Yet Another Morrowind Thread

[ERYFKRAD]

I was looking for some interesting builds that aren't full magic

Go Nord or go back to the outlands.

 

[Sigourn]

Three mods I recommend:

1. Bloodmoon Rebalance
2. Tribunal Rebalance
3. Sixth House Rebalance

All three mods are made by the same author. The first two tackle Bethesda's expansion integration (if it can even be called that) by nerfing enemies from the expansions to make them more in-line with what you see in Vvardenfell. However, the third mod rebalances Sixth House enemies so that they are truly the strongest enemies in the game.

I very much recommend all three of these.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Does anyone bother to finish this game during replays, or do you just set personal goals that you wish to accomplish and then quit when they are done?

 

[MWaser]

I finish Morrowind every time I play it. Which is like, once every 4 years.

 

[RNGsus]

Maybe every few years I'll play just to do a different guild, or explore TR's latest map. No, I don't finish them, which is fine.

 

[Sigourn]

The early game is a slog and the late game is a slog as well. It's not a game I particularly enjoy replaying, as opposed to New Vegas which somehow manages to stay fresh despite being, ironically, the most railroaded out of the two games and the one with the considerably less amount of content, quests and locations to explore. Quality over quantity I guess.

 

[MWaser]

Well I only really enjoy Morrowind because I love breaking the game in various ways. Which considering Sigourn's love for balance and making everything harder for himself, I can't imagine he'd enjoy Morrowind at all, let alone replay it. But he still plays it, so what do I know.

 

[Sigourn]

Well I only really enjoy Morrowind because I love breaking the game in various ways. Which considering Sigourn's love for balance and making everything harder for himself, I can't imagine he'd enjoy Morrowind at all, let alone replay it. But he still plays it, so what do I know.

Truth is I've done a few Morrowind playthroughs, but only with my latest one (which I put to an end halfway through the main quest) did I refrain from using balance mods for the most part. Before that, I would always play with BTB's Game Improvements and a few other progression mods.

Overall, his mod is great and I definitely recommend it, but it's not without its faults. The execution may be lacking, the polish is not perfect (many changes should have had adequate dialogue and description edits to go along; this means you may get an item as a reward described as "a ring that shoot fireballs" while BTB's mod removes the fireball enchantment altogether and replaces it for something completely different), some things were taking too far and others not far enough.

For those who think alchemy is too easily abusable, the release of Poison Crafting fixes this to a considerable degree. It comes with an optional feature that can be enabled/disabled in-game which makes it that alchemy no longer considers attribute/skill boosting effects on your character for the purposes of making a potion.This means you will no longer be able to craft increasingly stronger potions as a consequence of drinking said increasingly stronger potions and becoming more skilled yourself.

I'd say Proportional Progression is a mod everyone should take a look at as well. Not only does it let you tweak many different game settings in a fairly convenient manner, but it also lets you customize how do you want leveling speed to work. Do skills grow at a steady pace based solely on the skill level, as it does in vanilla Morrowind? Do skills grow slower as you are of a higher character level? Do skills grow slower as the skill itself is higher? Do you want all of these effects combined? I found myself gaining levels like crazy until I installed this mod at level 29, and gained only one level afterwards.

There's also Higher Faction Requirements for those who think advancing through factions is very easy, and Service Requirements Lore so that advancing through factions is much more rewarding.

 

[MWaser]

see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I hate taking the time to grind up skills for higher faction advancements and I'd NEVER slow down the skill progression further as it's already way too tiresome to try and get 100 in spell schools or combat by just using them. But you somehow enjoy the game while making it slower and more tedious to yourself, but then I don't know why you'd even mention that early game is a slog and late game is a slog. Slog sounds like something you enjoy.

 

[Sigourn]

see, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I hate taking the time to grind up skills for higher faction advancements and I'd NEVER slow down the skill progression further as it's already way too tiresome to try and get 100 in spell schools or combat by just using them. But you somehow enjoy the game while making it slower and more tedious to yourself, but then I don't know why you'd even mention that early game is a slog and late game is a slog. Slog sounds like something you enjoy.

When I say the early game is a slog, I mean to say the early game quests are a slog.

I actually enjoy the difficulty early on, but you get strong too quickly and thus it doesn't last that long. That's why I like installing difficulty mods. There's plenty of content in Morrowind to level your skills up at a steady pace without resorting to grinding. And it makes sense to me that you cannot join all guilds at once. No one should be that skilled, not even the Nerevarine.

 

[Drax]

Three mods I recommend:

1. Bloodmoon Rebalance
2. Tribunal Rebalance
3. Sixth House Rebalance

All three mods are made by the same author. The first two tackle Bethesda's expansion integration (if it can even be called that) by nerfing enemies from the expansions to make them more in-line with what you see in Vvardenfell. However, the third mod rebalances Sixth House enemies so that they are truly the strongest enemies in the game.

