Wrestling with Oblivion, and losing.

TetraNitroCubane

A long time ago, I was super excited about playing Oblivion. I rushed out to buy the game with memories of Morrowind still buzzing in my brain. Let's just say that Oblivion never really worked out the same for me: My computer just couldn't handle the beast. Fast forward about two years. I've got a beast of a machine now that should destroy Oblivion, and I've managed to get my hands on the PC version again. After reinstalling and getting through the sewer tutorial, I'm greeted with... A program hang upon trying to leave the sewers! Joy. I can't even get out of the rat infested starting area.

I'm all patched up to code, but I'm frustrated by this buggy crud. On top of all that, I've heard that the game is not only buggy, but rather lackluster without mods. Unfortunately, I'm totally lost when it comes to mods. There are tons of them, and an overwhelmingly large number of pages I can google to just point toward dead links. Even most of the Oblivion guide pages I've found seem rather outdated, with little to no documentation and a plethora of links that lead to nowhere. Additionally, I can hardly tell which mods are best when multiple options exist, and which mods are going to play well in the sandbox together.

So I ask you, what mods are considered essential to playing Oblivion? I'm concerned with stability first and foremost, but after that I'm very concerned about gameplay (I hated the UI for what limited experience I had and am very interested in changing it), and then graphical enhancements (particularly for people). I'm just a little overwhelmed with the number of options out there and no good way to understand them, or even find the resources needed. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

TychoCelchuuu

Are your drivers updated and everything? As for the mods, these three places are somewhat outdated but a good starting point:

http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/home
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=759876
http://aelius28.googlepages.com/home

It also helps just to read the mod forum for a bit to get a feel for what people are talkinga bout and what the most popular mods are.

TetraNitroCubane

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

Are your drivers updated and everything? As for the mods, these three places are somewhat outdated but a good starting point:

http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/home
http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=759876
http://aelius28.googlepages.com/home

It also helps just to read the mod forum for a bit to get a feel for what people are talkinga bout and what the most popular mods are.

I've tried to keep my graphics drivers up to date for sure, and every other device driver seems to be the most current version (they don't really update sound drivers much, it seems). I'll give another check to be sure, though, when I get home from work.

Thanks for the links, too! Those were ones that eluded me. I'll give them a look over.

Gaffer

This ought to provide you with a wide variety of mods and add-ons for both Morrowind and Oblivion.

I'd heartily recommend Deadly Reflex and any number of the environment and lighting mods (it's purely your taste, but user comments and downloads from the site can help you see what's popular)

Never really browsed the forums there, but they seem to have a somewhat active mod community going there.

Daemonion

I'd recommend FCOM - it's a complete game overhaul, but it is fairly complicated to install.

I'm not sure what to say about your error, though. Oblivion crashes about 25% of the time whenever I play it.