As I am playing Oblivion for the first time now (having only played Morrowind before) I have already installed a lot of mods which greatly improve my gameplay experience. However, you all will certainly agree that repairing weapons and armor is (like in Morrowind) implemented in a very unimmersive way, which only requires the player to have a bunch of hammers in his inventory to repair his gear anytime and anywhere, as long as he is not in combat. Not only is this not immersive or fun at all, it really makes repairing merely a minor annoyance instead of a real gameplay element. As long as you have enough hammers, you won't get into any trouble. So I believe it would be great to have a mod that changes this. I know about http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/40184/? which I haven't tried yet but sounds interesting, though it is not quite what I have in mind.

Here is my idea: Repairing weapons and armor somewhere in the wild with Hammers will only get you so far as to barely keep them from breaking again (dependent on you armorer skill, e.g. with a low skill you can barely repair them at all, with a higher skill maybe up to 50% health), but in order to get them fully repaired you need to have access to an anvil. The anvil must be activated and repairing still consumes hammers from the player's inventory. There are already a number of anvils in the game world, but in order to make this mod work there would probably need to be a few more, but that should not be a big problem. But now comes the fun part: Why not add a number of different anvil types and place them in different places, including dungeons and oblivion planes, and each of them has a different effect when used. So for example there could be an apprentice, journeyman, expert and master anvil which gives advantages, maybe even if the player has not reached this skill stage. Then there could be Ayleid anvils in Ayleid ruins which could allow a character to repair magic items without being journeyman armorer, and at higher skill levels maybe even recharge magic items. Daedric Anvils could add enchantments to an item that wear off as the item is damaged again. And so on.

Further ideas: Repairing requires materials and takes time. Materials needed depend on the item. This would probably be quite difficult to implement, since most materials and ways of achieving them (other than buying) would have to be brought into the game as well. Maybe this could included in a later version.

So the base features I have in mind are:

- Using only Hammers will get items repaired only partially

- To fully repair an item, an anvil is needed

- more anvils placed in the game world, including dungeons

-possibly different anvil types with special attributes

Now the problem is, I have no idea how to make a mod like this or whether it is possible in the way I imagine it at all. I have some experience with Morrowind Modding, but mainly graphics, and virtually none when it comes to Oblivion, except messing around with some textures and meshes. So I would have to get into scripting first in order to make this real. But first I wanted to hear your thoughts and suggestions, and maybe someone can give me a few useful tips which could help me make this.

This is a really cool idea.

While it doesn't do exactly what you ask for, http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/32365/? does have some nifty armorer features, such as limiting how well you can repair items when not in a beneficial location.