Hi. I'm playing Oblivion on the PC, and I'm wondering if I can edit certain attributes or values on clothing, armor, and weapons. I don't want to cheat necessarily but some of the more powerful items I find look like crap. And I would prefer wearing/using other stuff I find but that stuff would give me no protection. So I was wondering if I can, for example, take clothes and give it an armor rating and/or enchant it by other means than through creating meshes/textures. I've never used programs for editing textures and meshes, and I don't want to spend the time learning those programs. I figure there has to be a file I can change or a console code for altering an items attributes. I searched online to no avail. Any info answering or pertaining to my question would be most appreciated. Thanks.

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/The_Elder_Scrolls_Construction_Set

King Coin's link is a very excellent one. I consult it regularly (and I've been modding for nine years).

I do exactly what you're describing in my own games. I adore Leather armor and dislike most of the higher-level stuff. So I make my character a set of unique Leather armor. Then, as my character gains levels and encounters Chain mail, Elven, ect, I change the stats of my character's Leather armor to match those of Chain Mail and Elven...and on up to Glass.

You can also turn clothing into armor. In fact I just made a set of armor for my next character out of clothing I got from mods. I turned the clothing into light armor.

Study the Construction Set page and if you have any questions, ask. I or someone else will be happy to help you.

Thanks, guys! I'll check this out and ask for further help if I need it.

OK... got a problem. For some reason when I add a mod to the loaded files in the TES Construction Kit and do anything and then try to save my esp file, the Construction Kit crashes on the save. It doesn't matter what mod I add. If I just load the Oblivion.esm and make the same changes and save, it saves fine. I made no active file cause I'm not changing any mod I'm loading in. I'm just making my own additions. It saves fine with just the game but not an added mod... why is this and what can I do about it? Am I doing something wrong or missing something?

If you want to create an .esp that makes changes to another .esp you have to http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/De-Isolation_Tutorial the .esp first.

But I presume these changes are for your own game only (that is, not for release)? If so, I would just make them directly to the mod. Make the mod active, make your changes, save. That's what I do.

Thanks for the de-isolation info. I solved the problem though. It seems all I needed was ShadeMe's CS Extender. The CS wouldn't save when I loaded .esp's along with the Oblivion.esm to the CS and tried to save my own .esp. Once I installed the CS Extender though, problem was solved.

Just be careful when doing what you are doing --- CSE automatically does the deisolation for you but doing so can cause problems later if you are not careful --- Not allowing one .esp to use items in another .esp file is done by choice (BEth did this to keep people from having probelm with games being unstable once they start removing and adding mods) and overriding that can cause problems if you do not know what you are doing ! -- If you deisolate a mod and then use it in another mod like you are doing then you have to be sure that the mod used to store the changes always has the reference mod loading before it and you can not use the second mod if the first is ever removed (the game will Crash since it will be looking for things that do not exist if the first mod is removed) --- and randomly doing this can make it difficult to keep track of which mod requires which others and once you start changing load order or removing what you believe are unused mods you can easily make it so that your game no longer loads (there are places where it is useful to override the limitation but for stability it is better to learn when this should be done and when it should not!)

For learning how to mod at first I would suggest doing so without CSE to begin and only add it later once you have an understanding of how the extensions are effecting things.

I assume you'll be wanted to change clothing to armor or vice versa. That is fairly involved owing to the difficulty of getting brand-new item blueprints to reference textures and meshes locked inside the oblivion.esm. I create dummy files and directories to do it, and it works fine, though there is probably a better way.

Or you could do it the easy way and get this http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12996. Make sure you also have OBSE.

If you have something you like the looks of and something with stats that you want, you can combine the two of them into one attractive item with great attributes. The only thing it won't do is change the item slot, so pants can't become boots or gloves can't become rings, and it won't let you pick and choose which stats you want. It's all or nothing. But it takes all the headache out of going into the CS and you can set it up in-game so it's like your own personal clothing alchemy lab.