» Tue Mar 15, 2011 1:53 am
Well it depends on the amount of effort you are willing to invest. Getting a perfectly tuned, high mod install, crash free can take someone a year of pure testing to get perfectly flowing. Every single major mod you install is another 1000 possible issues down the line.(that is actually a huge overstatement that is far more scary than it sounds, 998 of those issues won't crash your game) I currently have a crash free 155 mod install. You can image how many posts I had to read, how many settings I had to tweak, etc etc to get it to a near-crash-free-state. It's not a easy undertaking.
That said, I like my oblivion diverse. Oblivion 2.0. If you will. If you keep your modlist limited to OOO or MMM, that's great. But in my view, that's oblivion 1.01. Not oblivion 2.0. (lol don't worry, I am not taking myself that seriously here).
There are guides on this board for a pretty damn good fcom++ install (check the 50step fcom thread) but even that would likely be hours, and hours, and hours, to get right. If that scares you, and it probably should, maybe start smaller.
If you cannot handle the idea of ticking boxes, and reading how to use programs such as wrye bash, then maybe stick to a cleaner OOO install. It's not that HARD, exactly. It's more... how to put it. Layered. You need to understand how merging works, how wrye bash works, so on.
In terms of wrye bash, in my view - it's the gateway to more than a single overhaul mod. It's THE essential tool for getting oblivion 2.0. (when used with boss installed so it's useable in wrye bash)
Personally, to experience oblivion on a grand grand scale, I think fcom+ many more essential mods is absolutely the way to go. But as said previous to this post, you can increment if you want.
Just to reiterate one more time, if you manage to understand how wrye bash works, if you have your oblivion mods folder setup with the mods you want, so you can use bain. If you merge that bash patch. If you set boss and click on the sort button before you build your patch. Then from thereon out, (and it's not THAT hard getting there) it's smoother rolling. You basically just install (nice to read readme's for most complex mods) run the little boss icon from wrye bash, right click your bashed patch, build patch, set your tweaks and merge options, and build the patch. And every mod you install beyond that is just repeating that same formula. Get that formula down, and you have the eb-and-flow of tweaking your oblivion install.
Also, if you do finally go down this path, and figure out the above, from a proper post explaining how to do so. Then always remember to install a mod, test test test, install a mod, test test test, install a mod, test test test. And every time you feel you have gotten somewhere in terms of stability, make a backup of the oblivion folder, or rar it up. Then if something goes wrong, and you install a few too many mods, and now everything feels broken or dirty. Revert to the older install, start again from there. Until you find the next stability point. It's like slowly climbing a ladder.
This is really essential.
Like I said, it's a process. Eventually you learn to love it. But a lot of hate, cursing, frowning, and giving up, comes before that. Personally, I had to learn it all myself. I never had a fcom++guide, by that point I had already figured it all out myself. The hard way. But that's way I learn. I truly hope you can follow the guides on here and catchup a lot of what I had to manually invest, a lot faster.
Oh, and you gotta install those unofficial oblivion patches nomatter what! They are essential.