Which one added all those great new dungeons ???

48. The Lost Spires.esp

It adds a new guild to the game as well.

Holy Cow! I have to go check it out !!!

Updated list. 73 files running.

Holy Cow, KC !!!! WOO HOO !!!

I am still the champion, though...

Just updating. 86 files now.

You just wait until I get my new computer gets put together, KC.

Just you wait....

Another update. 107 files (that's not counting Oblivion.esm)

I've performed an overhaul of my load order!

The main attraction is that I have ditched Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul for the smaller, pure vanilla overhaul Tamriel Immersion Experience, which soft-unlevels the entire vanilla game's creature, equipment, and loot lists, and provides a number of interesting things for roleplayers, like secret passages into cities so that thief types can avoid the guarded gates, and making it much easier to catch diseases... you can even catch diseases from NPCs now, too!

An equipment rebalance is included, too, designed to make combat harsher. Coupled with LAME, melee vs. magic battles are actually quite a lot of fun!

And yes, due to the fact that I've performed a massive overhaul to how the game is meant to be played, that means the induction of a new character. This time I went a bit off-standard and am using a non-vanilla race. In this case, it is the Hidden Elf from RBP, which is derived from Ren's Mystic Elves mod, excellent for a pure spellcaster class. The story behind them is that they are long-lost descendants of the Ayleids, in hiding for centuries, and now so rare that due to their small stature, they are often mistaken as Bosmer.

He is, of course, a mage in the purest sense, and as such most of his majors are the Schools of Magicka (the only one that is not is Sneak). He does combat purely through magical means, which means he will not use any mundane weapons or armor at all, he can only use Bound equipment. If he needs armor, either a Shield spell or Bound Armor spells are what he can use, but he will never don mundane armor. Ever.

Active Mod Files:

Hmm that's weird, just noticed mine weren't showing. Retry:

This is the current rendition:

Active Mod Files:


This load order was designed with three things in mind: building the most immersive and beautiful rendition of Cyrodiil possible (and I think I did a pretty good job here), putting back some the 'vanilla' game (all creatures and loot are vanilla once again), while continuing with ditching the level scaling (T.I.E.), and quest expansions that are unique and lore friendly (Lost Spires is gone, for instance).

Most recently added was Artifacts and Immersive Interiors. Artifacts was added because the new shop stocks plenty of robes (and my new mage likes his robes), a few new outfits (not many, but I got a nice riding outfit while visiting), and lots of new weapons and armor (bleh ). Immersive Interiors was added because, well... it's immersive, need I say more?

I used to have none for years but now I´ve got 10-15 or so. It´s mostly minor things like not having the FG porter follow you around and having regular animals not attacking. I don´t use big one like Open Cities and I don´t use any overhaul.

Eighty-one. I have 81 esms and esps, according to the number of Form IDs in OBMM. Not all of these are active all the time though, some of them only get used for certain characters.

Come and think of it, I actually have more than 81. It's hard to say. Some mods don't include esms / esps, some of them will modify the game hiding in background. I estimate I've got another 10 of these, perhaps. So approximately 90 overall. That's twice my 'goal' from a year ago. I think I started Oblivion on PC almost a year ago. To think it all started with Snaat Rayag in the Tutorial dungeon on my old PC (made for office work, not gaming), and I had no idea why the dungeon was so bright.

Give a kid the keys to the candy store, and this is what happens..

There it is, Crow. The good news is my mod-adding frenzy has slowed down dramatically. There's not much else I'm really craving to have in my game (yeah, I mean it this time), other than more peaceful critters. Unfortunately if a mod adds critters, it only adds hostile ones.

Renee's gone Mod-Wild!

Eh.... somewhere between 70 and 80 I guess...
Basically, I'm trying to strike a balance between stripping away the things I don't like (thank the nines for darnified UI, which achieves about 60% of that), and adding in elements that I feel are lacking.. as well as some nice visuals. Some of these I won't be adding back in when I do a reinstall at some point in the future, but I am quite happy with this setup, for the most part.

My problem with many mods that add NPCs and houses etc is that even though they may fit in perfectly and all, I still know it´s a mod and I can´t stop noticing it. The only way for me around that is to add it all before I even start the game!


