My main question is, when doing a big install of mods set up with FCOM, when should i install re-texture mods?
The 50 steps guide says he did it near the beginning of his install. But this seems like all the other mods you install later would overwrite some of these.
Would installing re-textures last be the best option? I'm thorughly confused now.

My other secondary questions:
FCOM w/ Companions - I want to play a game where companions are pretty much mandatory (an adventuring party) for dungeons/oblivion gates, at least in the lower - mid levels. Would setting the number of spawns & the hardcoe settings to max work well with that in mind or would it be too much? Any other ideas/mods/suggestions?

Items with FCOM - I was wondering what item mods are redundant w/Francesco's and FCOM, in particular MC staff pack (melee staves) and defensive weapon mods like Evantal's dual wield. Are these in the item lists for the overhaul mods?

Thanks for your help.

I am rewriting my guide and working on http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/installmods. I have five groups left to go in the installation order subsection. Blade of Mercy's guide is good for comfortable mod users and great for experienced mod uses. It is not a teaching guide for general installation and load order questions, however. Anyway, the first complete version of the guide is here: http://sites.google.com/site/oblivionpoinfo/walkthroughs/baininstallguide. <-- The version I am working on now is much more comprehensive, but you should try reading Part VI here. Do not worry that it talks about BAIN. The BAIN package list reflects installation order. (It basically is installation order.) If you can match your setup to the section header and some of the examples, that should be enough to answer your questions.

For the item question, you really have to look at the ReadMe's for each overhaul because I doubt anyone can run all of the item mods incorporated into each one off the top of his or her head. Fran, MMM and OOO's ReadMe's are linked on my site under "Lists>Online ReadMes." For OOO's actually ReadMe, look in the sidebar (left) for the OOO Readme. It is a PDF file. There is a list of merged mods at the bottom. Fran's merged mods list is toward the middle I think, probably near the "New Items" section.


Edit: You definitely do not have to change the default spawn rate to be in need of a companion or two, and I am not just considering dungeons. If this is your first time playing FCOM, you should probably die enough times to convince you of that. You should install a smooth leveling mod to make it even more "fun."

Thanks again Tomlong.
I read alot of your guide from the previous thread you helped me in and i learned alot of useful info. Sounds like adding re-textures at the end is the way to go like i suspected.
I'm kind of resistant to learning about BAIN since i just learned how to make OMODS, but it's starting to sound more useful.

Is it true that overwriting textures with OMODS deletes that from the OMOD itself? It's another thing i'm confused about.

About companions, I'll try it first on the default settings then to see how rough it can be. Actually I was going to run with 3 companions most of the time, hopefully going alone or with 1 companion at high levels.
What is a smooth leveling mod?
I was going to install a slower leveling mod.

No, the only way to delete files form OMODs is to rebuild them. It is hard to mess up an OMOD.

1 companion at higher level in the FCOM world sounds backwards, but sure...

A smooth leveling mod is one that 1) gets rid of that stinking level up menu 2) gets rid of the "you need to sleep to level up" rule 3) gets rid of the silly x5 modifiers goal 4) depends on the mod. Are you familiar with KCAS? or AF Leveling?

There are three current main leveling mods: nGCD, Realistic Leveling and Oblivion XP. The simplest to explain is the latter. It brings classic rpg-style XP to Oblivon. Realistic Leveling and nGCD are really smooth leveling versions of the Oblivion leveling system, whereas Oblivion XP completely ignores it (unless you do not want it to.) The difference between RL and nGCD is that nGCD is more configurable. RL's author wanted to make a simple mod that really improved the leveling system and did. I use nGCD. I love the configuration options, and the default align well with OOO and FCOM. I also use Progress, by the same author. Progress is not compatible with Oblivion XP, but it seems that most RL and nGCD user who play FCOM, use Progress in conjunction. Progress handles skill rate advancement, rendering obsolete all of those "Skill Rates Slower x" plugins. Between nGCD and RL, read the description for RL and see if its for you; otherwise, choose nGCD. As I said before, nGCD is the most flexible of the current leveling mods. However, with any of these mod, the variation in characters (i.e., if you polled all users vs. vanilla leveling uses) is greater. What skills you actually use in the game matter more than the default skills you choose via race and class. With nGCD and Oblivion XP, you can configure them to rely on the X number of major skills advancement if you want. Of course, with nGCD you can have leveling depend on almost anything you want, switch attribute contribution, etc. It is hard to grasp how much control you have over how you level with nGCD, but reading KCAS's description may help. KCAS is nGCD's "spirit" predecessor, so it is more advanced than that mod (and does not have its few noted bugs) but the idea is similar. RL is slightly based on KCAS' "The Great Wheel" option. --http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Kobu%27s_Character_Advancement_System

Progress was what i was going to use to slow down the leveling.

In the past i always use Simbaccas player advancement method (SPAM) because it was simple but configurable and let you level your attributes based on your primary skills or however you wanted.
What skills you used didnt affect what attributes you gained.

I'll check out the others you mentioned though.

Thanks.

If you want to keep it simple, I would go with RL. I think it may have mentioned that mod, SPAM, as well, but you can see that right in the description on its TESNexus page.