Hi there. New to the forums

I've "beat" Oblivion once in vanilla mode and am just starting to mod it. So far I have about 50 mods installed successfully and running without a hitch in the game (using OBMM, BOSS, OBSE). I am considering installing OOO, and have found links around the web for a compatibility thread in these forums, but they lead to nowhere. I've also done a few searches of the forums, again with no luck. This is an enormous mod and I have a hard time believing that there's not some master list out there of known incompatibilities to OOO. I can certainly post a list of my current mods and load order, but feel certain I am overlooking where I can find the info that I'm looking for. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Much thanks.

Note edited for fail spelling/grammar...

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:FCOM

As FCOM is built on an OOO foundation incompatibilities will be the same

Great, thanks for this. Not completely sure that I'm going the FCOM route yet...still deciding. I'm surprised that there aren't more mods on this list, there's maybe a few dozen here out of the thousands out there -- is there anything else that is more exhaustive?

The easy way to approach this is to look at the incompatibilities listed in mods you might want to consider adding. Almost every mod that is completely incompatible with OOO will state as much in it's readme file, since OOO is the biggest and (including FCOM users as OOO users) most prolifically used overhaul mod.

I think that you're imagining there will be much more in the way of incompatibilities than there actually are, though. Aside from other overhaul mods, I very rarely find a mod that's incompatible with OOO/FCOM without a patch available.

I use FCOM and have over 150 mods that aren't FCOM mods, and my game runs perfectly.

Yeah, I might be being overly cautious in that respect. I'm down to mostly the cosmetic mods, landscape texturing mods, race mods, and game mechanics mods. I anticipate the most problems with the latter. I've been slowly working through all the mods I'm interested in, scouring their read me files, as you suggested. Haven't had to use Wrye Bash yet, but sort of expecting that I'll need to learn how to use it, as well. Modding Oblivion is sooo much more work than modding WoW, lol. I hope Skyrim will be easier!

For gameplay altering mods and a number of landscape mods, unless you're using a very minimal number, Wrye Bash will be a necessity. I can tell you that several of the UL (Unique Landscapes) mods will require patches which will in turn require proper load order (get BOSS) and possibly the bashed patch. Any leveled list changes will require use of the Bashed Patch. Gameplay changes to things that are also changed by OOO may require the Bashed Patch or just proper ordering.

But the point is, get Bash and use it (including the Bashed Patch), along with BOSS. Those two steps will solve 90% of "could have been" compatibilities. And "solvable" compatibility problems will most likely NOT be noted in readmes, since they're not real compatibility problems but rather load order / standard patching issues.

Since it's possible to play for days without running into a problem, then find a stray compatibility problem - sometimes not game breaking, but severely annoying - it's better to head them off as much as possible. I realize that's what you're trying to do looking for lists, but Bash + BOSS (which, come to think of it, kind of counts as an "exhaustive compatibility list") will solve almost every possible problem you may have of this nature with a standard OOO install - with much less time and effort!

plus OBMM should warn about conflicts

OBMM's conflict detector is junk, and impossible to read.

Besides, it only warns about resource conflicts, not mod conflicts.

Yep, this is the part I haven't done yet, but have spent alot of time reading about. I wouldn't say I completely understand it, but it's getting slightly less confusing. Now that I'm about to enter the area where things are going to get a bit stickier, it might be helpful if someone commented on the "order" that I'm doing things in when I am working on the mods:

1. Download mod @ TESNexus.
2. Create OMOD w/OBMM. I generally have BSA redirection on. I encountered one mod that stated I should use BSA alteration/textures/generate AI entries for hash collision -- I think it was QTP3 Redimized. Should I switch it back to BSA redirection? Will this mess with QTP3 or any other mods? How frequently do I need to "update" the archive invalidation? I've read that you only have to run it once, but honestly, the whole process still has me perplexed. I understand that the game is looking at the dates on files, trying to figure out which one to replace/use, and it will use the one that's the most recent. That's about as much as I understand -- I'm not a mod dev and I don't know anything about coding, etc.
3. Check if new OMOD is conflict-free. If not, view the conflict details, and evaluate whether to still activate or not. This is where I can get a bit confused. I typically do some web research to try to figure it out, but honestly, alot of the time it feels like a crapshoot. I figure that BOSS will sort it out in the next step. Is this a correct assumption, or can I fark up my game by enabling conflicting mods in the OBMM?
4. Run BOSS. This is the easiest part! I read through the output to see what the program says -- tons of handy information there. I haven't had to clean any mods yet, but there are some dirty ones -- Book Covers, for example, is so dirty it crashes my game. I've downloaded TES4Edit, but haven't used it yet, as the cleaning has to be made according to load order. I figure I need to wait until I'm done downloading all my mods, run BOSS to figure out the order, and THEN use it to clean the appropriate mods.

Does all this sound right? Am I making any rookie mistakes?

Big question: At what point do I insert Wrye Bash into this mess? Right now I'm sort of assuming, after step 4 (running BOSS). Seems like mods be cleaned prior to making the Bashed Patch, which if I remember right, also isn't done until all mods are downloaded and load order is determined?

Thanks to all the recent posters for their input!

The "insertion point" for Wrye Bash isn't extremely important, it actually has a number of features that overlap OBMM (and some would argue that some of those features work better in Bash's implementation). For instance, it has it's own comprehensive mod installer that handles everything BUT omods, and certainly unarguably works better for conflict detection.

But the most necessary function of Wrye Bash, the Bashed Patch, should be the last thing you do, yes. When you get to that point, use this as a guide: http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35230.

For conflict detection, it is usually fine to rely MOSTLY on BOSS. BOSS is basically the only comprehensive mod conflict report you can get, where BAIN or OBMM will tell you about resource conflicts, as previously noted. If you have a texture or mesh conflict, these generally won't be game-breaking. I would highly recommend figuring out BAIN (the included installer functionality of Bash) as soon as you can, as I already said, this makes finding (and correcting) most conflicts easy as pie.

As far as cleaning goes, my personal policy is to clean everything that shouldn't explicitly NOT be cleaned. If it's clean already, the file will go unchanged, and you can never be sure which dirty edit will be the one that causes issues, so! For that you need http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11536 and this handy dandy http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1200914-list-tes4edit-cleaning-list/ (Maintained by Thomas Kaira, who's also been posting here to help you out. :icecream: ). Find the part listing the handful of mods that should not be cleaned and make sure you skip them if you have them (such as the OOO esp). Learning this process might seem complicated at first, but I guarantee you that once you've done it three times it'll seem easy. It takes about 10 seconds per mod, plus the loading time - which depending on the mod can stretch into the range of a few minutes. But you can read forum posts while you wait for that!

Alright, sounds like I'm doing ok then, so far. Just have to make sure I check for patches for OOO/FCOM compatibility.

I'll go ahead and finish up mod research & downloads, order with BOSS, clean, and then make a Bashed Patch. Hopefully, my game will still work after that, lol.

Will post back and let you know

Thanks again for everyone's time!