Question about using Steam versions

Hey everyone. I've been watching this mod for a few years now and once I saw the work Eloth did on the visuals I decided to try my hand at using the mods for Oblivion.

I am planning on getting both GOTY editions for Oblivion and Morrowind through Steam. Since I am a complete noob at the whole modding thing I am wondering if there is a chance that I will completely screw up the original download and make Oblivion unplayable. Is there a way to start over with a fresh install of the game and not have to buy the game again? Some have been saying to make a copy of the entire Steam directory but would you be able to play the mods through a copied directory with Steam?

Sorry for the noob question, I've never had to reinstall a game with Steam before so maybe valve already took this into consideration.

This won't be a problem

Steam is smart like that. If you have purchased a game through steam, it lives in your account forever. You can mess with the files, mod, or uninstall, and you can just redownload to install again. There is no install limit.

Personally, I would advise

Personally, I would advise backing up your Steam game (perhaps to DVD) before you add new mods... It's perfectly possible to remove eveything and re-download it all from scratch but that's a pain right?

Under Library, select the game, right click and choose Backup Game. Follow the on screen prompts to generate the backup files and burn to DVD if necessary.

If you haven't taken a backup and you mess up your install, you can also do the following...

1. Under the folder C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Oblivion\Data, copy the largest files elsewhere on the disk. These should be something like:

DLCThievesDen.bsa
Knights.esp
DLCHorseArmor.bsa
DLCVileLair.bsa
Oblivion - Misc.bsa
DLCBattlehornCastle.bsa
DLCOrrery.bsa
DLCFrostcrag.bsa
DLCShiveringIsles - Sounds.bsa
DLCShiveringIsles - Meshes.bsa
Knights.bsa
Oblivion.esm
DLCShiveringIsles - Textures.bsa
Oblivion - Sounds.bsa
DLCShiveringIsles - Voices.bsa
Oblivion - Meshes.bsa
Oblivion - Voices1.bsa
Oblivion - Voices2.bsa
Oblivion - Textures - Compressed.bsa

2. Use Steam to delete your game then check the folder C:\Program Files\Steam\SteamApps\Common\Oblivion has been removed - if not delete it.

3. Re-install the game from Steam, but as it starts to download, cancel the download and exit Steam.

4. Move your backup copies of the biggest esp / esm files back into the Data folder.

5. Restart Steam and it will only download the other (smaller) files, saving you a lot of time and download usage (download usage in the UK is often limited to so many GB/month).

This will seriously reduce the amount of download time required, as I think Steam downloads games using something very similar to bittorrent - i.e. it will check the hashes on existing files, and if they are correct then if won't re-download them.

I had to do this after I decided to change from manually installing mods to using Wrye Bash, as my installation folder was a mess. I would highly recommend you use a mod manager like Wrye Bash, then you'll always be able to uninstall any mods you want to try out without damaging your original installation files... look on the tutorial page for some vids of how this is done...

It also massively simplifies mod testing where you only want to install a mod temporarily. It isn't necessarily immediately straightforward but neither is the Morroblivion installation, and Wrye Bash helps... a lot! ;)

Best of luck!

Thanks for the replies. I

Thanks for the replies. I have recently got the game up and running. For the most part

I gave OBMM a try for a day and failed miserably. Then I gave wrye bash a try and failed miserably even though I was keeping a close eye on the installation tutorials and about 4 more on youtube.

Then I decided to do it all manually. Took only a fraction of the time and worked perfectly! I archived a couple versions of the oblivion folder just to be safe.