Elder Scrolls Project Tamriel: A Morrowind mod

[Funposter]

I just find chitin, bonemold & even steel a bit too cool to have such a small window in the game. I think more ppl should wear netch with funky helmets and maybe mail or something. That's why I thought maybe different quality for various armor could be used to make these cool armors matter. Steel, after all, is very varied when it comes to quality when made by one armorsmith or another.
So is chitin I take it, as Indoril armor is some laminated bug stuff with gold and chain.

I usually keep steel the whole game if i'm heavy armor just for the aesthetic. It's not like you need the extra armor, and if you really suck you can get it in other ways.

Heavy and Light Armor have really bad progression in the base game, since Light goes straight from Chitin to Glass, and even though Heavy technically has Dwarven as a stopping off point between Steel and Ebony, it actually doesn't provide that much more AR (20 compared to 15) and is pretty rare compared to how strong it is. Medium is really the only one with decent granular progression, but those early game bits and pieces like Ringmail and Chain are pointless, so you're probably picking up Bonemold straight away and then upgrading to Orcish as soon as you kill some Malacath worshipers or whatever. Pick up Dreugh or even Indoril afterwards. The real problem is that very early game sets (Fur, Netch Leather, Iron, Chain) are so easy to pass over that no player will ever use them, meaning that they exist only as window dressing for NPCs. Even the heavily level-scaled Oblivion and Skyrim suffer from this, where Leather and Steel are easy to purchase or obtain even at Level 1, making Fur and Iron entirely pointless.

 

[Poseidon00]

I mostly go Unarmed/Unarmored anyway. It's only a pain in the ass for the first 30 or so minutes it takes to pump unarmed to 100.

 

[lukaszek]

not sure what you guyz are talking about. I always play thieves for a reason being stealing best piece of armor one can find in shops early

 

[Archwizard Hank]

Good lord, do I have stories to tell about this mod. Every now and then I get a little bout of megalomania and think "hey, they've been taking eons to do this, surely I could to it - and do it faster - if I just lowered the quality standards a bit! Say, back down to Bethesda levels, that's not a bad metric." There used to be a video on their forum showcasing all the provinces in OpenMW. The bulk of this stuff at the moment is just very cleverly designed heightmaps imported into the game via TESAnnwyn, which is a real bastard of a tool to use. This video was privatized, and I can tell you exactly why: because if I could figure out how to reverse engineer the heightmaps from the video, some other schmuck could too. (Note that the provinces in the screencap at the start of the thread are either flattened or chopped up in areas that are highly unfinished, like High Rock.) As I figured, Morrowind renders the height data (if in a somewhat simplified fashion) for its world map, so it's really just a matter of calculating how many cells the map consumes (the assumption being that one map marker equals one cell) and importing an appropriately leveled heightmap into TESAnnwyn using the resulting figures. I was able to duplicate Black Marsh this way, but after a solid two weeks of banging my head against TESAnnwyn's archaic documentation, I flat out gave up because I couldn't move it into an appropriate position.

Tamriel Rebuilt's another story entirely. These modders are highly protective of their assets, so unless you're part of the team, there's always going to be *something* you aren't privy to. Eight years ago (give or take,) that "something" encompassed anything that wasn't considered a "public release." This was back when Sacred East had just released and they were entering a kind of developmental drought in terms of public releases. They had that embarrassing teaser trailer for Almalexia with the ordinators dancing in the empty streets, so I figured they had a massive amount of playable content that was just behind closed doors. I was right, but the trick was in unlocking the doors. I figured interior modding would be the easiest way in, because I had no way to guarantee my writing would meet their Ascendant Uber-CHIM Loremaster standards, and exterior modding gave me the willies. I made a real banger of a house, but the thing with their interior modding review process is that they require you to use DE_Poor furnishings, which have an uneven surface. This is partly to ensure you're a bad enough dude to properly stack a shelf, but it's mainly just a fucked up hazing ritual to make sure you're a team player who's willing to meet their quality standards, because no matter how many times you think you've placed that motherfucking bowl evenly on the table, you're bound to get the claim sent back to you because it's just two pixels off. The real hell of it? They don't actually require you to use vanilla DE_Poor furniture on the project, they made their own copy of it with an even surface.

