I saw a bit of my roommate playing the free weekend and it seemed pretty awful. Maybe it's just the introductory zones.
The intro zones are mostly pretty lame, especially the tutorial zone (Coldharbour) which is dreadful. Of the three n00b islands, Bleakrock Isle is the worst (it's Skyrim! Again! snore), Stros M'kai has nice aesthetics but a boring quest, and Khenarthi's Roost has khajiit and also a boring quest. Of the three proper alliance starter zones, only Stonefalls stands out aesthetics-wise, and all have kinda dull intro quests.
But the game opens up a lot more once you get to those intro zones, because you can start doing stuff that isn't quite as Standard MMO Kill Ten Rats. You can get your first free starter apartment, and, more importantly, start stealing everything that isn't nailed down (which imo is the real endgame and the real purpose behind any Elder Scrolls game -- steal ALL the things!)
Unfortunately, the better writing in the game is either mostly VERY late in the Aldmeri Dominion questline for the base game, or locked behind DLC (Thieves Guild is VERY good).
I mean basically, if you like MMOs and you want to play an MMO that is Elder Scrolls themed where you don't necessarily have to stick to "traditional" MMO endgame content, ESO is great. I love that the Thieves Guild quests require almost ZERO combat if you're good; you can ACTUALLY pacifist run all but one quest there. But if you already are kinda not an MMO guy (eg, "but I want to do whatever I want," "what is all this crap about endgame gear / best in slot / rotations / whatever") it's probably not for you.
It has some GREAT lore though. It really opens up a lot about Elder Scrolls locations and races that haven't been explored well in the other games -- the Redguard, Khajiit, Orcs, Wood Elves, and Argonians especially get A LOT of expansion in this game, which is fantastic.
so hey skyrim thread! with the Special edition on steam I was gonna dive back into the game and mod it up for the first time.
Coming from playing it on the 360 a while ago, I'm kinda looking for some good graphic upgrades, and looking for some stable stuff, as I'm going away for work and will be offline for the summer, so running to online faqs for crashes isn't really viable. Anybody got some good suggestions?
I know a little bit that I should get a mod organizer, but still pretty green.
Sooooo I grabbed ESO because Amazon Prime had the PS4 version for 10 dollars
I'm a Bosmer Nightblade and I'm hoping for an archery/dual wield build but boy the skill system is not nearly as intuitive as Skyrim and some googling indicates a lot of people complain that bows are not viable so uh
I don't know what I'm doing here
Edit: also there seem to be a bunch of skills that cast from magicka? Like, more than there need to be
Sooooo I grabbed ESO because Amazon Prime had the PS4 version for 10 dollars
I'm a Bosmer Nightblade and I'm hoping for an archery/dual wield build but boy the skill system is not nearly as intuitive as Skyrim and some googling indicates a lot of people complain that bows are not viable so uh
I don't know what I'm doing here
Edit: also there seem to be a bunch of skills that cast from magicka? Like, more than there need to be
We have a dedicated ESO thread in the MMO subforum too though most of us are on the PC.
Bows are extremely viable but not as a primary weapon. Stamina users tend to use two of the DoT skills from bows in the more challenging content, often from point blank range since weapon switching is near instantaneous after you unlock it at 15. The other skills are more situational and get swapped in if you need the crowd control from one of them, snipe for a longer ranged attack for a few fights you can't melee, and I forget what the last one does because I never used it after fully leveling it.
Your abilities improve any time you gain experience and you have those skills slotted on your ability bar. If it's a class, weapon, or armor skill, having it slotted when you gain experience will also boost the overall skill line (eg, having Surprise Attack slotted when you finish a quest applies experience towards improving Surprise Attack and Shadow). Your weapon and armor skill lines also will get experience based on what you have equipped when you finish a quest/kill things.
All class skills start out being cast from magicka. The designers felt that rendering a new player unable to dodge or block early on because they had used too many abilities before getting a feel for the game would not be the best learning environment. Most of the skills that actually attack a target can be morphed into a stamina based skill upon getting the basic skill to rank 4 and filling up the skill's experience bar again. Siphoning skills are the exception as the damaging skills there are purely magicka and the line is more for buffs for stamblades.
The closest you will probably get is the S.T.E.P. Project. (Although I don't think it has been updated for the Legendary Edition) It is only a set of instructions so you will still have to download and install everything yourself. But generally do a good job of testing stuff to make it work pretty well together.
