FCOM & Other Mods

[JohnStark1776]

Greetings.

 

First time posting here, and first time playing Oblivion. I played Morrowind back in the day before the two expansions were released for it, but never made it into Oblivion. My apologies in advance for being a newb!

 

After playing Oblivion for a bit, I went on the web looking for a mod to change the UI, and stumbled upon many of the other mods for the game. After doing a fair bit of reading, I saw OOO, MMM, Fran's, etc. pop up with frequency, and then stumbled upon FCOM.

 

Great mod! I finished adding all of the necessary files for FCOM today using Wrye Bash and a good guide for FCOM 1.0, and so far Oblivion is running fine with no errors, CTDs, or other hiccups. It was a bit of learning curve and took some time to manage, but the guide and the FCOM site were very helfpul. Not having to choose OOO vs. MMM vs. Fran's thanks to FCOM was a pleasant surprise. Great work guys!

 

Now that I have everything working together, I'm reluctant to add other content mods willy nilly. There seem to be a number of large mods that add whole cities, towns, villages, with tons of new quests and storylines, and those are my main interest. A few other tweaks for the UI and so on have caught my eye as well. I'd like the play the game with as many of these new areas and quests available as possible.

 

I'm wondering how compatible these various content mods would be with FCOM. I'll give some examples:

 

Alluring Potion Bottles

 

Alternative Start

 

DarNified UI

 

Midas Magic

 

Elsweyr the Deserts of Anequina (it was hard to find a copy of this one)

 

Anvil Bay Expansion

 

Kvatch Rebuilt

 

Mannimarco Resurrection

 

Stirk

 

Thievery in the Imperial City

 

Etc.

 

Most of the mods in FCOM seem to have their own FCOM specific files to make them work together, making me unsure how compatible other mods will be with FCOM.

 

Do other mods need their own FCOM_esp file to work with FCOM, in the same manner as the mods already included with FCOM like Bob's Armor and so on?

 

Will other mods like the ones I've listed work as long as they are set in the proper order using via BOSS?

 

Some of the mods I'm interested add a lot of new areas to the game, or alter existing ones, and seem like they could easily conflict with stuff that is in FCOM. I'm leary of adding stuff that might make the game unstable or unplayable, or mess up the clean install of Oblivion and FCOM that I managed to complete today.

 

Any input or advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

[HeyYou]

The trick is to get a stable FCOM game going first, and then add whatever else you want to it. Most 'new land' mods will be fine, as will Kvatch Rebuilt. Darnified UI is a must have. Some will have an FCOM patch available to download from the mods site as well, it it does, grab it, if it doesn't, don't worry about it. Just don't stuff a whole boatload of mods in all at once, and expect it to run without problems. Getting a stable FCOM game running, with a long load list, is an exercise, but, in the end, you will LOVE it.

 

Welcome to TESA!

[JohnStark1776]

Thank you for your reply and the welcome.

 

Following your advice, I added some other mods last night using Wrye Bash and Boss, and so far everything is working very well.

 

Darn UI is so much better!

 

Much obliged.

[HeyYou]

I love FCOM.

 

Enjoy the game. But, be CAREFUL, while for the most part, the further from towns you get, the meaner the monsters get, it is still possible to run into things that will kill you dead before you even know they are there, right close to home.

[JohnStark1776]

I love FCOM.

 

Enjoy the game. But, be CAREFUL, while for the most part, the further from towns you get, the meaner the monsters get, it is still possible to run into things that will kill you dead before you even know they are there, right close to home.

Fun! I'd rather play something challenging than milquetoast. I'm an old school pen and paper RPGer from way back, which is what attracted me to FCOM and the higher difficulty in the first place.

 

Save often and early should keep me from jamming myself up too bad, heh. /crosses fingers

 

If you don't mind, I'll ask a few more questions with regards to your first response in this thread.

 

First, I cannot get the Darn UI to keep my settings when I set them in the inventory menu. I can move the various HUD elements around, and they remain the same if I reload, but when I quit the game they are all back to default. Is this because I've been using Wrye to add mods, and then rebuilding the patch? Or something else I'm overlooking? Or maybe Darn conflicts with the parts of OOO, Frans, MMM, etc., that FCOM bashes together? This is the first real issue I've had with my FCOM install, and not a big one, but a customizable UI to me is like having a good AC in my car. I may not need it all the time, but I want it when I want it!

 

My second question has to do with Wrye and adding mods. I understand that shoving a hundred mods all at once into Wrye and expecting the game to work after that is not going to work out well. I'd imagine that problem gets worse the larger and more intricate the mods are that I'd be adding (i.e., large content mods with new cities and so on are more likely to clog the process up).

