• Features
• Clock
• Grinders
• Luggage
• Versions
Hello, and welcome to Cobl (Common Oblivion)! If you downloaded Cobl for itself, then you'll find that it significantly enriches the world of Oblivion: new books, new ingredients, new foods, etc. There are no quests, but you'll find the world a better more interesting place in many small and large ways.
If on the other hand, you downloaded Cobl because some other mod required you do to so, then... You'll still find the world a more interesting place! But you'll also get the benefit of having multiple mods work better together, and be richer, more powerful mods in themselves.
Modders: This readme is geared for players. For the modders manual, see: Cobl Modders Manual.
Unzip the included files to your Oblivion Data directory. Esp descriptions:
Oblivion must be patched to version 1.2 for Cobl to work.
This is the main library mod, which defines common items. This should always be active.
This is the main glue mod – i.e., it "glues" the items defined in Cobl Main into the world defined by Oblivion.esm. You should activate this mod.
Includes additional elements related to SI.
While Cobl Glue avoids making substantial changes to the world, this mod does tweak some things. Specifically, this modifies some creatures to include Lore Ingredients drops. Because thise makes more substantial changes to the world, you may not want to activate it. If you do activate it, you should consider load order – generally you should load it before other mods (e.g. overhauls) that substantially change existing creatures and npcs.
This adds some Cobl features to OOO (Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul). Several creatures and NPCs are given appropriate ingredient drops (Glass Golems drop glass, etc.). Also some OOO configuration commands are supplied.
Note: This will work with OOO 1.33.
This is the Cobl version of Tarnsman's mod. It greatly improves Salmo the Baker in Skingrad, making many more foods available in his shop. It also makes the same foods available in other taverns throughout Cyrodiil. For more info, see Salmo the Baker, Cobl.
The following files can be found in the Extras directory of the distribution.
Several of Cobl's menus appear as misc. items in your inventory and are activated when you attempt to equip them. Annoyingly, when you do this, you may get a message saying "You can't equip that!" even though you can. You can override this message by activating this mod. Be sure that it is position later (lower) in your load order.
Alternatively, if you have Wrye Bash 1.30 or higher, you can use can use the "Tweak Settings" part of the Bashed Patch feature.
A set of alchemical catalogs. There are two types (ingredients and effects) and four levels for each type. The first level catalogs only show the first level ingredient effect, while the fourth shows all effects. Hence the fourth level catalogs are the most valuable and is priced accordingly.
You'll find the books in Cheydinhal, and, if you're a Journeyman or higher in Mercantile, in Leyawiin. They're expensive, so spend your money wisely.
To get the full value out of the Alchemical Catalogs, you'll need to use the Alchemical Catalogs feature of Wrye Bash. By default, the catalogs only list vanilla Oblivion ingredients; but with the Bashed Patch, they'll list all ingredients from all active mods.
Credits: Wrye
Cobl provides a standard version of alchemical sorters. When you access these, you can choose to put away ingredients in your inventory, or access ingredients in the sorter by name or by effect. When accessing by effect, only effects that are actually producible given the items in the sorter and your current alchemy level will be shown.
If you have OBSE installed and active, the sorters will recognize and handle ingredients from all mods. If you do not have OBSE installed, then the mods will operate in a simpler mode and only recognize/handle vanilla Oblivion ingredients.
Alchemical sorters can now be found in each of the purchasable houses in the cites (typically they'll be associated with either the storage or the dining package). Note that if you currently have Phoenix Amon's old Ingredient Storage Shelves.esp these will occupy exactly the same space in vanilla buyable homes. See Cobl Relz topic for help.
Aside from Vanilla homes, you'll also find the alchemical sorters in a number of house mods.
Credits: Phoenix Amon (nee Daleth), Haama (OBSE version)
Cobl comes with an onscreen clock. You can activate it and set the display interval from the Options menu.
Credits: Wrye
Cobl's dinner plate is an eating interface for use with hunger mods. For Cobl aware mods that use this, activating the plate will move edible foods in your inventory to a "Dinner Plate" container. Taking the foods out of the container will count at eating them. When you're done eating, any left over foods will be returned to your inventory. Note that there are several advantages to this approach:
• Only foods that you can eat will be moved to the dinner plate.
• Eating does not count as wortcraft.
• No scripting of foods or the player is required.
Also note that calculation of what has been eaten doesn't happen until you close the dinner plate. So if you move something from your inventory back to the plate, it won't count as being eaten.
