Nehrim, mod bigger than the game.

[AceHigh]

After about 4 years of work a group of modders have released the English translation of their mod Nehrim.

Game:   The Elder Scrolls Oblivion

Mod:     Nehrim
Type:    Total conversion.

I have played it for several days now and I must say, it's way better than vanilla Oblivion. It has better story, more gameplay hours, improved gameplay, awesome missions and so much more....

Oh and this is where we come to a point that will make some of you uninterested in this mod at once. They had voice actors for all characters in Nehrim.... good voice actors, but German ones, as this mod was developed there. So the English version of the game is actually a translated version with subs running during speech. Personally I have seen so much anime in Japanese with annoying high pitched voices, that this was no problem for me at all, in any case you stop noticing it after a half an hour.

Technically it's a mod, but practically you disable oblivion.esm file to play, so you could say it's a free game that uses oblivion engine. Indeed, the terrain, cities and people remind me more of Gothic 2, than Oblivion.

So if you are interested give it a try. I can provide some links and easy instruction.

(click to show/hide)

Download the mod here:
http://www.nehrim.de/dataEV.html - I recommend torrent link on that site as it is very well seeded.
Install Oblivion, download latest patch here (the mod requires v1.2.0416, no need to have Shivering Isles)
Install Nehrim mod, recommended to be installed in a different folder than the game, not recommended to be installed to /Program files 86/... on Vista, Win7 because of security checks.
Nehrim launcher will start up, go to Data Files and deselect oblivion.esm and any other files like DLC packs, mods etc... enable the 3 Nehrim files (2 if you are German, then you don't need english pack) and play the game.

Oh they mentioned that they don't support piracy and their mod is not supporting nocd crack, so either run the game with your retail cd in, or download mini-iso and run it in daemon tools)

[Sosseres]

Does the mod use the default combat and level up system? If it does I'll skip, that was what broke the game for me. ^^

[AceHigh]

Level up system goes like this: for everything you do, you get xp points and level up when reaching a certain amount. when you level up you can raise your attributes, like in vanilla game, but you also get learning points, that are used up when trainers train you (training is much cheaper and you can train skill by a factor of 5 and 10 at once). Your skills still increase when you use them. So it's kind of combined system in that you both raise levels by using skills and training them whenever you have learning points. Also learning points are used when you read hunting books that teach you to skin creatures, pull out their teeth, heart etc.... Haven't tried the armorer skill much, but it is used for crafting of new weapons from various materials and other crafting like mines, food, etc...

As for combat system, I guess you could add deadly reflex mod on top of this one, as I can't think of any conflict between those. Just get yourself a script extender and launch the game from it. I am playing a mage right now, so I haven't bothered to alter a combat system that I am not using anyway, but if I make a fighter, then I will try deadly reflex just so I can decapitate, sever arms, impale, kick, shield bash and so on.

Deadly Reflex mod.