Highly Recommended Mods
The following are free mods I highly recommend that you install. These are mods I have installed on my own system, and are safe and effective. From time to time I will add to this list of 'must-have' mods:
Landscape LOD Replacement 1.1 (28MB) - This mod replaces all the distant blurry LOD landscapes with better looking higher resolution textures. This means you don't have to use the
uGridsToLoad command, and hence you won't experience any major performance reductions or visual glitches. Note that Version 1.1 of this mod provides improved performance over the original version, so it is recommmended that you upgrade to it - more details
here.
Landscape LOD Replacement (Border Regions) 1.1 (48MB) - By the same author as the mod above, this mod fixes all the blurry landscapes from the border regions as well. Note that Version 1.1 of this mod provides improved performance over the original version, so it is recommmended that you upgrade to it.
Normal Map LOD Replacement (16.5MB) - This mod replaces all the normal maps for distant land - basically it improves the shadows in all distant terrain, and is a great complement to the Landscape LOD Replacement mods further above.
High Resolution Lanscape LOD Replacement Pack (325 MB) - If you're still not happy with the appearance of the landscapes, you can try this high resolution lanscape LOD replacement pack containing two parts: the normal landscapes (110MB) and the border region landscapes (215MB). It uses higher resolution replacement textures which will only work on Nvidia 6 and 7 series and ATI X1000 series graphics cards. More importantly they will generally increase stuttering and reduce FPS by up to 10-20%. Only recommended for those with very high-end graphics cards with 512MB of Video RAM. I personally use and recommend the regular landscape LOD replacements further above as they are a good compromise of performance and image quality.
Note: These LOD replacement mods may not work properly if you have certain optimizations enabled in your graphics card control panel - See 'Graphics Control Panel Settings' under the Neat Stuff & Conclusion section of this guide for details. They also may not work once you patch the game to a newer version - see Updating Mods at the bottom of this page for a fix.
Better Grass Without Tiling (151KB) - This mod replaces the standard distant grass texture which shows very obvious tiling. This mod removes that tiling and hence grassy hills in the middle distance look much better. If you want to replace all your tiling textures - not just the grass - with non-tiling versions, you can try this
Texture Tiling Replacement Pack (22MB). I personally prefer just the grass mod, as removing tiling from everything makes it look far too smooth in my opinion.
No More Annoying Messages Mod (3KB) - This simple mod removes the made-for-console periodic 'Loading Area' text message, as well as 'Your Horse is stabled outside the city gate' and 'The Dark Brotherhood is watching you' text prompts, but keeps the important ones. If you just want to remove the 'Loading Area' only, use the
Lite Version of this mod. Highly recommended, as the 'Loading Area' messages totally ruin immersion while wandering around outdoors.
Color Map Mod (3MB) - This mod replaces the in-game world map with a color version; a nice visual touch.
I'm aware that there are plenty of other mods out there at the moment, however the list above will only contain those mods I consider "essential" and would personally install on my system due to safety and compatibility reasons. Feedback on some of the other mods indicates that they can have unusual effects on the game, including visual glitches and even crashes, so I will only provide the "safe" must-have mods here. Make sure to check out the Mod sites further above yourself to see what else is out there if you're after a particular modification for Oblivion.
Installing Mods
Installation instructions for each mod are usually included with the mod itself in a
Readme.txt file. Where instructions may not be provided (perhaps a sign the mod isn't very professional), the procedure typically involves extracting the contents of the mod archive into your
\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data directory (and subdirectories as required), then if necessary using the Oblivion Launcher, selecting 'Data Files' and ticking the mod from the listing shown there. Note that you should make sure to run Defrag after installing larger mods to reduce stuttering in the game.
Next, to make sure your mods are always detected by Oblivion, even after being patched, see the instructions under 'Updating Mods for New Version of Oblivion' further below. That method is quite simple and should work for most basic texture replacement mods, such as those I've recommended above. However, I've found that for the 'Grass Without Tiling' mod, I needed to create an empty text file, rename it to
ArchiveInvalidation.txt, paste the path to the 'Grass Without Tiling' mod file into it (i.e paste the following into there
textures/landscape/terrainhdgrass01su.dds), and then place this Archiveinvalidation.txt file into into my
\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\ directory. This isn't always necessary, but basically it tells Oblivion to always check for subdirectories under the default directories for added texture, sound, music and image mods, and load up whatever is in there. You can use
this utility to automatically do it for you, adding the proper entries required.
Update: Based on further research by members of the Oblivion community, it turns out that due to (most likely) a bug in Oblivion, the ArchiveInvalidation.txt method doesn't necessarily work properly for all mods. The detailed explanation is
here, but for those of you who just want the solution, it involves using the
Oblivion Mod Manager utility. This utility makes the appropriate changes to your Oblivion files, but note that you need to install
.NET 2.0 for it to work. If you're still having problems installing your mod and getting it to work correctly, try this
Oblivion Mod FAQ for more detailed instructions. The instructions I provide above (and below) will work for the mods I recommend.
A final word of warning about mods - be careful, not all modders are experts, and sometimes installing a mod can bring with it odd effects or unexpected problems down the track. Choose mods carefully based on lots of user feedback and don't install many different mods at once - some are incompatible with each other. A badly installed mod can thoroughly ruin your saved games, so once again make sure to keep plenty of save points before installing a mod. The mods I recommend above are all proven to be relatively safe and thus I can recommend them for you to install. I do want to urge you though not to go nuts with mods.
Update: Apparently a person is distributing fake/malicious mods which you should not install. For more details and a list of such mods, see
this thread on the Oblivion forums. If you've already installed any of these mods, obviously you should uninstall them as soon as possible.
Updating Mods For New Versions of Oblivion
Some mods need to be updated each time a new patch is released for Oblivion, otherwise they may not work properly or at all. In such cases, it is wise to check the mod sites for a new version of the mod shortly after a patch is released. Otherwise changes to certain gameplay parameters may conflict with that in the new patch, and cause unintended consequences.
However, for simple mods which only have replacement textures, sounds or images, and hence no chance of actually conflicting with the latest patch update, you can resolve this easily yourself. Oblivion usually considers any replacement file 'old' if the file dates are older than that of the main Oblivion.esm file, and doesn't load them up. You can change the dates on your existing mod files yourself quickly and easily, following these instructions:
1. Download the free
FileDate Changer utility (20KB).
2. Extract the contents and run FileDate.exe
3. In the program, click 'Add Files', then browse to the mod directory where replacement textures reside. For example, for the LOD Texture Replacement files this should be
\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\textures\landscapelod\generated.
4. Select all the mod files there (hold down SHIFT and highlight all the files), then click Open.
5. Back in the main program window, change the Creation and Modified dates to some new date, such as tomorrow's date (i.e. newer than the day you patched Oblivion).
6. Click 'Change File Dates' and it's done.
This method only works for mods which are simple replacements of existing Oblivion data, primarily mods based on texture, sound and image changes. I don't recommend this for any other type of mod which affects gameplay for example, and if you find it doesn't work properly for you, see further above for links to more detailed instructions.
The next section starts our look at the Oblivion In-Game settings in detail.
i woke my wife up laughing at this one
