Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul Mod 1.01 addon

OSCURO'S OBLIVION OVERHAUL
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I decided to make this mod after realizing that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
suffered from significant gameplay and "realism"
problems that, in my view, detracted from the potential enjoyment of such a
beautiful and massive RPG. Creating, balancing,
and testing the needed changes was a time-consuming task, but the result is a
more rewarding experience that I hope also
helps those of you that found the game wanting upon release.

The following list describes the problems and how I addressed them:

The first major issue is that of linearity of challenge. In Oblivion, quests
and combat encounters are "leveled" relative
to the level of the player's character. This concept, while offering some good
gameplay elements (freedom of choice,
gentle learning curve, etc.) was implemented too indiscriminately. The sense of
accomplishment in improving one's avatar
suffers because the world is constantly changing to meet a pre-designed level
of challenge. Also, "realism" and "immersion"
disappear when the player notices glitches in the continuity of the world (Town
guards so high in level that one wonders
why they need a "hero" after all; lowly creatures that can suddenly give
High-Chancellor Ocato a senseless beating, etc.)

The goal of this mod is to increase the overall challenge of the game, to
increase the chances of the unexpected to happen,
to reduce the flaws that hurt the "realism-factor" of the "leveled" system, to
tweak item rarity and presence in the world,
to add some new content and, lastly, to change some of the variables of the
game system to balance its gameplay.

To preserve the positive aspects of the "leveled" system and remedy the
negative ones, this mod changes the following:

I went through every NPC and creature in order to cap their max level. In
general, the caps fall mostly between 4 and 40,
with some special cases. Every modification allowed a range where the creature
or NPC can level relative to the level of
the player; those that were capped or static by default I left untouched. The
criteria to choose the level of caps took into
account the relative power of the creature, the frequency, the status (named,
boss, occupation), the relevance for the
main quest and guild quests, the lore of tamriel, etc. Also, most of these
changes also included a minimum level. This
will enhance the sense of danger when traveling into unknown areas, it will
also add to the realism of the game's
world and, finally, provide a sense of accomplishment when what once was a
threat becomes a hunt for sport. A complete list
would be too large for a readme file, here are some of the most significant and
common changes:

1- Daedra remain unchanged except for capped levels. Also, their spawn lists
were changed to give a more random chance of
encountering weaker daedra at higher levels. For example, Fire atronarchs,
clannfears and scamps can appear in oblivion
areas, gates, special dungeons, etc, regardless of the level of the player. The
higher level daedra have a slightly
higher chance of spawning, to keep the player on guard.

2- Dremoras are now significantly more powerful. Markynaz and Valkynaz have
their levels capped but with a range where they
keep up with the player. Every leveled list that included dremoras is now
updated, even quest ones. This means that some
quests, specially the main quest, will be more difficult and the player will
not be able to complete them at low levels.
Roughly, a level 20-25 will stand a chance, anything below that and it will be
a world of hurt. At a player level of 40+
almost all dremoras will be lower than the player, with the exception of some
special cases. At lvl 50 the player should
be able to mop the floor with just about every creature in Cyrodiil. (Example:
Kynval are lvl 12, in most cases they will
not spawn unless the player is level 13--the intervals of Dremora reach near
lvl 40)

3- Vampires are very different now. There are four different types of vampires:
regular, fearsome, deadly and ancient.
They all have an interval where they will appear in the usual vampire havens
and dungeons. The space between the intervals
allows the player to experience both challenge and a good ol-fashioned
vampire-killing spree. For example, at lvl 16 there
is a good chance that you can clean up a vampire nest with ease (except if
patriarchs or matriarchs are around) Anything
below level 8 will have a very tough time against the regular vampires. Deadly
and ancient vampires carry specially good
loot, but they will not show up until level 25 or so. Again, some surprises are
in store for the daring adventurer. The
most powerful vampires are the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs. These will
appear in the late stages of the game provided
that you have not cleaned every other regular patriarch or matriarch in
Cyrodiil, something hard to do unless you reach mid
twenties. Some dungeons will become "re-occupied" if you clean them early on.
Rumor has it that a very powerful vampire lord
has brought to Cyrodiil a feared relic in order to cleanse it of its power with
the aid of other elder buddies of his kin.

4- Goblins of different tribes vary now in power. Some are rather scrawny,
others are now very strong in comparison. All
of their levels and loot tables are capped and adjusted accordingly, plus a new
item here and there if you can find them.
regular, run-of-the-mill gobbies are also capped and tweaked, the warlords will
give you a good beating unless you are a
seasoned adventurer.

