I'm not familiar with such a mod that, I would imagine, reduces enemy spawn points along the roads. I'm sure there probably are such mods though.

I reduce the number of wilderness fights via SubRosa's mod Witchcraft. One of the features of this mod is that wolves, bears, lions, boars and spriggans are not hostile. For RP reasons, we still like to give them a wide berth, but that one mod can significantly reduce 'annoyance' attacks while traveling. I find that mud crabs, imps, trolls, wills, ogres, minotaurs, land dreughs, etc still allow for enough excitement while traveling. In fact, I tweaked SubRosa's mod to render boars once again hostile. Witchcraft is a flawlessly put together mod that has other nice features as well (some bound armors and the ability to summon forest creatures). It is well worth taking a peek at. And, of course, it has the wonderful plus that if you have any questions about it, we have the wonderful authoress of this mod right here at Chorrol!

TIE (Tamriel Immersion Experience) greatly decreases the number of bandits, et al on the roads.

I've also noticed the will'o'wisps aren't nearly as aggressive as they are in Julian's story. Whew! All of us - two-legged and four - are very relieved!

I also heartily second Acadian's recommendation of Witchcraft. It's a solid mod that plays well with TIE.

Personally, I use Tamriel Immersion Experience.

It's actually more a tiny overhaul than it is anything else, but one of the features is highly reduced spawns on roads.

Just keep in mind, it also un-levels the entire wilderness (among many other changes), so don't go venturing far from the roads while you are a low level.

I've got MMM in my games, which has a 'Safer Roads' option, but MMM probably wouldn't work for you Rhiannae. It's a pretty involved mod with lots of options, probably too many for you from the sound of it.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions!

I really like the look of Witchcraft, but I'll check out both that and TIE, although I think I'll enjoy Witchcraft more for the other benefits it provides

EDIT: Scratch that... TIE also looks amazing. Grr... I'll most likely have both! haha

Okay, here are my most recent mods that I am loving.

Killiana - Adds a permenant, unique spider Daedra companion. She's pretty cool, but quite sloppy when it comes to using magic! Can't TELL you the amount of times I've been zapped! Haha.

Weye - A simple mod I discovered that turns Weye into more of a settlement. Can't remember the exact name of the one I need.

TIE - Introduced to this above, along with Witchcraft. I love the subtle, bt awesome changes it brings to the game. I enjoy dungeons being hit&miss when it comes to finding treasure.

Unique Landscapes Compilation - Adds some beautiful locations. I very much like my Cyrodiil to have quite a cluttered landscape.

An update on Valenwood Improved (VI) + Elsweyr. As you recall, I'm using the older Elsweyr mod (will change over to Illiana's March 2014 version sometime fairly soon), and also, that the patch between the old Elsweyr mod and VI is no longer available.

Well, I'm pretty pleased with VI except for the western portions along the Elsweyr border. As I've gotten further and further into VI, the terrain rips, tears, and mismatched terrain planes are pertty bad. I'd say as much as 20% of Valenwood is unusable due to that. On one hand, the rest of VI looks good and is a pretty nice mod. My real concern, however, is that when back in Elsweyr and looking toward V-wood, those terrain abominations along the border or very visible. That really distracts from the beauty of Elsweyr - well, only if you look to the west.

I'm dealing with it for the moment since I'm not done pondering and evaluating and exploring. Once I change over to the new Elsweyr mod, I'll load Elsweyr after VI and evaluate things.

My long winded point here, I guess, is that at least with my setup, all is not happy along the Elsweyr/V-Wood border as I had initially reported. Again, I don't know yet how the new Elsweyr mod will fair with VI. If it comes to a choice between the two mods though, that is easy. Elsweyr, at least for me, is hands down the better mod to have.

If I do dump VI, I'll go looking for a separate worldspace (like SI uses) mod that provides a more rain forest/jungle feel to go explore.

I think Acadian and I have the same VI.

