Renee, I believe that’s the current version. I used the installer. It did all of the work.

I have no idea about the dark cave mods, sorry. I've only adjusted my settings like SubRosa suggested.

Renee, I installed WB a long time ago, so am unable to help with what is current.

Like SubRosa and Grits, I only use the in-game settings and find the dungeons dark enough that Buffy can easily miss trap pressure plates, trip wires and such since she finds her way primarily by stalking the pink glows of detect life.

Awesome. Do you folks enjoy answering all these questions? I hope so. I like the variety of answers. Everybody does things a little different.

http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_7.html

I found the cool webpage in the link above which shows all the diffs between OB PC settings which is GREAT because I saw all these settings in my game and had no idea what they affect. So now I have an idea. Now, the way my game is, it automatically sets the graphic settings to Medium. Turns out, an Xbox or PS3 actually has better (more defined) graphics than a PC on Medium setting. So .... I want it all. I want to go for the best settings possible. I know this means upgrading my video card, which I am fine with. More money, basically.

SubRosa, I think you told me in the past what I need to look for (via PM) and I'm wondering what sort of cards I should be looking for but I want to ask everyone for opinions, because I bet there will be a huge variety out there.

Also what's a good store for vid cards? I'll probably go to Best Buy or Radio Shack unless there's something better unbeknownst to me here in America

I think the first place to start is going to be your current computer. Open the case and see what kind of video card slot you have on the motherboard. It is probably a PCI-Express (or PCI-E slot). But you never know, it might be an AGP slot, some older computer still have those. This pic shows the difference between slots. Write that down, because you need to make sure the card you buy uses the right slot.

I suggest going for an Nvidia-based card. Different companies like EVGA or Visiontek make the cards themselves, the chipset they all use is Nvidia. Just look for the Geforce name. There is really not a whole lot of difference between the Nvidia video cards and the AMD cards (AMD bought out ATI). I have been using Nvidia since 3dfx went out of business, and I have always been happy with the quality of the chipsets, and the driver support. So I stick with what I know to be good. I am sure many people say the same about the ATI/AMD cards too.

Generally speaking, the more money you spend the better you are going to get. But I know you do not have a zillion samoleons to blow on a video card. You should be able to find a decent card in the $100 - $150 price range. Look for something with at least 1gig of onboard memory. These days DDR5 memory is pretty standard, so I would no go with anything slower. (the DDR# is a basic speed of how quick the memory works, the higher the number the better). This guy looks like a good card that won't bankrupt someone. It will handle a game like Skyrim just fine.

Best Buy is probably a good place to look. I often go to Micro Center. It looks like they have a couple of stores out in Maryland, so if they are close you could try them. I don't know what else is out there. Don't be shy about buying online though.


Edited to Add: It is also not a bad idea to look for how many and what kind of free power plugs you have left inside your case. In the old days you just slid the card into the slot on the motherboard and that was it. But modern cards have so much horsepower that they require their own power connections. Usually the video card needs a 6 pin power cable that looks kind of like a lego. Sometimes there is an 8 pin cable coming from your power supply, with a detachable part that takes off 2 pins and lets you use just 6. Depending on the card you buy, you might need 1 or 2 of these 6 pin cables. Here is a page all about power connecters. The ones I am talking about are the 6 pin PCI Express, and the 6 + 2 Pin variety. A lot of power supplies come with the 6 + 2 kind, that way you can just pop off the extra 2 pins if you do not need them. Mine is like that in fact.

You might also need more than one cable for your card. I have a pair of Geforce 670s, and they each use two 6pins. If you don't have any 6 pin cables and you need them, there are adapters you can buy that will plug into a standard 4 pin drive cable. There is a pic of one of those above.

It's on "None" (or whatever the 3rd choice is). I tried putting it on Bloom and that didn't seem to make a diff. Not for the Tutorial, anyways.

I'm attempting to learn Bash now. Interesting. It's rather like OBMM, but seems more complex.

Edit: Interesting. Bash puts a huge red slash across Cava Obscura. Wonder what that means. Guess I'll find out as I read. OBMM did not do anything like this.