In some areas, you might not be allowed to "snack" from your own inventory. In such cases, there may be something local to activate (like a plate or a menu), which will give you access to the dinner plate. However, in this case food will come from the restaurant (or whatever) and you may be charged for what you eat.
If the dinner plate is available, you'll find in in your inventory, near the +[Options] item.
Credits: Wrye
Cobl provides a standard way to intercept the player's death (for an afterlife mod or similar). This will only be active if another mod (e.g. Wrye Shivering Death) makes use of it.
Credits: Scanner, Wrye
Cobl includes several modder added sets of food and beverges:
• Salmo the Baker is Tarnsman's expansion of Salmo the Baker's shop in Skingrad. All of these foods are now in Cobl and will be found in various shops. However, to get the full Salmo experience, you'll also need to get the Cobl version of Salmo the Baker from Wrye Musings.
• Tarnsman's Beer! adds a number of new beers, ciders and ales. You'll find these in taverns and scattered throughout the world.
Credits: Tarnsman
Grinders are available in all Mages guild halls. The grinders will grind gems, bones and some minerals and metals into alchemical ingredients. Note that grinders process items one at a time. You can interrupt at any time to get what's done so far, or you walk away and come back later.
Credits: Turgothh, Wrye
The Elder Scrolls universe has a very rich history in lore, told in part through various books to be found in the various Elder Scrolls games. These books tell background story of gods, daedra, kings and commoners. While some of the books from previous games are included in vanilla Oblivion, many are not. With Cobl, you'll find these books available again in various bookstores house mods, etc.
Credits: MrDarkSim, Xui'al, Gez
Similarly, previous Elder Scrolls games provided many alchemical ingredients that were not included in Oblivion. Again, Cobl re-adds many of these ingredients. Look for them in alchemist shops.
• Availability
• Ingredients are added to specific shops, rather than to standard leveled lists. Generally, you'll find Morrowind ingredients in Cheydinhal, Solstheim ingredients and foods in Bruma, Daggerfall ingredients in Chorrol and Anvil. In addition, Sinderion and All Things Alchemical have stocks in Skingrad. Also in the Imperial City, a few of the eating establishments stock Daggerfall or Morrowind food, and The Main Ingredient has a good collection. For non-ingredient items (metals and ores) a few blacksmiths stock several items.
• Distribution: Vendors that do have ingredients will typically have a lot of what they do have (10 misc items or 30 alchemical items of each type stocked). However, no vendor will offer their full stock at one time, nor does any one vendor stock all items (e.g. Sinderion never stocks items from Solstheim).
• Grinders
• Ores and metals from Daggerfall and Morrowind can be ground into corresponding filings or powders using the grinder.
• Alchemical Sorter
• Lore ingredients will not be recognized by the alchemical sorter unless you have OBSE installed/active.
Credits: Tarnsman (Tamrielic Ingredients), Razorwing (Meshes)
The Luggage is a simple wooden chest that once acquired, will show up in many places: Mages Guild and Fighters Guild guild halls, inns and taverns where you've rented a bed, wilderness camps (after a night of rest), bought houses, etc. To acquire the luggage, you'll have to find it first. Hint: Go west.
Credits: Wrye
These combination spell making/enchanting altars can be found in some homes and other locations. They will likely not appear until the PC has reached sufficient rank in the appropriate faction. (E.g. "Light" altars will not appear unless the PC has sufficient rank in the Mage's Guild.)
Credits: Wrye
Cobl provides a standardized Options Menu. You can access this by selecting the "+[Options]" misc. item from your inventory. This will display a container/menu of command tokens. To run a command, simply select the token.
Available options include:
• About Options: Displays a bit of info about the menu.
• About Testing: Allows you to display/hide advanced testing commands in the options menu.
• Generally, you keep this set to 0 to avoid the temptation to use uber testing commands.
• Cobl Clock: Enable/disable an onscreen clock.
• Time Scale: Set how fast time passes in the world.
• Luggage: Enable/disable The Luggage (after acquiring it).
Credits: Wrye
Cobl provides standardized water sources (wells, barrels, etc.) which you may find in some custom house and village mods. For these to be useful, you must have a Cobl aware hunger mod.
Credits: Wrye
Cobl includes a few additional resources which modders may find useful.
• Water Meshes by Texian: These static meshes can be used to represent water surfaces in barrels, troughs, etc.
