Of course it's a cheat. It takes away a limitation that is part of the game rules. And that is cheating. It's like using a mod that gives you unlimited gold because you find it tedious and boring to loot dungeons and sell every single item you find to a vendor. Or using a mod that regenerates magicka instantly because you think it's boring how slow magicka regenerates.

I like that I can't take everything with me when I walk through a dungeon. I keep the most valuable or most useful things and leave the rest behind. I don't even understand what's so tedious about doing that. To me it's more fun if I have to inspect the loot and choose the good stuff instead of just pressing the 'take all' button(Obviously I voted no/no/yes).

But it's a single player game, so of course there is nothing 'wrong' with using a mod like that.

Loot management in Oblivion is a rather tedious thing that either results in me constantly going back and forth with loot, using some kind of "Bag of Holding", or bringing along some kind of partner to hold all my stuff for me. However, the latter two feel like cheating: the game wasn't designed for the player to have what is arguably infinite encumbrance, nor was it designed for them to bring a friend along.
Unfortunately, the first feels amazingly tedious - and leaving behind a large amount of often spectacular loot is not an option. There have been times when I've tried different mods that limit what you can do somewhat, but they never seem to work well.
Personally, I can't help but wonder if there is a way to implement a "Bag of Holding" without it feeling like a cheat. Making the bag reduce weight is an interesting option, but it won't help when you've found a heap of loot and are now over-encumbered. One idea would be to simply have the bag only work in one direction - you can put loot in, but you can't take it out once it's inside... but whether or not that would feel like a cheat isn't clear. Another idea would be a bag that you'd have to carry around - physically - while it has things in it. The only problem is that dragging a heavy bag around might feel just as tedious as going back and forth.
The whole issue of loot is really due to Oblivion's handling of encumbrance - in Fallout 3, for instance, you can still walk while over-encumbered. But that's it - just walk. Some kind of "speed reduced by weight over limit" could help, if it weren't for the fact that you'd either have practically unlimited encumbrance as long as you didn't mind walking slowly, or eventually have to stop anyway.

You might want to check out http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12074 mod.

I use another one for holding items, regardless of what i use, there is nothing worse then having a mudcrab or wolf fill up your grand soul gem. So they are needed really, plus there are many mods that alter the game that you can call them cheats, it comes down to with some the degree you use them, mages have awful strength, and there is nothing worse being over cumbered by just plants

It is what makes mods unique, and cool, the cheating side, well i see it like this, its what makes the game enjoyable is the most important, we'll all have different needs

I've never used the BOH because it seemed too cheaty, it basically removes one of the game mechanics.

On the other hand I've several times endured the tedium of moving home without cheating. This is immensely tedious at high levels when moving your entire armour display between Awesome Castle A and Even More Awesome Castle B.

The Luggage from Cobl is a nice balanced alternative. I also use Khettienna's http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=28748. A thing of beauty, but only suitable for the high level magician IMO.

Its not cheating at all, really

If i enter a cavern, any cavern as a mage, kill all of the enemies, then sit there taking all of the items bit by bit over 30mins(can sometimes take that long), using Feather potions to aid as much as possible, till no items left, then do this to another 20 caverns later :swear: . I have cleared all the items, but tortured myself by finding its so tedious, i got much better things to do with my life. But with that said some really do prefer it where its done that way which is fine.

For me i know i can clear out a area completely, so its easy for me to justify it as not really a cheat at all(cause i can do it), but a better way for me to enjoy the game. I can still play it having to store soul gems and only keep on me what is needed, to stop pesty criters filling them, but again its not as enjoyable cause of all the wasted time spent traveling to storage containers

Harvesting flora for 5000 time also becomes daunting, its not like i dont have the ability to harvest a plant, but do i really want to tortured myself by constantly picking them. For those that enjoy picking them, i can respect that it can be enjoyable, it once was for me too, but that has been well worn down for me. So i love mods that make life easier :dance:

Don't trust any partner after my companion got lost inside an oblivion gate with over 100k in weapons and potions...

Yes. With this mod you can make it work exactly the same way they have it in Fallout 3.

Totally agree that 'cheating' to play the game the way it is fun for you is the way to go with SP games. I love that BOH, but I'm just not totally happy with how mundane and easy it feels once you get it.

I was thinking a way to make it more 'balanced' would be if there were some consequences of using it.

Ideally, there would be quests and such that its usage would spark up. For example, a Djinn pops out of the bag and demands that you complete some quests for him or something. Another idea would be, if certain NPCs see you using it it changes their behavior: for example they might try to hunt you down, or they might want to use your bag or something. With something that powerful, you could practically base an entire DLC-sized mod around it!