5- Mythic creature leveled lists are modified so that there is a chance that
lower level critters will spawn even at high
levels. This is specially prevalent in wilderness areas, where now there is
also the chance that powerful creatures may
surprise the wandering player. That is, there is now the slight possibility
that you will run into very tough fights while
exploring the wild. The more remote and inaccessible the area, the higher the
likelihood of an untimely encounter. The
strongest of mythic creatures, the Minotaurs, are capped but can put up a fight
even against the experienced player.

6- Undead are mostly untouched, except for level caps on their strongest
versions: wraiths/Lichs. Some skeletons are a bit
stronger but they remain among the weakest of the undead, alongside zombies.
Leveled lists for undead are modified so that
there is now the chance that they will spawn weak undead regardless of the
level of the player. Again, higher level undead
have a greater chance of appearing in these situations.

8- Bandits, Marauders, Conjurers and Necromancers are capped, their loot lists
adjusted and spread at variety of level ranges
so that some difference between them is apparent. Bandits can be very low level
and reach early twenties. Some exceptions
are the bandit bosses and the infamous Black Bow Bandit crew. Marauders tend to
be slightly more powerful. Necromancers
and Conjurers will give some trouble to the inexperienced adventurer, but later
on they will easily become cannon-fodder.
However, the boss versions are rather powerful. The expulsion of necromancers
from the Mages Guild has bred resentment.
Necromancers of Tamriel, under the guide of the experienced Fayth Noor, gather
in Cyrodiil to plot against the Archmage.

9- Every guard in game is now level-capped. They are not lowly beginners, but
you will not get the feeling that they are so
powerful that your presence in Cyrodiil is a nuisance. At high levels you will
be able to school most guards. Some towns have
stronger regiments, others are weaker. Guards in the stages of the main quest
are leveled appropriately, stocked with some
healing potions and ready to rumble. Still, powerful enemies will take them
down more easily than they can do the same to
you. This also applies to the blades and the imperial guards.

10- Every citizen of Cyrodiil, friendly or not, is level capped, when possible,
in-synch with the difficulty of the quests
with which they are associated. I have tried to give them a generous level
range so as not to stiffle or demean the quest
progression. With that said, a lot of npcs involved in quests have minimum
level caps which means that you may not be able
to finish the hard guild quests early on. A great feature of this change is
that you will no longer get your ass handed
down to you by a hoe wielding punk of a farmer after you pilfer his house clean
or take his daughter to the "barn."

11- The levels of the Arena fights are completely changed. They do not simply
scale according to your level. Now, each
batch of fighters has its own level range, increasing up until a much more epic
fight with the Grandchampion. You will
not be able to beat the Arena unless you are highly experienced and decked out.
This is a significant change from the
original, where the Grandchampion of Cyrodiil, capital of Tamriel, was a
fearsome level 10 warrior! Morituri te salutan!

12- Finally, every loot table and NPC-gear table has been adjusted to match
their occupation and status. You will not find
hardly any npcs with Elven, Ebony or above, except in some cases to flesh out
the mysteries of Tamriel. The same applies to
monsters, except powerful ones, and Bandits, Highwaymen and Marauders. Also,
even at higher levels they will not constantly
sport chainmail, mithril, dwarven and orcish. They will still appear in
leather, iron, fur and steel on a regular basis.

Those changes addressed some of the problems that I found with the "leveled"
system. I believe that the game's atmosphere
and gameplay improve greatly with them. I added a few more changes for the sake
of rounding the mod, also with the aim of
improving realism, tweaking lackluster skills, birthsigns and a few other
issues. The changes are:

1- Every loot table for armor, weapons, gems, jewelry and special items has
been revamped, except most of the quest-related
ones. The aim here was to make items more scarce and rare until higher levels.
For example, Dwarven will not appear at
lvl 6, but lvl 13+; Daedric will not begin to drop until around very early
thirties. The same formula, scaled appropriately,
I applied to the remaining lists. Powerful items will be more special and not
simply lying around at every corner after
level 20. (As an aside, the editor for Oblivion has a few bugs, one of which
affects how items and levels in lists are
organized, I went through the lists as many times as I could before going
completely bananas--you try going through hundreds
of items across hundreds of cross-referenced lists--but inconsistencies may
remain here, some by design, others by bug and
yet others because I didn't feel like tweaking them any longer.)

2- The value of gems, jewelry, silver house-wares and pelts is now higher so
that thieves have a greater enticement in
risking their neck than the measly gold coin that they can squeeze out of a
silver fork.

