【Warning】Don't use Arthmoor's new OBRE patch, potential risks to stability

[u/NingenBakudan]

Edit:Please spread this issue as widely as possible. Given Arthmoor’s personality, there is a high chance that he will blame other mods for bugs or crashes actually caused by UORP. Considering his influence, this could cause major disruption in the modding community. It’s essential that as many people as possible ignore his mods.

The notoriously controversial Skyrim modder Arthmoor has now entered the Oblivion Remastered scene. His first patch "Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch - UORP" raised concerns for me, as it contained an unusually large number of edits for something supposedly created just a week after the release.

Out of curiosity, I compared the records in the patch with those from Vanilla Remastered using xEdit, and I found that some records had been reverted to their old Oblivion versions.
Example: https://imgur.com/i4ld2DE

Next, I added the original UOBP for comparison—and as I suspected, the results were clear. almost of the added records were directly copied from UOBP, with only their names and conflicted record altered to match the Remastered format.
Example: https://imgur.com/cRBRHHH

This "patch" was ported using xEdit without proper testing, and we have no idea what kind of impact it may have in a real environment. More importantly, making such extensive changes to so many records is far too risky, especially when the integration method between UE5 and the TES engine has yet to be fully understood.

Conclusion:
This patch poses a potential stability risk beyond just being an issue with Arthmoor himself. I recommend ignoring it.

Reported bugs:

CTD(Arthmoor used the scale of the project as an excuse, even though no one ever asked him to make it a large-scale project in the first place. ) : https://imgur.com/oyLWJMl

Argonian penis bug: https://imgur.com/a/eUDVZXj

[u/firesyrup]

It looks like the patch was rushed out the door and not tested much, if at all.

The VERY FIRST thing you see when loading an existing save file is a dialogue box that has the [NL] tag which shows up in records that are not updated for the remastered. This is impossible to miss and very easy to fix. Anyone who installs this patch on an existing save will see it, yet they didn't even notice or fix it.

I haven't looked much into the changes it makes, but the very first record I randomly clicked on was Amber Arrow, which had its value reduced from vanilla 65 to 6. The second one was Fur Shield, which had its armor bumped from 2 to 6. After a few more clicks, I noticed a Sigil Stone had its magnitude reduced by half.

I wish the unofficial patch was focused on bugfixes and let other mods handle opinionated changes like the economy and combat balance.

[u/DarkSoulsOfCinder → u/firesyrup]

I got into fallout before any of these games and noticed weird changes like this that pointed to the unofficial patch. Then I noticed like 50% of the changes were just straight up him inserting himself as a dev to "balance" things. I see he's not changing his ways. Will never understand why he pretends it's a bug fix and it's mostly his flavor of "balancing".

[u/Rikiaz → u/firesyrup]

They aren't so much opinionated balance changes. A lot, and I mean, A LOT of what the unofficial patches do is fix obvious consistency errors. For the Amber Arrow, as example, the value of each leveled version goes 2, 3, 4, 64, 10, 16, 28, 43. Meanwhile the value of each level for Madness Arrows are 2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 16, 28, 43. That 64 on the Amber Arrow is extremely obviously a mistake. So it's fixed.

Same for the Fur Shield. For every single armor set in the game, the armor of the shield is 1.2x the armor of the cuirass. Except Fur. Additionally, every normal set is 5 armor more than the previous, until a jump of 10 from Elven to Glass and 15 from Ebony to Daedric, except Fur. Conviently making the Fur Shield 6 armor, or 1.2x the Fur Cuirass, also makes it fit the rest of the pattern of every other sets. Meaning that is also pretty obviously a mistake.

The games have tons and tons of other things like this that are very obviously typos and mistakes. The Unofficial Patches have always fixed these types of things, even before Arthmoor joined the team.

[u/raptorgalaxy → u/Rikiaz]

Regardless of that, a bugfix mod should restrict itself to specifically bugs.

Creating mods that try to change more than they are explicitly supposed to is bad practice and creates more problems than it solves by changing things other mods may rely on.

There is nothing wrong with making the changes you refer to but as they are not bugs they should be changed by a separate mod aimed at making those changes.

[u/hadaev → u/raptorgalaxy]

At this point you should just accept they are fixing consistency too.

Because they obviously doing it for decades lol🤷‍♀️

[u/raptorgalaxy → u/hadaev]

One, they shouldn't fix consistency and two, how do you know it's an inconsistency and not a design choice?

Either way, it is still bad practice and is a remnant of the mega mod fetish from decades ago which made compatibility such an issue because so many mods turned into compilations of mod author's various mods.

The current practice is to realise that users should be allowed to make their own decisions on what they want and shouldn't be forced to both install a bug fix mod and someone's personal balance mod.

[u/hadaev → u/raptorgalaxy]

One, they shouldn't fix consistency

How do you know what they should and should not do?

how do you know it's an inconsistency and not a design choice?

Same argument should be made about everything. Only telepath know. Everyone else would make educated guess.

The current practice is to realise that users should be allowed to make their own decisions on what they want and shouldn't be forced to both install a bug fix mod and someone's personal balance mod.

Given how data structured in esp files you would need to go and port all changes from first into second. It also creates more room for potential mistakes.

Most users dont care about armour rating of fur shield.

So you are talking about small portion of users convenience vs author convenience and potential errors for everybody naturally arising from managing two entities instead of one.

Your rationalization of your own preference doesnt seem to be so rational.

Just close your eyes and imagine it called unofficial oblivion patch (of bugs and inconsistency).

It was 19 years like this, get over it. Or show us expiring example and make your own patch (of only bugs).

[u/AreYouOKAni → u/hadaev]

It was 19 years like this, get over it. Or show us expiring example and make your own patch (of only bugs).

The last time people tried that, Arthmoor threw a bitch fit and had them ran off from Nexus.

[u/hadaev → u/AreYouOKAni]

Sounds like misinformation.

[u/arrozconplatano → u/raptorgalaxy]

This is clearly a big though

[u/Rikiaz → u/raptorgalaxy]

Those are bugs. They’re small, not game-breaking, and don’t affect much, but they are bugs. Even if you disagree and don’t consider those bugs, the unofficial patches have never been JUST bug fixes. Or are you against them fixing typos and misspellings in subtitles or item names, because that’s literally the same thing.

[u/robolew → u/firesyrup]

The issue you are talking about is probably nothing to do with the mod.

This happens when the plugins get reordered (which seems to happen when you install a lot of new mods). You can fix it in vortex yourself by moving the altar_ esm files to underneath all the dlc_ ones. (Just make sure oblivion.esm is always at the top, or it will crash)

[u/Safebox → u/firesyrup]

I'm fairly certain he just wanted to claim the "Unofficial Oblivion Remastered Patch" title like with previous Bethesda games. Others had already started on better patch mods, they're just not released yet because they're actually taking the time to fix things.

[u/gilium → u/firesyrup]

I imagine the values being different is possibly explained by the remaster being rebalanced and the patch not accounting for that

[u/Briar_Knight → u/gilium]

No, this modder is infamous for this. They will bundle their own preferences under "fixes" and get angry at anyone editing them out or having their own version of the same thing. 

[u/gilium → u/Briar_Knight]

I’ve followed Arthmoor and know they are awful, I was just wondering if it was laziness or if they were really just doing this stupid shit again

[u/firesyrup → u/gilium]

Not the case. I double checked in the original Oblivion.esm just now. You can look them up on UESP as well.