Hello it's me again, aren't you excited?

Here is what is happening in my game. Look how freekin' bright that is, and that's with the Brightness dumbed down all the way! It's like I'm trying to play Oblivion underground with Walmart-style lighting everywhere, and with the Tutorial dungeon this bright, I cannot get im ... im... I cannot get IMMERsed. Thank you.

Wrye Bash is not easy to understand, at least not to me. I could have written their ReadMe better. To a no0b like myself, I have no idea what they're talking about half the time because they start off with some extreme tech-talk. But I have to learn Bash. Just have to.

One of the cool things I'm noticing about Bash is it put a large red slash across the mod slot where Cava Obscura is, and it does the same thing with Darker Dungeons. For some reason, something is going haywire whenever I want to darken the Tutorial dungeon, yet all the other mods I've installed so far are green, which means they are fine.

It's interesting because OBMM did not do anything like this. All OBMM tells me is Cava Obscura (or DD) are "Active". So obviously Wrye Bash is trying to communicate something to me. What the heck it is, I can't really tell. The ReadMe says this if a red background shows up: An active plugin that should remain deactivated (ie. tagged with Deactivate) or, for Oblivion only, an active plugin that shares its modification date with another active plugin. This must be corrected so that they have different modification dates or else it may break your load order.

...that barely makes any sense to me.

Here is an example of what it's showing me, though. Any ideas what to do?

Renee, I don't know on the WB message. What I do know is that the lighting in your dungeon screenshot is not due to the game being on PC. My vanilla PC dungeon lighting was just fine. I've adjusted the vanilla in-game options a bit darker, but have never found the need for any sort of 'darker dungeons' mod. It is very easy to miss trap pressure plates, tripwires and such in Buffy's game. Did that 'WalMart' lighting start after you began modding?

Acadian is right, that is not how it should look on the PC. I use no lighting mods at all, use the Bloom setting, and have the brightness slider just a little to the right of center, and this is how the tutorial dungeon looks. However, if I use the TLB command, I get this instead.

Did you ever use the console command TLB, which is short for Toggle Lite Brite? It makes everything really bright like that. Try running the command from the console and see if it changes things.

Other than that, I can only think to delete those lighting mods, and any loose files that came with them. Maybe one of them is F'ed up, and is actually messing up the lighting.

Renee, I am very new at Wrye Bash, so hold on for some more experienced advice. I’m sure someone will come along.

I looked in the Darker Dungeons description for a clue about what’s going on, and it says “New in Version 1.1- A Shivering Isles ESP! It REPLACES the one you may already have (Also, the old version of the ESP is packed in too).”

Does this mean you should only be using the SI esp? Perhaps the SI version is the original plus SI, not just the SI part. Maybe try that?

But first as SubRosa said get vanilla looking the way it should. Fingers crossed for an uncomplicated fix.


Added: I can’t see in the picture, do the Darker Dungeons mods have the same date as Camping (or each other)?

I'd add BOSS. Even though you don't have a lot of mods, it will fix this, as it re-dates the mods to get them in the correct order to override each other properly. It also knows which mods are incompatible, and which need cleaning. Launches from Wrye Bash, and Bash picks up the changes immediately.

And that's not nearly enough mods! Not to mention, none of them are mine!

No, the lighting has always been that bright in the Tutorial, I know this because when my Dunmer was looking across the hallway to the other Dunmer (the one who insults) I could see him clearly, and that's not what I've been used to on console. On console he'd just be a dark shape behind his jail cell bars.

But just to double-check, what I can do is start all over again from the very first save and not add any mods. Let the Emperor & guards do their thing (open up the wall) and see if that makes a diff.



Nope. I've only used the console to (1) slow down the Timescale and (2) remove the starting Flare spell. I'll try that TLB command though.



Okay.



Umm. I don't think so. How do I find out?



Lol, cool thanks! .. I've got BOSS installed but barely know how to use Bash at this point.

I know Wyrd is a Bash-master, looks like I'll have to PM him about the red background bit, assuming BOSS can't figure it out.

