OBLIVION MODS FAQ

How to find, install, make, and get help

Updated 5-24-2006 ~10:07 AM CDT

by dev_akm (with a lot of help from others) --Dev akm 14:07, 23 May 2006 (EDT)

This FAQ is primarily aimed at mod users rather than mod makers, but as such it addresses a lot of basic issues about how users will play a mod, and thus serves as a good introduction to mods in general.

Specifically, the FAQ attempts to answer the following questions:

What are Mods?
Where can I find good mods?
How do I install a mod?
Can I get these mods on my Xbox-360?
The beta patch broke my mods, what should I do?
How do I solve a problem with a mod?
How do I make a mod?

What are Mods?

(adapted from a Morrowind Mods topic by Tegger)

What are mods? Are they the same as plug-ins, patches, or expansions? What do they do? Will they mess up my game? What else do I need to know before using them or making them?

Mods are modifications of the original game.

The terms "mod" and "plug-in" are interchangable (in other words: yes, they're the same). Patches and expansions are not the same, however. Patches are official files intended to correct errors in the original game, and expansions add official content to the game.

Some mods add content (such as new weapons, NPCs, quests, clothing, faces, buildings, etc.), and others seek to balance issues in the original game, such as making items or NPCs either more or less powerful. Still others seek to improve upon what was already in the game in various other ways.

Mods for Oblivion are a lot less likely to cause game-breaking problems than with Morrowind, due to major improvements in the way the game engine handles mods. This doesn't mean mods can't cause problems. It does mean that Oblivion mods can almost always be removed safely if you decide you don't like them.

Before using mods, you'll need to decide what kind you want to play. No one can answer that for you, so don't bother asking very broad questions on the forums such as "Which mods should I download?" It's fine to ask for other members' opinions on specific mods you're thinking of downloading, though.

Note: Many veteran players recommend that you not use many (if any) mods if you haven't yet played the game through at least one time. You can always replay later with mods installed, and you'll be better able to recognize what the mods added to the game. On the other hand, if there are things you don't like about the original game, chances are that someone has already made or is working on a mod to change that aspect of the game.

If you're ready to go get some mods, see the section "Where can I find good mods?" (below).

And for those new to using mods, don't forget to also see "How do I install mods?".

If you think you're ready to try your hand at making a mod, the first thing you should do is see "How do I make a mod?"

Where can I find good mods?

There is an alphabetical list of Oblivion mod download sites on the ESF forums:

If you need suggestions about the very best mods available, there is an excellent article on this topic (and a lot more) called Optimising Oblivion v3.0: Into Modblivion, by Ashton Mills (aka Martigen) at Atomic MPC.

Another excellent resource for finding Oblivion mods is Endarire's Oblivion Mod List.

How do I install mods?

This depends largely on where the mod came from and how it was packaged.

The Bethesda official mods come packaged with an automatic installer that does everything for you. Once you've downloaded the .exe for an official mod, just double-click it to launch and follow the prompts. However, if you are using a 64-bit version of Windows, the official mod installer will not work.

Fan-made mods normally require a bit more involved process to install, unless they come packaged as an .omod file, in which case the installation process is very easy but requires an extra tool called Oblivion Mod Manager.

Regardless of whether a mod is already packaged as an .omod file, using Timeslip's Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) is perhaps the easiest way to install mods. It also lets you uninstall mods and all their related files very easily.

Beurban has written an excellent omod Creation Guide.

How to install plug-ins manually

(based on a Morrowind tutorial by lochnarus)

FOR BEGINNER MOD USERS

LOCATE YOUR OBLIVION DATA FOLDER

This will be located wherever you installed Oblivion, so it is usually:

C:\Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\

Unless you installed Oblivion in a non-standard location, in which case the path will be:

<install path>\Oblivion\Data\

For example, a lot of people install Oblivion to:

C:\games\

Because it's a lot easier to find things there than under "Program Files\etc".