 

My intention had been to add each of the larger quest, city, lands, etc., mods one at a time using Wrye, rebuild the patch each time, and then test the game to see how it runs and whether anything conflicts. However, I'm finding this to be extremely time consuming.

 

For starters, Wrye seems a bit unstable, and while it has not crashed on me while adding stuff and rebuiling the Bash patch, it does hang up and says its "not responding" a lot. It still get the job done if I just let it be and finish the task, but it takes quite a bit of time simply to add a mod to the Install tab, install it, then activate it in the Mod tab. Is this normal, or might there be something on my end making Bash unstable?

 

And even worse, it then takes about 20 minutes to rebuild the Bash Patch after adding each mod.

 

I understand that Bashing the patch takes a fair amount of time, but coupled with the how long it takes to install and activate, its really making the process of adding mods frustrating.

 

So, my question is, how many mods can "safely" be installed/activated at any given time, and then Bashed together once they are installed/activated?

 

I've done 3-5 smaller tweak mods together at the same time, and the game loads and runs no sweat so far (other than Darn not saving my UI settings).

 

I'm looking for a balance between preserving stability and preventing corruption of game files that might force me to reinstall, versus the amount of time its taking at present in my attempt to keep the game stable and without conflicts.

 

My emphasis for adding mods leans way over on the side of having more content to play, like quests and dungeons, than better graphics, sounds, more items in game, and so on. My preference is content over eyecandy, in other words, so I'm more interested in getting as much into the game as quickly as possible than I am tweaking it forever to look nice or whatever.

 

Sorry for the long post, and I appreciate any input.

 

Thanks.

[HeyYou]

Darn UI: Yep, that's a common problem, I had thought someone came out with a 'fix' for that...... so that it would remember the settings, but, it has been awhile since I dealt with Oblivion..... Might check the thread for DarnUI over on the beth forums, and see if it isn't mentioned there. (I just stuck with the default placement of DarkDarnUI.)

 

Wrye Bash is a resource intensive program..... as you add more mods to your load list, yeah, Wrye is going to take more time to shuffle thru it. I believe there is a couple different versions of Wrye out there in the world though..... I *seem* to remember the Java-based version ran a bit faster than the Python version.... Might try that?

 

As for 'how many you can add at a time', well, that depends on the mods being added. For the larger ones, I would only do one. But, if you have a few tweak mods you want to install, and are pretty sure they aren't going to conflict with each other, should be able to do several at once.

 

Yeah, getting your game to where you want it, have it remain stable, and playable, is an exercise. The trick is, once you get it to that point, BACK IT UP! Even if you only grab the data folder. Stuff it off to a thumb drive, or some such. That way, if something 'bad' ever happens, all you need to do to get it back is install the base game, your assorted tools, and then just copy the data folder back over. 20 minutes of data transfer is MUCH better than DAYS of reinstalling all your mods.

[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.

[JohnStark1776]

Darn UI: Yep, that's a common problem, I had thought someone came out with a 'fix' for that...... so that it would remember the settings, but, it has been awhile since I dealt with Oblivion..... Might check the thread for DarnUI over on the beth forums, and see if it isn't mentioned there. (I just stuck with the default placement of DarkDarnUI.)

 

Wrye Bash is a resource intensive program..... as you add more mods to your load list, yeah, Wrye is going to take more time to shuffle thru it. I believe there is a couple different versions of Wrye out there in the world though..... I *seem* to remember the Java-based version ran a bit faster than the Python version.... Might try that?

 

As for 'how many you can add at a time', well, that depends on the mods being added. For the larger ones, I would only do one. But, if you have a few tweak mods you want to install, and are pretty sure they aren't going to conflict with each other, should be able to do several at once.

 

Yeah, getting your game to where you want it, have it remain stable, and playable, is an exercise. The trick is, once you get it to that point, BACK IT UP! Even if you only grab the data folder. Stuff it off to a thumb drive, or some such. That way, if something 'bad' ever happens, all you need to do to get it back is install the base game, your assorted tools, and then just copy the data folder back over. 20 minutes of data transfer is MUCH better than DAYS of reinstalling all your mods.

 

I'll check out the Java version of Wrye, since I have Java on my computer, and give some thought on how to best manage my computer resources while using it. I didn't realize it was that much of a resource hog, and mistook it to be instability with the program itself or perhaps a bad install.

 

As to adding mods, I'll stick to one at a time, or just a few, per your advice. I'm due for a thorough backup of some of my files as it is, so I'll be sure to add my Oblivion data folder to that list.

 

Thanks for your specific answers to my questions, you've been very helpful.

Edited February 2, 2015 by JohnStark1776

[JohnStark1776]

Crackomint, thanks for the links to the Darn fix. I missed that one while looking for a solution.

 

As to the rest of you advice, I appreciate you taking the time to offer up several points to think about. Thanks you.