Was surprised there wasn't a thread here for this so figured I'd get one up and going because if you're an RPG fan and not yet playing this then you should be
It kinda blows Arcanium outta the water.Nehrim is a total conversion mod for Oblivion. Completely new game world as large as the original Oblivion world, completely new storyline. In other words, apart from using the same core engine, this is very little like Oblivion. The world and and the many, MANY dungeons are entirely hand-crafted and many are comparing it to Gothic in terms of game-feel.
Billed as four years of work, 35 main quests, high quality side quests, 56 professional voice actors, 50 new pieces of music, 40-50 hours of gameplay, 555,840 objects, 9,622 loading areas, 1,285 NPCs, 1,616 scripts.
And, as it's a mod for Oblivion, it is entirely free, provided that you already own Oblivion.
So, here's the catches...
All of the spoken language is in German as it was a German mod team. The voice acting is very good and there are English subtitles. Occasionally you do run across a book or note that hasn't been translated but nothing game critical.
It uses the Oblivion engine. They've mod a lot of modifications to it but at it's core there are a lot of similarities. If you hated Oblivion's combat then it will annoy you here as well. It also requires the Oblivion disc to be in to play.
Most of your Oblivion mods will not work. Pretty much only mods that are textures and meshes will function as is. There are starting to be a growing number of other mods being converted for Nehrim compatibility. Look in the forums on the official site for the mod forum.
It doesn't generally hold your hand. The gameworld does not scale at all and if you just try to follow the main quest you will quickly be in way over your head. There are sidequests to be found but most of your XP comes from exploring, finding one of the many nifty and unique dungeons and clearing it out.
Official website with download links: Nehrim
I recommend the torrent download as the fastest.
If you are using Windows 7, do not install it into the Programs folder. This seems to trigger some sort of issue. Do not install it directly into your Oblivion folder either. I installed it into a Nehrim folder within the Oblivion folder and that has worked fine.
Before you play, run the Nehrim launcher. Click to connect to their servers and have it auto update. Once it's done that, click the data files button and select the Nehrim files there to activate them. Curiously, the launcher setup options don't include 1920x1200 resolution. If that's your resolution you can switch it once you're in the game and then restart.
One of the mods for it is an English patch mod where someone went through and corrected a bit of the grammar and added some additional translations. Highly recommended.