In this case, the path would be:

C:\games\Oblivion\Data\

If you're not sure where you installed it, one easy way to locate the folder is to go to your desktop, right-click on the Oblivion icon, select Properties, and select the Shortcut tab. The path to your main Oblivion directory is shown in the "Start in" box.

You will know you've found the correct location if you find several very large files that look like this:

 Oblivion.esm
 Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa
 Oblivion - Voices1.bsa
 etc.

This is the final destination where you will put the mod files. Don't put anything there yet, though.

First, you will need to download the mod archive to a temporary folder and extract it, so let's talk about that next.

FILE COMPRESSION

Virtually all Oblivion mods are "compressed" into one easy to download file that is commonly referred to as a "zip" file or "archive". This makes the file smaller and keeps everything in one file. There are numerous types of these programs:

7zip http://www.7-zip.org

PowerArchiver http://www.powerarchiver.com

WinRAR http://www.rarlab.com/

Winace http://www.winace.com/

WinZip http://www.winzip.com/

Zipgenius http://www.zipgenius.it/index_eng.htm

IZArc http://www.izarc.org/

All of which can be found by doing a search on Google. Each one is different and some of them will not open all of the file formats from the rest of them. For example:

 .7z - opens with 7zip, PowerArchiver, WinRAR, IZArc, but not WinZip
 .rar - opens with 7zip, PowerArchiver, WinRAR, IZArc, but not WinZip
 .ace - opens with Winace, 7zip, PowerArchiver, WinRAR, IZArc, but not WinZip

...and so on.

7zip is favored by many mod makers because it can produce dramatically smaller files than the other formats. It's also free, open-source, and supports all of the other common formats, so if you want to cover all your bases with one download, get 7zip. This is a personal bias on my part. Many people will argue in favor of one of the other tools.

UNZIPPING TO A TEMPORARY DIRECTORY (FOLDER)

Double click on your downloaded mod file. The program should open it, displaying the files inside. Depending on which mod you are unzipping, it should have an .esp file (looks like a swiss army knife), a "Meshes" folder, a "Textures" folder, and lastly a README file. Sometimes mods will have all their files placed into mock directory folders, like so:

  Program Files\Bethesda Softworks\Oblivion\Data\

this is for automatically unzipping the files in to your \Oblivion\Data\ folder, which I NEVER do. You're bound to come across a mod that will not unzip correctly and you'll have loose files cluttering up your folders. (This is a MANUAL installation guide, after all.)

Select ALL the files by highlighting them. Then select the program's "extract" feature and a new window should come up asking WHERE to unzip it to. You will now need to pick a folder to be a temporary folder. It's probably a good idea to create a temporary "mods" folder in an easy-to-find location such as "My Documents"...

Some archive programs will also let you use a right-click method of extraction, with simplifies the process. In this case, download the mod to your temporary directory, then right-click it to see what options you have. You should see a menu choice for the archive program, and under that a submenu (or "context" menu) that says something like "Extract Here" or "Extract to ...". WinRAR even has an "Extract each archive to separate folder" option which will allow you to highlight all of your archives and extract each to its own folder with two clicks of the mouse. I find this method significantly easier to use once you get used to it.

In either case, you'll need to extract (i.e., "unzip") the files to the temporary folder. Then open that folder and you will see either exactly the items you need, or you may have to dig down a bit further.

If the mod-maker structured things correctly, it is most common to find some combination of items like this:

  "mod file".esp (usually whatever the mod was named)
  Meshes
  Textures
  "mod file README".txt (or any text filetype)
  ArchiveInvalidation.txt

However, you might have to keep digging down a bit to find this stuff, so if you don't see a structure like that, then open any other folders you find until you get to the "Data" folder with those items in it.

With some mods, you might POSSIBLY have these folders:

  Video
  Music
  Sound
  LSData
  Menus
  Shaders

Select all of these items -- except ArchiveInvalidation.txt, which we'll deal with in a minute -- and copy/paste or drag them into your Oblivion "Data" folder (described in Step 1 above).

