Through the Valleys - PushTheWinButton's Vanilla Plus Modding Guide

Through the Valleys

PushTheWinButton's Vanilla Plus Modding Guide

Introduction

Although Fallout New Vegas is the game I'm more known for modding, I actually think I enjoy playing and modding Oblivion more. This is probably because Oblivion is the first game I started out modding (as a user and amateur mod maker) back over a decade ago, soon after the game's release.

During my time with New Vegas, I was part of a movement towards a 'vanilla plus' style of modding, which revolves more around creating a highly stable, balanced, and enhanced mod list that preserves the vanilla spirit of the game. This is different to the older conception of modding, which aims more to overhaul and stuff the game with lots of new (often lore-breaking) items, features, and pretty graphics, which can often lead to game instability.

This guide aims to be the definitive vanilla plus guide for Oblivion, built upon my own many years of experience in making and using mods since the game's release.

The guide is separated into sections each containing a list of my recommended mods accompanied by a short description of each and instructions for what to download and install. The mod name will link to the mod's page on the Nexus. Every mod in this guide can be downloaded from the Nexus (with the exception of one essential one, which I provide full instructions for). All files are in English and there are no links to foreign language sites.

Mods have been selected by me based on my own lengthy playtesting and manual checking of the each mod for quality, conflicts, etc. I will not list any mods with dodgy or broken scripts, nor any mods that break immersion, are not lore friendly, or include janky setup menus and items. If you think that a mod has been missed off the list, it is probably because I believe it is not up to standard, doesn't fit the vanilla plus brief, or there is a better or simpler solution for the same concept. Please note, that I have also omitted some smaller mods to make the guide more concise, even if they conformed to the above criteria.

If any patches are required, I will provide them in the downloads section of this page, along with pre-configured INI files for any mods with customisation. I will not require you to use Wrye Bash, xEdit, or any other modding tool other than your main mod manager. I will also provide optimised load order files for you to import via Mod Organizer so that you don't have to manually sort them yourself, provided your mod list