I'm no WB expert, but I do use it quite a bit. I also second ghastley on BOSS. Never add a mod without my full complement of utilities - WB, BOSS, TES4Edit and TES4LODgen.

Run Boss on your mod list, then see if the problem persists in WB.

I can't quite remember what that red background means, but I do suspect it means the dates are somehow identical. BOSS fixes that for you.

I'll take a look at my WB stuff and see if I can't explain things a little better for you.

Thomas Kaira is the big WB user around here, but I don't see him just yet . . .

HA! figured it out! SubRosa gets the cookie. She was right. IT was the TLB command. For some reason it was on. Well at least I know what to do to fix this.

My game looks nice and dark now, I might not even need a darkness mod.

That's great news, Renee! Sometimes the answer is indeed the simple one - and SubRosa is indeed a smart cookie.

It does make you wonder why the TLB command exists, but I suppose the devs might need it if they forgot to put in any lights in a cell at all.

I read that command can make the game run a lot better if you PC is not running it well.

I am guessing it's for gamers that have some sort of intolerance to dark spaces? Dunno.

All I know is I'm done assisting my daughter with her homework and now it's GAME ON. I am so psyched you guys & gals, you don't even know.

Edit: Maybe TLB is for partially blind gamers? I just had that thought.

I am pretty sure the TLB command is out there as a way to speed up the game on really old computers. It disables all dynamic lighting, which gives an FPS boost. It is easy to forget now that the game is many years old, but when Oblivion first came out, it really pushed the boundaries of computer technology. When I first tried to play it, it literally would not run on my PC. Not because of compatibility issues, but simply a lack of power. I got as far as the character creation. Then I would move the mouse, wait five minutes, and see the cursor move. My comp at that time was not a blazing speed demon, but was not an old, dead horse either. It was years before I had a computer that could run the game.

I think the TLB command might be enabled by default at the lowest graphics setting. That might be why it was turned on in your case Renee.

I'm glad to know that you're off and running again, Renee!

Good point - being an older game, the Oblivion installation often can't recognize the current video cards, and assumes the worst (the idea being that the game will at least be playable before you adjust it). You may want to review ALL the video settings and move them off the bottom end of the scale.

TLB is not for vision-impaired gamers. What happens when you use it is it completely turns off the game's dynamic lighting and makes the ambient light full-strength white.

It's the ingame version of a Construction Set feature. In the CS, there is a work light you can toggle on and off to do the same thing. Idea being that if you are designing a dark location you can see what you are doing while you work. TLB is meant for the same purpose.

TLB does not get enabled at very low graphics because it changes the ambient light color to full white. At low graphics all that is done is the dynamic lighting gets disabled.

Interesting, Thomas, SR, and ghastley.

I have some (more) questions. I want a mod that slows magic down somehow. I'm looking for a mod that can possibly slow all the magic down to Restoration levels. In other words, Restoration is the slowest-leveling skill in the vanilla game, and I've always felt that the rest of the magic skills (all of them) move upwards way too fast.

Back in my tabletop days (way back in the '80s) I had a wizard character who became all-powerful, but this took years to achieve. Not a few weeks as in TES. Granted, tabletop games are intrinsically slower because they're all about dice rolling and pencil notations, but even still I think it would take a long time for my wizard to level upwards even if his game was in real-time.

Any sort of mod like this out there?


Bottom end of the scale? Not sure what you mean. The general setting is Medium, and I haven't messed with any of the other settings (the ones that affect grass and leaves and distant buildings and stuff. First thing I'm gonna do is figure out what sort of video card I've got in my PC, but I'm too afraid to open it. I've got a friend that's done this before though, so he'll probably be over tomorrow.

You all are gonna laugh, but after all that stuff with the TLB and too-bright dungeons, once I got to gaming last night, I was thinking it's still too bright. It's about the level of brightness as what's on consoles, basically. So I did wind up trying Darker Dungeons again, and this time it DOES make a diff. Areas where there's no ambient light are now BLACK, and I do need a torch to see once I'm in these areas.

