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New to Morrowind Mod Guide

NeoKino

RPGCodex Ninja
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
This is a Basic mod guide for those new to morrowind and morrowind haters ( That are popamole enthusiast), CRPG hardcores with still be dissatisfied.

STEP 1: install morrowind, Preferably GOG edition.
Acquire these mods

MGE XE – https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/41102

Morrowind Code Patch – https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/19510

Patch for purist - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45096

Morrowind Optimization Patch - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45384

Project Atlus - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45399?tab=description



Install them, consult this video if you are unsure thttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKuMT5RT2IE it will show you

how to install mods for newbies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STEP 2: These are dependencies you need for some of the mods listed

OAAB Data - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/49042

Tamriel Data - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/44537

Install those Mods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STEP 3: now time for the real meat, this is a small modlist focusing on gameplay

BTB Necro edit Tweaked – https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50308
(make sure you install the anti-cheese module.)

Ahead of the Class – https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50346?tab=description

Power Fantasy – https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/50617

MWSE Perk Framework - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/51448?tab=description

Poison Crafting - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/45729

Magicka Expanded - https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/47111
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This modlist greatly expands the character system in morrowind to make it more fun and enjoyable as well as adding quite a bit of new mechanics,
perfect for beginners bored of the simple character creation system, lightweight this modlist is easy to install and use. You may want to acquire this
Mod class conscious https://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/46902 to remove exploits and further hammer in that role-play experience.

EDIT: Added project Atlus and Morrowind optimization patch.
 
Last edited:

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
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Eastern block
u missed a bunch of essential stuff

meanwhile u included some completely unecessary and bloaty mods
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
What essentials did I miss? Meanwhile I'll study Sig's list to see what mods to add.

Regardless of how you feel about most of the mods included in the guide, the truth is that Morrowind Optimization Patch and Project Atlas are a must for performance and mesh fixes.

The best thing I can say about Morrowind's community is that the few major project it has going are all handled by a few authors working together. Patch for Purists, Morrowind Optimization Patch, Project Atlas, MGE XE and MWSE, all their authors can be found active in the Morrowind Modding Community Discord. A far cry from the New Vegas community, with people throwing petty fits over anything all the time.
 

Kalon

Scholar
Joined
Jan 21, 2016
Messages
189

I'm so tired of every new little mod coming out lately having OAAB and/or Tamriel_Data as requirements. 99% of the time they are tiny little mods that use maybe 1% of the content of OAAB or Tamriel_Data for fluff.
Probably the trend will die anyway. It's like when Necessities of Morrowind came out and every mod had to be "NOMified" to be cool.
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
I'm so tired of every new little mod coming out lately having OAAB and/or Tamriel_Data as requirements. 99% of the time they are tiny little mods that use maybe 1% of the content of OAAB or Tamriel_Data for fluff.
Probably the trend will die anyway. It's like when Necessities of Morrowind came out and every mod had to be "NOMified" to be cool.

You could just simply install OAAB and Tamriel_Data and forget about this inconvenience in the future.
Personally I dislike mods using new assets if they are, as you said, tiny little mods.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
If you're new to MW the only mods you want are Patch for Purists, Morrowind Optimization Patch, Expansion Delay, and TrueType fonts for OpenMW. Play the game vanilla.


I'm so tired of every new little mod coming out lately having OAAB and/or Tamriel_Data as requirements. 99% of the time they are tiny little mods that use maybe 1% of the content of OAAB or Tamriel_Data for fluff.
Probably the trend will die anyway. It's like when Necessities of Morrowind came out and every mod had to be "NOMified" to be cool.
OAAB maybe, but most TD mods I've seen alter TR/HotN/PC content.
 

NeoKino

RPGCodex Ninja
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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire
Major update incoming Ive vetted 50 gameplay mods that totally enhance the experience.

