Steam! Options

[Rihanae]

Just a quick question which can be deleted once it's answered haha.

Can you use mods if you've downloaded Oblivion from Steam?

[ghastley]

There's a caveat on mods that use OBSE, but it's only that you make sure the OBSE install is aware of Steam. Once correctly installed, it works. There was some confusion when Oblivion first came out on Steam, because everyone expected it to break OBSE in the same way that D2D did, but it didn't. Mods work the same way as they do with Skyrim, which is Steam-only.

I use BAIN in Wrye Bash rather than OBMM for mod management, for two reasons: I'm going to be using Bash anyway, for all the other things it does; and BAIN understands how to handle shared forms when un-installing overlapping mods. OBMM breaks the game when you do that. The latter one may not be an issue for you, but since I publish my own mods, I often want to temporarily install another mod to check for compatibility with my own, and then take it out again. Wrye Bash is a much bigger and more complex thing than OBMM, which is just a mod manager, but I use it as my launch pad for the CS/CK, Tes4/5Edit, BOSS and everything else, as well as the games (both Oblivion and Skyrim). I particularly like the profile feature, which maintains separate folders for multiple characters' saves, and remembers what mods their games use.

And now I've mentioned BOSS - you need that to get your load order right. Once you have the "required" mods, like the unofficial patches etc., you'll need help keeping the load order straight, as fixes for things don't do anything if they're loaded at the wrong time.