The Mods, Part 1: Performance

Thought I'd make a brief note about some of the mods I'm using. Oblivion is one of those games that, while excellent on its own, can be tremendously improved with community mods. First, I'll cover those mods I use to increase performance.

I run Oblivion on a laptop. That means onboard graphics, which are notoriously sucky for playing games. Even on my machine, Oblivion is playable without mods. Careful tweaking and experimentation allowed me to keep my game running smoothly. If you want to tweak your Oblivion install, I suggest checking out Tweak Guides. Koroush Ghazi goes into great detail not only on how different settings affect your performance but also on the technical aspects of the settings. Dunno what anisotropic filtering is and why you might or might not want to turn it on? He explains it thoroughly. I highly recommend running through this guide and seeing how you can increase performance before you install any mods.

Here's the list of performance-increasing mods I use:

1. Oblivion Script Optimization: Each second, hundreds and even thousands of scripts run per second. For the most part this goes smoothly. However, Bethesda has been rather lax in its code optimization, which means busy areas with lots of scripts can run slower (we're talking lag here, not FPS) and that your load times can increase. This mod improves the efficiency of scripts throughout the game.


2. Unofficial Oblivion Patch: Fixes all the bugs that should have been fixed in Oblivion's patches. Currently, that's over 1800 bugs and 70,000 object placement errors. Probably won't increase your performance terribly, but will stop lots of annoyingness.


3. Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch: As above, but for the Shivering Isles expansion. If you don't have the expansion, you don't need this. If you do, you do.


4. Unofficial Official Mods Patch: As above for Bethesda's official mods. I have Knights of the Nine, which was included in the Game of the Year Edition, so I use this. If you don't have any of these, don't bother. If you do, do.


5. Operation Optimization: Optimizes meshes throughout the game with no loss in visual quality. It takes out unnecessary polygons that you never see, meaning things run faster with no difference in how the look.


6. Operation PolyGone Overhaul: Decreases the number of polygons in many objects around Cyrodiil. Note that this, unlike the above mod, does have a noticeable reduction in quality. However, it's not excessive. The goal is simply to correct Bethesda's "overly generous" use of polygons.


7. Optimized Distant Land MAX: Two mods in one. The first reduces the number of polygons in the distant land (distant land is what gives the scenic vistas in so many of my screenshots; distant land reduces my framerate, but it's just soo pretty :) ). After all, why do they need to be high-poly if they're so far off? The second mod reduces the texture sizes in distant land, since you don't really need 1024x1024 textures for distant objects.


8. Low-Poly Grass: Grass is one of the biggest performance eaters in the game. Without this mod, turning grass on ate about 10fps. Now, it eats only 1-2fps. Highly recommended.


9. Wiseman's Reduced Textures: Absolutely essential. This mod provides the largest performance increase of any mod I've found. It essentially uses medium quality textures in place of many large textures, letting you run the game with a large texture pack with the performance of the medium one. For example, a large wall needs a large texture. But a ring or a shirt doesn't. There's a slight drop in visual quality, but the only place it's stood out so far is in the Burgundy Shirt (see the screenie of Gogan in my last entry). If you use this, be sure to grab parts two and three.


10. Streamline: I no longer use this, as it introduced some problems for me. If you're still hurting for FPS, though, you might consider it. Essentially, Streamline optimizes your graphical settings as you play in order to achieve what you've told it is a good framerate. It's especially handy in combat, where it reduces your graphics to keep your FPS solid during the battle. I found that using its fog settings turned the sky black, and after uninstalling it, things didn't return to normal (I had to reinstall Oblivion to fix it). Also, it kept setting Actor Fade (which says how close creatures need to be to you before you see them) so close that I couldn't see enemies until they were right on top of me. Some folks swear by it, though, so try it out and see how it works for you. Requires the Oblivion Script Extender.

There's plenty of other performance increasing mods out there, but these are the ones I've tried and swear by.

Happy gaming!

Day 3: Back to the Beach

The next day starts out badly. By which I mean that I mysteriously lose about 20 screenshots, most of them carefully posed (I've learned a thing or two about taking better screenshots since my last post). But I don't sweat it. Nope, Sharlassa gets up at the crack of dawn. Well, before dawn, really. Having gone to bed early, she rises at 3:30 am. The inn is alive even at that late hour, and she spends a relaxing morning drinking ale around the warm fireplace. After a hearty breakfast of cheese, bread, and mutton, she begins her daily wanderings north of Gottshaw Inn.

