Hi All. It's that time again where I'm having to set up a new game in order to test out the next incarnation of SDR. Unfortunately, dunno why, but my previous installation order/organization that was in Wrye Bash got wiped out. I probably did something accidentally when moving stuff around.

Anyhoo, I wanted to see if there was some "end all be all" guide for installation orders. At the moment, all I am aware of is the generic tescosi guide over at the assimilation lab:

http://wiki.theassimilationlab.com/tescosi/A_General_Order_for_Installing_Mods_(Oblivion)

Is there anything else out there? If not, is there any interest in creating some sort of community friendly site where people can add / look up / recommend installation orders? (not that I have time for such a thing, but figured I would ask)

You can check out http://wiki.step-project.com/User:Hishutup/OblivionGuide guide, created by Hishutup. Because it's rather long and detailed ( not complaining - thanks Hishutup!! ) I'd say it's especially beneficial for newcomers AND for the ones that don't want to think whether their load order will work or not.

When I build my load orders, I take a conceptual approach, and install things in groups with some rounds of playtime in between each install. I use Wrye Bash's BAIN system (there's no other good way to do it):

- First I install all of the DLCs that I am planning on using.

- Any OBSE plugins I am likely to use.

- Unofficial patches

- Anything that alters the GUI, menu system, hot keys, etc.

- Game mechanics (stealth, combat, magic, economics, level advancement, etc.)

- Large scale gameworld overhauls (TIE, Francescos, OOO, FCOM, Open Cities Reborn, Better Cities, Unique Landscapes)

- Race and body mods

- Quests, expansions and modifications to cities and villages

- Items

- Graphics and Textures

- LODs (like RAEVWD)

- Companions

- Miscellaneous bells and whistles (like AWLS)

- Any and all patches

Personally, I don't think guides that specify general guidelines for installation order by the type of file you are installing are helpful. Most of the time it makes no difference (other than graphical replacers). And with Wrye Bash you can examine conflicts and change install order on the fly.

Obviously, installation order is important when you are experimenting with graphical replacers, but that's just a matter of tinkering with installation order until you get the right look.

Installation order makes no difference if the mod's files are bundled in a bsa file.

Installation order may make a difference with some mods that have loose files that conflict with loose files from other mods you are using, but typically you need to look at what the mod is doing and what other mods that conflict are doing in order to decide what installation order to use.

But the cases where you have to make that type of decision are few and far between. I've got over 200 mods in my Oblivion load order and I would need to review my installers tab to see what is conflicting with what, but I doubt I have more than a couple (apart from graphical replacers) where installation order matters.

General guides like the install order guide on the TESCOSI site just seem more confusing to me than helpful. I say this with all respect to TESCOSI, since I do believe its guide for setting up modded Oblivion is extremely helpful, just not the "install order" guide.

Agree with everything here, especially dedalus. It's probably a good idea to install big first and little after. Whether something like qarl's should go before FCOM is moot, but in any case keep a tight rein on dem dat files.

If a mod comes with an esm/esp only or with a bsa - it can be installed in any order.

All mods with loose files need to be ordered so that the right one overwrites. This is up to the user to figure out. Happily, Wrye Bash lets you drag, drop, and anneal to change install order easily.

ESP/ESMs and BSAs can be designed to override others (some of the Frostcrag replacers come to mind) so one should still be careful.

But install order still won't matter

canb spomeone explain what does anneal do ? I never understood the sense. Does it make the mod you are annealing overwrite the conflicting files?

It will, actually. In those cases, the ESP/ESMs or BSAs actually replace the existing files. If you don't install them in the proper order, the files will not be replaced appropriately.

If a bsa "overwrites" an existing file, it is only when an esp tells it to, and it is load order, not installation order that matters.

About esps - you are correct - most often in the case of patches, where the new patch esp replaces the original esp. And in the isolated case of the Frostcrag mods that overwrite the official Beth DLC esp. I suppose these exceptions could be covered by saying always install the DLCs before installing mods and always install a patch after the mod it is patching.

I mean the BSA replaces an existing BSA of the same name. Haven't seen it myself, though.

Bah! You're making it up.

Yes, although another way of articulating such a rule would be to always read the readme, since I've never seen a replacer esp that didn't say it was replacing another esp in the documentation.

Overwriting assets in a .bsa with the contents of another .bsa does not work properly for Oblivion as it does for Skyrim -- the game randomly loads files from either archive.


To overwrite an archive's assets, you must use loose files.

The game randomly loading archives in arbitrary order from BSAs like that is what happens if you're lucky. You're more likely to have that generate a CTD instead.

As far as guides for setup, I've got one here: http://afkmods.iguanadons.net/index.php?/topic/3328-oblivion-installing-from-scratch/

Sometimes the installation order do matters.

For example a modder has just updated a mod that has a BSA with an esm/esp no problem, but having a different name for the archive and that will make a difference in BAIN.

It depends how BAIN sorted your installed archives and most cases the installed archives got sorted alphabetic.

You can imagine what will happen in BAIN, if a mod archive has a name started with "Spell Overhaul" and the update has this "New Spell Overhaul update" name.

Wrye Bash will sort an installed archive in alphabetic order e.g "N" is sorted before "S", which will probably give the mod user a mod issue or worse a CTD in-game.

A good example to what I mean is a Morrowind replacer for Goldbrand and most people thinks that it's safe to play, but it is NOT safe to play since the original mod had a serious modding error.

Sure you can have Goldbrand in your inventory, but as soon you equip Goldbrand the game will CTD. http://mw.modhistory.com/download-13-15107 discover this error and provided a fix for this issue, but the archive starts with a "K" as in Knots and the original mod archive starts with a "P" I think. In this case BAIN in Wrye Mash will sort those archives in alphabetic order e.g K, P and that's the same as having a CTD in-game. The fix will NOT work unless the installation order for those two archives are changed in BAIN.

@Leo: Wrye Bash default install order is by date. The beauty of BAIN is if the wrong item is installed first, you can change its install order.

@dedalus: Anneal retrieves items from the package according to their install order. For example move QTP3 last in the install order and it will require annealling due to the many files now required to override the other mods. (please don't do that btw)