Hello. Let me say up front that I appreciate your taking the time to read and consider my post.

As some of you already know, I'm embarking on my first heavily modded game, and while it will include many convenience, graphics and other nice to have mod offerings, my primary goal/concern is consistent balance and challenge (I prefer games at "hard" level, but never "insane").

So, for the purposes of this thread I've distilled my list down to just those mods I'm concerned about either conflicting directly (crashes and other failures) or simply resulting in an imbalanced and "unfun" experience. I'm hoping you'll be willing to take a look and share your experience, comments, suggestions, etc. Any feedback is welcome.

First, here are the mods that most directly impact gameplay, along with a few that I'm especially concerned will conflict (please note that I'm not thinking of running all of these — they are just up for consideration):

Some questions about these:

1. Installed properly, should I expect that Unnecessary Violence III will run smoothly (I'm very invested in this one, as I find vanilla Oblivion combat rather dull)?
2. I'd like to run with a companion (Vilja, most likely, or another) — is this likely to make things much easier, and, if so, how should I best offset this to balance the difficulty?
3. I know many convenience and other mods (like Unnecessary Violence) make use of specially programmed keys — should I be able to avoid conflicts with these and one of the two hotkey mods I've identified?
4. I'm not planning on making extensive use of COBL, but several mods I'm considering require it. Is it problematic?
5. Better Cities sounds nice, but is it likely to conflict with quest mods (list below), etc.?
6. Are mods like Geomancy, Runeskulls, Sigil Stones and Soulgem Magic likely to make things too easy? If so, how would you advise that I balance this, or should I just avoid them?
7. I'm leaning towards not running realism mods (hunger, fatigue, etc.), but I will if they really add to the sense of peril and challenge (as opposed to just being inconvenient, even if immersive). Are they worth it?
8. Do you prefer a particular leveling mod and why? I'm looking for a nice and easy alternative to vanilla leveling.
9. Thoughts on running LAME and Supreme Magicka together? Preference? If both, load which first?
10. I really don't like how corpses fly about in Oblivion. Will using realistic ragdolls work fine with Unnecessary Violence?
11. Regarding overhauls, I'm leaning toward running Maskar's because it seems less fussy and complicated compared to Francesco's or OOO (especially to install...the others have so many special versions/patches). Will that do the trick in terms of difficulty, enemy A.I., etc., or is OOO (or Frans) clearly superior if I'm looking for balanced-yet-consistently-difficult challenge?
12. I like the idea of greater foe/creature variety. I've heard Waalx's Animals & Creatures is very good, but also potentially the source of a lot of crashes (due to many additional spawn locations). Is it more trouble than it's worth? What about running MMM?
13. Will mods like Enhanced Economy and Persuasion Overhaul play nicely with leveling mods like nGCD or Realistic Leveling?

I'm also looking to run a good number of housing/home and quest mods (though, as with the above, just a selection of the following...definitely not all):

Since I imagine nobody has run them all, are multiple quest mods likely to play nicely together if you use a bashed patch? For quests designed for vanilla, what about challenge if I run an overhaul and other gameplay-changing mods with them?

Finally, with so many expertly crafted equipment mods (weapons, armor and items) out there, I'm eager to add some of the best of these to my game. Here are some I've identified:

But I'm wondering how they are integrated into the game. Is there a way to integrate them so they may be found as loot/treasure, used by NPCs, sold by multiple merchants, included in community-made quest mods, etc. or is that not possible with directly editing the leveled lists (about which I understand very little)? And, regardless, are they likely to upset the balance/difficulty of my game (I suppose the concern here would be that they are overpowered...either that or so underpowered that, even if they look appealing, they'll be of no practical use to me)?

Again, any insight(s) is appreciated. And thanks for your time.

- ELB

I've got to go bed - but I want to say you just one thing - use cobl 1.72 if you want to use item interchange.