The following mods are superceded by Cobl and should be removed from your load list. Note that when removing these mods, you will lose any copies of their items that you currently possess. Unfortunately, there's no way around this.
• Beer! by Tarnsman
• Daggerfall Books by MrDarkSim
• First Edition Guide to the Empire by MrDarkSim
• Morrowind Books by MrDarkSim
• Morrowind Ingredients by Tarnsman
• Tamrielic Ingredients by Tarnsman
• Gem Dust by Turgothh
The following mods duplicate some of the items found in COBL. Probably you will not want to uncheck them because of the other content they provide. Hopefully, duplication will be corrected in the future by making the mods dependent on COBL.
• Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul v 1.3
• Includes its own copies of MrDarkSim's and Xui'als lore books.
COBL modifies some leveled lists. It is suggested that you use Wrye Bash to merge your leveled lists. Alternatively, you may want to load Cobl ahead of other mods so as to avoid interfering with their changes to leveled lists.
• Cobl Clock Update [Tekuromoto]
• Clock will now optionally display weekday or full date.
• Inventory Tracking [Haama]
• Inventory Tracking has been fixed and is ready to go. See Inventory Tracking for details.
• RUE (Recipe Updater Engine) [Haama]
• RUE can now handle scripted effects
• Should be able to create and use recipes while on horse-back now
• Took care of a nasty bug that would only occur when you uninstall Shivering Isles (or a mod update removed an ingredient). The bug would prevent you from opening a recipe - if you've run into it either make a clean save or go to an earlier save.
• Adds RUE options to the Options menu
• Lost and Found - opens a container full of missing recipes.
• General functions [Haama]
• Add From List and Remove From List. These will add/remove items on a list (either a container or a Pluggy array) to/from a container. Others have been updated. See General Functions for more details.
• Misc. [Haama]
• Signal Se now reports the current COBL version.
• For the Activate function, especially when calling functional activators - a special NPC (cobGenActRef) has been created to get around the 'can't activate while player is on a horse' bug.
• Changed some comments, changed a few scripts to use the safer activation reference.
• Toys for Modders - Static Alchemy Equipment scripts, Inventory Tracking, several functions, misc. additions, and a preliminary Recipe Updater Engine. See the Modders page for more information
• Bugfix for v1.33!
• 1.33 erroneously included v 1.33 of Cobl Main.esp (the development mod, while retaining the old (v 1.32) version Cobl Main.esm. This most likely would cause problems for the newly updated Salmo the Baker.
• Salmo Household faction (for use by Salmo-Cobl).
• Now includes Salmo the Baker (Cobl version).
• Applied Nvidia fog fix to all mods.
• StrFactions for use with OBSE %c messages.
• Added cobSigSi stage 10 script which will set the SEWorld jail stuff. Useful for mods that need to run in situations where SI may or may not be installed.
• Cobl Main
• Pluggy version detection: fix a bug.
• Luggage: new nif and texture courtesy of johnguydude.
• Cobl Main
• Reformat books using html tags.
• Fixed var type typo in cobWaterCampOS.
• Fix a silver to gold transmutation bug with the grinder.
• Cobl Eat menu will now auto-close inventory if OBSE 13 or higher is running.
• Added pub plate activators.
• Added version checking for OBSE pluggy.
• Rebalanced ore and ingot costs.
• Cobl Glue
• Remove an erroneously placed cobLugMain from Two Sisters Lodge.
• Add luggage to Olav's Tap and Tack.
• Add Grinder to Skingrad Mage's Guild basement.
• Cleaned with Tes4Edit.
• Reconcile with UOP.
• Cobl SI
• Recompiled scripts to fix some errors.
• Cleaned with Tes4Edit.
• OOO 1.32-Cobl
• Cleaned up lock menu.
• Remove old geomancy script.
• Cobl Morph: Add cobMorphMFact to mark factions as morphable.
• OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp updated with more options. [by Showler]
• Fix misnamed master for OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp.
• Fix options commands for OOO 1.32-Cobl (disable wasn't working).
• Fix paths for cobWaterWells.
• Some Tamrielic Ingredients related lists added.
• OOO 1.32-Cobl.esp in Extras.
• Alchemical sorter now allows retrieval of food if you have a hunger mod that enables the Dinner Plate.
• Cobl Glue MW Ingred.esp is now obsolete (content merged into Cobl Glue.esp).
• Added Cobl Tweaks.esp (includes Tamrielic Ingredients creature drops).
• Added OBSE upgrade notices and downgrade warnings.