If you already have some of these folders, Windows will promt you with a warning about files with the same name. Click "Yes to All".

That's it! The mod is installed. Just a few more details and you're ready to go.

ARCHIVE INVALIDATION

Oblivion normally gets all of its media assets (artwork, spoken dialog, music, etc.) from within a few large .bsa files rather than in individual folders (such as Meshes, Textures, Sound, etc.). The original game and official plugins use these .bsa files (it stands for Bethesda Softworks Archive). These .bsa files are organized internally just like your "Data" folder is.

However, as we've already seen, fan-made mods don't use .bsa files. Instead, they place individual meshes, textures, etc. into folders within your "Data" directory. This isn't a problem for new items added by a mod, but it can be a problem for some "replacer" mods that alter original game items. For example, some of the most popular types of mods are "armor texture replacers" and "landscape texture replacer" mods that improve the look of the game by replacing the original "stock" textures.

Normally, this isn't a problem since Oblivion is designed to automatically load any meshes, textures, etc. that it finds in your Data folder, as long as the timestamp (Modification Date) on each of these files is more recent than the timestamp on the original .bsa files. Since the .bsa files are older, items in them get replaced by any newer items with the same name that exist in your Data folders.

In some cases, however, this doesn't work correctly. It appears to be caused by a bug in Oblivion. Hopefully, Bethesda will correct this bug in a future patch to the game, but in the meantime you may have to use one of several workarounds if you want to install any "replacer" mods.

Further details on this subject, as well as extensive testing results for ArchiveInvalidation problems in general, can be found in the ESF thread ArchiveInvalidation Explained and in previous threads on the same topic.

The best workaround so far is to use Timeslip's Oblivion Mod Manager version 0.7.10 or later. It includes an option to rename textures in your .bsa files so you never have to worry about ArchiveInvalidation problems again.

This new feature has been tested and seems completely stable. You should probably make a backup of your BSA files if you have the space (or a DVD-burner) just in case, but no corruption issues have been reported yet.

Using this option, OBMM will keep track of which textures have been renamed in your BSAs and provides a "Remove BSA edits" function to rollback any changes it has made to your BSA. Assuming you have OBMM 0.7.10 or later already, the detailed steps for doing this are as follows:

Open OBMM
Click Utilities
Select Archive invalidation
Click Directly Edit BSAs
Check autoupdate on exit and/or click Update Now
Play!

If you didn't check the box for autoupdate on exit, then repeat this process after installing each new mod.

Finally, Timeslip has also created a standalone version of this feature, called BSAPatch, which will run with .NET 1.1 or with mono for those who don't have .NET 2.0. So far, our testing has shown it to work quite well (it uses the same BSA alteration code from OBMM 0.7.9), but you should probably still make a backup of your BSA files first just in case. Run it once to rename files in your BSA and run it again to restore them to their original names.

You can find more information and updates on this feature in the ESF thread: ArchiveInvalidation Revisited.

If you don't use this OBMM feature for some reason, then the only way to convince Oblivion to load these problem textures from the individual folders rather than from the .bsa files is to specifically force it to do this by creating a special file called (you guessed it) "ArchiveInvalidation.txt".

The ArchiveInvalidation.txt lists the relative path (from the "Data" folder) of texture files you want to replace the default artwork shipped with the game.

As a result of the extensive testing reported in the ArchiveInvalidation Explained threads, we now have very clear information about how ArchiveInvalidation works and how it fails to work. Suffice to say that it can get extremely complicated.

My current best practice, based on the above-mentioned research, is that ArchiveInvalidation.txt should only list just the DDS textures from the original game that are being replaced by individual files in your Data folders. In other words, this means it should only contain entries for texture replacement mods. No meshes, sounds, or voices should be listed.

