After reading about the myriads of Oblivion Mods I recently had the urge to play Oblivion again. I used to play it after release and with an early version of OOO. As I also never got to play the DLC/Addon I just bought the whole package on Steam and started to look for mods. Little did I know that this quest may be my very own personal trip into a realm of darkness.

To cut a long story short, while I certainly was able to install one of the overhaul mods with a few tiny ones and added graphical improvements it is unfortunately impossible for me to install more complex combinations. My dream Oblivion would be something along the lines of FCOM, Deadly Reflex, Cobl, BBC, UL, Qarls etc., nGCD, Midas, the better quest mods (i.e. Heart of Darkness) but after multiple tries I can only report failure.

Whatever I do I always seem to mess something up. I read up on the guides and readmes and carefully retraced my steps after each failure. While I am certainly not an idiot I finally do have to admit that I propably will not be able to sort this out on my own.

After grudgingly accepting this I did ask myself whether it would be possible to receive the data folder of someone who already succeeded in installing a complex combination of the most common mods. Would it be possible to simply copy someone else modded files (minus the Oblivon core files and DLC obviously) into my own Oblivion folder and be able to play his/her installed mods this way? If this is possible would someone care to do so and publish a torrent with it?

Maybe one day I will play a heavily modded Oblivion then .

First thing: What's your OS? Did you install Steam (and subsequentely Oblivion) in the Program Files folder running Vista/Seven?
Then you'll need http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=22368, Oblivon Mod Manager (the version you prefer) and http://obse.silverlock.org/.
Then give a try to http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/.
Good luck :foodndrink:

Stuck record time, I think... But it is often worth saying, so I'll say it again anyway:

Use BAIN.

Apart from that, read readmes and relevent thread OPs, and install major things one at a time, testing each significant change to make sure everything is working as it should be. Even if you get something wrong, BAIN allows you to easily backtrack and do any part of it again, painlessly. I'll leave it at that, except to say that, well, I can't emphasise how important it is, if you want to be sane at the end of it all, every time.

Check out Tomlong's site too - that's the "Posi-whatever" thing linked to above. Really, it's worth a read.


edit: Oh, and certainly, make sure you install Oblivion outside of Program Files (or the x86 version of same). Bad things happen, otherwise. Assuming you're not running WinXP, that is. If you need to uninstall Steam and reinstall that outside of Program Files (e.g., in C:\Steam instead, or whatever) first, then do so, first.

I use Win 7 and as I read a few guides so I did avoid pitfalls like installing in the program files directory. I do use OBSE, OBMM and Wrye Bash (albeit here I only really use it for the BOSS and "trying" to create a bashed patch).

I will take a look at Tomlong's site but right now I am not really in the mood to try again,maybe on the weekend. My gaming time is preciously sparse already and trying to convince mods to work is rather frustrating. :/

Thanks for the replies.

Noone has answered my question yet. Is it possible to transfer someone else's data folder and received his configured mods this way?

Yes it would be possible but not recommended.

Can you imagine what the size of someone's data folder is, with those mods you listed? I have all those mods running smoothly (*knocks on wood*), and my data folder is easily 25 GB+. :excl:

Can you imagine transferring that over the internet?

I also want to point it that it is ILLEGAL to transmit Oblivion's own files that come with the game, as it would be against the EULA... :grad:

PS: We have all gone through the necessary trouble of reading guides. It is also a matter of your own hardware - it will be different from other's, so another installation will certainly not play well with your hardware, and neither will their choices.

Also, modded Oblivion is not easy - to avoid frustrations, you need to have more than a dilettante's understanding of the tools and utilities needed to make it work. Letting someone else do the hardwork for you is a surefire recipe for disaster when the time comes to troubleshoot (and believe me, it will always require troubleshooting!)

I suggest reading Tomlong's guide - and using either BAIN or OBMM. FCOM is easy to install with TNO's FCOM OMOD installers, but I recommend going the BAIN way as it is very very easy to troubleshoot with it.

He specifically said such things would obviously be omitted.

Nevertheless, it is not recommended to attempt such a thing, it's not practical and it doesn't do you any good for anything but the immediate future. You will still have no knowledge/experience of how modded oblivion works, which to use mods you will need at some point. It's like taking a course in something, doing no work, then cheating in the final exam: you might get the qualification, but the minute you need to apply what it covers, you're in trouble.

My advice is: one at a time.

Don't try to add them all at once. Get each one working, then move on to the next.

It seems that the wonders of modded Oblivion are not for me.

Between university and reallife my gaming time is very limited already. Diving into the
finer points of modding is certainly nothing I would like to do in my free time.

It is unfortunate that the great looking content the hard working modding commuity
created is locked for me. I wish everyone who had the time and patience to work
through the initial problems continued fun with Oblivion.

Thanks for all the advice. I may try again one day when I have more free time on my
hands.