Yes, S.T.E.P. is very useful for creating a stable mod setup for Skyrim, but it's not really needed for Skyrim SE because, to this day, there still isn't a script extender released, which is generally when the flood gates open for truly game-changing mods.
I went back and played some more Skyrim recently, and while I can make it look and feel like an awesome game, it always breaks down at some point and the game just gets all crashy. On the other hand, I can mod the crap out of Fallout 4 and almost never have crashing issues. I really want the SE script extender to come out, in hopes that it will be as stable (or almost as stable) as FO4. Or heck, just release another Elder Scrolls game already, Bethesda. :P
I'm still holding out hope for an SKSE release for the enhanced edition.
I'm kind of in play paralysis.
I want to play skyrim and actually finish it.
but the remastered edition is so much nicer, and 64 bit for more stability (at least when stupidly modded) but no SKSE64 means very little in the way of the mods I like.
Meanwhile i have old skyrim sitting here, loaded with mods, and stable..with SKSE, but its old lameness, not new hotness.
So instead i sit here with both freaking Skyrims installed, staring at them and doing nothing.
I'm still holding out hope for an SKSE release for the enhanced edition.
I'm kind of in play paralysis.
I want to play skyrim and actually finish it.
but the remastered edition is so much nicer, and 64 bit for more stability (at least when stupidly modded) but no SKSE64 means very little in the way of the mods I like.
Meanwhile i have old skyrim sitting here, loaded with mods, and stable..with SKSE, but its old lameness, not new hotness.
So instead i sit here with both freaking Skyrims installed, staring at them and doing nothing.
I'm in this situation, and I blame Bethesda a lot honestly for doing such a shit job with the special edition that a lot of the old mods requiring skse are still needed... I still cannot reassign hotkeys without having to guess what keys do what in the menus because they don't update, I still can't assign certain keys to certain functions because they are hardcoded to other functions and conflict, there still are a ton of fallout 4 quality of life features like previewing purchases or a proper skyui style inventory system that weren't ported over, no proper hud support for mods, big texture/mesh issues in obvious locations that never were fixed from vanilla, etc.
I decided to install Skyrim (regular, not the enhanced Special Edition) on my new computer and I was wondering if there's any particular mods out there I should look for. Since I have Dawnguard, I know I need to get one to protect the NPCs from random attacks until I decide I'm good and ready to play Dawnguard's story but are there any others that are seen as 'must have'?
I decided to install Skyrim (regular, not the enhanced Special Edition) on my new computer and I was wondering if there's any particular mods out there I should look for. Since I have Dawnguard, I know I need to get one to protect the NPCs from random attacks until I decide I'm good and ready to play Dawnguard's story but are there any others that are seen as 'must have'?
Nothing is must have, just depends on what you want. I would get all the dlc though if you dont have it, most mods assume you do and dragonborn is worth it anyway.
For a vanilla experience my typical load order is as follows( sorry for lack of links, on my phone).
Skyrim script extender +4gb patch
Unofficial legendary patch + unofficial hi hes texture patch
Vivid landscapes (ymmv, I would take a look at some comparison videos for texture packs. Skylands, noble skyrim, ozys textures, or just nothing is perfectly fine here)
Vurts flora overhaul
Realistic water 2 (note that this needs to go at the end of your load order no matter what unless another mod specifically says it needs to come after, otherwise you will get green waterfalls)
Nordic snow
This will give you a pretty good graphical base. Some people recommend smim as well, it fixes some odder looking meshes for things like ropes and chains and such, a lot of people swear by it but I have never thought it particularly needed. If you do install it do it first and let everything else overwrite.
For gameplay, I usually run most of arthmoors mods except open cities (causes problems with other mods that alter cities and not really anywhere near as necessary as in oblivion IMHO). Look, read descriptions, make sure they are what you want, etc.. when vampires attack and run for your lives are necessary though.
I also tend to run complete crafting overhaul remade, and weapon and armor fixes remade by kryptopyr and some of his other mods are good too. Read the instructions of course and make sure you are setting them how you want.
Finally I would look at diverse dragons by opusglass, as well as splendor and the other creature diversity mods by the same author.
Thanks. I was planning on skipping graphic-mods for now since I'm using my computer's built-in Intel HD Graphics card but I appreciate the listing nonetheless. Do I need anything special to run these mods like some sort of manager program?