In any case, I got on board their team, and I was able to access their files, which basically entailed everything you can download from them now as the "public alpha release" or whatever they're calling it now, and everything else they have clanged in to their claims forums (Almalexia, Southern Morrowind which is mainly just a big empty void with Narsis in the middle) and after disseminating the files to some friends for review, we were both impressed and disappointed. Western Morrowind was visually impressive, but very frequently confusing to navigate. And while I'm usually wont to chalk that up to the project simply being unfinished, all of my experiences with the eastern half were disturbingly similar - huge, empty spaces with very little to indicate where to go or who I should even be talking to. Necrom, an area which is supposedly a gigantic pilgrimage destination for literally every Dunmer who respects the dead, is nearly devoid of people. Folks in this thread have praised this mod's questlines, and while I'm sure they exist, unfortunately all I ever seemed to find was trash mobs, scenic vistas and NPCs who didn't have very much to say.

TL;DR I'm a fucking maniac who pulled a retarded Ocean's 11 heist on a dumb internet forum because I couldn't wait like three more years for them to release their unfinished mod, mod world seems too big, needs to be fleshed out to work

 

[Luzur]

Shouldn't they try to focus on just making a morrowind province? Why do they try to add diffrent provinces? Fucking modders man

And this is usually what kils big TES mods, the modder grunts get bred doing the same houses/caves/evil temple everyday and lose focus.

 

[None]

A progress report for Tamriel Rebuilt was posted a few days ago. Thought I'd share.

​

Telvanni Dustlands by Feivelyn — a concept for a future reimagining of the Telvannis district.​

Tamriel Rebuilt is a large-scale mod that adds the mainland of the Morrowind province to TES III: Morrowind, according to the vision and lore of the original Bethesda team. At two decades old, it is one of the longest-standing modding projects still active. Work continues on the western areas of the province, but since we release our mod as a series of fully-realized expansions, players can already enjoy content that includes roughly half of the Morrowind mainland and around 360 quests.

We last updated you on our ongoing modding progress in mid-January. Since then, there has been a ton of exciting progress, as we develop not only our next upcoming expansions, the Dominions of Dust and the Embers of Empire, but also the ones beyond those. Some major items were the merging of Embers of Empire reworks into our main in-development .esp plugin, allowing for quest re-implementation to begin, and the completion of the final assets required before Othreleth Woods goes into development.

The new, improved Firewatch now stands guard over the Inner Sea. Landscapes around the city are still works in progress.


Sketchfab concepts of Redoran architecture by Feivelyn, for future work in the Velothis district.


The fearsome Skyrenders terrorize unlucky travelers in the eastern part of the Shipal-Shin. Skyrender assets by Worsas and Sirrah. Image credit and landscape work: Chef.​

Above is just a snippet of some of the interesting bits, see the rest here: https://www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/content/april-2022-progress-update

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Is it worth trying out yet? I remember trying it some time ago and finding too many areas near finished ones completely empty.

 

[Tenebris]

Is it worth trying out yet? I remember trying it some time ago and finding too many areas near finished ones completely empty.

It's worth it. There are many areas that are absolutely packed with quests and things to do. Especially at Old Ebonheart. Not much point waiting unless you think you'll still be interested in 20 years.

 

[None]

Is it worth trying out yet? I remember trying it some time ago and finding too many areas near finished ones completely empty.

Depends on when you last played. Everything post 2018 is what I'd consider "modern TR" and worth playing, everything before that is hit or miss as far as quality goes. Here's a visual:

Spoiler

Compare that to the next release, Dominions of Dust:

Spoiler

 

[Funposter]

Is it worth trying out yet? I remember trying it some time ago and finding too many areas near finished ones completely empty.

Old Ebonheart and Aantharin releases are high quality but encompass a relatively small section of the overall map. As others have stated, the pre-2018 maps are hit-and-miss in regards to quality and the philosophy behind the overall design seems to have been quite different. There is a lot of high level content in those areas and it can be spread quite thin, making it feel more like extra content for people who had already beaten Tribunal and Bloodmoon and wanted to continue on with the same character. Sacred East in particular feels completely devoid of content. Necrom is a huge city but it has about six quests actually located in or related to it. It's all going to be reworked eventually, and the Ashes of the Empire release will be the first part of that, redesigning the Imperial towns/cities in the Telvannis area.

My recommendation would be to at least give the Tribunal Temple quests in Almas Thirr a go. I think it's better quality than any of the vanilla questlines. The philosophy behind TR generally shouldn't be "oh boy I can't wait to play all of that TR content". Rather, you should be looking at it as a way to supplement the base game's content and give characters more things to do. Often in the base game guild questlines won't give you enough experience/rewards to approach their more difficult end game quests (try playing the Imperial Cult or Tribunal Temple without supplementing them with other quests) but what TR does is give characters more content to engage with without needing to join new factions or start the main quest.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Depends on when you last played. Everything post 2018 is what I'd consider "modern TR" and worth playing, everything before that is hit or miss as far as quality goes. Here's a visual:

Yeah, I think it was before then, because I remember this rope bridge across a canyon in a town I don't remember seeing anyone in.
Either way, I think I will give it a shot the next time I play Morrowind, which knowing me shouldn't be too long.

