I took a look at this in the CS to determine why it lags to high heaven. Theres really nothing but bad news here. My findings:

The biggest reason I can spot is Nehrim's use of meshes. On one hand, their creative usage of vanilla meshes and high detail makes Nehrim great. On the other, its horribly inefficient and causes the terrible slowdown that has been mentioned. The cells of Shadow Song Mine (the start dungeon) have 2,500* references each, which adds up to over 500,000 polygons(!!!) per cell. Whats worse is that about half these polygons (and therefore a lot of the lag) could be cut with very simple Nifskope edits. For example, anytime you see a rope in the mine it is attached to an animated high polygon zombie somewhere beyond the roof. One cell had something like 10 zombies, each with animation, collision, and plenty of polygons, each of which the player will never see. Likewise, all the pathways and structures are built of individual planks, each with their own collision and each of which adds to the reference count. Had these been assembled in a modeling program, thousands of polygons worth of collision could have been cut. Likewise, collision could also have been removed from the rocks in the ceiling and other inaccessible areas (especially since the start area is entirely corded off by collision walls - far, unreachable areas of the cave could just as well been a matte painting and no one would know better). Their love for disembodied lightbulb lighting with small radii probably doesn't help either (there are many places where several bulbs are placed though one could have sufficed), especially when you add the heavy AI into the mix.

Basically, this means that efficiently getting rid of lag means re-building large chunks of the gameworld :/

Oddly enough, the exteriors I briefly checked out were reasonable in reference count. My guess is that the view distance is at fault here, perhaps combined with the altered tree animations.

In a related issues, I suspect that the esm could use cleaning since I encountered several errors when loading. It also includes references to Arkwend (their Morrowind TC) and Cube (their FO3 mod), removing which could cut a bit off the file size.

*by comparison, a typical Oblivion cell has a few hundred.

I managed to get out - finally. Wow, what a tutorial dungeon! If that doesn't leave a great first impression, I don't know what does.

Don't want to spoil anything concerning Artkwend or Cube but both have a reason for being in the game. You would actually break part of the game if you deleted Arktwend it is totally built into the game. An area to take a look at is the Dark Forest because that is really where you get a FPS hit when you cast a spell and I mean slow untill the spell is over.

I gave this a go last night. It's awesome.

That said, I've been wondering about a couple of things. One is I got a bunch of miner armor. It looks an awful lot like the amazon armor from OOO. Is that normal? It didn't seem to my eyes to be something you'd wear while working in a min, but I could be full of it. Additionally, is there a resource for finding out things like the difference between the races in terms of gameplay? The descriptions in game and in the wiki didn't have anything to say about that. Or should we just run with it and see what happens?

okay, I've played this like four hours, i got to the sanctum, and i have to say, the levelof detail is.....well, its amazing....the world feels so friggin organic and finished,
great work!!

Just wondering if there is anything I should be aware of if I use DarnUI instead of the UI you guys gave out ?

I am seriously hating the UI you guys gave out and could not play the game with it installed -> but I do want to be aware of any issues that will not be present within DarnUI that your mod requires or at leasts expects to be present so I can watch out for them or avoid them.

I'm stuck at the black troll that chases you after you get on the gondola. I keep reading about torches, but the only one I have I got at the start and it has burnt out. Where can I find more torches and how do I get past the Troll?

This looks great, and I am on the verge (like three days away) from getting a pretty good upgrade to my RAM. I am also so addicted to Oblivion and Morrowind Mods it is disgusting. So, that being said I really, really, really want to play this mod.... you have no idea.

Here's my problem. The website will not load.... at all. The "connection times out." Every time. Sooo, is it down or is it just my internet being stupid? Or is there a site which hosts downloads of this mod which has servers.... not in Europe?

Basically... what am I doing wrong so I can get this mod?
Thank you. ^^

You should find 2 levers on the wall. Use them both.

So just to be perfectly clear, without a doubt.....

This will not mess with my Oblivion game at all? My Characters, and saves.... everything will be just as it is without this mod? And all the other mods I have for Oblivion will not be affected?

Because I can tell you, that would be the worst thing ever to lose the... four years of saved games and mods I have for Oblivion for a shiny new mod...

Backup your oblivion.ini because it will change it. Best thing to do is move it and make Nehrim make its own because then you don't have to uncheck all your other mods. So if you have specific settings for your regular game you will lose them and your mod load order. I would just put all the savegames in a backup folder just to keep them separate but no the game will not change them but if they are all in the same folder it would get confusing. The installer will just copy all the files it needs to the SureAi\Nehrim folder thus leaving your orginal folder alone.

Thank you.

If it doesn't have to be installed in the same place I will just do that. This looks great though, I can't wait to play it.

Yes, backup your ini and saves. While your saves won't go anywhere, you will overwrite your quicksave and autosave, which may be important to you depending on your play style and habits.

The Devlopers Deserve The Accolades!
Seriously, a Monumental Effort Should Not Go Uncredited.
Great Job, Modders!

Not so, I'm afraid.

I renamed OBLIVION into TESIV and moved it out of the Bethesda folder. I deleted the Beth folder. I removed all traces of Beth in MyGames.

I made a clean install of OBLIVION.

I made a clean install of NEHRIM.

. . .

NEHRIM would not start, would not exit.

Checked launcher: it had found all my mods, activated them and not activated itself.

NEHRIM Installer is @ss.

Finished the starter mine. Fantastic. A+ so far. Needs people to port over some of the most popular performance and visual mods. I much prefer this universe to the stale old elder scrolls.

You're doing it wrong.

Someone didn't read the readme and now has his panties in a bunch...lol.

Loved the tutorial dungeon, then I stepped outside...I had to shut it off because it's so beautiful (and I have work in the early AM ).

Been playing for a few hours. Oblivion is now dead to me.

So far I've made it to Stonefield, and I haven't found a single thing to complain about. The mod's just amazing.



He should be right next to the mine boss and the guy with the helmet, if I remember right.

Um....I already knew where Merre was, so I didn't need him to show me where he was. That's the same guy, right?

Yes, it's the same guy. After Merre suggests soap, Porim should be standing right next to him. So should the guy with the helmet.

I had installed a meshes BSA that had been thoroughly PyFFI'd - I'm assuming it copied that version over. I have yet to experience any sluggishness at all only a weird crash when harvesting mushrooms.

I mean it is playing and feeling like vanilla oblivion to me.

My only concern is the cave entrance issue - somewhere I have a fix esp for that though, but will wait till I see it - I may not as so far the caves are much different.

Are there PyFFi'd meshes for Nehrim already? Because the custom armors(the one the first merchant wears) seem to be downing my FPS quite a lot.

I don't know but it would probably be very easy to do - what with PyFFI as convenient as it is.