It's not a mod, it's the beginnings of one. So there's a lot of new territory, but it's not yet properly filled in. Some places are virtual ghost towns, with nobody living in the houses. Some houses have no furniture. However, there are quests and NPC's in parts of the province, and what's there works fairly well. Because it was developed independently, it doesn't mesh with Elsweyr. The patch I have (from Illiana) fixes the border alignment issues Acadian mentioned, but doesn't go any further. There aren't any cross-border quests, for example, except between each province and Cyrodiil. Nothing that uses both Valenwood and Elsweyr.

We've probably mentioned a few of the bugs we found, like unkillable spriggans, and overpowered enemies. I patched my copy to fix them, so I forget they were there. I think I also fixed a multitude of smaller cosmetic things as I came across them, for my own use. I can package up my copy if anyone here wants it, but I can't support someone else's mod.

I also run Shezrie's Towns, and there's one in Valenwood, close to Anvil. I help her patch that for a few land tears etc. that VI caused, and again, I forget what we fixed. That patch is probably still available, but may not be on Nexus.

If I get round to pulling down the latest Elsweyr, I can check if the VI patch still works. If not, I might even rework it myself.

I use Dynamic Maps in my game, and I developed an overlay for each of Elsweyr and Valenwood. I only have one style, and it may not work for everyone. I'm not sure if they're part of the DM package now, from other authors.

Which brings me to the southern part of the map. The Elsweyr mod is strictly Anequina only, and doesn't include the Pellitine cities of Torval and Senchal. So that piece of the landscape only exists in the Valenwood mod, and they didn't get it right. Since all that was needed was a border region near Haven, there's enough to take you over to Duncori, which is as far south as the Elsweyr Anequina mod goes. The peninsula south of that is the wrong shape, and needs reworking before Senchal could be added. Also, Elsweyr Anequina has invisible walls along its borders, which I had to remove by updating Illiana's patch, as she'd left the Torval area walled off.

There was a separate project to create Senchal, (by StarX) and you can still find images of it on the TESAlliance site, IIRC. It was intended to be merged into a composite Elsweyr mod, and someone else was going to do Torval. Rimmen likewise, but it looks like that area was surrendered, and Illiana's got control.

I've held off from making any pieces for my mods that go into Elsweyr or Valenwood, but they have had mentions in some quests. Aranxa was summoned by Altmer conjurers who wanted to mount an attack on Riverwood, but she never left Fort Black Boot. The Mane was to be the assassination target of Enilwen, but she was talked out of going to Torval while she was still in Skingrad. Taminwe goes to Senchal from Leyawiin, while the player stays in Cyrodiil. The only actual cross-border quest was to my own Falkreath, but I was always hoping Elsweyr would be fully released, and I could use it. Maybe that's a bit closer, now that Rimmen's included.

ghastley, thanks! I've already adjusted the Valensprigs to match how we have the Cyrdiil ones. Heh, Buffy encountered what seemed to be pretty stout storm atronach as the boss down in the bowels of some dungeon. In fact, it seemed so sturdy that we opened the command console to query its health. After inflicting enough damage to kill a vanilla storm several times over, this guy still had more that 10,000 health! Buffy felt up for the challenge though. With a change in tactics to optimize stacked weakness to magic, he went down fine.

Interesting reading, all your adventures in extra-Cyrodiil areas. Sounds fun. I'd look into it but it sounds like I'd need more of a background with building mods before I do, huh? ..

Rihanae: what's the name of the Weye mod? That sounds like something I'd be interested in, assuming it doesn't somehow clash with Better Cities I.C. (which it shouldn't).

Rihanae may be talking about AFK Weye. I have that one, and like it a lot. The story lines are more interesting than your usual fetch and carry quests.

I've deleted Valenwood Improved (VI) from my load. I was willing to tolerate the near empty cities, unfinished building interiors, forests instead of jungle, and land tears that were contained within V-wood.

