In the spirit of SubRosa's That Mod Looks Interesting thread for Skyrim, here's a place to post new mod discoveries and updates to mods for Oblivion.

I'll start with one that makes me very, very happy. Emma's Children of Cyrodiil is out on the Nexus.

It is a port of her same mod from Morrowind, and has been years in the making! I downloaded it as soon as she posted it, but won't get to try it out for a while.

What I liked is all the different stages of children she added - pregnancy and infancy too!


I've got so many favorite Oblivion mods that I couldn't begin to post one, lol. But great idea for a thread!

Oh, don’t worry about listing all of your favorite mods here, since there’s already a thread for that: Favorite Mods. But if one of your favorites gets a new version or a major update that people might otherwise miss, this thread is a place where you can help spread the word.

I’ve only seen Emma’s Cheydinhal children so far, since that’s where Darnand and Jerric are at the moment. They are marvelous. I love the animations. They add so much life to the game!

What a fun and good idea for a thread! Heh, I wonder if the kids of Cyrodiil all sound like little Viljas.

Oh, and Grits, I love your current screenie of the month - two by two by two.

If the children in Cyrodiil have the same attitude as Princess in Fallout 3, I better not bring anything sharp to this mod...

Acadian, they do sound like little Viljas! According to Emma’s remarks the voice acting was done by her own children, mostly for her Children of Morrowind mod that mALX mentioned with some additional files for Oblivion by her daughter.

I thought of Buffy right away when the guys walked into Cheydinhal. Two kids were playing tag and one little girl started skipping in a circle around Darnand. When he said hello she wanted to play Rock-Paper-Scissors with him. Follower Jerric was as always grinning his head off. It was a joyful scene.

There is some Acadian magic in that screenie of the month – only friends of mammoths would dare walk with giants!! Thank you so much!

*

Well here is something I think is well worth mentioning then - Stroti is back modding again, after years of not producing anything. Stroti had fallen into a depression. I don't know the whole of why, but do know that the type of things he makes are excruciatingly hard to do in Skyrim. Blender does not play well with Skyrim at all.

His friend Tamira has been porting his mods over to Skyrim for him, so anything of his you like in Oblivion can also become a part of your Skyrim game.

I chose this latest mod of his because in this mod you will find a letter from Stroti inside. In the Oblivion mod it is sitting on the table, in Skyrim you will find it in the mailbox - it is a wonderful letter, just so Stroti to add a touch like that to his home!

Please, for all the wonderful Oblivion modders that (like Stroti) found themselves left behind by the new graphics engine and scripting language in Skyrim - if you do use their mods, please endorse and comment the mod to let the authors know how much you like it. That kind of encouragement used to be a given on Nexus, but with the influx of such a younger fan base from Steam, those kind of courtesies have been left behind.

Also, for any new mod you try out if you like it - give it a vote for "Mod of the Month" - (I think you can only vote for one mod per month; so if you vote for another it will cancel your first vote).

These little shows of appreciation could be the difference between us having more treasures from these great modders or them quitting modding like so many of the greats did after Skyrim.

Here is the mod; Stroti's "Hunter's Cabin."


http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/45896/?



*

Grits, I saw the Oblivion kids mod, too, and thought it sounded fantastic. Don't forget to endorse that mod if it works out well in your game. I've flagged it to my tracking centre.

mALX, I also saw that Hunter's Cabin by Stroti. I really liked that it was up in the trees - thought of Buffy there! It also sounds like a really cool place for Teresa, too, if she ever needed to get away and revisit her Spirit Guides. That, too is flagged to my tracking centre.

mALX, I couldn't agree with you more about endorsing the mods and letting the authors know you are enjoying them. All too often creators only hear from users when there is something wrong (usually on the user's side, but that's the Apple Specialist/equestrian in me talking). So making sure to give positive feedback (and including why you love the mod, not just "Great mod!") is just as invaluable as reporting bugs and conflicts.

I continue to keep an eye on the Nexus for new mods. Most of them don't speak to me, but the new kids' mod really sparks my interest after playing with the kids in Skyrim. Now if my PC can only adopt one or two of them . . .

+1 on the full feedback. Especially the little details you can point out to others who are thinking about trying it.

I don't care so much for endorsements, so I didn't turn them on at first. However, I've been persuaded they're helpful as a quality guide for downloaders. Download to endorsement ratio probably means something.

