Check out this site. There's a TON of reading, but by the end of it, you'll know exactly which graphics mods you'll want to install.
Regarding the game itself, I've played with many of the gameplay mods and overhauls out there, and as great as many of them are, I've actually come back around to just enjoying vanilla Oblivion (mostly - see below). Sure, it's far from perfect, and it is certainly more action game than RPG, but that's exactly what I liked about Daggerfall too. I love the amount of freedom they give you in playing your character by not forcing you into a rigidly defined archetype Are you a warrior who wants to cast a powerful spell? Go ahead and start practicing. A mage with a hankering to snipe enemies? Grab a bow, Gandalf. The story sucks, the NPCs are mostly uninteresting, and some of the mechanics are downright awful, but the core gameplay is so much fun for me that none of that matters.
There are only two actual gameplay mods I play with now:
- Alternative Start By Ship
This is just my personal preference to save time, as I am always creating new characters. - 100% Harvest Chance
Again, just to save time. Makes it less of a chore to max Alchemy.
The rest of the mods I use are for the graphics, and actually, I also scaled back a fair bit on those as well. I was running with QTP3, hi-res LOD enhancements, a bunch of ultra-high-quality item models and so on and so forth, but I came to prefer faster load times to all the eye candy. Now I'm just running with a few relatively minor tweak mods:
- DarNified UI
Because the default one sucks, let's face it. - Illumination Within
Makes the cities much more pleasant to navigate at night. A must-have mod in my opinion. - Far View
Does exactly what it sounds like. Another must-have. - Beaming Sunglare
It's basically a lens flare. Looks nice. Ya can't go wrong. - Enhanced Water
Self-explanatory. Easier to see underwater. Good stuff. - Short Grass V3
The default grass is okay, but this just makes it easier to find items.
I also use a few .ini tweaks to increase grass and tree draw distance. But as you can see, even my graphic tweaks are mainly just for convenience. I guess I kind of ran this post into somewhat of a ramble, but the bottom line is that I think the vanilla game is just gravy, if not particularly great, and even though I can understand the majority of the criticisms, I also think it just might not be a game for everyone. As you can clearly see, however, I personally still love the hell out of it. :)
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