The mod went on 'probation' though when I saw that the land tears and mismatched terrain planes were quite distracting when looking westerly from Elsweyr. That probably would have ultimately caused me to uninstall it. The patch between the two is no longer available and was made for the older Elsweyr mod anyway.

What caused me to uninstall it however was some excitement earlier today. As Buffy progressed into central V-wood, she began encountering the 'I HAVE NO GREETING' glitch. At first, we attributed it to a problem in central and possibly southern V-wood, since the NPCs in northern V-wood had talked fine. On a whim, however, we popped back to northern V-wood and encountered this new problem there as well. Nervous now, we popped to Anvil and encountered it there! That generated an instant uninstall of VI - which did not solve the new problem in Cyrodiil. What fixed our game was loading an archive save from right before we installed VI.

I'm certainly no whiz with mods, but I know my limitations. VI is not for me. That said, I'm very glad I tried it (and emerged relatively unscathed), since I've been curious about the mod for some time.

Well if you're giving up, there's no way I'm going in there! That sounds like a broken game waiting to happen, unless you know a lot about fixing things. Which I know less than anybody here, just about. It'll be cool once everything gets ironed out though, eh?

How large is VI's landmass? Similar to ES games or smaller or larger?

Thanks for the Weye AFK tip, haute.

Hi, Renee. Yes, Buffy's game without VI is fine now, thanks. The land mass of VI seemed to be about a third the size of Cyrodiil - pretty big.

So no more pics from Buffy in Valenwood?

I have three more yet to be posted, but won't be able to take any more. That's okay, Cyrodiil, Elsweyr and the SI are a pretty big and varied range. I also have another mod that adds a small V-wood tree village and yet another that adds Falkreath up in Skyrim.

I reckon that last place is also last on Buffy´s list of favourite places.. !

Sorry I took so long to get here!

Renee I am indeed talking about AFK

Acadian it's a shame VI wasn't for you. I can't blame you though. I tried it a while back and had the same personal issues with it. It's disappointing because it truly has the makings of a great addition to the world.

The description of the mod claims it to be a 'Landscape mod', explaining the lack of interiors... but personally I just think it's laziness to describe it as that when it's clearly just unfinished.

I've great respect for modders. I can understand putting out VI 'unfinished' and I'm sure the modder had plans to refine and fill in things. But like many projects, it never really got updated beyond a certain point.

I'm still using the older version of Anequina. For those using the new (March 2014) version, is it working well? Any problems? I'm likely to switch over to the new version at some point, but am, kind of selfishly, hoping for some 'trouble-free' reports.

Thank you.

So last night I used Camping for the first time holy moly I love that one. I love the fact that there are different levels of campsites (pup tents to caravan-style, fully-enclosed shelters). I am RPing that she can only use a tent if Saga's got a horse to carry it from place to place, and of course since she's not afraid of the elements, she's using the cheapest tent + bedroll we can buy.

I’ve had no trouble with the new Anequina so far, but I hasten to say I have barely begun to explore! We’ve made it from Dune to Fort Seaplace stopping in at every location found along the way. That’s not much. I will make note of any weirdness that we find in Elsweyr as well as after returning to Cyrodiil and give a report.

Renee, I found the ability to actually set up camp for the first time to be one of the best game moments I’ve experienced. After all of those years of using Wait to pretend, my character was finally living in the world. Congrats on the addition!!

Thanks, Grits!

Renee, after trying quite a few camp/tent mods, I've settled into 'Camping' (like you) and augment it with 'Portable Campsite' when we just want a campfire or maybe a bedroll. Rather than setting up stools, I generally use simply a pose mod if Buffy wants to sit by the campfire (sit on the ground).

As you probably know, the 'Camping' mod has, in addition to three levels of tents, also three levels of 'poshness'. Those are determined by the amount of gold you're carrying, with cutoffs at 20K and 100K. I confess that Buffy kind of likes the silk brocade bedroll provided by carrying plenty of gold.