Core Gameplay Mods (50)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Magicka Expanded
2. Power Fantasy
3. Ahead of the Classes
4. Companion Leveler
5. Supreme Follower System
6. NPC functionality
7. BTB's Game Improvements (Necro Edit) Tweaked
8. MDMD - More Deadly Morrowind Denizens
9. Fortify Max
10.Attribute Effect Tweaks
11.Stealth Improved
12.Poison Crafting
13.Ultra AU
14.PvP
15.DragonDoor
16.N'wah Shooter
17.MM - Enhanced Detection
18.Magicka Regeneration Suite
20.Dynamic Difficulty
21.Controlled Consumption
22.High ground
23.Hard Save
24.MM - Cast-On-Swing Enchantments
25.Wading in Water MW
26.Real Fire Damage - MWSE Edition
27.Hold Your Breath
28.MWSE F.A.S.T.
30.Staff Casting
31.Arrow Catch (and block)
32,4NM_PERKS
33.Combat Enhanced
34.Combo Master
35.Shieldsup
36.Final strike
37.Fast Attack
38.Inari Skills Tweaks
39.MagicStrom
40.Armor Rating
41.Mana Shield
42.Auramancer
43.Runes and Totems
44.KickMaster
45.Oil Flask
46.Traps
47.Venerific Vials
48.Apoapse's Alchemy
49.MM - Enhanced Reflection
50.Miscast Enhanced

Ill come backe with supplementary mods one day however these gameplay mods are enough.
 

ind33d

Educated
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
805
I agree about vanilla MW GOTY being the way to go, barring graphics mods/better bodies/better heads/VR. The game is so fundamentally broken and weird that mods only make it worse unless you already know what you're doing. You literally have to metagame to make a mod list that won't ruin the experience
 

Sigourn

uooh afficionado
Joined
Feb 6, 2016
Messages
5,624
For what it's worth, I reformatted the entirety of my Morrowind Sharp guide.
Many instructions were taken verbatim from the Viva New Vegas and The Midnight Ride mod guides, since they are very clear and concise.
 
Joined
Sep 1, 2020
Messages
979
I hate when people create laundry lists of "essential mods" that completely transform gameplay and don't even bother to justify why they include each one. There's a million mods on Nexus that "totally enhance" the game and make it "more fun" and "immersive" if we're to believe their creators. Why are these mods any different?

I'm actually doing a first serious playthrough of Morrowind and I couldn't help going down the rabbit hole of mods for the game. Maybe I'll make my list in a few days and post it here, as the other thread seems to be mostly for content mods.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
14,476
Location
Frostfell
Any mod which makes spell failure more interesting? Example, if I fail to cast firestorm, it blows up in my own hands damaging muself, conjured daedra can go berserk against the caster, healing end up damaging and so on.
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,623
I hate when people create laundry lists of "essential mods" that completely transform gameplay and don't even bother to justify why they include each one. There's a million mods on Nexus that "totally enhance" the game and make it "more fun" and "immersive" if we're to believe their creators. Why are these mods any different?

I'm actually doing a first serious playthrough of Morrowind and I couldn't help going down the rabbit hole of mods for the game. Maybe I'll make my list in a few days and post it here, as the other thread seems to be mostly for content mods.

If it's your first playthrough then it's best to be very judicious. Better to just experience the base game first.

https://github.com/Tyler799/Morrowind-2020/blob/master/Morrowind_2020.md This list up to and including chapter 2.2 or 2.3 looks OK to me, although it's from 2020 so maybe outdated.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3014486063 This one up to and including chapter 3. Beyond that, LOL, recommending Better Bodies and Better Heads in 2023? That shit must be 2006 vintage by now. Some of the readers of this thread were probably in their diapers when these were made, unless they've been updated recently?

One could be really anal about it and say that even some of the modules of the Code Patch change the gameplay (although I'd get the patch itself if not using OpenMW, since it helps against save game corruption), MGE XE graphics are a change from the base game, and that the official plugins (although official) are nonessential content whether in the official versions or patched, so you can leave them out. Indeed some people delete them from their GOG install.

Patch for Purists I'm not sure about, I usually just install it without issue and never look back. But even that has its issues. If you look at the Bugs page, you can see that it also introduces new bugs, like this one which I've experienced:

During the quest for mages guild where you put a fake soul gem in Galbedir's desk, there is a bug which occurs when she comes back to her area from the downstairs rooms:

Instead of walking back, she inches along very slowly (no walking animation). Occasionally she will get stuck inching around in a circle at the bottom of the stairs; other times she gets back to her desk except she is facing the wrong way. Resetting her with "reset actors" command puts her back by her desk, except that she is then facing the wrong way, and will not turn to greet the player or speak at all (no voiced greetings).