Glad to see Strotis stuff appearing for Skyrim, too. I used a lot in Evergloam, although I still had to make more myself. It made the difference between feasible and too much effort!

Thank you, mALX, Stroti’s tree house looks fabulous! A perfect getaway for Lil. I don’t check for Oblivion mods very often, so I would have missed this absolute jewel. Thank you so much for pointing it out!

Yeah, I remember before Skyrim came out when Stroti used to pop out with new little items every other day just about. When Skyrim first came out I stopped playing it in January of 2012 - wanted to wait till the modders could get in there and fix a few of the issues and pop out with some better faces and bodies, etc. Couldn't wait for the resource modders to get busy in Skyrim.

So I come back in 2014 thinking it would be like Oblivion was, with tons of awesome mods to pick from. Instead the modding side of it was almost dead; no resources or very few - and most looking exactly like the vanilla, so what is the point of downloading?

Anyway, then I learned so many of my absolute favorite modders had just quit modding after Skyrim came out. Stroti, Siika, Rileymarks, MEO, JBVW, FlintOne/Garnet - people whose mods made my Oblivion game the most fun game I ever played and the most immersive - it shocked me, I didn't want to be in Skyrim without their mods.

Stroti and FlintOne/Garnet have both popped out with new mods just recently, which thrilled me to no end. I also set them up to be tracked. Like I feel about Ghastley's mods, if they post a mod I am getting it. But from Stroti's depression I realized how lax I'd been in making sure these great modders really knew how much I loved their work, so I've been much more careful to always endorse and comment since he's come back.

Funnily, I logged in to make mention of Emma's new mod, and here's a thread already. I really am late to the party...
Anyway, I installed Children of Cyrodiil yesterday, and so far I'm very impressed. The kids look and feel like a natural part of the game world, which is always a significant thing for me with mods. Overall, the models and animations are nicely done, and the VA is really quite good. In my wholly subjective opinion, I think the children from CoM looked slightly better, especially the elven ones, but I'm fairly certain that is a "feature" of the Oblivion engine itself. After all, it is only recently, in terms of modding history, that Nuska, with OCO, overcame the potato-head deformities plaguing the adults of Cyrodiil.

I was appalled, though, at the fact that already there have been several requests (in some cases, demands) for Emma to make the kids killable, and complaints because they are not. People who download children mods, with the express intent of killing them, disturb me. While I'm still uncomfortable with it, I can better understand the mods that remove the essential status from children in Skyrim, because some of them are quite irritating (Braith, I am looking at you), and they are a default part of the game. I wouldn't use those mods, but I get it a little bit more. Emma's mod, on the other hand, is something you download by choice.... I don't know, that's just sick to me.
Even worse is that Emma's own kids did the voicing, which makes it that much more unpleasant.

Good point, since it is a choice to download it, there should be no reason to want them killable - or any reason why they can't/don't just go into their own mod and unclick the essential status instead of demanding she change the mod for them - kind of makes you wonder about their motivation.

I whole-heartedly agree that in Emma using her own children's voices for that mod - it would most def freak her out to think of anyone wanting to kill those children.

But it has to make you wonder why they want to download children mods and then kill the children - I noticed RS had the same requests in her child mod overhaul.

Does anyone know of a mod that removes the Mages Guild eye symbol and/or replaces it with something else? Haven´t checked myself, decided to ask first

Removes it from what? I recall there were some house meshes derived from Mages' Guild buildings with the logo removed.

Well, everything; the outdoor signs, the floor, the tapestries

I tend to want mods no one comes up with, such as this one and a cricket-free Jerall Mountains

I created another minor Oblivion mod for myself today - to remove the respawning Marauder from Greyland, thus making it a safe place.

Lopov, that's a good idea. Although Buffy kind of enjoys taking out that marauder every time she wants to visit Greyland. Did you add any safe storage? I think that was a bit of a problem at Greyland if I recall.

There is one chest filled with skooma which doesn't respawn, so that should suffice for now.

You Have My Ear?

Coffins Contain Corpses? -- hand-placed dead people! EDIT: hmm....... I don't know about this one, it's a great idea, but it goes too far. Corpses wind up all over the place. The good thing is there are several versions of this mod, so the Caves version might be the one for me. Seeing dozens of corpses in Ayelid ruins isn't quite right, imo.

Bury the Corpse?, pretty cool mod. We can now bury our friends, instead of dragging them away or using a console command to delete them.