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I very highly appreciate the work the modder put into just a grand project, it's just highly disappointing that it was left unfinished.

And, like grits, I'm running the new Annequina, too and am not experiencing any problems

Map Marker Overhaul?, one of my new favorites. Removes the GPS pointer on the map YES! .. I've spent at least a couple months looking for a mod that does this. It does a few other things too, but I've been wanting to remove the pointer since my PS3 days.

And the makers of tape everywhere panic is they just lost their best customer...

Home Depot's market share plunges....

Summon the Rats?

This mod makes it possible to summon TEN rats at the Journeyman level. It is the type of mod which fits a very specific type of roleplay, and for Lady Saga this mod's perfect. Saga only summons 'natural' creatures, you see, like the Summon Wolf spell found in SR's Witchcraft mod.

Anyways, Summon the Rats is hilarious. The rats all squeak at the same time, and often an enemy will literally be surrounded. Then, it's a slow death for that poor NPC, while they go "Hah, Ow! Ouch!"

The only thing I don't like about StR is the original mod author made it too über. I noticed after summoning the rats that it would only take 2 or 3 rat-bites to kill most enemies, and I discovered that the mod author made so that each rat does an insane amount of damage (for a rat): 35 points per bite! They also had too many health points; I think 20 hp each, which is just insane.

I was able to go into TES4Edit and change this (my first usage of this tool...pretty cool); now each rat only has 10 health and does 5 pts. of damage. NPC enemies now must deal with agonizing rat-bite after rat-bite, while Saga can get some easy shots with her bow.

Wow, I had completely forgotten about this thread!

But now when I´ve found it again I might as well ask if anyone know of a mod, or can create a mod, that disables the cricket sound in the Jeralls? I mean, they really shouldn´t be heard there, now should they?

I was searching for the same mod a few years ago and using Sounds of Cyrodiil was the closest to achieving this - it"disables" crickets in the Jeralls but it also changes a lot of other things which I didn't like so in the end I didn't install it.

I did look at that mod long ago but decided I didn´t want it. Thing is, if I mod my game too far away from vanilla it takes away "the Oblivion feel" for me, if that makes sense. If that mod had been in the vanilla game it would have been great, but as it isn´t I´ll notice it every time a sound plays that isn´t vanilla and then I´ll be reminded that I´m using a mod.

Plus I really only want to disable the crickets up there anyway

But they're magic crickets, Crow.

My guess is nobody has made a mod for this yet. I wonder if it's possible to go into individual cells up on Bruma and somehow find the cricket sound files, then remove them from these cells? It seems they randomly get triggered to turn on and off, which means there must be some program or script that triggers them. But i have no idea if this is even possible. Assuming it is possible, and you somehow manage to edit cell after cell, you'd have yourself a mod I'd also be interested in.

I don´t really need a mod that disables them in Bruma. All I need is one that disables them entirely and I just turn the mod on and off as I need to

Ahh, you might not need a mod actually.

There's always been one 'wind noise' that annoyed me on consoles. I am talking about the sound of wind blowing. There was one particular sound that was way too repetitive and obvious, know what I mean? Natural sounds like this don't repeat themselves over and over like this sound did. So what I did was I go into

C: // Oblivion > Data > Sound > FX > ambient

....then I clicked on all the sound files in that folder (all the different rain and wind noises) until I found the sound I wanted to get rid of. I didn't actually delete it though, I simply moved somewhere.

... and now I am trying to find cricket sound files, but cannot do so. Maybe they are inaccessible.

They're in the Oblivion - Sounds.bsa file, Renee, which you would need to unpack, modify and repack. I would advise against that, though, I don't think it's a good idea to modify the original game BSAs at all. Some supplemental vanilla assets are placed on the disk though, I have some cricket files there, but they're likely from a mod like OSSO.

