Hello,

After reading through these forums I can tell that it's a very active and helpful community. I hope someone can take the time to save me some time .

I started playing Oblivion on XBox when it came out, but never finished it (life happened). Now I see there is a new edition coming out soon, so I'm revisiting Oblivion to finish it up before the new Elder Scrolls comes out. I've purchased "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion? Game of the Year Edition Deluxe" from Steam (PC Version). I could use some direction with the following questions:

*What order should I do the quests in? Should I do the kings quest from vanilla Oblivion first, then go through the expansions?
*Are there mods that I should load that are essential? I saw the unofficial patch mod, and the texture mod. Should I load those, and are there others that are essential?

I hope there's someone who's still active on the forums who has this knowledge.

There is no real order to do the quests. so can't help you on that one.

for you second question. I don't use the texture pack but I do have the Unofficial patch for oblivion and shivering isle installed. they fix more then i can imagine so you should deffinetly use it, in my opinion.

Regarding essential mods, definiitely load UOP.

Then I recommend the following approach. Play the game and consider what things about it you would like to improve and or bother you. Then research mods toward that end. Each player's list of mods is going to be quite different because each player is quite different as far as what they consider important.

For example, I use several horse mods but no scenery mods or mods that affect leveling or quests. Most players will have a mod list that looks very little like mine. Use mods to fix or change things that bother you.

Thanks for the replies. I've decided on all the unofficial patches and nothing else. I'm not into cheating and don't want to risk unballancing the game.

Concerning order of quests/expansions... I found the following page that helps with ins and outs of the vanilla Oblivion quests: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Quest_Timing

Concerning expansions though, should I complete the vanilla Oblivion before delving into the expansions.. or does it really matter. Should I just follow my nose?

I think you should just follow your nose. do what you want and whenever you want. and mods aren't always cheating, there are those to make the game harder and others just add items like armor and weapons that are nicely ballanced ... Meh, like Acadian said. play the game first without mods and see what it is you don't like and then find a mod that changes it the way you want it to be.

Fair enough! Thanks for taking the time to help me out. Concerning expansions; there are no expansions that are important for me to do right away due to items or storyline order then?

no, not that I know of. I'm glad I was of any help.