Yeah, it's one of those "What mods should I use?!?" topics. I'm sorry!

I played Oblivion a great deal in the year following release, and was consistently blown away by the work so many modders put in. (With OOO being the centerpiece.) Now I'd like to revisit the game and see what new work has been forged--the problem is, there's so much of it that I'm not sure what to use! So many of these mods seem so ambitious that it sometimes seems inevitable that there will be conflicts. I'm hoping someone can bring me into the loop and back up to speed.

The good news is, unlike a lot of these topics, I don't need technical help. (OBMM and Wyre Bash are as wonderful as ever, and BOSS looks spiffy.)

Rather my concerns aren't even about technical compatibility; a much more common problem would be gameplay compatibility, where too many independent cooks in the kitchen baking their own masterpiece inhibits balance and immersion. I'm not just asking if things work together, but asking for expertise on if they are appropriate together.

I'm currently assuming that all mods operate fine with SI and official DLC, but I worry that such is not covered by otherwise global systems like FCOM. Not entirely sure what the situation is here concerning how independent this content is.

I previously played Oblivion generally with OOO and couldn't imagine playing without it. However, at that time the original Open Cities and the first ULs were just getting started, and OOO's widespread worldspace changes often interfered with both. I really loved these mods and am very excited to see how much more has been done on both fronts. Do any ULs, Open Cities, or Better Cities interfere with FCOM?

It's my understanding that I need to choose between Open Cities Classic, Open Better Cities, and Open Cities Reborn. Right? Thoughts?

Deadly Reflex looks interesting, but I'm worried about interfering with OOO/FCOM's balance. I'm not familiar enough with combat variables to be sure. Can someone share some understanding?

When I last played, there were several competing weather mods with various bugs and incompatibilites. Now it looks like All Natural + Immersive Interiors or Reener's mod is the single way to go?

These are my main concerns, and I'd be really grateful for anyone's help. I'm more than welcome to hear any other thoughts or warnings, as well as any other highly suggested mods. Thanks!

I use a heavily-modified version of Open Cities with OOO and MMM and all but one of the ULs and I think they work extremely well together. The tiny conflicts that do exist have long ago been resolved with some excellent patches. Better Cities has a few "open" options available for some towns nowadays so if you're leaning in the direction of Open Better Cities I would suggest using Better Cities instead. I'm guessing most people except me probably use Open Cities Reborn in place of classic Open Cities these days.

I use my own weather mod so I will leave a discussion of weather mods to someone else. I don't use Deadly Reflex so I'll leave that one alone too.

In terms of gameplay? No, other than some small percentage of spawn points that might be out of place.



Depends on whether you want them all to be from the same package. OCC and OCR are entirely modular so you can pick one, some, or all of either if you want. I'm not sure what the state of BC/OBC modularity is right now but last I knew you could also selectively pick one or more of those cities too. So you could really mix things up in interesting ways if you want.



I'm probably biased in the matter, but yes, I'd say All Natural is the way to go. The interiors portion isn't entirely fleshed out in either of the other two mods yet though.

I'm in a similar situation, and as such this time I'm considering skipping big overhauls in favour of building the experience I'd like with smaller works. As a side note if it wasn't for bash and BAIN (which is a ****** godsend) I would seriously reconsider my decision to have another go.
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/820948-scaling-overhaul-comparison I've found to be a very good read.
I've only tried frans, and I think that was when it was 1.2b or something, but I found it sufficient (though I never gave it much thought). This time I'm looking to try TIE.

Actually I'm having difficulty deciding how I wan't to experience the game, which isn't helped with the crazy amount of choice provided by those dedicated modders out there.

FCOM is compatible with the DLC's, but it doesn't deal with them either, with the exception of Knights of the Nine. This means that Mehrune's Razor is vanilla leveled and OOO and KotN share the same dungeon for respective bosses for example. When it comes to overhauling SI, you can choose between Fran's SI and MMM SI with FCOM. Not much point of running both IIRC, as MMM SI will overrule most of Fran's SI. Also, there's http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34245, which aims to make SI more like OOO and works fine with FCOM/MMM SI. I haven't finished the SI mainquest with it, but so far it's excellent, finally making SI a bit challenging.