I very much recommend all three of these.

You really like making lists of mods.

 

[Sigourn]

You really like making lists of mods.

Meeee gussssta hacer listas. Todo tipo de listas.

 

[Castozor]

Does anyone bother to finish this game during replays, or do you just set personal goals that you wish to accomplish and then quit when they are done?

I hardly ever "finish" a play-trough as in finish the main quest. Rather I make a character and play trough whatever faction(s) I want to climb trough, enjoying myself along the way.

 

[Drax]

You really like making lists of mods.

Meeee gussssta hacer listas. Todo tipo de listas.

Make a list of your favourite lists.

 

[Sigourn]

Originally I had uninstalled Morrowind but I needed to take some pics for a mod of mine, so time to reinstall it was.

Anyhow, I decided to do a little test. A set of images, actually. Six different versions of the same photograph, like so:

1. The vanilla game, as it comes from GOG, with its pixel-shading enabled for the water.
2. MGE installed with AA and AF, as well as its water shader (which cannot be disabled)
3. Same as above, but with Distant Land enabled (at low values).
4. Same as above, but with Per Pixel Lighting enabled. Patch for Purists has been installed, which explains why some textures look different.
   
5. Same as above, but with shaders enabled (minus depth of field).
6. Same as above, but with new, modern shaders enabled (minus depth of field), and Skies .iv.

Pictures taken outside Arrille's tradehouse, looking west:

Spoiler

Pictures taken inside Arrille's tradehouse (I've removed picture number 3 as you can't see Distant Land in here):

Spoiler

Pictures taken inside the Census and Excise Office (I've removed picture number 3 as you can't see Distant Land in here):

Spoiler

And lastly, pictures taken in Seyda Neen, looking South:

Spoiler

I have nothing to say about these pictures, other than it's surprising how bad some of them are compared to others in the same series. I thought it was an interesting exercise.

 

[MWaser]

what the hell happens to the colors in that last picture. It's like it's suddenly trying to look like a mobile game. Or, even worse, Oblivion.

 

[Butter]

what the hell happens to the colors in that last picture. It's like it's suddenly trying to look like a mobile game. Or, even worse, Oblivion.

I don't think I can handle Morrowind looking that good.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I still love Morrowind's feature of "finding everything on your own". You accidentally fight a vampire, don't realize you were bitten and became a vampire, oh no! But your stats are way stronger and you heard about vampires in a Dwemer ruin nearby. So you go searching by night and find it, only to find out you can join their vampire clan! All from a completely emergent story that you created, but the game allowed for. It's like stumbling upon the Morag Tong guild, or just finding little hidden things everywhere that no one ever told you were there (or maybe some really obscure one-time Latest Rumor mentioned it or something). You could just stumble on legendary items being guarded by powerful monsters and there wasn't some quest marker telling you to go there. You just explored, found stuff and wondered, "wow, what else can I do in this game?!". Even finding someone's hidden key by their bed or a glass dagger in an unexpected place, it just had that sense of discovery that's really never been duplicated.

 

[Sigourn]

what the hell happens to the colors in that last picture. It's like it's suddenly trying to look like a mobile game. Or, even worse, Oblivion.

It's two things, but I reckon it could be another. The first is the water shader. The second is the sky. And the third is the lighting shader that apparently saturates things.

Another thing I tested yesterday was a MGE XE option I hadn't given a second thought before. Basically, you can see in the dock pictures that the "fog" is white, and in latter pictures that it blends the sky with the ocean. Well, turns out this is the doing of a MGE XE feature one can disable to get "white" fog again.

 

[wwsd]

Does anyone bother to finish this game during replays, or do you just set personal goals that you wish to accomplish and then quit when they are done?

I usually get around to doing the main quest eventually, just to get that over with and have the journal cleaned out a bit. But I take it slowly, taking side quests or factions when it's convenient. I still try to let the game develop organically, although of course I've seen almost all the vanilla content at least once by now (I think there's one vampire clan I've never done). Caius sends me to this or that shithole, I talk to NPCs there to get quests or rumours, or I only go there when two or three quests lead me there. Otherwise the game is no fun and you're just jumping hoops.

Obviously the main questline is completely predictable when you've done it once, but I actually think it's pretty well-designed when you play it for the first time. You have to deliver a package to Caius, without the particular urgency where the Emperor has just been assassinated and the gates to Oblivion are open and such. You can imagine that they're expecting you to take days or weeks to do this. Then in the early stage you're made to feel like you're actually gathering intel, making forays against the Sixth House, etc. before you get corprus. You supposedly have to be careful with whom you talk to in Vivec when looking for Mehra Milo. Of course in reality the world is entirely static and waiting for you to do the quests, and the risk is conveyed purely in writing, but you're not supposed to know that.

