I'm just looking for some mods that will enhance the gameplay a bit. Perhaps a sword, a pair of armor, a nice shield or an extra house/city. I don't want anything weird and extensive that will make the game not feel like Oblivion anymore. I just tried that Unnecessary Violence mod and there was just too man features etc that made the game just feel awkward.
For example, one mod I really like is Archery Rebalance, tweaks the game a little bit but barely noticeable.


Anything out there for me? Thanks.

Adonnays Classical Weaponry - nice named swords hidden throughout the land for you to find with nice benefits.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=9185

Try Kuertee's mods, do a search on nexus. There is also a thread for this.

Enhanced Economy.
Companion Vilja and Red Rose Manor.
Phitts Phiting Phixes and Phitts Artifacts.
Dynamic Leveled Lists.

Hope one of these catches your liking.

Perfect. =) Thanks.

If you haven't tried it, http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16316 is fantastic and fits in the game world very seamlessly.

Forgot that one. Good catch. This really fits into the fun mods without changing anything (much).

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31773 adds about 15-20 quests that feel like they could have been in Oblivion to begin with.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15412 looks good as well from what I played through. Haven't finished it yet.

Open Cities, it puts all the cities except the IC and Kvatch in the main worldspace. Once you try it you'll wonder how you ever played without it.

There are two variants; Classic keeps the original city layouts, and Reborn changes them to be more logical and closer to the concept art. I personally like Reborn a lot, but you might want to go with Classic as it sounds like you're looking for an experience closer to vanilla.

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16360
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33003

Integration: The Stranded Light is very fun to me, and personally for me it does the opposite of going too "out there." It makes a lot of Oblivion look like some lame action game that was trying to be an RPG. It has skill checks, interesting stories, well developed characters, multiple solutions, recogmiotion of race, achievements, stats, etc. proper integration into the game world, lore from the elder scroll series which Oblivion refuses to acknowledge in favor of a more bland 'black and white' world, and just so much more.

It makes a lot of the vanilla quests look like poor excuses for a western RPG while the Integration quests far out shine them.

There's also Better Cities, which really helps to make the cities feel unique and like real renaissance cities, but it does come with a performance hit.


There is one problem here, though: the backbone of this mod is omnipresent and impossible to fully remove. Being based on RBP and LAME, two mods that drastically alter the gameplay, (so far as I have heard) even the requirements-free version without those two will not be able to fully preserve the vanilla experience. I've noted a few people already complaining about the fact that all of the races in RBP are still there and still playable, for instance. This might be too much for the OP's liking, but if he feels inclined, I certainly will give my endorsemant.

Other mods you might like include:

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=18305 A robust and realistic weather experience that includes things like being able to see through building windows and improved interior and exterior lighting.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20218 Adds new roads and bridges around Cyrodiil to make traveling by foot a bit less of a headache.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31668 Makes the cathedrals to the Nine throughout the game's cities feel much more distinct and a lot less generic.

http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39804 Lots of new audio for the game to help svck you into the world. You can hear horses whinny at the stables now, or hear the roar of the ocean in Anvil harbor, to even little rowboats bumping up against their moorings.

That's only an issue when creating a character, is completely optional, and trust me I've seen other mods that do things which are a 1000 times worse to the character creation. Countless mods that aren't even supposed to add races have these really bizarre like testraces, or races meant for NPCs in the mod, or like several duplicates of races. Worst part is that when you scroll past those races the creation process will screw up and prevent you from changing things like hair or eyes no matter what race you choose. The requirement/gameplay free version doesn't have any issues like that, and all the new races are lore correct, and if they were not able to be chosen that would be restricting a massive amount of content and replayability for the player given all the race checks, and recognition. Only real inconveniance I can imagine is if you had some other mod add eyes and hair you wanted to use, you'd have to scroll through all the RBP ones to get to it, which is really just like a 5-10 minute inconveniance once per character.

Where did you hear people complaining about the races still being playable? Only complaint I've heard was about the vanilla shivering Isles summon spells being a bit wonky, and while bg personally considers how it's set up to be a very stupid design decision by Bethesda he will possibly get around to reverting it when he can (Stupid in that each summon spell has like 4 different scripts or spells effects attached to it, and how it's all rather redundant and dirty how Bethesda set it up)

I was going to post my usual copy/paste thingy, but I can't copy/paste with this Job Corp computer's like.... Internet explorer 5; someone else wanna do it?

Re: Integration, he may be talking about my somewhat recent experience with Integrated, wherein, indeed, all the RBP races apparently showed up at character creation, and also you were able to do things like have male Argonians with long silky blonde hair. That's either something you're cool with or something you're not, and as it happens I'm really not, so I decided to pass.

That said, I've gotten an awful lot out of LAME all by itself. It may be bigger than the OP wants, but it does make Oblivion's magic a whole lot more like I wish it would have been to start with, so it's at least worth looking into.

Just to continue the Arthmoor love in here, his http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?showtopic=1178889 are all big parts of my game.

Also, http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21593, which more or less does just that, and http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=27638 little interface improvement.

I also would find an Argonian with long silky blonde hair very strange looking. I see no reason why that should stop me from installing and using LAME, RBP, and Integration. I simply won't choose bizarre combinations when making my character. I thought I would share my secret, magic technique with any who hadn't considered it .

Given all of the mods I have loaded, I'm sure that one or more of them adds some weird-looking NPCs, but so look as that's a minor part of the mod and not a main goal, I'll rarely run into them. I think that's a small price to pay for the immense amount of content added by mods like bg's.