Bury that corpse might be good for a roleplay idea I have had for a while now. It is inspired by the Undertaker wrestler, who has this whole beyond the grave shtick, with coffin matches, and so on. Like Persephone, the character would have to be undead. They would use a shovel as a weapon, and would have to wear something like a long dark coat. With that mod, they could actually bury their victims.


Eisen Platte Expanded. It takes the original Eisen Platte and adds more versions in different colors. It also gives the option of a bottom section with pants, rather than having your character walking around in their underwear (which is why I got it).

I absolutely LOVE this one! Did you read all you can do? You can pray at the grave with four different animations, a priest can give a blessing to the dead, you can give them a headstone if you want - and one I think is particularly awesome and well thought out - Necromancers may possibly rob the grave at midnight! There was a bunch more, I quit reading I was so excited! I want this mod!

I see Vilja having a very nice funeral ....


BWAAHAA!!!







Oh, I used to LOVE the Undertaker! Paul Bearer ... I used to have a blast going to the WWF matches when they came to town! Where is the Imp Snob when you need him?

The Undertaker was always one of my favorites. I even remember when he was Mean Mark, before we went to the WWF. He was coolest as the Undertaker though. I loved Paul Bearer, the Urn, the coffin matches, how he would make the lights go out in the arena, and all that stuff.

I just found what the Gravedigger character needs. Zombie Hunter Shovel gives you a shovel for a weapon.

It would also be good for a superhero, like The Shoveler from Mystery Men.

Yeah, he was my absolute favorite, and I loved a lot in the WWF. The last time he came to town they didn't have the huge showing they were expecting - I think the weather was really bad or something; but they all made it in. I would have gone in a dog sled if I had to, but we had 4 wheel drive.

Well, The Undertaker was last, because he was the featured wrestler. Paul Bearer came out with his urn, the lights went down, we were all excited and couldn't wait for the show they always put on before the match - didn't happen.

The Undertaker walked out, leaped into the ring and stove-piped the guy and then walked out with a disgusted look on his face. I just sat there stunned, feeling like I might cry - couldn't believe he did that. It was really disappointing.

Well, this is ETN, so the crowd got pretty ugly over not getting the show they expected (and in their minds, payed for). Some of them demanded their money back and thought they might try to take on The Undertaker and Paul Bearer when they left the building. (not me, men )

The Undertaker said he wasn't putting on the show for such a small crowd. Well, either he was not invited back to this area for matches, or refused to come back - either way, I never got to see him again.

Wow, that sucks. I wonder what was going on backstage? You never know what kind of politics are going on, and wresting is filled with egos. Netflix has a special on WCW, how it started, became hugely successful, and then crashed and burned. It was all about what went on in the business and backstage, and it was a real eye-opener.

Macho Man Randy Savage was always my favorite wrestler. I just loved his insane ramblings and crazy interviews. I did see him once live as well. A friend of mine's father had season tickets to one of the local arenas, and the WWF came by there once, and so we got to use the season tickets for free. Savage was pure awesome. Not only in the ring, but he went around to high five people before and after the fight. He was just a lot of fun.

Oh, I would LOVE to see that! Oh how interesting that would be!

Randy Savage was "with" Elizabeth then, and I can't remember which big ugly wrestler was "in love" with her - he used to follow them around shouting "ELIZABETH" with a love struck look on his face. Well, Randy Savage showed up for that same show (above post) - I was really excited because I was hoping to meet Elizabeth, but she didn't come so that was another part of the show expected that we didn't get. It would be possible she couldn't come because of the weather, but Randy Savage was there, and they were supposedly together, lol.

I was really sad she died.

It looks a bit Camel-footish with the pants instead of the panties,

Now I am going to be thinking that whenever I look at it!

I found Really Real Lightgen, which adds some dynamic lights to the IC Market District at night. They look like they are coming from behind the windows of the houses, and are really atmospheric. Unfortunately it is only in the Market District, but it is still a really cool mod.

BwaaHaa!

I have used Texian's or All Naturals at different times - I guess because it covers the whole game, all the houses - but to be honest, I like the appearance of this mod a little better. It looks more realistic, actually. I wonder if the author plans to do other cities as well or will give permission for another to continue with their work?


Awesome mod!

I did find a bug with Really Real Lightgen. When you are inside a building in the Market District, and mouse over the door that leads back outside to the district, the name is all garbled up into nonsense. Not a deal-breaker, but odd.