Be aware, however, that many earlier approaches recommended listing ALL your moded meshes/textures/etc. in ArchiveInvalidation.txt, regardless of whether they replace anything from the original game.

If you do use any texture replacement mods, there is a high probability you will need an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file listing these replacements (if you don't use the OBMM's "Directly Edit BSAs" feature). Without it, chances are that many of Bethesda's default textures will continue to be loaded. Also, if you have bad entries in your ArchiveInvalidation.txt file, or even in some cases if your ArchiveInvalidation.txt file is perfectly correct, you may see items in the game appearing purple or even invisible.

Given all these warnings, if you still want to try using an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file, there are several fan-created tools that will generate these file listings for you automatically.

ElChE's Oblivion Automatic Content Validator 1.0.2 (also called Automatic Content Validator) will create an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file for you automatically, and it also does some other very useful things like making sure all of your meshes have valid texture paths. Be sure to get 1.0.2 or later because it adds the option to only generate listings for replacer files. You may need to manually remove any meshes from the list it generates.

Oblivion Mod Manager, which we mentioned earlier, also has an excellent set of options for automatically creating the ArchiveInvalidation.txt. This process executes automatically every time you quit from OBMM or use OBMM to launch Oblivion. Make sure to get version 0.7.10 or later.

If you prefer to create ArchiveInvalidation.txt by hand, this will work fine, but you can probably guess that it will quickly become a huge problem to maintain all the file listings if you try new replacers very often.

If you do create it by hand, here's what you need to do.

Create a text file named "ArchiveInvalidation.txt" in your main Oblivion folder. This is not the "Data" folder, but is one level up from that, in the same folder with OblivionLauncher.exe and Oblivion.exe. The reason for placing it here is primarily to avoid accidentally overwriting it when you install a new mod.

(You can put the ArchiveInvalidation.txt into your "Data" folder if you want. It will work there as well, but be wary of accidentally overwritting it during mod installation.)

For the sake of creating an example, let's say you have two replacer mods, one that replaces the texture for Daedric cuirasses and one that replaces the texture for glass shields. Your ArchiveInvalidation.txt would look something like this:

  textures/armor/Daedric/cuirass.dds
  textures/armor/glass/shield.dds

Note that textures whose names end with "_g.dds" and "_n.dds" don't need to be listed. Other DDS files that don't need to be listed include those in the Menu directory and those in "icon" directories.

If your replacer mod came packaged with an ArchiveInvalidation.txt file, you can copy and paste the contents of the lines of that file into yours. If you do this, be careful not to accidentally paste over any lines that you've previously added for other replacer mods.

Many people claim to use a "universal" or "global" ArchiveInvalidation.txt. However, extensive testing by numerious people has determined that this approach does not work at all. It is the same as running with no ArchiveInvalidation.txt file. If someone offers advice saying you should use a file like this:

  meshes/ \s
  textures/ \s
  sounds/ \s

Don't believe it. It's a great urban legend, but it doesn't work.

PLAYING THE MOD

The only thing left to do now is to activate the mod.

If you are using the Oblivion Mod Manager, either with or without .omod's, you can activate your mods through this program. This program has substantial features to make this easier, most notably the ability to sort the list by a variety of criteria, rather than the usual alphabetic.

If you do not use OBMM, open the Oblivion Launcher and click the "Data Files" button.

This will show you an alphabetical listing of all the .esm and .esp files you have installed.

The Oblivion.esm file must always be checked. The others shown in this list (usually .esp files) will represent whatever mods you have installed. (Note that some mods, like texture replacers, don't need an .esp, in which case you can skip this step.)

Check the new mod so that it is "X'ed" and start the game. If you did everything correctly, you should have no problems with your newly-installed mod.

You're done...

Can I get these mods on my Xbox-360?

The Official mods from Bethesda are available for the Xbox-360 via Xbox Live Marketplace.

Fan-made mods are NOT available for the Xbox-360.