I recommend Extended Imperial City by Stootoot. It brings a great deal of life to the Imperial City by adding around 100+ new npcs, and I haven't noticed too much of a performance drop with it.

The author has also done similar mods for Skingrad and Chorrol as well. Here's a link to their profile with all three mods available:

http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=233752

Another modder I recommend is David Brasher. He specializes in Dungeon mods which use mostly vanilla assets and seem rather well-crafted, along with a variety of other mods, such as one with turns the area around Kvatch into a corrupted Daedric Wasteland. I suggest you pick and choose what you'd like best:

http://www.tesnexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=1139939

Better cities is cool, I think there was a compatibility patch released recently that added some of the Better Cities content to the awesome new layouts of Open Cities Reborn. Unfortunately if you'r not careful with your mods it can utterly destroy your FPS.

It has some pretty big and dungeons too, like the Lost Imperial Catacombs. And when combined with Map Marker Overhaul (that hides your position on the map) it makes for some nice "Where the [censored] did i end up now? " moments

I find this a little confusing, especially in light of the responses so far. It seems to me that one gamer's "out there" is another's "barely noticeable"!

But as you like. You might want to check out the Oblivion Real Estate website, as well as TESAlliance. Maybe a few others too. It just so happens that not all mods are to be found at the Nexus. Or easily found, in some cases.

Some fairly "simple", "vanilla-friendly" mods - other than the usual graphical improvement suspects, more or less - that I like are: TIE, Phitt's Phighting Phixes, Deadly Creatures, Sneaking Detection Recalibrated, Arthmoor's various villages ...

Actually, I cannot recall all that many. And besides, I find Oblivion in need of rather more extensive "fixing". Obviously, we should simply agree to disagree there. Anyway, you might find something useful http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1211132-new-to-the-game-what-mods-do-you-find-necessary-for-oblivion/page__p__18130121#entry18130121 (a post I prepared earlier, if you will). Warning: At least one of those mods (that being Revised Oblivion Mod aka ROM) DOES significantly alter and add many things. Not recommended, for you.

This, 100000x this. If you combine it with the Map Marker Overhaul's ability to hide your GPS arrow thingy and location from the world map, it can be a ton of fun trying to figure out where in the world you just teleported to. Endless hours have been spent lost in the woods with this one trying to catch some glimpse of a landmark.

Agreed, it's almost like refusing to play the game period because the tgm console command is too overpowered, or to make a more apt comparrison, no playing because you have the option of creating a blond hair blue eyes redguard, with a massively disproportional, and unrealistic facial structure. It's an entirely optional thing just like some of the weird and bizarre options the core game offers.

Also my copy/paste so we can get some more info from the topic starter:

GENERIC PART THAT EVERYONE GETS:

If you want the most help possible it helps to give as much information, and uniqueness as possible.

Here's my generic written thing for these topics. if you want something specific give more details. I ask some questions in the below text as a small guide line. You can answer them if you wish:

The real issue is much more severe - and also the reason many mods include "broken" races like you've described: Dialog is very often tied to the playability of the NPC's race.

So e.g. you toggle the original Golden Saints or Dark Seducer playable? They've no longer got anything to say. Or you just can't stand cats and want to prevent players from playing one? Congratulations, now all Khajiit NPCs will only have "I HAVE NO GREETINGS" to say.

You can work around that, but that takes a lot of work for every single NPC, and often includes changing of whole quest structures if it is done later. It wasn't really an option, especially considering it only affects at the very most thirty seconds at the beginning of the game.

However let me get this straight: Having broken races (like you've described) playable is still a completely bad idea. If you know before that you're including NPCs of a new race, you can adjust the dialog accordingly. The "Integration excuse" doesn't work for a lot of those faulty mods.

(PS: I'm pretty sure that I also mentioned this in the mod's descriptions, that the new races are still playable, however balanced to Vanilla Oblivion.)

@Several -

I don't want to spend a lot of time on the subject, because this isn't the thread for it, but as far as the me ditching Integration Integrated goes:

- Look, this is my own personal neurosis. I'm only bringing it up at all because it was mentioned. You do what you're cool with in your game, and I'll do the same in mine.

- It's nothing against bg2408, who I very much respect (LAME makes me giddy with joy), or against Integration. Just me thinking like me is all.

That said, my objection wasn't so much with the rebalanced RBP races showing up (I kinda figured they'd be there, just as NPC-only races, but ok, whatever), it was more with the crazy stuff added to vanilla races. Why can my Argonian have http://dementedrabbits.net/images/oblivion/IntegrationBadHairArgonian.jpg? I dunno, but the mere existence of such a (questionable, IMHO) thing makes me ask myself "Am I actually going to run into an NPC like this? Is that something I even want to deal with if it happens?" One suspects not, author considered, but I'm not going to start checking all the NPCs before I play to find out, either. So, I take a pass.

Milage may considerably vary here, and that's cool. I made a decision for my game, is all.

@bg2408 -

You may have mentioned all that, and I may not have read hard enough. I didn't read a ton of the readme, so may very well be my bad.

Of course not.

It is only there because some people complained when they didn't have that option. However other people complain because they have this option, even if it only appears for them for like five seconds.

If there's one thing I've learned in five years of modding, is that having no options is usually a lot better than having options available.

Ever wondered why there are no officially supported addons for Integration Integrated? Guess why.

Yeah, kinda figured, but.

And more like 5-10 minutes. I take forever in chargen. I'm like that. I also switch back and forth between hairs a lot, so, you know. Gets frustrating. Kind of did the hair version of ragequitting.

Pretty much these, Probably my favorite mods and they fit into the game really well.