I accidentally removed Oblivion , I suppose its a good thing, it was so buggy from all the mods.

I am looking for new mods now, but this time i'm going to be 100% carefull, and to be really carefull I need advice on which mods I should get which are safe and reliable and don't break your game

I'm needing a main overhaul mod, like MMM or OOO, don't know which one to choose, or maybe theres others. Taking advice here

Also looking for tweaking mods, and gameplay mods as well. I mainly play a Rogue/Assassin/Ranger - mainly ranged stealth classes. Any good mods around this area would be great.

Thanks for looking at this and thanks very much for replying

PS: If you know any other good mods, then please list them but I'm begging people not to list buggy mods which can crash your game

My "Top Ten":

1. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=3953 by Oscuro, dev_akm, MadCat221. Not just a 'creature-adding' mod, not just a 'difficulty' mod, not just a 'gameplay-tweaking' mod, Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul is actually one of the finest finest roleplaying mods around. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=1757 by Martigen, Corepc Dev_Akm Shadowborn is the perfect complement to Oscuro, adding much-needed spontaneity to Oscuro's static world. Crank Martigen's mod all the way up and Oblivion will feel as wonderfully unpredictable as an MMO. These mods are so inseparable to me I count them as one.

2. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com/View.php?view=OblivionMods.Detail&id=2764 by, of course, DarN.
This essential mod goes a long way toward making Oblivion's consolized interface useable. Configurable from within the game via a menu.

3. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14065 by tej?n, or http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13879 bu ABO.
Two excellent character-levelling mods that do away with stat management, excel spreadsheets, visits to Wiki pages, etc, to research "builds". With these mods a player can just play and let a mod handle leveling seamlessly and invisibly in the background. I tend to prefer RL but I am using nGCD in my current game and am very impressed.

4. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=14304 by tej?n.
This mod allows the player to control the speed of advancement of each skill. Easily configurable via an .ini.

5. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11237 by tej?n. (I tell you, I believe my games would be practically unplayable without tej?n.)
Willpower again has an affect on the player's vulnerabilty to magic, as in previous ES games.

6. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=7484 by Deathless Aphrodite.
Makes the player lose fatigue when running. When the player's fatigue hits 0 he starts to walk. Also allows the player to sprint for a brief time.

7. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25078 by TheNiceOne.
Using this mod merchants' gold goes up and down with each trade. Also does away with the haggle slider (what a relief!) Allows the player to specify how much gold they recive from looting containers, enemies, as quest rewards, etc. All configurable via .ini.

8. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4387 by CorePC. Adds much-needed life to Cyrodiil's roads. The merchants are great if you like to spend extended time away from cities as I do.

9. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16513 by Bananasplit, Wolfslady, Reckless, SilentResident, Nernie, Vorians and last but not least, Ismelda.
The way the cities of Tamriel should have looked. Spend hours wandering around like a tourist, awestruck at how different (and gorgeous) everything looks. Comes in modular form - you can choose to redo all of Cyrodiil's cities or just one. It's your choice.

10. http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=25023 by Iliana.
An ambitious project whose aim is to recreate the province of Elseweyr, home to Khajiits and, of course, Moon Sugar.

Most of the time, it is not bugginess in the mods that causes problems. Most of the time it is load order and mod-conflicts which are the issue. In addition, many popular mods put a heavy strain on the CPU, which can cause slowdowns.

So, to be 100% careful, you'll have to be very methodical in your installation of mods.

• If you can, install and learn to use Wrye Bash's BAIN installation feature.
  
• If not, converting as many mods as possible to omods and installing with OBMM is good also.
  
• Use BOSS for your load order.
  
• Be patient, add mods slowly, playtest often.

gothemasticator

Hello, I really understand you, because I know how long it did take for me, and still does.

First advice, do not give up! :banghead:

Second, start with your vanilla Oblivion, hopefully GOTY edition, if not, you have to think about the appropriate Official Patches to apply first.

Next, test your vanilla if it works fine (mine did even exit properly without crashing, until I installed the 40th mod or so)

Then install the necessary tools first, like TESCS (if needed), OBMM, OBSE, Wyre Bash (this is a little bit more tricky, because it needs Python to run, and a seperate gui library for pyhton), BOSS (this are only the most important)
Be sure to always use the latest version, in most cases they can be found here in the forum.

