I'm waiting for a better graphics card to start playing Oblivion again and am really intrested in mods but after seeing this i'm a bit discouraged. I have to ask myself how much trouble is playing these mods really worth?

What do you mean by 'these mods'? Many mods are stable and will cause you little or no trouble. It's always important to read the readme properly - I've been guilty of not doing that more often than I'd like to admit, and it is always the case that hassle down the road and unnecessary questions in the forums will be avoided by reading.

Don't be discouraged, just be patient. If by 'trouble' you meant time and care, then I would say it's worth a lot - I wouldn't give Vanilla Oblivion a second thought, so it's only because of 'these mods' that I still enjoy it. The main way you can align your enthusiasm with best practice is to not install all the mods you want to play with on first go. Try at least just to pick the ones that you don't want to start a new game without and only install those; for example there are lots of big quest mods out there which are popular but are really only meant for higher level characters, so why complicate your modlist right from the get-go with those? Once you've been playing your first 4 or 5 levels and everything is ok, think about what the next stage of adding mods should be, and so on.

I'm sure OP is already very used to installing and cleaning mods. It's a lot easier to go through the process if you have experience. My advice is to just try a few mods when you start out - if you don't like the vanilla Oblivion experience, you could try OOO or Fran's. Once you make sure you installed that correctly, you could try adding a few other mods, until you get the feel for things. Just make sure you don't jump in all at once, or you'll end up making a rant thread like so many others have on this forum. :V

This is correct. I have a crash free game with over 100 mods and FCOM. I only achieved such by cleaning. If it says so in the construction set wiki, it is right 99% of the time, and the other 1% it's not wrong, just out dated.

Alright, mabye I exagerated the percents a bit much, but my point is that the construction set wiki is an extremely reliable resource.

very nice instructions

just one curiosity, I guess you're using all Giskard mods? maybe even parts of CUO? how do they work with a FCOM+++ setup? I hear there's some conflicts that would require patches, but deciding whether or not to include these in my setup is a headache... awesome mods, but I want to avoid incompatibilities as much as possible

They work fine, there is FCOM support for Origin Of The Mages Guild, OOO patch for Kvatch Aftermath and OOO patch for Kingdom of Almar. The Elder Council and the necromancrer are without patches but work fine.
Of course there are compatibility issues, so my advice is: stick to the things with FCOM and OOO patches.

that makes sense, too bad for no patch to TEC though since IMHO it's the best giskard mod out there, same with CUO itself actually. FCOM+TIE+CUO would be pretty good

I just wanted to say to you that you shouldn't use version 6.1 of Origin of the Mages Guild, as it is a fake version. You should use 6.2. It's available from Giskard's website. Giskard warns for the damage that 6.1 can do to your save file, so I'd get 6.2 if I were you.

Do you think maybe you could have expanded on what the dangers are for 6.1 and the effects it has on save game files?

Ominously vague - rarely a great selling point - especially since your doubtful going to see a great migration to his site (or an accepted migration).

Specifically since the main page regarding OMG that is accessible to us pleebs says nothing about this: http://www.theengineeringguild.co.uk/origin-of-the-mages-guild or nothing that I could find.

I have absolutely no idea what the dangers are for your save file, it's just that Giskard says that any damage that it does to your save file is your own fault, because you used it. He says that you should better use 6.2, available from a private section of The Engineering Guild. I have no idea of the damage it could do. It's just that that version isn't supported by Giskard.

Is there any way to find a copy of OMG v6.2?

sure, just register to Giskard's site, say hello in the forums and you can download it.

Is there a list of what common mods should be cleaned with TES4Edit?

Thank you so much registered, downloaded, extracted, pyffied, omoded, installed, am rebuilding bashed patch, will play in a minute. Information updated in post #1

http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/TES4Edit_Cleaning_Guide. Just checked, it is already pinned in post #1.

So your supposed to top these patches with the MOBS version if your using FCOM?

So the OP in post #1 did not install the "OblivionScriptOptimization", right?

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=13092

Is it good idea to leave it out? Does it cause problems with FCOM? What's your experience with it, please? It sure sounds interesting to me.




EDIT: I JUST READ IT'S PRETTY POINTLESS TO INSTALL IT. DON'T BOTHER TO REPLY. SORRY!!

So, it turns out this thing doesn't do anything, really. No beneficial effect at all. A little more clearly: the "optimization" it does has no measurable result on fps or smoothness or system-stress.

And, there are two versions with the same name. One does bad things to Shivering Isles.

There's no reason to install it, and there might be problems.

gothemasticator

So sorry gothemasticator, I got the edit in too late! But thanks, yeah, I won't install that.

Another one: How valuable or useful is the "Pluggy" plugin? Is it really a "must" download? And if I should download it, which version? There are quite many on TESNexus.

If you want to install a mod that requires Pluggy, then install Pluggy. Otherwise, there is no need.

gothemasticator

Is it good to run PyFFI on ~9700 meshes :wacko: ??

Seconded. In my experience, it's a complete waste of a perfectly good ESP slot.

Just coming on here to say that FastExit2 and Stutter Remover did a hell of a job on my system:

Fast Exit really exits at lightning speed and cleanly. Before, I used to get a semi-crash on exit. It would exit to the Desktop but still create a Window Error Report window. That's completely resolved.

With regards to SR I just give a quick rundown of my rig to give you a reference: Intel Dual Core E8400, HiS ATI 3870 512MB card, 4 GB RAM, fast Barracuda HD, screen at 1680 x 1050 with 60 Hz refresh rate. Using only Vanilla graphics at this time but at "Highest" video and "Large" textures settings, with 8x AA and 16x AF force-fed from the videocard and HDR lighting in game. Viewdistance is maxed for items and NPC's. I can say that even in Vanilla is looks pretty awesome already.

Now SR I installed just with the default config file that was provided. I did not change anything in there. It caps my FPS pretty much always at 30. This is generally slower than before where I would have between 45 and 60 FPS. But it did stutter, not terribly annoying, but it did. Now with SR it keeps pumping these 30 frames no matter what, how many NPC's in action, whereever and always. Totally amazing. So my game has become very smooth. It's maybe one stutter every like 15min or so when I run around a lot. But usually the stutter is totally gone. This is fantastic! :drool:

And one question:

Is there any point in getting "Streamlining" also? The OP mentions it but rather off-hand it seems. So what's your take on that, please?

the reason for your FPS drop is that SR1 has set default FPS of the game at any time 15 min to 30 max. this is why you will not have 60 anymore.
But then, your eye cannot receive images at 60/min either, so you lose nothing, you gain smooth game.
Try different heapmode - for me best is 1, for other players - 3 or 5.

As for Streamline, yes, IMHO it is a must, just you have to make some changes after reading the readme.
I play at 11 trees visible with the correct fog settings and some other adjustments, like setting the FPS range 15 to 30 as SR1's.

There is no current mod that can beat streamline in what it does - it still does it best.

What the heap mode is ?
I have set this to 1 and my fps gone high even on extreme dive rock ragdolling test .