I started playing the most recent Tamriel Rebuilt release yesterday, and damn. Kept me up all night. This feels almost like playing Morrowind for the first time again, it lost nothing of its charm. When I replayed parts of vanilla I didn't quite recapture that feel because at this point I know most areas of the game by heart, so it's just revisiting familiar places.
But TR is all new, and the quality is incredible. The cities, the dungeons, the quests are all better than vanilla Morrowind, but they're also very respecting of the lore and the tone of the original. It's really just more Morrowind. I started on Vvardenfell and leveled up to level 2, and got all the basic spells I need (divine and almsivi intervention, mark and recall, levitate, water breathing), then headed to Andothren by boat. It's a pretty sizeable city, larger than Balmora and just as densely populated.
Right in the port authority building, the woman in charge gave me a cute little quest to find missing items in a warehouse. Not much to it, but it's content, and it had some fun flavor to it: the Argonian working as a warehouse stacker tells you it's no use to search for the items as they were probably stolen, but his boss believes they were merely misplaced. You can find them pretty easily by exploring the warehouse (jump across crates or levitate to the ceiling - a simple quest, but it uses Morrowind's great traversal mechanics to make you look for the items), and it turns out the guy is just a badly organized worker!
Then, I explore the town and do some shopping. Two of the vendors give me a quest. One wants me to deliver an ebony longsword to another city. Another wants me to sabotage the business of her rival! I accept both, but I tip off the alchemist's rival, and now get the opportunity to help the other alchemist sabotage the first one. This quest alone has more choices than most vanilla Morrowind sidequests.
The delivery quest seems simple, but has some complications to make it interesting. When I reach the city the client is waiting in, I visit a blacksmith to see if he has any armor pieces I might want. He mentions the ebony sword I have in my inventory, and when I click on "ebony sword" as a dialog keyword, he tells me it's a forgery - it's just steel made to look like ebony. Looks like my questgiver is a scammer! Also, to find the client, I have to go to a certain corner club and tell a password to a contact, who then tells me where the client is waiting. Quite secretive. Of course the guy notices the sword is fake, he tries to bully me into paying him money but I tell him it's the shopkeeper's fault, so he wants me to go back to her and make her pay him back for the money he gave her for the sword. He offers me a cut if I do it, so I agree.
I travel back to Andothren and try to get the shopkeeper to pay her scammed client back. She tells me to fuck off at first, but then I use a charm spell and some bribes to get her to agree - whether she agrees or not is based on how high her reaction score towards you is, but I guess threatening her might be an option too, at least the scammed client implied so. She gives me a letter of guarantee that I'm to deliver to the client. I read it, and it promises that he'll get his money back but it will be delivered in three installments by trusted deliverymen. Sounds like she's trying to scam him again lmao.
Before I head back to deliver the letter, I explore the town a little further and enter some more shops. A local blacksmith says he's the best blacksmith around... or at least that's what he used to tell people, until he sold someone a shitty armor of low quality. He received a shipment of low quality steel and made a breastplate from it. He only realized it after he sold it, so now he wants me to find the guy and tell him his armor is shit. The guy apparently planned to head to a dangerous area, and this could be a risk to his life. The blacksmith tells me to visit the nearby enchantress, because the client went to her to have the armor enchanted. She tells me he was in a hurry and already left town and I can find him in a wayside inn near the ashlands he headed for. So I go and travel there. On the way I come across two slave catchers delivering an escaped khajiit farm tool back to its owner. The khajiit asks me to free him - this seems to be a timed quest as he tells me they'll continue their journey soon, but gives me poisoned meat to feed the nix-hound pulling the carriage. This will slow them down and allow me to prepare if I have to.
I talk to the slave catchers and try to bluff them into setting the khajiit free. This is an actual dialog tree with multiple choices! I claim I was sent by the boss to take it from here, and they buy the story but want me to pay them their promised reward. When I say "nah, go to the boss he will pay you directly" they call my bluff and attack. They have weapons enchanted with paralysis so I'm stuck unable to do anything until my health is whittled down halfway. When their charges finally run out, I heal myself back up and kill them. Tough fight! The khajiit gives me a slave key he stole from his master, which he used to free himself. He kept it on his person when he was re-captured. He asks me to liberate all his pals from his master's estate.
I love how the quests are all just simple fetch quests, but they have a little twist, or a little choice that lets you pick a side or choose how to approach the problem. And they do a great job of sending you from town to town, giving you incentives to travel and explore.
Tamriel Rebuilt is fucking excellent and I can't wait for the next release.
Later this year, somewhere between summer and fall, they plan to put out the first major release of the Province Cyrodiil mod. Really looking forward to that one.