As the title says I have been playing Morrowind for years and just a few days ago got the GOTY edition of Oblivion. I went looking for mods and found so many I don't even know where to start. Can some of you long time Oblivion players give me a hand and send me in the right direction? Mainly I am looking for something along the line of Better Bodies to make the characters look a bit better. Lets face it, straight out of the box the characters are ugly at best and go down hill from there. After that I would probably like to find a really good house mod. Since, as far as I can tell, there is no way to teleport in game I can forget about a teleportation mod like I used to use for Morrowind.

So, I am looking for suggestions on what mods you use and what you might suggest I should be looking out for besides the two areas I mentioned. I'm sure there are probably several must have mods for graphics and such that I should be interested in.

Thanks in advance.

Jiltanith

Bear in mind that I am pretty novice and basic regarding mods:

Bodies. As far as bodies go, I like BAB. It is perfect for my 'petite' elf. At one time I used HGEC and that is also very good, albeit notably 'curvier'. Those are the only two I have tried. Most of the fellows seem to sport bodies by Roberts Male Bodies.

Horses. I love horses in the game, but I do need to ensure that you are aware of Oblvion's fast travel ability. Anyway, back to horses, anything that Slof or Zira touches is gold. If you want an all in one super simple wonderful horse horse that you can summon/unsummon, has saddlebags, looks gorgeous (blond Clydesdale with white mane/tail/feet and beautiful tack), can walk on water, charges and knocks down foes. . . then simply get Slof's Summonable Epona. If you want a horse mod that affects all the horses in the game, adding terrifically to the variety of the horses and detail of the tack, then I use Slof's Oblivion Horses along with another simple mod called Simple Saddlebags to make the Slof saddlebags functional. If you want a tiny mod that simply livens up the horse animations and causes you to pet them more frequently etc, then try Lady Deadlocks Love Your Horse. If you think you want some beautiful Clydesdale horses, then look at Zira's mods. You can simply use the command console to name your horse, change their speed, make them essential, bring them into town if you like, etc.

Obviously you'll want to have

Oblivion Mod Manager
Oblivion Script Extender
and maybe WryeBash (it's a bit more technical but a must if you want a weather mod)

Body Mods

Robert's Male body version 5
Exnem's eyecandy body replacer (seems to be the best supported female body mod though it's a bit cartoony. Choose robert's female body for something more realistic).

Random Mods I enjoy.

Quarl's Texture pack 3 redimized (does wonders for oblivion's textures)
Millstone Farm - awesome house mod! Just downloaded it and it's incredibly detailed. Korana is the best.
Unique Landscapes - these are a must. Makes oblivion's wilderness feel like just that.
Animated Window Lighting System - does what it says ... and it does it well
All Natural - best weather mod out there.
Immersive Interiors - You can see out of windows! Still a WIP
Symphony of Violence - nice sound replacer for combat
Alive Waters - adds some much needed detail to underwater Oblivion.
RealSwords - adds race specific weapons to npcs (Khajiit, Argonian, Breton, Bosmer, Nord, Redguard)
Slofs Horses - Texture replacer for horses. It's pretty amazing.
Mad Mages Tower - awesome home for a mage with some great touches (moving walls, a crazy chest)
New Face Textures by enyala - my favorite face texture mod
Slofs Khajiit Retexture


Morrowind Themed Mods I enjoy.

McMuffin's Daedric Lord Armor - Incredible recreation of morrowind's daedric armor.
Dwemer Skyship by mr_siika - awesome floating house mod. The miscellaneous dwemer meshes are spot on.
Personal Pack Guars - Adds guars to Oblivion ... huzzah.
Morrowind Booze
Morrowind Books

Some of My Mods

If you start aching for Morrowind Equipment try Vvardenfell Imports and Vvardenfell Imports Addon. Adds a shop to cheydinhal just be sure to check the bookcase
Mythic Animals
Mythic Creatures
Mythic Ghouls and Ghosts - High res texture replacers for Oblivion creatures.

