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Post by dogonporch on Oct 4, 2015 8:35:41 GMT
Seeking something to break the monotony of those incessant Oblivion Gates... I never do the main quest causing those gates to pop up. They ugly the scenery and are rubber stamped all the same. I also avoid the Main Quest for many characters...sticking to 'Knights of the Nine' and/or one of David Brasher's epic quest-lines...'Vampire Hunting: The Order of the Virtuous Blood (Continued)' being a typically good one...especially for 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer' fans. www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/30568/?www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/29347/?
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Post by jgf on Oct 5, 2015 1:51:36 GMT
Thanks for the input. I had bookmarked many of the Elseweyr additions while seeking the actual mod. "...have in mind that I made this mod to be used in conjunction with OOO, Francesco's and MMM which greatly change the difficulty and gameplay of oblivion, so they WILL be overpowered if you use it alone" I've no interest in OOO or MMM for the very reason this mod is designed to work with them. (This is not a castigation of such mods or those who enjoy them, but for me Oblivion is enough of a "hack-and-slash" as it is, without a mod to amplify that aspect of the game.) "Exteriors are finished, interiors as well, but the don't include, with few exceptions, any small clutter, misc items, books and things like that. Also there are currently no quests. Some NPCs have unique dialogue. Future version might include detailing of interiors, more dialogue and a quest or two." So it is just eye candy for now? (And since this is dated 2012 it is doubtful a "future version" is forthcoming.) The second link requires Shivering Isles, which I do not have (just the base game patched to the most recent version).
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Post by thenryb on Oct 5, 2015 3:44:53 GMT
I have been trying, for some time (off and on) to configure Oblivion in a way which is fun for me, without much success. When I was playing it a lot some years ago, I had an FCOM installation but when I revisited the game recently (mainly to try Vilja, and because Skyrim is so bleh), I found it to be drudgery. I have also tried T.I.E. which was even more so. I do not like the incessant Oblivion gates either which are more annoying than Skyrim dragons , but my approach has been to complete that boring main quest just to close them. The vanilla leveling system is dreadful, so I have tried to find some combination of mods which allow the player to pick as major skills those which are used without fighting bandits with glass armor at level 10. I finally settled on Maskar's overhaul and have configured it so it is basically vanilla with high level gear being a rarity. There are many features of that mod which I just disable (diseases, darker Aeliyd ruins, more and stronger Goblins which invade cities, more Minotaurs and Ogres-boring monsters who drop no loot). I have Knights of the Nine but ended up deleting it.( I should have just hidden it using Wrye to avoid having to figure out how to add it back without reinstalling the whole game.) I have a mod called Kvatch Rebuilt. The old version of that was fun, worked pretty well and many other mods had patches for it to avoid conflicts. However, the new version is very glitchy, Zaldir seems rather tired of messing with it and it has made the patches obsolete. I even tried Viconia DeVir which requires the Underdark, which is really buggy and unsupported. I suppose I should just admit to myself that Oblivion has run its course for me.
I rather wish I had played Morrowind when it was a bit newer. I bought it on sale a few months ago and have taken a quick stab at trying to get interested but it is just too old and dated for me to get motivated to learn how to use its controls, build a character and discover which mods to use.
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Post by Sniffles on Oct 5, 2015 9:50:49 GMT
thenryb, that was quite depressing. Probably because I feel about the same. For me it's more fun watching someone else play now. It is definitely more fun for us both to play Zippy's way: butt naked or just nicely dressed stalker. Fussing with all that stupid armor is bullshit. She also starts the game and ups the PC level to around 50 to max out the enemies levels. The PC gets leveled only by the console, a certain amount for every hour of game playing. I can ask her the formulas she uses if you're interested. It makes most of the encounters life or death situations.
She's been doing that with Fallout, Oblivion and Skyrim. In Skyrim the PC wears something nice, for her it's Hircines armor, for me I found a really nice blouse and jacket but bare down below. I'm looking for a pleated ankle length skirt. Then all leveling is done according to the playing style using the console. I set most of the stats going by my opinion of the best of us both in RL.
But anyway...
