Hello and thanks for reading.

I'm embarking an Oblivion installation with about 70 mods and I'd like to accomplish this as efficiently as possible. So, I've a few questions and would appreciate any help you kind folks can offer.

1. What's the best way to set up multiple downloads from Nexus and the few other sites I'll need to access? Do you download files with Nexus Mod Manager or use the manual method (to be clear, I intend to use Wrye Bash to install the mods as BAINs, not via Nexus Mod Manager)? Do you use a downloader app that you would recommend?

2. I have a solid state drive (along with two other large and fairly quick ordinary hard drives) with about 70 GB free on it, and I'd like to take advantage of it if I can (since Oblivion can be HD intensive), but I'd like to keep the drive as clean as possible (ordinarily, it's only used for Windows 7). Can I install Wrye Bash, B.O.S.S. and other utilities on another drive and keep my SSD exclusively for game-only files?

3. Is there a particularly loading/installation protocol you think works best? Or is it fine to download all the files you want first, load them all into Wrye Bash, order them with B.O.S.S. and then just activate a few at a time to test for stability and performance?

Any and all feedback and guidance is most welcome.

Thanks,

ELB

I never use a manager. I download mods manually.

Bash has to be installed in your Oblivion folder. But it's small. It won't take up much room at all.

I have my copy of BOSS on a separate drive (E drive, in my case). That works fine for me. But, again, BOSS is pretty small. You won't be filling up your C drive if you install either of these utilities to your C drive. I wouldn't worry about space.

I download all of my mods to a "holding folder" first. This is where I keep virgin copies of every mod I download. I do this so that if anything goes wrong or if I change my mod list I do not have to re-download a mod all over again.

I install my mods manually.

My method is to copy/paste the necessary files and folders from my holding folder into my Oblivion Data folder. If it's a large mod list I may use BOSS to arrange a preliminary load order, which I then tweak heavily by hand. If I'm using less than, say, 30 mods I may skip BOSS and arrange my load order manually.

Pretty much what PW said.

I suggest that you forget NMM and only use Wrye Bash.

Of course you can use OBMM too, but I recommend to install DarkUId DarN 1.6 in OBMM since you probably need to create your own BAIN archive and that isn't easy if you're not familiar with the BAIN structure.

1. Use the manual methods and then just use the mod manager of choice, which for me is the Oblivion mod Manager. NMM is really buggy with Oblivion and does not work correctly

2. that works fine, I download and install them one by one, but downloading them enmasse and then installing them one by one should work fine.

Use Wrye Bash's INI file to configure where your BAIN Installers are located. By default they're in a directory where Oblivion is (so on your SSD), you can configure that location to somewhere else (a HDD).

I have a question for you. If you manually install stuff like Better Cities, what do you do when there is an update?

Do you just install the update over the top of the old version? Modders always recommend uninstalling first, but it would be an incredible nightmare to manually sift through all your texture and mesh folders to delete the hundreds of files added by a mod like Better Cities.

With Wrye Bash you can uninstall all of the Better Cities files in few seconds. How do you handle issues like that with a manual install?

Is there any reason to uninstall all the texture/mesh files before upgrading? Every mod I have ever seen says you must completely uninstall the prior version before upgrading but its never made sence to me why you could not just install over the top of the old version and everything that has been changed will be replaced. I understand the need to delete any esp files that are no longer needed by the new version but stray mesh/texture files are inert.

I've always been curious about that and given your mod installation technique I figured you must know the answer.

Actually, you can use up space on your HDD with Bash. It uses a folder to store mod archives. The default location is the Oblivion root directory. Not sure if it puts copies of the mods in there like OBMM or FOMM does, or if these are working copies or what exactly gets put in there. In any event, you can make a folder on another drive and set it to be the Mods folder for Bash. See this. scroll about halfway down for the section in question to move this folder or designate another one for the purpose.

https://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/prep/wrye-bash

Why would you install something that has Textures and Meshes manually? This is the reason why you use a Mod Manager to install a mod. If the mods were just ESPs, then we would not need a mod manager in the first place. BASH works with any archive format. If the Archive contains options that you don't want and confuses BASH, then just extract the directory, make the changes needed to remove the parts you don't want, then use what is left to install the mod. I think you have to make a new ZIP file, but it has been a long time since I have had to tweak an install like this.

It is the Bain Archive that gets stored in the Oblivion Mods/Bash Installers directory. So, its the entire mod in a compressed archive. It can add up to a lot of space. Unfortunately, I don't think Wrye Bash won't function properly if you move Oblivion Mods/Bash Installers to different location, unless you modify Wrye Bash somehow to tell it to look in different folders than it is programmed to look in. There may be a way to do that. You should ask on the Wrye Bash thread.


I use Wrye Bash, but Pseron Wyrd said he installs all of his mods manually and he uses some big ones so I was curious how he dealt with upgrading and uninstalling big mods like Better Cities. Also I wnated to know why mod makers always say to completely uninstall prior versions when upgrading, since (apart from the potential need to remove stray esp files that may be made obsolete by the upgrade) installing an upgrade over the top of the original would seem to work just as well.

This is exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks.

Now I just have to figure out how BAINs are made. If it builds off the regular .esm/.esp and data folders structure, shouldn't be too bad.

- ELB

It does. Creating a Bain is pretty simple. Bash installs everything to the Data directory. So, if you want something put into the meshes/textures folder, your bain looks like this:

.esp file
textures (folder with files in it in whatever subfolders you want)
meshes (folder with files in it in whatever subfolders you want)


Use 7z to package all that up into an archive format and you are done. Anything else you want installed can be put in whatever folder you want it in. Readme files that are not in any folder will be automatically put into the Docs folder, but you can add a docs folder in the Bain if you want to. Either way works for readme files.

What I have described above is a "simple" bain.

Procedures for a "complex" bain are the same, except a complex bain combines multiple simple bains into folders with numbers (you can use any numbers you want), like:

00 Core
01 Patches

Again, just use 7z to put these folders into an archive. Inside 00 Core would be identical to the simple bain I described above and 01 Patches would have any patches that might be needed now or in the future. If you patch is an esp file, it would not be in a subfolder since you want that to go directly into data, but if your patch is a texture or mesh, then it would need to be in an appropriate subfolder inside of the 01 patches folder. Wrye Bash will let you select individual esp files, but it automatically installs all mesh, texture and other files, so the only way to be able to select those in the Installers tab is if you put them into a seperately numbered folder in a complex Bain, which leads us to the next point . . .

The advantage of a complex bain is the individual files can be installed individually in Bash, which can be useful when installing something with a lot of options. I will give you an example for installing a hypothetical better body mod, a complex bain might look like this:

00 core
01 A cup body
01 C cup body

In the above example, the 00 core file contains the core files you need and the two 01 files contain alternative versions of the cup specific body files. You choose which to install in the Installers tab and if you later change you mind, you can unclick the a cup box, click the c cup box and hit anneal to switch between the two. Just make sure not to install both at once.

The Wrye Bash Pictoral Guide contains a more detailed and technical explanation.