But it still wasn't dark enough. So (check this out) I added my Darker Dungeons pretend mod to the Darker Dungeons actual mod. This means I push a button on my TV screen (the button toggles a setting called "Sports") and FINALLY I got what I want. With Darker Dungeons, yes there are areas that are darker, but they're more of a washed-out gray than what I want. With my DD pretend mod, these washed out areas are now pitch BLACK. YES!

Um. I had another question, but I forget it now. Had something to do with TES4Edit though. I was messing around with this last night. The thing that's weird is even though Wrye Bash still puts a red background across Darker Dungeons, this mod seems to work fine.

If you would like to know what graphics card you have, click the Start button and in the search bar, type DxDiag, and run that program. When it appears and is done running, click the Display tab. That will detail what you have.

Naah, didn't work. It says "No items match your search".

TES4Edit cleans mods, but does not fix their dates. BOSS? (Better Oblivion Sorting Software) does this for you. That should get rid of the red bar.

Here's my usual modding routine: Add a mod using WB or OBMM (some mods like OBMM, like DarNUI and Robert's Female Body Replacer). Run BOSS to sort load order, fix dates, and identify dirty mods. Run TES4Edit on the dirty mods identified by BOSS. Play the game. No crashes? Great, add another mod, or keep playing.

I don't know of any mods off the top of my head that slow down the time it takes to raise your magic skills. Why don't you just make one?

I don't know what version of Windows you have. If it is Windows 7 or Vista, you can click on Start, then type Device Manager into the Search field. Click on it in the list that pops up. Look down through the list for Display Adapters, and open that line up. It will give you the name of your video card.

Really? What's your operating system?

Renee, there are indeed mods that let you customize how quickly differing skills level up. I can't recall any of the names because I don't use any mods that affect leveling or skills. But Pseron does and I'm sure he can give you the insight to select the best choice.

King Coin: I have a Hewlett Packard Pavillion 500-023W which has Windows 8. I'm supposed to upgrade to 8.1 (I get reminders on the PC telling me to do this occasionally) but I've heard 8.1 will possibly mess up my Xbox controller when I'm gaming. Besides, everything is working fine to some extent on 8, why should I upgrade? I'm in no hurry.

SubRosa: MAKE one? .. Eeesh, I dunno about that! I'm too much of a n00b for that! .. Maybe when I'm not so green I'll feel more confident in that regard.

Start > Search > Device Managers did not work either. Win 8 does a lot of [censored] different and it's basically the new kid on the block that nobody fully knows yet. I've noticed (for instance) that whenever I'm looking up modding info or computer info, everything is written for Win 7 or Vista or XP.

My friend was supposed to come over and dismantle the back of my PC for me but he ran into probs. If I have nothing else to do this weekend maybe I'll go on You Tube and watch a vid (there's gotta be one somewhere) of somebody removing their video card. Not that I'll do this, I just want to try and get in there, at least.

HER: Yes, I've got BOSS installed. I'm not sure how to figure about the Darker Dungeons date thing, but this is what it says next to Darker Dungeons:

Dark Dungeons.esp Version 1.0 Active Bash Tag suggestion(s): {{BASH: C.Light, Deactivate}}

I have no idea what this means, though. It's suggesting something about Deactivating Light, but what is it? I have not a clue.

It also says See You Sleep has a "dirty edit", and that's how I wound up messing with TES4Edit, but I couldn't figure how to clean this up. I'll have to explain what the directions said, but that'll be for later.

Every modder in the world started out knowing absolutely nothing about modding. We all have to start somewhere, and that is usually the situation of saying "I really wish I could change this." So jump in the pool and have fun. The link I posted on page 2 to the construction set wiki has all the info a first-time modder needs.

I have Windows 8 on my Surface. Assuming it works the same on a Desktop, open the sidebar, and click on Search. Type in Device Manager. It will say 0 items at first. Look down in the list, and you should see it say Apps, Settings, and Files. Click on Settings, and Device Manager will be the first thing that comes up on the list.

Renee, what that message from BOSS means is that you turn off DD in Wrye Bash, then build a Bashed Patch which will then merge the resources from DD into the game patch.