If this is your first time playing Skyrim I'd go pure vanilla. Maybe a texture improvement but that's it. The default experience is great, and since mods are made to build off of that you won't fully know what they are doing if you install them right off the bat. Maybe you'd like the way the base game deals with whatever modded system more.
I even extend this to the unofficial patch. It fixes a lot of things but most of them are issues that are incredibly rare. Then alongside this they go beyond "bug fixes" and into adding content or changing things they didn't like. It was a good idea that got way too big and the author(s) heads vanished up their asses.
Play the game, and if you see something that you don't enjoy then find a mod that changes it. No need to jump in the deep end right away.
I agree about the unofficial patches, they make quite a few subjective changes which just goes too far for me. I don't mind actual bugfixes, but some things are potentially just part of the game as designed.
I can think of one example that I've encountered that seemed pretty subjective. In vanilla there is a clear progression of dragons, normal -> blood -> frost -> elder -> ancient. Each dragon occurs twice with two different breath attacks, except the frost dragon which obviously uses frost breath for both of its LeveledActor entries. This distribution allows the player to encounter every visibly distinct species with equal likelihood, assuming the player/cell/spawn is of sufficient level.
But after USLEEP, the second copy of Frost dragon has been replaced by a weakened version of the Elder dragon. As a result, you are 3 times more likely to encounter an Elder dragon than a Frost dragon. It's made even worse by the fact that Beth used the same mesh for the Ancient dragon, presumably as a last minute addition. So you are 5 times more likely to encounter that mesh than the Frost mesh. USLEEP's reasoning seems to be that players care more about which breath a dragon is using than its appearance/name. Whether or not that's true seems like a matter of opinion. AFAIK there is no associated bug being fixed by this change. The other possible explanation is that this was intended to restore the rank 3 fire dragon that had been cut from the game, but that would mean this should be part of Cutting Room Floor rather than USLEEP. Especially since the dragon doesn't have it's own model.
The patch changes stuff not necessary broken, for example Aval Atheron, he's a shady merchant that sells any kind of goods in Windhelm, the patch make him a food vendor just because he have a food stall. Some people don't like this kind of changes.
Oh, right, I would probably agree on avoiding gameplay changes for the first run, but skyui is the exception. If you don't do anything else do Skyrim script extender and skyui.
I'd also probably also put run for your lives and when vampires attacks on there as first run recommended just because there's no point in having an important npc get eaten just because they are too stupid to run away.
Unofficial patch, weapon and armor fixes remade, clothing and clutter fixes, crafting overhaul remade are all fixes and changes I agree with but not necessary by any means so I could see dropping them for a first run for simplicity's sake.
If you are not running many mods (like just skyui +skse with run for your lives and when vampires attack) you should be fine just installing manually, when you start getting into the 10 or 12 mod range it would probably be a good idea to use a manager. Nexus mod manager, wyrebash, and mod organizer are among the more popular I think.
If this is your first time playing Skyrim I'd go pure vanilla. Maybe a texture improvement but that's it. The default experience is great, and since mods are made to build off of that you won't fully know what they are doing if you install them right off the bat. Maybe you'd like the way the base game deals with whatever modded system more.
I even extend this to the unofficial patch. It fixes a lot of things but most of them are issues that are incredibly rare. Then alongside this they go beyond "bug fixes" and into adding content or changing things they didn't like. It was a good idea that got way too big and the author(s) heads vanished up their asses.
Play the game, and if you see something that you don't enjoy then find a mod that changes it. No need to jump in the deep end right away.
Well I've played Skyrim before, getting through most of the Dawnguard story before my old computer died. That's why the primary mods I wanted to put in were ones to keep town-NPCs safe from the random vampire attacks so I can play Dawnguard when I want and not have to blaze through it. I don't want to end up dealing with a broken quest just because an NPC I needed to talk to was killed hours ago unknowingly by a vampire over me not getting around to playing Dawnguard yet.
People will tell you there are, but they're wrong. The game is fine Vanilla but mods can add some fun things and conveniences.
People will often say Bethesda games are unplayable without mods but I must have logged over 800 hours between Fallout 3 and New Vegas on consoles and atleast 300 with Oblivion and Skyrim before moving to PC gaming.
Those games are already a deep ocean that you can replay and still find new things without a single mod.
I decided to install Skyrim (regular, not the enhanced Special Edition) on my new computer and I was wondering if there's any particular mods out there I should look for. Since I have Dawnguard, I know I need to get one to protect the NPCs from random attacks until I decide I'm good and ready to play Dawnguard's story but are there any others that are seen as 'must have'?
