I've mentioned in asides in the past working with Lovers with PK, an Oblivion mod of a... oh, let's call it "more adult" nature. I haven't been intentionally holding out on you guys in this regard, it's just that it's been something like four months now, and I'm just now getting it all in line. It's truly massive mod, comprised of dozens of optional plugins.
I'm not posting about that, though, since I still haven't gotten it all figured out myself, just yet.
What I'm posting abut, is my messing with those mods has led to several others that are apparently popular. Namely:
Modular Beautiful People, MPB++, and XEOSP.
The MBP files are new races; but can also modify vanilla races if you use that plugin. For those interested in trying it, MBP 1.4 gets installed first, with the ++ version overwriting. Be careful, these install a lot of stuff; and the omod for the main part is in Japanese, so you may want to make a backup of your data directory, in case you don't like something it does.
What really got me, was what the package did to the vanilla elves.
I'm sure many of you remember my version of Aribeth, from Neverwinter Nights:
Well, here's how she looks now:
I didn't touch the plugin; that's just MBP's race edits to the new meshes and textures. Cute, yes; but looks nothing like the original character anymore.
It did similar to all the other high elves. Don't know that I've encountered a wood elf or dark elf yet in the new game, but I expect them to be similar.
Race edits aside, the two MBP mods are very nice if you're interested in non-standard characters. There are dozens of new races including: "Tolkien" elves, Mystic Elves, Blood Witches, several forms of Tabaxi, Ainmhi, various "lop-eared" elves in standard and toy groups; amongst many others. I will forewarn that many don't work right "from the box" - apparently the authors don't feel the need to include all the resources in the packages to actually make the races in the master display correctly. I'm still tracking several of them down, and will most likely update with more links when I find them.
XEOSP is an NPC beauty overhaul. It's different. This is one of those "anime inspired" mods. It's not for everyone, but I like it. I actually run this one alongside Colourwheel's Oblivion Overhaul, which I have loudly praised before. I run XEOSP lower in the load order, so that it takes precedence. XEO does some neat stuff, but it does not affect guards; which Miss Colourwheel helpfully converts to virtually all females in skimpy, midriff-revealing armor.
Now, when I say "anime inspired" I mean it. I was walking through the IC Market, and noticed that beggar (Simplicia the slow, I think?) now had bright blue hair. Don't get me wrong, it was not unattractive a look... but if you're one of those annoying "immersion" players? Skip this one. You'll hate it.
These three mods actually took a bit of time for me to get running. Being the obstinate ass that I am, I refuse to create a "bash patch"; believing instead that most all such issues can be solved by careful load order finagling - and those that can't are probably heavy enough conflicts that you need to just remove one of the mods and be done with it.
It's interesting and a bit sad. On the one hand, CW's overhaul, MBP, XEO, and Apachii's Goddess Store has pretty heavily transformed my game world. It doesn't even look like the same set of NPCs anymore. On t'other hand, it's pretty sad that I've been playing this game since September 2006 and I'm just now getting into installing this stuff.
If it's any consolation, you're not the only one. I've had Oblivion for roughly the same amount of time, never finished the MQ, and every time I think I've finally got it tweaked to my liking and am going to do a new playthrough I inevitably discover some new mod that I want to have installed and in use from the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteIn my case, though, the conflicts don't stem so much from plugins clashing to cause crashes as much as from things attempting to edit the same worldspaces. I've had to do a lot of that load order finagling to get things in place without having those big surreal gashes in my landscape. I wanted to use Colourwheel's Sexy Ayleid Shrine, but it conflicts in just such a way with Heart of the Dead. So I had to choose between a major quest mod and girls in panties, and finally had to go with the major quest (though there's nothing wrong with girls in panties).
Anyway, thanks for sharing. Sometimes I forget that there are other sources for these things besides the Nexus, and I probably should explore around the web more than I do.