Common Mod Issues

I installed the patch, how do I get my texture mods back?

(adapted from the article Optimising Oblivion v3.0: Into Modblivion

The most common issues people have had with Oblivion mods are:

The patch
Load order and mod conflicts
Missing archiveinvalidation entries

THE PATCH

The new 1.1 beta patch from Bethesda impacts the display of texture packs and the operation of mods.

The patch updates the compressed textures .bsa file, causing it to have a newer date than your texture replacement mods, and giving the textures in the .bsa file priority. This can be fixed by either:

Ensuring you have an accurate 'ArchiveInvalidation.txt' in your \Oblivion\ folder and that you do not have any other copies of it floating around, especially not in your "Data" folder since this may confuse the game about which version to use. (See the section on ArchiveInvalidation above for more info.) In addition to the OBMM tool already mentioned earlier, another excellent tool to automatically create this for you is the Oblivion Content Validator [download]

Re-set the date on 'Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa' back to its original date (24th Jan 2006). A handy tool for changing file dates is, funnily enough, FileDate Changer. [download]

(credit goes to Koroush Ghazi of Tweakguides for this link)

Oblivion.esm, the master data file, will have a new and recent date after the patch, causing it to appear near the end of your mod load order. Because this is an ESM file (Elder Scrolls Master), it will load before any ESP files (Elder Scrolls Plugin) and shouldn't cause any problems. However, if you have any other ESM files, you may need to reset the load order for Oblivion.esm. You can easily do this with Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM):

Download OBMM if you aren't already using it. [download]

In OBMM, set the view to 'Load order', click on 'Oblivion.esm', then click on 'Move up' until it's back at the very top.

LOAD ORDER AND MOD CONFLICTS

It's inevitable that the more mods you use, the greater the chances some of them will clash. While mods that address different areas of the game are, for the most part, clearly compatible it's not so simple for mods of similar intentions, due to the way the game handles its data structures.

For example, if you want to use "Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul" but prefer a different rate of skill levelling as provided by the "Level Rates Modified" mod - how does Oblivion handle the conflict?

Quite simply actually - the last mod loaded takes precedence. So if you did want to use the skill rates that "Level Rates Modified" provides, simply ensure it's loaded after Oscuro's. And how do you do this? Glad you asked.

SETTING THE LOAD ORDER

Oblivion loads mods by order of date. Ensuring a mod is 'newer' than another causes it be loaded last, and thus take priority.

The problem with this is that the mod selector under 'Data files' in the Oblivion launcher lists mods alphabetically - good to find and choose the mods you want to use, but doesn't tell you the order they are loaded in.

The best way to see the load order - and more importantly, re-order them - is with the excellent Oblivion Mod Manager tool (see above). You'll need .NET installed, but it's well worth it. From here you can simply click the 'Load order' view and then 'Move up' or 'Move down' on mods to re-order them.

Using OBMM, you can also test to see which mods have conflicts. Simply click

 Utilities -> Mod Conflict Report

and look at the list. Don't worry about 'green' or 'yellow' warnings, mods crossing data entities here are compatible unless they edit the exact same object (such as a location on a map), which is rare. The conflicts to look for are those in red - these are the ones where only one mod or the other can have its changes go through, and again the mod loaded last will stick.

If it looks a little overwhelming, follow this guide: as the levelled list mods like Osucro's or Sagerbliv's are the most important with regards to balance, load these mods last with the exception of specific changes you want to make to them - as with the example, using a mod like Level Rates Modified to set skill rates or the TF_time mod to make days last longer. This way you get the best of both worlds.

LOAD ORDER AND LOST ITEMS

Many people have experienced problems with losing stuff they had previously acquired after installing a new mod or updating an existing mod. This happens because Oblivion savegames keep track of items based in part on the load order.

If you've been playing with some mods for a while and then add a new mod or update an existing one, this may change the load order (a new mod may have an older date than mods already in the list, or an updated mod may have a newer date than the previous version.

