Horses are overrated. Yeah, I said it. No offence to any horse experts out there. They’re a bit of an unnecessary purchase in Elder Scrolls games in my experience.
But how else am I supposed to travel? Ah, of course, by boat. I looked at Nexus Mods this morning and spotted that a modder has saved my poor feet by managing to get fully-functional rowboats working in Oblivion Remastered, so I can sail around Cyrodiil as a magical mariner.
Row Your Boat does what it says on the tin, provided you count it as ‘rowing’ if you’re doing it via a spell rather than actual manual labour. Drawing inspiration from some classic Oblivion mods, Tyler ‘Dactyl’ Hallada’s created a means to buy a usable rowboat that you can summon and use to sail the waterways of the Imperial province, merrily waving to all the poor landlubbers you pass and praying that you don’t spring a leak.
As you can see demoed in the showcase video below, the boat’s controlled by casting a special row spell while standing up or crouched to move forwards and backwards, with the direction you’re looking acting as the steering. One you’re up to speed, you can also basically set it in cruise control so it’ll keep carving along while your character’s free to take in the scenery and rest their arms.
Hallada’s implemented stuff like “dynamic collision detection” and “realistic wave simulation” to make things feel more authentically boaty, and added a handy in-game manual in case you get stuck. You can also purchase upgrades for the boat, in the form of a storage chest, working lamp, and a rope ladder to make boarding easier.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the mod’s pretty hardware-intensive right now, with its creator writing: “You may experience some performance impact, especially with a weak CPU. This mod is pushing the limits of the script engine. I’ve spent a lot of time to reduce the performance impact and minimise script execution when the boat is not in use. I personally don’t notice an FPS impact but your mileage may vary.” There’s also a list of known issues on the mod page that’s worth scanning through.
If you fancy taking to the seas, you’ll need to grab UE4SS, TesSyncMapInjector, MagicLoader 2, the Oblivion Remastered Script Extender, and NL-Tag Remover.
