If you’re a gamer with a pulse, then you’re no doubt excited for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but it’s a little while away. So we’ve put together our favorite mods to use with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to help you fight off the summer gaming lull.

Oblivion is a wonderful game, but sometimes little changes make a big difference. This little change will open up a whole set of classes to people who were afraid of archery. It’s called Faster Arrows. Certainly there are plenty of arrow speed mods, but we feel this is one of the best because it’s the simplest.

Arrows in vanilla Oblivion floated like cardboard tubes with suction cups on the end. This mod turns archery into the fast experience it should have been from the start.

Darkness can be a powerful atmospheric tool in video games but it is something many developers have a hard time getting just right. Caves and dungeons in Oblivion are only sort of dark and they render most lighting spells, vision spells, and torches absolutely useless. The mod Let There Be Darkness changes that. Now caves are only lit in tiny areas where the sunlight creeps in or from other smaller local sources of light. Mix in the mod Droppable Lit Torches and you can fight back the darkness by leaving a trail of these inexpensive pieces of tinder.

We are suckers for stealth games, and the Thieves’ Guild and Dark Brotherhood missions in Oblivion are some of the best stealth missions found in gaming. But there are few good choices for good stealth armor.

Two of our favorites are Assassin Elite Armor and Ranger’s Shroud Armour. Assassin Armor gives players a set of very cool gear that looks to be a cross between a Dark Brotherhood armor and ninja armor. The armor is two-piece and it is comes pre-enchanted. It also comes with two different VERY beautiful but completely overpowered swords. Nothing ruins a game faster than taking away the challenge, so we use the swords for display purposes only.

Ranger’s Shroud Armor comes in different pieces that you can purchase in Bravil. They are non-enchanted and it offers roughly the same amount of protection as mithril armor, but looks 100x cooler.

For PC gamers, one of the most annoying aspects of Oblivion is the menu system. The large, chunky fonts and the overly small map proved to be frustrating if left unmodded. DarNified UI is one of the best, and most user friendly interface mods available giving the player complete customization over their experience.

Deadly Reflex is a mandatory mod for people who found hand to hand combat to be boring and repetitive in the original Oblivion. It adds in new combat moves and makes almost every enemy encounter a life or death situation. It is scalable based on how difficult users want their combat to be. But after using it, we can barely play vanilla Oblivion.

One of our favorite mods is simply for kicks and giggles… and vanity. Reznod Mannequin gives you the option to buy and place wooden or stone male or female mannequins in your homes and castles. They’re great for putting all the armor you’ve found in the game on display and they’re completely posable too.

One mod that no PC gamer should miss is actually the compilation of the work of many different modders put into one. Together, they remolded the original territories in Oblivion into stunning landscapes. Unique Landscapes Compilation also mixes in the mods for Natural Habitat, Weather, Vegetation and Water. The end result is a breath-taking new Cyrodiil that has to be seen to believe. What we can show here does it no justice.

Certainly, there are other mods out there that are completely worth your time. Nehrim is worth a try. Oscuro’s Oblivion Overhaul is a masterful total revision of the Oblivion experience. And we are anxiously awaiting Andoran almost as much as we are for waiting for Skyrim.

Playing with mods is almost as much fun as playing Elder Scrolls games themselves. But the mods we’ve listed here should keep most of us occupied for a little while longer. Feel free to share your favorite mods with others in the comments below, or on our facebook page!