This may cause Oblivion to lose track of which mod an item came from, or even worse, which mod added a storage container that you've stored a bunch of stuff in. If this happens, the items in question may disappear from your inventory or from a storage container.

Since the "Data Files" selector you get when running the default OblivionLauncher.exe lists mods alphabetically, you have no way of knowing what the load order is without using an external tool or using Windows Explorer to sort your "Data" folder by date.

This is yet another powerful argument for using a tool like Oblivion Mod Manager. It lists mods in load order and it automatically adds new mods to the end of the load list so they don't mess with your existing load order. OBMM also makes it easy to move mods up and down in list so you can make sure that an update to an existing mod gets moved into the same position previously occupied by the old version.

ARCHIVEINVALIDATION PROBLEMS

If your ArchiveInvalidation.txt file does not contain the proper entries, or is in the wrong location, etc., you may notice that some or all of the textures you installed with a mod will not work properly. This usually shows up as items becoming invisible or appearing purple when playing the game. See the section "How do I install mods?" in this FAQ for more information.

If you're still having problems with invisible, purple, or black items, please see ArchiveInvalidation Explained.

How do I make a mod?

The most important place to look for information about making mods, including many tutorials and how-to articles, is The Elder Scrolls (Official) Construction Set Wiki.

The best place to find help with the Construction Set is the official CS forum on the ESF boards.

If you're looking for technical details about the Oblivion file formats, fan-made tools, etc., you should definitely try the Oblivion Modding and Tech Support section of the UESP Wiki.

If you're looking for information on how to create 3D meshes for use in Oblivion, the NifTools Wiki is the place to look. (In particular, download the latest release of NifSkope and find help on the Help Forums.)

If you need to merge several plugins into a single mod, you'll need ScripterRon's TES4 Plugin Utility.

FAQ Credits

Assembled and adapted for Oblivion by dev_akm using material from:

lochnarus
Martigen
Tegger

Additional material, testing, and moral support provided by

Auctionmule
DoomedMarauder
Wonder Dog
Malifrax
Zanderat
Jarol
Scanti
adeliedreams
Acleacius
pintocat
Baphomet
MadBat
kalikut

and many others on the ESF forums and CanadianIce forums.

A lot of the material in this FAQ is based (at least loosely) on the Morrowind Mods FAQ, assembled by the moderators of the ESF boards with input from many others.

Version History & Notes

Last Updated 5-23-2006

Archeopterix has agreed to submit this to the forum administrators to try and get it pinned.

I have finally gotten permission from all the folks whose work I have mangled here.

Version History:

 0.1 - Initial draft
 0.2 - Added section about Xbox-360
 0.3 - Updated section on ArchiveInvalidation and added shortcut method for finding where you installed Oblivion.
 0.4 - More changes to ArchiveInvalidation sections; Made layout prettier; Updated File Compression section;
 0.5 - Minor changes to introduction and added new Problems section on "Load Order and Lost Items".
 0.6 - Added IZArc to list of archivers.
 0.7 - Added Endarire's Oblivion Mod List
 0.8 - Rewrote a large portion of the ArchiveInvalidation section. 
 0.9 - Updated ArchiveInvalidation section to recommend that you only include listings for DDS textures.
 1.0 - Updated credits.
 1.1 - Added filetype exceptions to ArchiveInvalidation section.
 1.2 - Got permission from Tegger via kalikut.
 1.3 - Updated ArchiveInvalidation info.
 1.4 - Massive rewrite of ArchiveInvalidation section based on current test results from 
       ArchiveInvalidation Explained.
 1.5 - Fixed the download link for BSAPatch
 1.6 - Converted formatting for Wiki
 1.7 - Minor updates to ArchiveInvalidation info
 1.8 - Edited info about the official mod installer for 64-bit version of Windows

Oblivion Mods FAQ

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