Basically what the game patch does is combine resources from multiple mods into one so that you can run more mods than the limit the game allows.

I have a couple of mods in my load list that is the same - the Road Records for Roads of Cyrodiil and Robert's Female Body Replacer, for example. Their resources are merged in the Bashed Patch and that frees up their slots for other mods.

I know, I know. Clear as mud! But it's one of those things that makes sense only after you've done it a few times.

Thanks hon. For now I'm just going to be a passive modder, just trying what's out there, once I get good and confident then I'll start to maybe go on my own path..

Matter of fact I think I've found what I'm looking for. It's called Progress, and it promises the following:

Base options include:
* Set an overall multiplier for advancement rates
* Edit the bonus given to class skills
* Change the number of skill increases required to gain a level
* Change how many times you can train per level, and how much training costs
* Modify the advancement rates for specific skills

That final one (modify the advancement rates for specific skills) is exactly what I want.


What's the sidebar?


Ohhh I think I get it! .. Wow thanks for explaining, I'm going to try this soon as I'm done with my Arena session.

You getting all the mods up and running, Renee?

Yeah, kinda. I was having some probs last night because the game kept immediately crashing after loading, but I was really tired by the point and couldn't figure out what was going on. This morning I thought 'maybe I've got too many mods checked off' and turns out that's just what was happening.

Am going to see if I can mess around again some more today.

How many mods do you have now?

Here's the active ones

Realistic Hunger
Darker Dungeons
No POI Compass
See You Sleep (having some probs with this one, though)
Fundament

I removed Camping and Cava Obscura and a couple others because I believe SYS might clash with Camping (they've both got sleep-oriented stuff), and DD is working in my game, so I don't need Cava. My goal is to get to about 40 mods, I think I'd be happy with that. In Skyrim I'm definitely wanting more; perhaps 70 in that game. I want attributes back (dammit!) and also I'm going to be looking for mods that'll liven up (or maybe clam up) those NPCs from their stock, repetitive ... stock, repetitive ... stock, repeti*clunk!* dialog voicings.

That's a light load list, really. I've had up to about 80 mods on my old Mac Pro and they ran fine.

See You Sleep does conflict with some other mods. I couldn't use it with Camping, either. I ended up dumping Camping for Realistic Fatigue, mainly because it let me pick up and carry those bedrolls you find at the bandit camps. It was perfect for my hardy Redguard Not-a-Hero character - she was so used to roughing it in the Legion that the big tent at Ra'sava Camp was sheer luxury for her!

On this play through, I'm using my newer MacBook Pro running Parallels and Win 7. It's working fine, but I do find more glitches. The MBP is only about a year and a half old, so it's got a very decent graphics card in it - maybe too decent! I had to install DirectX 9 to get TES IV to run on this one.

40 mods? Geez, I don´t think I have that many mods in Oblivion and Morrowind combined!

You´re like a kid in a candy store, Renee!

I have 122 .esps active in Oblivion, and 174 in Skyrim. That of course does not count all the mods that do not have .esp files, and do straight mesh/texture replacements.

40 just seems like the right number for me. And 70 in Skyrim.

Tonight I'm messing around with a mod called Fundament which is supposed to be able to tweak skill rates. I can't seem to figure what the ReadMe is saying though (it's another one that's written for advanced gamers, it seems). I'm guessing I'm supposed to change values in an .ini file called Skill Rates. Tried changing some stuff around.

Like for instance the default rate for Restoration is 1.0, and the default rate for Conjuration is 5.5. Makes perfect sense to me because Conjuration levels upwards uber-quick. So I had Snaat Rayag cast the default healing spell 10x in a row with the default Restoration settings of 1.0. He wound up leveling from 6-7/8 to just over 8. Then I quit the game, changed the value for Restoration to 5.0, and started the game back up. Cast the default healing spell 10x, but it's still moving at the same speed. The ReadMe directions are so vague, it almost seems like it's written for somebody who already knows stuff.

None of you are familiar with Fundament, eh? I kinda doubt it.

Not me anyway.

