LF advice, Returning to Oblivion after ~4 years

[Toatedsnow]

So, the last time I played Oblivion was back in 2011/12. Since things have quite clearly changed so much since then, especially the modding scene, I was hoping to get a bit of input from more "recent" Oblivion players.

 

Firstly, does this game play nicely with 8.1? Or should I boot my 7 partition instead?

Secondly, is ENB as resource-intensive with Oblivion as it is for, say, Skyrim or GTA V? I was eyeing the Tweaked preset (https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/44146) but it does say that it requires a "high end" box. Does "high end" for Oblivion mean "Titan or GTFO" (as is the case for GTA) or can my 780M handle it?

LOOT or BOSS?

 

And lastly, I was hoping for a bit of input as to what people feel is essential for quality gameplay as far as modding is concerned. I had a hunt around for mod recommendation lists and found a few, specifically the sticky in this subforum, the wiki.step guide by Hishutup (http://wiki.step-project.com/User:Hishutup/OblivionGuide), and something I discovered on Steam (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1306005).

 

Nevertheless, I'm curious what more recent players/modders would have to say. Do the lists leave out anything you'd consider essential or useful?

 

 

Sorry for the long post lads. Cheers in advance if you deign to weigh in.

 

 

 

[Sir Artsy]

I have GTX 960, fps is mostly 60 (or more depending on monitor) but that depends how modded your game is. My ENB is based on ATE so i can say this sort of safely.

 

Your laptop will play it on some degree but if you want to have modded skyrim level visual which is entirely possible, fps might crap out but so it does in skyrim too.

[Myst42]

We've had recommendation threads before, and as usual, it very much depends on what you want for your game.

Personally I want my game intended for pretty caracters, pretty landscapes and mostly a lore-friendly experience... except maybe some stuff for screenshots...

I actually made my own triad of "overhauls" so i cant tell about FCOM or OOO or even OCO so I have things mostly like this:

Graphics:

- Some ENB

- Oblivion Reloaded

Utilities and Basics:

-OBSE

-Blockhead

-CM Partners (Used as base mod in case you ever want a custom companion)

-MenuQue

-Pluggy

-Skeleton from LAPF (The epitome of all custom skeletons, with this one, you should never have a skeleton problem again)

-Universal Silent Voice

-VipCxj High Heels (Again, needed as a master for some gear mods)

After that, comes the patching part

-All unnoficial patches you can find, wrye bash...

Then some landscape beautification mods of your choosing, mostly texture replacers. I'm using discovery1's stuff. Also some climate mods, maybe atmospheres or all natural

For more landscape beautifications I'm running this thing with

-Better Cities

-Unique Landscapes

-Hesu Mods

-Snus Dungeons

But it's tricky and requires some patching and load order. BC and UL are resource-consuming so if you must, you can choose one. Hesu is the latest scream of fashion in pretty places these days...

My own overhaul "triad" is for making pretty characters and having them look nice in game too, so it goes like: (Shameless self-promotion ahoy)

-EGO (Still unreleased, it's functionality is simlar to OCO making vanilla races prettier)

-Combat Stance Reanimation (Here I took care of thos crappy vanilla animations and made em better gathering knowledge and experience from previous animation mods)

-Mass Outfit Redesign (My eternal WIP, but it's functionality is similat to gathering lots and lots of clothing and armor replacers for HGEC and Robert Male)

I obviously have more stuff loaded but these are the must-haves on my end

 

People at Nexus and probably here too will insist on you using BOSS... like "PLEASE USE IT!!!" and "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU NOT USING BOSS YET!?!"

But there are some of us that prefer to set up things manually

Especially if your alternative of game is not like what I described above and you're after sex mods instead

If you like sex mods you can't use BOSS and you must read install instructions carefully and set things manually. There are numerous threads for that here at LL.

[fejeena]

Some beginner tips and tools you need.

Read my yellow Link below

[gregathit]

Oblivion plays no different on 8.1 than 7.  Either one is fine, so no need to worry.

Any modern video card with 1 to 2 gig of memory should be fine.

 

The bottle neck isn't going to be your video card most likely.  It will be your CPU.  Oblivion is a 10 year old game and all the video instructions go through the CPU.  Faster your CPU speed, the better.  The game will only use 1 core.  So it is better to have a faster CPU speed than multiple cores. 

[varenne]

Setting Oblivion to use XP Mode is also performance-wise a bit better, IMO, followed by the 4GB Patch. Next, again in my opinion would be optimizers tweaked to your build, which can take some time to get just right.

 

Besides CPU clock speed as pointed out by gregathit, FSB or front-side bus speed, RAM settings, especially clocks and the CPU cache can also affect game play.