Crackomint

Hi, sorry to pop in and interrupt! Thought I might be able to offer some mods relevant to your interests: For DarnUI not saving settings, this mod, Config Addon: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/34792/ purports to fix that issue, I don't recall if it works because I'm playing vanilla (...I know) Oblivion at the moment, but the comments overall seem to confirm that it does. It's important to note that for this mod to work it requires either ConScribe or Pluggy, I've had issues with the latter in the past and it seems a lot of others have as well. So I would recommend ConScribe, which you can find here: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/26510/? As for the issue of "I find myself spending more time modding the game than playing the game", which is most certainly a rabbit hole I and others have fallen down, here is my advice- feel free to take it or leave it: Do not bother trying to set up a single, definitive load order that has all the mods you will ever want and that is somehow stable. At least in my experience, that way lies burnout. You sit in Wrye Bash for ages fiddling with your load order and rebuilding the bashed patch. If you're trying to play it "smart" you do test run after test run with each little batch of mods you install- which when you factor in modded Oblivion's load times and tendency to hang unresponsive on exit can be very time consuming. When something goes wrong, you get a consistent CTD or missing meshes or whatever, you can spend a whole lot of time diagnosing the problem and even longer trying to fix it. And you never seem to actually get to playing the game. What I have started doing and would recommend is to minimize the number of mods you have going at any one time. You wanna explore Elsweyr right now? Have Elsweyr in there, but not Lost Spires and Stirk and all that. If you're playing a mage character, you might want Mannimarco Resurrection and Midas Magic in there. If you're doing the main quest, you might have Kvatch Rebuilt. Maybe you have a "base save" with your character and some quality of life mods like DarN UI, and when you want to play a certain quest mod you throw that in along with any necessary patches, and start a new series of saves. This way you minimize the amount of plugins active, the amount of potential conflicts, the amount of ways things can go wrong. You minimize the time spent slamming your head against the keyboard cursing Oblivion, Wrye Bash, Bethesda, Microsoft, and the deity of your choice- because you've been troubleshooting for the last three hours and still don't know why the game's crashing in one particular spot. There are issues with this approach, obviously. You'll end up with a lot of different saves, a lot of different load orders to juggle, a lot of files to manage. HeyYou's advice of BACK IT UP comes into play here- if you have a good "base", for example, with the essential mods you'll have going practically every playthrough, you'll want safe copies of that. There are tools to more easily manage different load orders- Mod Organizer's profiling feature is one of it's biggest claims to fame, along with a "virtual data folder" that keeps all your mods nice and separate so you never have to worry that you installed your mods in the wrong order and now things have been overwritten and you've got to do it all again- but it's up to you if you want to take the time to learn yet another program when you've already got Wrye Bash to deal with. And if you're throwing mods in and out of your install, starting different characters and branching off paths where you explore a certain quest mod's content, you don't get that same feel of a long continuing story as that person who's been rocking the same PC since 2006 or whatever. Again, you don't have to take this advice. Maybe someone who knows more about Oblivion than me will come in and retort that this is terrible advice. But I think that if what you're looking for is gameplay- quests and adventures and new lands etc., you might as well stop trying to craft that one perfect install and just add in the mods as you play them.

I'd be interested in the results, @alpheus911. I just had a conversation yesterday where I lamented how frustrating FCOM can be to install, someone recommended one of the various installers and I was leery because I've heard very mixed things about such bundles. In particular I never bothered with the Superpack because I wasn't interested in a lot of the additional mods it throws in. And if I find myself tossing mods in and out, disagreeing with the game balance and tweaking various inis and patches, well what was the point of using the bundle in the first place. But I would like to hear someone else's fresh experiences! If it turns out the Superpack really is a great way to save yourself the pain of the Wrye Bash Face Bash (oh yeah, I feel you on that one), great. If not, well, at least I know.

Thanks to the three of you for the welcome! I hope I don't get too addicted to the cookies- that'd be bad for the figure! Sooner or later I will have to avail myself of the tutorials, definitely. Just from skimming a few they look very well put-together! A fansite that really tries to share knowledge and foster new modders is such an awesome thing to me. I've definitely seen communities for other games where it feels like modding and technical knowledge are closely-guarded secrets meant only for a privileged few... I'm glad I found TES Alliance.

Hello, hello! I'm Cracko! A new bit of fresh meat to be welcomed or hazed or shoved into a locker, whichever you prefer. I'm not a total newbie to The Elder Scrolls or mods, but compared to the modding old guard I've seen on this site and others like The Nexus, I am but a wee babe. In October 2011 I saw the trailer for Skyrim and thought it looked pretty neat-o, so I decided to purchase Oblivion; it was cheap and I wanted to see if this whole open-world RPG thing was for me before I invested in the shiny new $60 game. The series has captivated me ever since. Recently my venerable old laptop's hard drive failed and I lost practically everything, including my TES-related installations and files. Now with a new, better and beefier computer (and a newly-implemented careful backup system), I've resolved to begin my Elder Scrolls journey anew. My goals for this grand rebirth are to actually participate and interact with the community surrounding these games beyond silently downloading a few mods; from what I've seen you're lovely people and at the very least I'd better be able to express my gratitude for the wealth of content you've created for the games I enjoy. I'd also like to try my hand at actually making mods at some point- it looks like this site in particular has a great amount of useful information in that regard! At the moment I'm focusing on Oblivion, my first love- and in spite of its flaws the game I'm most often drawn back to. I'm stockpiling a hoard of mods like some demented digital dragon, and I do want to get at least a short vanilla playthrough in before I abuse my poor install again, so not much exciting stuff planned for the very near future. I'll probably get going in Skyrim again eventually too; my inner graphics obsessive would like to have a go at making that game look really pretty. One day I intend to give Morrowind a good shake- which will likely be a comedy of errors. My first and last experience with the game was stumbling through Seyda Neen with a friend and having our weak Millenial minds rattled by the retro graphics and mechanics. Truly terrifying. So that's my story! Apologies if it's a bit of a wall o' text. I'm very glad to be here on TES Alliance and I do hope to make some friends. Great conversation starters are links to interesting or obscure Elder Scrolls content; I love finding blogs and writings and mods and videos I haven't seen before. It's like an archaeological dig, only less kneeling in the dirt and grubbing up your clothes.