Unauthorized Oblivion

We break all the rules and change our adventuring lives forever

Words: Joshua LaTendresse, GamesRadar US

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Mod Name: Natural Environments

Why you need it: Add the birds and the bees to your Oblivion experience, in addition to 40 different types of weather

Difficulty: Tough

One of the most incredible things about the forth Elder Scrolls chapter is the absolutely immersive world that it dunks us into. Getting sucked in even deeper seemed impossible until we installed the Natural Environments mod. This upgrade serves up 44 different kinds of seasonal weather patterns (up from just seven stock types), ambient insect life and birds that sing and migrate with the passing seasons.

Mini-questing for perfect pearls underwater is now easier due to an improvement in water clarity. And on top of all that, every once in a while you'll stumble across a rainbow in Cyrodiil. You'll never need to go outside again.

Caption: That's right; Oblivion shipped with Unicorns, but no rainbows. Correct this egregious oversight by installing Natural Environments

Remember where your Data folder was from installing the Elven Cartographer mod? Find it again inside your Oblivion folder, and unzip the entire "Natural_Environments_v212" file into the Data folder. Once that is done, launch the game itself. You may have never noticed it, but the second option under "Play" is "Data Files". Click on that and you'll find you have some options you didn't have before.

Click on the empty boxes next to "Natural_Habitat", "Natural_Vegetation", "Natural_Water" and "Natural_Weather". There are two types of weather options, one for folks who run the game with HDR lighting enabled, and one for those who don't. Click OK after you are done, and run the game. Don't forget your galoshes.