 

[Funposter]

Depends on when you last played. Everything post 2018 is what I'd consider "modern TR" and worth playing, everything before that is hit or miss as far as quality goes. Here's a visual:

Yeah, I think it was before then, because I remember this rope bridge across a canyon in a town I don't remember seeing anyone in.
Either way, I think I will give it a shot the next time I play Morrowind, which knowing me shouldn't be too long.

Just keep an eye on the release schedule and either don't go to areas for which only exteriors have been developed, or don't install TR Preview. The preview exteriors are basically there for sightseeing at this point, especially since they're subject to change.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

 

[None]

Looking Back At 20 Years Of Tamriel Rebuilt

An ancient, 2004 trailer for Tamriel Rebuilt by Prometheus, featuring theme music by Dragonfly.

Rejoice! The celebrations of the 20th anniversary of Morrowind continue this month. There is much to be grateful for – how many other games still have an active modding community after two decades, perhaps stronger now than ever since the very early 2000s? Tamriel Rebuilt owes very much to the wider Morrowind modding community, whether it is sharing assets and modders or simply benefiting from the community improvements.

In fact, TR has been a prominent part of this modding community since its inception, which stretches back even before the game was released. Parts of TR are likely some of the oldest mod content still actively being played. Hence, it feels fitting in this month to take a look back at the history of our mod.


Released areas of Morrowind province covered by Bethesda’s and Tamriel Rebuilt’s expansions are marked by clear areas and years of initial release. Future in-progress expansions are marked by shaded areas and teal italic text, numbered in expected order of release. Planned reworks of older areas are marked in red.

If you're interested to see what 20 years of autism gets you check out the link above.

 

[None]

What about those islands?

What about those islands?
Submitted by Sultan of Rum on Wed, 2022-06-01 14:38

Tamriel Rebuilt is a major community modding project for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, which aims to add the mainland of the Morrowind province to the original game’s island of Vvardenfell, sticking closely to Bethesda’s original vision. The mod is released as a series of fully-realized expansions; currently, over half of the mainland is released to players, including thousands of interiors and NPCs and over 360 quests.

Over the last year, we have showcased our major upcoming expansions – Dominions of Dust and Embers of Empire, as well as the future ones after those. However, many of you have been asking about the few obscure bits on our planning maps that are not contiguous with any of the aforementioned expansions. In fact, we left those bits obscure on purpose, to explain them in more detail for this month’s teaser article. These upcoming additional lands (mini-expansions, if you will) are the islands of Olanar, Vounoura and Firemoth; we will examine each one in turn.

 

[Tenebris]

Can't wait to see those in a few years.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Can't wait to see those in a few dozen years.

FTFY

 

[taxalot]

Is this compatible with overhaul mods like Morrowind Rebirth ?

 

[Funposter]

Rebirth fucking sucks

 

[taxalot]

Rebirth fucking sucks

Why ?
I never tried it in the first place.

 

[gerey]

So, is TR actually worth playing? And by that I mean, are the quest well-written and well-designed, are there unique mechanics to them, how does the mod slot into the main quest of the original game?

 

[Funposter]

So, is TR actually worth playing? And by that I mean, are the quest well-written and well-designed, are there unique mechanics to them, how does the mod slot into the main quest of the original game?

Newer quests (2018 onwards) are better than the older content (2006-2011) and some are extremely high quality - better than anything found in the vanilla game or its expansions, I would say. The Tribunal Temple questline in Almas Thirr is a standout, as I have pointed out repeatedly in other Morrowind/Tamriel Rebuilt threads. I don't know if I'd say that any quests have "unique" mechanics, insofar as everything is done using the vanilla construction set and scripting, but the highlights would be quest in the Old Ebonheart Mages Guild, which has a pocket realm with a bunch of gimmick rooms and puzzles that you need to sort out. Doors in weird places and at odd angles, mazes, trapped floor panels and you absolutely require skill in magic to navigate the whole thing effectively and to get the final quest reward. The Imperial Legion has a fun investigation/talking-to-people quest where you need to suss out whether or not a Simulacrum-era crime was committed by an imprisoned former-General, or a Daedric doppleganger as he claims. As stated, the Almas Thirr Temple questline is great and the basic gist is that you end up needing to play negotiator in an attempt to stop a House War breaking out between the Hlaalu and Indoril, on top of a bunch of other things. Both of those previous quests require a lot of skill checks in dialogue, too, which is an underused mechanic in the vanilla game which TR takes advantage of a lot more often.