Apart from something that hides helmets, there are no mandatory mods.
AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
I've always been of the mind that if you are playing a Bethesda game and your mod folder is not at least as large as the actual game install then you did something wrong.
But to each their own. :razz:
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Thanks for all the tips so far. On the same topic of mods, what's the general consensus when it comes to Oblivion as I had that recently installed too with all the DLC as well.
I decided to install Skyrim (regular, not the enhanced Special Edition) on my new computer and I was wondering if there's any particular mods out there I should look for. Since I have Dawnguard, I know I need to get one to protect the NPCs from random attacks until I decide I'm good and ready to play Dawnguard's story but are there any others that are seen as 'must have'?
Apart from something that hides helmets, there are no mandatory mods.
Thanks for all the tips so far. On the same topic of mods, what's the general consensus when it comes to Oblivion as I had that recently installed too with all the DLC as well.
Jeeze that is a great and complicated question.
There is a lot to be said for ooo and maskar's oblivion overhaul, but they are NOT vanilla experiences at all. Everything about first runs applies to that as well.
For a vanilla experience without much mods and vanillaish graphics I would do the following:
Unofficial patch (base+si+dlc)
Unique landscapes
Arthmoors open cities reborn (I would probably not bother with imperial city or new sheoth, and make sure you get any compatibility patches for UL)
Oblivion character overhaul 2 (+blockhead obse plugin)
MOBS
Weapon expansion for oblivion nthusiasts mobs version (install mod then mobs patch)
Use BOSS for load order sorting
This next part I would also do, it takes a little legwork but it helps a major oblivion problem.
Download wrye bash after installing the above and sorting your order (its a bit intimidating but we are only doing a minor tweak). Make a merged patch (right click, rebuilded merged patch, name it whatever) leave everything default and go to the tweak section. Under race tweaks hit bigger nords and orcs if you want, dont have to, but it is nice. Now the important part. Go under tweak settings. Where it says leveled creature max level difference put 0. Where it says levelled item max level difference put 0. ( IIRC I think 0 means disable in oblivion, been a while, it should say this in the help text in wryebash, if it doesn't put something arbitrarily large like 99)
What this does is fix a big design flaw in oblivion. By default, oblivion won't spawn items or creatures above your level. This is fine. However it also will not spawn creatures and items more than a few levels BELOW your level by default. This is bad, it means for example if iron armor and wolves are level 1, by the time you get to level 10 you will just never see wolves or iron armor again. This way it will spawn things below your level regardless. This makes the game easier, but gets rid of the issue where one you hit some arbitrarily high level you get all glass, ebony, and daedric armor on npcs.
Edit: forgot this but if you want a bit faster and more interesting combat use this
Install that and the recommended other mods and settings in the description per the instructions. Mobs above works fine with it (recommended even), but do not install the optional mobs combat tweaks.
Posts
The intro zones are mostly pretty lame, especially the tutorial zone (Coldharbour) which is dreadful. Of the three n00b islands, Bleakrock Isle is the worst (it's Skyrim! Again! snore), Stros M'kai has nice aesthetics but a boring quest, and Khenarthi's Roost has khajiit and also a boring quest. Of the three proper alliance starter zones, only Stonefalls stands out aesthetics-wise, and all have kinda dull intro quests.
But the game opens up a lot more once you get to those intro zones, because you can start doing stuff that isn't quite as Standard MMO Kill Ten Rats. You can get your first free starter apartment, and, more importantly, start stealing everything that isn't nailed down (which imo is the real endgame and the real purpose behind any Elder Scrolls game -- steal ALL the things!)
Unfortunately, the better writing in the game is either mostly VERY late in the Aldmeri Dominion questline for the base game, or locked behind DLC (Thieves Guild is VERY good).
I mean basically, if you like MMOs and you want to play an MMO that is Elder Scrolls themed where you don't necessarily have to stick to "traditional" MMO endgame content, ESO is great. I love that the Thieves Guild quests require almost ZERO combat if you're good; you can ACTUALLY pacifist run all but one quest there. But if you already are kinda not an MMO guy (eg, "but I want to do whatever I want," "what is all this crap about endgame gear / best in slot / rotations / whatever") it's probably not for you.