I guess this is a result of the idle animation fix. The bug is avoided by un-activating the Patch for Purists ESM while doing this quest, so I can verify it isn't from another mod.

I assume the patch does more good than harm, but surely something is going wrong when a patch that is updated into 2023 introduces new bugs that were not present in the 2005 official patch. Seems to be some Wespification (no offence meant lol) going on.

I think the GOTY edition without any changes is playable and should run fine on modern systems, so even the most "essential" mods and patches that everyone uses are just bug fixes, QoL improvements, and distant land. I don't think the unmodded GOTY version is broken and unplayable, just sub-optimal to say the least. So "essential" mods are not really essential, just more convenient in general.
 
Joined
Sep 1, 2020
Messages
979
I hate when people create laundry lists of "essential mods" that completely transform gameplay and don't even bother to justify why they include each one. There's a million mods on Nexus that "totally enhance" the game and make it "more fun" and "immersive" if we're to believe their creators. Why are these mods any different?

I'm actually doing a first serious playthrough of Morrowind and I couldn't help going down the rabbit hole of mods for the game. Maybe I'll make my list in a few days and post it here, as the other thread seems to be mostly for content mods.

If it's your first playthrough then it's best to be very judicious. Better to just experience the base game first.

https://github.com/Tyler799/Morrowind-2020/blob/master/Morrowind_2020.md This list up to and including chapter 2.2 or 2.3 looks OK to me, although it's from 2020 so maybe outdated.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3014486063 This one up to and including chapter 3. Beyond that, LOL, recommending Better Bodies and Better Heads in 2023? That shit must be 2006 vintage by now. Some of the readers of this thread were probably in their diapers when these were made, unless they've been updated recently?

One could be really anal about it and say that even some of the modules of the Code Patch change the gameplay (although I'd get the patch itself if not using OpenMW, since it helps against save game corruption), MGE XE graphics are a change from the base game, and that the official plugins (although official) are nonessential content whether in the official versions or patched, so you can leave them out. Indeed some people delete them from their GOG install.

Patch for Purists I'm not sure about, I usually just install it without issue and never look back. But even that has its issues. If you look at the Bugs page, you can see that it also introduces new bugs, like this one which I've experienced:

During the quest for mages guild where you put a fake soul gem in Galbedir's desk, there is a bug which occurs when she comes back to her area from the downstairs rooms:

Instead of walking back, she inches along very slowly (no walking animation). Occasionally she will get stuck inching around in a circle at the bottom of the stairs; other times she gets back to her desk except she is facing the wrong way. Resetting her with "reset actors" command puts her back by her desk, except that she is then facing the wrong way, and will not turn to greet the player or speak at all (no voiced greetings).

I guess this is a result of the idle animation fix. The bug is avoided by un-activating the Patch for Purists ESM while doing this quest, so I can verify it isn't from another mod.

I assume the patch does more good than harm, but surely something is going wrong when a patch that is updated into 2023 introduces new bugs that were not present in the 2005 official patch. Seems to be some Wespification (no offence meant lol) going on.

I think the GOTY edition without any changes is playable and should run fine on modern systems, so even the most "essential" mods and patches that everyone uses are just bug fixes, QoL improvements, and distant land. I don't think the unmodded GOTY version is broken and unplayable, just sub-optimal to say the least. So "essential" mods are not really essential, just more convenient in general.

Well, too late, I've already installed 5000 mods! I've definitely spent more time looking up and installing mods than actually playing, as retarded as that sounds. I just can't help myself going into rabbitholes like these.

Still, it's good to know the game is playable out of the box, with maybe just the Code Patch to avoid savegame corruption issues. I'm tempted to do an unmodded playthrough after I finish the current one, since by now I've managed to significantly alter the gameplay.

Most of the mods I found most useful I don't see in any list, the most essential of all so far (not necessarily for reasons of game performance or stability, but for my personal wellbeing) being Shut Up! , which allows NPCs to greet you only when you're FACE TO FACE with them, not passing by them or in the general vicinity. I swear I was ready to snap if I heard "Outlander, I haven't much time" one more time.