Oblivion doesn't have teleport, but it does have fast travel. Once you've discovered a location, you just need to click on it from the world map and you'll fast travel there immediately. Supreme Magicka and Midas Magic offer the same Mark and Recall type spells that Morrowind has. Supreme Magicka also has an extrication spell that will take you back to the beginning of an area, like a dungeon - very handy.

There are lots of body mods. There are also mods for better looking faces. Have a look at the first three pages of postings in the mods forum - a lot of people have been asking about body mods lately and there are a ton of responses in those threads. Having said that, I prefer Roberts for both male and female Do a search on Nexus for All Male Bodies, if you want a male body mod. Roberts female will yield lots of results on that side.

Remember, Oblivion does not have 'face' mod like Morrowind. If you're searching for better faces, all you can get is facial textures, better looking NPC mods, and some custom head meshes you can use for making custom races.

If you are used to Wrye Mash, use Wrye Bash instead of OBMM.

Three necessaries missed so far ... (Oh and before you start modding, if you are using Windows Vista or 7, do not install the game in its default location C:\Program files\ - Installing it in a different folder outside of UAC control (say C:\Games\ for example) will save you having various problems modding Oblivion - If you have already installed the game there, re-doing it now will be a lot less grief than later when you have started modding).

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=5296

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9969

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10739

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27710

Install those four in that order, the last one is the most up to date and continues work in the previous patching those, with the addition of patches to the Official Mods Patches.

This forums help guide http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/449239-oblivion-mods-faq/

More help with modding Oblivion on Tomlongs superb site http://tesivpositive.animolious.com/

If you want help starting out with Wrye Bash basics, see my Signature links below. Also listed in the description of that guide are links to body mods on Nexus which can be installed easily with Wrye Bash.

A lot of mods use OBMM as the installer (installs OMODS), because its easy to use for most people. If as we are guessing you have been used to Wrye Mash, Wrye Bash will be familiar ground, and has advanced what used to be called Replacers (Now called simply Installers or BAIN's, Bash Installers). For finer control over your installations BAIN IMHO is superior, you can still use OBMM for a few functions (you will come across those later), but I primarily have it installed just to extract an OMOD and make a BAIN out of it when needed

Edit: And a tip in advance - When you start learning about Archive Invalidation, some people recommend BSA Alteration still .... Dont use that method, use BSA Redirection instead (Which is the default method used by Wrye Bash and OBMM).

Edit2: Ooops missed UOMP previously, which is also required before the Supplementals patch

Firstly, bodies-wise, Roberts for the males, and Roberts or TFF for the females, Exnems seems to be a bit WEHEEEEY [censored]!!ELEVENTYONE based whereas the other two are less aimed at the peanut gallery, BAB is quite good too, but a little skinny for some people's tastes.

If you want improved faces, TNR is the way to go, a modder spent a very long time improving every single NPC face in the vanilla game and DLC.

As stated above, if you have a relatively recent video card, you'll benefit from Quarls textures, although I would supplement them with AmpolX's new subsets for caves and a couple of other bits and bobs.

Deadly Reflex makes the combat. (I was going to say it makes the combat better, but but actually, it's accurate as it stands.)

Cyrodiil Transportation Network puts a morrowind style public transport system in place, and disables fast travel, two massive improvements in one.

I recommend OBGE as well, if you're confident fiddling with shaders (most morrowinders these days are used to MGE, right?)

Noone is going to recommend a Morrowind player the mod that makes Oblivion like Morrowind? Well looks like i will: look up Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul.It completely redoes level scaling in a fashion similar to Morrowind. You can find the support thread http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1119240-relz-oscuros-oblivion-overhaul-133/ as well as a download link in there For bodies, check out Roberts Male and Female bodies, they're the most realistic IMO. Corepc's Vibrant Oblivion textures, found http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=982463, are a nice graphic increase for lower computers, but you cant go wrong with Qaurls Textures pack for high res textures and TheMythofStriders Mythic Animals, Creatures and Ghosts texture packs for creatures. You might also consider my leveled list overhaul, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1145321-relz-johns-leveled-list-overhaul/. It adds TheMythofStriders Vvardenfel Imports plus its addon to the leveled lists as well as a pile of other weapons to give Oblivions loot some diversity.