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Post by jgf on Oct 6, 2015 0:43:07 GMT
I have been trying, for some time (off and on) to configure Oblivion in a way which is fun for me, without much success. ... Oblivion is such a pale shadow of Morrowind that it is difficult to approach as a true rpg. The landmass is too small (perhaps a fourth the size of Morrowind); the NPCs are too few and too generic, lacking any individuality; and the quests are heinously repetitive (quest giver asks you to go somewhere, find an item, and return it to them; you find the place, hack-and-slash your way through it, get the item and return it to the person. "Rinse and repeat" 150 times) ...not to mention the monotony of those Gates. While not exactly a sequel, you would think with Oblivion Bethesda would have built upon and added to what they had done with Morrowind. Instead they did the opposite - not just a smaller map, fewer NPCs and fewer quests, fewer guilds/factions, but spells removed (I miss levitation and sanctuary), less clothing options (you cannot wear clothing with armor, I guess we are naked under our armor ...that must certainly be comfortable; we cannot even wear a robe over the armor); and a massive kludge of an interface that requires searching four tabs and scrolling through lists to find anything, add that idiotic disposition game and you wonder if the developers were actively trying to ruin any sense of immersion. And while horseback riding is a nice addition ... you cannot fight while on your horse! That's ridiculous, throughout history people have fought on horseback with swords, bows and arrows, spears, and guns. And the enchantment system is, to me, infuriating. Any enchantment on clothing or armor is constant effect, so you cannot, for example, have a "castable" spell on your shoes. And any enchantment on a weapon only affects your target, so you cannot put a CE spell of Fortify Marksman on your bow and have it affect you ...it will Fortify Marksman on anyone you hit with an arrow. And, except for the few you find, there are no enchanted arrows - you must waste a potion to create just one arrow. Coupled with the all too rapid decay of weapon enchantments (a sword with a measly 12 strikes? that doesn't even last one fight) and the quick deterioration of armor (I often stop to repair Vilja's armor in the middle of a single dungeon crawl), I question if the development team ever played Morrowind, or any other true rpg. I rather wish I had played Morrowind when it was a bit newer. I bought it on sale a few months ago and have taken a quick stab at trying to get interested but it is just too old and dated for me to get motivated to learn how to use its controls, build a character and discover which mods to use. Well, controls are the standard fps/rpg and can be reconfigured. For mods, start with Better Bodies, this completely reworks all the NPCs to make them presentable (this alone is an amazing improvement). There are plenty of texture mods which improve everything else. Galsiah's Character Development eliminates that kludge of a leveling system, and, if you are so inclined, Necessities of Morrowind adds the requirement to eat, drink, and sleep, along with the ability to cook (many new food items are added, and there are portable campfires). If you like companions, Julan, Constance, or Laura are quite nice (though, understandably, not as complete as Vilja). Beyond that it is a matter of what type of mods you like; and there are a couple of sites which list known incompatibilities among mods, it is good to peruse these once you start adding mods.
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Post by Sniffles on Oct 6, 2015 1:32:59 GMT
Want to get really depressed? Overlay 2 maps: First, a semi-circle: Anvil, Chorrol, Bruma, Cheydinhal, Leyawin Markarth, Solitude, Dawnstar, Winterhold, Windhelm, Riften Then in the middle: Skingrad, Imperial City, Bravil Falkreath, Whiterun, Morthal
Now, following the roads as much as possible, run from Anvil to Chorrol to Bruma to Cheydinhal to Leyawin to Bravil to Imperial City to Skingrad and back to Anvil. You can do it in half a game day. You can run/swim from Bruma to Leyawin in 1 game hour.
Elseweyr isn't a mod, it's a necessity to keep from going stir crazy.
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Post by thenryb on Oct 6, 2015 4:16:08 GMT
Maybe that swim would qualify for Vilja's desire to go for a "really long swim". She is a dear but her suggestions for what to do for fun are pretty boring (cozy evening at home, inviting Heneri for dinner, picking flowers, going down to the dock to look at the ships [sic]). Come to think of it, they rather fit the game.
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Post by dogonporch on Oct 6, 2015 16:07:54 GMT
Want to get really depressed? Overlay 2 maps: First, a semi-circle: Anvil, Chorrol, Bruma, Cheydinhal, Leyawin Markarth, Solitude, Dawnstar, Winterhold, Windhelm, Riften Then in the middle: Skingrad, Imperial City, Bravil Falkreath, Whiterun, Morthal Now, following the roads as much as possible, run from Anvil to Chorrol to Bruma to Cheydinhal to Leyawin to Bravil to Imperial City to Skingrad and back to Anvil. You can do it in half a game day. You can run/swim from Bruma to Leyawin in 1 game hour. Elseweyr isn't a mod, it's a necessity to keep from going stir crazy. Stock Oblivion would be maddening at this late date...lol. Have you tried adding Valenwood Improved? It's quite nice. Other things that keep Oblivion fresh are the tons of excellent dungeon mods plus more critters...monsters and the like. After years of Oblivion, I do have my favorites...Emma's creations, of course. But you can't go too wrong with David Brasher's mods. I've ranted about his stuff before. He fleshed out many of the stock Oblivion quest lines...Mages Guild...Fighters Guild...Order of the Virtuous Blood...Knights of the Nine Continued. Plus his various 'epic' dungeons...huge dungeons. Can't play Oblivion w/o his additions, now... www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1139939/?tb=mods&pUp=1
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Post by Sniffles on Oct 6, 2015 22:00:43 GMT
Stock Oblivion would be maddening at this late date...lol. Have you tried adding Valenwood Improved? It's quite nice. Other things that keep Oblivion fresh are the tons of excellent dungeon mods plus more critters...monsters and the like. After years of Oblivion, I do have my favorites...Emma's creations, of course. But you can't go too wrong with David Brasher's mods. I've ranted about his stuff before. He fleshed out many of the stock Oblivion quest lines...Mages Guild...Fighters Guild...Order of the Virtuous Blood...Knights of the Nine Continued. Plus his various 'epic' dungeons...huge dungeons. Can't play Oblivion w/o his additions, now... www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/users/1139939/?tb=mods&pUp=1Thanks for that link! I feel like a kid in a candy store!
