Unauthorized Oblivion

Mod Name: Elven Cartographer

Why you need it: If you get lost as often as we do, you'll appreciate a prettier map

Difficulty: Challenging

We never realized that we were utterly sick of the boring, sepia-toned map of Cyrodiil until we saw the Elven Cartographer mod. Dressing up Oblivion 's cartography in blues, greens and greys, we now have a color-coded terrain map. Dungeons, caves, Alyeid ruins and Daedric shrines get their own special icons - enabling you to sort out the endless destinations with ease.

Oblivion's recent patch breaks compatibility, but if you haven't run into problems with a busted quest yet, go ahead and treat yourself to a great upgrade. Dialing back the patch is possible by reinstalling the game - made relatively painless thanks to the single-disc DVD format.

Download the 4MB .zip file, and unpack it onto your desktop. You'll need to find the Bethesda Softworks program folder next, located in your Program Files folder (likely your C: drive). Double-click the Bethesda Softworks folder, then open up the Oblivion folder. Inside you'll spot the Data folder. Simply drag and drop the unpacked 'Textures' folder from your desktop into the Data folder and you are done.