3- A few new items now appear near or in powerful NPCs. These are not mighty or
common enough to imbalance the game, but
they add some flavor to the also new NPCs.

4- Birthsigns have changed. I have kept the original spirit of each
constellation but I have modified their effects, and
added new ones, to balance them out. Unless you are interested in roleplaying a
cursed character, very few people would
choose the sign of the Lord (90 hit point heal spell, 25% weakness to fire)
over the Mage (50 points of Magicka, as much
as a 25 bonus to INT would give, without penalties)

5- The skills of Hand to Hand and Sneak have some modifications. Hand to Hand
was sorely lacking at release. Its range is
very short, its damage can't hold a candle to powerful weapons, its rate of
block was half of wielded weapons and the player
cannot use gauntlets to add offensive on-hit spell effects as with every other
weapon. Now, hand to hand damage max is
higher, its rate of block also went up (although still lower than that for
weapons), it has a longer reach and its staggering
chance while blocking was adjusted upwards. Sneak Attacks now do slightly
higher damage at Journeyman and Expert ranks, x7
and x8 respectively. Marksman Sneak attacks in the same ranks are x3.5
(displays just as the normal x3) and x4 respectively.
Also, disarming chances of Special Attacks and Blocks are now higher than a
poor 5%, which meant that only 1 out of 20 blows
would actually disarm an opponent. The chances to Knockdown and Paralyze with
Marksman Special Attacks also went up slightly.

6- Descriptions for the notices of Mastery achievement in-game are re-written
now to reflect a higher sense of pride and
accomplishment, rather than the same old text used in the prior perks' notices.
Descriptions of Birthsigns differ so as
to include the changes and additions. Finally, changes to the perks of Sneak
also appear in the notices brought up when
a player reaches a new rank.

7- The speed of arrows and magic attacks increases by 20% and 10% respectively.
This is done to offset the ease with which
one could avoid the ranged attacks of NPCs and monsters by timing sidesteps.

8- The minimum levels necessary to receive Daedra Lord quests at their shrines
is now higher for most of them--anywhere from
lvl 15 to lvl 20. This change obeys two reasons. First, it did not make a lot
of sense to me that a Daedric Lord would grant
a lowly lvl 2 the honor of serving under them with the promise of an item of
power. Now, in order to be a worthy champion,
you are going to need to know how to skin some beast other than sheep. The
second one is related to acquiring a decent level
before tackling more dangerous stages of the main quest--a build-up towards a
more epic finale.

9- Fighter's and Mage's Guilds in the main towns of Cyrodiil now have special
Storage Chests to stash the player's growing
inventory.

SPECIAL CASE IN THIS VERSION:
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10- Last, the day-time length is now doubled. It takes twice as long to
transverse between dusk and dawn. This change aims at
both "realism" and practicality. Some problems may occur with this change,
which will be removed in the next version of the
mod. Temporarily, one can edit Oscuros_Oblivion_Overhaul in the CS editor to
remove this setting. Do the following:

Open CS. Select Oblivion.esm and Oscuros_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp in the load
screen, check the "make Active File" on the
mod (.esp) file before you hit the load button. Load. Now go to "Gameplay"
menu, then to "Globals", scroll down until the
setting "Timescale." Now select it and hit delete. This will prompt a message
of warning, hit yes and now hit the save button.
Exit the editor. Restart Oblivion, make sure the mod is checked in data files,
and everything should work without problems
thereafter.
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These are the main changes that the mod addresses. I hope you enjoy it as much
as I do.

Oscuro
---------

oscuro9@msn.com

INSTALLATION:
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Unzip Oscuro_Oblivion_Overhaul.zip and extract the file
Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp into the "Data" folder that can be
found inside the main Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Folder.

(Example: C:/Program Files/Bethesda/Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion/Data/)

Once Oscuro's_Oblivion_Overhaul.esp is copied inside the "Data" folder, enable
it through Oblivion's Game Launcher under
the "Data Files" tab.

A word of caution:
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Because of increased difficulty, it is wise to use a permanent save slot before
you embark upon further stages of the main
quest, lest you find yourself unable to return from of the plane of Oblivion.

The amount and nature of these changes mean that not all of them are compatible
with existing savegames. In fact, if a new
game is not started after installing the mod then most of the improvements that
come with it will not take effect. It is
highly recommended that you begin a new game if you wish to run Oscuro's
Oblivion Overhaul.

Feel free to modify this mod as you see fit, although if you release it to the
public then make sure to let them know that
you used Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul as a base, in order to preserve
compatibility among mods.