It has some GREAT lore though. It really opens up a lot about Elder Scrolls locations and races that haven't been explored well in the other games -- the Redguard, Khajiit, Orcs, Wood Elves, and Argonians especially get A LOT of expansion in this game, which is fantastic.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Coming from playing it on the 360 a while ago, I'm kinda looking for some good graphic upgrades, and looking for some stable stuff, as I'm going away for work and will be offline for the summer, so running to online faqs for crashes isn't really viable. Anybody got some good suggestions?
I know a little bit that I should get a mod organizer, but still pretty green.
Thanks for the help!
http://steamcommunity.com/id/BretonBrawler
I'm a Bosmer Nightblade and I'm hoping for an archery/dual wield build but boy the skill system is not nearly as intuitive as Skyrim and some googling indicates a lot of people complain that bows are not viable so uh
I don't know what I'm doing here
Edit: also there seem to be a bunch of skills that cast from magicka? Like, more than there need to be
We have a dedicated ESO thread in the MMO subforum too though most of us are on the PC.
Bows are extremely viable but not as a primary weapon. Stamina users tend to use two of the DoT skills from bows in the more challenging content, often from point blank range since weapon switching is near instantaneous after you unlock it at 15. The other skills are more situational and get swapped in if you need the crowd control from one of them, snipe for a longer ranged attack for a few fights you can't melee, and I forget what the last one does because I never used it after fully leveling it.
Your abilities improve any time you gain experience and you have those skills slotted on your ability bar. If it's a class, weapon, or armor skill, having it slotted when you gain experience will also boost the overall skill line (eg, having Surprise Attack slotted when you finish a quest applies experience towards improving Surprise Attack and Shadow). Your weapon and armor skill lines also will get experience based on what you have equipped when you finish a quest/kill things.
All class skills start out being cast from magicka. The designers felt that rendering a new player unable to dodge or block early on because they had used too many abilities before getting a feel for the game would not be the best learning environment. Most of the skills that actually attack a target can be morphed into a stamina based skill upon getting the basic skill to rank 4 and filling up the skill's experience bar again. Siphoning skills are the exception as the damaging skills there are purely magicka and the line is more for buffs for stamblades.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
I went back and played some more Skyrim recently, and while I can make it look and feel like an awesome game, it always breaks down at some point and the game just gets all crashy. On the other hand, I can mod the crap out of Fallout 4 and almost never have crashing issues. I really want the SE script extender to come out, in hopes that it will be as stable (or almost as stable) as FO4. Or heck, just release another Elder Scrolls game already, Bethesda. :P
I'm kind of in play paralysis.
I want to play skyrim and actually finish it.
but the remastered edition is so much nicer, and 64 bit for more stability (at least when stupidly modded) but no SKSE64 means very little in the way of the mods I like.
Meanwhile i have old skyrim sitting here, loaded with mods, and stable..with SKSE, but its old lameness, not new hotness.
So instead i sit here with both freaking Skyrims installed, staring at them and doing nothing.
I'm mostly kidding, but mainly the fact that I can't bring my old characters over is a real shame.
Turn these NPCs up to 11:
Already at over 2000 endorsements so might be pretty good.
I'm in this situation, and I blame Bethesda a lot honestly for doing such a shit job with the special edition that a lot of the old mods requiring skse are still needed... I still cannot reassign hotkeys without having to guess what keys do what in the menus because they don't update, I still can't assign certain keys to certain functions because they are hardcoded to other functions and conflict, there still are a ton of fallout 4 quality of life features like previewing purchases or a proper skyui style inventory system that weren't ported over, no proper hud support for mods, big texture/mesh issues in obvious locations that never were fixed from vanilla, etc.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Nothing is must have, just depends on what you want. I would get all the dlc though if you dont have it, most mods assume you do and dragonborn is worth it anyway.
For a vanilla experience my typical load order is as follows( sorry for lack of links, on my phone).
Skyrim script extender +4gb patch
Unofficial legendary patch + unofficial hi hes texture patch
Vivid landscapes (ymmv, I would take a look at some comparison videos for texture packs. Skylands, noble skyrim, ozys textures, or just nothing is perfectly fine here)
Vurts flora overhaul
Realistic water 2 (note that this needs to go at the end of your load order no matter what unless another mod specifically says it needs to come after, otherwise you will get green waterfalls)
Nordic snow
This will give you a pretty good graphical base. Some people recommend smim as well, it fixes some odder looking meshes for things like ropes and chains and such, a lot of people swear by it but I have never thought it particularly needed. If you do install it do it first and let everything else overwrite.
