This is a list of mods that I use all the time. TBH, there aren't that many now. I grew bored of the conflicts and game crashes that mods always caused. What's left is largely about graphics or music. I'll leave the mods to the professionals.
Oblivion
Sounds and Music
- Oblivion Stereo Sound Overhaul: Dramatically improves the quality of many of Oblivion's stock ambient sounds. Also adds several new sounds for wind and thunder.
- Storms and Sounds: Adds better sounds for most weather conditions. This mod comes with files that work with vanilla Oblivion weather as well as many major weather mods.
- More Immersive Sound: Adds more ambient and nature sounds.
- Atmospheric Oblivion: Adds several more ambient sounds, such as ghostly moans to haunted forts or howls of animals to the night.
- Matti Paalanen's Music:
- Battle Music Pack: Adds eight new battle music themes.
- Dungeon Music Pack: Adds six new dungeon music themes.
- Explore Music Pack 1: Adds eight new overworld (Tamriel exploration) music themes.
- Explore Music Pack 2: Adds another seven new overworld music themes.
- Public Music Pack: Adds seven new city music themes.
Graphical Tweaks
- Alluring Potion Bottles: Adds 35 glass bottles for potions instead of the standard green and pink.
- Book Jackets: Replaces the rather boring default book covers and gives each one a unique appearance. Makes your library look really impressive.
- Improved Fruits Vegetables and Meats: Makes ingredients look much more realistic.
- Kafeis Better Amulet Replacer: Simply makes the amulets in the game look much prettier.
- Kafeis Better Ring Replacer: Does the same for rings.
- Leviathan Soulgems: Makes the dull Oblivion soul gems look like they did in Morrowind.
- RAEVWD: Really Almost Everything Visible with Distance. This mod makes buildings appear at much greater distances than usual meaning your game looks beautiful at the cost of melting your processor.
Gameplay Changes
- Harvest Flora: This is how ingredient harvesting should have worked. It alters the appearance of flowers from which you have harvested the ingredient so they look different to the originals.
- Toggleable Quantity Prompt: Allows you to auto-select one item from a stack by holding CTRL, or the entire stack by holding SHIFT. This makes so many things so much easier.
New or Changed Locations
(none)
New Items
- Keychain: Replaces the 100 different keys clogging up your inventory screen with one keychain. Brilliant idea.
Quests
(none)
Other
- Oblivion Script Extender: Necessary for some of the more advanced mods to run.
Mods I Tried and Discarded
- Akatosh Mount: Gives you a dragon you can summon on demand and then fly. Sounds cool, but it's too fast and utterly unrealistic.
- Natural Environments: Makes trees look a lot nicer, but I had many problems with this mod.
- Open Cities: Great idea, but crashes most other mods.
- Quarl's Texture Pack: Makes textures look a lot more detailed, but really slows the game down. Unless you're running an absolutely incredible machine, you can use either RAEVWD or this, but not both.
- Clocks of Cyrodiil: Simply adds a variety of clocks to the game. From carriage clocks on mantelpieces to huge clocks on the outside of buildings. Doesn't do much except look nice and make it easier to find out the time.
- Armory Lab: Creates a hidden house attached to all the existing houses for sale. Comes with an alchemy and spellmaking room, armor displays, a garden, a library and more storage space than you could ever fill.
- Bank of Cyrodiil: A new bank has opened for business in the Market District, with branches all over Cyrodiil. If only real banks gave you this much interest...
- Better Benirus Manor: Having written my own mod that rebuilt the wall around Benirus Manor, I was a bit irritated to find this one that did it better. It does a lot more though.
- Better Benirus Manor - Helping Hands: Adds a servant to the Better Benirus Manor.
- Bravil Sea Domes: An unusual, underwater house. I must confess I rarely use the house, but it's unusual and well-done so I keep it installed.
- Elsweyr - the Deserts of Anequina: Huge mod that adds the northern two thirds of Elsweyr to the game. Stunning stuff, but several problems reduce enjoyment.
- Glenvar Castle: Adds a huge castle south of Lake Rumare and a quest to make it your own.
- Stirk: Lets you explore the island of Stirk, west of Anvil. A new location with several new quests.
- Temple of Nirn: This one is a bit of a cheat. Adds a new temple containing chests that can only be opened by gathering nirnroot. The rewards are very overpowered though.
- Unique Landscapes: All the Unique Landscapes mods add vast, beautiful vistas instead of the repetitive terrain in Cyrodiil. This URL is for the full OMOD that includes the whole lot, but you still have options to disable ones you don't like.
- Adonnays Elven Weaponry: Adds a variety of powerful new weapons available for sale and some that must be uncovered in Ayleid ruins.
- Dwemer Spectacles: Lets you choose from a variety of eye-wear, from eyepatches to elaborate alchemists' goggles. Gives you an extra slot to enchant.
- AFK Weye: Hugely expands the village of Weye and adds several quests that let you win a large manor house.
- Kvatch Rebuilt: One of a few mods that let you rebuild the city of Kvatch. This is my favourite of the ones I've tried.
- Thievery in the Imperial City: Adds a new store in the Market District. Once you gain the proprietor's trust, he has a number of items for you to... acquire.
Notes
- 2pac4eva7 should learn that a woman who looked like that wouldn't be running around killing monsters, she'd be constantly complaining about lower back pain.
Morrowind
Graphical Tweaks
- Better Bodies: replaces the rather nasty segmented bodies of standard Morrowind with smooth and far more detailed versions.
- THE Facepack Compilation: What Better Bodies does for bodies, this does for faces. Makes things much prettier.
New Locations
- Tamriel Rebuilt: A gigantic effort to create mainland Morrowind. Features some of the best scenery ever to be rendered in the TES III engine.
Other
- Morrowind Code Patch: Fixes several engine bugs, and expands the map so you can see where you are when playing Tamriel Rebuilt.
- Morrowind Graphics Extender: Adds huge graphics improvements, most notably Distant Land, which extends the field of view so that, for instance, you can see Solstheim from Ald Velothi on a clear day.
Mods I Tried and Discarded
- Morrowind FPS Optimizer: Provides a wealth of options for improving speed and graphics quality. Doesn't work if you install the Code Patch, and to be honest my machine is fast enough to run MW without it anyway.