Please note that this Total Conversion project is still in an early BETA state.
An optional torrent download can be found in the Mirrors tab.

Name: Middle-Earth Roleplaying Project (MERP)
Version: Beta 0.2.6
Date: 06/02/2012
Category: New Lands
Requirements: Shivering Isles Patch 1.2.0416
Authors: MERPTeam

MERP Forum
Moddb
Official The Elder Scrolls Forum
Facebook

Description
MERP is an endeavour that is striving to make J.R.R. Tolkien's world of Middle-earth available for RPG enthusiasts. We've done quite a lot of landscaping as well as some town building and we thought you might enjoy the tour.
The version 0.2.6 is our last Beta release for TES IV: Oblivion. It contains everything we created so far including generated regions, popular sites and some NPCs in the town of Bree.
There will be no further major updates for the Oblivion branch of MERP since we will from now on concentrate fully on developing MERP for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Update 0.2.65:
Includes improved performance around Minas Tirith and Pelargir, and you can now see the Emyn Muil from afar! Also be prepared for what now lies within one of the halls of Moria!
There are also plenty of fixes included such as: Shelob's lair is now accessible and there are much less holes in the ground!

Details
The installations already contains all essential files like OBSE and Pluggy that are needed to run the mod.

Regions to explore include:
Shire, Blue Mountains, Harlindon, Arnor, Mirkwood, ...
Cities to visit, among others:
Minas Tirith, Moria, Hobbiton, Michel Delving, Barad Dur, Isengard, Minas Morgul, ...

To get around quickly in Middle-Earth, you can use the console: Open the console [~] and type "cow MiddleEarth -18,37" (without quotes) to get to Bree. For more locations see the List of Coordinates at our forum.

Installation
Requirements:
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
- Shivering Isles
- The latest 1.2.0416 patch installed (If you have installed Shivering Isles then you won't have to download and install the patch)

Process: (Steam users see addition below!)
1. Download the MERP 0.2.6 installer, here on TESNexus it is uploaded as a multi-part 7z archive, you need 7zip or another compatible archive application to extract the contents. Extract all three files to the same directory.
2. Run MERP 0.26.exe, this is the installer. The installer provides two installation options: Either let the installer copy the core files of your current Oblivion installation to make a separate standalone MERP installation (recommended for most people) or install in an existing Oblivion installation (which has to be 'clean', i.e. without any mods installed, especially no old MERP content, or problems will arise).
3. Download NTCore's 4 Gb patch and patch Oblivion.exe.
If your intentions are to mod MERP as well, you need to patch the Construction Set and any tools you use, but never OBSE. For TESGecko you need the heap setting 1536.
4. Run the MERP Launcher and set the graphics settings appropriately to your computer.
5. Launch MERP and start a new game!

Update to 0.2.65: (0.2.6 required)
Run the MERP Launcher and click on the update icon (upper right corner).
OR
Download the update installer from the files tab under updates.

For Steam users ONLY:
As Steam does not allow multiple installations of Oblivion do NOT choose the option to create a new directory for MERP. Install MERP in your existing directory instead (which you cleaned beforehand).
Once the installation is finished, set the load order as shown below (using the MERP Launcher or OBMM) and run the MERP Launcher to set graphics options appropriately to your computer.
The MERP ini files are used when launching MERP from the Launcher, if you don't use the launcher then it doesn't load the MERP settings. After you set the options in the Launcher, go to documents/my games/oblivion and delete oblivion.ini (create a backup if you wish) and rename merp-oblivion.ini to oblivion.ini. then go to your username/appdata (or application data)/oblivion and delete plugins.txt (create a backup if you wish) and rename merp-plugins.txt to plugins.txt.
After everything is set, load the game using OBSE as you would do normally with steam.

Optional:
Check our list of recommended mods to further enhance your MERP experience. To install them read the mod's own installation instruction.
Once you have installed a new additional mod, ensure that the load order looks like shown below. For that you can use the Launcher's internal Data Files option or download the Oblivion Mod Manager.

Load Order:
- Oblivion.esm *
- MiddleEarth.esm *
- Eriador.esp *
- Rohan.esp *
- Rhovanion.esp *
- Gondor.esp *
- Fellowship.esp *
- DLCShiveringIsles.esp
- ...any other plugins...
(* These files must not be separated from each other or loaded in a different order)

Uninstall
Run the MERP Launcher and choose the Uninstall option from the menu.
Sometimes the uninstall process takes a very long time. To speed the process up you can delete the DistantLOD folder by hand before running the uninstaller (located in [install directory]\Data\).

Incompatibility
We recommend to have no other mods in your MERP installation (except for recommended ones).

MERP is planned as a Total-Conversion. That means that there will likely be incompatibilities with other mods. Primarily, it may be incompatible with other mods that add a new worldspace. Theoretically, that means that they should not be activated at the same time as the ground could potentially disappear depending on load order, this is an engine issue and cannot be prevented.

Known Issues or Bugs
If you encounter any bug that isn't explained due to the mod's beta stage, please write a comment or send us a message.

Contact
If you have questions or wish to contribute, you can always contact us at a number of places:
- MERP Forum
- Moddb
- Official The Elder Scrolls Forum
- And of course you can leave a comment or send us a message here on TESNexus.

History
0.2.6: 06/02/2012 - Last Oblivion beta.
0.2.4a: 26/06/2010 - Patch files with temp. regional map
0.2.4: 31/01/2010 - More regions added, as well as some models.
0.2.2: 23/03/2009 - Initial release.

Credits
J.R.R. Tolkien for the most amazing fantasy world known to man.

A big thanks you to all authors who granted us permission to use their great work and of course all past developers of the MERPTeam as well.
A full list of our contributors can be found in the Permissions and Credits tab.

Licensing/Legal
You must contact us and obtain our permission before re-packaging any part of this mod. You can do that at our forums.
No assets from this mod can be reused until release 1.0.0, except for third party work which can be at the author's discretion.