Morrowind for the first time; char build?

[Grinolf]

didn't find medium armor useful.

As far as I remember until Tribunal Medium Armor simply didn't offered any alternatives to Glass Light Armor and Ebony/Daedric Heavy Armor which made choosing it a bad option. So I don't see any problem ith this statement.

 

[Curious_Tongue]

Anyhow. The redundancy in this. Maaan...
Vivec is supposed to be huge metropole, but there is almost nothing but shops. They really should've squeezed it down like 3 times at least.

Then you start fucking with illusion of scale that makes Morrowind the game it is.

Daggerfall, that's game that needs to be cut down to size.

 

[DraQ]

Look, i wouldn't be replaying it if i didn't like in one bit, but the things i pointed out can't be defended. You sound like a fanboy.

And you sound like a
.

How the fuck they cannot be defended?

Illusion of scale is a good thing and yes "redundancy" is part of it.
Alternative approaches are also a good thing and they are pretty much defined by "redundancy".

There is plenty of things in Morrowind that cannot be defended - a lot of mechanics is shot or out of control, the AI is derp, there are no legitimate high level challenges, characters eventually converge towards the same maxed out demigod archetype, animations are just plain lulzy, etc. - and yet you attack the good things.

That is the same thing what i said. It's a giant wallmart. Given the density of content there, it shoul've been 3 or 4 times smaller. It's nonsensical to have 5 armorer shops, 5 mage shops, 5 corner clubs, 5 temples etc. in one city that is made from copy pasted modules, while there is maybe one or two quest people at any given canton. Making it less symmetrical would be just a cosmetic improvement.

It's nonsensical to have just one of each shop in a supposedly large city.
Moreso, Vivec is zoned into individual houses' spheres of influence, so it's expected for it to have duplicate services - hell there are quite a few quests that hinge on that fact.

What Vivec lacks and needs is diverse and distinct locations, ease of navigation and properly realized sense of scale. The first could be handled by reducing symmetry and adding locations, the second - reducing symmetry and adding locations as recognizable landmarks, the last - adding smaller and less monolithic architecture to accompany the main cantons (so adding locations, which may in turn reduce symmetry).

But you know what? Drop Morrowind. Go play Skyrim. It seem custom tailored to your tastes.

Let's pretend i didn't notice the obvious and take your suggestion at face value - how so?

For example, the cities have much less "redundancy" (actually they retain surprising amount of sense of scale thanks to being mostly thin slivers while tricking your mind that the city should be more or less round, imagining much moire content than is actually present), dungeons not only don't force you into "redundant" areas and cul-de-sacs, but usually even don't force you to backtrack to exit, questlines have been pruned of "redundant" stuff and get straight to the point*, etc.

*

Spoiler

 

[DraQ]

didn't find medium armor useful.

As far as I remember until Tribunal Medium Armor simply didn't offered any alternatives to Glass Light Armor and Ebony/Daedric Heavy Armor which made choosing it a bad option. So I don't see any problem ith this statement.

Ebony mail was the single best piece of armor in game.

 

[Grinolf]

Ebony mail was the single best piece of armor in game.

Which is just one artifact from the end of one of the faction quest lines. So until getting it player would still need to focus primary on Light or Heavy Armors. And Light Cuirass of the Savior is also quite good, altrough heavy armor analogues were quite disappointing.

 

[DraQ]

Ebony mail was the single best piece of armor in game.

Which is just one artifact from the end of one of the faction quest lines. So until getting it player would still need to focus primary on Light or Heavy Armors.

Until you get your glass/ebony/daedric medium armor remains a valid alternative to heavy and superior to light.
Aiming for endgame performance it's a good idea to consider mixing and matching it with another armour type, though.

altrough heavy armor analogues were quite disappointing.

Not really. Both have the same AR as Ebony Mail (minus shield effect), one isn't too heavy and counts as Legion uniform, the other offers fire immunity.

