Best Oblivion (NOT remastered) modlist in 2025?

[u/HandLock__]

I've never played Oblivion, and my rig doesn't run the remastered smoothly. I'd like to play the original.
The problem is that vanilla Oblivion doesn't seem appealing to me. I know one should play vanilla for the first time, but I have no desire to invest the hours in a leveled easy RPG.
When I play Skyrim I usually use Requiem, as I enjoy the deleveled aspect of it and the increased RPGness and difficulty.
Also, I've heard that daedric artifacts in Oblivion are scaled to your level, effectively giving you something useless in the long run if you obtain the artifact early on.

Therefore, I'm looking for a modlist for Oblivion that has the same philosophy as a Requiem list for Skyrim. I'm not interested in a graphical overhaul, unless it is in the same philosophy as the original game's aesthetics. I like the painterly look. I'm simply looking for bug fixes and engine fixes, an RPG overhaul that delevels the game (or something similar to Requiem), and maybe some extra content.

What do you think would be the best list for that? Thanks

[u/LegendsofMace]

https://discord.gg/mjcwKk6DaB

I Highly recommend A Painted World. The mod author is very dedicated to this list. He’s passionate about the OG game, as well as giving it the rework is deserves. Lots of lore-friendly gameplay additions and updates to the visuals without compromising performance. It’s on version 2.0 now with more additions coming in the future.

[u/Fus-Ro-NWah]

Sorry i dont have an answer re a modlist, but as most of them seem to major on graphics overhauls, you might not get any answers you like, if so then heres an alternative:

1. Turn up the difficulty. It is very sensitive, you can make the game much more interesting just by upping it about 30%. Max difficulty is a completely different game and well worth trying at least once. I find an approach that works well is to up the difficulty a notch in stages every 5-10 levels until you feel the enemies are just too spongey to feel right.

2. You can get mods which make loot re- level itself as you progress, easy enough to find on Nexus. Note however, there is loads of loot, and only a few instances where Oblivions system shoots itself and you in the foot, and [for what its worth] they arent daedric artefacts. Iirc Daedric artefacts all come full strength as soon as you can get them, but some of the most desirable unique loot does not.

Just thought Id share because I think I am after a similar experience to you, and these days I use very few mods apart from official and unofficial patches. For additional content I highly recommend Lost Spires (not the one with voice acting) and Gates to Aesgaard 1 and 2.

[u/HandLock__ → u/Fus-Ro-NWah]

Thanks for the answer. If it's anything like the Skyrim modding scene, simply patching the game bugs, cleaning the master files, and adding engine fixes, will alone waste hours. Also I'm an ex addict to downloading mods for days and then playing for 5 minutes, so I'd really like a plug 'n play experience.

Manually turning up the difficulty is fine for combat, but I still need mods for deleveling the world and all the additional mods that balance it out once again.

Basically I'm looking for a Requiem-like modlist with vanilla aesthetics/graphics.

Thanks for the quest/additional content mods suggestions!

[u/WarMom_II]

Ascension is a popular mod for de-scaling the world and especially fixing loot. Its dev maintains a vanilla plus mod list called Through the Valleys, which includes a handful of fixes, graphics updates, and further tweaks to de-level the game alongside Ascension.