Introduction

Have you ever heard the story of WAC the Oblivion Overhaul? It's not the story modders will tell you...

WAC is a mod that adds tons of new content to Oblivion, and quite a quality one. Unfortunately, WAC is also... broken. It has never left a beta state, and has numerous issues. It also changes more that you probably want - including landscape alterations that need patches, bearded NPCs that look weird with OCOv2, lore unfriendly creatures, and so on. Which is a shame because author clearly put a lot of love into these new creatures and items, these are very beautiful and detailed. But to get them in your game, you need to install numerous fixes, and even then it's a mess. For example, Skingrad Guards will have broken helmet models. It feels like it was never properly playtested.

Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul proposes a different approach - you don't need to mess with all those things, and MOO will simply use WAC's resources. But I found this solution still far from ideal, partly because balance-wise WAC is a complete mess. And partly because I want to see packs of beavers in the rivers.

When I've started digging into WAC to simply tweak some stuff, I've quickly realized that it needs some radical balance changes. Many of the values were completely random - boots that protect better than Daedric Cuirass, sometimes completely random weight values (gauntlets that have weight of 30), and so on. I've decided to be a madman and clean all this mess up. Why? Because it feels really bad to see such a mod die in obscurity.

And yes, it is somewhat done and should be playable! Keep in mind that WAC is still being WAC and some of the models might be glitchy. For instance, I had to remove two Steel Cuirass variants because I've encountered a weird lighting bug.

What exactly is done?

TL;DR:

• Clothing - 95%
• Armor - 90%
• Weapons - 25%
• Creatures - 55%
  

All of the mentioned above are added to the game, both via leveled lists and (hopefully) compatible manual edits. For creatures, many new spawns have been placed.

Note: this is relevant for the 0.42 version. Dispensation's updated version may have more content.

Long answer:

I've fixed and integrated almost everything of value when it comes to armor and clothing. This means 70+ pieces of clothing and over 200 pieces of armor. Many of these are variants, but they do look well! They provide a great variety that could be amazing for roleplaying, while more varied environment will make the game feel richer. I only wish some of the items were less broken - unfortunately, had to omit barbarian-styled "armor" for now, because it does not work with female characters. I might come back to it later.

These items are tested at least to some degree (I've removed stuff where I could see obvious issues), balanced, and placed in game. Most of the items have at least 1 appearance in the actual game - usually on characters, but could be on the market stall or in a corner of a dungeon. There is even some stuff to steal, but nothing overpowered. Just something to make thieving a little bit more rewarding. I've tried for every single item to make sense, so you won't see Ungolim in armor or Falcar in a black robe. Hope you like it.

Let's talk about balance! (or not, this part is purely optional, feel free to skip it)

I follow the OOO, or even more so, Requiem for Skyrim's balance approach. This means that I don't like autoleveling. However, I am actually stunned how leveled Oblivion is. I guess this looked technically elegant in some way, making the entire game rely on leveled lists that rely on other leveled lists that rely... you get the idea. I've actually had some real issues deciding where to put items by hand. And in the end I've decided I still have to use leveled lists. So mid tier (like orcish) items won't appear on random enemies until you level up a bit. I don't like this approach, but I won't overhaul the entire game for it. I might be crazy enough by attempting to resurrect the abandoned mod, but that's a different level of crazy.

However, you theoretically can get these mid tier items at level 1. You probably won't, especially if you play with OOO as I recommend it (more on that in the compatibility section). But the fact that you can should incentivize exploring a little bit. This should follow the OOO approach to the game. 

Right now there are no overpowered items (the best armor set is slightly weaker than Ebony), so I am not concerned about balance too much. However, if I'll have to add some really strong items, I'll have to make a separate OOO dependent module for that. There is no way I can balance it otherwise.

Creatures are NOT leveled and all of them can spawn at level 1. However, main roads should be relatively safe. Tropical and cold regions are going to be dangerous if you delve deep in the early levels. The creatures right now are just animals, so none of them are going to be extremely strong - strongest creature is around level 18, with ~30 melee damage and ~250 HP.

Installation:

1. Download the original WAC

You still need the original WAC mod. This means you'll have to download it from the one and only place it can be hosted officially - TES Alliance. Another reason why people don't touch WAC, eh. I am merely uploading the tweaks.

From there, you only need two files: WAC.bsa and Waalx Animals & Creatures.esm. You don't need and should not install any other ESPs from the original mod. You also don't have to install any fixes, although some of them might be handy, for example, to adapt the armor to a body mod.

Waalx Animals & Creatures.esm is required for my mod to work, and WAC.bsa contains all the resources.

If you don't want to register and download from TES Alliance (understandable), you can google for "demwaifus wac". I have absolutely no idea what you may find.

2. Install WAC - Integration.

If you are using Dispensation's updated version (recommended):
Install via installer, WACIntegration.esp is the required file, the rest are optional. If you go this way, rename WAC.bsa to WACIntegration.bsa.

If you are using my version (older one, v 0.42):
Install the two esps from this mod: WAC.esp is a dummy file which is required to load WAC.bsa. You don't have to rename any bsa files this way.

3. Load Order and Bashed Patch

This mod should be put fairly low in load order, but it probably does not matter much. It does not break leveled lists by removing or re-adding items, so it will not ruin, say, OOO's leveled lists. It only adds new items to them.

Bashed patch is important if you run this alongside with pretty much any mod. Otherwise you'll encounter all kinds of weird issues.

Compatibility:

This is a large project, but one of my main goals was to have it possible to run this alongside major content mods.

OOO: In fact, this mod is balanced and designed to work along with OOO and OOO Extended. I have not altered the NPCs which are altered by these two - for example, if OOO Extended gives NPC a unique robe, I don't give that NPC another unique robe. However, at least as for now, OOO is not required. Some of the values might be weird (for example, low level armors cost twice as much in OOO, and I've followed OOO balance), but there should be no major issues. I might do an additional OOO module to add even more integration, but I'll leave that for when I'll finish adapting. I recommend using OOO and OOO Extended for the best experience. With that, you might find that most of the NPCs, expecially in guilds, have unique gear!

MOO: This mod should eventually fully superseed the original way of running WAC with MOO. I've packaged an ini file which does nothing if you don't have MOO, but if you do, it will also add my content to the game via MOO magic. This means that MOO characters will use balanced WAC gear instead of broken WAC gear as they did before. They'll also use new robes now, they didn't before. More so, MOO will mostly spawn creatures added by this mod and not original WAC. So no lore unfriendly or imbalanced spawns. I might think of some extra MOO integration.

Warning: if you've changed Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul for dynamic lists.ini or Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul for spawns.ini, they will get overwritten. Merge the contents using common sense.

Francescos Creatures and Items: as reported by users, seems to be working fine.

Other overhauls: Untested, but I believe there should not be major issues. Balance might differ because of conflicting design philosophies.

Dungeon changing mods: Might be some minor issues like unreachable items.

This mod does not change landspaces, nor does it add any extra NPCs. It does add spawn points in the wilderness, so you might see crocodiles in the middle of a modded town or stuff like that. Should play alright with UL and HESU, as I test this mod with these two enabled.

Credits:

Thanks to Waalx for the WAC. I suppose my attempt to revive and popularize WAC could be more of a gratitude than just mere words. This mod is reliant on WAC and is just a balance mod. All assets belong to the original creator.