 

[Grinolf]

Until you get your glass/ebony/daedric medium armor remains a valid alternative to heavy and superior to light.
Aiming for endgame performance it's a good idea to consider mixing and matching it with another armour type, though.

That doesn't make much sense, as we are speaking about 7 pieces of light/heavy armor and just one piece of medium armor and for some reason it heavy/light armor skill that should be mixed with medium and no other way around. And it's not like it is hard to get Glass Armor as long as one know where to look or simply don't bother with medium armor at all and simply raise skill with trainers after obtaining Ebony Mail.

Not really. Both have the same AR as Ebony Mail (minus shield effect), one isn't too heavy and counts as Legion uniform, the other offers fire immunity.

Heavy Armor having the same AR as Medium, while having much worse enchantments (slightly higher FR doesn't count compared to other things) is pretty much definition of disappointing. They are much easier to get, I guess, but it their only advantage.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Illusion of scale is a good thing and yes "redundancy" is part of it.

A good thing? So you enjoy being fooled by the medium into thinking that it offers more than it actually does. A true popamoler if i ever saw one.
/updates my Draq .txt

For example, the cities have much less "redundancy" (actually they retain surprising amount of sense of scale thanks to being mostly thin slivers while tricking your mind that the city should be more or less round, imagining much moire content than is actually present), dungeons not only don't force you into "redundant" areas and cul-de-sacs, but usually even don't force you to backtrack to exit, questlines have been pruned of "redundant" stuff and get straight to the point*, etc.

I'm not sure i understand what do you mean with most of that, but reducing the amount of backtracking is always a good thing. But you seem to love games that annoy you with redundancy so i guess backtracking is great.

 

[DraQ]

A good thing? So you enjoy being fooled by the medium into thinking that it offers more than it actually does. A true popamoler if i ever saw one.

Sit down.
It might be a shock to you but that's how pretty much every medium works. That fantasy book you've read? None of this shit is real. Film? A bunch of fucks playing expensive make pretend + some CGI.
Games are also just pixels governed by shifting voltage patterns that pretend to be binary numbers.

After accepting all this bullshit accepting game that pretends to be large is not much of a stretch as long as it does it effectively.

I'm not sure i understand what do you mean with most of that, but reducing the amount of backtracking is always a good thing. But you seem to love games that annoy you with redundancy so i guess backtracking is great.

You'll *LOVE* Skyrim's dungeons.

That doesn't make much sense, as we are speaking about 7 pieces of light/heavy armor and just one piece of medium armor and for some reason it heavy/light armor skill that should be mixed with medium and no other way around.

True, but cuirass is weighted 3-6x more than other pieces as far as AR contribution goes.

And it's not like it is hard to get Glass Armor as long as one know where to look or simply don't bother with medium armor at all and simply raise skill with trainers after obtaining Ebony Mail.

Proper way of playing an exploration heavy game assumes no metagaming and hopefully no pre-knowledge.
In such circumstances medium armor really is advantageous compared to light for the majority of the game, only losing out once you find a suit of glass.

I'm not really arguing that armor types are well balanced in MW but I'm definitely allergic to "X is useless" comments, especially given that it makes cool stuff disappear in the next game only because someone failed to balance content for it.

As for balancing, I thing the best way would be to reduce glass durability to funny value. The second best would be to swap AR values for glass and orcish but where's the fun in that?
Overall, with few justified exceptions, there should be L<M<H hierarchy when it comes to protection.

 

[Metro]

DraQ is indeed a huge fanboy. Vivec makes sense from an E-Larper's perspective but for functional design it's terrible.

 

[Grinolf]

True, but cuirass is weighted 3-6x more than other pieces as far as AR contribution goes.

I'm pretty sure that you'll still get more AR from other pieces than from one single cuirass, but maybe it's my memory failing me.

