My Oblivion Remastered Recommended Mods

Introduction

This is a (small) list of the plugins/mods and other tweaks for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered that I use. You can find many more, but I mostly want small tweaks and re-balances, so I haven't even looked at what else appeared since I began playing.

Installation Instructions

For standard mods, download the corresponding files and put them in the Content/Dev/ObvData/Data subfolder of where you installed the game. Then open the file Plugins.txt (in the same folder), and add the names of the new plugins to the list (often to the bottom).

Custom mods usually come with their step-by-step instructions.

My Mod Recommendations

• Ascension Remastered - Vanilla-Plus Loot and Balance: Fixes leveling and loot. I use the main Ascension Remastered plugin, and Vanilla Spell Effectiveness.
• Better HUD: Smaller and better organized HUD elements. I use the Default Size (16x9) version.
• NPCs Catch Fire: Adds a bit of realism.
• Permanent Doomstones: Makes Doomstones more useful. I use the vanilla version.
• No Pickpocket Chance Cap: Caps the ability at 100%, instead of to 85%.
• Richer Vendors: Makes vendors have way more gold, to purchase your items. This one becomes more useful as you progress in the game and find better items. I use the standard version.
• Shady Sam Buys Stolen Goods and More: Useful if you play a thief, but beware that selling items to Sam does not count towards your thieving rank. It is still good to simplify getting rid of stolen items. Move to the bottom of Plugins.txt if you enable the Richer Vendors mod too.
• Skip Intro: No explanations required. I use the basic "Skip Intro Screens" version.
• Universal Achievement Unblocker: If you get stuck because of a bugged quest (e.g. Go Fish), and you need to restort to using console commands to fix it, this mod will re-enable achievements on the "tainted" savegame file.
• Weightless Alchemy and Misc. Items: I don't like having to travel home constantly just to drop resources and other miscellaneous items, and this mod solves that. Important stuff like armour and weapons still has weight.

Console Tweaks

Note: you need the Universal Achievement Unblocker plugin (listed above) if you want to make your savegame normal again after using any console command.

• If you need to make an item yours (e.g. you escaped jail and stole your own items from the evidence chest):
  • With the console already opened, target the stole item (click with the mouse an element, and having the inventory closed)
  • Type in setownership
  • The item it will lose its stolen tag/become your property
  • Be careful when you target, as you can for example also make npcs "followers"
• If you need gold because you accidentally sold your amazing magical item: player.additem 0000000F 500

General Game Stability Fixes

Oblivion was a buggy game. Oblivion remastered inherited all the old bugs, plus by swapping the 3D engine to Unreal Engine 5, seems to have added a new generation of bugs. I almost gave up twice playing the game due to issues, so here are my recommendations to (at least for now) remove the annoying "game crash on load" or "game freeze on travel" bugs.

• Disable autosaves in the gameplay settings: as you advance, the game will start crashing pseudo-randomly on loading new areas or fast travelling. It began to happen to me after 30h.
• Disable hardware Lumen effects in the graphics settings: Nobody knows exactly why, but even with autosaving disabled, at around 40h I'd get frequent crashes just changing the area, and since I disabled Lumen, zero.
• Disable non-native game mods: Mods like Universal Achievement Unblocker rely on special DLL files, which can make the game crash sometimes. I noticed more frequent crashes when having this mod enabled, so I removed it (and if needed, I'll use it once and re-disable).