I wander aimlessly, gathering ingredients as I find them. I'm trying to pick things that I can make into potions now, though, rather than gathering handfuls of whatever I can find. Since my alchemy skill has improved, I'm finding lots of new recipes for potions. The corn and potatoes in my pack, for instance, can be used in Restore Health potions, and the occasional cluster of Lady's Mantle and Aloe Vera go nicely with these. I find some St. John's Wort (good for poisons that damage my quarry's health), but I don't have anything to mix it with, so I hold on to it.

As I wander through the waist-high grass, I spy what looks to be a camp ahead, and the light of a couple of torches glimmer around it. I creep forward, hoping my woman's intuition will spontaneously tell me the name of the encampment. No such luck, though, because a boar rushes at me through the grass. I backpedal madly, trying to fend the beast off with my dagger. I'm knocked off my feet by an arrow that thuds into my shoulder. Yargh! I'm bein' attacked by boars and bandits at the same time!

A couple of well placed fireballs and powerful attacks dispatch the boar, and I leap at the bandit, who's turning me into a pincushion. My health is down to about half, and I'm about to turn and run (which is generally not so effective a strategy against archers) when another boar rushes me. Ye, gods!

Someone must have been listening to my prayers, because the boar comes after the bandit rather than me. I chuck my puny Flare spells at the two, and by the time the bandit falls to the boar's razor sharp tusks, the feral beast so weak that a single thrust of my dagger defeats it. Huzzah!

I'm a religious person, so I decide to honor the gods by stripping the bandit naked and taking her stuff. She's got a good-size quiver of steel arrows to replace my heavy iron ones and a snazzy green shirt and leather bracer that go well with my fur greaves. And... ooo! A shiny necklace! The boars have some excellent hides, and I take some time to saw off their tusks, too. Those should fetch a good price!

I briefly consider assaulting the bandit's camp. After all, if they're as rich as this one, I could make a good haul today. But that's not what we NPCs do. We don't go looking for fights, especially when all the fights we have been in so far have left us dangerously close to ending the blogs about our lives. Oh, and I count four torches moving around the camp. Nope, I decide to take a wide circle around the camp, avoiding the sight of its keepers as best I can.

An hour's walk west brings me to a large estate with plenty of crops around. There's also plenty of servants. One of them, a surly Nord named Bjorn the Basher, fixes up all my damaged equipment for a modest fee. I want to change into my now repaired furs, but there's no privacy around. Instead, I wander the estate, which my womanly knowledge tells me belongs to a Lord Drad. A bit of curiosity leads me to a familiar face. It's Geontene, the mage who bought all my loot! I tell him about my battles and he tries giving me some advice:

I also purchase a couple of spells from him. One is a healing spell that's a bit stronger than the weak one I already use, and the other buffs my health. They're expensive, but I think thy'll increase my survivability if I run into bandits again.

I have fun chatting with the locals, all of whom urge me to join the Fighter's Guild. Man, I must really look the part. But no, no fighting for me, thank you. I'd rather live my life in peace.

At last it's time to continue my wandering. There's a woman named Nilin heading out into the woods, and I decide to follow here. I make that decision based on the fact that she has a guard dog and a huge honking battle axe. The more protection the merrier!

After a while, Nilin turns around to head back to Lord Drad's Estate. Having just been there a half hour ago, I decide not to keep following her and continue my course westward. I can hear the surf pounding the beach ahead, so I follow my ears, moving silently through the grass just in case I should find any furry animals to shoot. As I slip over the crest of the hill, though, I see what looks to be the burned out ruins of a town.

Curiosity gets the better of me, and I head down the hill to investigate, keeping my hunter's eyes peeled and looking for any movement that might indicate danger. I don't see much, though, except for charred timber. There's not so much as a barrel to root through. I suppose that's good, though. After all, I wouldn't want to loot more ruins and break my code of non-adventuring.

Still, I'm somewhat disappointed as I begin to head south along the beach. Just outside of the ruins, however, I see something that makes my day. Oysters!

A few minutes of swimming later and I find what I'm looking for:

My swimming nets me 15 pearls, as well as some Sacred Lotus Seeds. I examine their properties and find they can be combined with my St. John's Wort to produce Damage Health poisons, so I whip some up. Those should give me an edge in any battles I might be thrust into.