But, Mirocu, what you can do is take the opposite approach. A file placed on disk overrides the one in the .bsa, so substituting a silent file with the same name should remove the crickets. In the case of the Jeralls, that would mean everything in data\sound\fx\ambient\regions\crickets\forest\ - which unfortunately would also wipe out all forest crickets elsewhere. And you need a silent .wav file, easy to make that.

OTOH, a targetted approach in the CS would mean finding all the cricket sound emitters in the Jeralls and disabling them, because the general sounds for that region already have crickets disabled, I just looked. Which means that you've identified a bug Trouble is there's probably a lot of them...

EDIT: Not very helpful, sorry, thinking aloud. Maybe a better idea will occur...

In Oblivion the sound files have a way to set them to randomly go off at different times of the day and at random intervals which can be controlled by changing the ratio set for each sound.

Go in the CK and find the cricket sound. You just double click on it to tweak the ratio; or if you Right click on it and click on "Users" and it will show you a list of the cells that have that sound in it.

You can use the grid chart for Cyrodiil and so you know which cells you are looking for to edit and just double click on each of those users if you want to just delete the ones you find offensive entirely; though ... it will kind of kill the ambiance if you do that. Those ambient sounds actually do help with the immersion in the game imho.

If you remove them or alter their ratio's either one - make sure to save it as a mod, don't ever alter the vanilla game itself !!!

I think it's helpful. You and mALX both have some effective ideas. Now, let's see if mirocu wants to follow one of these directions.

I´ve scrapped that idea for now, at least until someone makes a mod...



Another question. At some point Olfand died (I of course resurrected him) and as a result, no one longer talks about Skjorta´s antics and how they drink so much. Is there a mod for bringing that back? I looked at nexus but found nothing.

OMG, are you playing Skyrim?


*mALX faints*

*unfaints mALX*


Noo, Oblivion. Olfand and Skjorta lives in Bruma

Wow. I would dance the Wahtuusi if this happened.

.... the sky would fall.

... hell would freeze.

... if mirocu broke the Steam barrier. But I'd dance anyways.

Anyways, about your question mirocu. I wonder if there's a way to look into the CS and make something happen? I read something about this recently. I've been doing a LOT of reading though about the Construction Set over the past 2 or 3 months, and I know I read something about what happens when NPCs die. It resets the game in some sort of way.

I have a mod that enables greetings that get lost when you level up. Maybe there´s a way to bring back random talk between NPCs about other NPCs too?

I know, right? This is what will happen all around the planet on the day Mirocu makes that step across the Steam Barrier:



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeQyoTSgllc










Oh.

So can I get a list of your must have mods for Oblivion? Some things I would like to change about Oblivion would be:
How the characters look (the original "play dough faces" are just terrible)
Maybe some cleaner graphics
Oblivion had a severe problem, IMO, with leveled lists (really? Like 5 marauders in a ruin are equipped with Daedric stuff? I'd like to tone this down.)

Other than that, it's all good. Some extra options for lore friendly gear might be nice.

If Khajiit means Raven, he doesn´t have any graphic mods or anything that alters NPCs appearances so he can´t help there.

What he does have though is a two-part mod that brings in everything from the level lists, meaning that a bandit can still be wearing fur at level 50, and you can still meet lower level enemies. Or just one of those if one so pleases. The mod is called No Obsolete Enemies and Loot.


*Spell Delete is one that is essential to Raven, having an avid spell creator in Lothran.

*Witchcraft by SubRosa that, other than adding a few things, lets you summon regular animals and also not having normal ones attack you on sight. Forest Friend does only the latter if one prefers just that.

*FG Porter not Follow if you don´t want to be treated as a suspicious person when in the Fighters Guild.


Hope this was helpful

I find the opposite with Skyrim, though. A bandit in fur with an iron weapon there can hit you harder than one in full Daedric. Scaling the stats without scaling the appearance is not the right answer.

Yes very much helpful Mr. Nevermore, thank you! No Obsolete Enemies and Loot looks like something Khajiit would want!