For gameplay, I usually run most of arthmoors mods except open cities (causes problems with other mods that alter cities and not really anywhere near as necessary as in oblivion IMHO). Look, read descriptions, make sure they are what you want, etc.. when vampires attack and run for your lives are necessary though.
I also tend to run complete crafting overhaul remade, and weapon and armor fixes remade by kryptopyr and some of his other mods are good too. Read the instructions of course and make sure you are setting them how you want.
Finally I would look at diverse dragons by opusglass, as well as splendor and the other creature diversity mods by the same author.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
I even extend this to the unofficial patch. It fixes a lot of things but most of them are issues that are incredibly rare. Then alongside this they go beyond "bug fixes" and into adding content or changing things they didn't like. It was a good idea that got way too big and the author(s) heads vanished up their asses.
Play the game, and if you see something that you don't enjoy then find a mod that changes it. No need to jump in the deep end right away.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
etc.
Oh, right, I would probably agree on avoiding gameplay changes for the first run, but skyui is the exception. If you don't do anything else do Skyrim script extender and skyui.
I'd also probably also put run for your lives and when vampires attacks on there as first run recommended just because there's no point in having an important npc get eaten just because they are too stupid to run away.
Unofficial patch, weapon and armor fixes remade, clothing and clutter fixes, crafting overhaul remade are all fixes and changes I agree with but not necessary by any means so I could see dropping them for a first run for simplicity's sake.
If you are not running many mods (like just skyui +skse with run for your lives and when vampires attack) you should be fine just installing manually, when you start getting into the 10 or 12 mod range it would probably be a good idea to use a manager. Nexus mod manager, wyrebash, and mod organizer are among the more popular I think.
Well I've played Skyrim before, getting through most of the Dawnguard story before my old computer died. That's why the primary mods I wanted to put in were ones to keep town-NPCs safe from the random vampire attacks so I can play Dawnguard when I want and not have to blaze through it. I don't want to end up dealing with a broken quest just because an NPC I needed to talk to was killed hours ago unknowingly by a vampire over me not getting around to playing Dawnguard yet.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
Those games are already a deep ocean that you can replay and still find new things without a single mod.
But yes, install SkyUI immediately.
Apart from something that hides helmets, there are no mandatory mods.
I'd almost agree but I always seem to install this every time I play.
But to each their own. :razz:
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
'Hide helmets' is a base-game feature.
Jeeze that is a great and complicated question.
There is a lot to be said for ooo and maskar's oblivion overhaul, but they are NOT vanilla experiences at all. Everything about first runs applies to that as well.
For a vanilla experience without much mods and vanillaish graphics I would do the following:
Oblivion script extender
Oblivion stutter remover
4gb patch
Unofficial patch (base+si+dlc)
Unique landscapes
Arthmoors open cities reborn (I would probably not bother with imperial city or new sheoth, and make sure you get any compatibility patches for UL)
Darnified ui
Dynamicmap (needs menuque obse plugin)
Oblivion character overhaul 2 (+blockhead obse plugin)
MOBS
Weapon expansion for oblivion nthusiasts mobs version (install mod then mobs patch)
Use BOSS for load order sorting
This next part I would also do, it takes a little legwork but it helps a major oblivion problem.
Download wrye bash after installing the above and sorting your order (its a bit intimidating but we are only doing a minor tweak). Make a merged patch (right click, rebuilded merged patch, name it whatever) leave everything default and go to the tweak section. Under race tweaks hit bigger nords and orcs if you want, dont have to, but it is nice. Now the important part. Go under tweak settings. Where it says leveled creature max level difference put 0. Where it says levelled item max level difference put 0. ( IIRC I think 0 means disable in oblivion, been a while, it should say this in the help text in wryebash, if it doesn't put something arbitrarily large like 99)
What this does is fix a big design flaw in oblivion. By default, oblivion won't spawn items or creatures above your level. This is fine. However it also will not spawn creatures and items more than a few levels BELOW your level by default. This is bad, it means for example if iron armor and wolves are level 1, by the time you get to level 10 you will just never see wolves or iron armor again. This way it will spawn things below your level regardless. This makes the game easier, but gets rid of the issue where one you hit some arbitrarily high level you get all glass, ebony, and daedric armor on npcs.
Edit: forgot this but if you want a bit faster and more interesting combat use this
http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45314/?
Install that and the recommended other mods and settings in the description per the instructions. Mobs above works fine with it (recommended even), but do not install the optional mobs combat tweaks.