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Post by jgf on Dec 29, 2015 23:02:02 GMT
Well, I've been unable to get the Elsweyr mod to work. It requires no specific version of Oblivion, claiming its only requirement is oblivion.esm, which I obviously have. But whenever enabled the game will not start, oblivion.exe stops responding just after the opening videos and just before the menu page appears; I cannot alt+tab out, must use the "three finger salute" and open another Task Manager to kill the process. Disable the mod and the game runs fine. I've tried repositioning the mod in the load order, to no avail.
Oblivion certainly ranks as one of the most infuriating, irritating, and frustrating kludges of software to ever darken my digital doorstep. It's hard to believe this is from the same team which gave us Morrowind.
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Post by dogonporch on Dec 30, 2015 5:30:15 GMT
There is NO way the mod labeled Elsweyr Anequina Mar 2014.rar is all of the mod. My original copy is over 400mb.
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Post by dogonporch on Dec 30, 2015 5:39:34 GMT
Oblivion certainly ranks as one of the most infuriating, irritating, and frustrating kludges of software to ever darken my digital doorstep. It's hard to believe this is from the same team which gave us Morrowind. I agree on many levels. But I was really surprised when I started getting into the Construction Set how much was simply never put into the stock Oblivion game. Lots of objects/items/etc with zero use info...or use only in testing warehouses. It's pretty obvious once you dig into it a bit that all the minor quests are, in fact, tutorials to make your own...follow this, find that, kill the monster, etc.
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Post by Sniffles on Dec 30, 2015 6:39:41 GMT
Well all you Oblivion detractors can take a flying leap through a rolling donut. Climbing high into the Colovian highlands and gazing east into a glorious sunrise was and is, in a way, much like a stretch of the Tetons we both dearly loved to walk. Just replace Imperial city with a vast trailer park slum filled with itinerant vagrant rifle toting alcoholics and voila!
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Post by jgf on Dec 30, 2015 7:12:43 GMT
There is NO way the mod labeled Elsweyr Anequina Mar 2014.rar is all of the mod. My original copy is over 400mb. My install is from two files: Elsweyr Anequina Mar 2014.rar (35meg) ElsweyrAnequinaMeshesTextures.rar (369meg) The first file says I need the second file, but neither mentions necessity of any other file. ("1. You also need to download and install the Elsweyr Anequina Meshes and Textures resource file from this site. 2. You must have your in-game borders disabled or you won't be able to reach the new region. See the installation instructions to learn how. 3. This version of the mod is not compatible with the Unofficial Elsweyr Anequina Patch. So do not later install that patch. 4. If you have the 2010 version of this mod installed and the Unofficial Elsweyr Anequina Patch please follow the installation instructions or your game will become unstable (both of these need to be uninstalled and a clean save made before installing this version of the mod).")
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Post by dogonporch on Dec 30, 2015 7:21:43 GMT
Well all you Oblivion detractors can take a flying leap through a rolling donut. Climbing high into the Colovian highlands and gazing east into a glorious sunrise was and is, in a way, much like a stretch of the Tetons we both dearly loved to walk. Just replace Imperial city with a vast trailer park slum filled with itinerant vagrant rifle toting alcoholics and voila! There's actually a mod that turns the world to deep jungle that combine with various Viet-Nam mods. Betty, I think. For our own use (wife and I), I actually made my own version of Hammerfell using the stock elevations...it's as vast as the rest of the game map. But, it needed a lot of TLC to bring it up to Oblivion eye-candy levels. There are only trees and they were dropped onto the landscape leaving their trunk-ends exposed. So they had to be all moved into the land-mesh. Then rocks, bushes, logs, flora, fauna, NPC's, buildings, etc, etc, etc were added. So far, the South West quadrant of the region is complete. But there's still much to do. Perhaps I'll release it when finished. It incorporates a few already existing Hammerfell mods and the authors have long since moved on...so permission has been unavailable. But, privately to a few interested individuals shouldn't be an issue down the road. One I'm just finishing...but unfortunately it is too unique to my particular install to be released...is my upgrade to the popular Region Lake Rumare/Talos Bridge mods. Imagine the Imperial Island and it surroundings FULL of buildings/farms/forests/caves/forts/NPCs/etc. You get the idea... I'll try to take a screenshot or two when I'm there next. But, here's the originals I started from...even they'll beef-up your Imperial Island by themselves w/o much conflict. UL patches are available if you use those, I think. Load order is important...I also use a utility called Land Magic which deals with the vast majority of landscape tears that can result from more than one mod modifying elevations and such. www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/22751/?www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/37366/?www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/38087/?www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/32996/?
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