While I'm working on my alchemy, I hear some chittering behind me. The oyster-filled pool has spawned mud crabs. And dreughs. Hordes of them! I get in some practice with my trusty dagger...

...and blast a few with clumsily flung Flare spells.

I crack some of the crabs open to pry out their tasty meat. A few contain more than just meat, though:

Okay, the fork I can understand. Some dude thought he'd killed the crab, popped it open, and started eating the meat. Only it wasn't dead, so it crawled off, fork still inside, and healed up. Okay, I can buy that. But the lockpick?

Some more exploring shows me the wreckage of a few ships.

I consider swimming down to see if there's anything valuable inside, but I decide against it. Diving for pearls is one thing. You can surface for air quickly. I can't breathe underwater, though, and I don't want to get caught inside a sunken ship. I leave the ship and head south down the coast.

Before long I encounter another shipwreck, but this one is mostly above water. I decide to board it and see what's below. After all, I'm not superstitious about ghost ships. Umm... right?

Turns out the bigger thing to worry about is the smell. The corpse of what appears to have been the captain of this vessel is thrown against the hull, and the hot sun of the Abeccean Sea has turned this ship into an oven. Phew! I do manage to recover a few books and some food, and when I search the captain's body I find a wealth of gold coins, gems, some fine boots, and a seaman's cutlass.

Excited about my finds, I head to the lower deck. There's more flooding going on here, and it's a bit harder to move around since there's furniture blocking the doorways. I don't really want to hang around here too long, though. The corpse pinned to the wall with a cutlass has something to do with that. He died with his eyes open, and they just stare at me lifelessly. Ugh.

As the chills run down my spine, I strip another corpse of its belongings, then shimmy back up the ladder to leave the ship.

Hey, how do I look in my corpse clothes?

I spy some mud crabs ahead and decide to use this as a chance to test out my new cutlass. Have at thee, crabs!

I find a cave inside the stump of a driftwood tree. I decide to call it Treestump Cave in honor of the obvious. Treestump Cave is locked, though, and I don't want to spend my crab-pick trying to enter.

Having had enough pretending to be a pirate for one day, I change back itno my furs and begin the trek southward again.

Near some Ayleid ruins (Garlas Malatar, which I discovered on Day 1), I snipe some slaughterfish from the shore. They, like the mud crabs, eat interesting things:

I know this area. At least, I think do. I came this way up the Gold Coast my first day, but things look different now. Whatever the reason, I'm glad to be exploring it again. I'm seeing new things. Like that ruined lighthouse.

I check it out. There's not much to find, save for an old corpse dashed by rocks. Nearby I find what appears to be his tattered journal. It confirms my suspicions. This was indeed and old lighthouse, but it was destroyed when its fire leapt out of control. Apparently, that's what caused the many shipwrecks at the burnt-out village, which the journal identifies as Oyster Bay.

I poke around the tower for a bit, but accidentally fall off into the ocean below. Gah! The water is pretty shallow, so it doesn't break my fall. Instead, I crack my ankle on the rocks below. My health falls down below half, and I pull myself from the waves onto the nearby beach in hopes that I can cast my healing spells to fix my leg. Of course, something is waiting for me.

Even in my weakened state, I manage to kill the dreugh quickly. After I heal a bit, I gingerly walk around the little beach. Ooo... there's a Nirnroot. And another. Oh, and another. I suppose this was a worthwhile injury. I begin the swim towards the shore, but take a quick dive when spot a sunken chest below. I recover a few gold coins from it, but the real treasure is an alembic which I can use to improve my potions. Hah!

As I continue south I finally spot Anvil's harbor in the distance. Now there's a welcome sight! It's getting late in the afternoon, so I hurry toward the docks, eager to sell my finds before the shops close for the night.

I manage to sell off the jewels, pearls, animal bits, and my slaughterfish plate at Norbert Lelles' Merchandise, then head to the Flowing Bowl to buy all the corn and potatoes that I can. I'll turn those into Restore Health potions tomorrow. When it's all said and done, I'm sitting on over 1,700 septims. Not bad for a day's work! To celebrate, I sit on the docks and talk with a beggar named Imus the Dull. Sadly, he lives up to his name. The conversation is rather poor, so I spend my time checking out the shirtless sailors.