I'd say that newer TR quests just try to stretch the vanilla mechanics to their absolute limits in ways that the original game or its expansions never really did. Quests dealing with magic see you getting teleported to weird places a few times. There's a lot more instances of required use of Illusion and Conjuration effects like Calm, Command, Frenzy etc. in order to meet quest conditions or get the optimal result. You also get stuff like Khalaan, a pocket realm of Oblivion with some lore-justification which is effectively a massive dungeon, housing multiple quests and different entry points depending on the type of character you play. As for how it integrates into the main quest, you need to visit the mainland Telvanni councilors to get their votes (or kill them) in order to become Hortator. So far they're the only ones fully implemented., so you don't need to speak to Hlaalu or Redoran.

 

[gerey]

Newer quests (2018 onwards) are better than the older content (2006-2011)

Is the older content going to receive an overhaul to bring it more in line with the quality of later additions? I'm specifically talking about quests here, since I know they're working on redesigning locations already.

Both of those previous quests require a lot of skill checks in dialogue, too, which is an underused mechanic in the vanilla game which TR takes advantage of a lot more often.

Ah, thank you for this - this was going to be my next question, if the mod added skill checks to dialogue.

 

[Funposter]

Newer quests (2018 onwards) are better than the older content (2006-2011)

Is the older content going to receive an overhaul to bring it more in line with the quality of later additions? I'm specifically talking about quests here, since I know they're working on redesigning locations already.

I think that the stuff being overhauled in Ashes of the Empire is mostly keeping the same structure and just being moved around. House Telvanni is definitely due for a big overhaul though, as entire characters are going to be replaced and re-written. Sacred East's content will likely be less a case of overhauling and actually implementing, since that region of the map is still barren in terms of quest and faction content.

 

[None]

July 2022 Progress Update

Submitted by Sultan of Rum on Wed, 2022-07-13 21:04


Looking over the Armun Ashlands and the stronghold of Volenfaryon towards the Velothi Mountains. This screenshot uses Zesterer’s Volumetric Cloud & Mist shaders and the latest in-development build of OpenMW.
Tamriel Rebuilt is a massive community modding project for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind that aims to seamlessly add the mainland of the Morrowind province to the original game. The mod is released as a series of fully-realized expansions which are ready to be played. The released areas so far include more than a third of the mainland’s landmass, thousands of interior locations and roughly 360 quests.
Welcome to another Tamriel Rebuilt progress roundup, following on from last April’s. There is exciting news this time – the grand merging of the Dominions of Dust expansion has now begun! Our internal, in-development mod is organized into different “section files” – Morrowind .esp plugins which contain large chunks of our new lands, interiors, NPCs and dialogue. Significantly, the particular section files that make up Dominions of Dust have very recently been merged into our main plugin, TR_Mainland. This means that Tamriel Rebuilt has now permanently grown by several hundred new exterior cells, for the first time extending to the western border of Morrowind – there is no turning back!
As a consequence of this and the earlier merging of our Embers of Empire development plugin a few months ago, it is now inevitable that both of these upcoming expansions will be released simultaneously, as a double feature combining to make the biggest single Tamriel Rebuilt release yet (at least in terms of the amount of playable content).

An overhead map of vanilla Morrowind and our latest in-development TR_Mainland plugin (i.e., the playable area of the mod), showing the new lands added towards the south-west in the upcoming expansion. You can still see some rough edges, like the straight-line transition between Roth Roryn to the north and Armun Ashlands to the south, which we plan to address prior to release.

The second big news is that the first new quests and questlines are now not only complete, but are swiftly getting reviewed and merged! To find out which ones, read to the end of the newsletter – like last time, we will begin this overview of the last quarter’s progress in the order of our development pipeline: concept art, assets, exteriors, interiors and, finally, quests. If you are interested in finding out more, the links below will take you to individual claim pages. But beware that these pages will, by definition, contain spoilers – after all, our mod development happens completely in the open.

The TR team is busy on all fronts, lots of to read and see in this month's update.

Also, if you haven't noticed, all of these updates are by Sultan of Rum. So cheers to them for keeping us in the loop. This is much better than having to dig through their Discord.