Oblivion Remastered is here, and mod development is already in full swing in the community. We present some of the most useful fan creations.
Mods are as much a part of Bethesda role-playing games as mayonnaise is to fries. Whether it’s Skyrim, Fallout 4, or Starfield, as soon as these games were released, it was only a matter of hours before the first modifications from the community landed online.
This now also applies to the Oblivion Remaster According to Bethesda, the new version will not receive any official mod support, such as a Creation Kit. But that’s obviously not holding back the modding scene. In the few days since the remaster was released, over 900 mods have already been posted on the community forum Nexus Mods (as of April 28).
These range from simple weapon skins to extensive performance adjustments. We’ll show you some particularly useful modifications.
Quick navigation
- Less ugly info boxes
- Better crosshairs, no hit markers
- Remove level restrictions on items
- More balanced difficulty levels
- Less harsh level scaling
- Achievements at last
- A first performance fix
How do you download mods?
The most important place to go for mods for Elder Scrolls games has always been the Nexus Mods platform. Here you can get an overview of which modifications are currently popular and filter them by categories such as weapon replacers or interface customizations.
(Click here for the Nexus page for Oblivion Remastered )
The in-house mod manager Vortex does not seem to work with Oblivion Remastered yet. Therefore, you will need to manually unzip the mods downloaded from Nexus and copy them to the installation folder of Oblivion Remastered.
This can be found by default under (Your hard drive)(Steam/Xbox folder)Oblivion RemasteredOblivionRemasteredContentDevObvDataData. However, not all files need to be placed in the Data folder! If in doubt, always follow the instructions on the relevant page at Nexus Mods.
Less ugly infoboxes
The mod Less Ugly Black Infoboxesdoes exactly what it says: it makes the infoboxes in the game less ugly. Instead of an obtrusive and not particularly immersive black box, the info texts are now only faintly highlighted after installing this small mod.
Better crosshairs, no hit markers
Another visual improvement (besides the stylish UE5 graphics, of course) in Oblivion Remastered is the large crosshairs with hit markers. However, this isn’t for everyone. If you want a more visually subtle interface, then the mods Better Reticle and No Hit Marker are probably just right for you.
The former removes the large crosshairs and replaces them with a simple golden dot that shows you where you are aiming. No Hit Marker, on the other hand… well, removes the hit marker effect.
Remove level restrictions on items
The fact that quest rewards are often tied to a specific level was already a source of frustration in the old Oblivion. If you find your favorite weapon at level five, for example, it will become completely useless later on. To prevent this from happening in the remaster, there is the mod Unleveled Item Rewards
According to the mod creator, this removes the annoying
level restriction and always sets quest rewards to your current level. This means that the Blade of Sorrow, the dagger of the Dark Brotherhood, remains a useful dagger even in the late game.
More balanced difficulty levels
The Oblivion Remaster retires the old difficulty slider and borrows the five-tier ranking system from Skyrim. You choose between novice, apprentice, adept, expert, and master, and are served a correspondingly easier or more difficult gaming experience.
Unfortunately, this change means that granular settings are lost and the jumps between the individual difficulty levels feel huge. The mod Difficulty Slider Fixed adjusts the damage multipliers for the individual difficulty levels and shifts them towards the old Oblivion.
Mitigated Level Scaling
Normally, the controversial level scaling in Oblivion ensures that enemies become progressively stronger as your character progresses through the game. The mod Leveled Creature and Item Diversitydoes not completely eliminate this, but it ensures that enemies of lower difficulty levels can still spawn at higher player levels.
This means that not all mud crabs are automatically level 25; you’ll still find plenty of weaker enemies that you can make short work of.
Achievements at last
Admit it: you were overwhelmed once again and used a console command to fast travel to the nearest merchant. Normally, Oblivion Remaster disables achievements for the corresponding save game when you use the cheat console for the first time. The mod Universal Achievement Unblocker provides a workaround. It removes the annoying restriction and also ensures that you can still get achievements retroactively on already messed up save games.
A first performance fix
Due to a lack of optimization, Oblivion Remaster causes problems even on powerful computers with modern hardware. With only medium graphics settings, even an RTX 4060 Ti graphics card can experience severe FPS drops to below 30 frames per second.
Modders believe they have identified the culprit: the hardware-hungry graphics component of Unreal Engine 5. The mod Ultimate Engine Tweaks has taken it upon itself to fix the performance issues. It rewrites the configuration file Engine.ini
with the aim of eliminating frame stuttering and latency issues, improving image quality, and boosting overall performance.
You can read more news about the remaster of the fourth Elder Scrolls game in the link box above. Here you’ll find our helpful beginner’s guide with 10 tips for the game. We’ll also reveal how you can unlock Daedric armor right at the start of the game with the help of a simple repair hammer. That’s because numerous tricks and exploits from the original Oblivion still work in the remaster.
