts, say for example 25, 50, 100, or any additional increment of 100 up to say 1000.

I've seen mods that change these amounts to 25K, 50K, and 100K and mods that just add additional higher betting amounts, but none that seem to allow you to bet on yourself as well. I mean after all, it is voluntary. Why would you NOT be able to bet on yourself? What would be neat is if the Wood Elf had a dialogue something like "I'm going be fighting in a match for the Blue Team soon. What odds will you put on me?" Then based on some sort of maths that calculate your number of wins, and some measure of your power he would offer you some odds (ranging between say 4 to 1 for your first fight in the Arena to 1.2 to 1 when you are a clearly established fighter), then allow you to bet on yourself. You give him the cash (up to say 500 or maybe 1000) and then if you win your next fight you go back to him and get the payout.

Of course, you can simulate this with the console, but it would be neat if it was included in game.


ADDIT: did some more advanced searching here on the forums and "arena" looking only in the salient sub-forums of the Oblivion section finds 34 pages *sigh* I scrolled through the titles on the first 6 pages, but cannot stomach scrolling all of them right now.