That is all very complicated, and since it was obviously meant to be a simple straightforward and convenient mod I totally understand how it is, but those would be neat ideas.

Simpler ideas would be: if everytime you use it (click on it), there was a 0.1% (1 in 1000 chance) of something quite suprising happening. For example, if the dice hits 0.1%:
25% chance that it vaporizes all non-quest items in your inventory and in the bag (it should leave the bag intact obviously
25% chance that it opens the nearest Oblivion Gate and teleports you inside
25% chance that it taps into some extra-dimensional space and a diamond worth 10,000 septims teleports inside the BOH
25% chance that the bag (and its contents when you close it) transports to some random container in an Ayleid Ruin somewhere

The script for checking for the 0.1% chance would happen EVERY time you click on the BOH in your inventory (though if you click on it multiple times during one open-inventory session, that should only count as one click). Then if the Surprise Event happens (the 0.1% gets 'rolled' on the 'dice") when you close your inventory, a window pops up to alert you of the event.

If there was a 1 in 1000 chance that something quite unexpected could happen everytime you used the bag, I think it would make it both very fun to use exactly the way it functions, i.e., infinite encumbrance, but also make it quite a spicy meatball.

I can definitely see guys screaming bloody murder when the bag destroys their stuff, so obviously this "Bag of Holding Spice Up" addition would be an alteration/expansion on the basic BOH mod.

Surely it's only a cheat if you use it to make sure you are equipped for every eventuality whilst out and about. If you just use it to get all your loot back in one go it's just a ......................timesaver :whistling:
When you go grocery shooping do you only buy what you can carry, or do you "cheat" with a trolley? :bolt:

I really like these ideas it would certainly make it more interesting.

not sure about this one since most containers respawn and would therefore destroy it

I use Purse of Wonders as a 'Purse of Organizing' really. I'm not a packrat, and rarely if ever pick up more armor or loot than my character can physically carry, because there's way too much money in the game already ... I like them to stay relatively broke at low levels and amass it slowly. Most of my characters don't own houses, so instead I use the purse: to carry a change of clothing or weapon (in case I lose mine) and a few extra arrows or repair hammers ... as well as the various books and notes (memorabilia) that my character has found that he might want to refer to later. It also comes in handy from time to time in case something I'd like to keep is flagged as stolen--the cape in OOO's Path of Iron ended up that way--so I tuck it out of sight if I think I'm in danger of being arrested. But the alchemical section alone is worth the price of admission--because it allows me to separate the food items from the ingredients, and that keeps me from eating something poisonous by mistake. Used in that way, I don't regard such bags as a huge cheat; they just provide an additional way to organize and keep the inventory screen at a manageable level--and that's really all I want.

I use an equivalent, but its half and half. Near yes at the beginning of the game but later on, just add in the mod since I stop looting random stuff from every corpses I encounter.

The Bag of Holding can hardly be compared to a trolley (which is probably hard to navigate in a dungeon and still has very limited space), it's just a small convenient bag that has unlimited space inside. I want to see the adventurer driving around with a trolley in a dungeon (good idea for a mod though ).

You can say it's a timesaver, but then you could as well make a mod that scans cleared dungeons for loot, removes the loot and gives you the best price possible for each item (in case you use a mod like EE). After all picking up all the loot and walking to merchants takes time as well. Or how about a mod that kills all enemies for you that have a lower level than your character? You would defeat them anyway, so why waste time to fight them?

The point of encumbrance is that you either leave things behind and don't sell them or come back to pick them up and sell them. Which is either a nuisance (not picking it up and wasting possibly thousands of gold) or tedious (picking it up and running back and forth to sell it), but it's your decision. A decision that you don't need to make with a cheat bag. Personally I leave things behind because I rather go to the next dungeon or start the next quest than running back and forth for a few pieces of gold. That's why my character has probably far less gold than your character at the same level. And the only reason why it is that way is that you use the bag and I don't. So basically the bag gives you lots of money that you normally wouldn't have if you played with the regular game mechanics. Which is a cheat, pretty simple concept imo.

Again, this is not 'wrong' in any way. Cheating sounds so evil, but I for example sometimes enter tgm in the console when I'm about to die and forgot to save for the last hour (I punish myself by drinking lots of my best health potions though).

3 × Yes...

I like to collect things, have different outfits, plus I don't like to have too many things in my inventory. It is a small cheat - but for real immersion I have real life!
I don't think that it's any worse than fast travel.