Proper way of playing an exploration heavy game assumes no metagaming and hopefully no pre-knowledge.
In such circumstances medium armor really is advantageous compared to light for the majority of the game, only losing out once you find a suit of glass.

The idea is, that if person know the game, then medium armor is useless as he'll just rush for set of Glass Armor. And if he didn't know, then it would be a very long time before he get Ebony Mail, as I doubt that many people would make Temple Faction their priority. And during this time they would find themselves still sticking with orc/temple guard armor, when Light and Heavy getting their Glass and Ebony sets, literally being punished for their skill choice. So Medium Armor is both bad to pick for new and experienced players.

I'm not really arguing that armor types are well balanced in MW but I'm definitely allergic to "X is useless" comments, especially given that it makes cool stuff disappear in the next game only because someone failed to balance content for it.

But problem there isn't in the players pointing serious balance issues, but in developers deciding to axe the whole thing instead of fixing the problem. And I doubt medium armor would being fixed in the following TES games if people didn't complain about it. The "best' case would be with things basically staying the same way as in MW as Betheda proved to be to lazy to do something about it.

 

[DraQ]

DraQ is indeed a huge fanboy. Vivec makes sense from an E-Larper's perspective but for functional design it's terrible.

That's not really the topic here, though.
Even the mother couldn't love those ramps.

 

[Gnidrologist]

It might be a shock to you but that's how pretty much every medium works. That fantasy book you've read? None of this shit is real.

Are you fucking idiot? You're comparing apples with refrigerators. We're talking about realness of content, not whether the setting is realistic. Vivec being for most part empty husk of a ''city'' has nothing to do with the setting of elder scrolls. If i see a huge settlement made of huge megalithic domes, i expect decent amount of gameplay content there, but alas. It's especially annoying the first time you play the game, when you hope there will be some unique NPC behind the next door, but it turns out to be yet another generic shopkeeper or commoner pasted there so you basically spend several hours exploring this empty husk only reason for it being not to miss out on 3-4 crucial NPCs there. That's shit design and entirely uncalled for. Balmora is a good example of city for this kind of game, both aesthetically and gameplay wise.

You'll *LOVE* Skyrim's dungeons.

If you say so.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Btw, on the medium armor discussion. I'm having a mixed set of adamantium and golden one's and it's pretty good. Don't know what's all the fuss about that. Guess ebony/daedric are better with good heavy armor skill, but their weight is a deal breaker. I still rise my armor rating for both medium and heavy to get endurance points though. Given that there are only three skill that rise endurance, it's almost obligatory to rise them anyway even if you're end up using light armor. It's not like there is any financial hurdle to rise all those skill via trainers anyway.

 

[Grinolf]

Btw, on the medium armor discussion. I'm having a mixed set of adamantium and golden one's and it's pretty good. Don't know what's all the fuss about that. Guess ebony/daedric are better with good heavy armor skill, but their weight is a deal breaker.

Not only Ebony and Daedric, but Glass armor is also better than adamantium one while having even less weight. I don't even remember Gold Armor and looking in google it's from "LeFemm Armor which two new sets of armor, Domina Armor and Gold Armor, specifically designed for female characters." It has better AR than Glass one, but there are only 4 pieces of it in the game.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Yeah, i guess those four pieces are weird looking helmet similar to what ordinators have, just with different kind of ''face'' plastered over it, pauldrons and cuirass. Are there not other parts for it? And how are their female? They seem pretty unisex to me and the armorer in Ebonheart is wearing it (lolfag?). As for rating. they give around 140 AR with my medium skill being in70ish.

Anyhow, it's no like a big problem to boost light armor skill as soon as i get one. I remember there was at least par of the set easily stolen in Ghostgate, but my travels haven't been around that area yet.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The Domina set is a medieval dominatrix thing but the gold armor is basically a sarcophagus so it doesn't look too terrible on males.

Medium is inferior to the other two stats-wise, but it's not like the game requires you to be playing at 100% optimal gear anyway. I like the looks of the medium sets the best.