Don´t forget to actually play the game once in awhile other than for testing mods

Not yet. It's gotta be perfect, the gameworld that is. Been waiting for mods for a long time, Crow. I already know what the vanilla game's like because I've been walking around in it for 5 years now, so what I want is something which is more obviously different.

Now young grasshopper, you are ready...

Seriously though, welcome to the same world that people like Wyrd and I live in. I have been planning on picking up Skyrim again for about a week now, and starting up an old character. But I cannot just start the game and begin playing. I wanted to change up her look some to reflect how far she has come as a person. So I spent the last week going over character concepts and experimenting with mods to which would work with the ideas I had, and which would not. I started playing her a few nights ago, and realized I am still not ready yet. I want to go over ideas for a new sword, and a lair for her. And this is with an established character! If she had been a brand new one it would have been much more work!

I hear both of you, SubRosa and Renee!

I've played the same character four times, trying out different mods and figuring out what she is. It's not as easy as my first PC, who pretty much dominated the vanilla game and needed little more than making Gweden Farm her own after she cleared out the ... umm ... squatters.

Unfortunately her save games on the external drive are corrupted, so she only lives on in Old Habits Die Hard. I'm not sure I want to replay her from scratch . . . she was amazing to play the first time through and I'm not sure if I can capture that feeling again. Yet, I'm anxious to continue her story beyond the Main Quest and have some really cool snapshots from the game for that. And the mods I've tried out for Tallei would be useful for Julian as well - especially the textures and the All Natural system.

Something you might want to consider -- sometimes you will not discover mod conflicts until you actually play the game and follow a quest or another. This happened to me after I loaded about 40 or so mods (most highly endorsed on Oblivion Nexus) and tested each of them. Then when I started playing a small quest mod, I came across a particularly annoying fatal conflict that prevented me from completing the quest until I deactivated the offending mod. The problem is I really, really liked that mod.

Yes, that's how I am right now SR: everything's gotta be 'perfect', but also (in my case) obviously different from vanilla. This has been my dream for ... literally years now.

It's snowing outside so I created a second character named Clea Vigge. (get it? Har har..) I only created her, I'm not actually playing her yet. But with her, I'm going to want some boobie mods. -(.)(.)- She's going to be a Bard I think, but she'll have an 'enhanced' chest, is what I mean to say. With Clea, what's going to happen is I'm going to find a (tasteful) boobie mod. I've seen these sort of mods out there, never thought I'd get one for a character, but with Clea Vigge it'll be just perfect.

Good luck with your new Skyrim mama.



This sounds scary. What did you wind up doing about these corrupted game saves? I guess you just said it: you needed to restart from scratch. How did they wind up getting corrupted, though?

I love how you come up with your character´s names!

To quote dear mALX: SPEEW!!

Well, I suspect a brownout from one of the numerous storms we get through here. All my electronics are plugged into surge suppressors, but nothing is ever 100% . . .

In any case, I had my Windows partition on my Mac Pro run a disc diagnosis and it removed a bunch of corrupt files from the data folders as well as fixed a bunch of others. So I suspect the "backups" I had on the drive are no longer backups. However, I was able to copy over the saved games and the screenshots from the external drive to the desktop. I've formatted the external drive (from the Windows partition, natch) and am setting it up to be the backup drive for Windows (only for the game files, though, not for the entire drive).

Now I'm off to finish setting up Oblivion on the Mac Pro. I'm reorganizing the entire Oblivion system on the Windows partition so I can have a separate folder for each game with its own mod load list. That means installing OBMM, Wrye Bash, CS, TES4Edit and TES4LODGen in each folder. All the other mods will be stored in their own folder and be available to each game.

Sometimes all the work ahead of play makes the play worthwhile.

Yup, this exactly. On console all you gotta do is plug 'n' play, but with PC there's a lot more tweaking involved. And at some point, I'll just sorta 'know' when the tweaking is done and I can finally start playing.

1) Tweaking is NEVER done. There's always something that might be better if you just ...
2) The only way you find out what wants tweaking next is to play, then tweak, then play, then tweak.

I like your Warrior Nuns mod, ghastley, and also the Gweden Farm one. I might have to eventually get both of those.