Through the valleys and modding landscape

[volt41]

Greetings!

I've found myself in the mood to install oblivion once again and modding it. However, after being away from oblivion a while it seems the modding scene has changed a little bit. That in of itself isn't bad, but it causes me to be a bit lost when returning.

Things like cleaning the official esps was seen as essential for a more stable game, but now it seems to be deemed unnecessary or harmful to a certain extent if you don't know how to clean them manually. Mod sorters like LOOT were being used all the time it seems but now it seems their use is discouraged in favor of sorting your mod list yourself. Famous mods that everyone liked are now outdated and considered bloated and harmful to stability and performance. MBP and XEOsp used to be the go to for the beautification side of things, but now it seems OCOv2 gets more support from more up to date mods.

So in efforts to give myself a slightly easier time getting back into things I found the modding guide "Through the valleys" on nexus. It looks to be maintained and I think it would offer me a decent base to get some mods set up and then start adding a few more from there, like Lovers and its plugins.

 

My question is, would this be a good move, or does anything in the guide severely conflict with Lovers?

Also, even though I know it's not as simple as this, would it be a good rule of thumb to only use mods that have been updated or are no older than 2020 (for example), as a way to avoid outdated mods that may have not evolved with the modding knowledge?

Edited July 5, 2025 by volt41

[KinglyReturns]

Hey,

You shouldn't have any trouble using Through the Valleys and Loverslab together. It's very Vanilla+, though, so I'd suggest using it only for the stability stuff if you want a game that looks peak. Dispensation made a good updated visual guide here, and there are other mods you can find on Nexus that have come out since to make it even better. I'm working on some Loverslab mods now (with voice acting) so the LL scene isn't dead, either. For reference, this is my game:

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by KinglyReturns