In my latest game with Tamriel Rebuilt, I made a Telvanni character and so obviously I took a mainland trip. Basically around the early mid-game when all the early content is too easy, but some Daedric creatures can still kill you. That's when I tied up most of the outstanding Vvardenfell quests and made the trip to the mainland, did some questing there, and returned to the main game stronger. Again, just kind of let it run organically. The Mainland Telvanni allow you to jump a few ranks depending on your rank on Vvardenfell, but you'll always be lower. A lot of the mainland has simple early quests that mirror the Vvardenfell ones, so I didn't want to wait until I was Archmagister on Vvardenfell, but gathering herbs on the mainland. Just let the game run its course.

I only ever got around to the Tribunal questline a couple of times and the Bloodmoon one only once. Frankly I find most of the NPCs in Mournhold pretty silly. You have the very powerful quest givers, but apart from them, all the citizens of Mournhold are eccentric in one way or another. One of the charms of MW is that you get the feeling many of the quest givers you meet are just trying to get on with their lives, doing their thing. Whether it's the hetman of some backwater, or the ranking Great House agent in Vivec, whatever. They have their local problems for you to deal with and they have their petty schemes against each other, but that's it in the early stages. I also rarely ever get around to Solstheim.

In my last playthrough I did play Rise of House Telvanni, which also has lots of silliness (the House gets extremely powerful very quickly and through rather outrageous means), but at least it was new for me, and in combination with LGNPC and Uvirith Unleashed, it added dozens of hours far more entertaining than most of the expansions content. There is a bit of unbalance: one moment you're dealing with the very believable and human struggles of your retainers (LGNPC content I think), and the next moment you're navigating through your huge labyrinthine dungeons to get to your sick-ass magical prison to interrogate your enemy. And of course you get the sickest crib with the most absurd modder cancer embellishments. But that kind of comes with the territory of playing mods.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Morrowind was just so damn organic. They fit all these little secrets, world building and nooks and crannies into the game and just sent players out to find them like an Easter egg hunt. Nowadays most developers are terrified of making content that 2% of users would see, or not be seen at all on a first playthrough, but that is exactly the opposite of Morrowind. The more you play it, the more you find. You can play it 5 times and still find new things if you pay close enough attention.

 

[aweigh]

I think the 3rd pic in each series looks the best. The final two are absolutely horrible, especially the last one in each pic chain with the overblown colors and lighting.

 

[zapotec]

Anybody used/uses Morrowind Rebirth?

 

[Funposter]

Anybody used/uses Morrowind Rebirth?

I looked at it, and too many of the changes looked over-the-top. It also rebalances the game, which has its own set of problems, since with these types of things the mod author's idea of "balance" is often out-of-touch with reality. It's too bad that aren't any really solid town expansion/clutter mods in the same vein as Skyrim's JK/Dawn of/ETaC, but I suppose part of that comes from Morrowind's town and villages being less devoid of life overall. It's also unfortunate that these things are never modular. His changes to Ebonheart actually looked kind of neat - worth investigating at the very least, but then you get to Vivec or Balmora with statues and other large items being thrown around and my eyes roll into the back of my head. It's the worst approach to town design - adding things on because you can, and because there needs to be more stuff.

 

[DraQ]

Originally I had uninstalled Morrowind but I needed to take some pics for a mod of mine, so time to reinstall it was.

Anyhow, I decided to do a little test. A set of images, actually. Six different versions of the same photograph, like so:

1. The vanilla game, as it comes from GOG, with its pixel-shading enabled for the water.
2. MGE installed with AA and AF, as well as its water shader (which cannot be disabled)
3. Same as above, but with Distant Land enabled (at low values).
4. Same as above, but with Per Pixel Lighting enabled. Patch for Purists has been installed, which explains why some textures look different.
   
5. Same as above, but with shaders enabled (minus depth of field).
6. Same as above, but with new, modern shaders enabled (minus depth of field), and Skies .iv.

Pictures taken outside Arrille's tradehouse, looking west:

Spoiler

Pictures taken inside Arrille's tradehouse (I've removed picture number 3 as you can't see Distant Land in here):

Spoiler

Pictures taken inside the Census and Excise Office (I've removed picture number 3 as you can't see Distant Land in here):

Spoiler

And lastly, pictures taken in Seyda Neen, looking South:

Spoiler

I have nothing to say about these pictures, other than it's surprising how bad some of them are compared to others in the same series. I thought it was an interesting exercise.

Interdasting.

1, 2 and 5 generally look (so no harm pushing your eyecandy up to 5, unless you're sucker for complete vanilla look).
3 and 4 are way dark, apparently shaders in 5 compensate for that.
6 is pretty consistently the setting although it fares a bit better in interiors.