I don't care much about graphics mods, not to mention I'm playing on 1280x720 with a refurbished office PC which still struggles to make 30fps in most areas. There's nothing in the game I find visually offensive except for two things: the first is the horrible segmentation of the vanilla character models. VSBR Vanilla style body replacer is a far superior choice to Better Bodies and Robert's Bodies, at least for the male bodies(Vanilla females look positively malnourished). Unfortunately it has no compatibility with the Better Clothes packs that are made for Better Bodies. So it's a choice between looking good naked or clothed.

Oh yeah, the second thing is the Prosper-esque walking and running animations of the Khajiit and Argonians. Someone must've told the animator(?) these were species of spiders. Mildly amusing if you're not playing them, but as I really wanted to play an Argonian I had to look for a replacement. There don't seem to be a lot of alternatives, in fact I only found Dirnae's Beast Animations. It's not perfect, but it's far more palatable.

Stuff like Map and Compass, Perfect Placement, it'd be hard to play without those, too. But I don't want make a list, I need to finish the game first!
 

Funposter

Arcane
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
1,773
Location
Australia
Patch for Purists I'm not sure about, I usually just install it without issue and never look back. But even that has its issues. If you look at the Bugs page, you can see that it also introduces new bugs, like this one which I've experienced:

During the quest for mages guild where you put a fake soul gem in Galbedir's desk, there is a bug which occurs when she comes back to her area from the downstairs rooms:

Instead of walking back, she inches along very slowly (no walking animation). Occasionally she will get stuck inching around in a circle at the bottom of the stairs; other times she gets back to her desk except she is facing the wrong way. Resetting her with "reset actors" command puts her back by her desk, except that she is then facing the wrong way, and will not turn to greet the player or speak at all (no voiced greetings).

I guess this is a result of the idle animation fix. The bug is avoided by un-activating the Patch for Purists ESM while doing this quest, so I can verify it isn't from another mod.

I assume the patch does more good than harm, but surely something is going wrong when a patch that is updated into 2023 introduces new bugs that were not present in the 2005 official patch. Seems to be some Wespification (no offence meant lol) going on.
Christ, so that's why that was happening. Never in a million years would I have suspected PfP was causing this.
 

MWaser

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 22, 2015
Messages
607
Location
Where you won't find me
What kind of a madman would use massive rebalance and gameplay alterations to play a game for the first time?
If you hate the systems of the game you're about to play ahead of time without even trying, maybe play a different game.
 

wwsd

Arcane
Vatnik
Joined
Jun 16, 2011
Messages
7,623
What kind of a madman would use massive rebalance and gameplay alterations to play a game for the first time?
If you hate the systems of the game you're about to play ahead of time without even trying, maybe play a different game.

I mean I kind of get it. It's absolutely bananas when you realise that it's useless to train skills like Mercantile or Sneak past a certain level because they will actually get worse, because the devs made a kind of clumsy backstop to prevent these skills from getting too OP. So imagine you make a certain build only to find out it's useless to level that up because the skills have been sabotaged in the dumbest ways. A lot of changes in unofficial patches are fine in that regard.

But I definitely echo this sentiment in general. MW is eminently playable and can be finished without any alterations to the fundamentals, which is exactly how I played MW when I first found it in the budget bin back in 2005. Some of the fundamentals are just broken, but the base game itself isn't. Playing MW for the first time is a pretty unique experience. I don't think that experience would be helped by being confronted with a few dozen toggles to change mechanics that someone else has decided are shit. Better to decide for oneself and then change any faulty mechanics in a later playthrough, since the game is obviously very replayable and has a wide array of mods.
 

NecroLord

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Sep 6, 2022
Messages
7,930
Location
Southeastern Yurop
I only played it with the Unofficial Patch and the Patch for Purists.
Mods which are all about fixing bugs, NOT "rebalancing" and altering game mechanics.

Is Morrowind Code Patch all that good/necessary?
 
Joined
Sep 1, 2020
Messages
979
I only played it with the Unofficial Patch and the Patch for Purists.
Mods which are all about fixing bugs, NOT "rebalancing" and altering game mechanics.

Is Morrowind Code Patch all that good/necessary?

I think nearly, if not all of its changes are toggleable and everything that isn't bug fixing is off by default. I like most of the balance changes, though. I've always played with it.
 

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