• Enable perma-disable of mages altars (set cobAltarShowXXX to -1).
• All menus (except dinner plate) will now open directly from inventory.
• Clock: More config options.
• Luggage: Added/tweaked a few locations.
• Dinner plate: Added home plates (eat from larder).
• Camp water barrels (may be emptied).
• Mages altars to mage guild halls.
• Add support for Config, Construct and Cooking menus.
• Fix a bug that made eating menu appear incorrectly.
• Option: Cobl Clock.
• Rationalizing "registration" ref handling.
• Alchem sorters: Two more locations in SI.
• Signals: Tweak cobOptTestMode.
• Fix bugs with cobEatQ.
• Added Mages Altars (cobAltar).
• Added water barrels.
+ Menus: In progress.
• Death handling tweak: remove pms/sms shader (leave shading to client handler).
• Luggage SI:
• Added option to disable luggage
• Added/fixed a few locations.
• Options
• Testing options added.
• Luggage option added.
• Signals
• cobOptTestMode
• cobOptQuestMarkers
• Alchemical Sorters
• Now automatically show up in vanilla Oblivion player houses.
• Foods from Coleen's Farmers Market. (In progress.)
• Tarnsman's Beer!
• Options Box
• Time Scale option.
• The Luggage
• Dinner Plate
• cobEatEffectQ is now started earlier.
• cobEatFactorsQ now sets eating factors.
• Docs: Complete rewrite.
• Alchemical sorter now has OBSE mode.
• Fix bug with Cobl Si.esp overriding wrong scripts.
• Salmo the Baker
• New foods from Salmo's cousin in Woodland Village.
• Dinner plate integration.
• Salmo the Baker
• Cobl Morph
• Quest with variables.
• Alchemical Sorter
• Add support for OBSE version.
• General Signals
• cobSigNoCompFollow
• cobSigNoPcNeeds
• cobSigNoPcTeleport
• cobSigNoWeatherScript
• Standard Factions
• cobFactNoMove
• cobFactNoTransform
• Standardized editor ids for all items.
• Gem dust by Turgothh included.
• Lore Ingredients
• Expanded to include ingredients from Tarnsman's Tamrielic Ingredients.
• Added powdered form of various minerals/metals
• Added grinder for conversion of minerals/metals/bones.
• Revamped leveled lists and store inventories.
• Note: Despite version number jump, this is just an incremental fix over 0.04.
• Better Docs
• Small Tweaks/Fixes
• Fixed script on restore fatigue alchemy token.
• Morrowind misc. items at few new non-alchemical vendors.
• Fixed a few typos.
• Now with icons for alchemical sorter tokens.
• Alchemical Sorter by PhoenixAmon
• Morrowind Alchemy
• Morrowind alchemy items by Tarnsman.
• Factions
• cobBanditFriends (Loved by Bandits and other evil NPCs.)
• cobAllFriend (Loved by All)
• Survival
• Activator water wells and script.
• Add alchemical catalogs to Mach-Na's in Cheydinal.
• Alchemical Catalogs
• Companion Faction
Since this mod is intended to be a resource mod, please do so! However,
• Please don't modify the mod itself. If you have an addition that you'd like to see in the mod, please use the discussion topic listed a the top of the page.
• Please don't merge this mod with other mods – doing so would defeat the whole purpose of COBL and cause many conflicts.
If you'd like to make a translated version of the mod, please contact us. We'll be very glad to see this, but we want to make sure that there's one "official" translation for a given language.
Please do not redistribute this mod. Since it's likely to be changing rapidly, we want to be able to maintain close control over it's distribution – which is hard to do if we don't know where's it's being redistributed.
If the entire COBL team gets hit by a large meteor, or for some incomprehensible reason heads off to do something else and thereby abandons the project, then permission is given for another person or group to take up the project and continue it, making changes and redistributing as they see fit.
However, given the expected importance of COBL, we think it unlikely to be abandoned – passed like a baton, yes. Abandoned, no. In any case, anyone who takes up the torch after we have dropped it, should first make very sure that we have actually dropped the torch, not just left it on the curb while going inside for a pint of Guinness. And second they should continue in the community spirt that we seek ourselves to achieve: work with others, create a useful utility, look for solutions that supports differing tastes.
Thanks to Bethesda for a creating another great game, thanks to the modders who have contributed material to COBL, and thanks to the forum participants who have helped shaped COBL with their questions, suggestions and encouragement.