If ever possible, convert your mod to a omod (done with OBMM, some mods are already omods, some have conversion data, some need to be converted first), and install it via obmm.

Last, but not least, do one mod, not all at the same time, test it (there are incredibly lot of compatibility patches around, all in different versions, take your time, and it will be worth it)

And you will find lots of help here, incredible nice peops. just ask.



PS: If you have question, you can mail me anytime or use MSN, pm me for the nick. good luck.

what does Wyre Bash actually do?

MMM is not really a main overhaul mod. OOO, Frans, and TIE are the main options. I'm using OOO.
Stealth Overhaul by JOG seems to be the standard mod for adjusting sneaking chances and backstab damage, though it's getting a little long in the tooth.

EVERYTHING.
Though the most common thing it's needed for is building a bashed patch. Which I've never done since I don't use FCOM nor large numbers of mods.

basic fixes: (many of these require http://obse.silverlock.org/)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5296 - also see unofficial shivering isles patch and unofficial DLC patch
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2037
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12859 (requires OBSE)
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9333 (requires OBSE)
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22984 (requires OBSE)
http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22410 (requires OBSE)
and my own http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=23208 (requires OBSE)

more subjective fixes:
general game balance / design: see http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=820948 (OOO is good)
GUI: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10763 or http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11280
hotkeys: my own http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22326 (requires OBSE)

Wrye Bash does many many things. Notable among them are:

• The bashed patch: a configurable and automated patch-producing feature that is necessary to get some mod-combos (notably FCOM) to work properly. Also, it is capable of wholly merging some mods into itself, thus saving you some slots in your load order (mainly a concern for players approaching the hard limit of 254 ESP and ESM files).
  
• BAIN: an installation function that gives you great control over what files overwrite what other files. Also, wonderful for removing mods, since it restores the files that now-removed mod was overwriting.

However, it is a bit trickier to install, and there is a bit of a learning curve when you first begin to use it. Once you do learn, it becomes invaluable when working out mod-conflicts and load order problems.

That said, if it turns out to be too complicated or confusing for you, using OBMM to create and/or install omod versions of mods is easier to get the hang of and makes installing some complicated mods very simple. Many people, for instance, use OBMM to install even FCOM, and then they use Wrye Bash only for the bashed patch feature.

gothemasticator

Decided to go OOO this time instead of MMM, was going to try them together but... better not risk it .

Still unsure about Wyre Bash, the description "EVERYTHING" doesn't quite make sense so i'm going to leave it.

Thanks Pseron Wyrd for the links, very helpful

and thanks marshmellow for giving me that list.

Still needing more though

Well, for more mods you can browse around TESNexus or use the search function here: search for words like "recommend" and "essential."

gtm

Wrye bash is the best mod management and installation tool available in my opinion(BAIN). If you want a really clean installation you will want that, it keeps track of all files(mods, textures, meshes) and tell you which override which according to your mod order in BAIN. Of course you need to repackage your mods to be BAIN friendly but it's worth it in my opinion(my textures directory was quite a mess in my previous modded game).

You may want to install Tes4Edit too to clean dirty mods. There is an easy tutorial to remove duplicate entries: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit/Mod_cleaning_tutorial_with_TES4Edit

You will of course want to use BOSS to reorder your modlist.

I personally wouldn't bother with OBMM at all, the script system is nice enough but the interface is a bit too obscure for my taste(I like to know exactly what the installation did).

And additional features of Wrye Bash are: merging mods(if you go over the 255 limit or want to merge different features of different mods at the same time), ghosting mods(apparently oblivion tries to read mods even if they are not active, this correct that by adding .ghost to all unused mods), removing bloat from saves(and adds a fix for the animation bug too). It also tells you if any of your mods have missing masters. It has probably other features I never used too .
Wrye Bash is the swiss knife of the mod user, don't know if you will survive long without it .

And azerbagb, and the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1072579&hl=. By the way you're topic number 37.

Check post number 4 for some copy pastes, I list some pretty stable gameplay mods in mine. Also check the http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=872035&hl, http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=820948&hl. That should be enough for now.

http://www.sulteric.com and click the Oblivion link for what I deem my essential mods.

You don't have to choose, they can both be used at the same time. MMM has plugins to make it compatible with OOO.