Other than Bag of holding, I also use Alchemy pocket. Also other available storages in my game are Midas chest (Midas Magic), The Luggage (Cobl), Summon Punished (MentalElf's mod, I forgot which) and maybe some other which I don't know of but I don't use them.

On the surface, it seems like cheating...but its a real tedium reducer. There are just some things that are always more tedious then fun...and encumbrance gets old quick, particularly as a mage. I have 2 companions with me carry my loot as well as Mida's chest and its still tedious sorting through everything. Couldn't imagine it without my pack mules lol. I think I need to tweak the merchants so they sell more gold so I can get rid of the mountains of stuff I have. I'm such a loot [censored]!

This is not necessarily correct. If you are determined to really clear a dungeon of all possible loot anyway, then yes, it is a tedium reducer - but by using this mod and playing that way, you also ensure that you become obsanely rich withouth anything more to spend your money on, after having cleared a few dungeons.

If you instead try Realistic Fatigue (or a similar mod), where fighting or running with high encumerance means that you lose fatigue fast, and roleplay that you pick the best stuff and just have to leave the rest - then you get a different game, a game where (especially with harder Enhanced Economy settings) you struggle to earn enough to pay for your repair hammers, and must work hard and clear out many dungeons before you can even afford one house.

Different tastes for different players, but to me, a mod like Bag of Holding is not a tedium reducer, but a mod that would remove part of the challenges that make Oblivion fun. It is not more tedius to look for the best-valued loot instead of just taking it all, but rather more interesting - for me.

It sounds like cheating to me, but then, people should feel free to play however they wish.

Some "make use of" the console, too. Fair enough. I don't, but maybe I simply have different needs/preferences when it comes to Oblivion.

A lot of people would probably find the way I have TESIV set up absolutely unplayable - hideously difficult, demanding, "realistic" :huh:, limiting, stressful, or whatever else.

As said, personally I'm only using it for collectibles (i.e. stuff that I won't sell or use), plus Soul Gems I don't want to fill by mistake etc. I agree that it would be silly to use Realistic Fatigue (which I use) and then put everything in the Bag of Holding. I think my point is that you basically have to set your own rules for what you consider cheating and then stick to them. For me, that goes for quite a few things available in the vanilla game as well. In short, it depends on how you use it IMO.

Sorry for the double post. My cheat involves the Armory Lab. This mod gives you a virtual armory, alchemy lab, garden, and a lot of storage space. This virtual space (it doesn't exist in a particular location) is accessed through portals on the vanilla ownable houses. I use this rather than storing my things in clamshells or inside horses, and the like. Otherwise I use Realistic Fatigue and a lot of the other immersion mods that tend to limit what you can carry. Gives me a lot of motivation to build up strength, get feather potions and spells, and the like. So I have to get my loot to an ownable house so that I can port to the ArmoryLab. Means I have to make loot decisions, but it also means I don't have to carry everything I own with me.

I only buy what I can carry. What? My car's broke down and I gotta walk to the store!

Both QFT.
Over time, some players create personal rules that they live by, whether or not they have a mod to enforce it. I would venture to say that these rules generally do not make life easier on the PC. So while such bags can be used as a cheat, they don't have to be.

Yes, Yes, and Yes.

However, I rarely sell my loot. I only pick items that weigh very little, but sell for very high. (Example that pops into mind is Goblin Moria from one of the FCOM merges - Weighs about 5 but sells for about 50 with a decent disposition). Other than items like that which I tend to keep in my inventory, I only put items I plan on displaying in my Home(s). I love collecting every armor set I can find.

Also, it helps a TON with alchemical ingredients... I will admit that I put quite possibly 100s of pounds worth of ingredients in the BoH. I guess that's "cheating" and takes away from the immersion aspect of "preparing for a dungeon" by creating all your potions ahead of time. Oh well, my loss

To me they are most decidedly a cheat, I don't use it but i did at one time use a mod that changed the multiplier on encumbrance so i could carry more. But yeah it feels like cheating. And if you use the time saving argument then i just have to say time is money, if you want money without putting in the effort why not just use console to give yourself money and save even more time.. That said i am not really against cheating. If it enhances your fun then i see no problem with cheating in a single player game.

Now a days i usually use the console to give me enough gold to fully equip one of the dlc homes whenever i start a new character. I need a place to store collectibles and i justify it by thinking i inherited a home. And collecting loot for selling is just to tedious. I would never use a cheat like that first time i played through any game though.

First time i played through the game i could barely afford to buy all the spells i wanted and keep myself stocked with repair hammers, not to mention buy enchantments. So yeah it definitively unbalances the game if you have a ton of money. But yeah it's a single player game so who cares if you technically are cheating, nobody gets hurt.