Whoa! I'm a guy playing a chick who likes guys. Is... is that role-playing? It just might be. Lookit me, ma! I'm role-playing!

(Aside: Why do so many male gamers who decide to play chicks make them into lesbians? Is it because gamers are acting out fantasies? Or is it because they're too uncomfortable role-playing liking their own sex? It doesn't make you gay to play a straight chick, does it?)

After a while, the sailors start heading to the Black Flag tavern, so I follow Maybe it's the cutlass hanging off my belt, or maybe it's the coin jingling in my pocket; whatever the reason, the pirates save me a seat at their table. I feast on boar meat, cheese, and ale, and the party goes on into the night. To life in Cyrodiil!

Intro: How it Works

Taking a page from my model, I'll be playing a normal, average, everyday, run-of-the-mill, ordinary citizen of Cyrodiil. I'll be following all the rules the game normally provides for NPCs:

1. I must eat. That means at least one meal per day, though preferably two or three. I won't require myself to drink, since NPCs don't have to bother with that.


2. I must sleep. Minimum of 12 hours of rest every 48 hours, though preferably 8 hours a day. This means I'll have to find someplace to live or at least temporarily take shelter. I could buy a house, but that requires money. I could rent an inn room, but that can be even more expensive over time. That means, point 3 is...


3. I must find a source of income. Jobs may be difficult to find, but if I can't manage to support myself, I'll have to resort to plundering dungeons, and no one would read a blog about that!


4. No fast travel. If I want to get somewhere, I'll use my own two feet. Or four, if I manage to scrape together enough to buy a horse. Part of this project is enjoying the immersion of the game. I want to really get inside my character's head and see what he sees.


5. No reloads. This is the big one. NPCs don't get to start over when they die. Except in the case of RL tragedies (say, I forget to pause the game when taking out the trash, only to be ripped apart by wolves), I won't be reloading for any reason.

If you've read Livin' in Oblivion, you'll recognize these rules as a straight rip-off. I'll be making one big change, though: I won't actively avoid adventures and quests. I'm going to try to stay in character and approach thing the way my character would. That's not un-NPC-like. After all, there are NPCs in the game that charge in and try to close Oblivion gates on their lonesome. No, I think I'll take things as they come, only being open to adventure when my character feels up to the challenge.

Who is our not-quite-a-hero, then? Well, I don't think I'll be able to stand looking at someone as fugly as Nondrick for hours on end. I have a tradition from years of gaming that I must uphold: if I must watch a character's butt running around on screen, it will damn well be a hot one. Being of the masculine persuasion, I conclude I must therefore play a chick.

Hello, darling! Can I buy you a dri... eh? She looks different? Well, that's because I'm using a custom race. Our heroine (that's with an "e"; the other kind doesn't exist in Oblivion, since we have skooma instead) is a Wildling, a race hailing from the more remote regions of Tamriel. They're fond of magic, good hunters, and possess the power to partially enter the spirit world occasionally.

How did one get into the Imperial Prisons, you ask? Well, now's a good time to mention another handy mod I'm using: Modular Oblivion Enhanced. It's a large mod with lots of different features, but the one that figures in to this blog the most is the Main Quest Delayer plug-in. It makes it so the Emperor was never assassinated. No one talks about it, there's no invasion from Oblivion, and there's certainly no need to save the world. More importantly for me, it starts the player off on a ship in Anvil. I'm poor as dirt, and I'll need to find a job. That might be difficult, though. First off, Oblivion doesn't generally offer jobs outside of adventuring. Even if it did, there's another problem:

See that wonderful 20 on Personality? Yikes! I think Sharlassa (yeah, that's what I'll call myself) will feel more comfortable in the woods than in town. I'll suppose she's a hunter who's left her homeland seeking adventure, driven only by... ugh, that's so cliché. Ah, I know! I've left my homeland in a fit of rebellion and now seek my fortune by... no, no. That's no better.

Oh, I've got it: I'll be a normal girl from a simple tribe just trying to make her way. I'm not prone to reckless adventure, but I may accept the occasional challenge. I'm a simple girl of simple means with a simple past. I'll make my decisions as they're presented to me and let my experiences change who I am, and maybe I'll grow into adventuring. That's the most appropriate way to role-play, I think, regardless of whether I'm playing an adventurer or not.

Time to get out there and live my simple life. Let's start living in Cyrodill, baby!