 

[Grinolf]

Are there not other parts for it? And how are their female? They seem pretty unisex to me and the armorer in Ebonheart is wearing it (lolfag?).

That's what UESPWiki tells me. I don't remember even having this plugin when I played it. But boob cups on screenshots making it rather obvious that it supposed to weared by women and not men.

 

[Gnidrologist]

Heh, i did't even notice the boob things and thought the mask-helmet looked p. badass. Indoril helmet is still cooler though.

 

[Grinolf]

Additionally, if you are using the LeFemm Armor official plugin, Sirollus will be wearing a complete set of Gold Armor - which looks somewhat odd on him, as the armor was designed to be worn only by female characters. This is one of only three sets of this armor available in the game. (It's possible the developers gave him the armor intending him to have it for sale, without taking into account the fact that he would automatically put it on instead.) This will make getting it off of him without killing him somewhat difficult. You'll need to use Disintegrate Armor spells until it breaks, then cast Calm to stop him from attacking you, and then pickpocket it from him. Alternatively, you could sell him better armor, which he would put on in its place. Unfortunately, only very rare Ebony or even rarer Daedric Armor will be good enough to convince him to give up his Gold Armor willingly.

Lol. Bethesda, you never cease to deliver.

 

[DraQ]

I'm pretty sure that you'll still get more AR from other pieces than from one single cuirass, but maybe it's my memory failing me.

Summed up? Sure.

It will still take at least 3 (4 if some of them are gauntlets) pieces to out-contribute the cuirass, and that's without accounting for the fact that pretty much every other item will have lower AR lessening its contribution to the total.

The idea is, that if person know the game, then medium armor is useless as he'll just rush for set of Glass Armor. And if he didn't know, then it would be a very long time before he get Ebony Mail, as I doubt that many people would make Temple Faction their priority. And during this time they would find themselves still sticking with orc/temple guard armor, when Light and Heavy getting their Glass and Ebony sets, literally being punished for their skill choice. So Medium Armor is both bad to pick for new and experienced players.

OTOH Ebony Mail is guaranteed find if pursuing the Temple questline to the end. Just like you can invest in some other skill, then train medium, you can invest in medium and train some other skill. The difference is that medium provides nice progression of early to mid-game armors and that it's the only armor skill without master trainer.

But problem there isn't in the players pointing serious balance issues, but in developers deciding to axe the whole thing instead of fixing the problem. And I doubt medium armor would being fixed in the following TES games if people didn't complain about it. The "best' case would be with things basically staying the same way as in MW as Betheda proved to be to lazy to do something about it.

Actually if it didn't get the axe it might have ended up fixed completely by accident. The whole problem was caused by content distribution and was unique to this particular game, with subsequent game it might have failed to manifest altogether.

And don't get me started on spears that only caused players to whine because those players were too dumb to use their unique advantages.

 

[Gnidrologist]

It was quite funny seeing how vendors would automatically put on any armor you sell them, even if it seems completely unappropriated for their status. Some carrot peddler in imperial cuirass and the ninja bonemold helmet is a site to behold. Think the code patch has removed this though. Sirollus still wears the gold armor anyway, but you can steal a set from the closet in Vivec fighter's guild so that's no biggie.

 

[boobio]

Don't listen to DraQ, he is a blind fanboy that can't see the weaknesses of the game.

Don't be a fagot, use every mod from BTBs site.
BTB's Morrowind Mod List http://btb2.free.fr/morrowind.html

 

[AW8]

 

[Grinolf]

OTOH Ebony Mail is guaranteed find if pursuing the Temple questline to the end.

And how long it would take for a new player to complete Temple questline due to nature of their quests, stat requirements and being constantly distracted by various other activities, that include main quest and 6 other factions without even knowing that they should concentrate on them because of this artifact reward? Month, several, half a year? I'am remembering almost completely ignoring this faction when I played it first time along with Cult.