That is strange, I wonder what caused that? But yeah, as long as the door still activates it isn't fatal.

I love the random look with this mod. The Market District really looks inhabited. My Oblivion load order is precarious, but I’m going to keep an eye on this for the future. Thank you!

Yes, thankfully the doors work just fine. If you see one with a name in gobbleygook, it means it goes to the market district. I wonder if somehow the name 'Market District' got garbled by the mod?




The lights look much better than the ones I have seen in other mods. It looks like there really is a lantern or torch somewhere behind the windows. And the randomness is nice. Some windows have lights some don't. Just like in the real world.

That is how the light looked to me too, instead of just looking like a glowing film on the window - and not all the windows having the same exact curtains/not every single window lit - that is a huge step toward immersion from what the predecessors Texian and All Natural started.

I like this a lot.

I wonder if the mod author had to change the name on the doors and accidently miss-spelled Market District - either after a long night or maybe English is a second language. Either way, it should be easily fixed if it is irritating, but as long as the doors work - the truth is unless I'm in a strange place I've never been, (or like coming out of one of the subsystems in Fallout 3) - the truth is I never read those anyway, lol.

Does anyone know if there is a mod for Oblivion like Possessive Corpses for Skyrim, that prevents npcs from dropping items when they die, and instead keeps everything tied to their inventory? I don't like leaving swords and shields laying around because it contributes to save game bloat.

Edit: I found one. No More Weapon Litter looks like it will keep everything tied to the npc's inventories. I will try it out today.

I also stumbled upon Dual Wield Complete, which looks rather neat. It allows you to use a second weapon offhand, and function as a shield. Nico's Dreadweave Axes had an offhand axe that acted like that. But this works with all the vanilla weapons.

I generally clean up a dungeon and stuff everything I don't want to keep or sell into a dead body that I know will be absorbed when the cell resets.

One reason is that I don't like to go back to that dungeon again later and be sneaking and loudly trip over some hammer on the floor.

In dungeons like Rock Milk Cave it is almost a must to clean up when done.

Dual Wield Complete sounds like a great idea for a particular type of character. I have such a character in mind, who knows if I'll create him, though? I have way more ideas than I know what to do with!

Those wrestling stories are interesting. I once dated a wrestler, just one date, long ago in the early 90s. He wasn't famous or anything, but I got to watch him wrestle once. Was weird because he waited tables at the job we had, but at night, he would become this wrestler guy, completely different person, all dressed up in superhero clothes! .. kind of freaked me out, but it was entertaining, that's for sure.

I discovered Dragon Captions - The Elder Council? which I'm going to be using for Renee Gade III's game. I'm pretty psyched about it because it adds a LOT of content apparently, especially quests. RG3 needs lots of mod-added quests in her game. I don't do anything vanilla quest-wise with her, except the Arena.

Here's the weird thing. This Elder Council mod was originally a Giskard creation. The mod in that link is an earlier version of Giskard's mod, so I went to The Engineering Guild's website to get the latest version. But apparently, he no longer offers ANY of his mods to the public (according to his blog). It's so weird. He seems like such a brilliant guy, but very negative, and paranoid, and even offensive. I don't entirely get it.

Anyways, I'll have to use the earlier DC version, which is cool. I think the pc can rise in power with this mod, in some sort of way.

I'll wait to hear your opinions, was on the fence after reading the details page.

Careful not to mention the G-name on the Beth forums, can be enough to get a thread locked, he's usually known as He Who Shall Not Be Named. He's banned there and on Nexus. It's all before my time, but I did end up reading a lot of the sorry saga surrounding this with fascinated horror - and it's still hard to comprehend. Anyway, no clogging up this thread - but there's a (very long) account of the shenanigans here, which I'm inclined to trust, given the respectability of the contributors (Vorians, Ismelda, Arthmoor among others).

On-topic, comedy mods - I recently found Hilarity , which I mentioned on another thread. It really is hilarious - for example getting everyone in the Market District to follow you round; then starting them all rioting while disco dancing, priceless...

Not a recent one, but I like to fire up JM's Bar Fights now and then, too. (Ah, should try both of those at once, would probably destroy my machine though.)

Anyone else got any other silly mod tips? (Will be raining all week here, need a bit of a laugh...)

If you are seeking Giskard's mods, he is on Steam; and has had his own website since 2009:

I have no knowledge of the issues between them, but from reading that link you posted - Arthmoor and Hanaisse are both highly respected modders, so I have to believe that whatever side they are on in an issue is probably the correct one, they know their stuff.