Well I was asking for suggestions. What would you suggest?

I think that part is best left alone. I tend to cap the level of my Oblivion characters at around 20, so they never get to the deadric marauder stage. That's done by choosing majors to avoid levelling, not by any mod.

OBSE is one of the most important things, as it is a utility that many mods use, like Fast Exit and Keychain

Chase Camera Mod gets rid of the slow camera movement, and makes it behave like a normal camera in any other game.

Quest Award Leveling automatically levels up your quest-gotten items as you go up in levels. So you don't have to power game and deliberately avoid doing quests until you are over 26th level.

NaRae Pose 1 and NaRae Pose 2 add some good poses, intermixed with a lot of hyper-sexualized ones.

Unmarked Places adds map markers for wayshrines and ayleid wells.

No Persistent Enchantment Glow Fix stops magic items from constantly glowing after you eqiup them.

Denock Arrow Too allows you to un-ready a bow without firing the arrow you had nocked.

Poison FX adds a more visible poison shader.

No More Weapon Litter keeps items like weapons still bound to the inventory of the actor that carried them after they die. That way when their bodies refresh, the weapons go with them. Otherwise they remain, and contribute to save game bloat.

Idle Dialogues restores dialog that was cut from the game.

Luchaire's Neck Seam Concealer hides the neck seams by giving you little necklaces you can wear (which do not count against wearing an amulet).

Bab Body is the body mod I use. However, I took the face textures from Robert's Female Body and installed just them over Bab. That gives me the Bab body with the Robert's face.

Black Courtesan Dress is hands down my favorite clothing mod for Oblivion. Followed closely by The Roadstrokers Rogue Outfit

Nigheye Shader Replacement gives you a bunch of replacement shaders to replace the default nighteye effect.

Unique Landscapes changes many areas with new and interesting features. It is not one mod, but a bunch of them all with the same vision: of creating a new and more interesting Cyrodiil. I found some to be absolutely awesome, and others absolutely terrible. So it is best to download each separately and try them out one at a time, as you mileage will definitely vary.

Mystic Emporium Enchantment Station will allow you to enchant magic items without having to learn spells or go hunting for soul gems. The idea is to simulate Bubba the Barbarian walking in and paying Calindil to enchant an item for them. Rather than Bubba having to become a mage in order to magic up his monster-masher.

Ferryboats adds in a bunch of boats that will take you across the Niben and Lake Rumare. It is purely for roleplaying, so your characters don't have to swim or walk on water if they don't want to.

Witchcraft allows you to summon animals and makes them friendly to you. Or Forest Friend gives you an amulet that makes the animals friendly.

Dark Seducers and Golden Saints Playable with all Gear does exactly what the name says.

Cadlew Chapel Refurbished fixes up Cadlew Chapel and turns it into a nice little player home, perfect for an Azura and/or Meridia worshiper.

TQP = Toggleable Quantity Prompt - you need to sell things one at a time to level Mercantile, and this saves a bunch of time. It makes the vendor interface much more usable.

Shezrie's Towns - especially the bits I contributed. They may be hard to find.

Anything by me.

Wrye Bash to manage it it all - the Profiles feature is particularly useful for multiple characters with different mod lists.

Acadian and I have both run our characters through Elsweyr Anequina, and Valenwood Improved. Get a matched set with the border patch. se tmar's screenshots in the thread at the Bethsoft forum, his girls are there often. If you put these in, I have a few fixes, too.

The Wobbly Goblet mod is no longer mandatory, especially as it disappeared from the Nexus while being transformed into the Lucky Mudcrab, and never re-opened. There's a link in it's thread here, though.

Wow, some good sounding stuff here! Thanks!

I figured out why Wrye Bash 307 was acting up and got it working. Apparently I needed to have a previous version fully installed. Installed 306 and then replaced the Mopy with 307's Mopy and its running fine now.