Mods are the lifeblood of any new Elder Scrolls game or Bethesda title, and though The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is technically neither new nor developed by Bethesda Game Studios, the expectation for most people likely is for it to build up an extensive and active modding community over time. Of course, with the game having shadow dropped only recently, it’s going to take some time for it to get to that point. But even though it’s early days yet, Oblivion Remastered does already have several smaller-scale but solid PC mods available nonetheless. Here, we’re going to talk about a few of the best mods you can get for the remastered open world action RPG on NexusMods.
TECH IMPROVEMENTS
Oblivion Remastered is already a pretty comprehensive upgrade over the original game as it is, but those looking to make further optimizations should turn their attention to the Ultimate Engine Tweaks mod by P40L0. Included among its several visual and technical improvements are better frame rates, reduced stuttering, improved input latency, improved DLSS and FSR upscaling, better picture clarity thanks to the removal of chromatic aberration and film grain, and more. The difference is quite noticeable.
RESHADE
Oblivion Remastered makes some significant changes to the 2006 original’s visual aesthetic, to say the very least, but for those hoping for an experience that reverses some of that while still maintaining the leap in technical quality, the Ayleid Reshade mod is worth checking out. It swaps the relatively more subdued and grounded visual style of the remake with something that’s much brighter and louder. It’s obviously still a far cry from the original Oblivion’s look, but it does come much closer than the remake’s base form.
BETTER FOV
Sticking with tech improvements for a little while longer, there is, as you would expect, also a mod available that lets you improve the game’s field of view range. With the Better FoV mod by Caites, you can set your FoV to anything in a range of 60 to 140. In contrast, without the mod, Oblivion Remastered offers an FoV range of 70 to 100.
INVENTORY
Inventory management is always something of a pain in Bethesda RPGs, given how quickly you can hit the cap on your carry capacity. Thankfully, there’s a mod available that lets you address that- though in amusingly creative fashion. NexusMod user Erok’s Carry Weight Modifier mod changes the weight value of a single lockpick to -150, which means the more lockpicks you’re carrying, the higher your inventory capacity will go. Stock up on lockpicks and carry whatever you want, and as much of it as you want to.
LOCKPICKS AND REPAIRS
Speaking of lockpicks, if you want to remove the hassle of having to get your hands on as many as possible (or at least significantly lessen it), IxionXVII’s More Lockpicks and Repair Hammers mod is the mod for you. This mod increases the amount of lootable lockpicks and repair hammers you can find in the world by either 100 percent or 200 percent, depending on which version of the mod you choose. A third version goes even farther by adding lootable lockpicks and repair hammers to crates and barrels as well.
HORSEBACK TRAVERSAL
Sometimes the simplest mods can turn out to be the most useful, and this one definitely feels like one of those, especially if horseback riding is your preferred way of making your way around Cyrodiil. The Simple Faster Horses mod by StefN does exactly what its name suggests- it increases the movement speed for the game’s horses. Specifically, horse movement speed is bumped up by 10, so you should feel a noticeable difference.
MORE HORSE IMPROVEMENTS
Speaking of horses, here’s another mod that improves the implementation of mounts in Oblivion Remastered. Being able to summon your horse is the sort of basic feature that you’d ideally want to see in the game even without mods, but at the very least, PushTheWinButton’s Horse Whistle mod does let you do that. In fact, in addition to summoning your horse by whistling, the mod also lets you make your mount follow you as you move around on foot.
QUEST NPCs
Few things in video games are as annoying as quests where you have to walk with NPCs who are moving too slow, in turn making you have to slow down as well. Thankfully, the Elder Scrolls modding community doesn’t disappoint, because there is a fix for that. NexusMod user Dispensation’s Quest NPCs Run mod does what it says on the tin, and makes NPCs and companions in specific quests run instead of walk when you have to accompany them. It may look jankier, but honestly, Oblivion’s a supremely janky game anyway, so eh.
NPCs LEVEL CAPS
Oblivion’s infamously inconsistent level scaling issues have been addressed to a great degree by the newly released remaster as is, but lingering issues still remain. PusTheWinButton’s Balanced NPC Level Cap mod addresses a few of those, specifically by adding maximum level caps to every NPC in the game. With the mod installed, regardless of how high your own level climbs, NPCs will stop growing alongside you after a certain point.
ITEM AND CREATURE SPAWNING
Here’s another mod, also by NexusMods user PushTheWinButton, which attempts to address Oblivion’s level scaling issues. The vanilla version of the game stops spawning low level enemies and items as your own level increases, though the Leveled Creature and Item Diversity mod addresses that issue by bringing those low level spawns back into the mix.
NPCs ON FIRE
Honestly, we’ve put this one in here just to add a little bit of chaos to the proceedings, because chaos is never not fun, especially in an Elder Scrolls game. SpiderAkira’s NPCs Catch Fire mod leaves nothing to the imagination with its name. With the mod installed, NPCs can now catch on fire when standing close to flames. That’s pretty much it.
RICH VENDORS
Selling items in your inventory to vendors is easier said than done in Oblivion, because vendors can only pay you so much gold. If they run out of gold to pay with, no matter how many items you have or how valuable they might be on paper, you’re not going to get anything for them. With Erok’s Richer Vendors mod, however, every vendor in the game is going to have either 1000 gold each, or be ten times richer than they are in the vanilla game, whichever’s highest.
HUD IMPROVEMENTS
Oblivion Remastered already features considerable improvements over the original games where its HUD and UI are concerned, but there’s still more improvements that you can apply to the game with Caites’ Better HUD mod. Specifically, this mod pushes the compass and health, mana, and stamina bars further out to the screen’s edges, reduces the compass’ size by 60 percent, places the gauges vertically in the left corner, and makes status symbols less prominent. The mod also works with multiple aspect ratios.
DIFFICULTY CHANGES
Oblivion Remastered features multiple set difficulty settings rather than letting players control things with sliders the way the original did, and though that mostly works out, some of the balancing in terms of damage multipliers across the difficulty settings is a bit inconsistent. IxionXVII’s Difficulty Slider Fixed mod attempts to fix that by tweaking the multipliers across all settings to make the jumps feel less drastic. Best of all, the mod doesn’t disable achievements, at least in its current form.