What I do know: Dirty edits are not caused by the CS/CK - they are a by product that is very hard to avoid when making any mod that effects the landscape; you can just look into a cell while working on your mod and end up with a dirty edit for that peek.

That is why cleaning those references from your mod is important, so the game doesn't have to be stuttered by that faulty reference. The CS/CK did not make that reference, the mod author did - so the mod author has to clean it out of there.

I use TESEdit religiously, but there are other programs that work also. TESEdit is just my particular choice.

Well, agreed on most of that, but (especially) landscape issues are often caused by the CS. That's not just reports from other people, it's happened to me repeatedly. An edit to a cell in one place can sometimes cause changes to another cell miles away without you even looking at it - and some locales are more sensitive to this than others.

So Tes4Edit is utterly essential. I would not even know about this issue if it weren't for scrolling through records using it. But hey - agreed, many dirty edits are probably the result of someone not realising they've affected the cell and other human errors, but the CS does have its little quirks...

Really? Wow.



It is fascinating, and horrible at the same time. I think guy's a genius, but like some geniuses, he seems really unbalanced. Such a shame.


That bar fight mod sounds cool, by the way. If only it didn't replace so much stuff. I'm not liking the sound of that. Everything else about sounds neat.

I'd say talented and hardworking rather than genius level. The additional assets he uses in his mods were nearly all made by other modders, for example. Which is ironic, considering he affects to despise TES modders so much.

I only have any idea from part playing through a couple of his mods. Then I read the thread I linked to and scrubbed every bit of his work off my PC. It's enough that he actively set out to break end-users' games (those who were also running mods he disapproved of), never mind his casual attitude to publishing mods full of dirty and wild edits. It's easy to sort out the former, but you have to scan manually with TES4Edit to catch the latter. Life's just too short. Anyway, now he's largely irrelevant, lives in a closed-off echo chamber he's set up at TEG. So, I guess, everyone on all sides is happy at last...



Oh, agreed. But it's just one of those mods I activate when I need a laugh (which I do right now, actually), then turn off and revert to an earlier save. You wouldn't want to keep Hilarity going either, those spells are powerful...

I agree, Hilarity sounds like too much for me! That mod has "game-breaking" written all over it (that is to say, it would break the mood of my characters' in-game worlds ).

Didn't know about all that stuff with Giskard. I'm okay with it in my game. But yeah, he doesn't seem like quite the genius, after reading that info you posted.

It comes to me that I might have coined 'He Who Is Not Named'. I began modding Oblivion and joined the official forums soon after things exploded. Yet several of the gentleman's mods became favorites, Elder Council first and foremost. As such I sometimes felt a need to discuss them, usually in reply to someone else's query. Not wanting to rock the boat, I began referring to the creator as He Who is Not Named. Others might have beaten me to the punch, but if so I was not aware of it at the time.

I use the creator's own version of Elder Council, Kvatch Rising, Temple of the One, and a few lesser mods, acquired back when they were readily available at one of the several incarnations of his site.

Hey Decrepit, good to see you! Be sure to enjoy our Oblivion forums too, and any of Chorrol's forums, for that matter.

I'm interested in Temple of the One, if you can somehow share this.

Oh, hi there - so it's all your fault Well, perhaps I'm unduly harsh about his actual mods, but I don't think I am about his attitude. Perhaps they would work quite well if you weren't running too many of other people's mods, but otherwise, well, he doesn't care about compatibility and even complains when people, like the Better Cities team, create patches to make sure his mod will run alongside theirs. Sensibly, you would expect that to be a welcome development that would expand your own profile, but no....

On a positive note regarding mods, hadn't got round to installing the 2014 Elsweyr Anequina, should have. Apart from adding the Kingdom of Rimmen (with a whole new city that's also supported by lore), it integrates Elsweyr more closely with Cyrodiil. Just as an example, it now makes sense, as it should, to travel from Leyawiin to Skingrad by road via Elsweyr, the old EA made you brave the deserts of Halkarn Land, though you do get to see oliphaunts that way, I suppose. (A crashed game installation does have a silver lining, bringing everything up to date now...)

I'd imagine that a game using only G's mods would be quite stable, as it was only other people's mods that were a problem.

Thanks for that link to Anequina. It might take me back to playing Oblivion for a while (once I've finished the mods for Skyrim I'm working on).