I admit it. The first time I played Oblivion, I was doing it wrong.

Reinstalling Oblivion several years later with the intention of trying out a few of the many mods that have been created to enhance the experience actually became something of a game in itself.

Well, maybe not quite as fun as a game, but trying to work out which mods to actually play and how they affected the experience was still pretty enjoyable. The secondary job of balancing them all together so one mod didn’t conflict with another and end up breaking the game is a little more frustrating.

Morrowind was one of the most modded games of all time, so it came as little surprise to see just how extensively the community has messed around with the original Oblivion. One of the biggest titles, Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul, was something I was most particularly interested in. The idea behind the mod is to completely change the leveling system in the game, so enemies are a set level and don't scale with you.

While OOO was my choice of "big mod", it sparked a desire to try and make my overall Oblivion game more immersive and realistic. Not  the type of realistic that means I can’t jump more than two inches or that I can only carry what I can fit in my pockets, realistic in sense of fleshing out the already exciting and varied world that Bethesda created.

This led to nearly an entire day of searching, reviewing and downloading so many Oblivion mods that my game directory nearly doubled in size. Some of them like Unnecessary Violence gave the combat more depth, while others like Unique Landscapes and Better Cities made the world more visually interesting.

On top of all this, I discovered Qarl's texture packs. Out of the box Oblivion is hardly bad looking even several years later, but there were plenty of different graphical updates to the original game which increased the size and clarity of the textures. By the time I had finished figuring out every single area of the texture and landscape modifications, my Oblivion looked every bit as detailed as a game released last week, and I was practically maxing out my hardware.

It takes a certain type of person to get all excited about adding mods to games and getting them all to work, and if you're thinking of installing as many as I did you'll certainly need to learn a little bit about how the whole system works. As a teenager I'd spent more time than was healthy modding Baldur’s Gate and other Infinity Engine titles, so it came a little more naturally. There are still few kinks to iron out. There’s a modded area where the game keeps spawning animals twenty or so feet above the ground so I’ve almost certainly got a conflict somewhere, but nothing that crashes or breaks the game. So far.

The end result of all this messing around is something much more than just adding a few bits and pieces to an older game to give it a slightly fresher experience. It also isn’t about creating an entirely new game from the same engine, like most Source mods. What modding Oblivion feels like is what I wished Oblivion had been right out of the box.

The biggest change my particular selection of mods brought to the game was to make it a much more lasting and difficult experience. If the download count for Oscuro’s mod is any indication, I wasn't the only person disillusioned by a leveling system where every single enemy in the world leveled with you.

Modded, the world of Tamriel is a much harsher place. Wander far from the Imperial City and you'll likely to be quickly overpowered. Even previously throwaway enemies like Goblins and small wilderness creatures pose a very real threat to players of a lower level.

Playing as a pure mage class, an encounter with a bear outside Bravil resulted in nearly ten minutes of running around the wilderness, firing entropic bolt at the damn thing and constantly drinking potions before it finally collapsed. Of course, for all this messing around at low levels the bonus is that once you start to hit the higher levels you’ll actually feel like a force to be reckoned with.

The system isn’t for everyone, especially those that want to run out and explore every corner of the world straight away. It’s also a much slower leveling system which requires the player to do a lot of fighting and exploring before trying to take on many of the quests. Had all my modding efforts turned Oblivion into World of Warcraft by forcing myself to grind endless wolves until I reached the higher levels?

While a player using Oscuro’s alone could potentially get that feeling, I balanced out the extra leveling with a whole bunch of new content. A large segment of the Oblivion modding community is very aware of how their content might fit into the Elder Scrolls universe. Some go to amazing lengths to make sure their mods stick to the lore and feel of the original game.

This means there are a huge amount of story and quest mods that feel very much like something Bethesda themselves would make.  A select few provide so much content they can easily compete with the official expansion in terms of gameplay hours. For every well-crafted, well written adventure there are ten terrible ones. Luckily, the brilliant Oblivion Quest List site is a valuable resource in separating the must have additions from the wastes of time.

If the first time you played Oblivion you had a good time but left feeling a little disappointed that the game didn’t live up to its full potential, I can heartily recommend revisiting the game with a few extra mods added.

If my experience doesn’t sound like your sort of game then there’s plenty of offer different ways to enhance the game that don’t involve making it more difficult or touching the leveling system at all.

However, regardless of what you are trying to achieve I make two simple recommendations. Firstly take a look at the “must have” mods here to start you off with the major graphics and interface changes. Secondly, download the Oblivion Mod Manager and learn about how it works – it will save you hours of messing around with text files.