Actually I kinda did that with Morrowind. Though I didn´t add any NPCs or houses, but I did add graphic enhancers and I don´t notice them since I haven´t played without them.


*coughcough* - Sorry. Must have cought the Reneeofftopic bug...

Hey, how do you all take 'pictures' of your mod list? I want to share mine.



Ahh, this is why I like to imagine Saga and Renee's game are 4th Era. It's how I 'explain' why there's some new stuff in their games. I sometimes will throw something into their gameworlds, and actually forget about it. This way, when I come upon some new village in the middle of the woods somewhere, it feels natural.



Yeah, I know, it's going around this time of year. Tell me about it. Hey, you know it's actually ZERO degrees today? My kid went to school 2 hours late (this is mandated by our county, so all schools are 2 hours late today), and some of the other kids were wearing Halloween masks to school, so their faces don't fall off.

Ahh-choo! What were we talking about?

I see a lot of familiar names in that list!


OBMM has a button on the right side called Import/Export. Click on that, and then click on View Load Order and it will give you the list of all your active .esm and .esps. You can copy and paste that.

Very good, well here we go.



That's for Renee's game. Lady Saga's game and Snaaty's game have a few things different. Snaat Rayag has several skooma mods, for instance.

The specific set depends on the character. They all share the same landscape mods (all the ULs, all the ImpeREALs, Roads of Cyrodiil, Trails of Cyrodiil, Region Revive Lake Rumare, a bunch of villages and probably a few others), they all share the same body/hair mods (HGEC female, Roberts Male and an ever growing hair and eye compendium of my own), and they all share the same gameplay mods (DarnUI, HUD Status Bars, Enchanced Hotkeys, Custom Spell Icons, Map Marker Overhaul, Dynamic Map, Enchantment Restore over Time, Quest Award Leveller, and so on, and so on). They all get Spell Tomes, The Orrery and SI, and they all get most of my player houses (even though only one of my characters lives in each of them). Beyond that though, it starts to diverge. Only a few get KotN. Only a few get Mehrune's Razor. Only the fighters get armor and weapons and only the mages get robes and staves. Most of the DLC are saved only for the characters who actually live there, just because I don't want my other games cluttered up with messages about their new ownership of places in which they're never going to live, so Jana's the only one with Battlehorn and Ughoth's the only one with Frostcrag. Many of them have their own mods for the stuff that's specific to their games, so I've got a bunch of individual ones - HannaStuff and DawnStuff and ClaudiaStuff and so on.

The upshot? As of last night, I have 289 mods installed, and with Jana's game (the one I was playing then) 148 are active. That last is probably about average.

I also am in the habit of using different mod sets with each of my 3 characters. I actually have a notepad page on which I post instructions on how to swap from one character to the next. I'll put it in the spoiler tag below.



Pretty technical, eh? Snaat Rayag's game has plenty of 'Deactivates", because his world is 3rd Era, which to me means it is similar to what I'd find in my console games. The main diff is he's a skooma dealer, so I added several skooma mods to his game. Renee Gade III's game is supposed to be 20 years into the 4th Era, so I like to go crazy with mods here, dumping a lot of things which I need to Activate, which makes it seem very unlike Snaaty's game.

Lady Saga is in the middle of these two: about 6 years into the 4th Era, so she's got a few things found in RG3's world, but not all of them.

Sweet Jeebus, Renee! Quite some work just for switching characters!


I can sooo relate to that...

Wow, that is some list Renee! You know the Oblivion Mod Manager can synchronize your mods for you. I don't think it will turn any off, but you can use it to view your savegames, and it will show you which mods are in use by that save, and you can have it automatically turn on all the ones it needs.

Oh I know I can use the manager to do this for me, but I like doing it my way because I get to review exactly what's going on with each character as I swap. I also have a terrible memory, so it helps if I go through my checklist, just to remind myself which mods are being used by whom. It's like I get more personally in-touch with their worlds.

The only thing that's tricky is I can't just swap from one character to the next day by day, like I did on PS3. I used to roll dice just to see who I'd be gaming with for the evening! But this is okay. I like spending several weeks or months with somebody nowadays, before moving on to somebody else.

mirocu: har har. You can relate. Har har